Father’s Day Murder (11 page)

Oh, well. She sighed, reaching for the room-service menu. Throwing caution to the wind, she decided to splurge. After all, the Trask Trust was covering her expenses. She hadn't even paid for her drinks at the bar; Carole had refused her money. She hadn't spent a cent of her own money so far, except for a couple of dollars for Bill's Father's Day card. A girl had to do what a girl had to do and it looked as if this girl's immediate future included chicken Caesar salad, chocolate cake, and Cary Grant.

“M
y, my, don't you look bright and perky this morning.”

Lucy was sitting in the coffee shop, savoring her morning coffee and reading the
Herald.
She smiled at Carole, who she had to admit looked better than she would have expected, considering the number of double martinis she'd downed the day before. Her crisp, starched white shirt gave her a fresh appearance, and the short skirt she was wearing showed her legs to advantage, tipped with a pair of sexy, killer heels.

“I had a wonderful time last night.”

“A man? Did you meet a man?” Carole sat down in the opposite chair and put down her coffee. “Someone here at the convention? Tell me all about it.”

Now that she looked closer, Lucy could see that Carole was wearing rather a lot of skillfully applied makeup.

“The handsomest man I've ever seen,” said Lucy with a sigh. “Sophisticated, urbane, a real knight in shining armor.”

“He couldn't be in the newspaper business then,” said Carole, unsnapping the lid on her coffee with a slightly trembling hand. “How'd you meet him?” Her eyes fell on Lucy's left hand. “Hey, aren't you married?”

Lucy tried very hard and almost succeeded in pulling off a world-weary shrug.

“There's nothing the matter with a little extracurricular activity—so long as my husband doesn't find out.”

Carole's eyes widened. “Somehow I didn't take you for that kind of girl.”

Lucy couldn't contain herself any longer and burst out laughing. “It was Cary Grant. I spent last night in my room—alone—watching
Notorious.”

“You really had me going,” said Carole, taking a swallow of coffee. “But I was suspicious. He sounded too good to be true.” She sighed. “Believe me, I know from experience.”

“I've been married for a very long time,” said Lucy. “I can't imagine what it's like to be unattached and dating.”

“After my last relationship ended I decided to swear off men forever.”

Lucy smiled sympathetically. “That bad?”

Carole shook her head and pulled out her cigarettes, then realized the shop didn't allow smoking.

“Damn.” She fingered the cigarette, then held it to her nose and inhaled deeply before replacing it in the pack. “I'm such a fool. I really thought I had something going with this guy. I mean, we were together for years. Then one day he meets somebody else and it's all over. Bye-bye.
Adios. Sayonara,
baby.”

“That stinks.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You'll find somebody else.”

“At my age? With my responsibilities?”

“Do you have kids?” Lucy was surprised.

“No. It's my dad. He was injured in a pressroom accident and needs a lot of care.” Carole drained her coffee cup and set it down with a click. “Very expensive care.”

“Doesn't he get disability benefits?”

“Oh, sure. The lawyers and human resources people were at his bedside the minute he was out of surgery with a big, fat offer. He was only too happy to take it, but it turned out to be a lot less than he needed.”

“And he signed away any future claims?”

“How'd you guess? It was a condition of receiving the money.”

“Who did he work for?”

“Pioneer Press.”

Lucy nodded. She was beginning to understand why the Read family wasn't very popular with the employees at Pioneer Press. Not that they were any different from management at many companies these days.

“It's pretty late,” Carole finally said. “I'd better go.”

Lucy lingered at the table for a few minutes to finish her coffee. When she entered the hotel lobby her hand was immediately grasped and shaken energetically by a round-faced man sporting a
Shrubsole for Senate
button on the lapel of his rather tight suit jacket.

“I'm Dick Shrubsole, and I'm running for the U.S. Senate from Vermont. I'm going to be here in the hotel all day, and my press secretary here will be glad to sign you up for an interview.”

He indicated a tiny, very serious-looking woman who was clutching a clipboard.

“I have openings at one, two, and three-fifteen,” she offered, peering hopefully through her horn-rimmed glasses.

