Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  As predicted, a few moments later Guy rose from his seat, put on his sports coat—a formality pompously enacted every time he left his desk—and exited the room. Liz then made her way with studied nonchalance toward the front, hugging the file lest she drop it and scatter its contents to the room. No one paid attention to her. She was just part of the traffic. She dropped the file on Guy’s desk. No one noticed. Everyone in Guy’s vicinity had, over time, turned their desks to angles that allowed them vistas other than Guy’s head. Bob Pastuk, who sat nearest, kept his back to the newsroom. He didn’t even seem to hear the tiny rustle of paper, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care.

  She returned to her desk, her heart pounding, wondering whether she had followed the right course. Had she been cowardly in turning Michael’s information into an anonymous accusation? Should she have confessed the source but begged off the story, stating conflict of interest? Or would Guy have forced her to do the story anyway? That would have been untenable. No, she thought, this way the story would get out but she would be left with whatever peace she could find. On Monday, Guy would be the city editor and he would assign it to one of the city reporters. If he thought he could get a story ready for Saturday’s paper, he would have to give it to someone else. She was leaving. She hurried to grab her coat before Guy returned to his seat. But before she left the newsroom, she made one quick telephone call from the privacy of the deserted receptionist’s desk.

  26

  A Cool Reception

  Stevie stood at the door listening to Merritt retch. She regarded the cracker she’d had in her hand when she’d gone up the stairs after Merritt bolted from the reception, felt herself turning a little green, and tossed it in the wastebasket beside the vanity. On the other side of the bathroom door, the sound of someone disgorging her guts continued, followed by a toilet’s flush, then a tap’s shriek. Water surged into a basin.

  Too much booze. Too much agitation. Merritt had behaved like it was opening night at a club, not closing time for her brother. Her greetings were metallically bright, her laughter hollowly coquettish. She kept tossing that mane of red hair back with the idiot abandon of a B-list actress. And she was in and out of the first-floor powder room like someone with a bladder problem. Doing lines, no doubt. Stevie had felt like tying Merritt’s hands behind her back.

  And then, abruptly, with the house largely emptied of mourners, Merritt’s face had lost its colour and she had raced upstairs. Since no one else had seemed inclined to go see what was the matter, not even this Axel person who had been hovering awkwardly about, she’d done her female nurturing duty, and followed Merritt. She’d been about to say the time-honoured “are you all right?” but the vomiting had answered that question.

  Splashing sounds penetrated the bedroom. Stevie felt herself almost yearning for the shock of cold water along her own face, a balm after you’d purged all the sourness inside.

  Suddenly, the penny dropped.

  The door opened. Merritt tottered out, her face drawn, her mascara smudged—a ghost face under a red fright wig.

  It wasn’t booze and drugs and agitation.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  Merritt staggered past her, leaving a train of sourness in air, and plunked down on the vanity stool. “Give the lady a cigar,” she said, turning to the mirror and picking up a Kleenex.

  “How far along?”

  “Seven weeks.”

  “You’ve been to a doctor?”

  “Of course I’ve been to a doctor.” Merritt dabbed at her eyes. “I was there on Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday?” Stevie echoed.

  “Yes, Tuesday. Oh, happy day.” Merritt tossed the Kleenex into the wastebasket. Her hand went to a vial on the vanity.

  “What are you taking?”

  “Just something to relax me. It’s been a shitty week.”

  “Is that wise? You’re having a baby.”

  “I’m having an abortion.” Merritt responded flatly. She shook a couple of pills onto her hand. “I can ingest whatever I damn well feel like.”

  Stevie watched her in the vanity mirror put the pills on her tongue and swallow them dry. She wondered how Merritt managed to be so lucid given what she put in her mouth and up her nose. Practice, probably.

  “Does the father know?” she asked as Merritt opened a jar of face pads.

  “Should he?” Merritt began methodically rubbing away the streaks of mascara. With each stroke, her face seemed to diminish. Her eyes started to look small and naked. “Well…?”

