Murder at The Washington Tribune (15 page)

“No, it's okay,” Wilcox told the PR lady. “Set up whatever you want. I'll do what I can.”

“Thanks, Joe. You're a trouper.”

He finished the next day's article and delivered it to Morehouse.

“Nice,” Morehouse said, “but there's not a hell of a lot of meat.”

“It's the best I can do, Paul,” Wilcox said, annoyed.

“Nice the way you handled what came out of the press conference,” Morehouse said.

“Thanks. Well, good night. I have to get home. A family dinner.”

As Wilcox went to the door, Morehouse's wife appeared. Mimi Morehouse was a petite, bubbly woman with short blonde hair and an almost perpetual smile.

“Hey, Joe,” she said, accepting his kiss on the cheek. “Paul says you guys are really onto a big story with the serial killer.”

“Looks that way,” Wilcox said. “How've you been?”

“Great, if I can ever get the old man here to take some time off. I'm determined to take an Alaskan cruise before I die.”

“It's cold in Alaska,” Morehouse said, coming around his desk.

“Not in the summer,” she said.

“Big mosquitoes in the summer,” he said. “They carry tourists away.”

“Well, hope you get to take your cruise,” Wilcox said. “Got to be going. Roberta is bringing her latest boy toy to the house for dinner tonight.”

“I watch her all the time,” Mimi said. “You must be a very proud poppa.”

“I certainly am,” Wilcox said. “Have a good evening.”

“You, too. Now to collect Paul.”

The phone on his desk rang as he was about to leave. Pick it up? He did. It was Georgia, calling to remind him about their plans that evening.

“On my way out the door,” he said.

He'd no sooner set the receiver down, relieved, when the phone sounded again.

“Joe? It's Michael.”

“Oh, hello, Michael. You caught me on my way out the door.”

“A nice evening at home with the family?”

“That's right, I—look, Michael, I told you I'd call when I got a chance. I will, but right now I—”

“Family is so important, Joseph, more important than anything in life. You're my family. You, and your wonderful wife and beautiful daughter, too, of course.”

Joe couldn't keep the anger out of his voice. “I told you I'd call, Michael. Let's leave it at that.”

Michael's voice was smooth and even, deep and without any overt hint of emotion. “When will you call, Joseph?”

“Tomorrow. I have to leave.”

“I'm off tomorrow,” Michael said.

He's off,
Joe thought.
He has a job in Washington, which means he intends to stay.

“I'd like to see you tomorrow. Can we arrange that?”

“I don't think so. I have a busy day, and—”

“Maybe I should set up something through Georgia. You know how women are, more social than men. Perhaps we could get together at your house and—”

“I'll try to free up some time tomorrow, Michael.”

“Four o'clock? At my apartment? I'll put out some goodies and—”

“Yeah, fine. Four o'clock at your apartment. Where is it?”

He wrote down the address Michael gave him.

“I'm looking forward so to seeing you, Joseph,” Michael said. “I can't tell you how much it means to me to reestablish ties with my family. You go on, Joseph, and enjoy your evening. Good night now.”

FOURTEEN

Tom Curtis was first to arrive at the Wilcox home. Roberta had called to say she was running late, and that Tom would drive himself. Joe Wilcox called from the highway. There had been an accident involving a tractor trailer and a minivan that had blocked traffic for miles. Altogether an average night on roads leading in and out of D.C.

Curtis was in his thirties. He worked as a bartender and had an ambition, he told Georgia, to one day open his own restaurant and bar. He was tall, good-looking, and personable, cast in the bartender role. He offered to help Georgia in the kitchen, but she told him he was a guest, not hired to work the party, but invited him to make the drinks: “I'm sure you can make a better drink than I can.”

“What's your pleasure?” he asked.

“Nothing for me—yet. Take care of yourself.”

He poured two fingers of Scotch over ice and wandered out on to the patio. It was a pristine early fall night. The recent inclement weather had blown to the east, leaving clear skies and a cool breeze from the northwest.

Joe arrived next.

“Sorry I'm late,” he told Georgia, kissing her on the cheek and looking through the window at where Curtis stood at the edge of the garden. “That's him?”

“Yes. His name is Tom. He's a bartender.”

“Great.”

“And very nice.”

“That's good to hear. Back in a minute.”

He ran upstairs and changed into more casual clothing, returned to the kitchen, poured himself a drink, and joined Curtis on the patio.

“Joe Wilcox, Tom, happy you could make it tonight.”

“I'm glad I could, too, Mr. Wilcox,” he said, his handshake firm.

“Please, it's Joe. I understand you tend bar. Night off?”