“I'm from Maine,” said Lucy. “I don't think you want to waste any of that precious time on me.”

“Mr. Shrubsole is attracting a lot of interest nationwide,” said the girl, blinking rapidly. “They're filling up fast,” she said, “but right now I can probably squeeze you in whenever you'd like.”

Lucy suspected he wasn't generating quite as much interest among the journalists at the convention as he hoped, but she was intrigued by the opportunity to interview the challenger for Monica Underwood's seat in the Senate.

“When did you say those openings were?” she asked.

She was reaching for her day planner when Ted appeared at her side and steered her toward the stairs.

“We'll get back to you,” he called over his shoulder, but Shrubsole and his companion had already cornered a couple of other NNA conferees, clearly identifiable by their badges.

“What's going on?” asked Lucy. “That might've been interesting.”

“Trust me, he's not gonna tell you anything he doesn't say at the publishers' breakfast this morning. It'll be a waste of time. All he wants is a puff piece, anyway.” He stopped and turned, fixing a beady eye on Shrubsole. “I'm no fan of Monica Underwood's, believe me, but this is in really bad taste.”

“I don't understand.”

“Traditionally, all the regional candidates for the fall elections are invited to the breakfast. It's a chance to meet and greet the publishers and shmooze over some Nova salmon and eggs Benedict. It's usually pretty interesting.”

“So Shrubsole's here for the breakfast and he's making himself available for interviews. What's the matter with that?”

“It's taking advantage, because Monica Underwood had to cancel. She can't be doing any campaigning while she's supposed to be in mourning, can she?”

“Oohh,” drawled Lucy, as the light dawned. “What a weasel.”

Ted shrugged. “He's a politician. That's the way they are. But we don't have to let them get away with it.”

Lucy noticed they were blocking the stairway and stepped aside to allow a group of conferees to descend to the downstairs meeting room. “I guess I'd better get going. I don't want to miss anything,” she said.

Ted nodded his approval. “What's the topic this morning?”

“All your secrets will be revealed,” said Lucy. “It's the ‘Editors' Roundtable: What Do Editors Really Want?'”

“Don't let me keep you,” said Ted. “I'll expect a full report later.”

Lucy waggled her fingers in a little wave as she started down the stairs. She was pretty sure she knew what Ted wanted—interesting stories and lots of them—but she thought it would be advantageous to discover if his requirements were industry-wide standards or merely quirks. Was it really a universal rule that you couldn't begin a story with a name, for example? And what about his insistence on including ages? Lucy didn't see that it mattered, and the people she interviewed often resented it.

She was surprised when she took her seat and noticed Jim Prince was one of the panelists. She remembered him from the banquet as rather brash and outspoken. He seemed an odd choice, considering his fellow panelists: two tiny, wizened ladies with their hair twisted into tight buns and wearing identical blouses with Peter Pan collars.

“Let's get started,” said Jim, fixing his eyes on a group engaged in a noisy conversation in the back of the room.

They quieted down immediately.

“As most of you know, I'm the editor-in-chief of the New Bedford
Standard Times.”

Lucy knew that New Bedford was a gritty old industrial city in Massachusetts that had fallen on hard times when fishing declined and manufacturers abandoned the city's old brick mills in search of cheaper labor in Mexico and Asia. No wonder Prince was such a tough guy, she thought as he introduced his fellow panelists.

“Ada Crabtree is a journalism professor at my alma mater, Boston University, where she is the adviser to the student paper. Her sister, Amanda, is editor of the highly regarded, indeed legendary Nantucket
Gam,
a paper that includes the White House and numerous members of Congress on its subscription list.”

One of the ladies, the one with the circle pin placed front and center between the two edges of her collar, gave a tiny nod. “Thank you so much for that extremely kind introduction, Jim,” she said. “Of course, I always knew you'd go far in the newspaper business.”

Lucy was amused to see him grow a little red around the collar.

“I wouldn't be quite so proud, if I were you, Ada,” Amanda sniffed. “Sometimes Mr. Prince stoops a bit low. I fear he meets his readers on their own level, when he ought to strive to raise them to a higher understanding of the issues.”

