Killer Deal (8 page)

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Authors: Sheryl J. Anderson

BOOK: Killer Deal
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“Of the many things I love about you, the fact that you haven’t changed your cell number is pretty high on the list right now,” he continued. “I need to see you.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons, but primarily because we seem to be working on the same story.”
Which is, I swear, the only reason I agreed to have drinks with Peter Mulcahey.
“WE CAN’T ALLOW THIS TO happen.”
“It’s just drinks.”
“I’ve lost count of the number of disasters that have begun with that phrase.”
Tricia and Cassady had arrived at my office hoping to swoop me off for cocktails and I had stunned them with the news that I was otherwise occupied. With Peter. Stunning the two of them is no mean feat and normally I would’ve taken a certain amount of pride in the accomplishment, but there was that little gnawing feeling in my stomach that knew their misgivings had some merit.
“Why on earth?” Cassady asked.
“He says we’re working on the same story.”
“How would he know?” Tricia asked.
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“All the more reason not to see him,” Cassady said. She leaned against the desk of Carlos, the editorial assistant who camps out next to me, and I could see the muscles in his neck clench as he resisted the urge to lean back into her.
Tricia took my chair, but Cassady’s side. “You know Peter, he’s trying to steal information and sources from you. He always wants someone else to do the hard work.”
“So maybe I’ll beat him to the punch and steal something from him.”
“Do you have a suspect yet?” Cassady asked.
I glanced around the bull pen to determine how many eavesdroppers were on alert. Carlos was mesmerized by Cassady’s cologne, but plenty of other ears looked a little too perked up. “Of course not. I’m just doing an interview and the whole point of the interview is that she isn’t a suspect,” I clarified for all within hearing range.
“Maybe you do need to see him,” Tricia said suddenly.
“Traitor,” was Cassady’s response.
“He has information about what she’s doing that she didn’t think was public. She needs to at least figure out what his source is. If there’s a leak, we need to know.”
Cassady thought about that one briefly. “I really hate that there’s a good reason for her to spend even two minutes with him.”
Tricia shook her head. “It’s like Eva Marie Saint having to shoot Cary Grant in
North by Northwest.
Just part of the intrigue.”
“But they wound up together at the end of the movie.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I assured Cassady. “Peter is ancient history and will stay that way. But I do want to find out how he knows what I’m doing. And if he has any insights into this story that he’s willing to part with.”
“Just be careful what kind of bargain you strike with him.”
“You think that poorly of my self-control?”
“The mother of us all fell prey to a snake. I hate to see any other woman make the same mistake.”
“Perhaps we should chaperone,” Tricia suggested as we made our way to the elevator.
“It’s really all right,” I assured them both now. “I’m over Peter—”
“But he’s not over you,” Cassady interjected.
“Of course he is. This is professional taunting, nothing more. I’ll check for leaks, see what else I can learn, and be out of there in record time.”
“But not too fast,” Tricia suggested.
“Snakes don’t deserve good manners,” Cassady said.
“But if we are going to be working the same turf,” I said,
assuming I was getting Tricia’s point, “it makes sense not to antagonize him.”
Tricia nodded and Cassady sighed in capitulation. “All right. But mark my words. You’re going for cocktails with a man you used to sleep with, a man you then dumped, who now has something you want. What good can come of it?”
“Thank you for the warning and a special thank you for issuing it in a crowded elevator. Good evening, everyone,” I said with a smile to the rest of the passengers as I let Cassady and Tricia exit ahead of me. I tried to think of the variety of smirks I saw as moments of unexpected joy my friends and I had been able to bring to our fellow Manhattanites. That’s better than dwelling on the concept of people laughing at you on their way home.
Cassady stepped to the curb, raised a hand, and a cab stopped. She’s gifted that way. “If you don’t call us by eight, I’m sending the SWAT team in,” she vowed, opening the door for Tricia.
“Speaking of calls, how’d lunch with the physicist go?”
“Gee, I’d love to tell you, but you have other plans. Guess it’ll have to wait.”
Tricia leaned back out of the cab. “Be careful.”
“As always.”
She and Cassady rolled their eyes at each other as Cassady got into the cab. “Eight o’clock,” Cassady reminded me.
“Sooner,” I assured her as they drove off. I hailed another cab for myself—not with Cassady’s ease, but eventually—and headed down to the Flatiron Lounge.
The only thing I handle with less confidence than current boyfriends is former boyfriends. In my relationship with Kyle, I was exerting supreme effort to relax and enjoy the natural progress of things. Until that little voice started whispering that there is no natural progress, that a relationship requires guidance and training and cultivation. Or is that roses? I wonder sometimes if it’s the downside of being an advice columnist—you become so acutely aware of the myriad ways people screw up relationships that it seems impossible
to take a step without detonating a landmine. The shoemaker’s shoeless children and all that.
But the care and feeding of an ex is a whole different obstacle course. Normally, I move on and pretend neither to care nor consider how he ever thinks of me, mentions me, spits when he sees me coming, etc. But it’s a pretense because I do care, I do consider, especially when I did the dumping. It’s as Dorothy Parker said, in reference to her heart being broken, “Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.”
Not that there was a chance I’d broken Peter’s heart. I was pretty sure it was unbreakable. But I had dumped him pretty abruptly because Kyle had taken my breath away and I regretted not being more civil about it. The burning question was if I was about to pay for that.