“Yeah. I don't get many.”

“Where do you work?” Wilcox asked.

“McCormick and Schmick's, on K Street.”

“Nice place. Great fish. I go there often.”

“Great happy hour, too. Tip time.”

“Yes. Sorry Robbie is running late. You never can tell in the TV news business.”

“So I've learned,” he said pleasantly. “Yours, too. I've been reading your articles.”

“People talk about it at the bar?”

“Sure. We get a lot of single women during happy hour and they're uptight.” He laughed. “Later? Just tight.”

“Tension affect tips?” Wilcox asked.

“I'll have to do an analysis.”

Their conversation had just turned to the baseball season when Roberta bounded onto the patio.

“I am so sorry I'm late,” she said, kissing her father, then Curtis, on their cheeks.

Wilcox couldn't suppress a wide smile. His daughter, that impish toddler who'd blessed their lives, had grown into a stunning, effervescent woman. He silently reminded himself to not be too judgmental about Tom Curtis. No man would be good enough for Roberta, an attitude, which if played out, would doom her to a lifetime of spinsterhood.

“How's things in the glamorous TV biz?” Wilcox asked.

“Daddy, nobody says glamorous anymore. Crazy, crazy,” she said. “Insane! They keep wanting more but insist on cutting our news budget.”

“The competition must be intense,” Curtis offered, “with all the cable news channels.”

“Exactly,” Roberta said.

“I don't have to worry about competition,” Curtis said with a boyish grin. “As long as I make the martinis dry and the Cosmopolitans sweet, I'm golden.”

Wilcox smiled and realized Georgia had emerged from the kitchen and stood at his side. “How's the chicken coming, Chicken?” he asked.

“Just fine.”

“Mom makes the best fried chicken in North America.”

“Oh, stop it,” Georgia said. “Maybe in Rockville.”

Wilcox realized Roberta hadn't been served a drink, and asked what she wanted.

“I'll make it for her,” Curtis offered.

“He's a pro,” Roberta said, slipping her arm in his and heading for the house.

“How'd it go today?” Georgia asked her husband.

“Okay. I finished the piece for tomorrow's edition.”

“I saw the police press conference this afternoon,” she said. “They say there is no serial killer.”

“The official line, that's all. To be expected.”

“I saw Robbie's coverage of it, too,” said Georgia. “It sounds as though you two think alike about it.”

“I saw her,” Joe said. “The problem with the police approach is that it lulls everybody into complacency. Until it's proved to me that there's no serial killer out there, I'm all for prudence and commonsense security. Nice fellow, Mr. Curtis.”

“Yes, he is.”

He finished his drink and chuckled.

“What's funny?”

“This thing has even got me a little uptight. You read my interview with the shrink. Serial killers are usually good-looking, intelligent, good talkers—” He leaned close to her. “Hell, maybe Curtis is one.”

“That's not funny, Joe,” she said, meaning it.

“I know, I know. Sorry. I need a refill.”

Curtis's frequent verbal reviews of Georgia's fried chicken and the gusto with which he ate affirmed her reputation. Conversation at the table was spirited, with a lot of kidding between Roberta and Tom. Joe contributed to the banter, but his mind eventually was elsewhere. The phone rang in the middle of dinner. Joe started to get up, but Georgia was quicker.

“Wrong number?” Joe asked when she returned in seconds.

“A hang up.”

“Inconsiderate,” Joe said.

Had it been Michael who'd called? Joe felt like a cheating husband, flinching whenever the phone rang at home. There were many reasons he'd been faithful to Georgia all these years—with one notable exception—among them not wanting to live with such fears.
Fatal Attraction. Spare me that sort of tension.

But here he was, suffering the very fear he'd determined to not experience. Had Tom Curtis not been there, he might have told Georgia and Roberta about Michael's sudden and unwelcome intrusion into his life. No, that would take some thinking on his part. As upset as Georgia might be at the news, she'd handle it. But Roberta was a different story. She'd been deprived of the knowledge that she had an uncle all these years because her father had insisted she not be told. Georgia had fought him on that decision when Roberta was a small girl but eventually acquiesced, realizing how strongly he felt about it. The subject had seldom come up again during the ensuing years. Occasionally, Georgia would casually mention Michael during a conversation, tossing out a throwaway line intended to draw Joe into a discussion. “Will we never tell her about him?” she'd ask if he allowed the conversation to continue.

“Maybe someday,” he'd reply. “Maybe someday.”

Had that “someday” arrived? he wondered as the two women in his life cleared the table, with Curtis pitching in. Usually, Joe would be carrying things along with them into the kitchen. But this night he remained at the table, wondering what to do and dreading another ringing of the phone.

