The Reporter (15 page)

Having observed him in the newsroom and on the air over the past couple of weeks, she had detected a definite New York–style
“Don’t mess with me” attitude, but today, this close, she could see that his eyes were kind. Word on the company grapevine
was that he had moved here alone, no family.

“Except for his movies, I don’t know anything about your ex-husband, or his housekeeper,” he said now, “but you must be on
edge with all that’s going on, and I thought maybe I could help.”

In less distressing circumstances, Maxi might have taken this as a bit of personal interest, and were she not so devastated
right now, she might even have welcomed it—which was heartening, since from the time she had started divorce proceedings against
Jack Nathanson, she hadn’t felt a flicker of interest in any man; she was beginning to wonder if she ever would.

“Help how?” she asked.

“I was at the Benedict Canyon house this morning, and I’m going back to do live shots for the early shows,” he told her. “The
Beverly Hills cops and the L.A. sheriffs are calling it a routine burglary, but I have a hunch they don’t really believe that,
and for what it’s worth, it doesn’t smell like anything routine to me.” He paused.

“Meaning…?”

“Well, I’ve been around a lot of crime scenes, and this one has an element of, I don’t know,
lunacy
about it. I’m not sure what I’m talking about—all these kinds of things are insane, of course—but from our vantage they usually
have their own crazy order to them, if you know what I mean. This one doesn’t. I’ll know more later, but meantime, I wondered
if you have good security.”

“Um, I have the usual—”

“What
usual?”

She didn’t know this man at all, and she wasn’t sure if she should be offended at his brusqueness or flattered by his concern.
God,
she thought,
I’m really losing it.
He’s
an experienced crime reporter who’s just trying to be helpful to a colleague.

“Like a good alarm system, dead bolts on the doors—you know, the usual,” she said.

“Do you drive home the same route every night?” he pressed, and continued with a barrage of questions that made her wonder
if she actually
was
cautious enough, not only for now, but even in ordinary circumstances, given her high-profile job. After making her promise
to be more mindful of her safety, he offered to look
around her house to see that it was as secure as it could be. As he got up to leave, Maxi thanked him. He had actually made
her feel better.

She picked up her notebook and was about to go over to Pete’s office when her phone rang again. It was Ronald Ricco calling
from Tempe.

“I’m so sorry, Ron,” she said. “I loved Carlotta—”

“I know,” he said. “I’m coming in this afternoon. Do you know anything?”

“Not really, Ron, beyond what you’ve probably heard on the news, but we’re looking into it. Where are you staying?”

“I’ll make some calls when I get there, see if I can bunk with a friend,” he said.

Maxi knew he must be on a tight budget. “Stay with me,” she offered.

“Oh, I don’t want to bother you,” he said. Carlotta had taught him to be proud, but Maxi could hear the anguish in his voice.
He had been the man of Carlotta’s little family ever since his father was killed in a construction accident when the boy was
six years old. It wasn’t until he left for college that Carlotta gave up her apartment in West L.A. and became Jack’s live-in
housekeeper. Maxi remembered that Ronald had been pleased with that move; ironically, he’d thought it would be safer for his
mother than living alone.

“It’s no bother,” Maxi insisted. “I have a comfortable guest room, and I’d like to have you with me.” When he still hesitated,
she said, “Ron, I want to do it for Carlotta, okay?”

“Okay, Maxi. I really appreciate—”

“You can get a cab to my house,” she said, cutting him off. She spelled out her address. “Or will you be renting a car?”

“Uh… yeah, I guess,” he replied uncertainly.
Poor kid,
Maxi thought;
it hasn’t sunk in yet.
She told him her extra key was hidden in a magnetic holder stuck underneath a drainpipe behind the house, and she gave him
the alarm code. “Make yourself
comfortable, use the phone, fix yourself some food—Ron, I want to help, okay? I’ll be home later tonight.”

She hung up and walked over to Pete’s office.

“Everything, Maxi,” Pete repeated. “You gotta tell me
everything.”

“I
told
you everything,” Maxi insisted. “Jack was holding me up to pay off exorbitant bills that he’d run up while we were married,
debts in the millions, and legally, he might have gotten away with it. So it looks like I had quite a bit to gain by his death,
and of course the detectives know that.”

