Madeline Mann (11 page)

I was determined to talk to him face to face and ask him for a comment about the tragic death of his former employee. I felt that for once that mask of his might slip and I'd get a look at the real mayor. Maybe even a man who had arranged Logan Lanford's death?

These were my thoughts as I ascended the steps of Webley City Hall in the drizzle of an October Monday morning. In a nutshell, this was what I knew: Mayor Paul had fired Logan Lanford. Two months later, Logan was seen talking to someone in a city car (probably). Logan seemed agitated. That same night, Logan left Illinois and went to Michigan. Fleeing, perhaps, from the people in the car? Before he left, he made me a tape, which he said was for his protection. Three days later, when I went to find him in Michigan, he was dead, killed that same day by an unknown assailant. He'd lunched with a man named Quinn Paley—a man, he'd told his son Noah, who would get him “out of a hole.” Quinn Paley had drooling guard dogs named Rambo and Killer. He had a gun that had been missing from his wall on the day of the murder. A city vehicle had been seen at a rest stop on the way to Saugatuck. That same vehicle was later covered with mulberries, which could be found in plentiful amounts on the driveway of the Lanford cabin.

I had seen Logan's father at a restaurant. He had seemed to think nothing was amiss at home, although he'd asked me if my mother had sent me.

“My mother!” I said aloud, freezing in my tracks, as a trench-coated woman held the door open for me.

“Okay,” she said under her breath, obviously thinking I was here to sign my own commitment papers. She let the door close and hurried past, avoiding physical contact.

My mother
, I thought. Wick had asked, “Did your mother send you?” Why had he asked me that? Could it have been, perhaps, because he knew my mother worked for the mayor? Was Wick concerned that someone in the mayor's office had it in for his son? I took a little pad out of my purse and jotted a note on the first page: “Call Wick Lanford.” He had some explaining to do, if he hadn't already done it for the Saugatuck police. I opened the door for myself and entered the lobby.

I approached a circular staircase about twenty feet from the entrance and began my ascent. My mother's desk was in the “mayor's area” of the city hall: a lovely, airy loft with natural light emanating from a series of skylights. It was a primo workspace, modernized by Mayor Paul three years earlier. He'd made a point of leaving the traditional look of the outside of the building while turning the inside into a Frank Lloyd Wright–like dream of efficiency and beauty. It had cost a lot of money.

My mother excused the mayor's extravagance by saying that the townspeople had been asking for this for years. From what I'd read, the changes were suggested and pushed through by Mayor Paul himself. It was mainly his office that had been beautified, after all—a place that few Webleyites would ever see without a special invitation. My mother says that I'm unduly critical. She just doesn't understand vibes.

Despite my mayoral gripes, I was enjoying the new office now, as I plunked my bag down on my mother's desk and listened to her complaints about my blonde hair. “It's not that you're not still pretty, Madeline, but you somehow don't have the family resemblance without your dark hair. It's like you're trying to be out of the family.”

My mother took my purse off her blotter and stowed it under her desk. “You never know,” she murmured, looking suspiciously around her.

I almost laughed at that. My mother's coworkers weren't likely to steal a purse, for various reasons. There was Blanche Henry, a woman who'd been old when Mayor Weiss had taken office twenty years before and who still reigned in ancient splendor as the gossip queen of city hall. She also drove my mother to despair with her extremely short-term memory and her amazing capacity for remembering other people's words and ideas as her own. My mom, for example, had come up with the slogan for that bumper sticker: “Don Paul Has It All!” Blanche usually remembered it as her own brainchild.

Blanche was a tall, skinny woman who favored polyester fashions. She liked to smoke, although Mayor Paul had taken all the joy out of her when he'd insisted she'd have to do it in the alley behind the building. Blanche always smelled like she'd just sneaked a cigarette, although even my canny mother couldn't figure out where she was smoking them.

At the next desk over was Pamela Fey: young, ambitious, pretty, impeccably groomed. Pamela would hesitate to steal a purse, not because it was immoral as much as because she would perceive it as unprofessional. Pamela was all about image, which is why she was the perfect staffer for Mayor Paul. She drove a new Beetle because they were back “in,” and she wore designer suits and had a Lhasa apso, which she talked about incessantly. She walked faster than most people ran, and in high heels. As evidence of my fickle personality, I liked Pamela despite her phony image; I disliked Mayor Paul for the same reason. Perhaps I sensed more hypocrisy behind his facade than I did behind hers. Beyond Pamela's image, I sometimes feared, there might be nothing at all, aside from ambition. Pamela wanted to be mayor of Webley one day.

