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Authors: Anita Doreen Diggs

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BOOK: A Meeting In The Ladies' Room
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31
BROTHERS
I
dressed like the corporate executive I used to be—a navy blue suit, flesh-colored stockings, and black pumps. No one who glanced my way would equate me with the wild-eyed creature in the televised mug shot. The restaurant/bar called Brothers was located on Hudson Street, a few blocks away.
She was nowhere in sight. I was only twenty minutes late. Had she come and gone? I described her to a passing waitress, who said she didn't remember seeing anyone who fit that description.
I passed the time sipping ginger ale at a little table away from the window and kept my back to the aging preppies enjoying Happy Hour at the bar. It was a spacious establishment with comfy armchairs, a blond wood floor, ceiling fans, and pictures of famous rock musicians like Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, and Alice Cooper. A tape of their hits played quietly as a backdrop.
Alyssa Kraft showed up just as I was giving up hope. She was wearing black jeans, a gray silk tee shirt, and strappy silver sandals. A stream of apologies fell from her lips as she eased her five-foot, nine-inch frame into the seat across from me. We ordered drinks and catfish sandwiches.
“How are you, Jackie?”
I sighed. “Bewildered, scared, angry, and tired.”
She looked at me with pity in her eyes. “How can I help?”
“I need you to do me a huge favor.”
“Do you need money?”
“No.”
We were quiet for a moment while I summoned up the nerve to ask for what I needed.
“Tell me,” Alyssa said softly.
My words bumped up against each other in my hurry to get them out. “Alyssa, I don't want you to feel obligated to do this. If the idea makes you nervous, just tell me and I promise not to hold it against you.”
She nodded.
The waitress set our drinks on the table. We waited until she was gone before continuing our conversation.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Some traveling.”
She listened intently with her head cocked to one side.
“Philadelphia and a place in Wisconsin.”
“To see . . .”
“I need you to go see two women. They are sisters, but neither one of them can know that you're in touch with the other one. You'll have to lie and say that you're an official person from the committee that awards the Pulitzer Prize. You're there to investigate the background of a reporter who is in line to receive that prize. Understand?”
“Is this reporter really in line for a Pulitzer?”
“No.”
She looked wary. “This sounds illegal.”
“I don't know if it is or isn't,” I told her frankly.
“Go on.”
“You're investigating the background of a woman named Tiffany Nixon.”
“Isn't she the reporter who is always writing about you?”
“Yes. And the two women you're going to see are both her sisters. She hates them enough to write about it and I'm hoping that they feel the same way. I need anything bad they can tell you about Tiffany . . . something that would interest the editors of the
Comet.”
She whistled. “Holy shit!”
I continued as though she hadn't spoken. “Alyssa, you'll have to work fast and you can only visit each house one time.”
Alyssa swallowed a huge gulp of her drink. “When do I leave?”
We clicked glasses in a toast.
32
A NEW DEAL
B
lackmail focuses the brain.
Would I ruin Tiffany Nixon's career if she didn't play ball? Was I capable of living with the guilt that would accompany such an act? I couldn't help going over and over the possible karmic results of blackmail, unsure of how big a price the universe would force me to pay.
Alyssa didn't turn up much, but combined with certain inconsistencies that had arisen from my fact-checking, it was enough for me to proceed.
How should I approach Tiffany Nixon? I weighed my choices carefully.
A letter sent through the mail was one way to do it. But I would have no way of gauging her reaction. It was also a piece of physical evidence that could be turned over to the district attorney.
Calling her was not an option. According to the file, Tiffany had a taping device attached to the phone at the office which recorded all of her incoming and outgoing calls. Did she have such a system in her home as well? I couldn't take that chance. It was clear that I'd have to pay Miss Nixon a visit.
She usually worked until six and it would be dusk before she reached her block. I wore a black sweat suit and sneakers. I put my money in my bra and my keys in my pocket. It was important to be able to run away if Tiffany sounded the alarm. Unless I was caught on her doorstep, it was a case of my word against hers. I wrote a long letter to Elaine, telling her where I was going and why, and dropped it in the mail on my way to the subway.
