Crime Beat Girl

by Geri L Dreiling

  "A special friend?" Debbie asked.

  Flannery laughed. "You sound like a grandmother. No. No special friend. I don't have time for that either. "

  "So, work is truly your life?"

  "I suppose," Flannery admitted. "But here's a bit of irony for you. My ex said I wasn't ambitious enough. She left me for a man who she thought had more potential."

  "Harsh," was the first word that escaped from Debbie's mouth.

  "Fair is fair," Flannery said. "Let's see how the interviewer feels about being interviewed. Is there a Mr. Debbie?"

  "Complicated. A month ago, I was engaged. Now I'm not even sure if we're speaking to each other. He wasn't happy that I took a job in St. Louis to help my mother out for a while."

  "Ah, I heard about your mother. Cancer," Flannery said.

  "How do you know that?"

  "C'mon, big little town, right? I know a lot of lawyers. And judges. You hear things. Once I read you were assigned to cover the crime beat, I figured I better know a bit more about you. You're not the only one who researches."

  Debbie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked at the empty space next to the curb.

  "What?" Flannery asked.

  "I could have sworn I parked my car right here," Debbie explained.

  "Are you sure?" Flannery asked. "There's no broken glass," he observed. "That means it probably wasn't stolen."

  Debbie pressed the unlock button on her key fob, waiting to hear a beep from her car. Nothing came. She held the key up to her mouth, using a trick she'd read on some random blog, to amplify the range, and pressed again.

  "Um, Debbie," Flannery said, "did you see this no parking sign?"

  "Yes," she answered defensively. "And I didn't park there. Not really."

  "What do you mean, 'Not really'?"

  "Maybe an inch of my bumper was over the line. But ninety-five percent of my car was parked perfectly."

  Flannery sighed and shook his head. "It's that five percent that will get you in trouble every time."

  Flannery took out his cell phone and dialed. What followed was a brief conversation that ended with the revelation that Debbie's car had been towed.

  "Aw, hell!" Debbie said. Her feet hurt. She was tired. And now her car was gone. "What am I going to do now?"

  "Come with me," Flannery commanded. It took another ten minutes to reach a police squad car, a white Ford Taurus with St. Louis Metropolitan Police lettered in blue and an image of the arch emblazoned on the side.

  "Get in," Flannery ordered. "We're going to Ace Towing. I'll help you get your car."

  "Don't you have more important things to do?"

  "Probably. But I don't think that either the police chief or the mayor would be happy to hear about a reporter covering this good news event had her car towed. Plus, this doesn't make sense. A ticket? Sure. But towing?"

  They stopped at a light, and he turned to her. "Look, off the record, I think someone exercised poor judgment; was a little too by-the-book. I'm not sure why. But I will get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, let's get your car back."

  Flannery headed east, the police car passing under streetlights as he guided them through the deserted streets of St. Louis, a city that really liked its sleep. A police radio dispatcher broke the silence of the car ride. "Suspicious person reported at the 1900 block of Rutger," the dispatcher announced. A police officer replied, stating he was in the area and would head over.

  Debbie leaned against the headrest and shut her eyes. "That's near my mom's house."

  "I wouldn't worry," Flannery said. "That's a good neighborhood. When someone is walking around late at night that the residents don't recognize, they call." He paused, then when she didn't respond, asked, "Tired?"

  Unaccustomed to a soft tone from the gruff policeman, Debbie regained her focus. "Yes. I had been looking forward to going home, getting out of these shoes, and crawling into bed. It has been a very long week."

  "Hopefully, this won't take too long," he replied before lapsing back into silence.

  Flannery turned into the entrance of what appeared to be an abandoned industrial park. There were a few crumbling red brick buildings that had boards in the gaps where glass windows had once been. There were spray-painted messages scrawled on the crumbling walls: "Super," "LDS," and "RatFag."

