Edited to Death (14 page)

“Come on, boys,” he said.

“Hustle those plates into the kitchen and I’ll drop you off at school. Mom’s got a
title now and she’s got to get to her office.”

“It’s temporary,” I muttered.

“Cheer up,” he said, helping Zach with his jacket. “Maybe you’ll take to organizational
life. You can have your people get back to my people about what’s for dinner. Very
post-feminist.”

The boys raced out the door. I caught Michael by the arm. “Do you hate me?” I asked
and held my breath waiting for the answer.

He kissed me lightly on the lips. “No. I don’t hold grudges.”

I whispered, “Thank you.”

“And I don’t forget.”

I stiffened. “That sounds like a life sentence, Michael.”

He shrugged my arm off. “Good. That’s how it’s supposed to sound.”

“Michael,” I started to protest.

He held up his hand. “Of course, maybe our friend John Moon will decide I really did
kill Quentin. Life sentence for me, and lifetime freedom for you to screw around.”

I was speechless.

He grinned. “Just kidding,
cara
. Lighten up. Besides, the hockey team would have to go out and find a new center.”

Then they were gone.

Michael wasn’t really a suspect. At least, it didn’t seem that way from my conversation
with Moon. Of course, I could call Moon and just ask him. Well, not just ask right
out, but maybe… inquire.

I poured another cup of coffee and pulled Douglas’s letter from last night out of
my pocket. Then I reached for the phone, thinking about calling Inspector Moon. It
seemed as if I might have useful information, which perhaps he’d be willing to trade
me for the reassurance that Michael wasn’t remotely a suspect.

I glanced at the clock. Just after eight, too early to call Moon. But on the other
hand, my scalp prickled, the perfect time to call London.

“Bad idea,” I said aloud, antidote to the “adventure without a diaphragm” revelation
of last night.

“You shouldn’t play detective, Maggie. Bad, bad idea.” Then I thought about Michael’s
dark joke at the kitchen door. It was my fault; I had gotten us into this mess. I
should—I could—get us out. The police were busy; certainly they could use the help
of a concerned citizen like me. I took a sip of coffee. For a moment, I dutifully
considered my motives. Was I interested in helping the cops because it would help
Michael, or because I knew I was just as smart as Moon, or just because? “This is
a terrible idea,” I said aloud. Then, I dialed. It was just after four in the afternoon
in London, and Sara Jenkins would be getting the children’s tea. What harm could it
do to ask for her help?

“Sara? It’s Maggie.”

“Maggie! I can’t believe you called. Colin’s having the worst time practicing. I wish
you were here to help.”

“What’s the piece?”

“It’s not a piece. It’s one of those fill-in-as-you-go notebooks on music theory.”

“Uh huh, what’s he studying?” I glanced at the clock again, getting impatient. Colin’s
transatlantic musical coaching was ticking away at many cents a minute.

“Intervals. He says he can’t hear the difference between a fourth and a fifth. Is
that right? Aren’t they things to drink?”

I laughed. “Tell him to go sit at the piano and play fourths and fifths with a little
trick in mind: the fourths always sound like ‘here comes the bride’ and the fifths
always sound like ‘twinkle, twinkle, little star.’ It works anywhere on the piano.”

“Oh, Maggie, thanks.”

“Wait, wait, don’t hang up! I called you. Listen, Sara, are you still tutoring university
students?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I have a little academic detecting for you to do. I’m looking for a professor.”

“What’s the name?”

“That’s what I don’t know, exactly. His first name’s Douglas, he’s married to someone
named Leslie, and I think he’s written a biography rather recently.”

“About?”

“Isn’t Gully the name of one of Joyce Cary’s characters?”

“
The Horse’s Mouth
, Gully Jimson.”

“That’s what I thought. Okay, my guess is it’s a bio about Cary.”

“So you want me to ask ’round about this guy? Then what?”

“Just get me his name and a number where I can reach him. And the sooner the better.
I’ll explain later. I’m late for work.”

