Edited to Death

by Linda Lee Peterson

  “I got a message that you called, that Josh was ill.” She looked puzzled. “I didn’t call. Josh is fine. At least, I think he’s fine.”

  Fine he was. Out on the playground after lunch, practicing baskets with fierce concentration. He barely looked over at me. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

  I felt disoriented. “Nothing, sweetie. Come over here a minute.”

  “Aw, Mom.” He shot, recaptured the ball, and dribbled it over to me.

  “Honey, you feel fine?” I smoothed the hair off his forehead. He brushed me away.

  “Fine, fine.”

  “You didn’t tell one of the teachers you felt lousy? You didn’t feel like you were getting one of your upset stomachs?”

  He regarded me with suspicion. “Why? Did somebody say I did?”

  I hugged him to me. “Never mind, baby. Go shoot some more. I’ll watch for a while.”

  There he went, all brown arms and legs, struggling to ape the graceful run, jump, shoot sequences he watched on television. While I watched, I thought.

  “Hey,” I called. “I’m going to talk to Mrs. Schwab. I’ll catch you later.”

  Mrs. Schwab was waiting for me, looking ruffled. “I’ve checked around. No one called you.”

  I nodded. “Can I use your phone?” I rang The Cock of the Walk and asked to speak to the waitress. While I waited for her to come on the line, I ran over the possibilities. It had to be a stupid mix-up. But how? And just suppose it wasn’t?

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Fiori,” she said. “How’s your son?”

  “He’s fine,” I said shortly. “I was just wondering, did you take the call from his school?”

  “No,” she said. “It was the hostess, I think.”

  “May I speak with her?”

  “Sure.” She paused. “Is anything wrong?”

  “No, no, just some confusion, I think.” I pray, I said to myself.

  The hostess answered promptly. She was sure about the message, she’d just relayed what the caller said.

  “She asked for me?”

  “Not she, he. The guy even described what you had on. He said it wasn’t really an emergency, but he knew you’d want to get to school as soon as you could and he was sure you didn’t mind your lunch being interrupted.”

  “Thanks.” I put the receiver down and turned to Mrs. Schwab. “It was a man who called.”

  She shook her head. “Well, that narrows things down a bit. Joe Connolly, the art teacher, is the only possible suspect. He knows Josh and I sometimes ask him to track parents down in an emergency.”

  “Can I talk with him?”

  “As it happens, I already did.”

  “He didn’t call?”

  “He says he didn’t.”

  She touched my hand. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? You look a little shaky.”

  “Thanks.” With a cup of coffee steaming in front of me, I pulled the phone over to check in on Zach. He was fine, the school director assured me. “Sorry to bother you,” I said, as I felt my heart slow. “We had a little confusion at Josh’s school and I’m just being neurotic.” I hung up and called the office.

  Gertie answered. “Maggie? How’s Josh? Andrea called to tell us what happened.”

  “He’s fine,” I said. “It was just a mix-up. But I’m a little too creeped-out to leave him and head back to the city. Listen, is Glen there?”

  “No, he’s not. Oh, wait, I hear him coming down the hall.”

  Glen came on the line. “Hi, Maggie. Are you fine, now? Josh, too?”

  I sighed. “Josh is fine. It was a false alarm. I think someone was playing a trick on me—and I don’t much like it.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “No, not really.” I thought for a minute. “Well, I guess I am. I mean, I’ve been sitting here stewing about it and the only thing I can figure out is somebody didn’t want me to keep my date with Moon.”

  “You were seeing the Inspector?”

  “Yes,” I said impatiently. “Remember he called? He’s got Quent’s file on that mystery story.”

  “Want me to send a messenger for the file?”

  “No, I sent Andrea and Calvin.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Clever idea.”

  “When Andrea comes back to the office, ask her to call me,” I said.

  “I’ll do better than that,” said Glen. “I’ll bring the file by your house tonight.”

  “Oh, Glen, I can wait.”

  “No, no. I want you to look at the illustrator Linda’s considering as a substitute for Orlando anyway. She wants to place a call to his agent tomorrow. He works in some remote farmhouse in eastern Montana. No phone.”

