Secondhand Smoke

by Karen E. Olson

  I DIDN’T EVEN HEAR him behind me until I reached my car and saw his hand come out in front of me, keeping me from opening the door. I turned around quickly, not wanting him to know how much he’d scared me.

  “I heard your father’s in town. Where is he?”

  “Mickey!”

  Dark circles accentuated the deep wrinkles under Mickey Hayward’s eyes; his long face seemed even longer in his grief. “Where’s your father?” he asked again.

  I shrugged. “We had breakfast at the diner. He might still be there.” The minute I said it, I regretted it, since he might still be there with his “appointment.”

  Mickey started to move away from me, but he couldn’t move that fast.

  “Hey, Mickey.”

  He turned around. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about LeeAnn. You okay?”

  He shook his head. “I just can’t fucking believe it.”

  “You were in Boston, right?”

  Mickey nodded and pulled his black leather jacket closer around his long, lanky body. “Yeah. Sal gave me Wednesday night off, it’s a slow night, right before Thanksgiving. Everyone’s getting their turkeys ready. So LeeAnn and me, well, we decided to make it a real holiday.” His face started to contort, and I watched as he pulled himself together again. “We had a nice dinner, you know, went back to the hotel, you know, that sort of thing.” His lips moved into a smile, remembering, but then he sighed. “We had a big fight, you know me and LeeAnn, we just can’t let ourselves be happy.”

  “About?” My voice seemed to startle him, as though he’d forgotten he was talking to someone.

  “About what?”

  “What did you fight about?” I fought the urge to take out my notebook. I’d spook him if I did that, so I’d just have to keep this going around in my head until I could get my hands on a pen.

  “Stupid stuff, you know.” He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and something told me it was a lot more specific than he was letting on.

  “Stuff at home, stuff at work?” I probed.

  He sighed. “I loved her, you know that, Annie, don’t you?”

  “Sure.” I wasn’t quite sure, but it was good enough for him.

  “I’m not sure she loved me that much.”

  “Sure she did, Mickey. You guys always had the hots for each other.”

  He snorted. “Her hots were a little cool lately, if you get my drift.”

  “So you think she was having an affair?” Nothing like stating the obvious.

  “She said she wasn’t.”

  “Then why didn’t you believe her?”

  Mickey stared at me a second before answering. He looked like shit. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a few days. “Because I’m an asshole.”

  We were quiet for a minute, and he started to turn away again, but I remembered something. “Hey, Mick,” I said, “you wouldn’t by any chance have a picture of LeeAnn on you, would you? I have to write a story about her, and I’ll need a picture.” I could see him thinking about this, and I wasn’t sure he was happy about this turn of events. “It’s my job, you know, but because I knew her, well, I can get more personal, tell everyone what she was really like.”

  My words softened him, and he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced a wallet. He took a small snapshot out of the folds and handed it to me. I stared at it a minute. LeeAnn’s face looked up at me, smiling. Her brown hair, with bright highlights framing her face, was pulled back from her forehead, and wisps clung to her cheeks. She was pretty, I had to give her that, even with the East Haven big hair and bright blue eye shadow. “I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can,” I said, and he nodded and turned again.

  I watched him walk down the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched over, pulling his coat even closer around him. He was an asshole, everyone knew that, but the man could cook—he made those great raviolis with big chunks of fresh lobster meat—and I also knew he loved LeeAnn in his own way and was probably beating himself up over fighting with her the night before she died. He’d never get another chance with her now.

  I forgot to ask him what he wanted to talk to my father about.

  Chapter 8

  Marty Thompson was leafing through the newspaper when I threw my bag onto the desk next to him and handed him the picture.

  “What’s this?” he asked, his mouth full of bagel and cream cheese.

  “LeeAnn Hayward. She was the dead body in Prego.”

  He almost spat bagel on me, catching it instead in a napkin.

  “Gross.” I pulled away from him.

  “How’d you get this?”

  I shrugged. “My natural charm.”

  “You wish. I hope this is on the record.”

  “Straight from Tom Behr’s lips.” I didn’t like the way Marty smiled, so I added, “But I’m not sure I’m getting anything else from him ever again.” I brought him up-to-date on my most recent conversation with Tom.

  “That’s too bad,” Marty said, and I knew he meant it was too bad I wouldn’t get extra information from Tom, not that my personal relationship with Tom was most definitely over. He was my friend, but he would always be my editor first.

  I started taking off my coat, but felt a chill and thought better of it. Shrugging back into my sleeves, I asked Marty, who I now noticed was wearing a thick wool sweater over his usual dress shirt and tie, “What’s up with the heat?”

  Marty rolled his eyes. “Or lack thereof, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  “Air-conditioning kicked in for some reason. Maintenance guys are working on it.”

  Which meant we’d probably be icicles by midnight.

  I glanced around the newsroom. “Where’s Dick?”

  “He took today off. Personal day.”

  Dick? Personal day? That was an oxymoron if I ever heard one. “Does he have a personal life?” I asked before thinking.