  Stevie shrugged.

  “You didn’t exactly tell the father of your baby, did you?” Merritt continued, glancing at Stevie in the glass.

  “Different circumstances.”

  Merritt made a raspberry.

  “Well, I presume it’s not Dale Hawerchuk’s,” Stevie snapped.

  “Not unless sperm can cross town. Anyway, I haven’t seen him in ages.”

  “Then why do you have his team and number on your licence plate?”

  “I got it when vanity licences first came out.” Merritt leaned into the mirror. “I thought it would be a laugh. But Dale freaked out. He wanted it for his car.” She snorted. “We broke up over that. He even offered to buy it off me. Now I just keep it to piss him off.”

  Merritt turned and looked at Stevie. “Why are you bringing up my licence plate of all things?”

  Stevie hesitated. Clearly, Nickel had had no success bringing it up either. “It just sort of jumped out at me earlier,” she lied. “Anyway, you could have the baby.”

  “Like you did? No thanks.”

  “I mean, keep it. You’re twenty-seven. I was nineteen. World of difference.”

  “I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want it now.”

  “Now?”

  Merritt’s hand hesitated over the clutter on her vanity. “I thought at first, maybe. I even thought Michael might approve, for once. You know—me doing something responsible. And he could help out, you know—financially. But now—”

  The chime of the doorbell cut her off.

  “Oh, hell, who could that be?”

  “Someone downstairs will get it. You’ve still got guests, you know.”

  “I’ll get to them,” Merritt responded impatiently. Her face hung like a pale moon in the mirror. “Just let me reapply.”

  Stevie sat down on the edge of the bed. She pulled at the edge of the coverlet. Were the sheets black? Yes, they were. And silk, too.

  “Besides,” Merritt continued, oblivious, “if I had the baby, I’d probably have to have some sort of sick relationship with the father—who must never find out,” she added glaring at Stevie through the glass. “He’s a total creep.”

  “Well, the creep’s been making goo-goo eyes at you all afternoon.”

  “Who?”

  “Axel.”

  Merritt gasped. “How do you know about him?”

  “They should just put a sign on the highway outside the city that says: Welcome to Winnipeg, The World’s Biggest Small Town.”

  “Shit! We’re trying to keep it quiet.”

  “Because he’s married? I’m told he wouldn’t win a faithful-husband contest.”

  “No, because of Michael—”

  “Why do you make him out as this ogre of disapproval—”

  “Because he is—was. He would never say anything. He would just exude disapproval. You haven’t been around for the last ten years. He’d gotten very sanctimonious. And anyway,” Merritt moved her head from side to side, taking in her profile. “Axel’s not the father. Guy Clark is.”

  “Good god.”

  Stevie’s ear pricked. She rose from the bed and went to the door.

  “What is it?”

  “I thought I heard someone in the hall.”

  “River Heights homes are always creaking and moaning. It’s the shifting soil. You know that!”

  Stevie poked her head down the hall toward the window that overlooked the front yard. Only voices funnelling up the stairwell c
laimed her attention. “But I thought you broke up with Guy Clark in the spring,” she said, pushing the door partly closed with her foot.

  “I did.”

  “Then…?”

  Merritt slumped on the vanity stool. “I don’t know what the hell happened. I don’t even know why I went out with him in the first place, really. He was just sort of persistent. And, like, he’s my boss. This working for a living sucks, by the way—”

  “Welcome to the real world.” Stevie sat again on the bed.

  “—and then I tried to ease out of it, and he really didn’t accept it. He sort of kept calling, or he’d show up at Safeway when I was shopping or—”

  “You mean, he was stalking you?”

  “Kind of, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “So, anyway, I thought ‘okay, maybe if we just talk it through.’ I mean, at work he’d been civil to me, at least to that point. So one evening—it was just after the long weekend in August, after I’d got back from New York—I got a call, and it was him begging me to see him. His grandmother had just died—she’d apparently raised him—and he was crying and carrying on, and so I went over to his apartment and…” She glanced at Stevie. “How stupid am I?”

