We scheduled an appointment for 2 p.m., and I made round-trip train reservations. That meant six-plus hours on the rails, but I would make it home by dinnertime. Once again, Lauren agreed to watch the children after school. By now our baby-sitting co-op was so out of balance her daughter Rachel might as well take up residence in my house for the entire month of May.
I spent the next hour or so on the phone to other “men’s” magazines. I asked if they had heard of STOP, having identified myself as an investigative reporter for 20/20. My house address here happened to be 2020 Little John Lane.
Two of the five magazines I called admitted they had indeed received “hate mail” from STOP last week. In both cases, the mail consisted of empty but brown-stained boxes, with a card attached to the lid that stated in a sentence or two that they were to cease publication, “or else.” Though no return address was listed, the boxes to both magazines had been postmarked from Albany. Neither publisher had heard of the group before last week, or heard from it since. Also, in both cases, the men I spoke to gave me this information freely, then asked what STOP had done to interest 20/20 in a story, a question l had to “decline to answer for professional reasons.”
During my last conversation, however, the magazine’s representative said, “This is about that murder upstate, isn’t it?”
“Murder?”
“Yeah. A police sergeant spoke to me a few days ago, asking the same questions you are. He wouldn’t tell me anything, except that this all had to do with a murder investigation. Is this STOP group full of wacko, murderous feminists?”
Uh-oh. If I kept on the line, sooner or later I’d make a mistake that would reveal I wasn’t really on the staff of 20/20.
I held the phone away from my face and called, “Just a moment, Ms. Vargas, I’ll be right there,” then said into the phone, “Thank you, sir,” and hung up.
So. Tommy had been in touch with men’ s magazines to try to learn about STOP. That meant he had probably spoken to personnel at Between the Legs as well, and just hadn’t happened to speak to Susan Wolfe. Whatever he had learned about their contact with STOP, I could learn too in my meeting with Butch Blake.
I put on the pair of silk panty hose I reserved for business meetings, black high-heels, which were technically “flats,” but they were high compared to the moccasins or sneakers I usually wore, and my favorite dress: Windex blue with a matching jacket. Just as I was about to leave, the doorbell rang. I swung open the door and nearly gasped when I saw Sergeant Newton, arms akimbo.
“Tommy. What a surprise. I’d love to invite you in, but you happened to catch me on my way out.”
“You’re ‘way out’ all right. Going to New York City to see Butch Blake.”
“How did you know that?”
“Called down there myself ‘bout an hour ago. A Ms. Susan Wolfe told me you were coming down this afternoon. So am I.”
“Why? Haven’t you already spoken to Butch Blake?”
“No, the editor was out of town last week.”
“So you don’t know if they’ve gotten any nasty mail from STOP, huh?”
“They have. Last week they received an empty box from ‘em.”
“Postmarked from Albany?”
“Uh-huh. How’d you know that?”
“Lucky guess?” I leaned out onto the porch and saw Tommy’s police cruiser. “So, I guess I can cancel my train reservations.”
“Naw. I’m not takin’ the squad car all that way, but I’ll give you a ride to the depot. I’m riding the train with you.”
“Good. That’ll give us a chance to shake the gift.”
“You mean shoot the gift. I got teens at Carlton High.”
“Whatever,” I muttered.
Why would anyone want to shoot a gift? A person might shake one to figure out what was in it, but shoot it? Was it asking too much for young people’s expressions to make a little sense?
That thought brought another question to mind: why all these empty, but stained, boxes? Had STOP’s dog died? Even so, surely dog excrement was one of the more readily available, affordable commodities. Perhaps there was some significance to the fact that I’d gotten the real thing. Copy-dog mailings, perhaps?
Or maybe the culprit was afraid that sending such a thing through the mail was a punishable crime…abuse of the U.S. Mail. But that seemed so strange: “Okay, I’ll murder a man,but I’m not gonna mail dog doo-doo. Too danged risky.”
On the train, Tommy offered me the window seat, and we were soon on our way to New York City. I decided to wait a few minutes before asking him how the investigation was going. After turning toward him with the intention of making small talk, it hit me that he was now my best friend’s boyfriend. That was followed by a truly horrendous moment, during which I unintentionally flashed on the thought of him and Lauren in bed.