“Not all of us have the sort of readership you do, dear Amanda,” replied Ada. “New Bedford is hardly Nantucket, even if they were both whaling ports in the nineteenth century.”

“Then, of course, there was that awful business with the Borden woman,” admitted Amanda. “The city has never been the same since.”

“That was Fall River,” said Jim. “Lizzie Borden lived in Fall River.”

“I'm quite sure you're mistaken,” insisted Amanda.

“On the contrary,” snapped Ada. “I'm sure we can rely on Jim's knowledge of the history of New Bedford.”

“Shall we get started?” he said, clearing his throat. “I suggest we start with assigned stories and, if we have time, move on to enterprise reporting.”

Lucy opened her notebook, but as the morning wore on she made very few notes. Jim, she soon learned, was an overbearing editor who kept his reporters on a tight leash. The Crabtree sisters didn't live up to their star billing, either. As editors they encouraged solid reporting and welcomed diverse points of view, but their real passion was grammar. Over the years they'd developed a few pet peeves, and they were determined to use the panel to express their views on the sloppy use of semicolons, the inappropriate use of adjectives, and what Ada termed a deplorable tendency to unnecessary capitalization.

Lucy found her mind wandering, back to her own girls in Tinker's Cove. She'd always assumed they would stop squabbling as they grew older, but the example of the Crabtree sisters wasn't encouraging. Ada and Amanda were well into their sixties and they were still bickering with each other.

As an only child, Lucy had always envied her friends who had brothers and sisters. Her parents saw themselves as partners in an ongoing love story, and she had often felt excluded from the affection they showered on each other. What she hadn't realized, however, was the level of competition between brothers and sisters for their parents' attention. Her parents hadn't had much attention to spare, but what little there was had been all hers. She hadn't had to share it.

Lucy wondered about Catherine's role in the Read family. She was more successful than Junior, but that didn't seem to impress her father. Luther seemed to save all his affection for Junior, choosing him as his heir over Catherine. That would have been hard enough to bear, but Lucy suspected that Luther's affection for Monica might have been a worse blow to Catherine.

After all, recalled Lucy, Lizzie Borden supposedly reached for that ax because she didn't get along with her stepmother. Maybe Catherine didn't get along with Monica; maybe she resented her arrival on the scene. Maybe instead of giving her father forty whacks she'd handed him an empty inhaler. Lucy didn't like thinking of Catherine as the murderer, but she had to admit it was a possibility. She had the means; she had opportunity and perhaps a motive.

It was becoming clear even to the Crabtree sisters that they were losing their audience, so it came as a relief to everyone in the room when Jim announced a brief break. Lucy got up to stretch and headed for the ladies' room. There was a line, so she decided to go up to her room, and when she got there she saw that she had a phone message. She sat for a minute, staring at the rosy little message light. An emergency at home? Probably. Fearing the worst, she pushed the button.

To her surprise, she heard Monica Underwood's smooth, well-modulated voice.

“This is Monica Underwood. I believe we met on Sunday night, in happier times. I would appreciate it if you'd give me a call, Lucy.”

Lucy copied down the number and dialed, quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind. She never knew what to say to someone who was grieving anyway, and she was intimidated by Monica's position as a senator. If she waited, she knew she'd never make the call.

Monica herself answered the phone.

“I got your message,” began Lucy.

“Thank you so much for getting back to me so promptly,” cooed Monica, who apparently knew the Rule of Twelve: Your first twelve words should always include a thank-you.

“You're very welcome,” replied Lucy. “I'm sorry for your loss. Luther was a wonderful man and will be greatly missed.”

“A great voice has been silenced,” said Monica. “A staunch advocate for the free exchange of ideas and a champion of First Amendment rights.”

Lucy found herself questioning Monica's motive for calling her. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.

“I'm so glad you asked,” began Monica. “My contacts have told me that Dick Shrubsole is at the conference for the publishers' breakfast. Is that true?”

“I saw him myself this morning,” said Lucy.

“Are you aware, Lucy, that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy in this country that is trying to do away with our most precious freedoms?”

“I have heard that suggestion before,” said Lucy, hedging.