Private Scandals

by Nora Roberts

  “Damn it, Dee, don’t get that warrior look on your face.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he told me, okay?” She tossed up her hands in disgust. “And I was supposed to keep my big mouth shut about the fact that he’s canceled the Rome shoot and anything else that takes him out of Chicago.”

  “I see.” Deanna lowered her eyes, brushed a speck of lint from her teal silk skirt.

  “No, you don’t see because you’ve got your blinders on. Do you really expect the man to fly gleefully across the Atlantic while this is going on? For Christ’s sake, he loves you.”

  “I’m aware of that.” But her spine was rigid. “I have things to do myself,” she said, and stormed out.

  “Good going, Myers.” Muttering oaths, Fran snatched up the dressing room phone and called up to Finn’s office. If she’d inadvertently started a war, the least she could do was tell him to be fully armed.

  In his office above the newsroom, Finn replaced the receiver and sent a scowl at Barlow James. “You’re about to get some reinforcements. Deanna’s on her way up.”

  “Fine.” Pleased, Barlow settled back in his chair, stretched his burly arms. “We’ll get all this settled once and for all.”

  “It is settled, Barlow. I’m not traveling more than an hour away from home until the police make an arrest.”

  “Finn, I understand your concerns for Deanna. I have them as well. But you’re short-sheeting the show. You’re overreacting.”

  “Really?” Finn’s voice was cool, deceptively so. “And I thought I was taking two murders and the harassment of the woman I love so well.”

  Sarcasm didn’t deflate Barlow. “My point is that she can obtain round-the-clock protection. Professionals. God knows a woman in her financial position can afford the very best. Not to slight your manhood, Finn, but you’re a reporter, not a bodyguard. And,” he continued before Finn could respond, “as skilled a reporter as you are, you are not a detective. Let the police do their job and you do yours. You have a responsibility to the show, to the people who work with you. To the network, to the sponsors. You have a contract, Finn. You’re legally bound to travel whenever and wherever news is breaking. You agreed to those terms. Hell, you demanded them.”

  “Sue me,” Finn invited, eyes gleaming in anticipation of a bout. He glanced up as the door slammed open.

  She stood there in her snazzy silk suit, eyes flashing, chin angled. Each stride a challenge, she marched to his desk, slapped her palms on the surface.

  “I won’t have it.”

  He didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t understand. “You don’t have any say in this, Deanna. It’s my choice.”

  “You weren’t even going to tell me. You were just going to make some lame excuse about why the trip was canceled. You’d have lied to me.”

  He’d have killed for her, he thought, and shrugged. “Now that’s not necessary.” He leaned back in the chair, steepled his fingers. Though he was wearing a sweater and jeans, he looked every inch the star. “How did the show go this morning?”

  “Stop it. Just stop it.” She whirled, jabbing a finger at Barlow. “You can order him to go, can’t you?”

  “I thought I could.” He lifted his hands, let them fall. “I came from New York hoping to make him see reason. I should have known better.” With a sigh, he rose. “I’ll be in the newsroom for the next hour or so. If you fare any better than I did, let me know.”

  Finn waited until the door clicked shut. The sound was as definitive as that of the bell in a boxing ring. “You won’t, Deanna, so you might as well accept it.”

  “I want you to go,” she said, spacing each word carefully. “I don’t want our lives to be interfered with. It’s important to me.”

  “You’re important to me.”

  “Then do this for me.”

  He picked up a pencil, ran it through his fingers once, twice, then snapped it neatly in two. “No.”

  “Your career could be on the line.”

  He tilted his head as if considering it. And damn him, his dimples winked at her. “I don’t think so.”

  He was, she thought, as sturdy, as unshakable and as unmovable as granite. “They could cancel your show.”

  “Throw out the baby with the bathwater?” Though he wasn’t feeling particularly calm, he levered back, propped his feet on the desk. “I’ve known network execs to do dumber things, so let’s say they decide to cancel a highly rated, profitable and award-winning show because I’m not going on the road for a while.” He stared up at her, his eyes darkly amused. “I guess you’d have to support me while I’m unemployed. I might get to like it and retire completely. Take up gardening or golf. No, I know. I’ll be your business manager. You’d be the star—you know, like a country-western singer.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Finn.”

  “It isn’t a tragedy, either.” His phone rang. Finn picked up the receiver, said, “Later,” and hung up again. “I’m sticking, Deanna. I can’t keep up with the investigation if I’m off in Europe.”

  “Why do you need to keep up with it?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what you’ve been doing? Why there was a rerun last Tuesday night? All those calls from Jenner. You’re not working on In Depth, you’re working with him.”

  “He doesn’t have a problem with it. Why should you?”

  She spun away. “I hate this. I hate that our private and professional lives are becoming mixed and unbalanced. I hate being scared this way. Jumping every time there’s a noise in the hall, or bracing whenever the elevator door opens.”

