My stomach backed flipped to the sound of a funeral march in my head. Penny led me to a large windowed office with a brass plaque on the door that read: J.C. Thruster. Editor in chief.
Penny knocked at the glass door.
"Don't take it personally," she whispered. "J.C. Thruster arrived five years ago, like they all do, with dreams of grandeur. Know how many awards for scoops he collected in all this time?"
I shrugged to suggest it was too late to do any homework now. But I knew every there was to know about J.C. Thruster and his entire staff. My life might depend on learning their secrets. All their secrets.
"Put it this way," she whispered. "The New York Times ain't exactly knocking down his door."
Thruster, a bald man with a black beard, beckoned without looking up at us. In another century he could have been a pirate strutting the boards of a sailing ship destined to scupper my vessel. Penny pushed me in ahead of her.
J.C. seemed about ten years older than me. He was in fact, only five. He was good looking in a world weary sort of way. Thirty one going on fifty one in an ageless preppy cardigan with worn leather elbow patches and tobacco stains. Through the sadness of pools of crystal clear blue eyes and five day old stubble over his strong jawline, a good looking man struggled to the surface in a loser-doesn't-realize-way.
Penny slopped a coffee over the hard wood over-sized desk of J.C. Thruster, Editor in chief. She fussed at his side, picking lint off his shoulders.
Thruster squinted almost disbelievingly at my resume and after nearly two seconds of careful deliberation in what appeared to be quite painful mental gymnastics, he decided my resume was good enough to mop up the pool of coffee running across his desk and dripping onto his pants leg.
He glanced up at me. "What? You were expecting a standing ovation for choosing my paper to kick start your dream?"
"My last professor recommended me."
"I don't give a damn if your Professor's got a Pulitzer Prize propping up her pretty pink toilet seat."
He chomped on an unlit cigar as if that was what all great editors did to intimidate newbies. It was working. He padded all his pockets.
"Rampant ambition, Ms. White, may have shagged your way into my office, but I only pay for results."
"It's not a salaried internship?"
"Freelance. I pay by the word."
J.C. leaned in so close I felt my nostrils slapped with cheap cologne and cheaper cigar smoke all mixed into some kind of a vile coffee-breath potion. No doubt concocted by evil press editors around the world to incinerate unworthy interns.
His eyes seemed to drink in my fear. "How are you at making coffee?"
"It stays in the cup," I snapped.
He smiled and turned to Penny. "I like her. If you last a week I'll promote you to fax girl."
Penny chewed her fingernails. "J.C. we tweet, we text, we poke and occasionally email, but we most certainly never fax. It's a twenty first century thing, J.C."
His phone rang and he pointed to his office door as if indicating I should stop off at the dungeons and try out a few torture implements like the rack for a few days. Anything to stretch me into the right size for some full on abuse at a later date to be set at his convenience. Penny glanced at the incoming call number.
J.C. screamed into the phone. "Isadora, you can't quit because I just fired your little ass."
He stabbed his fingers at a thick and heavy block of glass and wood shaped like an old fashioned typewriter. As he hit the keys, a small flame shot out of the rolling pin shaped platen.
He bent over it and stuck one end of his cigar into the flame. He puffed great clouds of smoke into the air as he listened to the other caller.
He picked up the trophy.
Penny shuddered. "It's the only award he's ever won. It means more to him than anything and he's going to throw it at someone."
She grabbed the cigar out of his mouth and to my surprise and J.C's, she stubbed out the cigar in an ashtray. She then pried the award out of his hand and gave him a scolding look the way only lovers so. She set it down on the desk and quickly left.
She dragged me out and sat me down by her desk. Indicating the sticky circle on the desk vacated by her coffee cup would be my dungeon for the next semester.
Penny leaned over. "Can you wing it?"
"What's up?"
"Isadora Prim is down and out for the count."
"Who?"
"Our sex columnist."
