When Blood Lies

by Richards, Linda L. ;

  WHEN

  BLOOD

  LIES

  WHEN

  BLOOD

  LIES

  Linda L. Richards

  Copyright © 2016 Linda L. Richards

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Richards, Linda, 1960–, author

  When blood lies / Linda L. Richards.

  (Rapid reads)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0837-9 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0838-6 (pdf ).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0839-3 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8585.I1825W53 2016 C813'.54 C2015-904516-9

  C2015-904517-7

  First published in the United States, 2016

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946332

  Summary: In this work of crime fiction, gossip columnist Nicole Charles buys a desk at auction that turns out to be at the center of a secret from the past and a crime in the present. (RL 4.8)

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Jenn Playford

  Cover photography by Peter Rozovsky

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  19 18 17 16 • 4 3 2 1

  The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.

  —Dashiell Hammett

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ONE

  These days there are times when I can’t even remember what made me get into the news business in the first place. I know I wanted to do some big thing. I wanted to make a difference. Change things. I wanted to know that every day when I got out of bed, the work I did would have a positive impact on many lives.

  And so I played with ideas.

  There were other possibilities, but none of them made sense for me.

  I don’t like being around blood, so being a doctor, nurse or veterinarian was out of the question, even though I like animals. And sometimes people.

  Teacher? While I don’t dislike kids, the thought of being cooped up in a classroom with a bunch of them every day didn’t sound like a fun.

  Cop? I don’t like violence. I don’t like guns. I know there is more to the job than that, but I couldn’t get past those basics.

  Firefighter? Of course what they do is worthwhile. They do great work. But it looks so very difficult all the time. Like, you have to sweat and lift a lot of heavy stuff. I’m not particularly talented at either of those things.

  But I’m “good with words,” or so I was always told. And I know how to “turn a phrase.” I thought about being a novelist but found I didn’t really have much to say. (Maybe someday.) And then, reading through the descriptions of programs at a local college, a two-year journalism program caught my eye.

  In the first place, it was the only two-year program in the field west of Toronto. And to be honest, it sounded super fun. I would learn how to dig for information, write a compelling news story, conduct an illuminating interview and other important skills.

  And suddenly it all made sense. I knew that of the things I could be, nothing else had ever really clicked for me. Journalism became, in an instant, the only true thing I’d ever wanted to pursue.

  I applied to the program. Got accepted. Then spent the next two years learning about how I was going to make a difference. For maybe the first time ever, my life had meaning. I couldn’t wait to graduate.

  I did my practicum at the Vancouver Post, my hometown newspaper as well as one of the top papers in the country. I was on my way. But right in the middle of my internship, the society columnist dropped dead (no mysterious causes). And I just walked into his job.

  It was either a lucky break or a curse. Three years later, I’m still not sure which. The work is not difficult, but it’s also not what I imagined. When I signed up to be a reporter, I thought I’d be running around chasing down leads and uncovering conspiracies. Investigating stuff. Busting things wide open. (I wasn’t sure what kind of things, but still, it’s what I dreamed.)

  As the gossip columnist, what I really do is go to pretty parties and take photos of pretty people. Then I write pretty words about them to go under the photos. Not too many words at that. It’s a living and a good one. But most of the time I don’t really feel like a reporter. I feel like a party girl taking photos (pretty ones) and notes.

  “Nicole!” The sound of my name in that particular tone made me sit up straighter at my desk. Even at some distance, I recognized Erica West’s authoritative and well-modulated voice. It spoke of Ivy League schools and summers in France and a confident woman who was used to getting what she wanted. You could hear that right away. I didn’t know what she wanted right now, but I was ready to give it to her.

  Erica West is the sales manager at the Vancouver Post. And she is the publisher’s fiancée. The over-sized diamond on her left hand tells that story. But neither of those things—or the ring—explained why she was in my cubicle. For the most part, our paths didn’t have much reason to cross.

  “Yes, Erica,” I called back. “I’m right here. At my desk.”

  “Your desk.” She sniffed when she came into the area. She wrinkled her nose just a bit as she got to my cubicle, like she might be smelling something disagreeable. There was no bad smell. Unless downsizing has an odor. There had been a lot of layoffs recently to shore up the bottom line. Not so long ago, there was a reporter in each of the ten cubicles between where Erica had entered the room and where she stood now. There were only two or three of us now.

  It’s a tough time for newspapers. Facebook, YouTube and millions of “citizen journalists” with their blogs and Snapchats and Instagram feeds. It all eats into everyone’s news-reading time. Never mind television and radio. All of those things make people feel informed. Maybe they are and maybe they are not, but the fact is, not too many people actually read newspapers anymore. In my line of work, it seems someone talks about that—the state of the business and where we’ll all be in ten years—every single day.