  “That’s my point. That’s exactly how I feel. Come here.” He held out a hand, gripping hers when she walked around the desk. With his eyes on hers, he drew her into his lap. “I’m scared, Deanna, right down to the bone.”

  Her lips parted in surprise. “You never said so.”

  “Maybe I should have. Male pride’s a twitchy business. The fact is, I need to be here, I need to be involved, to know what’s happening. It’s the only way I’ve got to fight back the fear.”

  “Just promise me you won’t take any chances, any risks.”

  “He’s not going after me, Deanna.”

  “I want to be sure of that.” She closed her eyes. But she wasn’t sure.

  After Deanna left, Finn went down to the video vault. An idea had been niggling at him since Marshall’s murder, the notion that he’d forgotten something. Or overlooked it.

  All Barlow’s talk about responsibilities, loyalties, had triggered a memory. Finn skimmed through the black forest of video cases until he found February 1992.

  He slipped the cassette into the machine, fast-forwarding through news reports, local, world, weather, sports. He wasn’t sure of the precise date, or how much coverage there had been. But he was certain Lew McNeil’s previous Chicago connection would have warranted at least one full report on his murder.

  He got more than he’d hoped for.

  Finn slowed the tape to normal, eyes narrowing as he focused in on the CBC reporter standing on the snowy sidewalk.

  “Violence struck in the early morning hours in this affluent New York neighborhood. Lewis McNeil, senior producer of the popular talk show Angela’s, was gunned down outside his home in Brooklyn Heights this morning. According to a police source, McNeil, a Chicago native, was apparently leaving for work when he was shot at close range. McNeil’s wife was in the house . . . .” The camera did its slow pan. “She was awakened shortly after seven A.M. by the sound of a gunshot.”

  Finn listened to the rest of the report, eyes fixed. Grimly, he zipped through another week of news, gathering snippets on the McNeil murder investigation.

  He tucked his notes away and headed into the newsroom. He found Joe as the cameraman was heading out on assignment.

  “Question.”

  “Make it a quick one. I’m on the clock.”

  “February ninety-two. Lew McNeil’s murder. That was your camerawork on the New York stand-up, wasn’t it?”
>
  “What can I say?” Joe polished his nails on his sweatshirt. “My art is distinctive.”

  “Right. Where was he shot?”

  “As I recall, right outside his house.” As he thought back, Joe reached into his hip pocket for a Baby Ruth. “Yeah, they said it looked like he was cleaning off his car.”

  “No, I mean anatomically. Chest, gut, head? None of the reports I reviewed said.”

  “Oh.” Joe frowned, shutting his eyes as if to bring the scene back to mind. “They’d cleaned up pretty good by the time we got there. Never saw the stiff.” He opened his eyes. “Did you know Lew?”

  “Some.”

  “Yeah, me too. Tough.” He bit off a hefty section of chocolate. “Why the interest?”

  “Something I’m working on. Didn’t your reporter ask the cops for details?”

  “Who was that—Clemente, right? Didn’t last around here very long. Sloppy, you know? I can’t say if he did or not. Look, I’ve got to split.” He headed for the stairs, then rapped his knuckles on the side of his head. “Yeah, yeah.” He headed up the steps backward, watching Finn. “Seems to me I heard one of the other reporters talking. He said Lew caught the bullet in the face. Nasty, huh?”

  “Yeah.” A grim satisfaction swam through Finn’s blood. “Very nasty.”

  Jenner munched a midmorning danish, washing down the cherry filling with sweetened coffee. As he ate and sipped, he studied the grisly photos tacked to the corkboard. The conference room was quiet now, but he’d left the blinds open on the glass door that separated it from the bull pen of the precinct.

  Angela Perkins. Marshall Pike. He stared at what had been done to them. If he stared long enough, he knew he could go into a kind of trance—a state of mind that left the brain clear for ideas, for possibilities.

  He was just annoyed enough at Finn for emotion to interfere with intellect. The man should have told him the details of his conversation with Pike. However slight it had been, it had been police business. The idea of Finn interviewing Pike alone burned Jenner more bitterly than the station house coffee.

  He remembered their last meeting, in the early hours of the morning that Pike had been murdered.

  “We’re clear that the shooter knows Miss Reynolds.” Jenner ticked the fact off on a finger. “Was aware of her relationship, or at least her argument, with Pike.” He held up a second finger. “He or she knows Deanna’s address, knew Pike’s and had enough knowledge of the studio to set up the camera after killing Angela Perkins.”

  “Agreed.”

  “The notes have shown up under Deanna’s door, on her desk, in her car, in the apartment she still keeps in Old Town.” Jenner had lifted a brow, hoping that Finn would offer some explanation for that interesting fact. But he hadn’t. Finn knew how to keep information to himself. It was one of the things Jenner admired about him. “It has to be someone who works at CBC,” Jenner concluded.

  “Agreed. In theory.” Finn smiled when Jenner let out a huff of breath. “It could be someone who worked there. It’s possible it’s a fan of Deanna’s who’s been in the studio. A regular audience member. Lots of people have enough rudimentary knowledge of television to work a camera for a still shot.”