  “Annie, not everyone is like you. Yes, Dick has a personal life. I also know that he is dating someone.”

  Someone actually was dating Dick Whitfield? She couldn’t be human. Maybe some sort of alien from Star Trek. One of those little furry Tribble things, perhaps. I seemed to remember they liked everyone, even Mr. Spock. Come to think of it, Dick could be sort of Spock-like at times. Like when he took off the lime green ski cap and his hair stuck up over his ears.

  I stared at Marty. “You know you have to tell me now. You started this.”

  Marty’s lips were twitching, and I knew he was dying to tell me. He might be my boss, but he was still a journalist, and good gossip was good gossip. It didn’t matter if it was who was ripping off City Hall or who was fucking whom in the parking lot. We couldn’t help ourselves. We had to know, and we had to tell people.

  “Cindy Purcell at Channel Nine.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Cindy Purcell was one of the second-string reporters at Channel 9 in Hartford. She was fairly new to the state, coming from somewhere in the Midwest. I’d seen her around the office, because Channel 9 rented a corner of our newsroom from which it could broadcast its Shoreline Report every day. Channel 9 didn’t really give a shit about the shoreline, thus the makeshift “newsroom,” and they’d put Cindy Purcell here so she could prove herself before they gave her a real shot in Hartford.

  “Heard they went to the movies a few nights ago.” Marty was trying to be nonchalant about this, but it wasn’t working. He leaned toward me and whispered, “They saw that new Russell Crowe/Penelope Cruz movie.”

  “No shit!” I was avoiding that movie because I heard it was so steamy, I would have to take about seven cold showers afterward if I went alone.

  Oh, Christ, Dick Whitfield’s love life was better than mine. How pathetic was I?

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked, thinking of Cindy Purcell with her feathery blond hair and porcelain white skin. I’d thought at first that she was anemic, but she’d confided to me in the ladies’ room one day, without any promptin
g at all, that she believed the sun was every woman’s enemy. Like that was big news. She was a ditz, which would explain why she might actually find Dick Whitfield attractive.

  “She seems nice,” Marty said.

  “You think that because she’s got big breasts. She practically trips over them every time she comes in here.”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  “Of that?” I shook my head. I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’ve got work to do. I can’t sit around here all day gossiping with you.”

  “Hey, that’s my line.”

  Halfway to my desk, I heard Marty call my name. “So if it was LeeAnn Hayward in the restaurant, then what’s going on with Sal Amato?”

  “He’s missing.”

  “Obviously. Do you have any clues where he is?”

  I thought a minute. “Mac hired Vinny DeLucia to find him.”

  “So get your ass over to Vinny’s and find out what he knows. We have to find out about that fire, too. What caused it and why LeeAnn Hayward was inside at the time.”

  “Let me write up what I’ve got so far, and then I’ll see what else I can find out.” I glanced at the clock. It was only eleven. “Hell, we’ve got all day.”

  Marty scowled, and I knew he was thinking about how he’d just gotten reamed out by the executive editor for pushing deadline too close to production time. But it wasn’t my fault if I couldn’t get information faster.

  I was typing frantically, trying to ignore my blue fingers, when the phone rang.

  “You could’ve warned me that your father was in town.”

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “And you never came for turkey yesterday.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I had a busy day. Didn’t you see the paper? By the time I finished up here, I just went home and went to bed.”

  I heard the heavy sigh that indicated I was a terrible daughter and would never appreciate what a wonderful woman my mother was. “I have leftovers.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll come by after work and have dinner with you.” Another thought gave me a panic attack. “Bill Bennett’s not going to be there, is he? Because I don’t know if I can deal with that right now.”

  “Bill has a previous engagement, so you don’t have to worry about that.” Her voice was curt, and I knew I’d hurt her feelings.

  “A previous engagement without you?” I asked before thinking.

  “I’ll see you later.” The dial tone reverberated in my ear, and I hung up.

  I finished putting together what I could about LeeAnn; Mickey’s quotes sounded more poignant on the computer screen than they’d been out on the sidewalk.

  Even though I’d gotten the positive ID from Tom, I wanted to talk to the medical examiner’s office to get more details about the autopsy. But a phone call only revealed that the report wasn’t done yet and I’d have to wait.

  Maybe Vinny had some news about Sal, but all I got was his voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I had a feeling I’d run across him at some point again.

  Len Freelander actually came to the phone.

  “I was wondering if you guys had determined the cause of the fire at Prego yet,” I said after reminding the fire chief again who I was. He apparently had some sort of short-term memory loss when it came to me. God knows why. Everyone usually remembered me, and always for the wrong reasons.

  “Not yet, Annie. We’ll keep you apprised.” He hung up.

  As I sat there, pondering the existence of my fingernails and what my next move would be, Wesley Bell snuck up behind me and scared the crap out of me by saying quite loudly, “I’ve got something you might want to see.”

  His necktie was crooked, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Wesley Bell actually looked disheveled. He most likely did have something I’d be interested in, so I followed him into the photo lab.

