Annie Seymour 01 - Sacred Cows

by Karen E. Olson

  “I thought you’d want to know before it was in the paper.”

  He sighed again. “Yeah, that would’ve been really embarrassing.”

  “The apartment is rented by the McGee Corporation. What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. The address is a post office box in New York City. We can’t seem to find a phone number.”

  He was tired, that’s why he was telling me this. He wasn’t on his toes, he wasn’t up to playing the game. I had to get everything I could out of him before he stopped himself.

  “A dummy corporation?” I suggested.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. They’ve rented the place for two years. Does it look lived in?”

  I glanced around and saw the spare rooms again. “No.”

  Tom moved closer to me. “That’s all I can give you. Really.”

  I nodded. “Sure. I understand. But if I have something, I have to tell you, right?”

  “Give me a break.” His voice was rough, and I backed off. It wasn’t the time or the place for that, either.

  I started to back out the door, then stopped. “Just one thing, though. Since her ex-boyfriend’s a suspect, you think she was murdered and didn’t just off herself?”

  “Off the record?”

  “The readers will draw their own conclusions.”

  “You can’t use this,” he said again, and I nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “She was dead before she went over the balcony.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Melissa Peabody died from a blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Tom said there was blood on the balcony, and the injury wasn’t consistent with the fall.

  “So whoever did this then dumped the body over the balcony?” I asked.

  Tom shrugged. “There are a lot of sickos out there.” But I could see he was stumped, too, as to why someone would do that.

  It was irritating me that I couldn’t include the cause of death in the story, but I’d promised Tom. As a reporter, I couldn’t go back on my word or I’d never get anyone to tell me anything ever again.

  Back at the office, I tried to get someone to tell me on the record, but no one returned my calls.

  The streets were deserted when I finally climbed into my 1993 Honda Accord and made my way home in the dark. I parked near my brownstone on Wooster Square and instead of going right up, turned toward the smell of pizza. Sally’s was still open, and I wanted a small white clam pie. It had been a long day, I’d missed lunch, Dick was getting top billing on the byline as I’d suspected, and Tom had disappeared.

  The picture of Frank Sinatra on the wall at Sally’s stared down at me as I moved toward the counter. Flo was bustling around but took the time to say hello as I gave my order to her son.

  “Takeout?”

  I nodded.

  “Be a few minutes.”

  I was willing to wait for the best pizza anywhere. Most people did. Sally’s opened at 5:00 P.M. every day, except Mondays, and it’s rare not to have to stand in the long line that snakes down the sidewalk, people salivating for the crispy thin crust and savory sauce. Pepe’s, just up the street, boasts similar lines, but I have to be honest. I’ve never eaten there. In New Haven, you ask, “Sally’s or Pepe’s?” and people always have an allegiance to one or the other.

  We’ve got a lot of new reporters and copy editors who’ve moved here from other places and they don’t want to wait in the lines, so they never experience either. I actually saw a Domino’s delivery one night. New Haven was where pizza was born, or at least that’s what they say, and some idiot’s getting chain pizza.

  Someone was peering through the front window as I sat sideways in the last booth waiting for my pizza, and when I squinted, I could make out familiar features. It was that guy again, the winking guy. He looked like he wanted to come in, but when he saw me looking, he turned and disappeared. I glanced at the kitchen. It would probably be a few minutes before my pie was ready. I went outside.

  He was moving down the sidewalk at a fast clip and turned into Libby’s, probably for cookies and a cappuccino if he had any sense. Flo knocked on the window. I went back inside.

  “Thanks,” I said as I took the box, glaring at the Sinatra portrait as if it had something to do with the mystery man.

  He wasn’t there. In Libby’s, I mean. I risked getting my clam pizza cold so I could check it out. I shrugged and walked back to my building.

  As I put my key in the lock, the phone began to ring. I rushed inside; it was probably a copy editor with a question about the story. I hadn’t hung around while anyone read it, I was too tired and said I’d be home within a half hour.

  “Hello.”

  “So you’re home.” It was my mother. No, oh, hello, dear, how are you doing? It was going to be a guilt trip about something, something I probably either didn’t do or didn’t remember. I brought the phone over to the refrigerator and reached in for a beer. Nothing like a beer with clam pizza topped with guilt. Maybe I should get caller ID.

  “It’s been a long day,” I tried, knowing it wasn’t going to work.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

  “I’ve been really busy at work. And it’s going to be really busy for a while. You heard about the Yalie?” I took a bite of pizza, although I couldn’t truly enjoy it as I’d hoped.

  “Oh, the poor girl. Yes, of course I heard. It’s all over the firm. Her parents called us, you know.”

  My mother went back to school after she divorced my father and became a lawyer. A good one. One of the best attorneys in the city, one who always managed to win her cases. And one who always managed to catch me off guard.

  “What?”

  “The family of that poor girl. They want to sue Yale. But you can’t print that, it’s just a mother telling a daughter something in confidence.”

  Bullshit. It was a savvy attorney giving her reporter daughter a big fucking tip that had to be off the record. It pissed me off.

  “Don’t get upset, dear. Nothing’s in stone yet.”