  “Couldn’t she find someone more difficult? Speaking of artistic types, I had a little chat with your friend John Orlando today.”

  “Maggie, he’s not exactly my friend. I believe he and Quent were friends. Went to school together, or something.”

  Mrs. Schwab tapped on the door. I waved her in. “Well, then,” I said impatiently, “wouldn’t he have gone to school with you, as well?”

  “In a way,” he said. “Different years, you know.”

  “I’ve got to run, Glen. I’ll see you tonight, if you’re sure it’s convenient to come.”

  “It’s fine, Maggie. I’ll stop by about eight-thirty. I’d like to read my little ones a story first.”

  By now, it really was too late to go back into the city, so I assuaged my guilty feelings by stopping at the market and planning a better-than-usual weekday dinner. When Michael walked in the door, he let out a cheer and headed directly for the kitchen. I was at the stove stirring risotto.

  “I think I like you having a regular job, ‘cara. I knew as soon as I opened the front door this wasn’t Anya cooking. What is it?”

  “Risotto with artichoke hearts and mushrooms.”

  Michael slipped his hand under the hair on my neck and massaged.

  “What a little homemaker. Why is it that Scandinavian cooking can’t smell like this?”

  “I don’t think reindeer fat compares very favorably with olive oil,” I said.

  Michael moved to the refrigerator. “You can’t leave the pot, right? Have to keep stirring?

  “Right.”

  “Well, then, here’s a glass of wine for you.” He handed it over with a flourish, “and one for me.”

  He sat at the scrubbed and scarred pine kitchen table, cleared Zach’s crayoned airplane fantasies out of the way, and loosened his tie. “So tell me. Now that you’re a fulfilled and gainfully employed woman, tough day at the office?”

  I frowned.

  “That good, huh?”

  “No, it was fine. But something weird happened.”

  As I explained, Michael’s grin faded.

  “I don’t like it, Maggie,” he said.

  “I don’t either. I mean, maybe it’s some silly misunderstanding—but maybe it isn’t.”

  I turned the heat down on the risotto. “I keep thinking there must be something in that file. Glen’s bringing it by after dinner.”

  “Maggie, whoever didn’t want you to see the file knew exactly how to stop you. That’s what I don’t like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gestured impatiently. “One, he knew Josh’s name. Two, he knew you’d jump like a rabbit, that you worry about Josh’s sensitive digestive system. Three, he knew where you were having lunch.”

  A little buzz went off in my head. “And four,” I said turning from the stove. “He knew what I was wearing today!”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. The hostess who took the call said he described what I had on.”

  “That’s a lot of people. Everyone at your office, Anya, the kids,” he paused. “Me.”

  “It wasn’t you, Michael.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’d never use the kids to keep me from doing something. You’re too superstitious. You’d think that was tempting fate.” I gestured in the air, like his mother, “Mal’
occhio! Evil eye.”

  He laughed. “You’re right.” He sobered. “Really, Maggie, who else knew what you had on?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I keep asking myself.”

  “Unless,” said Michael, “someone at your office—who saw you all morning—let someone at the school know.”

  “That’s pretty conspiratorial,” I said. The idea of a Small Town plus Webster School cabal seemed both sinister and ridiculous. When in doubt, eat. I tasted the risotto.

  “Let’s gather the mob. This is done. Just get the salad out of the fridge, would you?”

  I spooned the risotto into my Aunt Sadye’s rose-rimmed casserole. For her, it had held brisket and noodles, good shabbas food. For me, it was just as likely to hold what Michael called EC (ethnic cooking) or takeout.

  Michael caught my arm as I kneed the swinging door open from the kitchen into the dining-room. “I’m not kidding. I don’t like this one damn bit. Let’s talk after dinner.”

  But after dinner, there was cleanup, baths, a story for Zach, and Josh begged for a game of checkers. When Glen rang the doorbell and was established in the living room with coffee, Michael summoned me into the kitchen.

