Confessions of a Red Herring

by Dana Dratch

  “That’s part of the reason we came here first,” he said, staring into the eyes of his bride, who had managed to curl herself into his lap. “This all happened so suddenly. We need a few days before we spring the news. I sold the farm, but I haven’t exactly gotten settled in a new business yet. And I’d like to have that in the works before I talk to everybody. You know how they are. Gabby and I were hoping we could crash here. Just for a week or so.”

  Double crap. The whole reason I’d been able to afford my cute little house on a newspaper salary is because it’s so damned tiny. My mother, who constantly compares my paycheck to that of my fashionista older sister, refers to it as “that darling little doll’s house.” As in, “when you grow up and move out of that darling little doll’s house and into a real home.”

  And it wasn’t like I could get away from them by going to work anytime soon. Come to think of it, how was I going to feed us all?

  “Well, the truth is, I’m having some problems myself right now,” I said, addressing myself to Nick. “I’m temporarily between jobs. And I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to make the next mortgage payment, much less groceries for the next week or so.”

  I was hoping at this point he’d jump in. He didn’t.

  But she did.

  “Well, that’s perfect,” Gabrielle squealed with a perkiness that was definitely way over the top for my out-of-work, out-of-money predicament. At this rate, if I told her I was a murder suspect, she’d probably have an orgasm.

  Nick gazed into her face like a golden retriever on Valium.

  “We have a little money squirreled away,” she said. “We can pay rent and groceries. And you won’t even know we’re here.”

  OK, I knew that last part was a lie. But I was seriously tempted by the idea of not losing my home and being able to eat until I could find someone who would actually hire a murder suspect.

  “Well, if you don’t mind the guest room . . .”

  Nick and Gabrielle beamed. And I hoped I hadn’t just made a big mistake.

  Chapter 3

  The definition of a friend: someone who will help you move. The definition of a good friend: someone who will help you move the body.

  Thank God for good friends.

  At seven the next morning, I was sharing a pot of coffee with my very best friend, Trip Cabot, in a greasy spoon two blocks from my house. Right off the town square and across from the county courthouse, Simon’s was a local institution.

  Our former congressman pressed the flesh here before he got elected and took every lunch break here during his trial. Rumor has it, Simon’s even catered his first meal behind bars. But none of us could confirm it.

  It’s also where the seventy-plus set meets every morning to talk about how they’d run the world and which way the next political wind is blowing. I love the place. But this morning, any Burger King in a storm would be just as welcome.

  “Jeez, Red, you look awful,” was the first thing out of Trip’s mouth.

  I glared at him. “Nick and his new bride got into town last night. I got about three hours’ sleep.”

  “Late night catching up? How are the emus?”

  “I wish. He sold the farm. Married some cocktail waitress from Vegas. And let’s just say she’s a screamer.”

  “No! Sweet little Nicky?”

  I winced and shook my head. “At one point, I thought they were going to come through the wall. I was seriously thinking about sleeping in my car.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Put it this way, when Mrs. Simon showed up this morning, I was outside reading the paper.”

  “She gets here at 5 A.M. to bake the pies,” Trip said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I opened my big mouth and promised them they could stay with me. Besides, bad luck seems to be following me lately. And Tom would kill me if I brought it to your house.”

  “Red, you’ve got to set some ground rules,” he said. “Make them sleep in the car. Your neighbors would love that. You could tell them it’s performance art and charge admission.”

  Across the dining room, I spotted Lydia Stewart, who owns the 250-year-old Colonial at the end of my block. As she pointed in my direction, everyone at her table turned to look.

  I smiled and waved. They all turned quickly around.

  Odd.

  Then it hit my sleep-deprived brain. News of the murder was all over town.

