Ms. Simon Says (2 page)

“Be my guest.”

He handed her the warm cup and Shelby took a gulp of the frothy brew, then promptly choked.

“Jesus, Derek,” she sputtered. “What’s in that?”

He grinned and pulled a tiny silver flask from the pocket of his corduroy jacket. “Greetings from Jamaica, mon.”

“Rum? At this hour of the morning?”

“Hell, Shelby. It’s almost nine.”

She shook her head, handing the cup back to him. “Thanks anyway. So tell me what’s going on. Another letter bomb?”

“Probably. They’re searching the building now.” “This is horrible.” A little shiver coursed down her spine. “Any idea who might be behind it?”

Derek shook his head. “Nope. But they’ve got a pretty good idea who the target is.”

“Oh, yeah? Who?”

He looked at her then with such warmth that for a split second Shelby felt a twinge of longing for their ancient affair. She reminded herself that it had happened scores of lovers ago. His. Not hers. “So who’s the target?” she asked again.

“You,” he said. “Every letter bomb was addressed to you.”

Half an hour later—after the bomb sniffing dogs had successfully located the lethal letter and the bomb techs had sealed it in a metal canister and driven it away—and after the police and the postal inspectors had asked her a few preliminary questions—Shelby answered the summons to her boss’s office, which was a glass-walled cubicle in the center of the Metro floor, usually referred to as the Sweat Box.

Her entire staff was already assembled there. And her entire staff—all three of them—were looking distinctly distraught.

Sandy Hovis, her loyal secretary and personal spell checker since day one of the column, was there. The only word that Sandy couldn’t spell was diarrhea, which didn’t matter all that much since Ms. Simon rarely said it. Sandy was sitting on the edge of a chair directly across from the managing editor’s desk. She had obviously been crying and was clutching a wad of Kleenex as big as a softball and getting tissue lint all over her black wool skirt. Poor thing.

Still single as she approached the big Five O, Sandy was the sole support of an older brother with cerebral palsy. From the beginning, Shelby had made sure, with each new contract she’d signed, that her secretary received a handsome raise in the bargain.

In spite of her robust coloring, her plus size figure, and her ability to spell every word in the English language but one, Sandy had always been a bit fragile emotionally, always teetering on the brink of tears, but the past few years, as things had grown more and more unsettled in the world, the woman had become a certifiable nervous wreck. Shelby had been hounding her lately about signing up for a yoga class that apparently worked miracles with its students. Now didn’t seem like a good time to hound her further, so she merely placed a reassuring hand on her secretary’s shoulder.

“It’s awful,” Sandy said with a wet sniff and a linty flourish of her tissues. “Just awful. I’m so upset.”

“It’ll be okay,” Shelby murmured. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?

She gazed across the office, offering what she hoped was a buoyant smile to the other members of her staff.

Jeff Kerr, a thirty-something neo-beatnik and researcher par excellence, sat glumly on a leather couch, chewing on a cuticle, while next to him, Kellie Carter, the pretty young intern from Northwestern, sat staring straight ahead as she twisted the hell out of a long red skein of hair. The two of them reminded Shelby of Gilligan and Ginger under extreme duress.

She was just about to offer a word of encouragement to the troops when Hal Stabler blasted through the door and announced, “We’re shutting down your column, Shelby. As of right now.”

“You can’t do that,” she gasped. Could he?

“It’s already done,” Hal growled, angling his too-many-donuts-and-Danishes backside into the leather swivel chair behind his desk.

“But...”

He held up a hand in warning. “This is not negotiable, Shelby. I mean it. I’ve just been upstairs with Brian and Bob. This is their decision.”

Brian and Bob, though the names may have sounded like a folksinging duo from the sixties, were actually Brian Helm and Bob Harris. The Helm and The Harris of the Syndicate. The Wunderkind of Newspaper Publishing. The Powers that be. Alpha and Omega. And in this case, apparently, the final word.

Canceled.

Oh, God.

Suddenly her knees felt a little wobbly so she sagged into the chair next to Sandy’s. “This is horrible.”