Tommy must have seen me blush, for he raised an eyebrow and said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
Caught off guard, I guffawed so loudly the old woman across the aisle leaned forward to peer at me. I cleared my throat and said quietly, “So, Tommy. How’s the investigation going? Any suspects?”
“I got a possible or two.”
I waited, but judging by the set of his jaw, there was no sense asking him who these “possibles” were. Instead, I asked, “Have you located the messenger? The one who brought me the box from STOP?”
He shook his head. “We’ve contacted every delivery service within a fifty-mile radius. None of ‘em recorded a delivery to your house, and we can’t locate anyone fitting your description.”
The young man’s most notable feature had been his hair, shaved to his scalp down the exact middle of his head, the other half dyed blue. “Maybe he was wearing a disguise and kept the whole transaction off the books.” Tommy said nothing, so I continued, “Someone could have bribed him to keep the whole thing secret, and if so, he probably would’ve assumed he was making a drug drop-off.”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah, that’s our theory, too. In which case, us finding him is gonna be next to impossible, unless he comes forward, which he’s not gonna do, since he thinks he was an accessory to a drug crime.”
“That reminds me.” I reached into my purse and retrieved the so-so portrait I’d drawn of the delivery man during a bout of insomnia a couple of nights ago. “The artist from Albany PD never contacted me. I drew this, though.”
After studying the drawing, Tommy thanked me and said he’d pass it along to the local newspapers and police departments.
“If I wanted to hide my identity, I’d shave my whole head,” I told Tommy.
“You’d really draw attention to yourself that way, Molly.”
I laughed and gave him a friendly jab with my elbow. “You know what I meant.”
We chatted pleasantly about our children, and for once I thoroughly enjoyed being with him.
At a stop, I chuckled at the sight of a large woman wearing what had to be the ugliest dress I’d ever seen. It was composed almost entirely of peacock feathers.
“Some dress, hey Moll?” Tommy said as he spotted the woman, “I can see you in something like that.”
“It’s a bit too sedate for my taste.” That gave me an idea for a cartoon, so I doodled a drawing of a pair of exhausted women crammed together into one worn-out dress. A man is gawking at them, and his wife explains, “Well, Fred, women do get weary, wearing the same shabby dress.”
Tommy peered over my shoulder at my sketch and said, “I don’t get it.”
“It’s poking fun at the line from the song. They’re wearing the same dress at once.”
He furrowed his brow as if confused, so I sang a stanza of “Try a Little Tenderness.”
He shrugged. “Your cartoon’s pretty sexist. Keep it up ‘n’ you’re gonna get STOP to change their name to STOMP: Sisters Totally Opposed to Molly’s Puns.”
That remark stung. I replied in clipped tones, “Maybe so. But, after all I am a woman, so all I’m doing is laughing at myself.”
<
br /> “Uh-huh. So if a woman makes a joke about women, she’s laughing at herself, but if a man makes a joke about women, he’s sexist.”
“Touche. I stand not only corrected, but embarrassed.”
“Just makin’ conversation to pass the time. No need to get upset.”
I shoved the notepad back into my purse and feigned sleep. Tommy sat in silence for several minutes, then started to whistle “Try a Little Tenderness.”
We arrived at Penn Station. I was now very glad Tommy was with me. Just being in this big building within this enormous city made me feel as though I couldn’t breathe. What was the technical term for fear of crowds? Massafolksaphobia, perhaps. Though the train station was actually well lit, I had the impression of being in a dark, cavernous area, where a crush of people darted all around me like crazed bats. I alone seemed to have no idea where I was supposed to go. With purposeful strides, Tommy led the way, and we were soon outside on a noisy, smoggy street facing Madison Square Garden.