  As they drove on past the decay of a once-thriving cluster of manufacturing buildings and warehouses, there was a ten-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Inside the fence, Debbie could see cars lined up in rows. Some were battered, others had cracked windshields, and several had crunched front ends. But Debbie noticed that some of the vehicles were in perfect condition. Others were covered in a thin layer of grime, the dust of the gravel road that had been kicked up and blown over the vehicles. They were the ones that had probably been there awhile, the owners unable to gather the money to get their car out of hock, and with each passing day, further in debt.

  The parking area allocated for visitors was small--more of a begrudging afterthought for those who, like Debbie, weren't happy about being there in the first place.

  Flannery stopped the cruiser, and the pair got out. "I think it would be best if you let me do the talking," he advised.

  A cheap bell clanked against the front door when it was opened. A man with thin, oily hair that had once been black, but was now a shade of dirty gray, sat behind the desk. The fluorescent lighting did little to flatter his waxy skin. He had a pencil in one hand and a find-a-word puzzle book in the other. An ashtray with a mound of yellow butts lay on the desk, near a Styrofoam cup with brown liquid. Cold coffee, Debbie guessed. A small fan on the desk hummed as it turned from side to side.

  "Yep?" the man said without looking up from his puzzle book as Debbie and Flannery entered.

  "You've got a car here--a Honda Civic--that should not have been towed," Flannery said gruffly.

  "We got a lotta Civics," the man said, looking at the officer in front of him, unimpressed by the uniform.

  "It came in this evening. Towed from the Central West End. Dark gray."

  Flannery looked at Debbie. "Do you know the, license plate number?"

  Debbie shook her head. "No, not off the top of my head, but I haven't had it titled yet in Missouri. It has Virginia plates."

  The man scratched his head, the greasy strands of hair clumping together when they touched. "Not ringing a bell."

  Flannery's jaw tightened. "What's your name?"

  The man put down his puzzle book and stood up, his shirt stretched tight against a protruding belly, stained just below the neck with something that Debbie guessed was grease from a takeout hamburger. "What's it to you?"

  Before the man could say another word, Flannery reached down to the desk and started shuffling through piles of paper before he seized a memo addressed to Quinn Hawkins.

  "Ms. Bradley, would you like to get out your reporter's notebook and interview this man? Maybe you could find space for a piece in your magazine about your visit to a towing company that also serves as an impound lot for the city police?" Flannery asked. "I'm guessing his name is Quinn; Quinn Hawkins."

  "I'm not talking to a reporter. And I'm not talking to you," he said defiantly.

  "Are you saying you're refusing to answer my questions? How good would that look if the towing lot the city has a contract with is subject to bad press? What's the mayor going to say, Quinn?"

  The man sat down behind the desk and shuffled the stack of papers that Flannery had just been rifling through. "I found it. A Honda Civic. Virginia license plates." Hawkins picked up the phone. "I want you to bring that Civic up front, the one that came in tonight." Hawkins paused. "Yeah, with Virginia plates." He paused again. "I don't care. I said now."

  Debbie studied Flannery as she listened to Hawkins's one-sided phone conversation. He never raised his voice, he didn't draw his gun, he just sized up his opponent quickly, diagnosed the sensitive spots, and applied pressure in those areas to get the information he wanted.<
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  Hawkins hung up the phone. "Wait outside. Someone will bring the car around in about fifteen minutes."

  "Don't make us wait too long. Otherwise, we'll be tempted to stretch our legs and take a look around," Flannery said matter-of-factly.

  She wasn't in trouble. But Debbie still couldn't shake that uneasy feeling that comes with seeing a police cruiser in the rearview mirror.

  Flannery had insisted on following her home to ensure she made it safely, saying he wanted to make sure her car hadn't been damaged or tampered with by the tow lot. So now she was scrutinizing her speedometer and resisting the urge to roll through the four-way stops that dominated the city's side streets. Even though the streets were empty, Debbie came to a complete stop each and every time.

  Finally, she pulled up to her parents' Painted Lady. There was a two-car detached garage in the alley, but her mom hadn't cleared her gardening paraphernalia from one of the spaces for Debbie. And since the other side was reserved for Beth's beloved Tesla, it was street parking for Debbie. Just like back in D.C.