“You got that right,” Hal said. He was a man who always looked harried and hassled, as if he bore the burdens of the entire planet on his beefy shoulders, but right now he looked particularly oppressed. Leaning back in his chair to a chorus of leather and metallic creaks, he said, “Frankly, it sucks. Still, it could suck worse. Brian and Bob think it
will
be worse if we keep running your column. So it’s canceled. Temporarily, at least. Now, here’s the deal...”

He went on to describe what amounted to a fairly generous offer of continued employment for her staff. “They can use you down in the Lifestyle department, Sandy. Talk to Jean Prewett. She’ll get you settled in.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stabler.” Sandy’s tears of anxiety turned to those of gratitude. “God bless you.”

“Yeah. Yeah. You can stop crying now, all right? Jesus.” Hal glowered and swiveled his chair toward the couch. “Jeff,
Weekend
magazine is planning some special editions and they can use an extra researcher. You’ll want to check in with Joe Detweiler as soon as possible.”

“Cool.”

Now that Gilligan was all smiles, Hal directed his gaze at the winsome Ginger. More likely than not, he’d be sending her back to Northwestern on the very next train. “You’ll be assigned to Derek McKay for the remainder of your internship, Kellie,” he said. “Or until such time as the column resumes.”

Kellie’s reply was a rather breathless “Oh, thank you, Uncle Hal.”

Shelby tried not to look too surprised or to blink uncontrollably. Uncle Hal?
Uncle
Hal? She’d had no idea that Kellie Carter was the managing editor’s niece. Actually, she had no idea how the young woman had been selected for an internship. Like all the sweet young things who’d preceded her, they just showed up, semester after semester, year after year. Most of them considered the internship a way to goof off for a semester. Kellie, however, was enthusiastic, energetic, eager to please. The girl arrived early and stayed late. More often than not, she knew what Shelby wanted or needed—coffee, tuna on rye, a particular phone number—even before she knew it herself. Shelby had never had such a wonderful temporary assistant, and had even been considering Kellie for a full-time job after her graduation next year.

She glanced at Sandy to see if she, too, was surprised by the news. If she was, the surprise was diluted by her tears. Then Shelby reminded herself that she’d just been the recipient of six, seven, maybe eight or more letter bombs, so what difference did it make whether nepotism was running rampant at the
Daily Mirror
or not. Who cared?

Hal went on to suggest, in his inimitable way, that everyone calm the fuck down and go about their new assignments now. While Sandy and Jeff and Kellie all stood and prepared to leave, Shelby stood up, too, until Hal said rather grimly, “Shelby, sit the fuck down.”

“Oh.” She sat back down.

“Don’t worry,” Sandy whispered to her. “It’ll all be fine.”

“Take it easy, Shel,” Jeff said.

“I’m so sorry, Shelby,” Kellie said with tears in her eyes and a warm hand on Shelby’s shoulder as she passed behind her chair. “This is awful. Poor you.”

And that was exactly how she felt just then. Poor Shelby. Poor old canceled Shelby. Ms. Simon says
That’s all for now, folks.

She watched her colleagues through the glass wall of Hal’s office as they drifted away in three different directions. Sandy went toward the elevator. Jeff disappeared into the stairwell. Kellie sauntered across the floor and perched on the corner of Derek McKay’s desk. Derek glanced up at the young redhead with a wolfish grin, as if he’d been expecting her.

Well, what do you know! Kellie was quite obviously and quite happily the latest initiate in the Fresh Young Thing Club. How had Shelby missed that, she wondered. She usually didn’t miss much. Maybe, considering the nepotism, Derek was being more discreet than usual. He better watch his lecherous step, too. She would absolutely kill him if he did anything to ruin the best internship in the history of the
Daily Mirror
.

Did Uncle Hal know? Shelby shifted her gaze to her boss, who was just then barking a few of his favorite four-letter words into the phone.

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “I’ll be right with you,” he told her. “Sit tight.”

Shelby sat tight. What choice did she have? Outside Hal’s office, at the various Metro desks, people were already writing articles about the events of the morning. Until now, she really hadn’t had time to think about those events. And even now she didn’t want to contemplate the letter bombs that had suddenly blown up her column, her career, and quite possibly her whole life.

