Rubout (15 page)

“Must be sex,” I said. “That family has plenty of money.”

“There’s never enough,” Katie said. “Especially if you’re rich. The victim may have been rich, but she didn’t live well. She was malnourished.”

“You’re kidding. She lived in Ladue. Nobody goes hungry there.”

“She did,” Katie said. “She was too thin.”

“You can’t be too rich or too thin,” I said. “Thin is healthy.”

“Not that thin. Did you ever see how skinny her arms were? The woman barely had enough muscle to swing a tennis racket. She didn’t have any strength to fight off her attacker. She couldn’t run much, either. She had bird legs. I’ve seen parakeets with more meat on them. You could see the bones in her legs and the cartilage in her knees. Heck, her knees were bigger than her tits. They’re the only things that stuck out on that woman. I call that too thin.

“There was almost no fat on her organs, another bad sign. Also, her liver was atrophic and yellow.”

“What’s that mean?” Sydney’s organs sounded like they would be rejected by the better class of supermarket.

“It had shrunk to half its normal size. I had the top half of her body X-rayed and found accelerated bone loss for her age. She had the beginnings of osteoporosis. In twenty years, her Escada outfits would be
hiding a dowager’s hump. Her face, what was left of it, had too many lines in it for her age. The woman had too much sun and not enough food. Her stomach was empty. It must have been that way often.”

“She lived on salads. Her friend said she always dipped her fork in her salad dressing. It was a skill I wanted to master.”

“Forget it, Francesca,” Katie said. “The woman was a fashion victim. What her diet was doing to her insides wasn’t pretty.”

Katie looked at her watch. “Time for me to go back to work,” she said.

Me, too. But I couldn’t face the
Gazette
yet. Maybe I should add some healthful fats to my diet at Uncle Bob’s. I didn’t want face wrinkles. I could try something really daring—a pecan Belgian waffle. But I’d have to act quickly when I got on the parking lot, or I’d be eating my usual scrambled egg and toast. I pulled into a parking slot under the kitchen window and knocked on it until Tom the cook looked up.

“Tom, no egg today. I want a pecan Belgian waffle,” I said.

“I’ve prayed for this day,” Tom said. “I knew you’d order real food sometime instead of that skinny-ass egg. You eat like an old lady, Francesca.”

“I’ve changed. Give me the biggest waffle in the house. Bring on the butter and the syrup.”

Tom smiled. Nothing makes a cook happier than someone who eats. By the time I sat down in a booth, Marlene was coming out of the kitchen with a hot, puffy waffle topped with a full ice-cream scoop of whipped butter. She set it on my table, along with a pitcher of warm syrup. As I poured the syrup and
watched it puddle into the waffle holes, Marlene said, “What’s the reason for the change? First time I’ve ever seen you order anything but your egg and toast.”

“I spent the morning at the morgue hearing about a dead woman who was too rich and too thin,” I said.

“Neither one is my problem,” Marlene said, running her hands over her generous hips.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t get to Tom in time,” I said. “It’s tough being a regular here. You choose your usual, and you have to be faithful to it for life. Well, I am about to stray.” I picked up my fork, ready to plunge into the golden syrupy goodness.

“Speaking of faithful, Mayhew was in earlier this morning asking for you,” Marlene said. I thought I detected disapproval in her voice. I put my fork down.

“We’ve been talking about a story, Marlene.” “All he could talk about was those leather pants you wore.”

“I was working.”

“At what?” Her sarcasm dripped like the maple syrup.

“Jeez, Marlene, I was at the Leather and Lace Ball. Then Sydney Vander Venter was killed and I was one of the people who found her body. Mayhew interviewed me about it, and I talked with him about the story I have to do on Sydney.”

“He’s married, Francesca. He has two darling little girls.”

“I know that.”

“Well, he forgets. Especially after he solved that last big murder. His name was all over radio and TV
and now he’s a big deal. I always suspected he fooled around, but he kept it quiet. Now he’s bringing his girlfriends into Uncle Bobs. Had that trampy-looking blond Sheila in here the other morning. It makes me mad. Upsets some of the other waitresses, too. They go to church with his wife. She’s a sweet woman. It’s disgusting.”