  The photo lab isn’t what it used to be. It used to be a place that smelled of chemicals as the photographers physically developed film. But that had gone the way of the dinosaurs with the advent of the digital camera. Now the photographers merely downloaded their shots into computers and played around with Photoshop to get them the way they liked.

  Wesley Bell led me to one of those computers, and a row of thumbnails danced across the screen. “What am I looking for?” I asked.

  Wesley moved the mouse, clicked on one of the pictures, and it got bigger. He pointed, his long finger jabbing at the screen. “See here?”

  It was one of the pictures from the fire the day before. Len Freelander was in focus in the front, his face drawn with the realization that his weeklong honeymoon period was over. Wesley’s finger, however, was off the center of the photograph and touching the face of the little man who had accosted me with questions about chickens.

  “Oh, that’s that weird old guy,” I said, ready to go back to my desk and do nothing for the moment.

  But Wesley wasn’t ready for me to do that. “No, no, Annie, here.” His finger stabbed the screen, and I looked more closely.

  It was Sal Amato, in the shadow behind the chicken guy, watching the firemen put out the fire at his restaurant.

  Chapter 9

  Holy shit,” I whispered. Sal had been there. I hadn’t seen him, and no one else had indicated they’d seen him either. What the hell was he up to?

  “That’s Sal Amato,” Wesley said, stating the obvious.

  I nodded. “So you didn’t notice him there either?”

  “I didn’t see him until I was going through these, and there he was. I was concentrating on the fire chief last night when I was picking a picture to use in the paper.”

  “Can you blow that up?” I asked him. “You know, as evidence?”

  “I can do it in Photoshop, but it probably won’t look great.”

  “As long as we can recognize him, that’s all we need.” I went back to my desk to let Wesley do his computer magic, but I was more confused than ever.

  Had he been in the restaurant when the fire broke out? If he had been, then he must have known LeeAnn was in there. A horrifying thought popped into my head. Maybe he’d set the fire. Maybe he’d meant to kill LeeAnn and destroy his restaurant. And maybe that was why he was missing. That led to another thought, and I called the police department.

  “Hey, Richie,” I said casually to the dispatcher, “it’s Annie Seymour. Could you do me a favor? Is there any way you could let me know who called 911 about the fire at Prego yesterday?”

  “I’m really not supposed to do that.”

  “I know, but it’s really important.”

  “It’s always important with you.” He paused. “What does the detective say?”

  “Let’s keep him out of it,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  “Really,” he said thoughtfully. “Okay, well, what about dinner sometime?”

  I had never been desperate, and I certainly wasn’t going to date Richie just to get 911 information. But I’d been around the block enough to know what might placate him.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “There’s a new rule here at the paper that we can’t date sources”—maybe not new or enforceable, but it got my point across—“even if I wanted to.” That last bit would leave him wondering whether maybe I did want to date him, thus making it more appealing to him to give me what I was asking for.

  “Hold on, okay?”

  It seemed to be working. Go figure.

  My phone beeped, indicating I was getting another call, but I couldn’t hang up on Richie now. Whoever it was would have to leave a message on my voice mail.

  “You can’t tell anyone who you heard this from,” Richie whispered when he got back on the phone.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t understand why no one picked up on this before.” Richie was still whispering, but now he seemed to have forgotten whom he was talking to altogether.

  “Picked up on what, Richie?” I prompted.

  “The call c
ame in from Prego. I don’t know who called it in, I’d have to listen to the tape to find out, but the call definitely was made from the restaurant.”

  I KNEW I HAD TO CALL Tom and ask him about the 911 call, but I was as frustrated as my prom date had been because I knew I wasn’t going to get jack shit from him.

  I dialed before I could think about it any longer.

  “Behr.”

  “Hi, Tom,” I tried to say casually.

  “Annie, I thought I told you I wasn’t going to give you preferential treatment anymore. Which means you can’t call my cell phone.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? Any reporter would use what she or he has, your cell phone number being one of them.”

  “I’m going to hang up.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m sorry, but I have to ask you something officially, okay, about Prego?”

  He didn’t hang up, but he didn’t say anything, either.

  “I heard that the 911 call about the fire came in from the restaurant itself. Do you have any comment on that?”

  I heard him catch his breath. “Christ, Annie, you don’t need me at all, do you. Where the hell did you hear that?”

  “Sorry, Tom, confidential source. So it’s true?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” he conceded.

  “Who made the call? Do you know?”

  “Finally something she doesn’t know.”

  I waited, but he was not forthcoming. So I tried again. “Can you tell me?”

  “No.”

  He disconnected the call, but at least I had something official, and I could leave Richie out of it. I sauntered over to Marty’s desk.

  I like making Marty happy. He’s cute when he smiles, and he doesn’t do that too often. After I told him what I’d learned, I apologized for not knowing who made the call, but he shook his head. “That’s okay, you’ll find out. Just when you start getting burned out, you go on a roll.”

  I frowned. Burned out? Me?

  “Does anyone else have this?” Marty asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones.” I thought for a second. “But Dick better keep his mouth shut when he’s out with Cindy Purcell.”