A Meeting In The Ladies' Room

by Anita Doreen Diggs

  “What are you drinking, kiddo?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Ginger ale.”

  “What?”

  “I have to keep my head real clear for the next few weeks, Pam.”

  She nodded soberly. “When does the trial start?”

  “In three weeks.”

  “Are you frightened?”

  Was I frightened? Not at that exact moment. My adrenaline was pumping too high and the desire for revenge was too prominent in my mind for fear to sneak its way in. But I couldn’t say all this to Pam without scaring her away.

  “Yeah, I’m terrified.”

  She downed the contents of her glass and summoned the bartender. “Another straight Scotch for me and a ginger ale for my friend.”

  “Pam, I need you to do me a huge favor.”

  “Is it exciting, illegal, unethical, or immoral?” Her face was creased in a huge grin like a mischievous schoolgirl.

  “Unethical,” I replied.

  The bartender placed a fresh drink in front of her and I let her sip on it for a few minutes. In the meantime, I took stock of the customers around me. There were no other Black people in the room but I was used to that. There were more women than men at the bar and a lot of couples eating in the dining room.

  “What is it that you need me to do?”

  “Huh?”

  “What is the unscrupulous behavior that you want me to engage in?”

  I turned my back on the dining room and got back to business. “How would you like to acquire a book by Tiffany Nixon?”

  Pam made a face. “What is she writing about and why do you, of all people, want to help her?”

  “I’m not trying to help her, Pam.”

  Silence. Pam was eyeing me impatiently, hoping that I’d get to the point as quickly as possible. I didn’t blame her.

  “I just wondered if you would approach Nixon about the possibility of doing a book on a subject of her choosing.”

  “And if she says yes?”

  “Then, as an editor, you would not be out of line if you asked her for a resumé, all the biographical information that she has, plus a collection of every story she has ever written.”

  Pam’s mouth was hanging open.

  “Then,” I continued, “you could make a copy of everything she gives you and pass the copied file on to me. If the two of you meet and a good book idea comes out of it, then please feel free to publish it. I won’t have any hard feelings.”

  Pam’s mouth closed.

  “If you don’t like anything she has to say, simply send her back the material and call it a day. Editors do that all the time—she’ll have no reason to be suspicious.”

  Pam let out a whoosh of air. “What are you going to do with the information?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to jinx my plan by talking about it.”

  She suddenly looked worried. “Jackie, I’m your friend but you’ll have to give me some time to think about this.”

  “How much time, Pam?”

  “At least a week.”

  It was far too long, but what could I do?

  In the meantime, I turned my thoughts to the possible motive of Sarah Jane Welburn Rizzelli. What would make a woman kill her own sister? Paul said that it was either money or a man.

  I was coming out of the drugstore one afternoon, mulling over ways to find out more about Sarah Jane, when I heard someone call my name. When I turned around, a blast of liquid hit me in the face and then a fierce blow landed in my stomach. I fell to the ground, holding my face, with my eyes squeezed tight shut, and screaming.

  I heard voices above me:

  “Lady, are you all right?”

  “Somebody call the police!”

  “I saw who did it. It was a female and she ran around the corner.”

  “Don’t move, an ambulance is on the way!”

  By the time paramedics arrived, the pain in my stomach had subsided and I realized that the liquid was not acid . . . only lukewarm coffee. I jumped in a cab to get away from the crowd that had gathered.

  29

  ANNABELLE ON THE DOWN LOW

  It was hard to tell who was angrier. Both Keith and Paul were huffing and puffing so hard, they looked like blowfish.

  I was lying on the sofa, hoping that the attack on me wouldn’t make the papers. It might give my poor mama a heart attack.

  “Jackie, did the woman’s voice sound familiar?”

  “I think so, but I’m really not sure.”

  “That’s very important,” Keith asserted. “We need to know whether it was just some nut who recognized you from all the media coverage and threw the coffee at you on impulse, or is there a woman following you around?”

  Paul pounded his fist into his palm. “This woman threw coffee in her face and punched her in the stomach. Instead of a fist, it could just as easily have been a knife. What are you going to do to keep her safe, Keith?”

  “She can stay in this house and not go out that door for any reason or I can have one of my men take her everywhere she wants to go. The choice is hers.”

  Paul calmed down. “I like the second idea.”

  “No,” I protested. “That isn’t going to work for me.”

  “Jackie, you could have been killed today,” said Paul.

  “I don’t care. Being followed around all the time would be worse than death. But there is something else at stake here. If this was a random act, it only drives home what I’ve been saying about the need to clear my name. Otherwise, I’ll have to watch my back for the rest of my life.”

  Keith shook his head. “Jackie, we’ve been through this before. I have my suspicions about what happened to Annabelle and why, but as of right now, there is still no way for me to prove it.”

  “You’re right. I just needed to hear you say that one more time.”

  Keith didn’t pick up on the warning. Someday he would learn that I had taken matters into my own hands, but he wouldn’t be able to say that I did not give him a chance.