Who hated her that much? Who wanted her maimed or dead? How could this be happening? The postal inspectors had asked her if she’d received any threats, and Shelby had told them in all honesty that there hadn’t been any. Oh, there had been the usual snotty letters and E-mails from people who disagreed with her advice, along with the usual off-the-wall rants that had nothing to do with anything Ms. Simon had ever said.

Once there was an unpleasant incident when Shelby had gotten a pie in her face from a woman whose boyfriend had moved out based on Ms. Simon’s advice. But, by and large, there had never been anything that threatened more than a fierce determination to never read her column again. At least, not to her knowledge.

Of course, it wasn’t like the old days when she’d personally read every piece of mail that came in. The success of Ms. Simon Says and its syndication in scores of papers meant a huge increase in the volume of her mail, and Shelby couldn’t read everything anymore. Between her speaking engagements and her media appearances, there just wasn’t time. Sandy and whatever intern was on staff did the initial reading these days, and then passed the most interesting correspondence along to Shelby for a reply. The letters she didn’t see were answered with a form letter and whatever helpful printed matter that pertained to the particular writer’s problem.

She still felt guilty about that. It was better in the old days when she read everything and answered everything. But such was the price of success.

Some success, she thought bleakly. Unless she could talk Hal or Brian and Bob out of their decision, she was temporarily out of a job. On the bright side, maybe they’d give her a desk out in Metro, where she could put her old journalism skills to good use. That was what she’d dreamed of, after all, a dozen years ago when she’d been a fresh young thing herself.

While she perused the activity outside Hal’s office, Shelby saw a man leaning against Hal’s secretary’s desk. Her gaze strayed past him, and then jerked back to scrutinize him more closely.

He wore dirty blue-and-white Reeboks, jeans that were ripped at both knees, and a plaid flannel shirt that looked just this side of the rag bag. Over the faded shirt was a dark blue down vest, patched here and there with...Was that duct tape? Good God.

The guy’s shaggy brown hair was long enough to curl over the collar of his shirt, and when he reached up to rake his fingers through his hair, Shelby could see that his forehead was deeply furrowed, as if a permanent headache were etched across his brow. It suddenly occurred to her that he was actually good-looking in an unkempt and dangerous sort of way.

That was when she noticed that his mouth turned down in an expression somewhere between disgust and anger, probably not so different from the way her letter bomber might look.

Did Security know this guy was up here? Who the hell was he? Just as Shelby began to feel panic begin to claw at the back of her throat, the guy looked directly into Hal’s office, right at her. As if he knew just who she was. As if...

“Shelby, did you hear what I just said?”

“What?”

She turned to find Hal glaring at her across his desk, obviously finished with his phone call.

“I’m talking to you,” he bellowed. “Now will you please pay attention and listen the fuck up.”

Shelby blinked, trying her best to concentrate on his words at the same time that she tried to keep an eye on the probable felon just outside Hal’s glass door.

“Brian and Bob have talked to the police, and they’re advising that certain precautions ought to be taken,” Hal said.

“Precautions?” Shelby echoed.

“To keep you safe,” he said. “Just in case this letter bomber tries anything else.”

She swallowed hard. Her palms were sweating now. It wasn’t so easy to breathe. “Anything else?”

“They want to relocate you.”

“Relocate?” She was starting to sound like a damn parrot, she thought, but her mind didn’t seem to be generating anything but fear at the moment.

“Just in case this guy knows where you live, Shelby. Brian and Bob want to get you out of town ASAP. So they’ve...”

“Out of town?” Polly want a cracker?

“. . . used their contacts at the Chicago PD, who’re supposed to be sending somebody to make sure that you get away okay. Safely. You know.”

No, she didn’t know. Not much of anything just then. Except that she didn’t want to leave town. Except that the angry looking guy was still there, lurking no more than fifteen or twenty feet from her.

“Let me check on that with Doris,” Hal said, picking up his phone again and punching in his secretary’s extension.

On the other side of the glass, Doris picked up her own phone and nodded as she said something into the receiver. The woman seemed completely oblivious to the criminal loitering around her desk. Or maybe she was wisely ignoring him, maintaining the appearance of calm while she waited for Security.

“That was quick,” Hal said on his end of the phone. “What’s his name? Okay. Well, great. Thanks, Doris. Yeah, go ahead and send him in.”