Deadly Interest (15 page)

I opened the card, half-hoping the flowers
were from William, knowing better. “My Dear Alex,” it read. “Had I
known your plan to revisit the site of that brutal murder, I should
have accompanied you, of course. I am devastated by the news that
you’ve been hurt. Please call me and let me know if there is
anything I can possibly do to speed your recovery. Yours,
David.”

Oh, so now it was just “David.”

I untied the wide satin bow and lifted the
lid. Rather than roses this time, he’d chosen a variety of flowers.
A rainbow of roses, lilies, daisies, tulips, and a few I didn’t
recognize. Picking up the box, I took a deep whiff of their scent
and tried to be cheered by the gift.

“
What’s wrong?” Lucy
asked. “Don’t you think they’re pretty?”

“
Yeah,” I said, unsure.
“But something about them . . . I don’t know.”

She leaned over my shoulder to look into the
box for a moment then up at me, bright realization in her eyes. “I
know why you don’t like them. They smell like the wake
yesterday.”

I dropped the box onto the kitchen table.
She was right.

Lucy canted her head at me, twisting at the
back of her hair as she spoke. “You seem really sad today. Can I do
something for you to make you feel better?”

I pretended to think hard. “You know,” I
said, “I haven’t heard you play the piano since you’ve been
home.”

Her face lit up with such sudden happiness
it broke my heart. She’d been worried about me, I knew, but up
until this moment I’d lost sight of her needs in this whole
mess.

Sprinting toward the living room, she shot a
question over her shoulder. “What do you want to hear?”

“
Surprise me,” I
said.

Seconds later the house filled with the
syncopated sound of Scott Joplin’s “Solace.” It fit my mood
perfectly, and, sitting at the kitchen table, I pushed the box of
flowers to the far edge, hoping the distance would help. I wrinkled
my nose again. David Dewars had probably paid a lot for this
arrangement, but the smell of them turned my stomach.

When the phone rang, Lucy was just ending
her first song. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked.

“
No.”

Standing, I took the few small steps to the
phone, and wondered if my stomach muscles would ever feel normal
again. “Hello?”

“
Hey, bruiser.”

William’s voice sent a warm wash of pleasure
over me. “Hi,” I said.

“
I tried calling you
earlier. They said you were at the doctor’s.”

“
Lucy told me someone
called.” I said, hearing the cheer in my voice. “That was you,
huh?”

“
Had to check on you
myself,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

I gave him a quick rundown. “I guess
Lulinski doesn’t suspect me anymore,” I said with a short
laugh.

A couple of beats went by as strains of
“Rhapsody in Blue” trickled in from the living room. Lucy would
never be able to balance a checkbook, but she played her music with
tender emotion. When William spoke again, his voice was quiet, and
I had to push my ear close to the receiver to hear. “I was worried
about you.”

“
I’m okay,” I said. “Plan
to be back at work tomorrow.”

“
That’s my
girl.”

The sentiment made me grin, which hurt, but
not so badly this time. “So,” I began, broaching the subject that
weighed on my mind. “You and Caroline are headed to Frisco Friday,
huh?”

“
Actually . . .” I heard
the discomfort in his pause. “One of our sister stations out there
invited us out a couple days early.”

“
Early?”

“
We’re taking off
Wednesday morning and spending two days in Napa before we head down
to San Francisco for the seminar.”

“
Napa?” Wine country.
Featured in the travel sections of upscale magazines. Known for its
romance. “Sounds like fun.”

“
Ever been
there?”

“
No.”

“
Well, I’m sure I’ll have
lots to tell you when I get back, then,” he said.

I forced fake cheer into my voice. “I’ll
look forward to that.”

“
Me too,” he said. A voice
in the background called to him. “Hey, gotta run. Don’t push
yourself, okay? Take tomorrow off too, if it’ll do you some
good.”

“
Sure,” I said, thinking:
The hell I will.