At seven, Tiffany Nixon turned the corner onto 71
st
Street. I was standing down a short flight of steps in front of a store that sold books on theater and film when she passed. I recognized her from the picture that always appeared at the top of her newspaper column.
Tiffany was about five feet-eight and weighed roughly 200 pounds. Her reddish-brown hair was thinly cornrowed and there were silver beads at the end of each one. She was wearing a multicolored peasant dress which swirled around her ankles, showing off a pair of silver sandals.
In spite of her considerable bulk, she was an attractive woman who walked like a dancer.
I slipped from my hiding place and walked behind her until she crossed the street. Then I fell into lockstep beside her.
“Your column last year on Jesse Jackson was very interesting,” I said without looking directly at her.
“Which one, honey? I do a lot of Jesse.” Her voice was tired as though she'd had a hard day.
“The one on his speech at the University of Michigan. The topic was ‘America Must Leave No One Behind: A Celebration of Diversity.' ”
She kept walking. “Thanks, but I don't really remember it.”
I jogged along beside her. “It's the one where you described sitting in the Hill Auditorium on that campus listening to Jesse drone on about the merits of affirmative action and how the place was packed so tightly that you could barely breathe.”
She stopped walking. I stopped jogging.
“The one where you talked to several students after his speech was over and reported on what they had to say,” I concluded.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Someone who knows that you were nowhere near the University of Michigan the day Jesse gave that speech. You had a big fight with your sister, Oona, the night before. The two of you continued arguing the next morning and you were late leaving her house because of it. You missed your flight to Michigan, Miss Nixon.”
Tiffany Nixon didn't move. My head was down, eyes gazing at her sandaled feet.
The feet moved toward me. I backed up.
“Who the fuck are you?” she snarled. “And what do you want?”
I looked up and saw that she was coming straight at me. I stood still and let her punch me right in the mouth.
She shook me by the shoulders. “I'm going to ask you one more time . . .”
A white woman rushed up to us, dragging her poor little dog on its leash. “I saw you hit this woman, now let go of her.”
Tiffany blinked and released me.
My lip was cut. I wiped my hand across it and saw blood. “Miss, could you be a witness to first-degree assault if I need you?”
The woman didn't hesitate. “Yes. My name is Josephine Harris.”
My mouth felt like it was on fire. “Thank you.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes. This woman won't hit me again.”
She gave Tiffany a nasty look, mumbled something about New York going to hell in a handbasket, and walked on with her dog. I was just thinking that I'd forgotten to get the stranger's address when Tiffany spoke.
“Look, I shouldn't have hit you. I'm sorry.”
I wanted to kick her ass. “My name is Jacqueline Blue.”
Tiffany gasped and then shrieked.
“I came to see you because I need your help.”
She was sputtering uselessly.
“I am not a killer. I am just an ordinary book editor who wants to go back to work. Can you understand that?”
Tiffany Nixon just glared at me.
“I've done my homework, Miss Nixon. The Jesse column was not the first time you fabricated a story.” I was bluffing here—Alyssa hadn't found anything else. “That's a big deal in the newspaper business. It would cost you your job and no one else will ever hire you.”
“There is no point in my going for this. You'll just come back again. Blackmailers never quit.”
I hadn't expected this. “Blackmailers usually want money. I don't.”
She crossed her arms and her eyes went squinty with anger. “You want me to run a column saying I don't believe you are guilty, right?”
I shook my head. “No. I want to tell you some very interesting things about this case. If you follow up on the information I give you, Annabelle's killer is going to panic and make a mistake.”
I was scared to death. If my scheme backfired and Tiffany went to the police with the fact that I tried to blackmail her, whatever public support I had would disappear in a flash.
Tiffany looked interested, but she was still frowning. “I'm listening.”
