Edited to Death

by Linda Lee Peterson

  “Hey,” I mumbled. “Could you back up a little? I can’t see anything with you hovering over me.”

  Under the loupe, the O’s ornaments came into focus. Ivy leaves, with what appeared to be “2/3/345876” inside the leaves. What were they? The dates the illustration was complete? A file number? Did the guy inventory his work? What?

  I looked up at Calvin, bewildered. He gestured to the next spread. “Look at a few more, go ahead.”

  I did. I moved the loupe from drawing to drawing, Orlando to Orlando, O to O. And in each initial O, upon close inspection, there it was—some sort of leaf-bedecked set of numbers, 1/6/231572—none of these could be dates.

  I looked up at Calvin. The morning’s work seemed like an annoyance, a mosquito buzzing around. I slipped my shoes off, put my feet on the heat vent under the desk, and felt the soggy nylons start to steam.

  “What is this? Do you know what these numbers are?”

  Calvin shook his head. “No idea. But don’t you think it’s exciting they’re there?”

  I did. And I felt—no, I knew—we were about to get in over our heads. “How’d you find them?”

  “I’m a genius,” he said. “Well, maybe not. I was just looking at his stuff, I spread it around. You know—we visual thinkers—we need to look at things.”

  “Nice work,” I said. “If it means anything.” I mused, “It’s like Hirschfeld.”

  “Pardon?” said Calvin.

  “So, Mr. Visual Thinker, you know the illustrator who did all those sketches of theater people? Anyway, he sometimes draws his daughter’s name right into the sketch. If you squint at a necktie someone’s wearing in one of his illustrations, you’ll see the lines of the design form her name.”

  “How do you know all this weird, miscellaneous stuff, Maggie?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t really understand the infield fly rule or the names of all the big-time Catholic saints. Leaves plenty of room in my brain to fill up with trivia. But here’s the thing about those Hirschfeld drawings—you wouldn’t find Nina’s name unless you knew to look for it. Kinda like this situation.”

  “Good point,” said Calvin. “Now, very quietly, very calmly, we’re going to figure out what the options are. And then,” he gestured theatrically, “we’re going to crack this case.”

  “This case? Calvin, we don’t know that these numbers have meaning, sinister or otherwise. And we don’t know they have anything to do with Quentin’s death. I mean, they may just be some weird numbering system this guy has. Who knows?”

  I wiggled my toes, grateful for the warmth creeping in. I retrieved my coffee cup, pried the lid off, and took a sip. “Besides, old John’s got some ironclad alibi. He was at the restaurant, and zillions of people saw him.” Calvin leaned against the window sill and closed his eyes. “Are you ill?” I inquired politely. “Because I’d just as soon you not throw up in my office. I’m only cheerful about cleaning up if it’s one of my kids.”

  “Jesus, Maggie,” he said without opening his eyes, “I thought you mother types were supposed to be compassionate. And I’m not sick. I’m just thinking.”

  He held up a finger. “Theory one, there’s some weird code in these O’s—and all those zillions of people who saw Orlando at the restaurant are lying.”

  “Trust me, Calvin,” I said. “I know group behavior. I’ve done time as chair of the PTA World Culture Day. You can’t get more than three people to agree on a time for a meeting, how could you get them all to agree to tell the same lie?”

  I continued, “Still, I kinda like your theory. It could be a code of some kind, you know, like ‘one if by land and two if by sea.’”

  “Very patriotic, Mags,” said Calvin.

  “Okay, a code for what?”

  He shook his head. “Smuggling something? Industrial espionage? Maybe when they all add up, it’s a series of addresses on the Internet. Maybe it’s insider stock trading or something?”

  We looked at each other. “Inspector Moon,” I said.

  “I know. We’ve got to call him. But I just wish, I mean, there’s something there, I know there is.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I muttered. “Something’s nagging at me.”

  Calvin regarded me eagerly. “Go with the flow, babe. Let it happen.”

  “Calvin, cut the New Age crap.”

  “You know what I mean. If you stop struggling over something, if you just relax and let it happen, it’s like it’s out there waiting for you.”

