Little Black Book of Murder (17 page)

“Don't say that. Any of it. It's insulting.”

He kept typing. “That's where she was born, right? And she is universally known as the hillbilly supermodel, isn't she? And her mother was fifteen when she was conceived? That's public record. So that language is dead set. In your notes about her husband, you said she cried over a bunch of dead chickens. We can use that to—”

“Are you going to twist everything into something lurid and sensational?”

“That's what sells papers.” His fingers stopped moving on the keyboard, and he finally looked up at me. His face was hard, his green eyes searing. “Get down from your high horse and get with the times, Miss Blackbird. Or you'll turn to moldering dust like all your high-­society pals.”

“How can you—”

“We're in a new era, Nora. Everybody has money, not just the people who came to this fertile land two hundred years ago with their noblesse oblige and the rest of their paternalistic, slave-­owning, feudal-­lord crap. In fact, if you want to get really rich and powerful today, you get down in the dirt and fling it at as many people as you can. That nong Porky Starr isn't going to sue the newspaper. He's going to ride the publicity like a surfboard. Face it. You are a dinosaur, young lady. A dying breed. You just haven't noticed, because you're too busy trying to keep up appearances.”

“I don't care how I appear,” I said. “I care about honor and integrity. And you've taken mine and walked all over it.”

“I'm teaching you how to do your job. You're bloody lucky, too. The rest of the idiots around here I fired.”

I almost said something vile. The words were in my mouth. I spun away from the desk and headed for the ladies' room. I had to pull myself together before I said something that would humiliate me more than he had already done in print. Skip Malone looked up from his computer as I passed, but I hurried on, determined not to break into tears or shrieks of rage in public.

I banged the door behind me and went straight to the sink. I wrenched the faucet handle, and a gush of cold water splashed out. I bent down and cupped water in my hands. In the mirror, my face looked white.

The next second, the door swung open, and Gus barged into the ladies' room.

He said, “Don't walk away from a fight. Not unless you're admitting defeat.”

“You can't come in here.”

But he marched in, turned off the water and banged on the towel dispenser. He shoved a paper towel into my hand. “I expected more from you.”

“I don't know what I expected from you, but I see an ethical bone in your body is not among your—”

“My ethics are fine. I know exactly what I will and will not print. But I also know how to write a story that will sell papers, so hustle yourself out to your desk and let's have a lesson, shall we?”

“I'm not going to sit still while you type a lot of lies about Zephyr.”

“Do you even know her? Why do you care so much about her precious feelings? She was the last person to see her husband alive, so she probably killed him!”

“We don't know that. And we're not going to insinuate so in the newspaper—­not with my name in any way attached to the story.”

“We'll lay out the facts and let the public decide.”

“We should allow the
police
to collect the facts, and a
court
will decide.”

For a second, I thought the argument was over.

Gus didn't speak. But he was angry—­I could see it. He glared at me. A vein throbbed in his forehead, and his hands were tightly fisted. I thought he might explode from the tension inside.

Instead, he seized my wrist, pulled me close and kissed me.

His mouth was hot, his body tense. He said something against my lips—­I don't know what. And his other arm came around me, holding me like a band of steel.

I twisted, pulled back and slapped him. Hard. Across the cheek.

It was instinct—­a bad one. Incredibly stupid, but heaven knew I didn't have a single sensible thought in my head at that moment.

I stepped back and collided with the sink, holding my breath. I had the back of my hand against my mouth as I stared at him.

He stepped back and cleared his throat, his palm against his cheek where I had clobbered him. He said, “I suppose right now stand-­up sex with me is off the menu.”

“Don't,” I said. “Don't try to joke your way out of this.”

“You have a powerful arm. Did you learn it from your thug boyfriend? Do you hit each other on a regular basis?”

I shouldn't have struck Gus, I knew that. I never did that kind of thing. Once again, he'd pushed me far out of my comfort zone.

He took his hand away from his lip and discovered a fleck of blood on his palm. I had hit him hard enough to cut the inside of his cheek against his teeth. As he looked at the blood, he said, “I guess I've given you reason to sue me for harassment, haven't I? You Yanks are a litigious lot.”

I could, I realized. I had a case.

Someone knocked on the outside of the bathroom door. From the hallway, I heard Skip Malone's voice. “Nora? You okay in there?”

I held Gus's gaze as I said, “I'm finished. I quit. You'll have my letter of resignation before the end of the day.”

Gus didn't argue with me. He stepped aside, allowing me space to walk past him.