  But just the fact that they called . . . I had no chance in hell of getting this until everyone else did. A useless cop for a boyfriend, a useless mother. What more did a girl need?

  The pizza was growing cold. “What did you want?”

  “When?” She was smart but could be fairly obtuse at times.

  “Why were you trying to reach me?”

  “Oh, yes, that. I’m having a dinner party Saturday night and would love it if you came.”

  One of my mother’s dinner parties was the last thing I needed right now. “I’m going to be working on this story, probably all weekend.”

  “Which is why you need a break, something fun to get your mind off it for a few hours.” She always had an answer.

  I wanted to tell her I didn’t want to go. But that would have been unacceptable. I thought about the black dress I’d worn the night before. Was it just last night? At least I had something to wear. “What time?” I was too tired to argue, too tired to try to come up with another excuse, even though I knew the evening would hardly be “fun.”

  “Eight o’clock.” I could hear her smile, thrilled with yet another success. “Someone’s going to be there I want you to meet.”

  Oh, God, it was another man. There had been many of them the last few years, lined up at these parties, dressed-up, good-looking men who were smart, funny, could make good conversation. I hated them all, plastic versions of each other, all run off the Ken assembly line. I wasn’t Barbie, and I wasn’t about to get sucked in by my mother’s feeble matchmaking attempts.

  “You know I’m seeing Tom.” She had never met Tom and didn’t consider him a viable catch. She kept telling me if he was going to marry me, he would have already asked. I didn’t tell her I didn’t need to get married. I enjoy living alone. I make my own hours, I don’t have to think about anyone but myself; it’s not a bad gig. I was old enough to be so set in my ways that if I did meet someone I wanted to cohabitate with, it wou
ld be more annoying than anything else.

  “Do me this favor, please, Anne?” I knew she was serious when she didn’t call me “Annie.” “It will be a lovely evening, and you don’t have enough of those.”

  How did she know? I fought back the urge to say something snide. Too bad I couldn’t do that when I was talking to Marty about Dick.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll see you then.”

  I hung up and turned back to my pizza. It was only moderately cold and still damned good, with a lot of garlic. It was probably a good thing Tom wasn’t coming over, he wouldn’t be able to stand the smell of me.

  THE PAPER SCREAMED death the next morning on the doorstep. I scanned the story, everything was in order, no editor had screwed anything up. I hate it when that happens. My eyes rested on Melissa’s picture. I hadn’t seen it, Dick had gotten it somehow, I hadn’t even asked. She was pretty, very pretty. I could see how the girl at Atticus would have envied her. Long, sweeping dark hair pulled away from her face to accentuate bright eyes, straight nose, wide mouth that sported straight white teeth. Her neck was long, swanlike, like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina.

  I rubbed my own short neck absently as I put the paper down. Having a face to go with the name was important, but it made my job harder. I was going to have to ask the questions no one wanted to hear about a lovely young woman who had a secret life.

  While I ate my bowl of Cheerios, I thought about what I needed to do to follow up. The McGee Corporation was first and foremost. I had to find out what that was, who the guy was Melissa saw that night, and what had gone so wrong. I also needed to get it on the record how she really died.

  Tom’s revelation about Melissa’s death was only preliminary; the autopsy was scheduled for this afternoon and the cause of death would be made official in the medical examiner’s report.

  I shuddered, thinking about the autopsy. When I die, I don’t want some doctor sawing into my body, taking me apart. I only hope I go naturally, when I’m very old and senile enough not to have any sense of what’s happening.

  I took another look at Melissa’s picture. The indignity of what they were going to do to her body was second only to the indignity someone had already wrought. I could only hope that she fought, fought hard, and managed to break some skin.

  Dick was sitting at my desk when I got in. I scowled at him. “What are you doing?”

  “My terminal crashed.”

  “So reboot.”

  “No, it really crashed. The hard drive went.”

  Our computers were several years old, the software not much newer. We played musical chairs as keyboards, monitors, and hard drives were replaced. This was the first time someone landed in my space, and just my luck, it was Dickie Boy.

  “Just because we’re working on this story together doesn’t mean you can sit at my desk,” I snapped, maybe a little too harshly, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I talked to New York about the McGee Corporation.”

  When, I wanted to ask. I had barely had enough time for my cereal this morning, and we had both worked late last night. Maybe Dick had more hours in the day than the rest of us. Or maybe had less of a life. No, that couldn’t be it. No one had less of a life than me.

  “I have a friend in Albany,” he continued, and that answered my question. Good to have friends in convenient places. Maybe Dick wasn’t going to turn out to be so bad. Not.

  “Anyway,” he continued when I just stood there, staring at him, “it’s on file with the state but very vague about what it actually is. But I did get an address that’s not just a post office box. It’s at Fifty-seventh and Lexington.”

  “Who’s the CEO?” I tossed my bag on my desk, wondering if he’d ever get up.

  “Listed as Mark Torrey.”

  Where had I heard that name before? Before I could access the recesses of my brain, I heard Dick’s voice.

  “Doesn’t the city have an assistant corporation counsel by that name?” Dick’s memory was obviously better than mine, but he didn’t seem to see the implication in what he’d just said.