“My interest in Mayhew is strictly professional,” I said, looking at my waffle with longing.

She raised one eyebrow. “Yeah? I’ve seen you eye him like you’re eyeing that waffle. I’d say you’re both looking for trouble.”

That did it. I wasn’t going to sit there and be accused of adultery before noon. I threw down my napkin and some money. “I can leave them both alone,” I said, in one of the stupidest exit lines of my life.

I left the waffle untouched, grabbed my coat and my briefcase, and flounced out, furious at my old friend. It was not my week for long-term relationships. As the door shut, I heard Marlene say “Francesca, wait . . . what’s the matter with you?”

I should have waited. Instead, I went to the
Gazette
on an empty stomach, always a mistake. Charlie’s latest announcements had been posted, probably right after I talked with Louise. The newsroom had time to settle back into its usual sullen self. The staff had already discussed the current changes—or they were too afraid to say any more at the office. Only a small knot of people was still gathered around the bulletin board by the men’s room, where the new changes were posted. No one said anything. I started
reading. The first change on the list looked good. Grady, the son of a nasty and long-retired
Gazette
managing editor, had been given the title of ultimate doom—Director of Special Projects. Good. Translated, that meant Grady had six months to get his resume together and get out. The
Gazette
was infested with relatives of old editors. Most were snotty and superior, and forgot they didn’t get their jobs on their innate talent. But they were an obedient bunch. They always did what management told them, no matter how slimy the task. Following orders must be genetic. I wouldn’t miss Grady.

But there was more news, and it was bad. A respected political reporter was taking early retirement. So was an editorial writer who had the guts to stand up to Charlie.

One name jumped out at me. Louise, mainstay of the Family section, was being transferred to the morgue, effective immediately. Charlie was getting rid of Louise? She ran our department. She kept track of the staff. She always had our vacation paychecks on time. She handled countless irate readers with courtesy. She warned us when Charlie was on the warpath. And now she was being sent to the morgue, where the newspaper files were kept. What an insane move. Louise didn’t know computers, and at fifty-five she’d have a hard time learning them. This was a terrible mistake.

I was so upset by Louise, I’d overlooked another name on the list. Albers, head of the Family copy desk, was taking early retirement. Albers smoked a pipe that smelled like a burning landfill and bored young interns with tales of his Pulitzer Prize-nominated
investigation of the Grey Gates Inn nursing home “when I was a young cub reporter like you, thirty years ago, heh, heh.” But Albers sent six people to prison for cheating the elderly residents. He was an old-time newspaper man, and he handled my copy with care.

Who was taking Albers’s place? Did I even need to look for the name? There it was—Peggy. She’d won. She’d gotten rid of Albers. I studied the list again. It didn’t look like she’d nailed the other decent copy editor yet. Monahan had survived this cut. As I headed toward the Family section, I didn’t hear the sounds of joyous celebration at Peggy’s promotion. I heard what I always heard since Peggy joined us—a loud, ugly fight. This one was about my column. I’d had a funny interview with the mayor. He talked about almost getting arrested as a teenager because he tied up rush-hour traffic on Kingshighway with a Chinese fire drill. Did kids still jump out of the car at a stop light, run around it, and jump back in? We used to think it was hilarious at sixteen.

“And I still say
Chinese fire drill
is offensive to our Asian readers,” Peggy was saying, in her shrill voice.

“And I still say that’s ridiculous,” Monahan shouted back. “You’ve carried political correctness to the point of stupidity. But I know how we can settle it. I have a friend who grew up on mainland China. He runs a restaurant now in my neighborhood. You can ask him if the term is offensive.”

“So what?” Peggy sneered. “It would be only one male opinion. There are quite a few other Asians, you know.”

“It’s hard to poll more than a billion Chinese people
by press time,” I said, butting into the argument. It was my column Peggy was going to mutilate.

“I think I better take that section out to be safe,” Peggy said.