J.C. Thruster threw his office phone through his open door and out across the newsroom. He stormed across to me and hurled my damp coffee stain resume in my face.
"Forty eight hours to impress me."
"I don't understand, are you offering me a column?"
He nodded and looked at his watch. "Miss White, you just wasted ten seconds of your deadline."
"But what do I write about?"
He scowled.
"I mean what do you want?"
"I want what my readers want."
"Which is?"
"Sex, Ms. White. Give me hot sweaty toe-curling sex. Make us think we all have a chance of getting laid before we die."
Penny rolled her eyes. It was then I noticed that a dozen people sat around computer screens, stopped what they were doing and began watching and listening. I felt myself burn.
Penny whispered to me. "Write what you know from the point of view of the average Kimberley graduate."
J.C. grunted impatiently. "I said that already. Miss Average, get out and expose your peer group's secrets."
I felt like thanking him for pointing out how average I appeared. It was true of course, but a girl prefers not to hear it with such an air of certainty.
Before I could stop myself, I admitted, "I don't know that much about..."
J.C. leaned in and scratched the tip of my nose with his two day beard. "You do know what sex is, Miss White?"
I'd heard of sex, of course. Sex was much like shopping with the lights out. You choose your aisle, fumble about in the dark and hope to Hell you come out the other end with the tasteless calorie free brand. Not the full fat, guaranteed to make you gag variety.
The truth that I wasn't about to admit to Thruster was this: She was another planet to me. Where other girls were giving it up in the back of their own Rust Buckets, I wanted more than a fumble in the backseat, followed by two minutes of painful grunts and thrusts. I wanted that elusive twenty first century taboo: Romance.
He thumped his great fists down on my desk spilling my coffee into the trash bin.
"I want fifty erotic vegetables and a hundred ways to orgasm."
"A hundred?" I gasped making it obvious I wasn't certain I knew of even one sure way to orgasm with anything edible, let alone a hundred.
I received the full force of his coffee and cigarette breath making me giddy with repulsion.
"Ms. White, I want the sex life of Kimberley campus and you have precisely forty seven hours and fifty eight minutes to expose yourself to your readers."
I hoped he didn't mean literally expose myself. I nodded with all the conviction of a rabbit in the head lights of a hunter.
"Are you going to give me hot rampant sex?" he bellowed.
My toes scrunched up tight and I mumbled timidly to myself. "Try fresh mints if you want to pass first base, J.C."
He pointed behind him to the revolving door. "Scrap heap is that way."
Putting it so charmingly how could I refuse his offer? Easily, was the answer. But not if I wanted to make it in this business. A career had to start somewhere. If only Kimberley Times was somewhere. I just needed to speak to someone who knows about sex. How hard could it be?
I made excuses I needed to research.
"Remember, no results, no money. Impress and I'll give you a special assignment. Got it?"
"Yeah toe-curling, I get it."
He turned to leave. Then stopped in his tracks and turned sharply, studying me up and down as if he'd only just noticed me for the first time. "You look
familiar. Got a sister I know of?"
I shook my head and lied. "I'm an only child."
He shrugged and left for the sanctuary of his office.
I whispered to Penny.
"Is it just me or is he the most loathsome man on the planet? Next to my ex of course."
Penny didn't hear me. She was busy gazing after J.C. and his trail of mayhem like a hurricane junkie fondly reminiscing about the upturned houses in the wake of a disaster. For a moment, from his glass office, J.C. stared through me and at Penny. Then, aware of her gaze over her horn rims he yanked the cord of his window blinds, near tearing down the ceiling as they rolled down, imprisoning him in his tower of isolation.
"Tell me there isn't a Mrs. Thruster hiding in the shadows?"
Penny looked away, blushed and spilt her coffee. She mumbled, "He's devoted to his work. He sleeps in his office half the time."
"You and J.C?" I tried not to sound too surprised. But she could do so much better.
"I'm married," she said as if in explanation of her loyalty to J.C. or her husband, but I wasn't sure which of them she meant. Maybe she wasn't either.