  So Erica’s desire to talk scared me. On the one hand, I was not passionate about my beat. On the other, it was a job. And a good union one at that. I am the child of immigrants. My Scottish upbringing couldn’t help but make me realize that a good union job has value.

  “Have a seat, Erica,” I said, indicating the simple canvas chair near my desk. No one ever sits in it but my brother, Kyle. And only when he comes to get me for lunch and finds me on the phone.

  She looked from the chair to me and then back at the chair, eyebrows raised. Like the very idea of sitting there startled her. She didn�
�t answer me, nor did she take the chair, opting instead to perch on the corner of my desk. It was a maneuver that would have looked awkward had I done it. But she managed it with the elegance of a movie star, one long, silk-clad leg crossed over the other, as if the whole thing were a photo shoot.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I think I’ll stand.” I didn’t point out that she already was not.

  “You wanted to speak with me?” I prompted.

  “Did I?” She looked amused. I didn’t say anything. “Oh, well, I guess I did,” she said, examining the tips of her flawless nails.

  I prepared myself for the worst, not even sure what the worst might be.

  She began without preamble on the topic I’d expected. I could feel my heart sinking at her words.

  “As you know, we’ve been making certain…cutbacks.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just looked at her. Of course I knew. Everyone knew. We could barely talk about anything else. And those of us still left at the paper walked around the emptier spaces in a kind of hush, waiting for something terrible to happen.

  And now? It seemed like, for me, here it was. I had a flash of me working at a Denny’s. Pancake-and-sausage-filled plates balanced precariously in my arms. My hair sticking out madly from beneath a cap and streaks of sweat running down my forehead, fortunately hiding the tears.

  Erica was speaking. I forced myself back from my vision to hear her words.

  “In fact, we’ve made enough of them now. Cutbacks. We’re closing off this whole floor.”

  So that was it, then. I had no words. I wasn’t trained to be anything other than a reporter.

  “When?” I managed to squeak out. My throat felt dry, as if I hadn’t spoken in a long time.

  “Hmmmmm?”

  “How long do I have?”

  “Have for what, dear girl?” The words sounded affectionate, but I knew the tone. Erica was irritated.

  “You know. Before I’m…out.” I had a vision of her calling security. Having me escorted out of the building, my personal stuff in a box in my arms, with a Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

  To my surprise, she put her head back and laughed. I knew that if she could have seen herself, she would never have done it again. The laughter changed her features. She went from composed and elegant—beautiful, really—to witch-ugly in a heartbeat.

  “Oh, charming girl,” she said when her laughter had run out. “You think you’re fired. How very sweet.”

  Now I was the one who was feeling irritated. “You mean I’m not?”

  “No. Definitely not. For one thing, if you were being fired, there’d be someone here from HR. Not me. And maybe some sort of counselor. We’re doing that now, you know. To help with the loss.”

  She looked at me like she expected something, and so I said, “Oh.”

  “No. It’s me here because this isn’t a matter for HR, really. Or not exactly. It’s coming from the executive suite. And no one else likes dealing with this stuff. And I don’t mind. Anyway, enough of that. All that really matters is that we’re going to need to buy you a desk.”

  “Sorry?”

  She looked at me for a moment with both eyebrows fully raised. I got the feeling she couldn’t quite understand how smart I was not. And then she explained my professional future to me, slowly and carefully, as if she were speaking to a child. Then I understood quite quickly. It was a chain of events I’d seen happening in the office plenty over the last few months. Too much, in fact.

  I was being downsized. That was the long and the short of it. Though not severely. I wasn’t being cut out or cut back, but my desk was. Or, rather, the space it was taking. I’d still have a job, was how Erica explained it. My mail would still come to the newspaper for me to pick up there. When I needed to take a meeting in an office environment, I could still do it at the newspaper. But the rest of it, I was going to have to do from home.

  TWO

  I decided not to think about it right away. I couldn’t. I had work to do. And another party to go to. Not a party for me. I wouldn’t even be part of the festivities. I’d be invisible. That’s my job, what I’m paid for. And when I’m doing it right, hardly anyone even notices me.

  I am a society columnist. I write about product launches. I write about fundraisers. The occasional wedding. Book launches, gallery openings, fashion shows. Really, wherever the rich and beautiful might be found in the greatest abundance, that’s where I’ll be.

  I write about them. I take pictures. In the morning they read about themselves. The more influential among them support the paper—tell their companies to buy ads, tell their friends how great we are, because look what good taste we had in including them. That is the function of the society column, full stop. My column serves no purpose beyond public relations. Not really. And honestly, for this job the bar is pretty low.