  “You’re up there.”

  “That’s not the worst. Afterward, after we, you know, did it…I still told him what I’d intended to: that it was totally over, and to please stop calling, and—” Merritt’s voice faltered.

  “And…?”

  “He went nuts. Yelling, swearing, smashing the wineglasses against the wall of his apartment. I tried to get out, but he grabbed me, and threw me down, and I thought he was going to—” Merritt paused, put a hand up to her face.

  Cold fingers tore at Stevie’s insides. She said nothing, waited.

  “—anyway, a neighbour came pounding on the door. He sort of snapped out of it.”

  Stevie breathed a sigh. “Thank god. Did you go to the police?”

  “Oh, please. And tell them what? Nothing really happened—well, except that I now have this little souvenir.” Merritt touched her stomach. “And Guy behaves like a total bastard to me at work.

  “I did tell Michael, though,” she continued after a moment. “Well, I gave him an edited version when he got back from Europe. Thought maybe he could do the big-brother thing. He could always make Uncle Martin squirm for some reason, and so I thought pressure might be applied down the chain of command, or he could read Guy the riot act, or something.” She sighed. “Guess it didn’t work. Guy’s still behaving like a bastard. When I go in. Anyway, it’s over.”

  “What?”

  “The job. I didn’t want to work at the stupid Zit in the first place, but Michael insisted. Thought it would be therapeutic. Now I don’t have to work there at all. Or anywhere.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Stevie, figure it out. By the way, would you like to drive me to Johns Mayhew tomorrow morning?”

  “The law firm?”

  Merritt smiled. She appeared recovered. The makeup helped. “It’s reading-of-the-will time.”

  Stevie had spent a lifetime resisting her own mother’s psychologizing. She knew the basics: that Merritt had missed something in her childhood with an alcoholic father and a distant, ineffectual mother; that she had nevertheless been traumatized by her parents’ sudden death, that, despite appearances, she was depressed; that she was self-hating; that she didn’t understand her own hell; that the substance abuse was linked to all of the above. But there were moments when she thought what Merritt had needed as a child was to have been spanked long and hard—yes it was wrong, but at least it was a form of attention. She’d been a spoiled brat at nine, a spoiled brat at fourteen, and she was still a goddamned spoiled brat. She was about to say as much when the crash of someone’s knuckles against the door sent her flying off the mattress instead.

  Axel burst into the room, his eyes taut, his mouth a severe line, his dark complexion darker still with blood. He rattled Stevie with a killing glance and then barked at Merritt, “The police are here and they want to talk to you.”

  “Shit!” Merritt responded to the mirror. “Why do they keep bothering me? Well, tell them I’ll be down in five.” She whipped her head around. “What’s got into you?” she asked Axel, who was standing smouldering on the wall-to-wall.

  “Nothing!” Axel stomped out of the room.

  Merritt frowned.

  “You know, I think he might have been listening.” Stevie grimaced, glancing back at the door, which she realized she hadn’t closed fully. The creaking in the hall hadn’t been the house shifting.

  “Oh, Christ. Are you sure? All that stuff about Guy. He hates Guy. I wonder if he heard the pregnant bit. Double shit!”

  “You haven’t told him, I suppose.”

  “Well, duh, no. It’s just you and my gynecologist.” Merritt quickly began applying eye-liner. “I sort of thought about telling Axel. But the timing wouldn’t work.”

  “What? You mean tell him he’s the father? You’re a monster.”

  “Oh, shut up. I said I sort of thought about it. I’m not crazy. I like Axel a lot. I don’t want to jeopardize it.”

  “He’s got a wife.”

  Merritt made a dismissive gesture with a lipstick. “You know he told me he fell in love with me watching me put on lipstick in the Concert Hall lobby after Romeo et Juliet last spring at the opera. Isn’t that sweet?”