Sara chuckled. “You must be on deadline again.”

“Deadline nothing. I’ve got a real job!” And with that, I hung up.

Half hour later I was in
Small Town’s
offices. I picked up a stack of pink message slips at the front desk, poured coffee,
and settled in behind Quentin’s desk. Uncle Alf, Inspector Moon, Manfred Smith, the
writer on the January resolution piece had all called.

Linda Quoc, the art director, pushed the door open, her arms full of layouts. As usual,
she was in requisite designer black, head to toe, except for her hot pink eyeglass
frames.

“Maggie, you’ve got to look at these spreads for January. Glen’s seen them all and
wants your approval before we commission art. And I’ve got portfolios of illustrators
we want to use for this issue, so please take a look so I can call these people and
get them going.”

“Show me,” I said. “I don’t want to return any of these phone calls anyway.”

I approved layouts, shifted some stories around, trying to recapture Quentin’s unerring
eye for leading with substance yet leavening with enough sexy fluff to keep people
reading. Then I looked at illustrator portfolios. The last one bothered me.

“Who is this guy?” I asked Linda.

“John Orlando,” she said. “You met him at Quentin’s funeral. Stocky dude in Banana
Republic regalia.” She perched her glasses atop her elegantly spiked haircut and looked
at me. “Do you like his work?”

I leafed through the portfolio again. He worked in pen and ink, dense fine-lined drawings
that looked like the op-ed pages of
The New York Times
. All had elaborate, tiny signatures, with the last “O” of Orlando filled in with
heavy ornamentation.

“It’s okay.”

“But?”

I closed the portfolio.

“But I think it’s awfully heavy-handed for
Small Town
.”

She sighed. “If you like him, Linda,” I said hastily, “I’m okay with it. I gather
he does a lot of work for the magazine.”

“I don’t like him,” she said crossly. “I never did like him. But Quentin was his…
his advocate, and then when Glen came, he seemed to agree. Twice I put my foot down,
because the assignments he turned in were so grim and depressing I couldn’t stand
to use them.”

“What happened?”

“Quent supported me, so we didn’t use the drawings. We paid a very handsome kill fee,
but Glen was cranky for a week.”

Kill fees, the money you pay an artist or writer for commissioning a piece and then
not using it, can deplete a magazine budget and throw a schedule off track.

She tapped her pencil on the drawing. “I don’t even know what he was cranky about.
Quent or Glen, I don’t remember which one, managed to persuade the people over at
the Sunday magazine supplement to buy that drawing. I offered to think about it for
another issue, but Glen and Quent said that Orlando’s drawings are—what did they say?—
perishable
. You’ve got to use them when they’ve been commissioned or they go bad.”

“They go bad? Since when has illustration become spoil-able? That’s nuts. It’s not
like they’re topical or political cartoons or anything.”

Linda smiled. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“I hate to be a new broom,” I said. “But I think he’s wrong for this resolutions story.
It’s supposed to be lighthearted and fun.”

Linda smiled. “Fine,” she said. “You break the news to Glen.”

She got up to leave. “Chicken!” I called after her.

“Hey, Maggie,” she said. “You may actually work out as a boss.”

“I may, huh?” I asked. “Okay, boss’s privilege. I’ve got a question for you.”

She leaned against the doorjamb. “Go ahead.”

“How come I’ve never seen you in anything except black—ever except at Quentin’s funeral?”

“Oh, Maggie, that’s a personal question. Don’t you ever read that multicultural, diversity
sensitivity stuff? You know Asians don’t like to answer personal questions.”

I grinned. “Uh huh, I know,” I said. “But seeing as how you left Vietnam when you
were five, and you already told me you grew up on Count Chocula cereal and Barbie
dolls, I figure you’re just obnoxiously American enough to blab about yourself like
the rest of us. So tell me, is it true they make you take the all-black pledge in
design school?”