“God forbid we actually say something in this newspaper,” I said. “If it goes, I’ll take it out myself. You’re way too thorough at removal.”

She glared at me and tossed her hair. She knew she’d just been insulted. She’d already forced out one good copy editor. Now she was going for two. The staff’s name for Peggy was Cruella, for Cruella de Vil. She once condemned three Dalmatian puppies to almost certain death in the animal shelter gas chamber when she pulled their “Pet Pick of the Week” photo to run the picture of a hunky surfer. Peggy had long red nails and dead black hair like Cruella, but she was much plumper. She was tightly packed into glamorous clothes that looked ridiculous on her. She wore chubby heels like a cartoon character.

Cruella thought of herself as a sex symbol. She did sleep with a lot of men, mostly married ones. Charlie and our former managing editor, Hadley Harris, had both done the deed with her. So had a
Gazette
ad salesman who strayed when his wife was out of town. The salesman ungallantly told Babe, our gossip columnist, that Cruella was a flop in the sack, but it could be he simply wasn’t inspired that night.

All this would be funny, if she wasn’t forcing out good people. Peggy was ambitious, but she aimed low. God knows why, but she wanted to be head of the Family copy desk. Doing the horizontal bop with Charlie and Hadley had helped, but that wasn’t enough. She wanted her own people on the desk. To
get them, she had to get rid of two veterans, Albers and Monahan, and both were too close to retirement to fire. Peggy loaded Albers and Monahan down with work, criticized them constantly, and made them work holidays, deftly shifting their schedules so they were never paid overtime. Three months ago Albers inherited a little money from his mother. Now he was taking early retirement. One down, one to go.

Monahan was made of sterner stuff. He was a real war correspondent, a tough man who spent his youth in the godforsaken jungles of Vietnam. He was a good writer, but he had a taste for the booze, which he could keep under control when he wasn’t pressured too much. He was riding out his last years on the copy desk, and it was a safe, easy berth. Writers liked him to work on their stories because he had a deft hand with other people’s prose. He always improved my copy and caught my errors. He also told me when he thought I did a good job. Praise was scarce at the
Gazette.
Peggy, on the other hand, slashed my copy, criticized me behind my back, and, worst of all, added careless errors. Fortunately, I kept copies of my columns and exposed her shoddy work. After that, she hated me, but she usually left my columns alone. Most other writers let her do what she wanted to avoid the strife.

Peggy was determined to get rid of Monahan, and he was determined to stay. He dug in at his desk like it was under enemy attack. I knew Peggy tried all the tricks on him that she used on Albers, but Monahan held out. Today Monahan looked like she was getting to him. His gray hair was hanging in his eyes instead of neatly combed back, his shirt was wrinkled, and
his tie was crooked. A lot of newsmen looked like that all the time, but not Monahan. He was always neat. Something was bothering him. I didn’t think Albers’s retirement came as a surprise. It had to be something else. Monahan jerked his head toward the back hall and walked away from his desk. I waited a minute and followed him out. He was angrily pacing back and forth by the old freight elevator.

“Cruella’s outdone herself this time,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now she’s adding outright lies to her other tricks. I can fight anything but lies. Damn her.” He was so angry, he balled his fist up and hit the wall.

“Let’s meet after work and talk about it,” I said. “Maybe we can think of some way to stop her.”

“We can’t meet at the Last Word,” he said. Too many people listened in on conversations at the newspaper bar. “How about Crusoe’s on Osceola? It’s near your place and not too far from mine. I get off work at five. I’ll see you there about five-thirty.” I agreed to meet him there.

I’d been in the building half an hour and still hadn’t reached my desk. Louise was hiding out in the back hall, too, pretending to wash her coffee mug in the janitor’s sink. She didn’t bother hiding the fact that she was crying. I could hear the department phones ringing and ringing, but for the first time ever Louise didn’t rush over to answer them. I put my arms around her, as if there had been a death. Well, there had. Louise’s career was dead. “Louise, I’m so sorry. This is a stupid move.”