  Stevie, a member of the league of betrayed wives, bit her tongue.

  “He stopped to tie his shoe and split his suit jacket right up the seam.” Merritt smiled. “Now if I could just get him to cut off that awful ponytail. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to go downstairs.”

  “’Kay.”

  “And Merritt,” Stevie said, rising, “this time with the police, try telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “So help me God? This is like twelve-step crap.”

  “You might need Him.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Merritt descended the staircase, tapped the Plexiglas cube of shoes she’d collected in New York as if for luck, and made her entrance in the living room. A few mourners who had loitered long enough to give her their condolences scuttled out, leaving Merritt alone with Frank Nickel and his partner but for Axel, who was seated on a chair, arms folded across his chest, casting malevolent looks at everyone, and Leo and Stevie, who were propping up a wall.

  “And now,” she addressed Frank before he could open his mouth, “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” She glanced at Stevie, who rolled her eyes. “Axel was here, with me, all of Tuesday evening—well, until about 9:00.”

  Frank smiled. Merritt smiled back harder. The Rossiters had not scrimped on orthodontia.

  “I see,” said Frank. “From what time would this be?”

  “From about 6:00,” Merritt replied, taking a chair next to Axel.

  “From about 6:00,” Frank echoed.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Werner joined you here about 6:00, after you’d been to Jane’s Boutique.”

  “Yes. 6:10. 6:15. Around there.”

  “I see,” Frank said again. He looked at his partner. “Gerry?”

  Gerry stared at him.

  “You’re on.”

  As Frank sank into the buttery couch, Shorter rummaged in his suit coat, pulled out a notebook and in a bland official tone, read: “Tuesday evening at approximately 7:10, a car bearing the licence plate 10JETS was seen leaving the cul-de-sac adjacent to the property of Michael Rossiter. The licence plate was checked and found to be registered in the name of Merritt Helena Rossiter Parrish.”

  He snapped the page of his notebook loudly, startling everyone but Frank, who extended his arm nonchalantly along the back of the couch. Much of the confidence seemed to drain from Merritt’s face. She flicked Stevie a hateful glance.

  Frank opened his mouth to continue, but Axel interrupted. “Impossible. We were together all evening. W
hoever claims to have seen this licence is either blind, mistaken, or malicious.”

  Frank lifted an eyebrow and turned his gaze on Merritt, who was squeezing the leather arm of her chair into a pucker. “Well?” he said.

  “She doesn’t have to answer your questions, Frank,” Axel interjected hotly. “She has a right to legal counsel, you know.”

  Frank held up his hands. “You’re way ahead of me, buddy. I’m not making any accusations. I’m just asking some questions based on new information.”

  “She still doesn’t have to answer them.”

  “Stop it, Axel,” Merritt said weakly. “Yes, it’s true. I was parked outside my brother’s on Tuesday.” Her eyes glistened. “But I didn’t go in. You have to believe that. I just sat in the car.”

  “But you intended to visit him.”

  “I…I wanted to talk to him about something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important.”

  Frank grunted. “So you just sat. For how long?”

  “I don’t know. I sort of fell asleep. I dreamt—”

  “What time did you arrive, then?”

  Merritt hesitated. She glanced helplessly at Stevie.

  “A little after 6:30, I think, maybe,” she replied.

  “Then your car was parked there for some thirty to forty minutes.”

  “I guess.”

  “With you in it the whole time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  Merritt shifted uneasily on the leather. “I don’t know. I was sort of out of it.”

  “Then did you see anyone?”

  Merritt was silent.

  “Because, it’s the right time and the right place.” Frank’s mouth was a grim line. “Honestly, Merritt Helena Rossiter Parrish, it doesn’t look good, you having an unaccounted-for half an hour twenty yards from your murdered—and let’s not kid ourselves—wealthy brother.”