The last person in my mother's cluster of desks was Lyle Sylvane. Lyle was besotted with my mother, and he wouldn't dream of touching anything of hers unless she asked him to do so. He was much shorter than Pamela, and much less impressive. He insisted on hitting on Pamela every day and was never put off by her rejection. At some point, Lyle had apparently decided that the only way to flatter women was to imply that they were sexually attractive. It was almost an office joke. My mother had told me that Lyle had even asked her, my mother, out for dinner in his first week, before he learned that she was married. Lyle wasn't put off by age; in his defense, I will say that my mother is a beautiful woman, still in her fifties, and practically wrinkle-free. She was amused by Lyle's advances but made the mistake of telling my father, who now wanders into the office every month or so just to frown in Lyle's direction.

Lyle was considered Mayor Paul's right-hand man. While Blanche handled the daily business of running the office, along with my mother, Lyle and Pamela concentrated more on the mayor's public relations. Lyle, my mother told me, was often the mayor's direct liaison to various community groups. I always thought Pamela would be a better choice, since Lyle, while not physically offensive in any way that I could pinpoint, somehow always seemed to have a dirty aura. Slimy, one might say. My mother considered Lyle handsome. Perhaps many voters did as well.

I wondered now at the mayor's choice of Lyle as a right-hand person. Might Lyle be willing to do unsavory tasks that Pamela would find inappropriate? Might Lyle kill for the mayor? And why was Logan fired? Why was he pursued by someone in a city car after his firing?

I thought about this, drumming my nails on my mother's blotter. My mother riffled through some papers and raised her eyebrows at me. “Where is Jack this morning? Is there school today?” she asked.

“No. Columbus Day. He's grading papers, I think.” I took out my little notebook and made sure not to look at her. She had a way of squeezing out information with one hypnotic glance.

“Madeline!” Her voice said imperatively.

Another voice saying my name at the same time distracted me. I looked behind me to see Lyle Sylvane, viewing me with open admiration in an unflattering way, like the icky kid at the dance who feels you owe him an obligatory waltz just because you're both there and he deserves the right to place his sweaty hands on your back for a full three minutes.

“Oh, hi, Lyle,” I said with forced enthusiasm. “How are you today?”

“Just great. I love the blonde hair.” He made it sound like I'd dyed it at his request. I hid my squirming response by bending to scratch my ankle. I heard a snort of disgust or amusement from the direction of my mother.

I straightened up and went on the offensive. “So is your boss in yet? I'd like to ask him a couple of questions.”

“Oh, so this isn't a social visit?” he asked, again with an insinuating tone, as if I'd made up an excuse to come to the office and flirt with him. Lyle was seriously handicapped in his ability to deal with women.

“No, no, not a social visit. I'm working, just like you, so I'm hoping to catch him, if he's in.”

“I just saw him parking his car.” Lyle sounded a bit put off. Perhaps he was tired of being the underling. I didn't see him winning any elections in the future, though.

“Great!” I said. “I think I'll go meet him at the door.” I stood up just as Blanche Henry walked in. The aroma of cigarette floated in her wake. I couldn't resist a comment. “Where are you sneaking those cigarettes, Blanche?” I asked with a wink.

Blanche was a tough nut to crack. “Wouldn't you like to know,” she said hoarsely, picking a file folder off her desk and then tossing it back down. “So you're a blondie now. Are you having more fun?” That was a pretty risqué comment for someone of Blanche's generation, and I saw my mother's eyebrows rise again.

“Not really, Blanche. But I guess I'll give it a couple of weeks and chart the results,” I quipped.

She laughed her smoky laugh and patted me on the back with a clawlike hand. “I always say, if it's clothes that make a man, it's hair that makes a woman.”

Blanche had never said this, I was pretty sure, but at least it was a complete and logical thought, which was an improvement on some of the things Blanche turned out.