  “I’m going to let Anya put the kids to bed, Maggie,” he said. “I want to sit in on this conversation.” He sounded proprietary, lawyerly and cranky. I raised my eyebrow at him. “Loosen up, Michael. I’m not a client.”

  “Good thing,” he muttered under his breath.

  While Michael cleared the last of the dinner clutter, I looked through the substitute portfolio Glen brought. “Looks fine,” I said. “Go ahead and have Linda give the agent a ring.”

  “Good. I still think Orlando would have been a grand choice, but it’s up to you.”

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t agree, Glen,” I said.

  “Well, then,” he said brusquely, “let’s get on with it.”

  Glen glanced up as Michael came in. “Sorry to intrude,” said Michael. “But I’m feeling just a little freaky about the mix-up this afternoon. It seems as if somebody didn’t want Maggie to get her hands on this file.”

  Glen fished a manila file out of his briefcase. “Here it is. I can’t imagine what’s so dangerous in there.”

  “Hey,” I asked, “did Moon say where they found it?”

  “In Quentin’s briefcase. They’d searched his flat, but they hadn’t rummaged round the car yet. I guess he’d packed up his briefcase with what he needed to take to work.”

  I patted the couch. “Michael, come sit here and we’ll look together.”

  The file was slender, labeled, “Cock of the Walk,” and had the usual story summary sheet stapled to the inside front cover and a few other pages. All were in Quentin’s hand, blue ink on yellow lined paper.

  We turned to the story summary sheet first. Whenever work was begun on a new piece, Gertie began a data sheet. It carried the working title, lists of contacts, the name of the writer assigned, a photographer or illustrator if one had been identified, and the name of the computer file where the notes and drafts could be found.

  “Did you check the hard drive?” I asked Glen.

  He nodded. “There’s a file with that name, but nothing in it.”

  “Someone could have erased it,” I said. “We could check the zip drive. Everything’s supposed to be backed up there once a week, anyway.”

  “And do you back everything up, Mags?” asked Glen.

  “Well, no,” I confessed. “But we should check.” Glen volunteered to do it.

  We scanned Quentin’s notes in silence, a list of dates and events at Cock of the Walk; the opening, a fashion show, the new music series.

  “Did Inspector Moon make anything of it?”

  “Not according to Andrea. He’d just glanced at the file, and wanted to have your thoughts. She told him what had happened, and that you would check in with him tomorrow.”

  Glen reached for the file. “I’ll win that home for you, Maggie?”

  “What?”

  He laughed. “In County Clare, that’s what you call getting the turf home after it’s dry so you can burn it in the fireplace.” He gestured at the fireplace. “Looking at your fire made me think of it.”

  I sipped my coffee. “Do you miss home, Glen?”

  “Some, but not the life we led there. Too many people still poor who will never be otherwise, too many rules about what you can and can’t do and think. But losing Quentin put me in mind of other things I’ve lost.”

  Just then the fire crackled, and a piece of log sizzled, sparked, and fell off the andirons.

  “I’m not sure that oak was completely dried out,” said Michael.

  “Ash, fresh and green, makes a fire fit for a queen,” said Glen.

  “Ahh,” said Michael, “maybe that’s what I should burn for Maggie, now that she’s Chief and Queen at Small Town.”

  “Michael, please,” I said, hearing something brittle creep in his voice.

  Glen stood. “Well, I’ll leave you friends in peace,” he said.

  I stood as well, slipping my arms around Glen for a hug.

  After a moment, Glen pulled away from the hug, a look of concern in his eyes. “It’s scary, what they’ve done so far,” he said, and, turning to Michael, “If she were my wife, I’d.…”

  “Dissuade her from this little amateur investigation of hers?” Michael finished. “I’m doing my best. Maggie, think a little bit. They know something about you. About Josh. About us.”

  I looked at the two of them, a little smug, a little paternal, more than a little male.

  “I don’t like that part at all. But I think I might be on to something. At least, I want to talk to Moon about it.”

  “Something? Like what?” asked Glen.

  “I don’t know. Just something odd I found in some letters at Quentin’s.”

  “Go on,” urged Glen.

  So I explained about the letter from Douglas, and about my inquiries.