“Aren’t you forgetting to tell me something?” His bushy eyebrows shot up.

“Like what?”

“Like they know you were at the scene the exact minute your ex–old man was croaked,” Pete said.

Maxi felt her throat constrict. “I’ll tell you about that, Pete, if you promise you won’t tell Baker.” Lon Baker was the young
news director who had recently been brought in to head up the news department, along with his even younger assistant, Chaz
Crawford. Pete and Maxi had been at the station through several management teams, and this one seemed far more interested
in cosmetics than in solid news coverage. Pete called them “the idiot” and “the underjerk.”

“No,” he said, “I won’t tell the idiot unless this gets dicey, but if it does, all bets are off.”

“Yes, I know that, but for now, if the rank and file hear about this”—she gestured outside his office toward the enormous
newsroom teeming with writers, producers, camera crews, editorial assistants, graphic artists, researchers, and the rest—“you
know
somebody
will drop a dime on the print press and it’ll be all over the papers. Then—”

“Right, then you’ll be off the air and maybe out of a job,” he finished. “Sorry, Max, but that’s out of my hands. Now spill
it.”

Maxi told him about that Saturday, and Pete’s eyes widened. “Worse than I thought,” he muttered. “Why didn’t you come forward?”

“Because I didn’t think anyone saw me.”

“Jesus, Maxi, of all people, you know better than that.”

“You don’t know how you’re going to react until you’re in that kind of situation,” she offered, realizing the weakness of
her position even as she uttered the words.

Pete let it go for now. “Mike Cabello told me he’s not convinced the Ricco woman’s murder was just a burglary.”

His words triggered icy fear in her. “Tell me everything,” she demanded.

“There’s not a lot to tell, but he swore me to secrecy—he specifically told me not to tell
you.
Winningham doesn’t even know, and he’s on the story.”

“I give you my word, Pete.” She was well aware that when confidentiality was breached, sources dried up, and sources were
the lifeblood of the news business.

“Okay. All he’s saying is it feels wrong. He says he knows they’re missing something, and that something feels eerily…
inhuman”

G
ia, I have a message from Mrs. Daugherty,” Debra said sternly to her daughter. It was Monday, late afternoon—she’d just got
Gia home from school and checked her phone machine.

“Is there something you would like to tell me before I return her call?” she asked her.

“I didn’t do anything,” Gia said with an anxious half smile. She spoke with no trace at all of Debra’s own Italian accent.

“Gia, she is the principal of your school. If she tells me that you have done something nasty, I’ll be very angry with you
for lying to me.”

Gia started crying. Debra felt like crying too. She went to the phone.

Mrs. Daugherty had left for the day.
Just as well,
Debra considered, sighing. She didn’t think she could handle one whit more of bad news today. Carlotta dead, stabbed in the
back in a very brutal killing. She was waiting to hear from Maxi, hoping for a report that it was, indeed, nothing more than
burglary. But all of her instincts told her that wasn’t the case.

She went back into the kitchen where her daughter was sitting over her math homework. Gia looked up at her nervously.
She’s going to try to tough this out,
Debra thought.
Why does she actually believe she can fool her mother?

“Gia, I would like to hear it from you,” she said crisply, sitting down across from her at the table. “What exactly happened
at school today?”

“One of the kids got bit,” Gia said, continuing to stare at the numbers in her looseleaf notebook.

“Who got bit?”

“Umm, I don’t remember,” Gia muttered, her head dropping lower.

“Look at me, young lady,” Debra fired at her. “Just how did this mystery child get bit?”

“Well,” Gia replied, “one kid wouldn’t let anybody have some of his fruit bar, and, uh, so he got bit.”

“Really,” Debra remarked dryly, making an effort to maintain her calm. “And who bit him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bessie?” Debra called to Mrs. Burke, who was working at the sink, chopping vegetables, trying tactfully to ignore the unpleasantness.
“Would you please get Gia’s class picture, the one of all the youngsters in fourth grade, and perhaps Gia will be able to
remember who exactly got bit, and who exactly did the biting. It’s hanging above her dresser; you know the one—just take it
down off the wall, Bessie, and bring it here, would you?”

Bessie returned and wordlessly handed Debra the class picture. “Thank you, Bessie,” she said. “Now, Gia, have a look at this,
will you? Please pick out for me which child got bit.” Sullenly, Gia pointed to a child in the second row of the group portrait.