Her vulnerability vanished in an instant and once again she was hard faced and like ice.
"Don't you have something to be getting on with, like, I'm guessing... a career?"
I took the hint and left. But not before covertly slipping a small thumb drive into the desktop computer and uploading a program I was certain couldn't be detected by any firewall.
I ran back to Mai's apartment. I let myself in with the key she gave me. I called out, but there was no answer.
I went to my room and kicked off my shoes. I opened my laptop and entered my password.
A small box popped up on my screen:
Connecting to private network.
Connected... Kimberley Times network.
Status: Invisible.
I had hacked into the Kimberley Times.
It was time to learn their secrets.
CHAPTER FIVE
A tap at my bedroom door meant Mai was home. She called out. "I thought we'd celebrate. I brought takeaway. You hungry?"
I suddenly realized I was starving. I joined Mai in the kitchen. I say kitchen, but really it was big enough to run a cookery school. Everything was chrome or marble. No expense spared. And clean in a way that suggested it was until now, completely unused.
She sat at the table injecting herself with a syringe. She glanced up at me and smiled.
"I'm diabetic. I'm always forgetting to take my shots."
"I'll remind you."
We chatted over Chinese food and a glass of dry white that Mai retrieved from a wine rack that appeared at the snap of her fingers: literally.
"So tell me about your new job."
"How'd you know I got it?"
She laughed. "The jungle gossip drums have been pounding since you got here."
I couldn't believe it. "People are talking about me?"
"Kimberley talks about everyone... even the mysterious new fresher that went one to one with the Queen of Mean."
"Who?"
"Charity."
"Oh, the Plastic Princess."
Mai laughed so hard she choked on her deep fried crispy wanton.
Images of the wrecked Mercedes filled my head and suddenly I wasn't hungry anymore.
"I never did discover the owner of the second Mercedes."
Mai rolled her eyes and winked. "Why do you think I came looking for you?"
It suddenly dawned on me. "Oh my God, no?"
"Robyn, it's insured."
"But I'm not, Mai."
Her slender hand and impossibly long fingernails gently caressed my forearm.
"When I found you sitting on an island of cases in that flood I forgot all about my silly car."
Mai stifled a giggle.
"Robyn, I'm not going to sue you for the damage. That is, if you promise me one thing."
"What?"
"Let me show you off to the rest of campus and I'll forget about the whole thing."
My head was spinning with the shock of my roller coaster fortune. I could even contemplate picking at another wanton.
I learned Mai was quite the social butterfly. On the one hand, I needed desperately to remain as low profile as possible. But I wondered how Mai's social life could benefit my investigation.
"Show me off how?"
She whispered, "There's a very special Christmas Ball. Tickets are white hot. People will kill for them."
"A ball? As in dancing and ball gowns."
She nodded. "And masks. And carriages. It's very fairy tale"
"I'm not sure..."
"Good, it's settled."
I somehow got the sense that Mai was used to getting her own way. I felt a little guilty accepting once again her generosity of spirit. A part of me felt expertly manipulated, but I couldn't figure exactly why.
"Now, Robyn, confess your dark secrets."
I flushed hot. "My secrets?"
"Yes, silly... your first assignment. I hear J.C. Thruster really sticks it to the newbie recruits."
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"The ultimate guide to One hundred ways to orgasm with vegetables and other household appliances."
Mai, bless her, kept a straight face for all of two seconds before roaring with laughter.
After she caught her breath, she said, "Well, Robyn, you've come to the right place."
"What do you mean?"
She touched a kitchen surface and a drawer slid out. She reached inside and retrieved a long thin cucumber, a long thick and knobbly carrot and a perfectly curved banana. She turned back to me with a wicked glint in her eyes.
"Robyn, meet the top three on your list. Only ninety seven to go."
I shook with laughter and poured another glass. It was going to be a long session.
