Bertie knew she was laying it on too thick, but she couldn’t stop. When she was nervous, she got a bad case of the verbal trots.
“We wouldn’t agree to anything that would make the family look bad,” GiGi said, but Bertie could see that she was already imagining herself in the starring role of this little saga. “Actually, I have an alternative proposition that I’d like to discuss with you. “
Bertie wished she’d get to the point; her arch tone was giving her a headache.
A quiet knock stopped GiGi. A pretty young woman dressed in the movie version of a maid’s costume with black dress, frilly apron and cap, deferentially entered the room.
“Sorry, Ma’am, but there’s a phone call for you. The gentleman said it was very important,” she said and curtseyed. Bertie wondered how much they had to pay the young woman to dress and act like such an ass.
“My dear,” GiGi said to Bertie. “I’ve been expecting this call. Please, enjoy your coffee until I get back.”
After she’d hustled out of the room in a gale of expensive perfume, Bertie started looking around—you just never knew when you might find (accidentally, of course) something that was worth a story, but there was nothing much of interest in the little sitting room other than expensive furniture.
She opened the French doors and wandered out into the garden, staring up at the facade of the mansion, trying to get a better idea of the layout in case she ever got a chance to roam freely inside. She moved down one of the paths that striped the garden and froze when, in a grove of trees, she found two men arguing heatedly. Bertie moved back into the shadows, thankful they hadn’t seen her.
“That was my wife you were fucking, Gardener,” R2 said.
“Get over it R2, or should I start calling you Bro?” The muscular young man’s sneer took away from his physical attractiveness. “And by the way, I was more fuckee than fucker.”
R2 lowered a shoulder and rolled into him, destabilizing him but not bringing him down. He stepped back and raised his fists but before he could swing, the younger man hit first, punching R2 in the ear in a wild flail that almost missed his head altogether.
They launched into an awkward fight, kicking, slapping, punching and occasionally connecting with an extremity. R2 bent and butted the man in the stomach, using his head as a battering ram and doubling Gardener over his back. He wrapped his arms around the large upper thigh of the younger man, who started hopping on one leg as he struggled to get free. They were engaged in this grunting, lurching ballet when a strikingly beautiful young woman barreled into them shouting, “STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, before I kick you so hard in the patootie you’ll taste underwear for a month.”
Bertie couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bertie was quickly ushered out of the mansion without talking to the combatants or GiGi. As she’d expected after meeting with Crotty, there was no story about what she’d seen because no one involved was willing to talk, and no charges were filed. Crotty told her to tell Shawn, who was writing a follow-up story on the murder.
She found him typing furiously, not even looking at his notes, trying to beat his 6 p.m. deadline. He stopped long enough to listen to what she had to say, looking thoughtful. “The young guy is John Gardener, the gardener, the one they hauled in for questioning yesterday. He was released this afternoon after being charged with obstructing the police in the investigation of a crime. The chick is the darling Delia, R2’s wife. She gave the gardener an alibi because she was screwing him for most of the night Bellingham died. Looks like you caught his welcome home party. Lemme finish this story, and I’ll meet you at Duffy’s later, and fill you in on the rest. Too bad I can’t use the fight, it’s a great story.”
His assumption that she’d hand over her notes to him … again … pissed her off.
Duffy’s was a nearby bar where the boys and girls of the press met to drink after work. Bertie checked her voice mail, answered some e-mails, and wrote a couple of graphs of a story that wasn’t due for a week before leaving for the bar.
Several reporters were already there, standing around the crowded bar in the cozy gloom of the pseudo-Irish pub. The noise level was rising in direct correlation to the number of drinks being downed.
The newsroom bunch was a careful crowd both in and out of the office. The elderly couple who owned the paper were incredibly prudish. The slightest hint of anything that could be construed as sexual harassment was immediate grounds for dismissal. That was driven home a few months ago when a reporter was fired for leading a water cooler discussion about the true relationship between Lisa Douglas and Arnold the Pig in an ancient episode of “Green Acres.”