She laughed. “Sort of. I do think color is way too intense to use casually. So it
keeps me calm if there’s no color on me. Plus, now that I have kids, it’s all I can
do to get out of the house in the morning. And they wear all those crayon colors that
make my eyes hurt. When I look in my own closet and the choices are black, black,
and black, it makes it quick and easy to get dressed.”

“Okay, that’s everyday,” I said, “but what about the turquoise?”

She looked away, seeming to consider, then back at me. “Some friend of Quentin’s brought
a bolt of turquoise silk back from Hong Kong and Claire didn’t want it. So he brought
it here and one day when I was sitting at the table in his office, he jumped up and
held the fabric next to my face. He made me stand in front of a mirror with him and
look at myself with all that silk wrapped around my shoulders.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “It was as if I was seeing myself in some different way.
I looked, I don’t know, exotic or glamorous or something.” She thought for a minute,
“I looked like a more intriguing version of me.”

I thought about Quentin in the millinery department at Saks, buying me just the right
hat.

I handed Linda a tissue. “I know what you mean,” I said.

“So anyway,” she continued, “I took the silk and my mother made me that jumpsuit you
saw at the funeral. Pretty peculiar, wasn’t it? Everyone else puts on black for a
funeral, and I put on turquoise. But I thought Quentin would like it.” She swiped
at her eyes with the tissue. “I’m getting back to work. See you later.”

I turned to the message slips. One of the feature writers, predictably, wanted a teeny-weeny
extension. Uncle Alf was just “checking in,” and wanted me to know he’d be reviewing
the books very carefully each month. And could Michael and I have dinner with him
and Claire later in the week? Just to chat?

“Of course,” I said cheerfully, and hung up, ruminating about what horrible reparations
I would have to make to Michael in return for a dinner with Alf and Claire.

“Dentists,” I muttered to myself. “I’ll have to take the kids to every single dental
appointment for the next five years.”

Glen stood in the doorway. “You’re not doing well, dear heart,” he said. “You’re talking
to yourself about dentists.”

I motioned for him to come sit down.

“What do you and Corinne do about dentists, Glen?”

“I pay their infernal bills,” he said.

“No, I mean about who takes the kids when,” I said. “We’re always negotiating.”

“Ah, you Americans with modern marriages,” he said. “We don’t negotiate. Since Corinne’s
a schoolteacher, it’s hard for her to get away. So I always take the little ones.”

I patted his hand. “You’re a good dad, Glen.”

“It’s all I ever wanted, Maggie. It was a pleasure too long deferred. When I left
the priesthood, I wasn’t dreaming about women or riches or fancy houses. I was dreaming
about being a real father.”

The intercom buzzed and Gertie’s voice squawked. “Maggie? It’s that Inspector Moon.
Again.”

I looked apologetically at Glen. “I better take this.” He gestured towards the door.
“Want a bit of privacy?”

I shook my head and picked up the phone.

Moon’s voice came over receiver, cool and mannerly. “Mrs. Fiori? Remember the file
you were looking for at Mr. Hart’s flat?”

“Yes?”

“I believe we have it,” he said. “If you’d like to drop by my office, we can go through
it together.”

I glanced at my watch and calculated. “Good, I wanted to talk to you anyway. I’ll
be by around two. Is that okay?”

“Fine. By the way, my colleagues met with your husband the other day.”

“So I heard,” I said frostily.

“Relax,” he said, “we have to talk to everyone. I told you Michael’s not really a
suspect. My team said he just seems like a good guy.” I tasted bile.

“A good guy?” I said. “Is that how cops talk? He’s my husband. He’s a helluva lot
more than a good guy.”

Moon was quiet for a moment. “I’m not the one who needs convincing, Mrs. Fiori. I
skate next to him every week. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he behaves
on the ice.”

I thought about watching Michael play hockey. To a spectator like me, he looked fierce,
bloodthirsty, and unstoppable. I’m not sure I wanted to hear Moon’s opinion.