  I stopped at home. Changed. A pretty dress. High heels. My evening bag, which is a tiny clutch. But there was a pretty serious digital camera slung over my shoulder. An SLR. Always ready for me to pull forward at a moment’s notice to grab the shot I want.

  Yeah sure, I could use my smartphone for taking pictures. My competitors all do. But I want to be the best at my job. The best in the whole country if I can. And why? Because this job is not enough. If I can be the very best, I hope I will move forward. I will move to another job at this same paper. Or at a different paper. But I’ll get to be a real reporter. And the pictures I take will matter more than they do now. Quite a bit more.

  Lately I’ve been using a short lens with a fixed focal length. When I throw it wide open, it’s at f/1.4, which means that in normal light, only the teensiest bit of an image is in focus. Everything beyond the focus point looks soft and somewhat dreamy. It’s a creative choice not everyone would make. But imagine this. You open your morning paper, check the society column, and those beautiful people? They seem even more beautiful. The photos of them are artful—that’s what I’m going for. Good enough isn’t good enough. I want everything I do to be extraordinary. It has to be. It’s a high-water line, and I don’t hit it every time. But I think I have to try.

  I don’t kid myself—my column isn’t news. But I have a job in an industry that is dying. That makes me one of the lucky ones. It also makes me one of the ambitious ones. They don’t always cancel each other out. Even so, not everything is about ambition. Things can sometimes be very simple. There are times when I am laser-focused on being the best that I can be. At other times, my needs are pretty basic. So it wasn’t long before I was on a different mission, thanks to Erica’s news. I knew I had only a limited amount of time to find a desk for what was to become my home office.

  I’m lucky in another way too. I have a place to put a desk. Not everyone does. My apartment is in a nice part of the city. It is beyond what I could actually afford in this city, but I inherited it from a loving grandmother with both money and foresight.

  As she got older and began to suspect the way my life would go, she thought I was the one of her grandkids who could use her apartment. Rather than the cash she was planning to leave the others. After all, I was a girl. And I showed every sign of not spending the energy she thought I should in looking for a husband. She despaired of me ever making anything of myself. And she thought that at some point I’d need a place to hang my hat. It’s not a big apartment. But then, I don’t have a lot of hats.

  The apartment is on the west side of Vancouver, just a few minutes from the offices of the Vancouver Post by car. A few more minutes by bike and a good hour if I put rubber soles to pavement and walk. Though now that I no longer had a reason to go there every day, I was planning on doing that less often.

  The apartment is bright
and sunny, though small by anyone’s standards. In truth, there isn’t much room for new office furniture. Also, the apartment is pretty retro by virtue of having been decorated by my grandmother many years ago. So I needed a desk that would fit the decor. Not so old that was it was actually antique, but old enough to be cool. And since the newspaper had given me some money for the purpose of outfitting my office, I decided to take a good look around and get exactly the right desk. I wanted it to fit in but be functional for me as well. And for once, I wouldn’t even think about the cost. I wanted something really special.

  So I checked the usual places for people in my age group, but I decided I didn’t want a desk that arrived home flat and in a box. There were a number of very cool stores specializing in midcentury-type furniture. But I decided retro and new would make everything else in the apartment look shabby. I couldn’t afford to redecorate the whole place just because I needed a desk. Then I thought of buying something used, and I started checking auction catalogs. It didn’t take long before I found something that seemed perfect.

  The desk I settled on was Danish modern. The catalog said it had been owned by Morrison Brine, a well-known Vancouver architect who had recently passed away. I liked the desk’s smooth golden lines. And I liked the fact that it was a piece of furniture with some history. Best of all for me, it was exactly the size I needed. It would fit into the small available space between where I prepared my food—the kitchen—and where I sometimes consumed it—the dining area.

  Not only was the desk the right size. By some strange coincidence, the auction estimate was for exactly the funds I had available—eight hundred dollars. Which was a lot for me to spend on a desk. It would take all of the money the paper had given me for outfitting my home office and a few hundred of my own loot on top. Even so, I wanted it and I set out to have it.

  And I know a little bit about the way auction estimates can go. Quite often, auction items don’t meet their estimates. And the desk wasn’t in perfect condition. I went to the auction house to inspect it. There were a few scratches and some imperfections in the varnish, as well as some scars where someone had tried to open a locked drawer. I knew the scratches would be under my laptop when I was working on it, so what did I care? And there again, that perfect size. I’d brought a tape measure to be sure. I measured the desk again to confirm that it was just right. It seemed to me that it was meant to be my desk.