“Aah,” Debra intoned, “and what is that boy’s name, Gia?”

“Jimmy Bracken.”

“Uh-huh. And on what exact part of his body did Jimmy Bracken sustain this bite?”

“His arm.”

“I see. Now a very important question. Who
bit Jimmy Bracken?
I’m sure this picture will jog your memory. Please point to the child who bit Jimmy Bracken.
Now,
Gia.”

Gia turned away and started to cry again. Debra took her arm and yanked her up to face her. “Stop it,” she ordered. “Tell
me the truth immediately, Gia. Did you bite Jimmy Bracken?”

Gia nodded.

“Tell me
why
you bit him, Gia, and I don’t want to hear about fruit bars. You
do
know better.”

“I don’t know—”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Finish your homework, and then you’re going right to bed. Tomorrow, you will apologize to Jimmy Bracken.
Then we’ll call his mother, and your teacher, and Mrs. Daugherty, and you will tell them all that you are very sorry, and
that you will never, ever do a horrid thing like that again.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Gia was sobbing. Debra wanted to take her in her arms and comfort her; none of this was the child’s fault. But the lesson
had to sink in. God
help her, and help me,
she thought. I
hope it’s not too late.

She escaped into the small sitting room adjoining her bedroom and sank into the sofa. Her nerves were raw. That crazy Meg
Davis had been squatting out on the beach for hours again today. Debra’s first impulse was to march out there and let her
have it, demand that she go away and stay away, leave her family alone. But she was frighteningly aware of stalkers in the
news, obsessed psychopaths like the deranged drifter who killed the beautiful young actress Rebecca Schaeffer, or the monster
who’d stalked and slashed her friend Theresa Saldana. Debra knew there was no appealing to logic with these people, that confronting
Meg Davis could possibly trigger catastrophe.

Her second instinct was to call the police. But what could she tell them? The woman wasn’t breaking any laws. That area by
the rocks was public beach. And Maxi had taken the tape recording
of the woman’s bizarre rantings to the detectives investigating Jack’s murder, and they’d evidently seen no reason to detain
her, nor to deter her from keeping her eerie, twisted vigil outside this house every damn day.
Guess there s no law against being nuts,
Debra thought.

Shoulders sagging, she contemplated her life. A prisoner in tony Malibu, with a wacko camped outside her door, murder charges
hanging over her head, a hard-earned career in tatters, terrible apprehension that she was losing Gia’s soul, and an overwhelming
dread of some killer out there who had viciously stabbed Carlotta Ricco to death last night.

She shivered. It was getting cold at the beach. Halloween was three days off. And Thanksgiving would soon be here. Would she
have anything to be thankful for? she wondered.

Have to shake off this mood,
she told herself. She would do her nails, save herself sixty bucks on a manicure and pedicure. Her expenses were high, and
now she had to find the means to manage all of Gia’s support and schooling alone. She was laying out the polish and emery
boards when her phone rang. Maxi, she hoped. But it was Marvin Samuels, her attorney.

“Debra, where were you last night?” he asked.

“I was here,” she said.

“Between seven and ten, you were home?”

“Well, I did go out for a little while, for a run on the beach. I’ve really been feeling cooped up. Why?” she asked.

“Were you with anyone? Did anyone see you?”

“Marvin, for God’s sake, what’s this about?”

“We have to go downtown tomorrow, Debra. You’re wanted for questioning in connection with Carlotta Ricco’s murder.”

T
hat night, Maxi bustled about getting Ron Ricco settled in with linens and soaps, keys to the house, instructions on the burglar
alarm, phone system, TV, VCR, and clock-radio in his room. Next, she conducted a full tour of the kitchen, showing him where
everything was and how it worked. Then she put the kettle on for tea.

Ron protested that she was making too big a fuss over him, and in fact she knew she was. A bright young college athlete didn’t
have many needs beyond a bunk and running water, and he could certainly figure out how to make himself some toast or pour
a glass of juice, but the ritual forced both of them to focus on something other than his mother’s murder, at least for a
while. By the time Maxi had exhausted every bit of business making her guest comfortable, she actually had Ron laughing. “I
feel like I’m buying the house,” he said.