  “I think that’s stretching it.”

  “So let’s stretch it. He sees her every day on TV.”

  “Could be a woman.”

  Finn let that cook a moment, then shook his head. “A remote possibility. Let’s shuffle that aside for a minute and try out this theory: It’s a man, a lonely, frustrated man. He lives alone, but every day Deanna slips through the television screen right into his living room. She’s sitting right there with him, talking to him, smiling at him. He’s not lonely when she’s there. And he wants her there all the time. He doesn’t do well with women. He’s a little afraid of them. He’s a good planner, probably holds down a decent job, a responsible one, because he knows how to think things through. He’s thorough, meticulous.”

  Impressed, Jenner pursed his lips. “Sounds like you’ve done your homework.”

  “I have. Because I’m in love with Deanna I think I understand him. Thing is, he’s got this temper, this rage. He didn’t kill in a rage. I think he did that coolly.” And that was what chilled Finn’s blood. “But he trashes my house, Deanna’s office. He writes his feelings of betrayal on the wall. All but splatters them there. How did she betray him? What changed from the time she got the first note to Angela’s murder?”

  “She hooked up with you?”

  “She’d been involved with me for two years.” Finn leaned forward. “We got engaged, Jenner. The official announcement had barely hit the streets when we had Angela’s murder and the break-ins.”

  “So he killed Angela because he was ticked at Deanna Reynolds?”

  “He killed Angela, and Pike, because he loves Deanna Reynolds. What better way to show his devotion than to remove people who upset or annoy her? He trashed her things, taking special care with the wedding-gown sketches, the newspaper reports of the engagement, photographs of Deanna and me. He was enraged because she’d announced, publicly, that she preferred another man to him. That she was willing to take vows to prove it.”

  Nodding slowly, Jenner doodled on a sheet of paper. “Maybe you didn’t get your psychiatrist’s degree at Sears. Why hasn’t he gone after you?”

  Instinctively, Finn reached up to run his fingers over his sleeve. Beneath it was a scar from a bullet. A bullet that hadn’t come from the sniper or the SWAT team. But he couldn’t be sure. “Because I haven’t done anything to hurt Deanna. Marshall did, on the day he was killed, and a couple of years ago, when he fell into Angela’s trap.”

  “I should have talked to him.” Jenner tapped a fist lightly on his files. “He could have known something, seen something. It’s possible he’d received threats.”

  “I doubt that. He was the type who’d have come running to the cops. Or he would have told me when I talked with him.”

  “You were too busy beating him up.”

  “I didn’t beat him up.” Finn folded his arms across his chest. “He swung, I swung. Once. In any case, I meant he would have told me when I talked to him at his office a few days ago.”

  Jenner stopped doodling. “You went to see him about Angela Perkins’s murder?”

  “It was a theory.”

  “One you didn’t feel necessary to share?”

  “It was personal.”

  “Nothing’s personal on this, nothing.” Jenner edged forward, eyes narrowed. “I’ve let you in on this investigation because I think you’re a smart man, and I sympathize with your position. But you cross me and you’re out.”

  “I’ll do what I have to do, Lieutenant, with or without you.”

  “Reporters aren’t the only ones who can harass. Keep that in mind.” Jenner closed his file, rose. “Now I have work to do.”

  No, Jenner thought now, sympathy and admiration aside, he wasn’t about to let Finn go off on his own. He might be wearing blinders to the fact that his life was in danger, but Jenner knew better.

  He rose to refill his coffee cup, and glanced through the glass door. “Speak of the devil,” he murmured. Jenner pulled open the door. “Looking for me?” he asked Finn, and waved away the uniform who was blocking Finn’s path. “It’s all right, officer. I’ll see Mr. Riley.” He nodded briefly at Finn. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  “It’s going to take a little longer.” Finn studied the police photos on the board dispassionately. There were snapshots of both victims taken prior to and after death. Side by side, they were like before-and-after shots gone desperately wrong. “You’re going to need to put one more set up there.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jenner completed his conversation with the detective in Brooklyn Heights. “They’re faxing us the file,” he told Finn. “Okay, Mr. Riley, who knew that McNeil was passing information on to Angela?”

  “Deanna’s staff. I’d be certain of that. I’d also give odds that it would have leaked downs
tairs.” There was an excitement brewing in him now. The kind he recognized as energy from a puzzle nearly solved. “There’s always been a lot of interaction between Deanna’s people and the newsroom. Are we on the same wavelength here? Three people are dead because they threatened Deanna in some way.”

  “I can’t comment about that, Mr. Riley.”

  Finn shoved back from the table. “Damn it, I’m not here as a reporter. I’m not looking for a scoop, the latest tidbit from an unnamed police source. You want to frisk me for a mike?”

  “I don’t think you’re after a story, Mr. Riley,” Jenner said calmly. “If I’d ever thought that, you never would have gotten your foot in the door. But maybe I think you’re too used to doing things