The Pink Flamingo Murders (21 page)

“Interviews with focus groups reveal that the
Gazette
staff is seen by readers as arrogant, distant, out of touch with St. Louis, and uninterested in the community or its welfare,” Charlie said. This meant the public had a pretty accurate picture of the
Gazette
.

“Our consultants have a suggestion,” he said, and
the silence was thick and despairing. Whatever it was, it would be more misery for us.

“We are instituting a new Meet Your Neighbor program. We want you to have more contact with our readers. We want readers to see that you are people like them, people who share their concerns, who pay the rent and shop at the supermarket, just like they do. That’s why, effective immediately, all
Gazette
reporters will be required to knock on the doors of fifty homes within a two-block radius of their own residence and introduce themselves. We will be passing out sheets with addresses and names. You must get a signature beside every name to show that you have met your neighbors. You will have one month.”

Scattered cries of “Fuck me,” “What?” and “This is stupid” filled the newsroom, but it was hard to say who was speaking. Jasper’s snarl broke through the confusion. “What do they think we are? A bunch of politicians?” Jasper hated everyone, but particularly readers. I was sure the people who met Jasper would not change their low opinion of the
Gazette
.

Then Nails jumped in, wearing the superior smile of the teacher’s pet. “Even though I am an editor and therefore not required to participate in the Meet Your Neighbor program,” she said, “I felt I should introduce myself in our neighborhood. I enjoyed the experience immensely. I signed up two families for home delivery of the
Gazette
. I helped an eighty-eight-year-old woman put away her groceries and learned that she was one of the first women accountants in St. Louis, a story suggestion I have given to the Family section. I talked to a gentleman who had a complaint about the stock market quotations, which I will be able to correct in my new post as the All Business editor, and I straightened out a problem for a reader whose paper was not properly delivered.”

It was hard to hear all Nails’s good deeds over the
noise of the reporters making fun of her. Naturally, I was one of them.

“As I was saying to Charlie in bed last night . . .” Nails said.

“Oh, for god’s sake, Nails, we can all see you sleep with him,” I said, right when there was an unfortunate and unexpected silence. Everyone heard my comment.

Nails swung my way, and we squared off like a couple of gunfighters at high noon. Showdown. Nails was so calm and deliberate, I knew she must be seething. She was still smiling her superior smile. “One of the things I did
not
add,” she said, carefully choosing each word, “is how many people did not like your column, Francesca. They think it’s trivial. They would like to see women writing serious stories.”

“Did you tell Charlie that in bed, too?” I said. “Is that where you think serious women discuss business? I save my discussions for the office. But then I have a different . . . position.”

The blood drained from Nails’s face. She said something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Smiley Steve grabbed the microphone, put on his game-show host grin, and said, “Thank you very much, Gazetteers. Please sign for your Meet Your Neighbor list at the city desk.” The meeting broke up with bitter cheers and catcalls. Charlie and Nails stalked off toward his office. Nails didn’t bother to take their wedding gift. Smiley Steve ran after the bridal couple and handed Nails the present.

“Way to go, Francesca,” Jasper said, slapping me on the back. “Care to contribute to the Nails Is Nailed pool? We’re taking bets on which day she’ll whelp. It’s a dollar per guess on the baby’s arrival date, time, and birth weight.”

“I’ll take ten chances, Jasper,” I said, fishing in my purse for a bill. I was eager to recoup the money I had lost on Charlie and Nails’s wedding gift. As I filled out
my ten entries, other staffers came over to congratulate me. Endora was first. Her rich girl’s horse face looked pathetically eager to get this gossip to her society friends. Trashy, topheavy Scarlette, one of Charlie’s minor squeezes, hated Nails for replacing her. She teetered over on her high heels and patted me on the back. She was followed by a flock of third-rate reporters and newsroom climbers who shook my hand or slapped my back. I looked at their ratlike smiles of congratulation. Tomorrow any one of them could turn on me and start fawning over Nails. I didn’t respect them personally or professionally. How did I get to be a hero to these people?

Worst of all, O’Hara, the burned-out feature writer, came over to congratulate me. O’Hara was known to the older reporters as “Pants” because of how the copy desk once butchered his story. The desk was always making outrageous grammar rulings, such as deciding people said “feel” when they should say “believe.” They also believed “like” must be corrected to “as though,” with no exceptions. So one election night O’Hara interviewed a losing candidate who said “I feel like I’ve been kicked in the pants.” What he said in the
Gazette
, thanks to the copy desk, was “I believe as though I’ve been kicked in the pants.”

