Unleashed (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

by Berenson, Laurien

  Business as usual by the end of the week, when the copublisher had just been murdered? She had to be kidding. Maybe Aubrey was trying to put a good face on things in front of an outsider, I thought. Either that, or she was severely delusional.

  “Aubrey,” Carrie called, her hand cupped over the bottom half of the phone receiver. “Roger Lenahan on line one.”

  “Got it.” Aubrey spun away and strode back toward the room she’d come from earlier. Reaching the doorway, she paused. “Don’t let Tim tell you too many lies.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Aubrey,” Tim said when she’d closed the door behind her. His fingers twirled a pencil on his blotter. “She has issues.”

  “About what?”

  “Brian. Sheila and Brian. Aubrey and Brian. If you catch my drift.”

  Only an idiot wouldn’t.

  “So Sheila arrived and took Aubrey’s job?”

  “Sort of. Aubrey’s always been managing editor. She’s the one who has the experience, the know-how. She was with Dog Scene for nearly a decade.”

  His voice was reverent. As if Dog Scene was The New York Times or Vanity Fair, rather than a weekly wrap-up of dog show happenings; published on newsprint and chock full of ads placed by exhibitors who hoped to influence the upcoming judges. Ah, the innocence of youth.

  “Wow,” I said, matching his awed tone. “Brian was lucky to get her.”

  “You bet. When Sheila came on board, Aubrey’s job and title didn’t change, but she still got demoted. Because Brian made Sheila copublisher. They were like equal partners.”

  “So Sheila was Aubrey’s boss.”

  “Supposedly, yeah. But you could tell Aubrey didn’t buy that. She knew a lot more about the publishing business than Sheila did, so it’s not like she felt she needed to defer to her or anything.”

  “That must have made for some friction.”

  “Friction. Good word!” The pencil stopped mid-spin. “You mean like a motive for murder?”

  “I don’t know,” I said casually. “Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one who saw them together.”

  “They didn’t fight a lot, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Did they fight at all?”

  “Sure. Everybody here mixes it up at some point. Like Aubrey would have an idea to pitch and Sheila would say, ‘Oh, God! Not another transvestite handler story. Like that’s anything new!’ ”

  His imitation made me smile. He had Sheila down pat.

  “Then what would happen?”

  “Usually Brian would step in and make a decision. Bottom line, it’s his magazine, and he never lets anyone forget it, you know?”

  “I thought you just said that he and Sheila were equal partners.”

  “They are. They were.” Tim frowned. “But he was still in charge. I guess you could say he had seniority. I mean, we’ve all been here since winter. Sheila just started a couple of months ago. It’s not like he was going to let her walk in and take over.”

  “Why do you suppose Brian took her on as a partner?” I asked. Privately, I had my own theory about that, but I wanted to see what someone who didn’t know about their past history might come up with.

  “I wondered about that myself,” said Tim. “I know Sheila made some sort of investment in the magazine. I heard her say something about it once to Brian. But it’s not like Woof! needed the money. For a start-up, this place is pretty solid.

  “It’s not like we needed another writer either. Brian and Aubrey and I were doing pretty well digging up stories. This is the dog show world; people gossip. Heck, they were all but throwing stories in our laps.

  “Maybe we were all a little busier than we wanted to be, but nobody really minded. We were all really enthusiastic about getting Woof! off the ground, you know?”

  I nodded. He was enthusiastic still. If I were starting a magazine, I’d have hired Tim in a minute. Aubrey, for all her supposed publishing expertise, would have taken longer to win me over.

  “So then I wondered if maybe this was a personal thing,” said Tim. “Like maybe Sheila was the one who needed the help. It’s been pretty obvious to all of us around here that she and Brian were involved.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Not for me.”

  Interesting answer. “Meaning?”

  Tim lowered his voice, even though there was no one close enough to hear us. “I don’t have the hots for Brian.”

  “Does Aubrey?”