  Flannery lowered the driver's side window. "Nice house."

  "Yeah, it is," Debbie agreed. "This is where I grew up. I'm back in my old room for now--until I have the time and energy to find my own place."

  "If you need any safety information on the areas you're considering, let me know," Flannery said.

  Debbie nodded, once again caught off guard by his offer. "Look, thank you for helping me. And you saved me a lot of money, money I don't have right now, to get my car out of a tow lot."

  Unable to say you're welcome because he wasn't comfortable with gratitude, he merely nodded before muttering, "Well, good night."

  Debbie walked the steep front steps up to the front exterior door. She unlocked it, stepped onto the marble floor of the tiny alcove, and then unlocked the interior set of doors--a common feature of the Victorian architecture in Lafayette Square. Debbie gave a small wave to Flannery to let him know she was inside, feeling like a schoolgirl who'd been dropped off at home by a friend's parent.

  Once she was sealed safely inside, Debbie tossed her keys into a clay bowl that sat on top of a vintage walnut side table, hearing the oh-so-familiar clunking sound, one she'd known since she was a child. The bowl had been something her parents had picked up on a trip to Mexico many, many years ago, in the days before Debbie existed. They'd used it as a key bowl since before Debbie was born. Debbie used it once she started driving. And now she was back home, slipping back into familiar patterns.

  She climbed the stairs to the second floor. At the top of the landing was a central room that served as a lounging area for the three bedrooms situated there. Debbie discovered her mother dozing on the couch, a laptop open on the coffee table. The screen had lapsed into sleep mode.

  "Mom," Debbie said, nudging her mother's shoulder softly. "Mom."

  Beth stirred and then stretched her arms. "What time is it?"

  "Time for bed," Debbie answered as she picked up the notebook with her mother's scribbles and set it down on a nearby coffee table.

  "How was the gala?" Beth asked.

  "Eventful, very eventful."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Distractions and Destiny

  The morning after the fundraiser, Debbie felt as if her skull was being stretched outward. It didn't feel good, not one bit. It wasn't a hangover. She hadn't had a drop of alcohol the night before. In fact, it was one of her strict rules: Don't drink while working. She often picked up a wine glass and pretended to sip, just to blend in with the crowd. For some reason, a drink in her hand seemed to put the drinkers she was interviewing at ease. But she knew that halfway into a generous pour, she risked getting too chummy, too chatty. And that could be dangerous.

  Coffee, Debbie thought as she rolled out of bed, grabbing her favorite gray sweater. It was more of a wrap than a sweater, light enough to wear in the summer, but providing enough coverage over her pajamas so that she wouldn't scandalize the neighbors if she ventured out onto the back porch. With houses so close you could see into the neighbors' windows without trying, it was safe to guess that folks looking down from their second floor would easily be able to see into her backyard.

  The sweater hung on the back of her bedroom door. She could still recall the day her father had put that hook up on the door. She'd argued to her parents, some twenty years earlier, that a hook would help keep her room neat. Her messiness had been a source of friction with her parents when she was a teen.

  Squeezing the sides of her temples with her hands to try to push her skull back into place, Debbie stepped over the black heels that she'd dropped in the middle of her bedroom floor after getting home. She searched for a pair of moccasin-style slippers that were half buried underneath a growing pile of dirty laundry. Her mother's black cocktail dress was draped over Debbie's favorite navy overstuffed chair, the one she often curled up into with a book when she was a girl. Even though the dress needed to be dry-cleaned, Beth would have had a fit if Debbie had tossed it on the floor.

  Debbie opened her bedroom door and entered the sitting room. Her mother's laptop was still on the coffee table. Beth's bedroom door was closed. Debbie hoped she was sleeping. The mastectomy was only a day away. Her mom's body could use the rest.

  Debbie headed for the first floor, but it was no use trying to creep quietly down the stairs. The treads on the steps of the 120-year-old house would still pop no matter how softly Debbie tried to descend.

  Old houses, like old ladies, refused to remain silent.