Because of that, Bertie and Shawn were very careful not to advertise their relationship, such as it was. Secrets are hard to keep in a newsroom, but so far they’d managed to keep the lid shut on office gossip.
Bertie was part of a spirited debate about how long they were going to keep their jobs in the abyss that was now the economy when Shawn joined the party. He looked tired, but entered the fray. “Everyone, including the computer jockies, are going to start outsourcing to India. You can get CNN everywhere; whoever works cheapest can watch the news, write their stories and e-mail them in. Who needs us?”
There were a few boos and a little laughter. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that farfetched. Everything from graphics to stories was being outsourced. There was a story making the rounds about a young Indian woman who was copy editing an article about the Rose Bowl and when asked what it was about, said it was a story for the food page. The newspaper industry was losing its fight for life and everyone lived in fear of those awful words: “You’ve been laid off.”
Several people were talking about the best places to eat in New Delhi when Shawn turned toward Bertie. He ordered them both a beer.
“This Bellingham story just keeps getting better and better,” he said, after draining half his beer in one gulp. “I told you that Gardener the gardener was released today, but that’s only part of it. He found the body about 4 a.m. and he says that’s how he got the blood on his shoes. He’d been screwing Delia until about 3:30 when she fell asleep. For the past six months or so, she’s been sneaking out to his cottage after the hubby went to bed, then she’d get up at 6 and sneak back into the mansion. R2 is taking heavy doses of some sleeping meds so she’s been getting away with it. She heard Gardener leave at 4ish and followed him. She could alibi him right up to the point where he found the body.”
“Oooh,” Bertie said, “no wonder there was a fight. The gardener is fucking your wife. Yeah, that would make anyone PO’d.”
“But, here’s the kicker,” Shawn continued. “Gardener-gardener was fighting the police over his shoes because he wants to prove that he’s Bellingham’s son. Before his mom died she told him that R1 knocked her up when she was a maid at the mansion. He was married to Gardener-gardener senior, who died several years ago never knowing that his son might be the spawn of the devil.”
“This is like a bad Gothic novel,” Bertie said.
“Wait, it gets better,” Shawn said. “I have a source inside the mansion who said, off the record of course, that the old man put Delia up to the affair. My source said he knew what Gardener was trying to do and wanted someone there to keep an eye on him. He’d steal things, like the old man’s socks, when he could sneak into the mansion and then Delia would steal them back. Gardener never tumbled to the fact that she was doing it. I guess there’s a lot of brawn there, but not much brain matter.”
“Is there DNA in toe jam?” Bertie asked dubiously.
Bertie wasn’t surprised that Shawn had inside information. He had sources everywhere and he protected them so fiercely that not even his colleagues knew who they were or how he recruited them.
“Why didn’t Gardener just sue him? It’s the great American pastime,” Bertie said.
“He wanted to keep his sainted mother’s memory clean so he was trying to get information on his ow
n first. He has a lawyer now. You’ve heard of Lester Lomax, right? He’s the little guy who’s always hustling cases on TV. He’s got six kids and a taste for Italian suits and the two don’t mix well.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of him,” Bertie said.
“Anyway, that’s what I’ve got up to this point. A lot of it’s in my story except for the theory that the old man put Delia up to it; I wanted it in, quoting “sources” but the lawyers killed it—too close to libel. But what a grand old guy Bellingham was, huh?”
“He was a sleaze,” Bertie said, and told him about how the old man used to torment his son.
“The only ones who seem to have a clear alibi are R2 and Gigi, the beautiful widow,” Shawn said. “They went to a charity ball together last night, with R2 standing in for his old man. They were seen there by hundreds of people.”
“The whole evening? Someone saw them all the time, they were never out of sight?”
