If Winter Comes

If Winter Comes
(02-1990)

One

I t was an election
morning in the newsroom, and Carla Maxwell felt the excitement running through
her slender body like a stab of lightning. The city hall beat which she shared
with Bill Peck was a dream of a job. Something was always happening—like this
special election to fill a vacant seat created by a commissioner’s resignation.
There were only five men on the city commission, and this was the Public Works
seat. Besides that, the two men running for it were, respectively, a good
friend and a deadly foe of the present mayor, Bryan Moreland.

“How does it look?”
Carla called to Peck, who was impatiently running a hand through his
gray-streaked blond hair as he hung onto a telephone receiver waiting for the
results from the city’s largest precinct.

“Neck and neck, to use
a trite expression.” He grinned at her. He had a nice face, she thought. Lean
and smooth and kind. Not at all the usual expressionless mask worn by most
veteran newsmen.

She smiled back, and
her dark green eyes caught the light and seemed to glow under the fluorescent
lights.

“What precinct are you
waiting for?” Beverly Miller, the Society Editor, asked, pausing by Peck’s
desk.

“Ward four,” he told
her. “It looks like…hello? Yes, go ahead.” He scribbled feverishly on his pad,
thanked his caller and hung up. He shook his head. “Tom Green took the fourth
by a small avalanche,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Now there’s a
surprise for you. A political novice winning a city election in a three-man field
with no runoff.”

“I’ll bet Moreland’s
tickled to death,” Carla said dryly. “Green’s been at his throat ever since he
took office almost four years ago.”

“He may not run again
now,”Beverly laughed. “He hasn’t announced.”

“He will,” Peck said
confidently. “Moreland’s one hell of a fighter.”

“That’s the
truth,”Beverly said, perching her ample figure on the edge of Peck’s desk. She
smiled at Carla. “You haven’t been here long enough to know much of Moreland’s
background, but he started out as one of the best trial lawyers in the city. He
had a national reputation long before he ran for mayor and won. And despite
agitators like Green, he commands enough public respect to keep the office if
he wants it. He’s done more for urban renewal, downtown improvement and city
services than any mayor in the past two decades.”

“Then why do we keep
hearing rumors of graft?” Carla asked Peck whenBeverly was called away to her
phone.

“What rumors?” Peck
asked, even as he began feeding his copy into the electronic typewriter.

“I’ve had two anonymous
phone calls this week,” she told him, pushing a strand of dark hair back under
the braided coil pinned on top her head. “Big Jim gave me the green light to do
some investigating.”

“Where do you plan to
start?” he asked indulgently.

“At the city treasury.
One particular department was singled out by my anonymous friend,” she added.
“I was told that if I checked the books, I’d find some very interesting
entries.”

“Tell me what you’re
looking for, and I’ll check into it for you,” he volunteered.

She cocked her head at
him. “Thanks—” she smiled “—but no thanks. Just because I’m fresh out of
college, don’t think I need a shepherd. My father owned a weekly paper in south
Georgia.”

“No wonder you feel so
comfortable here,” he chuckled. “But remember that a weekly and a daily are
worlds apart.”

“Don’t be arrogant,”
she chided. “If you tried to hire on at a weekly, you’d very likely find that
your experience wouldn’t be enough.”

“Oh?”

“You have one beat,”
she reminded him. “City Hall. You don’t cover fashion shows or go to education
board meetings, or cover the county morgue. Those are other beats. But,” she
added, “on a weekly you’re responsible for news, period. The smaller the
weekly, the smaller the staff, the more responsibility you have. I worked for
Dad during the summers. I was my own editor, my own proofreader, my own
photographer, and I had to get all the news all the time. Plus that, I had to
help set the copy if Trudy got sick, I had to do layout and paste-up and write ads,
and set headlines, and sell ads…”

“I surrender!” Peck
laughed. “I’ll just stick to this incredibly easy job I’ve got, thanks.”

“After seventeen years,
I’m not surprised.”

He raised a pale
eyebrow at her, but he didn’t make another comment.

Later, as they were on
their way out of the building, Peck groaned while he scanned the front page of
the last edition.

“God help us, that’s
not what he said!” he burst out.

“Not what who said?”
She pushed through the door onto the busy sidewalk and waited for him.

“Moreland. The paper
says he stated that the city would pick up the tab for new offices at city
hall….” Peck ran a rough hand through his hair. “I told that damned copy editor
twice that Moreland said he
wouldn’t
agree to redecorate city hall! Oh,
God, he’ll eat us alive tonight.”

Tonight was when one of
the presidential advisers was speaking at a local civic organization’s annual
meeting, to which she and Peck were invited. It would be followed by a
reception at a local state legislator’s home, and Moreland would certainly be
there.

“I’ll wear a blond wig
and a mustache,” she assured him. “And you can borrow one of my dresses.”

His pale eyes skimmed
over her tall, slender body appreciatively, before he considered his own
compact, but husky physique. “I’d need a bigger size, but thanks for the
thought.”