“Look, Miss Nixon. I was arrested on evidence that was purely circumstantial. There's a good chance that I won't be convicted of the crime but that is not good enough for me and Annabelle deserves better, too. I want my name cleared and the real murderer locked up. All I'm asking you to do is a little investigative reporting—who knows what you'll turn up?”
Her hands were now balled up into fists at her side. This was not a woman who took bullying well. “Start talking.”
And so I did.
While scrubbing my makeup off that night, I glanced in the mirror. The woman who gazed back at me was someone I no longer knew.
33
THOSE WELBURN GALS
T
here was nothing I could do except be patient. Tiffany's column appeared every day but she didn't write anything related to the case until two weeks later. It was worth the wait.
WAS SARAH SOBBING WITH GRIEF FOR
FIFTEEN MINUTES?
by Tiffany Nixon
 
Sarah Jane Welburn and Mike Rizzelli met seven years ago at a wedding reception. He was the caterer and she, the bride's old college chum. It didn't take long for them to become an item (those Welburn gals sure don't marry up, do they?) and their own wedding followed just a year later.
The new Mrs. Rizzelli kept her maiden name professionally and continued on with her work as an interior decorator for the Park Avenue set. Her firm, Le Magnifique, flourished over the next two years just as the forty-year-old, family-owned firm, Rizzelli Caterers, began a decline. She told her friends that Mike began to drink.
According to their neighbors on West End Avenue, the couple often had loud arguments that went on for hours.
The last fight in the apartment occurred five months ago, shortly after eight a.m., and it was so heated that someone called the police. By the time the police got there at eight-thirty, no one was home. Mr. Rizzelli was gone and Sarah Jane Welburn Rizzelli had hailed a cab for a trip to her sister's home.
According to my source, who shall remain anonymous, the argument between Sarah Jane and Mike had something to do with Annabelle. In fact, after Mike stalked out, Sarah Jane called Annabelle and “really laid into her.” She was on the phone “screaming and sobbing like a crazy woman.”
We've been told that Sarah Jane arrived at The Dakota at nine, too late to save her sibling, who had been strangled in her own bathroom. Annabelle's doorman called 911 at nine-fifteen.
Why didn't Sarah Jane call the police and what was she doing for fifteen whole minutes?
The column set off a firestorm of articles over the next few days. Keith, Mama, and I were elated as the press stumbled over themselves in an effort to upstage each other.
“CAIN AND ABEL?”
ran a headline in the
News.
The venerable
New York Times
featured a prim article alluding to Annabelle's rumored affairs but it was the
New York Comet
that showed Victor Bell on the front page, trying to duck the camera. The headline above him screamed
“IS THIS DORA'S DAD?”
and the story inside reported:
Annabelle Welburn Murray, the murdered debutante-turned-publisher, was involved in a torrid affair with Victor Bell, a 35-year-old African-American sales representative for Bingham & Stone, publishers of numerous celebrity memoirs and home to several best-selling novelists.
It is believed that Mrs. Murray, doubtful that her husband was actually the biological father of their only child, subjected Dora, aged three, to DNA testing a week before she died. The results of those tests have not been released.
Although a spokesperson at Bingham & Stone refused to comment, book-publishing insiders agree that the normally taciturn Mr. Bell is “a very private individual who rarely talks about his personal life.” Now they all know why.
Everyone in the Black Pack (except Joe and Victor) was trying to reach me, but I only took Elaine's calls. She was handling our project with brisk efficiency—her publisher was now in on our secret and had granted her a blank check to make the book happen.
Every single one of the news bulletins reviewed my career, arrest, and upcoming trial.
With investigative reporters from the
National Enquirer
to
Newsweek
working on the story and poking holes in both Annabelle's reputation and the district attorney's case, there was nothing left for me to do.
I had fought the good fight and now the days stretched before me. Keith was busy with jury selection, pretrial motions, and other legal maneuverings designed to save my life.
BOOK: A Meeting In The Ladies' Room
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