“Yes, there’s the rub, of course no one could keep an eye on them the entire evening. Gigi made a beeline for a young, good-looking stud as soon as they got there, leaving R2 to wander around like an orphan. He says he went out on the balcony of the hotel and spent a lot of time out there by himself. Well, maybe he did, but he can’t prove it. Unfortunately, the police can’t prove he didn’t.
“And Gigi’s young stud will only corroborate her time up to a certain point, then who knows? Same thing with her, though: they can’t prove or disprove anything.”
They started speculating about motives. The coroner was waffling about the time of death because of the open front door. It let in cool air, which caused the furnace to kick on and off. The cooling and heating made predicting time-of-death iffy, and there was no evidence to hold Gardener for an earlier time so the cops cut him loose.
R1’s psychological torture of his son could’ve driven him to do it in a fit of rage. Or R2 could’ve heard about Gardener’s claim to be the long-lost son and killed his father in an argument about sharing his inheritance with the gardener.
“Well, that’s true for any of them,” Shawn said. “The wife, R2, Delia, who’d miss out on her hubby’s cut, any of ’em. And who knows how many people he shafted during business hours?”
Bertie and Shawn were quiet for a minute or two before Bertie said, casually, “Well, I’m outta here. You want to come over for awhile?” Translation: “You wanna get it on?”
Shawn looked uncomfortable. “I’m really tired, Bertie. I’m going to have another beer and then go home.” He yawned and an alarm went off in Bertie’s head at the timing. Just a little too convenient to be convincing.
Bertie mumbled a few inanities, said goodbye and then headed to the bathroom before leaving. She checked her ass in the full-length mirror to see if it was bigger than the last time Shawn had come to her apartment.
Inconclusive.
Bertie drove to her tiny apartment a couple of miles away and was putting her key in the lock when a tall figure suddenly loomed over her, blocking the light in the already dimly lit hallway. She backed away, but the man kept coming. Before he could reach her, she let out a low scream.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Cheeze, lady, cool it. I’m a cop. See?” A silver badge flashed in one of his upraised hands. “Here,” he put the badge on the floor and kicked it over to her.
“And I’m supposed to believe that? That’s the oldest trick in the world. You can get one of those in a box of Cracker Jacks,” Bertie said, wondering fleetingly if Cracker Jacks were still made. She reached into her purse and pulled out a canister of pepper spray, pointing it at him with a shaky hand. She glanced down at the badge. It looked authentic, but how was she supposed to know? She wrote about dishwashers and Martha Stewart.
“Check your cell phone. There should be a message from Shawn Fuchs. I called him to see if he knew how to reach you, and he said he’d call you to warn you I was on my way.”
“Liar!” Bertie said. “I was with him not more than 10 minutes ago.”
“That’s about what time I talked to him. Look, I’ll back away and you check your phone. I’m Detective Madison.”
As he shuffled backward into the light, Bertie realized he looked familiar. Familiar beyond looking like Harrison Ford. She opened her purse and pulled out her phone. There was a message from Shawn.
She kept her right index finger on the button of the shaking pepper spray canister pointed at him and put the phone to her ear with her left. He never took his eyes away from her, but relaxed enough to lean against the wall.
Bertie lowered the phone and the pepper spray. “OK, come in, but remember … there are people who know you’re here, so don’t try anything.”
She led the way into her mini-apartment, turning on lights and throwing her things on a chair, before gesturing him to take a seat on a small, flowered sofa. He was tall enough and the sofa sagged enough that his knees jutted up awkwardly. He had sandy brown hair that curled around his rumpled suit collar. Dark circles were banners of exhaustion under his blue eyes.
As she settled into a chair across from him, she realized why he looked familiar. He’d been in several perp walk pictures in the paper, leading the suspected criminal past cameras to give the press and TV a chance to give the public a look at the bad guy.
“By the way, lady, my hair is fine,” he said, looking at the small canister she was still clutching in her hand. Bertie looked down, too, startled to see her white-knuckled fingers clutching a mini-can of hairspray.