  And the bell went ping! “Calvin, that’s it. This is tied to time in some way. Remember how particular Quentin and Glen were about when these things ran?” Calvin looked puzzled.

  “Of course, you don’t,” I said. “Somebody here at Small Town told me that, and they told me because I wanted to hold up on a drawing. They said something about… the drawing had to be fresh.”

  “That’s nuts,” said Calvin, “unless they’re political editorial cartoons, which they’re not as far as I can tell, these things don’t have shelf lives.”

  “I know, I know. Of course they don’t. But somebody told me they did, and then—who was it? Maybe Andrea said that when they couldn’t use an illustration, it ran right away, that same month, in the Sunday supplement. So it must have something to do with timing!”

  Gertie chose that moment to enter, with Glen hard on her heels. “Maggie—” they both began.

  Calvin leaned over my desk and in one swift move, began folding the magazines up, stacking them neatly. Gertie looked puzzled. “What is this? A review of past glories?”

  “Yes,” I said, at, of course, the same moment Calvin said, “No.”

  Glen looked from one to the other of us. “Well now, and which is it? I’ve only seen guiltier faces goin’ into the confessional.”

  Instinctively, I knew I didn’t want to talk about Calvin’s discovery.

  “Calvin’s going to squeeze us into his ever-so-busy schedule,” I said. “We were looking at editorial photographs in past issues so that he could be darn sure he out-did everyone else.”

  “I see,” Glen said dryly. “That certainly explains everything.”

  Well, it was damn lame, but it got us through the moment. Calvin disappeared, magazines under his arm. Gertie called after him, “Just a minute, young man. Are those archival copies?”

  “I’ll take very good care of them,” Calvin called over his shoulder.

  Within minutes, Gertie, Glen, and I were plunged back into the day-to-day business of the magazine. Negotiating squabbles between the copy editor and a writer who went in for totally original, and excessive, uses of punctuation. Repaginating the magazine—deciding what went where and in which order to accommodate a last minute burst of energy from the ad sales staff, who had overpromised “right hand page, far forward” to all and sundry. Looking at portfolios. Bitching about Uncle Alf’s tight hold on the purse strings, and complaining—yet again—about what a lousy magazine town San Francisco is.

  “The weather’s too nice here,” said Glen. “You can’t produce a walloping lot of stuff to read in a place like San Francisco. The sun shines, the cafés are full, there are races to run and kites to fly on the Marina Green. No one wants to sit inside and read.”

  “It’s raining today,” I pointed out.

  “And if more days were like this, we’d have a more literary city.”

  “You think so?” Gertie asked skeptically.

  “Absolutely,” said Glen. “Who produces the most literature in the Western world? The English. And you know why? Because it’s cold and gray and foggy 360 days of the year. There’s nothing to do but sit inside and read.”

  “How about the Irish?” I teased.

  “Ah, we’re prolific for different reasons,” he said. “There’s all that misery you’ve got to work out. And Ireland is full of the kind of things that spur writers on—too little money, too many pubs, and no guilt-free sex.”

  “Very perceptive analysis,” I said. “I’m sure those things c
ould be worked into the curriculum in all the creative writing programs in America.”

  Gertie stood. “Enough of this meaningless literary chit-chat,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’m starved. Anyone for middle eastern food?”

  Glen and I brightened. The best hummus and baba ghanouj were just around the corner at the teeny-tiny Cafe Krivaar. The whole place smelled of garlic and roasting lamb, although, in the spirit of international understanding, the Krivaar also offered Middle Eastern versions of pizza. It was presided over by Grandpa Vic and his squadron of family members, gifted poets who penned such signs as, “Don’t be a weinie/Try our iced cappucini,” or, “Don’t be a poop/Try our soup.” Gertie volunteered to make the run to Krivaar for takeout and Glen went back to his office.