I did. I left the bathroom and almost collided with Skip in the hallway. He already had one hand on the door, coming inside to rescue me. To him, I said, “Thank you, Skip. I'm fine.”

I didn't look fine. I saw it in Skip's face.

I picked up my coat and my bag and left the building.

Out on the sidewalk, rush hour had started. People were filing out of their workplaces, heading for home in a wave of anonymous humanity. A bus lurched past, followed by a surge of traffic. Head down, I walked quickly, feeling a thousand emotions, none of them good. Already, the adrenaline in my system was thinning out. I felt my legs trembling. My mouth tasted awful. I remembered how Gus had felt against me—­strong and impulsive.

I hadn't expected such a move. It came out of the blue.

Or had it? I was part of a generation that—­still, after all the politically correct training—­felt guilty when a man came on strong. Had I given him any signs? What about me made him feel he could grab me? Kiss me? Was it some Australian thing I didn't understand? Or had it been the tiniest bit my fault?

While I wrestled with guilt and outrage, my cell phone rang. I was crossing the street at the time, so it wasn't until I stepped onto the curb and stopped that I took a look at my phone's screen.

Gus.

I let the call go to voice mail. Standing still for a moment, I tried to calm myself.

Pedestrians brushed past me. People going home from work at the end of the day. I was out of a job, though. As broke as ever, but now without a paycheck, too. I wasn't sure how I could afford to pay any of my bills, but it had been the only thing I could do. I told myself that over and over. I'd had no choice. I'd had to resign.

But it was scary as hell. Standing on the corner, I got the shakes. Unemployment. Now what was I going to do? How would we manage? Michael was on house arrest. My family would be no help. What if I couldn't get a job waitressing?

My phone rang again. This time, when I checked the screen, it was Libby's name on the caller ID.

I answered.

“Nora, Nora,” she cried. The rest of her sentence was so garbled with hysteria that I couldn't understand a word.

“Lib? Slow down.” I plugged my other ear to hear her better. “I can't understand what you're saying.”

She shrieked in my ear. I could hear the frantic emotion in her voice.

“Take it easy,” I snapped. “Is it Max? Is something wrong with the baby? Or Lucy? Libby, I can't understand—”

“Rawlins,” she managed to say clearly. “It's Rawlins!”

But she burst into tears and hung up on me.

I called Michael, my hands shaking almost too hard to dial.

He said, “You better come home.”

“What's wrong?” I cried. “Libby just called. She was hysterical.”

“It's Rawlins.”

“Oh God,” I prayed, thinking the worst.

“Libby says he's been arrested,” Michael said. “For the murder of Swain Starr.”

I
telephoned Emma next.

Emma said, “Libby just called me. She says the cops arrested Rawlins. For murder!”

“I know, I know. Is she okay?”

“She's out of her gourd. They took him out of school a couple of hours ago. She asked me to pick up the twins. What's with you?”

“I don't know. I—­I—” I rubbed my forehead, trying to massage some sensible thoughts into my brain. “I just quit my job.”

Emma cursed again. “Lousy timing, Sis. Libby is going to need cash. If Rawlins really is arrested, she'll need money for bail, money for lawyers. This is going to be expensive. I've got a few bucks, but—­hell,” she said on a sigh. “What's this going to cost?”

“Surely Libby has some savings?”

“You're kidding, right? Let's remember who we're talking about.”

Of course Libby would have no savings. After her husband died, she took the last of their bank account and flew the kids to Disney World. The rest of the time she lived on carefully spaced payments from the life insurance policies of her dead husbands.

“Why'd you quit your job?” Emma demanded. “The boss finally get to you? Can you afford to be prissy about him?”

Gus's behavior had been one deciding factor, but not the primary reason. I didn't want to admit my ethical failings or that I felt pushed into overlooking my personal values. And I certainly didn't want my sister thinking I was too feeble to handle a little job pressure.

When I didn't respond, Emma said, “What do you want to do?”

I wasn't thinking straight. Rushing to Libby's side to comfort her was my first instinct. Or going home to Michael to strategize. But he didn't need my help for that. My first move should be to help Rawlins.

So I said, “Can you swing by and get me before you pick up the twins?”

“Sure. Where are you?”

I told her, and she said, “I can probably get there in half an hour, depending on traffic. Sit tight.”

“Thanks.”

