Edited to Death (38 page)

“It never occurred to me that she’d actually listen to you,” Moon weighed in. And
then they discovered the car.

“But how did you find us?” I asked.

Moon said, “And that’s why you leave detecting to the police. It was clear you’d left
the car in a hurry; your handbag was on the front seat. The officers simply found
the tracks left by the van and followed them off the road.” He gave me a grudging
smile. “We are, after all, detectives.”

“If you’d been better detectives,” I retorted, “I wouldn’t have been in that mess.”

“Oh, we’re fine detectives,” said Moon, “just a few minutes behind the nosy girl sleuth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you really think you were the only one who would consider removing the handles
from the pots?” he asked. “We did the same thing, but we were trying to tie up some
loose ends before we made an arrest.”

I sniffed, “Well, one of your loose ends almost killed me.”

Moon sighed and turned to Michael. “Isn’t there some nice convent where you can take
her and keep her locked up?”

It was clearly time to change the subject, “And Raider?” I asked.

“I brought him along for company,” said Michael. “I was frantic and didn’t want to
say anything to the kids. Raider was there to keep me calm.”

“The dog must have scented you,” said Moon.

“Anyway,” continued Michael, “He led us directly to you.”

An emergency room nurse walked in, a collection of pill bottles in hand.

“These for pain, these to knock out any infection, these to sleep, in case you need
them.”

Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion swept me, head to toe, and I thought I might slip right
off the table. “I won’t need anything to sleep,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “If you can pry your little friend away from Dr. Singh, you can
all go home.”

Disregarding Michael’s advice, Anya had arrived at the hospital with the boys, and
true to form, was flirting with the ER doc while the boys roamed around the waiting
room bragging to anyone who would listen that their mom was involved in a shootout.

Over the next several days, Michael threatened, begged, bribed, and otherwise pressured
me to confess to the error of my ways. I did, more or less. He led the boys in a little
cheer every morning at breakfast: “No more detecting! No more detecting!” Josh and
Zach thought it was hysterical. I more or less promised. After all, how many dead
bodies are likely to turn up in the life of a suburban housewife, or even the life
of a media mogul? It’s not as if I were a reporter on the police beat, after all.

And the moral test I thought I’d have to face, to tell or not to tell about Glen’s
confession, never even came up. Glen spilled the beans to John Moon that night in
the emergency room. His remorse began to melt both my fury at him for endangering
me and my family and my horror at what he had done. In a way, Quentin’s chilly focus
on looking out for himself is what doomed him.

I talked with Glen after he was out on bail.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” I said.

Glen snorted. “Hard to believe there’s much you missed, Maggie.”

I persisted. “Why set up this elaborate charade—sending Calvin and me out on this
fake story?”

“It wasn’t a charade,” he said. “If Quentin had called the police on Rowland, he’d
still have been in it up to his neck. But commissioning the story gave him a great
cover; he could claim he’d played along just to expose the scam, and then assigned
the story to gather investigative evidence.”

“He was using me like that?” I said indignantly.

Glen laughed. “Quentin used everybody, Maggie, surely you figured that out. This way,
he got the financial benefit of playing along and the glory when he exposed the whole
mess.”

I was quiet for a minute, letting go of the last of my feelings for Quentin.

“Still,” said Glen, “I did the unforgivable. And then it just got worse and worse.
Every day at work, there you were nosing around and coming closer to the truth.”

I couldn’t help but feel pleased. “Yes, I was, wasn’t I? And all those threatening
pranks? My car? The bouquet?”

“Teamwork, I’m afraid,” said Glen. “Greg Bender, Joe Connolly, John Orlando; all of
us were collaborators. Until the end, when Orlando thought I was going to crack. Then
he just wanted to get rid of you—and me. He’d already grabbed me when he talked to
Joe Connolly in the hospital and knew where you were.”

“You’ve got lousy taste in co-conspirators,” I said.

In the end, I couldn’t help but see Glen as a guy who had a lot in common with me.
He’d made a terrible mistake. I figure it takes a sinner to help a sinner—or maybe
it takes a sinner’s husband. So I put Michael to work on his behalf. Fortunately,
though Michael himself wasn’t spectacularly useful in the whole criminal law arena,
he had plenty of friends who were. I’m a little troubled by how easily a serious crime
can begin to seem less serious in the hands of a highly skilled attorney, but since
it was Glen’s life involved, I was willing to suppress those trepidations.

According to Michael, we’re already down to manslaughter and, in his words, with Edgar
the Invincible on the case, “we’ve not yet begun to fight.”

“We?” I inquired archly, beginning to clear the breakfast dishes. “Are you planning
to threaten the DA’s office with a closely held trust or something?”

Michael reached out as I walked past and pulled me on to his lap. “I happen to be
offering some counsel of worth, Miss Know-it-all,” he said.

“I know,” I said brightly. “I invited that nice Edgar out to lunch the other day.
He brought me up to date.”

Michael tightened his hold on me. “Maggie,” he said, “don’t you have enough to do
at that damn magazine?” I did. I said so.

As for the story Quentin had planned for Calvin and me, we’re working on it. Calvin’s
still feeling really annoyed he wasn’t in on, as he calls it, “the big climax,” so
he’s looking for opportunities to get into more mischief.

Orlando’s in the clinker, awaiting trial. They found a passport and a one-way ticket
to Belize City in his jacket, so the judge decided he was too much of a flight risk
for bail. The other Skunkworks principals are under investigation. Much to my disappointment,
it turned out Claire was a more or less innocent party in the whole deal. She was
simply society do-gooding, and had no idea what Skunkworks was really up to. Stuart
didn’t know anything either, so he’s in the clear. The remaining vials of BZT were
retrieved and shipped over to the lab at the University of California, San Francisco
med school for analysis. The pieces of the story are coming together, and we’re hoping
to run it in
Small Town
right after the New Year.