  “But it can’t be the same one,” he said, still not getting it.

  My brain was racing. Mark Torrey had been with the city for the past four years, if I was remembering right. I’d met him at one of my mother’s dinners, maybe a year ago. The only reason it stuck in my head was because he wasn’t hard to notice as he worked the room. He turned his charm on the people with power like my mother and her partners but ignored me and the obvious underlings. My mother thought he was a real up-and-comer.

  “No address listed for him?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Just the corporation address.”

  “What was so vague about the company?”

  Dick finally pulled out a notebook and thumbed through his notes. “It’s some sort of financial investment company, I’m not really up on that kind of stuff.”

  “Like a Merrill Lynch, but smaller?”

  “Much smaller.”

  “Do they have a board of directors listing?”

  Dick shook his head. “I didn’t get that. I didn’t think to ask.”

  “Any phone number?”

  “No.”

  How could a financial investment company not have a phone number? How would they make money that way?

  I wanted to go to City Hall and see Mark Torrey. It would be the only way to nip this one in the bud. Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. But I wanted to ask him face-to-face, see his reaction, before I made any speculation.

  I grabbed my bag off the desk. “See you,” I called as I left Dick sitting at my desk. He didn’t try to come after me, which is what I would’ve done; he just sat there staring at me, which proved my point about him.

  I couldn’t find a parking spot. City Hall towers over the expansive Green, and it’s crowded all day. After going around the block a couple of times, which took about ten minutes because of the lights, I finally found a spot on Elm Street and walked over to Church. The big thick doors opened into the lobby and I found my way to the corporation counsel’s office.

  “Mark Torrey?” I asked a young woman in an ill-fitting beige suit.

  She cocked her head, pushed back a loose hair on her cheek. “Not here.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Not sure. He had a death in the family in California. He called yesterday morning from the airport. He’ll probably be gone at least into next week.”

  Yeah, right. I had a feeling it might not be a coincidence.

  “May I help you with something?” she asked.

  “No thanks. It’s personal.”

  She gave me a look that made me wonder whether I was too old for Mark Torrey. I decided to ignore it. “Thanks,” I said again and turned around.

  I walked to Willoughby’s for a coffee, sorting it out in my head. I had a nagging feeling about this. Just as I was about to go into the café, I saw him again. The Frank Sinatra look-alike. He was across the street, leaning against the brick building on the corner, watching me. I deliberately stopped and stared at him. A smile broke across his face, he straightened up and waved. Waved. Like he knew me.

  I started across the street, but there were too many cars, and as I was looking both ways, he disappeared.

  Who the hell was he? This was getting way too creepy. Maybe he was a cop, but why would he be where I was instead of doing his job? No, he wasn’t a cop. I knew that the first time I saw him in Atticus. I went into Willoughby’s. He wasn’t going to ruin a perfectly good coffee experience for me. But I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see him. He wasn’t there.

  “DID YOU SEE THE TIMES?” Renee flung the paper at me when I got back to the office, knowing full well I hadn’t seen it yet. Renee Chittenden has been at the Herald almost as long as I have. She’s our only “general assignment” reporter. The social service agencies were always trying to get her to publicize their causes, and she could put a human face on any story. Her news judgment was solid.

&nb
sp; I scanned the New York Times’s story about Melissa Peabody. Everything we had. What was the big deal?

  “See the byline?”

  Richard Wells. Another Dick. Okay, so he moved from the Hartford Courant to the Times. That wasn’t any surprise, either. He’d covered a lot of big shit for the Courant. I’d never met him, but I heard a lot of stories. Not all of them good. He was rumored to be arrogant and sometimes his way of getting the story wasn’t entirely kosher. I’d heard he slept with the mayor’s assistant in Hartford to get a story once.

  “He’s an asshole.” I put the paper down, determined not to get upset by this. Even though we had our share of TV reporters, I didn’t consider them competition. Neither the Bridgeport nor the Hartford papers covered New Haven on a regular basis, if at all. I enjoyed a fairly competition-free zone, but if this Times reporter got a bee in his bonnet over Melissa Peabody, then it meant I had to be more on my toes than usual.

  “What’s going on with this McGee Corporation?” Marty was suddenly next to my desk, sneaking up on me again. Renee slid back to her own seat.

  “Can’t seem to get a handle on it, although Dick got an address.”

  “Yeah, he told me. What about Torrey?”

  “In California, allegedly. A death in the family.”

  Marty scratched his chin in that way he does when he’s not happy with how things were turning out. Another meeting with the publisher, another lambasting, another edict about what we could say in a headline or where it would have to be played. Another stake in the heart of journalism.

  “We need to get a handle on this story. The cows are coming, and we’re all going to have some extra stuff to do,” he said.

  My expression must have been as blank as my brain, because he added, “You know, the CowParade.”

  The memo about it was somewhere on my desk, but I hadn’t read it yet. I didn’t have time for cows anyway, I had to find out about McGee. I have a friend who works for the Daily News. She could check out McGee’s address on her lunch break, I hoped. “I’ll see what I can get on McGee,” I told Marty, picking up the phone.