  Tim shrugged. “Maybe there was something between them in the past, nothing I’d know about for sure. Just a feeling I had when I first got here, that they seemed to know each other awfully well for two people who’d just started working together. Anyway, whatever it was, it’s over now.”

  If it wasn’t Aubrey’s resentment he was referring to, there was only one other choice. “Carrie?”

  “It’s not her fault,” he said. “It’s just that she’s so young.”

  Like he wasn’t.

  “And she was involved with Brian?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Tim looked horrified by my misunderstanding. “It’s more like she kind of has a crush on him. When he’s here, she follows him around the office like a lovesick puppy.”

  I smiled at the simile. “What does Brian think of that?”

  “Funny thing, it’s like he doesn’t even notice. He thinks Carrie’s just trying to be helpful.”

  “And is she helpful?”

  “Well yeah, sure. I mean, how hard is it to be a receptionist? Answer a few phone calls. Type a few letters. But Carrie’s always asking to do more. Asking Brian, that is. The rest of us she couldn’t care less about. She wants to be near him all the time.”

  “Was that a problem for Sheila?”

  “It was more like Sheila was a problem for Carrie. When Brian brought her in and introduced her around, you could tell Carrie was pissed. Of course, she smiled and made nice about it. She’s not dumb. But after that, she’d get back at Sheila in little ways.

  “Like she’d always fix a cup of coffee for Brian, but she never made any for Sheila. And when Sheila asked her, she’d make it wrong, fill the cup with sugar when she knew Sheila took it black. Or she’d manage to lose Sheila’s phone messages.

  “Then Carrie would be all apologetic, like she couldn’t figure out how she could have gotten so mixed up. Sheila was usually pretty nice about it, even though Carrie’s behavior must have been a real pain in the butt.”

  “Tim?” Aubrey’s voice called from the back office. “Are you busy?”

  “Yes,” he shouted back.

  “Are you working?”

  He thought for a moment, grinned at me, then answered, “Yes!”

  “Did you finish the edit on the Tar Heel Circuit story?”

  Sheesh, I thought. The office wasn’t that big. Rather than all this shouting back and forth, why didn’t Aubrey just walk the dozen steps out to where we were?

  “Hang on.” Tim rifled through the papers on the top of his desk, grabbed up several sheets that were paper-clipped together, and strode into the back room.

  Several minutes passed. I could hear Tim and Aubrey talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. A glance in Carrie’s direction revealed that she was sitting at her desk, thumbing through a fashion magazine. Since nobody seemed to mind my presence, I decided to wait it out.

  Five more minutes passed. I got up and walked over to the door. Carrie was reading an article entitled “How to Land the Man of Your Dreams.” How appropriate. She marked her page in the magazine with a finger and looked up.

  “Which office was Sheila Vaughn’s?” I asked.

  She seemed surprised by the question. “That one.” Carrie pointed to the room where Tim and Aubrey were conferring.

  “She shared an office with Aubrey?”

  “No.” Carrie pointed again, this time at the remaining work space. The desk top was clear, the computer turned off. “That’s Aubrey’s desk over
there. At least it was.”

  She hadn’t wasted any time, I thought. Sheila was barely gone and Aubrey was already staking out her turf.

  “What’s in there?” I asked. Two doors remained; both were dosed.

  “Brian’s office.” Carrie gestured toward the first, then the second. “Bathroom. Can I help you find something?”

  “No. I’m just being nosy.”

  “Oh.” Carrie smiled. She seemed to like the idea. “Okay.”

  “I was a friend of Sheila’s,” I said, just to see what sort of response I’d get.

  “Really? I didn’t think she had many friends.”

  “Why’s that?” I moved closer and perched on the edge of her desk. Nothing threatening, nothing confrontational about my posture. Just us girls, gabbing. It seemed to work.

  “Mostly just that she was new to the area. At least that’s what Brian said. When she came to work for the magazine, she was still getting settled in.”

  “I guess you must have been shocked to hear that she was murdered.”

  “Shocked doesn’t begin to describe it.” Carrie’s pink lips made a round O. “I was blown away. I mean, you hear about things like that on the news, but you never expect it to happen to anyone you know.”