Surrounded by such tall buildings, I now had the distinct—albeit unoriginal—impression of being at the bottom of a canyon. Biting chill winds whipped my hair into my face, blinding me. The kite-like fabric of my dress was plastered against my thighs. I fully expected it to rise to neck level if I so much as took a step. This is what happens to me when I try to dress my age. I should have stuck with the arrested-development look. Tommy all but shoved me into one of a half dozen cabs waiting by the curb. He gave an address to the dark, curly-haired cabbie, and we were off on a whiplash-inspiring ride.
Eight dollars apiece later, we followed the receptionist at Between the Legs through a windowless maze of cubicles. She led us to a small meeting room, where she told us to help ourselves to coffee or tea. Tommy poured himself a cup of what appeared to be well on its way to becoming espresso, while I poured myself some orange pekoe tea. This room had three walls of fake mahogany paneling graced with large glossies of beautiful women shown from the shoulders up, and one glass wall. Employees walking by glanced with blank faces through the glass at Tommy and me. It gave me the childish impulse to draw mustaches and goatees on the photographs just to give passersby a better show.
The oval, oak-veneer table had eight chairs. Tommy and I sat beside each other, facing the glass. Moments after we’d taken our seats, a tall, elegantly dressed woman entered, carrying a stack of papers. She appeared to be in her early forties. She hadn’t dyed her long, white-streaked brown hair, which won me over immediately. She further impressed me with her sincere smile as she held out her hand to me. “Hello, I’m Susan Wolfe, also known as Butch Blake. We spoke on the phone earlier. You must be Ms. Masters.”
Stunned, I rose and shook her hand, but stammered, “You’re Butch Blake?”
“That’s my professional name, yes.” She then greeted Tommy, shook hands, and we all sat down.
For the next fifteen minutes or so, we discussed the situation with my cartoon and what should be done. She didn’t hold it against me when I assured her that under no circumstances would I create cartoons for her magazine. To my surprise, she said that because they had published my cartoon without my consent, they were willing to pay me an extra thousand dollars in exchange for my signing a release to ensure that I wouldn’t sue them. I agreed, and after reading and then signing the paper, she gave me a check for a thousand dollars. The meeting was pleasant, and I found myself liking Ms. Wolfe.
During a pause, I could no longer resist my curiosity and said, “Pardon me for asking, but doesn’t it bother you to publish a magazine in which the bulk of the pages contain pornographic photos of naked women?”
“Printing men’s literature simply happens to be my job, Ms. Masters. It doesn’t carry as much prestige as, say, working for The New Yorker, but I wouldn’t be editor-in-chief there, as I am here. I take it you don’t approve?”
“It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove of your job. It’s just that I personally wouldn’t wish to work for an industry that presents women as sex objects. One which caters to and encourages the prurient interests of men.”
“You consider our magazine to be exploitative, but that’s only one viewpoint. Mine is that beautiful bodies are always used in our society to sell products. Whether or not a model is willing to pose in the nude is a personal matter that should be up to the model to determine.”
Her reply sounded rehearsed. This was no doubt her canned response to questions like mine.
She turned to Tommy, who had been quietly listening to us, and said, “Mr. Saunders seemed like a sincere, decent man. Obviously, I misjudged him.” For the first time, her voice trembled slightly as she spoke, perhaps with anger at Preston for having conned her. “Do you have any idea who killed him?”
“Not enough to make an arrest at this time.” He asked, “Have you ever heard of a group called Sisters Totally Opposed to Pornography?”
“As I told you when you asked me that over the phone, yes. But not until a couple of weeks ago. That was less than a week after the April edition hit the stands.”
“The one that contained my cartoon?” I asked, just in case Tommy had missed the connection.
“Right. We received a soiled box on Monday, two weeks ago. This was glued to the lid.” She rifted through her stack of papers and pulled out a small, pink paper that read:
Your publication has degraded and insulted women everywhere. Either you decide on your own to cease all publication of this filth, or we will decide for you.
Sisters Totally Opposed to Pornography
Chapter 10
Where’s My Thesaurus?
After an uneventful train ride home from the Big Apple, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Jim had beaten me home and had already picked up the children from next door. I was unpleasantly not surprised, however, to discover Karen and Nathan bickering. Nathan was insisting to Karen that the name of the song she was currently trying to sing was, “Hot and Cold,” not “Heart and Soul.”