I stood on the corner for about ten minutes, trying to decide what to do. I was having major second thoughts. I could hear Crewe's voice saying I should hang on to my job by my fingernails. I shouldn't have quit. I should have been more professional. Rather than clobbering Gus for kissing me, I should have called a lawyer, then buckled down to work. Other people stuck with jobs plenty worse than mine.

My phone jingled again, and I looked at the screen. Gus.

I didn't answer.

A minute later, the phone rang again. Gus again. And again. And again. He was going to keep calling until I picked up.

Finally, in exasperation, I answered.

“Yes?”

In my ear, he said, “I can see you from my office window. Shall I come down there to hash this out, or will you come back up here so we can discuss it in private?”

I hung up.

But I felt ridiculous standing there, knowing he could see me, so I shouldered my bag, walked back to the Pendergast Building and went up to his office. I went past his assistant without speaking and pushed through the door.

Standing in the middle of the office, he said with perfect sincerity, “I'm sorry. That kind of thing isn't in my repertoire, and I don't know what got into me. That's no excuse, of course. But I'm sorry for my behavior.”

I closed the door, knowing the assistant had probably heard every word, but she didn't need to hear any more.

He added, “I don't usually apologize, either, so I hope you appreciate that this is a first.”

“I'm sorry, too,” I said. “Quitting my job was also a first.”

“So why did you come back?” he asked, staying on his side of the office. “Which do you want? More kissing or your job?”

Although I felt as if I were standing on top of a violent earthquake, I said calmly, “I'd like my job, please.”

“Ah.” He didn't look disappointed.

I said, “Believe me, I'd walk out of here immediately if I didn't need the money, but I do.”

“Any demands?”

He took me by surprise. “Am I in a position to make demands?”

“You could have my head on a pike,” he said. “You could get me fired and splash my name in headlines worldwide. My father will be annoyed, but he can't kick me any farther from home than I am now, so what does it matter? Still, the humiliation will be annoying.”

The idea that I had such power startled me. And by something in the back of his gaze, I suddenly knew he very much minded being banished so far from his home and family. He pretended not to care what his father thought, but I knew it was a lie. The enraging Gus Hardwicke had feelings, too.

He continued. “I am genuinely sorry, Nora. I was overcome. And I'm not usually knocked for a loop by women. I enjoy the fairer sex, but I follow the mantra of get in, get off, get out—­and nobody gets hurt. But there's something about you.”

“Let's not get into that, please.”

“I can't help it,” he said, unable to suppress a smile. “You're attractive enough, but it's the look in your eye that compels me. You know you're headed down a mountain on a runaway toboggan with your mob boyfriend, don't you? But you like the thrill of it, despite your polite, ladylike ways. That's very appealing.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” I said. “My only demand is that we remain completely professional from now on.”

“Done,” he said.

“And although I recognize I am practically an amateur at this profession, there are lines I will not cross. I'll do the job, but I must do it my way.”

“Your way?”

“Yes.” Gathering momentum, I said, “The only reason I'm good at my work—­the society reporting, that is—­is because of who I am. People open their doors to me, talk to me, share their secrets with me. I speak their language. I know the rules. But if I start turning into somebody else, my access will be denied. You need my society page. Advertisers like what I bring to the newspaper, and they support the
Intelligencer
.”

“Your column is very lucrative for the paper,” he agreed. “And your online social reporting more than pays for itself.”

“So I have to protect my reputation,” I said. “I have to be true to who I am. If someone is going to write about these people, it has to be me, who understands them from the inside.”

“Rightio,” he agreed, composing his face into solemnity.

“I'll write the piece about Zephyr, but not today. I won't write anything about her until I have new information—­information I can confirm and stand behind.”

“Okay,” Gus said.

I turned to go.

“Nora,” he said. When I paused, hand on the doorknob, he went on. “You can learn from me. You need to start thinking like a reporter, and I can help you with that.”

He was right, and I knew it. But it felt good to leave the office without acknowledging his offer.

I met Emma a few minutes earlier than she had guessed. The traffic must have worked in her favor.

When I climbed into her pickup, I had to move a six-­pack cooler off the seat to make room for myself. She snatched the beer cooler from me as if it were a jewel case loaded down with precious stones.

Carefully stowing the cooler behind her seat while horns blew around us, Emma said, “Why are you looking so smug?”

The six-­pack cooler gave me pause. I was dismayed to think she was drinking again, but she seemed sober enough. Her question distracted me from giving her the third degree. “I got my job back. On my terms, in fact.”

“No more digging up scandals?”