To cover her embarrassment, she said sharply, “Stop calling me lady, I’m not a ‘lady,’ I’m a woman.” The quote marks she’d try to bracket “lady” with didn’t quite take.
A smile slowly slid across the cop’s face and he looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.
She smiled, too, relieved at the break in tension. “Let’s start over again. I’m Bertie,” she said.
“And I’m Detective Madison,’ he said, his voice hard as his smile died. “I’m investigating the murder of Robert Bellingham. I understand you talked to him two days before he was murdered.”
Oooohhh—the jerk, the absolute jerk! He’d suckered her into being friendly with a crinkly-eyed smile then shut her down. She was burning, but anxious to get this over with. Her smile followed his into nothingness.
“Yes, I did,” she replied curtly. “It was an interview for a story I was planning.”
“How did he seem? Anything you can tell me might help.”
“I didn’t notice anything. It was the first time I’d ever talked to him, so I don’t know what he’s like normally... what he WAS like normally. But nothing stood out.”
“And you talked about business?” She hesitated. Red flushed her cheeks as she was wondered if she should tell him about the ass-grabbing.
Madison looked at her, but didn’t say anything for several moments. Silence was the worst; Bertie just couldn’t take it.
“It was just... No, there was nothing,” she said, and looked away.
“Obviously there was something, what was it?” His voice was hard.
He was starting to piss her off. “OK, he did a full two-hand, two-cheek ass-grab. I should’ve slapped him silly and left, but I didn’t. I’m not exactly proud of that, but I wanted the interview. It was hard to get.”
Madison looked amused again. “You weren’t angry enough to go back and murder him, were you?”
She snorted in exasperation, not willing to return his smile again. Her standards were higher than that; she needed more than a smile to spill her guts.
“What else can you tell me? Did you meet any of the family?”
“I met his wife, GiGi, then Bellingham and I sat and talked for about an hour.” She wasn’t going to mention today’s meeting with the Bellingham clan and friend for anything.
“How did he act with his wife? Did there seem to be any tension?”
“No.” She shrugged. “But again, I’d never met them before, I can’t say if there was tension or not.”<
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A beeper on his belt shrilled into life, making them jump. He looked at it, and she saw his lips move in a silent curse. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “How about calling the paper and telling someone to bundle up your notes from the interview so that I can pick them up and give them a look. It would save me a lot of time.” He turned on the smile full-force, dimples pitting his cheeks. Suddenly, Bertie was aware of the dim little apartment, so small their knees were almost touching as they sat across from each other.
She hesitated, then sat bolt upright. “Are you nuts, buddy? You know better than that; I’m not giving you my notes.”
“Look... lady, I’m investigating a murder. You know... murder? You’ve been acting weird ever since I got here. What’ve you got to hide?”
Bertie lost her temper. “I don’t have anything to hide, but I’m not giving you my notes—I don’t have to, I’m protecting my story. And what do you mean I’ve been acting weird? Who shows up for an interview at,” she looked at her watch, “midnight? Who lurks in the shadows, scaring people to death?” She jumped to her feet.
He stood up, too, which put them face to chin since he was taller than her.
“I can get a subpoena for your notes, you know. I can send you to jail.”
Jail? Bertie’s mind raced. Reporters who went to jail didn’t just write stories, they had stories written about them and their journalistic integrity. They got book deals and lecture dates. They didn’t write about designer garbage bags, they wrote about the big stuff.
And how bad could jail be? She’d probably get the Paris Hilton/Nicole Richie Memorial Cell and the paper’s lawyer would get her out in a couple of weeks. All of this took a second or two to blaze through her thoughts.
She stuck her chin belligerently into his throat. “I’m willing to go to jail for my ethics.”
His beeper shrilled again. “I’ve gotta go,” he said, “but I’m telling you right now, lady, I want those notes or you’re going to jail.” “Oh, yeah?” Bertie spluttered. “Make me!” Childish, but satisfying.
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