Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5) Page 9

  "Except," I point out as I walk onto the third-floor landing, "the night Jessica Wright was found."

  She makes a sound of approval. "You've seen that already, have you?"

  "You betcha," I say just as Alfred Royce Jr. appears at the other end of the hallway.

  "Where the fuck have you been!"

  "Uh-oh," Cassy Cochran says. "Talk to you later."

  I fold up my phone and walk right past Al. "Why don't you come and have a seat?" I have half a mind to tell him how he has just distinguished himself within earshot of the president of DBS. I throw my stuff down in my cubicle and pull out my chair to sit.

  "Where have you been?"

  "Al!" somebody yells from the other side of the newsroom. "I finally got the mayor on the phone!"

  Al points a finger at me. "I'm not through with you."

  "I'll be here," I say. I pick up the regular phone to call Verity at Expectations. Her office voice mail says she has left for the day. I try another number she gave me this morning and she picks up.

  "Verity Rhodes," she says in a brisk British accent. There is the hubbub of people in the background.

  "Verity, it's Sally Harrington calling. I'm so sorry for bother­ing you already-"

  "It's quite all right. What's up?"

  I explain about Cassy Cochran suggesting we postpone the piece, about my being in the middle of a murder investigation, Cassy wanting to think about a more interesting angle, and that we thought the story could be pushed back a couple of months—if Verity is willing.

  "I am not willing," she says matter-of-factly. "Either the story is ready in five weeks or there is no story."

  "Oh," I say, a little taken back. "All right."

  "Of course she's going to want it postponed!" she continues. "Because she doesn't want it written at all, which just goes to show, Sally, there is a story waiting for you to write about. And the sooner the better. I am standing in the middle of a cocktail party at the Four Seasons and I am anxious to conclude this conversation."

  I hear some laughter. Verity has an audience.

  "Okay. Thank you, Verity. Goodbye."

  Hmm. Well, at least this Verity sounds more like the editors I have known.

  I turn to my computer and start writing when Al reappears. "I told you, you're fired."

  "Before or after I tell you who the dead man is?"

  "You know who the dead man is?" a woman's voice says be­fore Martha Royce Kellem's face appears around my cubicle wall.

  Martha is only a year younger than Al but has had a very good face-lift and is slim, whereas Al is getting pretty fat. She has been suing their father for years to make him put her in charge of the paper; her current status as a board member doesn't really allow her to do anything. For a while, in protest, Martha wrote a column for a competing Hartford paper, but old man Royce threatened to cut her out of his will altogether. I assume there is a board meeting tonight because that would ex­plain why our parking lot is full of brand-new Continentals ­and why someone has parked in my assigned spot.

  "Stay out of this, Martha," Al growls.

  "Well you can't fire her now," she says.

  "I can do what I like. It's my paper."

  "It's our paper," she says sweetly. "Besides, you'll never fire her—you're still sweet on the mother."

  At this, I look up, suppressing a smile. It's true. Al does have a thing for Mother.

  "Not only do I know who the dead man is, Al, but I've got a high-speed car chase for tomorrow's edition, involving me and a stolen pickup truck from Bridgeport and the North Haven po­lice.”

  "Joe!" Al yells.

  Joe Bix's head pokes around the corner.

  "Do you know who the dead man is yet?"

  "Not yet."

  "Don't fire her," Martha advises him, walking away. "I'll be with the others in the conference room, Al."

  After she leaves, Al turns to me, raising an eyebrow. "How do you know who it is?"

  "The important thing is that I do," I reply. "But the question is, Al, will you give me a five-week unpaid leave, effective to­morrow, in exchange for that information? I should explain that if you say no, then I will simply quit this god-awful job. If you say yes, however, then Joe gets the scoop and all my informa­tion now and access to me for the next five weeks. Joe does," I add, "not you."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Al shouts.

  "Okay, make that one-week paid leave and four weeks' un­paid. You heard me, Al. I need the time and you better agree, or the price is going up."

  "You wouldn't dare withhold that information from your pa­per!"