  “You’re a woman of resources, Maggie, I’ll hand you that,” said Glen. “But it’s hard to see what the letter has to do with Quentin’s death.”

  “So when you and Quentin were in school together, did you remember anyone named Douglas? Or Giovanni?”

  “Not Giovanni. Douglas, I knew one or two.”

  “Someone close to Quentin?”

  Glen shook his head. “Long ago and far away, Maggie.”

  He reached for the file. Michael folded it up. “I’d still like to have a closer look. I’ll send it along with Maggie tomorrow.”

  Glen hesitated, then reached over to peck me on the cheek. “Fine. I’d better be running along. But Maggie, I’d still think twice about playing detective. If someone—even indirectly—threatened me through one of my children, well, I’d drop it, I can tell you that.”

  I patted his shoulder and began walking him toward the door. “You may be right. Thanks for coming over.” I stood on the front porch, idly deadheading the mums in the planter boxes while I watched Glen drive off. If only tidying up the rest of my life were so easy.

  When I came back into the living room, Michael was looking sober. “Glen’s right,” he said. “Leave it alone.”

  “I will, I will. I just need to talk to John Moon tomorrow. Then, I’ll forget it.”

  Michael scrutinized me. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Michael—” I began to protest.

  He held up a hand. “We don’t need to discuss it, Maggie. We’ve got a seven a.m. practice tomorrow at the Oakland rink, and I just called John Moon to come a little early. He’ll meet you in the grandstands at six-thirty.”

  I prickled. “I can make my own arrangements to talk to Moon, Michael. You’re treating me like one of the kids.”

  He shrugged. “Not really. At this point, I think the boys have a far more secure grasp on the concept of telling the truth and keeping commitments than you do. Besides,” he added, “I’ll be right down there on the ice. I want to watch you tell Moon every last thing you�
�re thinking about.”

  We went to bed in silence.

  15

  On Thin Ice

  When I arrived at Skate Oakland, the pink streaks of morning were just showing up in the night sky. It had been a polite-but-businesslike start to the day at home. Michael and I had exchanged information, but not affection. Schedules, rearrangements so Anya could drop the kids off at school, negotiations over the dental appointments and soccer practice later in the week. The kind of parental juggling dialogue that takes the place of conversation in modern, middle-class households. Especially when the wife is an adulteress and the husband is pouting. Michael and I left in separate cars for Skate Oakland since we were both going on to work, and neither of us leaned toward the other in the driveway, even for our routine goodbye kiss. I fretted about the omission all the way to downtown Oakland, vaguely remembering that I’d read that husbands who got a goodbye kiss every morning were at lower risk for heart attacks. Great, now I could feel guilt about damaging every facet of Michael’s heart.

  The ice rink had seen more bourgeois days. Once it had been home to indulged kids’ birthday parties—the kind where the birthday girl would show up in a little sequined pink skating skirt, her hair pulled back in a ballet-style bun. Now it was distinctly seedy and existed primarily for the pleasure of hard-core skating enthusiasts, homesick Canadians who would come after work or early in the morning, lace up and take to the ice, and head into the center to execute half-forgotten turns, camels, and spins. It was also home to the Oakland Ice Devils, one of the East Bay’s official entrants in the Northern California senior ice hockey league. They referred to themselves as “Geezrs on Ice,” a self-deprecating name that belied how seriously they took their sport. The Ice Devils were a motley group, tied together by nothing more than age (all forty-plus) and the fact they couldn’t remember a day when they hadn’t skated—or wanted to—since they had learned to walk.

  A couple Canadians, of course, half a dozen guys from Midwestern places where pierogi or lutefisk had been on their mother’s tables, a Norwegian who’d left Trondheim behind for the right engineering opportunity in Silicon Valley, Michael, who grew up worshipping the two Bobbies (Orr and Hull), and one Korean-American cop—John Moon.

  Moon and I sat in the grandstands and watched the pre-dawn skaters glide off the ice as the Ice Devils filed out of the locker room and started warming up. Moon, his skates next to him, was sipping from a commuter mug. He held up his thermos. “Want some herb tea?”