Pants O’Hara was the reason I fought the
Gazette
editors so hard. He started as a writer of great charm and talent. His fatal flaw was he always did what he was told. He covered every bad story, dutifully making sows’ ears into silk purses. He interviewed charity horse show chairpersons who said, “I’m honored to help our city’s finest hospital.” He interviewed civic leaders who didn’t even say that. If the story disappointed him, he had a little drink at the Last Word. O’Hara had a lot of disappointments and a lot of drinks.

Now my personal nightmare was shaking my hand.
I looked around in panic and saw my mentor, Georgia, the person I most respected at the
Gazette
. She saw me, but she turned away without a word and went into her office. I picked up my list of Meet Your Neighbor names and left, Actually, I don’t know why I made such a big deal out of it. Now I had an excuse to meet all the neighbors and ask them about Caroline.

I started with the names on North Dakota Place. No one was at home at the first eight names. Number nine was answered by a wet, angry-looking woman who said, “It’s bad enough the
Gazette
telephone salespeople interrupt me night after night while I’m at dinner. Now you get me out of the shower. I wouldn’t subscribe to your rag if it was the last newspaper in the country. There isn’t an ounce of news in it. That’s why I take
The New York Times
!” She picked up the
Times
in a blue plastic wrapper from the hall table. For a minute I thought she was going to hit me with it. Instead, she slammed the door in my face. So much for making friends while meeting people.

No one was at home at Dina’s, Kathy and Dale’s, or Patricia’s. Caroline’s house was dark, and the porch was piled with yellowing newspapers. I passed it with a shiver.

At the fourteenth house, I got lucky. It belonged to a woman of about eighty who I’d seen around the neighborhood. She had neat, short white hair, a neat, short body, and clear skin. She wore a freshly ironed blue-flowered house dress that zipped up the front, white socks, and tennis shoes. “Come in, dear,” she said. “I’m Theda Meyer. I know who you are. I love your column. So true to life. I’ve just made lemon bars and I have iced tea. Come in, corne in, we’ll have a nice visit out on the screened-in porch.” The porch was shaded by a big old maple tree. It was a cool, comfortable place with old-fashioned plants in clay pots: red geraniums, parlor ferns, and angel-wing begonias. The brown
wicker furniture was padded with flowered cushions. I helped carry in the tea and cookies. Mrs. Meyer turned on the ceiling fan. She took the wicker settee and I sat in the rocker. “This is nice,” I said, and that’s all I needed to prime Mrs. Meyer. She was a good talker. She also made a mean lemon bar, tangy without being sour. Sort of like her conversation.

It was easy to steer her toward Caroline’s death. “I heard Caroline and her ex-husband the lawyer fighting the week before she died,” Mrs. Meyer said. “Oh, it was a terrible fight. Just terrible. The things they said. I heard every word, you know. They argued with the windows open, and I happened to be weeding in the side garden. The ex-husband said he paid Caroline four-thousand-a-month maintenance and his law practice wasn’t doing so well, and he wanted some financial relief. Caroline refused. She threatened to foreclose on his house in Clayton to get the maintenance he owed her. She said she’d take his BMW. He laughed and said, ‘Good luck, baby. It’s leased.’ He was in a rage, screaming that she’d be sorry. She said she’d been sorry since the day she’d laid eyes on him. And then she made some derogatory remark about the size of his, of his . . .” She looked at me and I nodded to make it clear I knew which part of his anatomy was being discussed. “I swear, Francesca, I think he would have killed her on the spot, he was so angry, but by that time he was aware of me weeding under the window. Called me a nosy old . . . person. It was nasty, I tell you, very nasty. And coming so soon after that terrible scene Caroline had with Sally and her boyfriend.”

We both fortified ourselves with lemon bars before Mrs. Meyer continued. “Is Sally the one who lost her boyfriend because Caroline wouldn’t let him park his pickup on North Dakota Place?” I asked.

“Ah, you’ve heard about that,” Mrs. Meyer said. “Personally, I think Caroline drove Darryl away because
she didn’t want a hoosier roosting on this street. I don’t have to tell you what a hoosier is, do I?”

“Of course not,” I said. In St. Louis, a hoosier is not a person from Indiana. A hoosier was an uneducated lowlife. A hoosier thought Bondo was a car color and a pickup was incomplete without a gun rack.

“Sometimes I think a hoosier is any ill-bred person we don’t like,” Mrs. Meyer said. “What’s your definition, Francesca?”