“Tell him, Mom,” Karen demanded. “Tell him it’s ‘Heart and Soul.’”
I glanced at Jim, who was watching the news, and wondered how it was that he was so adept at blocking out noise. Must be one of those Y chromosome things. “Karen’s right, Nathan.”
“That’s ‘cuz I’m always wrong!” he cried.
“Although,” I continued quickly to circumvent his imminent tantrum, “‘Hot and Cold’ would make an excellent title for a song.” To demonstrate, I sang, “Hot and cold. I had a lunch but it’s covered with mold. I don’t know why I didn’t refrigerate it. Don’t want to eat a bit of it, a bit of it.”
Karen giggled at my lyrics and Nathan managed a smile.
Jim turned off the TV and greeted me with a quick kiss. I asked him if he’d sing the bass part to my new song. Mostly thanks to Karen’s: “Oh, please, Daddy, oh, please,” he agreed, and he and Nathan sang, “I’m a guy and I don’t want to sing these notes ‘cuz they’re too high…” while Karen and I sang the soprano part.
Deb Nesbitt’s chamber orchestra had nothing on my family’s rendition of “Hot and Cold.”
I was delighted the next morning to receive an prospective order from a historical society that wanted to put humorous cartoons in their monthly newsletter.
After several minutes of brainstorming, I settled on a caricature of Abraham Lincoln, looking frustrated as he sits at a desk with quill pen in hand and thinks: Eighty-seven years ago, our forefathers… No. Four double-decades and seven years ago… No. Damn. Where’s my thesaurus?
Once the drawing was complete, I overlaid it with “Molly’s eCards” so that the customer could see enough of my work to decide if he wanted it, but not enough to use it without payment. Minutes later, I received an email that he “loved it,” and he sent payment for a year-long monthly eCard plan.
That accomplished before 10 a.m., I now had two hours before Nathan’s kindergarten bus arrived. I reflected upon the limited clues I’d managed to collect so far and my theories about Preston’s murder. The
one theory that seemed to be panning out was the idea that the “bad person”—to use Nathan’s wording—was someone who knew Preston personally and knew he had submitted a cartoon to the magazine.
Preston had told me that his drinking buddies at the country club had bet him he couldn’t get the job as the cartoonist. Stephanie should know who those “buddies” were. This was Tuesday. I hadn’t visited with her since Friday and, because her daughter and I had just been shot at in her driveway, that visit had been less than leisurely.
I stopped at a flower shop and bought an arrangement of blue and white carnations in an It’s a Boy! ceramic mug, plus a cute, cream-colored stuffed bear.
Stephanie’s private nurse answered the door and showed me to the sitting room. After a minute or two, Stephanie swept into the room. She had recently had her hair done and her makeup was perfect. In her loose-fitting caftan of an Indian-style print, it was impossible to tell she had recently given birth. She held out her arms to me and said, “Molly. What a nice surprise.” Then she gave me a rather distant-feeling hug.
I gave her the gifts I’d bought, apologizing for not having gotten them to her sooner.
She examined the flowers. “Oh, my. You needn’t have. We have so many beautiful flower arrangements.” Then she grabbed the stuffed bear by both paws. “That’s the wonderful thing about stuffed bears. No matter how many of them you already have, there’s always room for one more.”
She called, “Estelle?” then wandered into the hallway as I sat down. I overheard Stephanie say, “Try to find someplace these can go where they won’t be dwarfed entirely.” I gritted my teeth and counted to ten.
“How’s Michael?” I asked the moment she reentered, to postpone her next insult.
“He’s fine.” She eased herself into a chair across from me. “Absolutely precious.”
“And Tiffany? Is she doing all right?”
“Fine. She and her boyfriend have decided to take things a little slower and just be friends for a while. She misses her father, of course, but she’s being stoic. And, I told her as long as she stayed away from you, she didn’t have to worry about getting shot at again.” She paused. “I hope you’re not offended. As a mother, you surely realize that I am more concerned with my daughter’s welfare than yours.”
Death Comes to Suburbia (Book 2 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 11