I fastened my seat belt. “Oh, I think there will be plenty of scandals to dig, but I'll do the excavating with my own spade now. And I think it's going to help Rawlins.”

“How?” She pulled into traffic.

I told her my new information about Zephyr—­that she'd killed her father and maybe it wasn't such a big leap to killing her husband, too.

“I thought you were on her side,” Emma said.

“I am! She's a nice person. But she killed her father. That's a game changer.”

“I dunno,” Emma said as she drove. “I'm still on Team Zephyr in this.”

I looked at her with surprise. “How do you figure?”

“Everybody wants to demonize the second wife. Okay, she's younger and prettier than the first wife, but is that her fault? It's easy to think of her as the villain, the home wrecker, but hey, maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a powerful guy fell in love with her. He was the one who decided to chuck it all to be with Zephyr, not the other way around.”

“Some people would say she broke up a marriage, Em,” I said, knowing full well my little sister occasionally dallied with married men. “That she broke up a family.”

She shook her head. “That marriage was already broken.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Doesn't matter. Truth is? In this kind of story, the guy is usually the asshole.”

I wondered if Emma was changing her opinion of Hart Jones, her baby's father. “Are you saying Zephyr didn't kill her husband?”

“Oh, she could have killed him. But if she did, I bet it wasn't because she was a low-­down, dirty home wrecker.”

I saw Emma's point. There was no earthly reason to suspect Zephyr. My own observation was that she had devoted herself to her husband. She appeared to be a paragon of high principles and gentle ways. She had absolutely no motive to kill Swain. I had to stay objective.

I finally realized Emma wasn't dressed in horsey clothes, but instead wore a short skirt with ballet flats and a clean sweater that managed to look feminine and rather pretty. I said, “Where have you been?” Something was up. My sexpot sister Emma didn't dress like a Main Line soccer mom for no reason. “Have you been shopping for Filly Vanilli?”

She groaned with frustration. “Do you know how hard it is to find one of those damn things? I went to a dozen toy stores! I wore my best jeans, my lowest-­cut shirt—­and I couldn't get a second look from the dweebs who run those places. So I switched tactics. I can play sweet and nice.”

“Really?” I said.

I must have sounded astonished, because she snapped, “I pretended I was you. Please and thank you, the whole nine yards. But still, no dice. I'm gonna have to stake out a Walmart and hold up the joint when they get their next delivery.”

“The racehorse trainer must really want that toy.”

“Who?”

“You said the trainer who gave you a job—­that he wanted the Filly Vanilli for his son.”

“Oh, right,” Emma said. “Yeah, him.”

She was keeping a lot of secrets these days. But we had a more pressing problem on our hands, so I let it go.

The suburb of Manayunk hung on a curve of the Schuylkill River, bolstered by railroad tracks on one side and a jam of working-­class housing on the other. It had long been a neighborhood crowded with hard-­working immigrant families, but in recent years the usual signs of gentrification had taken over. Young hipsters sat at tables in front of coffee shops. Funky galleries beckoned with clever signs. The low rents drew the artistic class, and tourists followed. In a few years, though, the real estate values would rise and drive artists elsewhere, leaving a strong middle class behind again. Such was the ebb and flow of urban neighborhoods.

Emma parked down the block, and we walked up ­­toward a former hardware store that had been converted into a fragrant shop that sold spices from barrels. On the second floor, the windows were painted with the name of a dance studio. But when we got to the top of the stairs, the dance studio's sign had been covered over by a sheet of lined notebook paper onto which someone had scrawled
Starr
Hollywood
Academy.

We arrived on the landing at the same instant the door burst open and released a flood of chattering children. Emma and I flattened ourselves against the wall to let the tide roll past us and down the stairs. The kids were mostly girls, mostly in colorful dance and workout clothes. Their hair seemed to have been done by the same hand—­topknots embellished with sparkly accessories. They were all bright-­eyed and pink-­cheeked—­some singing snippets of a familiar tune from a Broadway musical. I heard a chorus of them yelping about living a hard-­knock life, but I had seen the parental vehicles waiting in the street below: expensive SUVs and fancy cars with bumper stickers advertising beach vacations and prestigious colleges.

When the last of the singing poppets had brushed past us, Emma grabbed the door and held it open. “Ew,” she said, looking at her hand. “This handle is sticky.”

“I guess the Starr Academy doesn't hire a cleaning crew.”

We walked into a large open space with a polished wood floor and a wall of mirrors behind a ballet barre. Although his name was on the sign outside, Porky Starr was nowhere to be seen.