“A guy who goes to a family reunion for a date,” I said.

Mrs. Meyer nearly spit out her iced tea. “Very good, dear. Caroline simply did not want one on the block, and Sally’s interest in this man seemed to be increasing. She’s such a nice young woman, with a responsible job as an accountant, and this Darryl—that’s his name, Darryl—was so unsuitable for her. He was practically living at her house. His disreputable pickup was parked out there almost every night, and it was covered with the rudest pictures and bumper stickers.”

“Was that the truck that had the bumper sticker, ’Don’t like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT. . .’”

“Ah, yes,” Mrs. Meyer said, interrupting me. “And it had this picture on the back window of a little boy urinating on a Ford logo.”

I bit into a lemon bar to hide my smile, but Mrs. Meyer was too sharp. She caught me. “I know you think I’m an old prude, but some things should not be for public display.”

“I was laughing at your delicate description,” I said. “That truck would never win any neighborhood beautification award.”

“After Darryl changed his oil in front of Sally’s house, Caroline was determined to get him out of there,” Mrs. Meyer said. “She said Darryl was bad for property values.” That was the ultimate South Side condemnation. A real hoosier like Darryl could make
Otto look like Martha Stewart. Soon Sally’s lawn would be sporting a couple of junked cars, and the lawn furniture would be replaced with an old car seat. Screens would fall off the windows, and curtains would start flapping outside. Domestic disturbances and police cars would be next. No wonder Caroline wanted him off the street.

“Darryl got into a tremendous fight with Sally after he got that ticket for parking in front of her house. They were in Sally’s backyard, which had several of his truck parts in it, and I happened to be going for a stroll in the alley, and I heard them. I’d have to be deaf not to. I will spare you Darryl’s exact language, but you’ve seen his pickup, so you can imagine. Darryl wanted Sally to pay his parking ticket. He was quite adamant. She refused. She said she’d picked up the last tab for Darryl, and it was time he got off his behind and went to work. I think Darryl’s request for money opened her eyes. It was the end of their relationship. Darryl blamed Caroline for the breakup. He threatened her, right in my presence. I happened to be weeding again, when he rang Caroline’s doorbell. She wouldn’t let him in, of course. They had their disagreement right on her front porch, and I could hear everything without straining. Darryl was quite drunk, on beer, I think. He carried a six-pack of Busch, minus the one in his hand, and he belched often. He was disgusting in an inebriated state.

“Darryl swore he’d get even with Caroline, but I just thought it was the beer talking. He drank a lot of beer, you know, and he wasn’t really the sort of man Sally should have been dating. I’m so glad that now she’s seeing that nice accountant she met at work. After the scene on Caroline’s porch, I saw Darryl around Caroline’s house once or twice, as if he were stalking her. He’d park his pickup right in front of Caroline’s house. I think she even called the police once more and he got
another ticket. I guess that’s why I thought Darryl was the one who killed Caroline at first. That pink flamingo was his kind of touch. He’d know Caroline would be mortified to be associated with something so tacky.”

And what did Sally know about her ex-boyfriend? Had he told her about his plans to get even with Caroline? How did she feel about the breakup? Did she blame Caroline? Or was she relieved he was gone for good? I’d have to ask Sally. Suddenly there seemed to be all sorts of candidates for Caroline’s killer. Darryl the stalker, blaming Caroline for the loss of his meal ticket. The ex-husband, pleading in vain for financial relief. Plus Dale and Kathy, the sweet little rehabbers Caroline was hounding into financial ruin. Four people who had excellent reasons for wanting Caroline dead. Might as well try for five or more.

“Caroline thought the kids in that rundown house pulled a prank that could have killed that jogger in the alley,” I said. “Do you think that’s possible?”

“Oh, my, yes. They were up to all sorts of mischief in that alley: setting trash fires, torturing a stray cat, selling drugs and guns and god knows what else. There are at least four of them living in the trouble house. That’s what we call it—the trouble house. The youngest is eleven and the oldest and meanest is almost eighteen. He looks quite capable of anything. I can see their backyard and part of their house out my back window upstairs, if I hold the blinds just right. I saw more than enough of their illegal comings and goings, including drug and gun deals. When I complained to the police about their antics, they broke all my garage windows. Of course, I couldn’t prove it was them, but I knew it was those children just the same. It didn’t do any good to talk to their parents. There wasn’t any father, and the mother was hardly ever home. Those children do as they please. People are afraid of them.
Caroline was after them constantly. It wouldn’t surprise me if they killed her and the jogger, too.”