At Michael’s firm, they invited him back on the executive committee. He turned them
down.

“I think I like having a little more spare time for the kids,” he said.

“How about for me?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he countered, “more time to keep you under high-level surveillance.” Things
seem better between us, still a little fragile, but despite Michael’s jokes about
surveillance, I’m hoping he thinks I’m redeemable.

At least, that’s what I reported to John Moon. We were having a drink at the silly,
chichi martini bar that replaced Cock of the Walk.

“Redeemable,” he said. “I don’t know. If I were Michael, I think I’d be looking for
a little more repentance. What about that?”

“Oh, I’ve repented,” I said grimly. “Every day. I have no idea what possessed me.…”

“To go detecting?” asked Moon.

“Oh, no, that was fun,” I confessed. “I mean—”

“The affair?” he finished my sentence.

I nodded glumly. We fell silent.

Moon cleared his throat. “Well, look at me,” he said, “asking nosy, personal questions,
just like the infamous Maggie Fiori.”

“Maybe it’s catching,” I said. “John,” I hesitated. “You’re a guy. Is Michael ever
going to forgive me?”

He shrugged. “Remember my theory, Maggie. All marriages are puzzle boxes. Only you
know that.”

“Swell,” I said.

“But I’ll tell you how things seem to me. Michael is a much happier guy than he was
six months ago.”

“You mean he’s not trying to kill people on the ice?”

“Oh, we’re all trying to kill people on the ice,” he said. “But I don’t worry about
what’s going to happen off the ice any more.”

I remembered Moon’s questions about Michael’s temper and felt remorseful all over
again. I took a gulp of my drink.

“What is that odd thing you’re drinking?” he asked.

“It’s a theme martini,” I said. “A hot tamale-tini. The olives are stuffed with hot
peppers.”

I deftly removed both olives from the toothpick with my tongue and felt my mouth catch
fire. I chewed and swallowed quickly. “You know what they say,” I managed to croak.
“Marriage can be murder.”

Moon snorted. “Being married to you could be murder,” he countered.

Meanwhile, Joe Connolly is back at school, Andrea has invited Calvin home to Connecticut
for Christmas, Jorge turned in his first story, and I’ve still got my job. Anya’s
dating that nice young doc from the ER. Uncle Alf’s at yet another drying-out spa,
so I figure my employment is secure until he’s completely clean and sober. I’m hoping
it will be a nice long run.

Epilogue:

Hat Trick

It was Family Night at Skate Oakland, and there we were, the whole
mishpucha—
Michael, Josh and Zach, Anya, her new beau, and me. Even Stuart had joined us. Anya
looked lighter than air, freed of her clunky Doc Martens and gliding on the ice. Dr.
Singh was slipping and sliding, and stopping to cling to the side rail every so often,
following Anya like a duckling, ready to imprint. Stuart was spending more time off
than on the ice, chatting up the cute guy who drives the Zamboni. Michael and Josh
were streaking along the ice while I helped Zach get rid of the ankle-wobbles.

The lights blinked over the rink, and a disembodied voice came over the speaker.

“Hello, skaters,” it said. “Time to dim the lights and invite all the romantics onto
the ice. Moms and dads, come on down!”

Anya, Dr. Singh, Stuart, Zach, and I glided off the ice and reassembled in the bleachers.
Josh and Michael sped up with a flourish and a little cascade of ice chips in the
air.

“Mom, did you see me?” asked Josh. “Did you see how fast I was skating?”

“Like the wind,” I said. “But even the wind’s got to rest once in a while. Come sit
for a few minutes.”

Michael stayed on the ice, leaning on the rail. He dug into his back pocket and brought
out his wallet.

“Who wants hot chocolate?”

I reached out my hand for the twenty-dollar bill he was waving. He handed it to Anya
and looked back at me.

“Anya will get it,
cara
,” he said. “I believe this dance is mine.”

As if on cue, the lights dimmed and the sound system started up. The first notes of
“The Skater’s Waltz” tinkled out of the raspy speakers.

I joined Michael on the ice. He took my hand and led me slowly along the rail. Suddenly,
my ankles felt almost as wobbly as Zach’s. He slipped his arm around my waist and
pulled me closer. “Relax. Longer glides,” he urged. I leaned into him, caught his
rhythm, and my ankles felt more secure. We picked up a little speed. We made a turn
around the rink, and I began to enjoy myself.

“This is fun,” I said.

“Ready to waltz?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I protested, but in the time it took the words to get out of my
mouth, he had pulled me into dance position and we were moving over the ice.

“Michael,” I faltered.

“You’re doing fine,” he said.

“No, I want to ask you something.”

“Just a second,” he said. As we danced past Anya, Dr. Singh, Stuart, and the kids
in the bleachers, he twirled me out and back again. I nearly stumbled, but recovered
enough to come back to dance position and wave at the kids over his shoulders.

Josh gave me a thumbs-up.

“You’re getting back in the swing,” said Michael. “Now what do you want to ask me?”

“Do you think marriages are like puzzle boxes? That’s what John Moon says.”

“What do you mean?”

“That there’s some secret way to make them work, and only the two people inside the
marriage can figure it out.”

Michael laughed. “That’s one way to put it,” he said. “Ready for a dip?”

As we drew close to where the kids were watching, he bent me backward. I fought a
moment of panic, then relaxed and leaned back so far I felt the pom-pom on my silly
hat brush the ice.

“Hey!” I said, exhilarated. “How was that?”

Michael grinned. “What a showboat,” he whispered in my ear.

“So,” I persisted. “A puzzle box?”

We skated in silence. “I don’t know, Maggie. I think it’s more like a hat trick.”