* * * * *

The following morning, unwilling to subject
myself to the double set of stairs from the building’s gilt lobby,
I’d ridden the elevator up one level to the second floor. It might
have been my imagination but the elevator’s other occupants, having
pushed numbers fourteen and twenty-three, sighed dramatically and
said “tsk” when I got off at two.

Good lesson, I thought. If I had a set of
crutches, no one would think twice. Reminded me not to be quick to
cast judgment. Things are not always what they seem.

I let loose a sigh of my own at the prospect
of dragging open our station’s heavy glass entrance doors. I
pulled, feeling pressure in my sore abs, wishing a magic sensor
would have whooshed the doors open for me.

I’d gotten in extra early because I wanted
to avoid the heavy commuter rush. I hadn’t taken a bus downtown to
work since my car had to be impounded after having been doused with
gasoline six months ago.

My doctor wanted me to wait a couple of days
before driving again. In fact, he’d strongly advised me against
coming back to work so soon, but since he admitted I was merely
battered and bruised, not broken, I decided to push myself. The bus
ride had been jarring, but getting an early start at least
guaranteed me a seat.

Bass was in early, too.

“
What the hell are you
doing here?” he asked.

Oh, the support I got from this man. “I work
here, remember?”

He perched his fists onto his hips,
regarding me. “You don’t look too bad.”

“
Thanks,” I said. From
Bass, that was a high compliment.

With his small hands tucked into the sides
of his steel-blue suit coat, he reminded me again of a little boy
playing grown-up. One eyebrow lifted, and he gestured with his
chin. “In my office.”

He circled around to the black leather chair
behind his desk as I braced myself on the arms of the chairs in
front of it, lowering myself slowly, trying to feign smooth
movement. If Bass noticed, he graciously pretended not to.

He’d pulled the window’s sheers across the
expanse of blue that overlooked the Chicago River behind him.
They’d predicted more snow, but the sky seemed way too clear for
that.

“
You could have waited to
talk to me,” I said.

Hazel eyes shot a look of disbelief across
the desk. “You can’t mean the trip to San Francisco.”

“
Of course that’s what I
mean. You knew I wanted to go.”

“
Your aunt said you’d be
out for at least a week.”

Frustrated, my hands shot up. “I’m here,
aren’t I?”

“
You shouldn’t
be.”

“
The point is, I am. And
the further point is that you should have at least waited to talk
with me before making a decision to send someone else.”

He held up a hand. “Hey, I made the best
decision I could, given the circumstances. I thought you were out
for a week. I even gave Gonzales the stories you were working on.”
Anger crowded his features for a moment which I then read as
indecision as to whether to get them back from Gonzales or not.
“Besides,” he said, his voice weary with having to bother
explaining things to me, “they’re leaving tomorrow now instead of
Friday. You’re in no shape to travel—even I can see that. As far as
I’m concerned, the subject is closed.” He looked at me with an
expression that dared me to argue, then added, without feeling,
“Better luck next time.”

I wanted to let him know just how pissed off
I was, but the fact remained that he had, indeed, made the best
decision he could at the time. For the station, that is. I shook my
head and looked away. Things happen for a reason, they say. All of
this. I blew out a breath, then worked to get my face into a
semblance of calm. “Okay, so I’m here now. What have you got for
me?”

He tapped a pencil’s eraser against his
blotter, and spent a long moment watching the action.

Oh, this is promising, I thought. “What’s
up?”

Tilting his head to acknowledge my question,
his attention remained on the center of his desk. “You realize we
have an opportunity here.”

“
For?”

“
For . . .” he let it
hang, with a stare at me as though I should finish the
sentence.

I didn’t.

“
Our chance to
trounce
Up Close Issues
and Dan Starck on a very big human-interest
story.”

“
You lost me, Bass. What
story?”

He gestured, indicating my face, my aching
body. “Your story.”

I shook my head, wagging a finger at him.
“No,” I said. “Not my story.”