  “I realize you didn’t know Sheila for very long, but while she was at the magazine, you had access to a large part of her life.” I thought of the missing phone messages, wondered if any had been critical. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill her?”

  “Who are you?” Carrie asked suspiciously. “Do you work for the police?”

  “No, I’m just a friend who’s trying to make some sense of what happened. Did the police talk to you?”

  “Not yet.” She sounded disappointed. “But they questioned Brian over the weekend. I’ll bet it was just like on TV. Maybe they’ll come here today. Do you think so?”

  “Could be. From what you saw, was Sheila working on any stories that could have placed her in danger? Maybe an exposé about something that someone would rather have kept quiet?”

  “Sure, all the time,” Carrie said proudly. “That’s what we do here at Woof!. We’ve got freedom of the press on our side. Like the first amendment and everything.”

  “Is there anyone in particular she might have made mad?”

  “Well Kenny Boyle, for one.” Carrie giggled. “He was really steamed when he called last week. I left the message on her desk where she’d be sure to see it. Mr. Boyle told me to write down what he said, word for word, so I did.

  “It said, ‘Run that story and you’ll be sorry. You ruin my life, bitch, and I’ll ruin yours.’”

  Fourteen

  I sat up. “Since the police haven’t been here to talk to you, maybe you should call them. I’m sure they’d want to hear about that.”

  “Really? You think? I heard on the news that Sheila was killed in a robbery. Kenny Boyle wouldn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “No, but it never hurts to explore all the options. Did you keep the message?”

  Carrie shook her head, and the blond curls danced. “Like I said, I put it on Sheila’s desk.”

  “What did she do with it?”

  “Read it, crumpled it up, and threw it away.”

  “Did she seem upset by it?”

  “Nah. She just sort of made a face. Kind of like she used to do when Marlon Dickie called.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Some photographer. He works freelance, but he takes lots of pictures for the magazine. Like if Brian wants to run a story, but we don’t have any photos to accompany it. Sometimes he hires Marlon to go to a dog show and grab a shot.

  “Brian says the people who buy Woof! like to look at pictures more than they like to read. Marlon says always make the picture as unflattering as possible. That way the readers will think the people in the stories are corrupt and ugly.”

  With a philosophy like that, it was no wonder Sheila used to grimace when Marlon called.

  “And Sheila didn’t like him much?”

  “I think she thought he was an okay photographer. It’s just that he called her a lot.”

  “A lot? About work, or about other things?”

  “How would I know that? It’s not like I listened in. Before Sheila came, Marlon used to check in once a week or so and see if Brian needed him for anything. After Sheila got here, he was calling every day. And he always asked to speak with her.”

  Interesting. I added Marlon Dickie to the list of people I wanted to see It already contained Kenny Boyle’s name. And Aubrey’s. Someday I’d love to catch her with her guard down.

  “Okay, Kenny Boyle was mad at Sheila because of the story she wrote. Was there anyone else who felt the same way?”

  Carrie pursed her lips. She tilted her head to one side and propped her index finger under her chin as she thought. The effect was not so much one of concentration, but a studied attempt to look cute.

  I wondered if she’d learned the pose in the magazine she was reading. And if it worked on me whether she’d try it on Brian next.

  “Well there was Alida Trent...” Carrie paused, waiting to see if the name meant anything to me.

  It didn’t.

  “You know,” Carrie prompted. “The steel heiress?”

  No help there. I live in Fairfield County. Woof!’s office was in Westchester. The entire region was lousy with heiresses. Alida Trent’s name didn’t ring any bells.

  “I take it she shows dogs?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Carrie’s head bobbed up and down. “Tons of them, according to Brian.”

  Good. That meant Aunt Peg would know who she was.

  “And she had a problem with Sheila, too?”

  “Sheila was researching her for a story about a Shih Tzu she’d leased. Alida Trent wasn’t happy about it. And with all her money, you could tell she wasn’t the kind of lady who was used to dealing with things she didn’t like.”

