Page 1 of Is Anyone Listening?
Chapter One
"You never know when you'll become a victim." Tessa Conway leaned forward and put her lips close to the microphone. "Or if anyone will ever know your story."
"Stop," I said with a laugh. "You're being overdramatic, Tessa."
"I'm selling our show, Cassidy," Tessa said.
"Cassidy is right. Too much." Morgan Kent set a bottle of wine on the folding table we used for our podcast and sat down next to Tessa.
"It's not too much," Tessa argued. "This is what our listeners are looking for. They want to be immersed in the story. Then they'll tell their friends about our podcast, and we'll be able to monetize. We won't have to keep looking for jobs or doing boring part-time work for no money."
As Tessa and Morgan bickered, I refilled my wine glass and looked around my tiny studio apartment on the twelfth floor of a high-rise in Manhattan. In addition to a full-sized bed, I'd managed to squeeze in a couch and this folding table, which served as my kitchen table when we weren't doing our podcast, Mysteries Uncorked. We'd started the show two months ago, after the company we worked for went out of business.
Bright Horizons, a midsize media agency, had been a great place to work for a while. But the owner had been more interested in his public persona than the bottom line and, eventually, reality had caught up. I'd done research and pitch decks, Tessa had worked in social, and Morgan in HR. Two devastating financial quarters for the company had resulted in massive company-wide layoffs that had put us all on unemployment.
While looking for new jobs, we'd decided to have some fun discussing our passion for true crime stories over bottles of wine. We'd never imagined that our informal podcast would have an audience of more than ten, but, to our shock, our numbers had grown as other true crime lovers joined us. Last week's podcast had gotten over ten thousand downloads across the various apps. That shocking fact had brought us our first sponsor, a wine distributor, who provided free wine for our podcasts.
Tessa thought it was just the beginning, and maybe she was right. Maybe we should start thinking bigger, because we all needed money. While we were three intelligent women with at least seven years of work experience behind us, none of us had been able to find another full-time job. Instead, I was picking up freelance writing gigs, Tessa was doing social media for a nonprofit and working as a caterer, and Morgan was editing employee manuals.
"You agree with me, don't you, Cassidy?" Tessa asked, drawing my attention back to her.
"Sorry, I wasn't listening."
"Well, that's great. I'm trying to save us, and you're daydreaming."
"What did you say?"
"What I said before. We need to think bigger."
"How?" I asked. "Specifically?"
"I was talking to a former client, who has been listening to our podcast. She's smart and well-connected, and she said if we really want to break out, we need to start doing more than talking about true crime cases."
"We do more than that," I argued. "I create timelines. I go through police files."
"So do I," Morgan added. "We dig in."
"But that's where it ends."
"Where else can it end?" I asked. "We're not detectives."
"Maybe we should be. My friend said if we take the podcast on the road, visit the scene of a crime, we'll triple our audience."
"What scene?" Morgan asked. "We mostly talk about cold cases. There's no scene anymore."
"We go to the town," Tessa said. "We talk to the neighbors, the friends. We shake things up. It doesn't matter if we find the truth; we just have to look for it and take our fans with us."
"You're crazy," Morgan said. "I need more wine."
Tessa raised her brows, a question in her gaze. "Am I crazy, Cassidy?"
"Maybe. We aren't investigators."
"Sure, we are. You're a researcher and writer, Cassidy. You always bring the scenes alive for our listeners. And Morgan is great with psychology, understanding people and motivations. And I can charm information out of just about everyone. What's the worst that could happen? No one talks? We don't solve the crime? Who will blame us for that failure?" She paused. "No one has solved any of these crimes. But we'll bring the story back to life. We'll put people right in the thick of it. I guarantee our numbers will grow, and so will our sponsors and advertisers. That means money, real money."
Tessa was a great salesperson, but not all of her ideas panned out. Still, where was the risk? "It is interesting," I conceded.
"Not you, too," Morgan groaned.