  Debbie entered the kitchen and poured her first cup of black coffee. Holding the warm mug in her hand, she stepped outside to the wooden deck located just off the kitchen. Like most of the homes in the Victorian neighborhood, the backyard space was small. The next-door neighbor, wearing a white robe with a luxury brand logo, was watering her plants on the back porch. She waved at Debbie when she heard the back door open.

  Even though the space was tight, Debbie admired her mother's ingenuity. Three raised vegetable beds were squeezed in the space just beyond the raised deck and a few feet in front of the detached garage. Large planters on the deck served as vertical growing spaces for tomatoes and cucumbers. In the tight areas along the six-foot-tall fence that surrounded the yard, Beth had replaced ornamental trees and shrubs with Missouri native flowers like black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers; treats for the birds and bees that helped pollinate her garden.

  Debbie removed a cover from one of the Adirondack chairs, sat down, and let her thoughts drift. A bright red cardinal landed on the wire that connected the power lines in the alley to the house and began to call, "Purty, purty, purty." When she was a little girl, her father had taught her to recognize the song of the bird that was as cherished by St. Louisans as their beloved baseball team.

  She thought of Jarrett. Her story about the Teen Alliance honoree would be as sweet as gooey butter cake, another St. Louis tradition Debbie hadn't thought much about since she'd been away. Sam would complain about the sugar overload in her story, but even he had to admit that the readers might enjoy a break from the unrelenting negative news at home, in the nation's capital, and abroad. And the magazine owner might even take a bigger hand in helping engineer Jarrett's fate.

  A female cardinal, with its brown coloring and warm red crest, landed near the male. Cardinals mated for life. Perhaps they were a couple, Debbie guessed, before they took flight together. Christian. His name popped into her head. She pushed it away by replacing it with work.

  Jarrett and Joshua. Two boys growing up in the same area, only a few years apart in age. One was being lauded, another lambasted.

  They weren't the only contrasts she'd encountered since coming home.

  If Teen Alliance was an organization that tried to lift people up, Ace Towing seemed to pounce on people when they were down. Dingy, dirty, and depressing. The clerk, Quinn Hawkins, would never win a customer service award.

  Debbie went back inside to refill her coffee cup and grab her laptop
. She set it down on the kitchen table. Casenet, the online service of the Missouri judiciary, might have some information on Flannery's divorce. Debbie typed Daniel Flannery into the search field. He lived in the city, so it had to be in the courthouse in that jurisdiction.

  Having grown up in St. Louis as the daughter of two attorneys, Debbie was already familiar with one of the metro area's unique quirks. There was no county for St. Louis city. St. Louis County was a separate jurisdiction, the result of the so-called Great Divorce in the late 1800s after farmers and city dwellers fought over the direction of the region. It was a fight that led to fractured government and myriad competing municipalities. In addition to the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County was now dotted with its own little cities--indeed, there were over ninety municipalities inside the county's borders. The more the area fractured, the further it slipped from away from its onetime archrival, Chicago. Just about the only thing that St. Louis now lorded over the Windy City was, of course, baseball.

  Flannery vs. Flannery appeared on Debbie's screen. Because it was a divorce, the publicly available information was limited. However, it appeared that a Denise Flannery had filed a dissolution proceeding against Daniel Flannery a decade earlier.

  Debbie opened another tab on her internet browser and typed in the search terms "Denise Flannery St. Louis."

  Search results popped up on the screen.

  According to a newspaper wedding announcement, after her divorce, Denise Flannery had married Jim Robertson, a lawyer and former cop.

  "It couldn't be the same Jim Robertson," Debbie mumbled to herself as she searched the mayor's name. Another news item with a photo of Jim Robertson being sworn in, his wife Denise at his side.

  "Huh," Debbie said, continuing her one-way conversation.

  "What?" Beth asked as she plodded into the kitchen, looking for her own cup of caffeine.

  "You remember Detective Flannery?" Debbie asked.

  "Mmmhmm," her mother answered as she added milk and sugar to her cup. Debbie had inherited her love of black coffee from her father, not her mother.