  "Two weeks' paid leave—you owe it to me for all the vaca­tion I never got last year, anyway. And three weeks' unpaid leave. I'll be back by Labor Day." I look at my watch. "You've got ten seconds before I start packing and go to the Courant."

  The Hartford Courant is our major competitor in the area.

  "Cripes!" Al says, looking at Joe.

  "Do it, Al," Joe urges quietly. "She'll feed us everything." He looks at me. "Right? And whatever ties this has with your fam­ily?"

  I nod and look back to Al.

  "Damn!" he fumes.

  I cross my arms over my chest and start to hum, as if I have all night.

  "All right!" he says.

  "Good."

  "But no paid leave!"

  I pick up the picture of my mother and brother off my desk and put it in my briefcase, as if packing to leave.

  "Okay, one week," he says.

  "Effective tomorrow?"

  He glares at me and then nods.

  "Deal," I say, putting out my hand. "You won't regret it."

  "Fuck you, Harrington," he says, walking away.

  Joe rolls his chair into my cubicle and we set to work.

  I don't get home until almost ten to let Scotty out. I am tired, confused and my house is a mess. I never know how it gets this way, but one or two hasty mornings a week usually does it. The dog food cans, rinsed, are still sitting by the sink next to the soda cans, bottles, empty yogurt containers—all waiting to be taken outside to the recycle bin in the back. Eight days of news­papers are stacked up on the counter, waiting to be put in an­other recycle bin. The mail, most of which is still unopened, lies on the kitchen table next to the mess of unread magazines I al­ways vow I will someday cancel. Laundry is overflowing from the clothes hamper; Scotty's hair is gathering in wisps around the edges of the kitchen floor; dust is everywhere in the living room from the windows being open and the rock-blasting at the Brackletons'; in my bedroom a pile of cleaning that never got dropped off is on the floor (I think Scotty's been sleeping on it); the bed needs changing; there are the piles of my winter clothes that never got put away stacked on my dressers; and piles of books are stacked in every room, all in danger of toppling over.

  At least, I think, I can put my winter snow boots away some­where. It is July.

  But I never seem to have time. It is wonderful to have a house and a dog, but part of me longs for the days in Los Angeles when I had my spiffy efficiency in the Valley. Back then I sim­ply dropped my cleaning off at the complex's front desk on my way to work and a cleaning lady—an illegal alien, of course­—came every two weeks to overhaul my apartment while I strug­gled up the ladder of success at the magazine.

  And then, too, I had kept my job from college—at least the best part of it­—which was bartending at a trendy nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills on Saturday nights. I could make up to two hundred dollars in cash tips, a necessity to keep my car and my cleaning lady going, to say nothing of keeping me in Lean Cuisine frozen dinners.

  The magazine had given me a membership to a health club, too. I used to work out three days a week. Now I feel lucky if I see the Y once a week

  "Scotty," I inform my big love of a dog, which I describe as a collie mix, but my mother secretly thinks is a police mutt. I know this because she wrote as much on the back of a photo­graph of Scotty and Abigail. "Abigail (golden
retriever) and Scotty (police mutt)."

  "Come on, boy, you and I are going out for a walk"

  His eyes light up, his mouth parts in a smile, his tail starts that special wide swing and he begins to dance. Yippee! We're going for a walk; you and me!

  Truth is, my Scotty's big teeth make him look like a junkyard dog and people are scared of him. He's got a deep barrel­-chested bark, too, but he is my gentle giant—a sweetheart, a lit­tle lamb masquerading as a ferocious police mutt.

  To heck with the house! The newspaper! The magazine! With sleep! I need air! I need my dog! So I change into gym shorts, an athletic bra, T-shirt and running shoes while Scotty goes to the mud room to get his leash. "We're outta here, baby!" I tell him, skipping out the back door and stopping in the backyard to do a few stretches. And then off we go down the drive, Scotty's fluffy collie tail high and wagging.

  Still in Castleford after all these years, I think.