“
You’re trying to tell me
you aren’t planning to follow this through? To find out exactly
what’s going on?” Bass shot me a skeptical look. “I think I know
you better than that.”

I set my mouth in a line, and formed my next
words in my mind before saying them. “I don’t know who killed Mrs.
Vicks and I don’t know who attacked me Sunday night. I don’t even
know if the two incidents are related. The police don’t think they
are.”

“
That’s what they say.” He
lifted one eyebrow.

“
Bass,” I said, in my
serious voice, “you know as well as I do that when an obituary runs
in the paper, thieves see the deceased’s unoccupied home as an easy
target. That’s what the police think happened.”

“
Uh-huh.” He smiled. “And
why were you there, anyway?”

“
I drove Diana there to
pick up a few things.” I shrugged. “No big deal. Just bad
timing.”

“
Uh-huh,” he said again.
“So you weren’t there to have a look around yourself at all? Not
the least bit curious about the murder? Not trying to see if there
was something in the house that the police might have missed?
Something to point to the murderer?”

I fixed my gaze out the window. A gray front
appeared to be moving in. Maybe we would get the big snow all the
newspapers were predicting. “You’ve been watching too much TV. I
have no intention of getting involved in this one.”

“
That’s not what your aunt
said on the phone.”

My gaze snapped back to meet his. Smug
amusement there. He waited me out.

“
She asked me to look into
it,” I admitted. “But if you talked to her, then you know how sorry
she is. She wants me out of this one. Pronto.”

“
But you’re not going to
let it go, are you?”

God damn it, the man knew me too well. “Of
course I’m letting it go,” I lied. “Look at me, I’m getting a black
eye. It could’ve been a whole lot worse. I don’t plan to tempt the
fates again.”

The truth was, Detective Lulinski’s
accusation that I would use my connection with Mrs. Vicks to
further my own feature story aspirations, still rankled. Of course
I wanted to know who killed my neighbor. And I wanted to know who
assaulted us at her house. But I’d felt the beginnings of rapport
between myself and the good detective after the attack. The truth
was important—but for its own sake, not for the station’s. Not this
time.

Tilting his head, Bass examined my right
temple for a moment. “Nah. No black eye. You might get a little
bruising—some green, some yellow, maybe.”

“
Doesn’t matter. I’m
backing out of this one. Let the police handle it.”

As if I hadn’t said a word, he continued,
“And since you’re going to look into this, why not do it with the
station’s sanction? We can give you lots of backup, lots of help
and we’ll come out with a kick-ass story. Homegrown, you know?
Sweet old lady killed in her house as she’s fixing dinner. Ace
reporter Alex St. James gets attacked when she starts looking into
it. This is lightning, and we can catch it.”

I shook my head again. “Didn’t you hear
me?”

“
I see a Davis award in
this one,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Wouldn’t it be nice to
show up your former boyfriend with a trophy of your
own?”

I boosted myself from the
chair, with a look toward Bass that was meant to be withering but
no doubt fell shy of the mark when I winced in pain. “You’re
dreaming, bub,” I said, heading for the door. “And in case you
forgot, we’re a news organization, not an investigative service.
We
report
what
happened, we don’t take part in it.”

“
You did. Last time. And
Dan Starck got the award you deserved.”

That hurt, but I refused to react.

He spoke to my back. “So what are you here
for anyway? I gave Gonzales all your stories. You got nothing else
to work on. So why not? I’m giving you all the time you need to
bring this one home.”

The worst part was that this was a
silver-platter offer. I had every intention of following through
this one on my own, but the station’s resources were a compelling
temptation.

Facing him again, I wondered if this was how
so many trusting folks sold their souls to the devil.

I held my hand up, but even I could see that
he knew I’d acquiesce. “Let me start looking. See where it goes. No
guarantees, okay?”

He grinned with such evil cheer that I
half-expected horns and a tail to sprout out as he sat there. “It’s
a deal.”