  I picked up the phone and, like an obedient little Girl Scout, called Inspector Moon, spilled Calvin’s findings, and offered to courier a set of the magazines over to his office so he could check out what we found. Soon Michael would be back on that awful committee and I’d stop breathing guilt in and out with every puff of air. I sat back, feeling like I’d finally done the right thing, looking forward to wolfing my pita stuffed with hummus with a completely clean conscience. For a change.

  22

  Numerology at the Dinner Table

  It was Thursday evening, my favorite of the week. Nothing but downhill ahead of us—one more set of lunches to make, one more set of homework assignments to nag through, sweet Friday and the weekend stretching ahead. I was watching Michael grate mozzarella, parmesan, and reggiano for a heart-stopping, cholesterol-filled batch of his grandmother’s baked ziti. Stuart and Anya were playing Parcheesi with the boys. Stuart’s loneliness, thinly disguised under a nonstop stream of gossip about his new employer and a free-from-Quentin unending series of bad Hawaiian shirts, wrenched my heart. He’d become a regular dinner guest, teaching Josh the fine points of the hook shot and playing video games with Zach.

  “I feel as if we have another kid around when Stuart’s here,” observed Michael.

  “Yeah, and he’s got the kids’ unclear concept of fair play,” I said. “None of them has yet explained the rules of Parcheesi to poor Anya.”

  “So how’s the detective biz?” asked Michael. “Since I know good and well you’re still on the case despite—” and here he raised the grater and shook it at me threateningly, “my explicit orders to leave it alone.”

  I surveyed the floor, where little wisps of grated cheese had drifted downwards with each shake. “Raider,” I called, “cheese on the floor.” Raider padded in and began a serviceable cleanup.

  “As if you’d even look at a woman who followed explicit orders,” I said. “Besides,” I ventured, taking a sip of Chianti, “shows what you know. Calvin and I did turn up a very fine clue, and I very virtuously, and very correctly, called Inspector Moon up straightaway.”

  “Uh huh,” said Michael, “And then what?”

  “Well, unlike what happens in detective novels where the amateur sleuth outwits the cops, it turned out that Moon snatched our clue and ran with it. Energetically.”

  Michael continued to grate. “So what was the clue and what did he find out?”

  I explained about the weird numbers in the O, and that Moon had listened very intently, examined the magazines, and cranked up the computers.

  “But they haven’t figured anything out yet. He’s got one of those hackers-turned-good guys trying to feed the numbers in all sorts of ways.”

  “How about just asking Orlando?” said Michael. “Maybe there’s some innocent explanation for the numbers.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought. But whatever answer Moon got, he didn’t tell me, and it must not have satisfied him, because he’s got those gearheads working on solutions. Although,” I sipped my wine, “he explained the 24/72 rule to me.”

  “And that would be.…”

  “How come you’re not a criminal lawyer? You’d know these things.”

  “Because one significant shortcoming of being a criminal lawyer is that most of the time you hang out with criminals. And may I remind you that even being associated with a felony hasn’t precisely enhanced my career.”

  “Of course, you get to hang out with people looking for tax loopholes,” I countered. “A much classier group of folks.”

  “Maggie.”

  “Okay, okay. Anyway, most homicides are solved within twenty-four hours, according to Moon. Because the usual suspects are easy to figure out—the boyfriend, the wife, the pissed off coworker, etc.”

  “The cruelly wronged husband,” added Michael.

  I tried to ignore him. “Then, if you don’t make that deadline, you start looking real hard while the evidence is fresh, and that takes you to seventy-two hours.”

  “And then?” he asked.

  “Well, if you haven’t figured it out in seventy-two hours, the likelihood that you ever will drops dramatically. I think they’re keeping this case live just because Quentin was a high profile guy.”

  Michael sighed.

  “What?”

  “I know why the police are keeping the case alive,” he said. “It’s you I worry about. Why can’t you leave it alone?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’ve wondered that myself. I guess I feel as if Quentin was pretty dangerous to me—to us.”

  “You have no idea,” muttered Michael, giving the parmesan a particularly vigorous swipe down the grater.

  “So now he’s dead. And as long as we don’t know the why or the who, something still feels dangerous to me. Unfinished.”

  Michael looked at me. “It’s not your job to finish.”