  No one asked me to come home when Mother got ill. But I knew how shaky Mother's finances were with Rob at school, and I frankly wasn't sure what her health benefits as a teacher would cover in terms of care at home. Mother had cancer, but not the horribly progressive kind; hers came in the form of a tu­mor attached to her lung—my mother had not smoked, ever—the kind of cancer that hundreds of thousands of people dis­cover they must take on every year and, if discovered early, can be successfully treated. So Mother had surgery, followed by chemotherapy treatments, which made her very ill, and so I never regretted my decision to come home to be with her.

  I thought I'd be home for a month, maybe two. When Mother's reluctant call came with the bad news, I had just found out my boyfriend in L.A. was two-timing me and I was thinking about getting away for a while to get him out of my system, anyway. I was also severely disenchanted with my ca­reer at Boulevard. In other words, my reasons for coming home to Castleford were not nearly as pure as people thought.

  But, as my mother says, I came home, which was ultimately all that mattered.

  To this day I don't think I did anything for my mother except prepare a few odd meals here and there and do the heavier work around the house. And cut the grass, weed, rake, that kind of thing. We started her garden together and Mother was quietly amazed at my clumsiness and stupidity. She would say things like, "I'm sorry, I thought you might remember how to... " and I would say, "The last time I did this I was seven years old, Mother." And so, certainly for the first two months, I more or less had a vacation. I'd stay up to watch old movies or go out on the town—as much as one could "go out" around Castleford after frequenting clubs in L.A. for years—sleep in, do some chores around the house, go for a run and do lots and lots of reading.

  The worst thing was that while 'Mother was getting chemo, which just took everything out of her for almost a week before she'd have to go back and get it again, our dog was dying. Mur­phy, a Springer spaniel, was almost seventeen and could barely move. And I just could not face telling my mother what the vet had advised. I just couldn't do it. So I went to the mall in town and blew every cent I had left on a golden retriever puppy who was on sale because she had kennel cough. I called the vet and he assured me Murphy had had kennel cough vaccines and I brought the puppy home.

  Mother was taking a nap upstairs and so I just went up and put the puppy on her bed; it fell soundly asleep because it didn't feel well.

  At first Mother was angry. I mean really angry. The puppy would upset Murphy, and how did I think Murphy would feel if this puppy got all the attention? And then Mother's eyes sud­denly welled up with tears and she hung her head and brought a hand up to her eyes and said, "Dr. Kardowski said we should put Murphy down, didn't he?"

  And so I started to cry and sat down on the edge of the bed and the puppy woke up and licked my mother's hand and I said, yes, he said Murphy was in a lot of pain, and had a kidney infection and arthritis and the lumps on him were cancerous and—

  And then the puppy had diarrhea on the carpet so our discussion ended.

  Mother asked me to keep the puppy with me, downstairs, for a while. She tried to take Murphy for a walk, but he just couldn't go farther than the stairs. And so, as weak as Mother was, she picked Murphy up in her arms and took him upstairs to her room for the day. And at four o'clock, she called me up­stairs and asked me if I would take him to Dr. Kardowski. "He is expecting him."

  And she hugged the dog and kissed him and told him she loved him so much, that he was the best dog in the world. As her eyes blinded with tears, she turned away and I scooped Murphy up and took him downstairs to the car.

  I'm not going to go into how difficult it was to let them take Murphy. I will just say I never cried so much in my life, not even when my father died, because I knew what was going to happen and it seemed so awful. But what else could we do? And what else could I do but hold Murphy as she went to sleep?

  My God, I don't know what we would have done without Abigail. That little face, that little puppy, so sick and so in need of love. Caring for her brought a new energy to my mother; it was as if Abigail reinforced her own treatment. Good food, lots of rest, warmth, a little gradual exercise, a lot of love. Mother had something to look forward to every single day.

  Somehow, with the arrival of Abigail, I knew I wasn't going I back to Los Angeles to live, at least not for a while. Mother said something about Al Royce mentioning I should stop by the pa­per, just to talk. And one day I did and he had a slot open tem­porarily and I heard myself say I'd be pleased to take it. A month later, Mother was given her first really good news about her future, and she mentioned that the cottage on Brackleton Farm was coming up for rent and perhaps, for a little while, I might consider renting it. That is, if I was staying on.