  “Will you tell me what your suspicions are?”

  “Yes, but not now.”

  My head drooped.

  “However, I do have some news about Victor Bell that may interest the two of you.”

  My eyes widened with curiosity.

  Paul glowered. “What is it?”

  Keith grinned. “He was having an affair with Annabelle Murray.”

  “What!” Paul and I screamed in unison.

  “I don’t believe it,” Paul said. “Why would a rich and beautiful woman want to fool around with that creep? In fact, how did she even know he existed?”

  “He met her at the Book Expo convention in Chicago a few years ago. They had drinks. They went to her hotel room and had sex. Things must have gone extremely well that night because they continued to see each other quite a bit over the past few years.”

  Fireworks went off in my head and I sat bolt upright. “Do you think Victor killed her?”

  Keith shook his head. “No. He was having breakfast with another member of your Black Pack when Annabelle was killed.”

  “Joe Long,” I guessed.

  “Right.”

  Paul shrugged. “I don’t care about all that. I just want you to tell Jackie that she has to have the bodyguard.”

  Keith looked at his watch. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to wrestle with the bodyguard issue. In the meantime, I’m going to try and get my hands on any security video cameras that may be in the area. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a moving image of this woman in action. Grabbing her won’t be difficult once we know what she looks like.”

  We didn’t get lucky and I refused to accept a bodyguard or stay in the house. As a result, Paul spent more time at my place than he did at his own.

  30

  PAM’S FOLDER

  So Victor liked white girls, which explained why I’d never had a chance. Annabelle was a tramp and had probably been one since
the day Craig married her, which was why Dora appeared to be of Mediterranean descent. Keith said none of this shed any light on who Dora’s father actually was or if he had anything to do with Annabelle’s murder.

  I was surfing the Internet looking for information on Tiffany Nixon one morning and wondering if Pam Bernstein would ever contact me again, when her folder arrived by messenger. I forced all thoughts about Victor and his disgusting little life out of my mind to concentrate on the task before me.

  On the surface, the thick dossier that Pam provided didn’t seem very interesting. Everything was meticulously typed and in chronological order—I would have to investigate each piece of paper line by line and hope to strike paydirt.

  Elaine was fascinated by this turn of events. Even though I never used Pam Silberstein’s name, I’m sure she figured it out. Pam would become the book’s Deep Throat.

  There are skeletons in everyone’s closet, I told myself, hoping that when the bones tumbled out of Tiffany Nixon’s cupboard there would be a Janet Cooke/ Jimmy’s World carcass somewhere in the debris.

  Janet Cooke was once a respected journalist at the Washington Post. On September 29, 1980, she published “Jimmy’s World,” a heartrending tale of a grade school heroin addict. According to Ms. Cooke, Jimmy was “eight years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes, and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms.” The public was outraged. They wrote and called the Washington Post, demanding the boy’s immediate rescue from his horrific home life. When Janet declined to give his address, saying that drug dealers would kill her if she did, the government stepped in to search for the tot. Their efforts were fruitless but the story was so well written that on April 13, 1981, Janet was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The intense media interest in Janet and Jimmy caused her story to unravel faster than a ball of yarn in a cat’s paw. It turned out that there was no Jimmy. She had made the whole thing up. Forced to return the prize and resign in humiliation, Janet became unemployable and was last seen selling women’s garments at a department store in the Midwest.

  What if I investigated every story that Tiffany Nixon had ever written and found something close to a Jimmy? And what if I used that information to gain her cooperation—I could feed her information that would make Annabelle’s killer panic and make a mistake.

  Unbelievable? Maybe . . . but so was Jimmy, and yet the powers-that-be had swallowed that story whole without even seeing the boy.

  While reflecting on my scheme, I became conscious of how much I had changed in such a short time. “Sister,” I now realized, is an empty label unless both women want to claim kinship.

  Alas, Tiffany Nixon had taught me the art of character assassination and I had always been a conscientious student.

  At least I would give her a chance to salvage her career—it was far more than she had done for me.

  I imagined myself lying in wait for Tiffany when she got off work late one evening and stepping out of the shadows, waving her past improprieties in her face like some evil flag.

  According to the information in the folder that Pam had given me, Tiffany Nixon was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but she was an army brat. The family moved often and she didn’t spend much time in any one school until she entered Mount Holyoke College in 1975. The reporter was single, asthmatic, lived on 71st Street between Broadway and West End Avenue, played the flute as a hobby, saw her parents on holidays, and didn’t particularly care for her three sisters: Janus, Eleanor, and Oona. In fact, I found a two-year-old column in the folder that she wrote about her family which was downright vicious.

  WE CAN’T CHOOSE OUR RELATIVES

  by Tiffany Nixon

  I’m from a totally screwed-up family. No, I didn’t grow up in a single-parent home nor were we poor.

  We just didn’t like each other.

  There were four girls: me, Janus, Eleanor, and Oona. I’m the youngest.