He was waiting for me at the bar, half-leaning, half-perched on a stool like he owned the place. I saw him first, which gave me a chance to absorb the fact that he looked really good, in that effortless, Nautica-ad way of his. He was wearing his golden hair shorter, which suited him, and had gotten a lot of sun—probably sailing with his cousins at Martha’s Vineyard—which made his pale blue eyes stand out even more. Or maybe it was the cobalt blue lamps above the bar that electrified them.
I was surprised by a butterflyish sensation in my stomach. What was there to be nervous about? Other than letting him play me into making a fool of myself. Or doing it all on my own. He was up to something, had to be, and I needed to be on guard.
One thing at a time. Taking a deep breath and walking up to him, I debated how to greet him. A handshake might be too cool, but a hug and a cheek kiss might be too insincere. What would Barbara Stanwyck do? No, that didn’t help, because she would have shot him rather than break up with him and wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
Lucky for me, he spotted me as I approached and dropped me a mocking bow, which left me no alternative but to offer my hand. He took it, kissed it lightly, then put his
other hand over it as he straightened up. “Good to see you, Molly,” he said.
“Good to see you, too, Peter. You look great.”
“Just trying to keep up with you.” He kissed my hand again and swept me onto a bar stool. “What’ll it be?”
“Scotch mist, please.”
I watched him carefully as he ordered, trying to remember what had first attracted me to him. Probably that I’d never dated anyone like him—he was very Ivy League and I am anything but—and he was a charmer par excellence. We’d had a lot of fun, but it had all stayed pretty close to the surface, whereas with Kyle, things had gotten so deep so fast, it still made my head spin sometimes.
He turned back, blatantly looking me over. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“You made it pretty hard to resist. How’d you know what I was working on?”
He pulled a mock frown. “Do we have to talk business right away?”
“I’m sorry, is there something we should discuss first?”
“Sure. Weather. Politics. The cop.”
“Do I get to pick?”
“You still with him?”
“Which candidate are we talking about?”
“The cop.”
“Yes.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Not at all.”
“For me.”
He gave me a lazy smile to show he didn’t mean it, but I decided to take the opportunity anyway. “Peter, I am sorry.”
“Wanna come back?” he asked, his smile growing.
“Sorry about how I handled things, I meant.”
“If I forgive you, wanna come back?”
I couldn’t help but smile in return. “You don’t want me back.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because you’re willing to say so.”
“How can you write that column and be so wrong about something so basic?”
Before I could say anything, his hand was behind my neck and he was kissing me with startling vigor. I was literally gasping when he let me go.
I didn’t appreciate Peter playing around like this, but experience told me that coolness made more of an impact on him than anything else, so I was careful not to overreact. I went for a Scarlett O’Hara response, fanning myself with a coaster from the bar. “Oh, now that changes everything. Want to take me home right now?”
He frowned. “You don’t kiss the same way anymore.”
I snuck a quick lick of my bottom lip, trying to tell if I had any lipstick left at all. What was he up to? This was taking the game a bit far, even for him. “It has been awhile, Peter.”
“Have you thought about me at all?”
“Of course.” I smiled. “You and the weather and politics and the cop.”
He laughed as sincerely as Peter ever laughs at anything. He’s more of a grinner, more apt to say “That’s funny” than to actually chuckle.
“Please don’t try to cloud my judgment when you brought me here to answer questions,” I said, trying again to move the conversation into professional waters. “How’d you know what I was working on?”
“I have a friend in Ronnie Willis’ office and she mentioned you interviewed him.”
She. The assistant or Paula? “What else did your friend tell you?”
“Nothing.”
The assistant. “So what makes you think there’s anything I can tell you?”
“Because I know how your mind works. I want to know who you think killed Garth Henderson.”
God bless the bartender, who appeared at that moment with my Scotch mist. I slid it quickly toward me so I could look at something other than Peter for a moment. “That’s not what my article’s about,” I said.
“Bullshit.”
“I’m doing a profile of Gwen Lincoln.” I took a sip and looked him in the eye while I could.
“Because she’s a murder suspect.”
“Because she’s a role model for our target demographic.”
“And the murder?”
“An unfortunate loss she’s coping with as best she can while she moves forward with her new business ventures.”
“C’mon, Moll, you can’t even say it with a straight face.”
“I am hoping to make it sound a little less movie-of-the-week when I actually write the thing.” I put the glass down in case my hands got unsteady when I asked him the next question. “So you’re doing an article on the murder?”
“Yeah.”
“Why the switch? I didn’t see your byline on any of the articles I read.”
“No, the switch is bigger than that. I left the
Times
.”
I tried to play down my surprise. “Really?”
His eyebrows drew together. “You don’t keep as close an eye on me as I do on you.”
One surprise after another. “So where are you?”
“It may turn out to be a hugely stupid move, but I signed on with Quinn Harriman’s start-up.”
“
Need to Know
? Congratulations.” Quinn Harriman was an investment banker turned publisher. His first effort, a magazine for gourmands, was growing nicely and his newest venture was being touted as a magazine for “the good guys.” While it was being surmised that this was some sort of anti-lad mag comment, what precisely made one a good guy hadn’t been spelled out too clearly in the promotional material. But if Peter was one of them, it was bound to be interesting. And open to debate.
He shrugged. “It’s a risk, but I didn’t like the paper as much as I’d thought I would, so I’m eager to dive into the next thing.”
I’d never seen it before, so I didn’t recognize it right away. Peter was being humble. What could have happened at the
Times
to cause this? When I was dating him, his definition
of humility had been acknowledging that there might be one or two men in the city more fascinating than he was, but only one or two. Peter’s irresistible force must have finally encountered an immovable object. There was another story to investigate. But this one first. “So you’re doing an article on the murder itself.”

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