Two hours later, with the assistance of several glasses of wine, we had emptied every drawer in the apartment. Every cupboard had yielded its secrets. We had explored the alternative possibilities of every household implement with our imaginations, if not with practical knowledge.
Mai recounted her apparently extensive knowledge of alternative uses for everyday household gadget, including an electronic crystal dusting device attachment from a high-end vacuum cleaner, electric tooth brushes and the optimum washing machine spin cycles. She explained that even the deep shag carpet had a use I hadn't imagined. Although carpet burn was an occupational hazard.
At the end of our investigation I was somewhat enlightened on how dull an imagination I really had and just how limitless was Mai's.
The furthest I would let Mai explore the possibilities of each object, was to let her caress my hand or forearm. Though she did tease my neck and the back of my ears with some of the smaller objects like the ultra-soft bristles of a high-end toothbrush that apparently emitted vibration pulses according to the science of oral stimulation.
I was beginning to realize what a naughty joy and tease and not to mention a first rate flirt she was. I couldn't help wonder if she had a boyfriend. But in asking her I feared I'd open a Pandora's Box of curiosity into my own private life. I shouldn't have feared. She knew it all, already.
At least she thought she did.
I completed the assignment in record time, hit save on my word document and emailed it to J.C. Thruster.
I sighed with exhilaration, and if I secretly admit with a little horniness at all the sensual talk.
"So, Robyn, who's the guy in the picture frame?"
I bit my lower lip and rolled my eyes. "Ben. The ex."
"Who dumped who and why? And don't say it was by mutual consent. It never is."
I shrugged. "I wanted romance, not a fumble in the backseat jungle of my Rust Bucket Beetle."
She shrugged. "Twenty first century man does not do romance. Ever experienced true romance?"
Maybe it was the wine, but I let it slip. "I haven't actually experienced anything."
"Not even an
orgasm?"
"Well, maybe in my dreams."
She found the carrot and dropped to one knee in mock ceremony, "Robyn White, I hereby bestow upon you a good time with Mr. Carrot. May the two of you indulge in consensual bliss. It doesn't last long though. One of you will always begin to wilt and go off the other."
I laughed and pushed away her playful teasing of the carrot on my inner thigh.
"Don't worry, Robyn. Stick with me and I'll find you a romantic man, even if it kills us. In fact, what about the campus cop?"
I avoided Mai's eyes. How could I explain to her? "Officer Hotness? I don't think he was interested."
"Why do you think Charity went nuclear on you?"
"What do you mean?"
"They used to date. Though by date I mean hook up. He's not exactly the settling down type. But I hear he's quite romantic. So the rest would be up to you."
"I don't even know his name."
"Gunn. Deputy Sheriff Harry Gunn."
H.G? Is Officer Hotness the H.G in Madison's diary?
"Say I was interested in Deputy Gunn, how would I meet him?"
"With your driving skills, shouldn't be hard?"
"OK, how about a cheaper way of getting a date?"
Her brow furrowed.
"Harry's not exactly shy about asking out a girl. From what I've heard he's slept with half the Freshers here."
My skin crawled. "Real romantic..."
I needed to change the subject.
"What about you, Mai? Is there a Proxy carrot man in your life?"
Her eyes furtively avoided mine. "Sort of. It’s complicated. So what's next for you, now that you've conquered your first assignment?"
"Entirely thanks to you, Mai, hopefully I shall get a serious investigative assignment for the paper. Maybe even something under cover."
Her brow furrowed. "You're serious?"
"Sure. This campus has fifty thousand students and its own police force. There's got to be all sorts of social problems bubbling away under Kimberley's serene surface."
She adopted a look of concentration and glanced out of the window at the ugly gargoyles adorning the walls.
"I suppose there are secrets."
This was my first natural chance to delve into what Mai knew about Madison's death.
"Mai, I heard a student was killed last year."
Guilty Secrets (Campus Love and Murder Sorority Eyes Romance Book 1) Page 3