  Mother’s favorite was Eleanor, while Pop leaned toward Janus and Oona.

  No one, including my siblings, liked me at all. Why? Because I’m the dark one. Dark as in too much melanin in the skin to suit them. And so I was ridiculed and ignored.

  My parents mercifully have died, but there are still three women out there who claim sisterhood with me at their convenience. You see, as a columnist, I mingle with the rich, famous, celebrated, and infamous. My “sisters” have no problem calling or e-mailing when they want concert tickets or an introduction to someone who can help them get ahead in some way.

  Sometimes I help out, but mostly I don’t.

  I say all of this to remind my readers to avoid fake and forced cheer during this holiday season. Spend time with people you like and who like you back. Do not feel obligated to spend time with people you detest, simply because they are biologically connected to you.

  I stopped doing that a long time ago.

  I will spend tomorrow opening presents with a group of my friends and enjoy myself tremendously. Please do the same.

  Merry Christmas!

  This was great news—if she didn’t like her siblings, the feeling was probably mutual—which meant they might talk to me. The problem was, Janus lived in Philadelphia, Eleanor was overseas with her husband, Oona’s home was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and I was not allowed to leave New York State. Who would be willing to go on the road for me and what could I offer that person in return?

  31

  BROTHERS

  I dressed like the corporate executive I used to be—a navy blue suit, flesh-colored stockings, and black pumps. No one who glanced my way would equate me with the wild-eyed creature in the televised mug shot. The restaurant/bar called Brothers was located on Hudson Street, a few blocks away.

  She was nowhere in sight. I was only twenty minutes late. Had she come and gone? I described her to a passing waitress, who said she didn’t remember seeing anyone who fit that description.

  I passed the time sipping ginger ale at a little table away from the window and kept my back to the aging preppies enjoying Happy Hour at the bar. It was a spacious establishment with comfy armchairs, a blond wood floor, ceiling fans, and pictures of famous rock musicians like Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, and Alice Cooper. A tape of their hits played quietly as a backdrop.

  Alyssa Kraft showed up just as I was giving up hope. She was wearing black jeans, a gray silk tee shirt, and strappy silver sandals. A stream of apologies fell from her lips as she eased her five-foot, nine-inch frame into the seat across from me. We ordered drinks and catfish sandwiches.

  “How are you, Jackie?”

  I sighed. “Bewildered, scared, angry, and tired.”

  She looked at me with pity in her eyes. “How can I help?”

  “I need you to do me a huge favor.”

  “Do you need money?”

  “No.”

  We were quiet for a moment while I summoned up the nerve to ask for what I needed.

  “Tell me,” Alyssa said softly.

  My words bumped up against each other in my hurry to get them out. “Alyssa, I don’t want you to feel obligated to do this. If the idea makes you nervous, just tell me and I promise not to hold it against you.”

  She nodded.

  The waitress set our drinks on the table. We waited until she was gone before continuing our conversation.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Some traveling.”

  She listened intently with her head cocked to one side.

  “Philadelphia and a place in Wisconsin.”

  “To see . . .”

  “I need you to go see two women. They are sisters, but neither one of them can know that you’re in touch with the other one. You’ll have to lie and say that you’re an official person from the committee that awards the Pulitzer Prize. You’re there to investigate the background of a reporter who is in line to receive that prize. Understand?”

  “Is this reporter really i
n line for a Pulitzer?”

  “No.”

  She looked wary. “This sounds illegal.”

  “I don’t know if it is or isn’t,” I told her frankly.

  “Go on.”

  “You’re investigating the background of a woman named Tiffany Nixon.”

  “Isn’t she the reporter who is always writing about you?”

  “Yes. And the two women you’re going to see are both her sisters. She hates them enough to write about it and I’m hoping that they feel the same way. I need anything bad they can tell you about Tiffany . . . something that would interest the editors of the Comet.”

  She whistled. “Holy shit!”

  I continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “Alyssa, you’ll have to work fast and you can only visit each house one time.”

  Alyssa swallowed a huge gulp of her drink. “When do I leave?”

  We clicked glasses in a toast.

  32

  A NEW DEAL

  Blackmail focuses the brain.

  Would I ruin Tiffany Nixon’s career if she didn’t play ball? Was I capable of living with the guilt that would accompany such an act? I couldn’t help going over and over the possible karmic results of blackmail, unsure of how big a price the universe would force me to pay.

  Alyssa didn’t turn up much, but combined with certain inconsistencies that had arisen from my fact-checking, it was enough for me to proceed.

  How should I approach Tiffany Nixon? I weighed my choices carefully.

  A letter sent through the mail was one way to do it. But I would have no way of gauging her reaction. It was also a piece of physical evidence that could be turned over to the district attorney.

  Calling her was not an option. According to the file, Tiffany had a taping device attached to the phone at the office which recorded all of her incoming and outgoing calls. Did she have such a system in her home as well? I couldn’t take that chance. It was clear that I’d have to pay Miss Nixon a visit.