  “I know,” I said. “And frankly, the magazine has kept me so busy, I haven’t had much time to get into trouble. And believe it or not, I do think the cops know what they’re doing.”

  “But?”

  “But I feel as if I endangered everything that matters to me.”

  “You did,” he said.

  Michael folded the last of the cheese into in a giant casserole dish.

  “In some weird, terrible way the murder brought good things to me,” I said.

  “Your job?”

  “Yes, my job. But also, it meant that there wasn’t this awful secret between us any more. So if the murderer isn’t thrown in jail—”

  “Forgetting due process,” interrupted Michael.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. If the murderer isn’t brought to justice, then it’s as if this tragic thing happened and I benefited from it, and nobody’s paying in any serious way.”

  “Well,” said Michael, “it’s another happy ending for you, isn’t it?”

  “For us,” I corrected.

  Silence.

  “I do like my life, Michael,” I faltered. “And I can’t tell you how awful I feel about you being dragged into all of this.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to you remembering it. Now how about getting the oven door for me?”

  I watched Michael put the casserole in the oven. When he was done talking about something, there was not a lot of room for revisiting the topic.

  “Salad?” I inquired.

  “I’m taking that as an offer to make one,” he said. “I’ll take that chair and that Chianti and just watch. I figure as long as you’re occupied here in the kitchen, you can’t be out chasing down murderers like Hercule Poirot.”

  “I believe,” I said, compliantly rummaging through the crispers, looking for green things that hadn’t yet wilted, “that Poirot was a guy. Don’t you know any chick detectives?”

  I held up a cucumber. Michael grinned. “Too large to be Poirot’s instrument. Must be mine.”

  “Very funny. I was just wondering if you knew the current status of Zach’s feelings about cucumbers in the salad. In or out?”

  “In. But he likes the side fluted in that artsy-fartsy way you girls do them,” he groused.

  “Oh, forgive me. I didn’t realize I was compromising you
r precious son’s masculinity by art-decorating the vegetables.”

  I liked the feeling in the kitchen: a little serious talk, a little chat, a little bicker, a little teasing. It felt the way it was supposed to feel to me, before I’d strayed off the moral straight and narrow. I thought about Hot Licks and about Stare, about the attractions of the unknown, the hip and the cool. Tempting, but still, my own gem, little kitchen and life could feel awfully good. Besides, unless I dyed my hair and rearranged what passed for curves on my body, I couldn’t keep up in that world. As I thought, I trimmed radishes, sliced peppers, and broke off chunks of lettuce.

  “You know,” I observed, “no one eats iceberg lettuce any more.”

  “No one?” asked Michael. “That seems to be untrue, prima facie. I believe we ourselves are about to eat iceberg this very evening. Or, wait, is that the point? We’re nobodies because we eat iceberg?”

  “Plus,” I continued, “there’s virtually nothing of food value in iceberg. We need to eat dark, leafy greens—spinach, kale, that stuff.”

  Michael sipped his wine. “Uh huh. Well, why don’t you pick an evening when I’m working late to introduce that ‘stuff’ to the boys. I’d just as soon not be here to hear their response.”

  And with that, the kitchen door flew open and the little gourmands in question swept in, shouting about their victory over Anya and Stuart.

  “Josh,” I suggested, “you know, if you were nice guys you’d explain the rules to Anya. I still don’t think she gets the intricacies of Parcheesi. That’s why she keeps losing.”

  Josh flopped in a kitchen chair and shook his head. “Huh-uh, Mom. We’ve explained. She just doesn’t pay attention.”

  I poured Stuart a glass of wine and handed it to him.

  “And how about you, Stuart? What’s your excuse?”

  He sat at the table. “For losing or for not explaining the rules to Anya?”

  Zach was struggling with the refrigerator door.

  “Honey,” I called. “Stay out of there, we’re two minutes away from dinner.”

  When we sat down, I decided to unleash the not inconsiderable brainpower of the boys on my problem. “Okay you guys,” I said. “Listen up. I want you to tell me all the things in the world you think have numbers attached to them.”