“Yeah, right,” I agreed, heading back toward the stairs I had just ascended. “Hey, how come Mayor Paul didn't spring for an elevator with all those renovations?” I asked over my shoulder.

Lyle fielded that one. “We're having an elevator put in. But a pretty girl like you stays in shape by taking the stairs.” I wondered if any sexual harassment lawsuits had landed on the mayor's desk because of Lyle's constant lack of tact.

“Is that how you stay in shape too?” I shot back before I trotted down the stairs. Lyle was short and tended to look paunchy. I didn't want to get insulting, but he invited it just about all the time. We all have temptations we can't resist.

I spied Don Paul walking in the door and shrugging out of a Chicago Bears jacket.
Casual jacket for a high-profile job
, I thought cattily.

“Mr. Paul!” I called in my professional voice, keeping my notebook visible.

“Hello, Madeline!” he boomed, showing me all his white teeth. “Here visiting your mom?”

“No, sir, I'm actually here to ask you a few questions. I assume you've heard about the death of Logan Lanford.”

Don Paul's smile immediately disappeared, and he went a shade paler. Either he was a great actor or he was surprised. “Logan Lanford?” he asked.

“Yes. Your former employee. I wanted to ask you for a comment, since you're Logan's most recent employer, and maybe even for a bit of information on the reason for Logan's firing from city hall.”

Mayor Paul hoisted his jacket over one arm, looked at the shine on his shoes for a moment, and then forced another smile. “That second request is for confidential information. The first one I can grant you after I give it some thought. What the hell happened to him? He was maybe thirty years old at most.”

“He was murdered, Mayor Paul.” I made sure to stare at his eyes when I said this, and they did flicker ever so slightly with something just before they widened in shock. Some indefinable emotion had appeared and scurried away before I could identify it.

“Murdered? My God!” he said. With that, he abruptly headed toward the staircase.

I had expected more, which is why he made it past me. I turned and ran after him. “How about that comment, Mayor Paul?” I said, following him back up the spiral stairs. “You must be—”

He turned suddenly, halfway up. I was forced to stop, and the two of us stood at crazy angles to each other. “Give me some time here, Maddy. I just got to work.” He apparently chose to deflect my questions with condescension. To soften the blow, he added, “I like the Marilyn Monroe look, by the way.”

I had to take a deep breath to avoid yelling “yuck” at the top of my lungs. If Mayor Paul and Lyle Sylvane found my hair attractive, I really did need to rethink the dye.

Don Paul made it to the top of the steps and quickly hightailed it into his office. The door closed with an audible click.

I returned, empty notebook in hand, to my mom's group, which had been joined by Pamela Fey. She looked brisk and efficient, as usual, in a plum-colored suit with a matching bow that pulled her chestnut hair back in a shapely tail. Her eyes were alert in a face that bore no signs of tiredness. I felt lumpish and exhausted by comparison, especially because I'd skipped my morning coffee. My face felt almost swollen with sleep, and I probably still bore pillow lines on my left cheek. I felt the usual surge of admiration/envy that I always felt in Pamela's presence.

“Hey, Madeline!” she called. I waited for the editorial about my blonde hair. It didn't come, and I realized Pamela might consider it inappropriate to comment on a change in someone's personal appearance. How interesting that no one else in the room had taken that into consideration.

“Hi, Pamela.” She didn't like “Pam.” No surprises there. “What's on the agenda today?” I asked. “Any time for lunch?” I heard my mother make a huffing noise. “With my mother and me?” I added with a smile.

Before Pamela could respond, my mother said, “I may not even have time.” She was obviously angry at the backward invitation. I had assumed we would dine together, since we often did after I paid a visit to her office.

“You can spare me half an hour, Mom,” I said, allowing my frustrated-daughter tone to conquer my professional-reporter demeanor. I turned back to Pamela. “Are you too busy?”

Pamela laughed at our mother-daughter exchange in a carefree way that suggested, “I don't suffer from these little domestic squabbles.” I didn't know too much about Pamela's own family, except that she hailed from California. “I have a lot of festival business, but not so much I can't spare time for lunch. We all have to keep up our strength for maximum efficiency, right?”

That was a typical Pamela remark. Coming from someone else, it might sound like an attempt at humor, or an over-the-top effort to impress the boss. In Pamela's case, it just sounded like Pamela.