  This was a nice way of saying that by this time I was driving Mother crazy and she wanted nothing more than to get back to her life, which did not include having me and my junk all over the place.

  After two weeks of working at the Herald-American, Al took me to a local pub for a drink to discuss my staying on perma­nently. While we were there, Doug came in to meet a friend, and I sort of sat there in stunned silence. I had not seen him in nine years. I had no idea he was in the area. I thought he was still in Boston.

  He just sort of stood there, blinking, looking across the pub at me sitting in the booth. Al was talking a mile a minute about something and I just sat there, looking back at Doug. Finally I smiled a little and gave him a wave.

  "I don't believe it," Doug said, coming over. "What are you doing here? I thought you were in L.A."

  "Doug, this is Alfred Royce, the editor of the Herald­-American. Al, this is Doug Wrentham, who grew up here in Cas­tleford."

  "I know your father," Doug said. "He was on the golf com­mittee with my dad."

  Al shook his hand. "How is your father?"

  "Pretty good."

  "Good."

  "Um, listen," Doug said to me, "when you're through here, maybe...?" He shrugged. "Could we have a drink or bite to eat or something and catch up?"

  "Our business is almost concluded," Al told him. "Give us another ten minutes and I'll release her."

  Doug nodded, smiled at me and backed away to the bar to talk to whoever it was I assumed he was there to meet.

  "So, Sally," Al said, "are you going to be a fly-by-night and take off in a couple of months, or are you going to dig in and get some solid work experience with us here at your old hometown paper? Hmm? Can we induce you to stay?"

  "The money stinks, Al," I said honestly.

  "We're in a recession," he pointed out. "It's dirt cheap to live in Castleford right now."

  "Well, I'm not sure that's a reason to want to work for dirt cheap."

  "Look, you and I know your mother wants you to stay awhile, so why don't you just stay and do some good writing and reporting and learn everything right here? Then you can go back to L.A. as a first-class, grown-up journalist and not a glo­rified secretary."

  When we broke up our meeting, I sauntered over to Doug,
glad I was wearing a particularly flattering skirt and heels. His friend said something and Doug whirled around expectantly. "Hi." He took a step forward and, wincing slightly, said, "Al doesn't have some kind of claim on you, does he?"

  I poked him in the diaphragm. I couldn't help it. I felt better, actually, having made physical contact. "That's what you think I would be doing? Dating some old, fat, married guy?"

  “I didn't know!" he pleaded, holding up his hands.

  "Ugh! God!" I slapped him on the shoulder. "You should know, you jerk!"

  His friend leaned over. "And you haven't seen each other in nine years?"

  "And not for another nine if he keeps this up," I muttered, looking past him to the bartender. "Amstel Light, please.” I got a bottle and motioned to the bartender that he could keep the glass. My mother would have had a stroke, but I was reverting to high school behavior and drinking out of the bottle seemed just the thing to do with Doug.

  "So I thought you were in Boston."

  "Just moved back to New Haven. I got a job in the D.A.'s of­fice there, specializing in securities fraud."

  I looked at his hand, which had no ring. "I thought you were married." Too late I remembered what I'd heard at the reunion.

  "So did I," he said quietly. Then he turned away to reach for the dish of peanuts and I realized that Doug had been hurt. Badly.

  "My mother," I began, "had a cancer scare. I mean, she had cancer."

  He turned quickly. "Oh, I'm so sorry—"

  "Well, she's just coming out of it. She's really done amaz­ingly well with surgery and chemo, and she actually just got a clean bill of health last week. We're going to go to Ireland for a week to celebrate."

  "That's wonderful. Tell her I said hello, will you? That I asked about her?"

  I ignored this comment because it sounded like he wouldn't be around to see her himself and suddenly I wasn't keen on that. Suddenly I was so glad to see him, so excited he was here. Back in Connecticut. And that so was I.

  "Royce was just trying to convince me to accept a full-time position at the paper."

  "But I thought you were in L.A."