  Despite serving as a bedroom community for D.C., Fordham, Virginia—where I’d bought my tiny, hundred-year-old bungalow—is a small town on steroids. The two D.C. metro papers are delivered daily in Fordham. There’s also a local weekly and a half-dozen blogs that chronicle all the gossip and goings-on. But news still travels quickest through the town grapevine. And Lydia Stewart, whose old-money family stole their land straight from the natives, is the head sour grape.

  “Who am I? Job? Which cosmic deity did I inadvertently piss off?”

  “Hey, as bad as it gets, you’re still doing better than your late boss,” Trip said.

  “They think I did it,” I countered.

  “Who?”

  “The police. My co-workers. My neighbors. You’re having breakfast with one of America’s Most Wanted. You might even want to get a taster for your food.”

  “Nah, I heard Coleman was stabbed, not poisoned,” he said, dumping sugar into his coffee. “But I could confiscate the butter knives, just to be on the safe side. Hey, if you kill the boss, can you claim it as a business expense on your taxes?”

  In a newsroom where staffers are judged by their dark humor almost as much as their ability to run down a story, Chase Wentworth Cabot III, better known as “Trip,” can more than hold his own.

  I let out a long breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. At least one sane, rational person realized I didn’t do it. And apparently the newsroom crew hadn’t heard I was on the suspect list.

  So I spent the next few minutes filling Trip in on what happened yesterday before I came home and found Nick on my porch.

  He listened so intently he didn’t even pick up a fork when Mrs. Simon slid two breakfast specials onto our table. When I finished the tale of woe that was the last twenty-four hours of my life, he exhaled one hushed syllable, stretching it into three: “Shiiii-iiii-iiit.”

  “That pretty much sums it up from my side,” I said, reaching for the ketchup.

  Suddenly, for the first time since the police knocked on my door yesterday, I was hungry. Really hungry.

  “The police told Billy Bob they had a strong suspect but weren’t going to release the name until they had one more thing nailed down.”

  “Yeah, the lid on my coffin.”

  Billy Bob Lopez is the paper’s lead crime reporter. He’s folksy, charming, and totally tenacious. A shark in sneakers.

  If the police really believed I’d done it, it wouldn’t be long before someone leaked that to Billy Bob.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” I said.

  “It gets worse?”

  I nodded. “The cops found strands of my hair on his shirt. I mean, they haven’t had time to test the DNA yet, but it’s the same color, texture, and length as mine. And there aren’t any other strawberry blondes in that office. At this point, even I’d bet money it’s mine.”

  “How’d it get there?”

  “No idea.”

  Man, was that ever true. The last time I’d seen Coleman, he was duded up in one of his Savile Row suits at the client dinner Friday night. After our little argument, I went straight home and stayed there pretty much all weekend. Except for a quick trip to the bookstore Saturday morning. But somehow, on Sunday afternoon my not-so-beloved boss died wearing golf pants and a lime green Polo shirt with my hair all over it.

  “I’d be more convinced if they’d found him covered in cookie crumbs and potato chip dust,” Trip said.

  “Hey, it was a rough weekend,” I said. “I had some major life decisions to make.”

  “Let me guess. Bookstore
?”

  “The new Spencer Quinn’s out,” I said.

  “Red, we’ve got to find out who did this.”

  “What am I going to do? Pull an O.J. and tell everyone I’m going around looking for ‘the real killers’?”

  “Minus the armed robbery and multiple rounds of golf, yes,” he said. “And you don’t tell anyone anything. From what you’ve said, C&W hasn’t officially fired you yet, so you could go down there and nose around. And I can help you out at the paper. Who better to prove you didn’t do it? You’re a reporter.”

  “Ex-reporter. I’ve spent the last three months shilling for a public relations firm.”

  “Not even enough time to get the ink off your sleeves. Once a reporter, always a reporter. And face it, the only one who knows you didn’t do it is you. “

  “There’s another person who knows,” I said, suddenly feeling my stomach knot up again. “The killer.”