  “Did you ever hear her threaten Sheila?”

  “There was one time. Sheila had her on speaker phone and the whole office heard it. Mrs. Trent said she was going to sue Sheila’s skinny hick ass all the way back to the Midwest where it belonged.”

  I felt my lips twitch. “Is that a direct quote?”

  “Close enough.” Carrie grinned. “Sheila didn’t like being called a hick, I can tell you that. She slammed her office door so hard the whole wall shook. I think she was sorry she’d let all of us hear what Mrs. Trent had to say.”

  “I wonder why she did?” I mused.

  “Sometimes she could be like that. She always wanted everyone to think that her stories were a big deal. I guess that was her way of drawing attention to how hard she thought she was working.”

  I noted Carrie’s choice of words. Not how hard Sheila was working, but how hard she’d thought she’d been working. Carrie, with her big blue eyes and her crush on the boss.

  “Carrie, would you come here a minute?” Aubrey stuck her head out of the back office, where she’d been ensconced with Tim for the last twenty minutes. “Oh, Melanie, are you still here? I thought you’d gone.”

  “I was waiting for Tim—”

  “Maybe you could set up an appointment for another time?” Aubrey suggested. “You can see how busy things are.”

  Actually I couldn’t, but that seemed to be beside the point.

  “Especially with Brian and Sheila both out of the office, we’re all having to do double duty. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Certainly.” What I could understand was that Aubrey wanted me gone. I guessed this wouldn’t be a good time to ask to have a look at Sheila’s desk. “Please tell Tim good-bye for me.”

  “Will do.”

  “Nice meeting you, Carrie.”

  “Likewise.” She was already heading across the room.

  “If the police don’t come here, you might want to contact them about some of the things we’ve talked about.”

  “Yeah.” She turned and shrugged, h
er plump shoulders moving beneath her form-fitting T-shirt. “Maybe.”

  In the doorway behind her, Aubrey frowned. “Don’t worry. I’m in charge of things while Brian’s gone. I’ll take care of it.”

  Yeah, I thought, just as Carrie had done a moment earlier. Maybe.

  From White Plains, I headed north, taking 684 to the Katonah exit. Then I drove east on Route 35 to 121 north. It was just before noon when I reached North Salem.

  Turning onto Sheila’s road, I slowed as I approached her driveway. On my two previous visits, I hadn’t paid any attention to the other houses in the area. Most seemed to be of a more recent vintage than Sheila’s cottage: large colonials on spacious lots, probably built twenty years ago to offer harried city dwellers a suburban option when it came time to raise a family.

  Luckily, most of the driveways sported custom-made mailboxes; big, buff-colored fiberglass bins with pictures of Labrador puppies or ducks flying off into the sunset, and the home owner’s name personalized along the bottom. I located the house belonging to THE DONALD BENNING FAMILY with no problem.

  The Benning house sat much closer to the road than Sheila’s did. As I turned in the driveway, I wondered if her property ran along behind this one. If so, it would explain why Mrs. Benning had been able to hear the Pugs. Still, as with all the houses in the area, a buffer of woods separated the Benning house from its neighbors. Nancy Benning might have been able to hear some of what went on at Sheila’s house, but I doubted she’d been able to see much.

  A scooter and a tricycle littered the driveway. I drove carefully around both and had just stopped in front of the door when it opened.

  “See?” a small girl demanded. She turned and stuck her tongue out at someone standing behind her. “I told you someone was here!”

  Another little girl appeared, identical to the first, except for her clothes. One wore a T-shirt and shorts; the other, a frilly dress. Both had dark, wiry hair, and fair, freckled skin. I guessed their age at five or six, just younger than Davey.

  “Who are you?” the second girl asked as I walked up the step. “We’re waiting for our friend, Sarah, to come and play. You’re not Sarah’s mom.”

  “No, I’m Melanie Travis.” I hunkered down to their level. “I was hoping to talk to your mother. Is she home?”