“Maybe he won’t blame
us,” she said comfortingly.

“We work for the
paper,” he reminded her. “And the fact that a story I called in got fouled up
won’t cut any ice. Don’t sweat it, honey, it’s my fault not yours. Moreland
doesn’t eat babies.”

“I’m twenty-three, you
know,” she said with a smile. “I was late getting into college.”

“Moreland’s older than
I am,” he persisted. “He’s got to be pushing forty, if he isn’t already there.”

“I know, I’ve seen the
gray hairs.”

“Most of those he got
from the accident,” he murmured as they got to the parking lot. “Tragic thing,
and so senseless. Didn’t even scratch the other driver. I guess the other guy
was too drunk to notice any injuries, even if he had them.”

“That was before my
time,” she said. She paused at the door of her yellow Volkswagen. “Was it since
he was elected?”

“Two years ago.” He
nodded. “There were rumors of a split between him and his wife, but no
confirmation.”

“Any kids?”

“A daughter, eight
years old.”

She nodded. “She must
be a comfort to him.”

“Honey, she was in the
car,” he told her. “He was the only survivor.”

She swallowed hard. “He
doesn’t look as if bullets would scratch him. I guess after that, they
wouldn’t.”

“That’s what I hear.”
He opened the door of his car. “Need a ride to the meeting?”

She shook her head.
“Thanks, anyway. I thought I might toss my clothes in the trunk and stop by a
laundromat after the reception.”

He froze with his hand
on the door handle. “Wash clothes at a laundromat atmidnight in an evening
gown?”

“I’m going to wear a
dress, not an evening gown, and the laundromat belongs to my aunt and uncle.
They’ll be there.”

He let out a deep
breath. “Don’t scare me like that. It’s not good for a man of my advanced
years.”

“What a shame, and I
was going to buy you a racing set for Christmas, too.”

“Christmas is three
months away.”

“Is that all?” she
exclaimed. “Well, maybe I’d better forgo the meeting and go Christmas shopping
instead.”

“And leave me to face Moreland
alone?” He looked deserted, tragic.

“I can’t protect you.
He towers over me, you know,” she added, remembering the sheer physical impact
of the man at the last city commission meeting.

“He’s never jumped on
you,” he reminded her. He smiled boyishly. “In fact, at that last budget
meeting we covered, he seemed to spend a lot of time looking at you.”

Her eyebrows went up.
“At me? I wonder what I did?”

He shook his head.
“Carla, you’re without hope. Men do look at attractive women.”

“Not men like Moreland,”
she protested.

“Men like Moreland,” he
insisted. “He may be the mayor, honey, but he’s still very much a man.”

“He could have almost
any socialite in the city.”

“But he rarely dates,”
he said. “I’ve seen him with a woman twice at a couple of social functions.
He’s not what you’d call a womanizer, unless he’s keeping a very low profile.”

“Maybe he misses his
wife,” she said softly.

“Angelica wasn’t the
kind of woman any sane man misses,” he recalled with a smile. “She reminded me
of a feisty dog—all snap and bristle. I think it was an arranged marriage
rather than a love match. They were descended from two of the city’s founding
families, you know. Moreland could get along very well without working at all.
He does it for a hobby, I think, although he takes it seriously. He loves this
city, and he’s sure worked for it.”

“I still wouldn’t like
to have him mad at me,” she admitted with a smile. “It would be like having a
bulldozer run over you.”

“Ask me when the
party’s over,” he moaned, “and I’ll let you know.”

“Wear your track
shoes,” she called as she got into her car and drove away.

Carla and Peck sat
together with his date, a ravishing blonde who couldn’t seem to take her eyes
off him. She felt vaguely alone at functions like this gigantic dinner. It was
comforting to be near someone she knew, even if she did feel like a third
wheel. Reporting had overcome some of her basic shyness, but not a lot. She
still cringed at gatherings.

Even now, chic in an
emerald green velour dress that was perfect with her pale green eyes and dark
hair—which she wore, uncharacteristically, loose tonight—she felt
self-conscious, especially when she caught Bryan Moreland’s dark eyes looking
at her from the head table. It was unnerving, that pointed stare of his, and
she had a feeling that there was animosity in it. Perhaps he was blaming her as
well as Peck for the story in the paper. She was Peck’s protégée, after all,
his shadow on the city hall beat while she was getting her bearings in the new
environment of big-city journalism.

“His Honor’s glaring at
me,” she told Peck over her coffee cup.

“Ignore him,” he told
her. “He glares at all reporters. See old Graham over at the next table—the
Sun
reporter?” he asked, gesturing toward a young, sandy-haired man with a
photographer sitting next to him. “He axed the mayor’s new landfill proposal
without giving the city’s side of the question. Moreland cornered him at a
civic-club banquet and burned his ears off. In short,” he concluded with a
smile, “he would like to see you and me and Graham on the menu
tonight—preferably served with barbeque sauce and apples in our mouths.”