  “That’s why you don’t tell anyone what you’re up to,” Trip said, stirring black pepper into his grits. “As far as everyone is concerned, you’re innocent and simply waiting for the police to bring the murderer to justice. In the meantime, la-di-da, it’s life as usual.”

  “But in reality,” I said, knowing where this was going.

  “But in reality, we put our heads together, figure out who did this, and clear your name.”

  Chapter 4

  Heading down the hall, past the blue silk wallpaper, toward the elegant offices of Coleman & Walters, I felt my stomach shrink.

  I stopped, took a deep breath, and pushed open the heavy oak door. At 8:35, the front office was mercifully empty. I’d timed my arrival carefully. I wanted to show up early enough that I didn’t have to run the executive gauntlet, but late enough so that the doors would already be unlocked. I assumed, of course, that my key no longer worked.

  The last time Coleman & Walters ejected an employee, the locksmith arrived before the ax fell. It was not pretty.

  But then Mrs. Everett Coleman is the office manager-slash-comptroller. And she runs this place with the kind of efficiency a Nazi would envy.

  Just under six feet tall, rawboned, and remarkably fit, she is also what my father would have kindly called “a little on the plain side.” Some people carry tension in their shoulders. With Margaret, it’s her jaw. While her demeanor is placid to the point of aloof, that lantern jaw seems perpetually clenched. I guess having Everett Coleman for a husband was no picnic.

  Or maybe she just doesn’t like me.

  Margaret’s most remarkable feature: her hands. From what I’d heard, mostly through office gossip, Margaret Coleman used to be a nurse. Of course, that was eons ago, before her husband’s business started raking in the dough.

  But those hands, while large and strong, are nimble. Skilled. Like they could beat the life back into a failing heart. Or squeeze the last breath from a lazy hen and fry it up for Sunday dinner.

  I made my way down the main corridor, then turned left into another hallway that ran along the very back of the suite. Instead of empty and dark, my small office was alive with light and noise. The speakers were blaring, playing some anthem of middle-class teen angst. Even more intriguing, my computer was on.

  I flipped off the music. Sitting, I noticed that the screen saver had been changed from my generic spring scene to a close-up of a buxom girl in a strappy belly shirt and Spandex short-shorts struggling up a craggy rock face. Sweat glistened on a lot of visible skin, while she tipped her backside toward the camera like a zoo ape in heat.

  “Hi, Amy,” I said as she powered through the door.

  Clearly surprised, her eyes went wide, and for a split second she froze. I thought she might actually drop her mug.

  Amy is a walking billboard for “what you see is not necessarily what you get.” With long, blond ringlets, fine features and elegant suits, she is most often described with terms like “pre-Raphaelite” and “angelic.” Which, of course, she does nothing to discourage.

  She also cultivates the image of a work-hard, play-hard health nut, who spends weekends rock climbing, rollerblading, hang gliding, bungee jumping and, for all I know, parachuting with Hell’s Angels. Every Monday we get to hear about her high-adrenaline exploits before the big staff meeting. And the requisite photos, featuring a bare minimum of clothing, show up at regular intervals in her office.

  The clear-cut message, not lost on the men in this office: Amy can play with the big boys.

  Ahem.

  Amy’s drink of choice: chamomile tea. “It’s soooo soothing,” she trills to anyone who would listen.

  What she doesn’t say: she uses it to wash down a variety of prescription meds. And while she’s very specific in her choice of organic tea, she’s a lot less picky when it comes to the pills. Percodan. Percocet. Vicodin. Codeine. I’m guessing that all that motocross-bungee-paragliding might have a downside.

  Make friends with the cleaning crew, and you learn all kinds of interesting stuff.

  Amy’s green eyes narrowed. She pursed her perfect little red bow of a mouth, producing a cross between a pout and a frown, and reached for the keyboard. My keyboard.

  To her credit, I’ve seen grown men mesmerized by that same expression, like rats hypnotized by a cobra. But it didn’t work on me.