They had dessert in the living room, gigantic homemade cookies and coffee, with everyone declining after-dinner drinks. To Roberta's feigned horror, her mother dragged out photo albums and started showing family pictures to Curtis. Joe wandered outside to the patio, and Roberta soon followed.

“Your guy's okay,” he said, “pretending to be interested in those photos.”

“You like him?”

“Sure.”

“Dad?”

“Huh?”

“They're pressuring me at the station to do a series on the serial killer angle, a five- or six-parter.”

“I heard you say that in your report this afternoon. Congratulations!”

“I'm not sure I want to do it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don't know, pride, I suppose. Your series of articles is what's spurred them to come up with it.”

He looked at her, brow furrowed. “You said it was a matter of pride, Robbie. How so?”

She hesitated, her eyes on the garden, and kept them there as she said, “I don't want to build my career based upon you, Dad.”

“I never thought you were,” he said, a tinge of hurt in his voice.

She turned to him. “No,” she said, “there's more than that. Yes, I feel a little as though your series will end up being the basis for my reports.” He started to respond but she cut him off. “There's also a gut feeling I have that maybe this serial killer obsession isn't justified.”

“Why do I have the feeling I'm being accused of being obsessed?”

She placed her hand on his arm. “Well,” she said, “aren't you?”

“No.” He didn't want his anger to show. “Paul Morehouse, my boss, is obsessed. Me? No. I'm just doing my job.”

“And enjoying it,” she said flatly.

“Not really.”

“Please, Dad, no offense, but the pieces you've been writing seem—well, they seem so
tabloidy.
Is there such a word?”

“I don't think so. Or there should be. Is there tabloid TV?”

“Yes, but some of the writing is so unlike you. It's so unlike the
Trib
for that matter. Anyway, I just wanted to mention it and get it off my chest. I hope you're not mad.”

“Not at all.” But he was, mad and embarrassed, and was thankful when Georgia and Curtis joined them.

“I really have to be running,” Curtis said. “This was great, getting to meet you both, and enjoying an incredible meal. The fried chicken at Georgia Brown's is great, but yours tops it, Mrs. Wilcox.”

Roberta left a few minutes after him, and both Joe and Georgia were sure the young couple intended to meet up somewhere in town and enjoy being alone, out from under her parents' microscope.

The parents went to the kitchen where he helped scrape plates and load the dishwasher.

They were close to finishing when the phone rang. Joe grabbed it off the kitchen wall. “Hello?”

He heard someone cough, a male cough.

“Hello!” he said, as though speaking to a deaf person.

The phone went dead.

“Another hang up?” she said.

“Yeah. Annoying.”

Georgia announced she was going to bed to read. She kissed him and said, “Don't stay up too late.”

“I won't.”

He went to the den, poured himself a short drink, neat, removed his shoes and sat in a recliner. His eyes scanned the photos on the wall and mantel, resting on a montage of Roberta at various ages. Seeing her display warmth and closeness to Tom Curtis—was it love?—depressed him, and he swallowed against a lump that was forming in his throat. He knew he would lose her one day. That's the way it was supposed to be, nurturing and guiding your children into productive, responsible, happy lives until they were out of the nest and flying successfully on their own. He could accept that; one had to accept it or go mad.

But her comments to him that night about the articles he'd been writing represented a different sort of loss. She was criticizing the very thing that defined him: his professional life. He knew many men who referred to their children when describing themselves and what they'd accomplished in life. Describing yourself by describing your offspring? Not for him. True, bringing up kids was tough, and succeeding at it was an achievement of which to be immensely proud. But for a man—and he readily acknowledged, at least to himself, that his feelings were sexist—there was more than parenting to define who you were and what you'd gotten done during your precious time on earth.

Those thoughts, and soon so many others, swirled uncontrollably about him as he sipped his drink and tried to bring order to them.

The phone calls that night. It had to have been Michael. How dare he inject himself that way? He was now glad that he would see Michael face to face the next day. He would confront him directly about whether he'd made those two nuisance calls. But his next thought was that the calls were irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, only serving to give credence to Michael's very existence, which he'd been fighting since the first contact with his brother. He didn't want him to exist, and had actually, inexplicably, tried to will him dead.

Georgia interrupted his introspection. “Come to bed,” she said from the doorway.

“Yeah,” he replied, getting up and carrying his empty glass to the kitchen. “You think they're serious?” he asked absently.

“Robbie and Tom? No, I don't. Not yet. But if they are, we'll hear about it soon enough. Come on, tomorrow's another day.”