  I quickly slid the keyboard out of her reach and began to type.

  “That’s my work,” she whined. “What are you doing here?”

  “In my office? Working. What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t think you work here anymore. I should call the police. We know what you did.”

  So much for a few quiet minutes to skulk around and gather information.

  “What did I do, Amy?”

  “You killed Everett.” The gleam in her eyes told me she didn’t believe it but was getting a thrill from spreading a nasty piece of gossip. “You stabbed him. And after he was so good to you. Taking you in when the newspaper fired you.”

  My mouth almost dropped open. But I caught myself at the last minute and took a deep breath.

  “The paper didn’t fire me, Amy. Everett had been trying to hire me for months. When he finally mentioned a dollar figure high enough, I accepted his offer.”

  I was actually kind of proud of that. For the first time in my life, I’d negotiated a decent salary for myself. And the firm’s P.R. work, while sometimes silly and often mind-numbingly dull, was easy.

  But after a few weeks, I realized that the salary wasn’t compensation for the job itself. It was a bribe to put up with the office politics that went with it. And it wasn’t nearly enough.

  American business likes to invoke the team metaphor. Teamwork. Team player. Team mentality. But there’s one big difference. If cannibalism were legal, your average athlete would go after a player on the opposing squad. The typical junior executive would be eyeing the guy in the next cubicle.

  And in my case, the feeding frenzy had begun.

  “You can’t be here. You can’t stay here. This office is mine now.”

  Ah, that was it. When I came onboard, I was given a sweet little office with a great big window overlooking one of the office park’s green areas. It wasn’t as grand or spacious as some of the executive suites. But with that oversized window, I considered it the pick of the litter. So did several of my co-workers.

  In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I did nothing to deserve this particular perk. The office just happened to belong to a guy who got canned on my first day. Margaret, in all her efficiency, felt it was easier to put me into his still-warm, ergonomically correct leather chair than to play musical offices. Much to the dismay of several more senior employees who had been salivating over the prospect of four-walls-with-a-view.

  Sadly, the leather chair was missing when I showed up on my second day.

  I looked Amy straight in the eye, speaking slowly, as if to a child. “Well, then, please call the police. I talked with them, too. They don’t know who killed Everett, but I hope to God th
ey find him. Or her.”

  Her mouth twitched. Uncomfortable with direct confrontation, she looked away.

  Score one for my side. I’d been schooled in a profession that used the truth as a weapon. In my case, a blunt instrument.

  Now I was smiling. “But if you really do believe that I stabbed a man, you might want to get your things off my desk.”

  Chapter 5

  I learned surprisingly little in the next few minutes.

  Since Amy had logged on to my computer and never logged off, I trolled through the system as her. I hit her email box first. There was a relatively brief memo from Holly, Everett’s secretary, dated Monday morning. It very plainly and primly announced her boss’s demise—minus any of the juicy details, of course. It explained that the police would “be present most of the morning” and urged everyone to “take the time to speak with them, regardless of your schedules.”

  It hit just the right tone between somber and practical. Everett was gone, but his “partner and friend,” Benjamin Walters, was “at the helm.”

  Yeah, and this ship is going down.

  When the fearless leader is so reviled that someone plants a letter opener between his shoulder blades, how can even the slickest P.R. firm spin that?

  The note finished on an upbeat “our work will continue without pause, just as Everett Coleman would have wanted.”

  The king is dead. Long live the king.

  Holly’s name may have been on the email, but I was pretty sure Walters had dictated every word.

  I half hoped for a volley of personal emails with details of the crime, police revelations, or the stories my co-workers were feeding to the cops. Nada.

  Knowing this place, I wasn’t really surprised. The coffeemaker and the gossip mill would be working overtime. But some things you just didn’t put into writing. The place to glean that kind of information would be the break room. And if the reception I’d received in my own office was any indication, I wouldn’t get much.