Annie Seymour 01 - Sacred Cows

by Karen E. Olson

  “Well, it wasn’t me.” He slammed the door in my face before I could say anything more.

  One down, one to go.

  I’d seen the woman who lived below me. By her mode of dress, I figured her for a New Age type, with the flowing print skirts and big and plentiful bangle jewelry. Sometimes I could smell incense as I went up the stairs, which made me nostalgic for simpler days.

  “Yes?” I could see her eyes from behind the chain lock.

  “I’m Anne Seymour, I live upstairs. I was wondering if you’d seen anyone just now in the stairwell.”

  “He said he knew you.”

  “Who ‘he’? Can you describe him?”

  “So you didn’t know him?”

  I shook my head. “No, but he pushed a note under my door.”

  The door opened a little farther, but the chain remained. I could now see fuzzy brown hair and a square chin. “What sort of note?”

  “Let’s just say he’s not my biggest fan.”

  “Really?”

  I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true, I felt like saying, but I didn’t want to push it, so I kept my mouth shut. Although I was getting a little information about the mysterious note, meeting my neighbors was all I’d expected and more. “What did he look like?” I tried again.

  “Oh, about average.”

  I suppressed the urge to scream. “Average what?” My voice was rising with my frustration.

  “Oh, brown hair, medium build. I didn’t really pay attention.”

  Why the hell not? I wanted to ask. She wouldn’t open her door for me and I lived upstairs. Instead, she lets in a complete stranger who might possibly be a murderer. “Was he young, old?” I prompted.

  “Oh, maybe about twenty or so. Maybe younger, maybe older.”

  This was getting me nowhere.

  “Did you ask Walter about this? Maybe he saw him.”

  “Walter?”

  “He lives upstairs.”

  Oh, yeah, him. Mr. Pit Bull. “I was up there already. I don’t think he saw anyone.”

  “That’s all I can tell you.”

  I smelled that incense again and heard some sort of weird Yanni-like music in the background. “Thanks,” I said as I started back up the stairs.

  When I was almost to my apartment, I heard footsteps behind me, and when I turned, she was standing there in an Indian sarong. “He had a mole on his chin. It was about the size of a dime.”

  I stared at her. She really was very pretty, in that breathless sort of way. I guessed she was in her mid- to late twenties.

  “My name is Amber Pfeiffer. It’s nice to finally meet you. You’re the reporter for the newspaper, aren’t you?”

  Oh, Christ, my reputation was preceding me. “Yeah. A mole?”

  “I don’t know if that helps you or not.”

  “It might.”

  “I’m sorry I let him in. But like I said, he said he knew you.”

  Just then, Walter the Pit Bull came down the stairs and the three of us stood there, staring at each other. Walter was the first to break the ice, which seemed only appropriate.

  “What the hell’s going on here? Amber, you’re talking to this woman?”

  “I let that guy in, the one she’s asking about.”

  They were talking as if I wasn’t there, and I wondered how many times they’d talked about me behind my back. Then I remembered I didn’t care.

  Walter turned to me. “Just go back into your own world and let us be.”

  So much for the Welcome Wagon. But just as I was about to open my door, Tom came bounding up the stairs and froze just below us, his eyes asking me what was going on.

  I pointed to Amber. “She saw a guy in here. Probably the guy who left the note. He got in by telling her he knew me.”

  “You really shouldn’t let strangers in the building,” he told Amber. “And who left the door unlocked downstairs?”

  “I didn’t realize she didn’t know him, Tom.” How did she know his name? And she was batting her eyes at him. Really. I could see his eyes soften. It pissed me off.

  “You two know each other?”

  They looked at me at the same time, but Tom spoke first. “I usually run into Amber in the mornings when I’m leaving and she’s coming in from her run.”

  A beatnik who runs? I guess nowadays anyone can do anything. I still didn’t like it that they seemed to have some sort of relationship, peripheral as it might be.

  “Did you see anyone, Walter?”

  Oh, Christ, he knew the Pit Bull, too.

  “No, Tom. I just got up and was making my coffee when she,” he tossed his head in my direction, “interrupted me.”

  “He had a mole on his chin,” Amber repeated.

  Tom started writing this shit down. I just stood there like an idiot.

  “What else did he look like?”

  “Brown hair, brown eyes, average height—”

  “Jesus, Tom, that could be anyone,” I interrupted.

  Tom frowned at me. “Anything can help.”

  I rolled my eyes and went into my apartment and slammed the door. I could hear the voices just outside, murmuring, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I poured myself another cup of coffee and was stirring a spoonful of sugar into it when Tom came in.

  “You really shouldn’t be so rude,” he scolded.

  “I was perfectly happy not knowing my neighbors.”

  “They’re really quite nice. Why do you have to be so mean?”

  I don’t know what happened at that moment, but I burst into tears. I never burst into tears. I am one of those people who can see Terms of Endearment and laugh at the end. Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was the thought that my life would never be the same now that I knew who my neighbors were. I would have to say hello on the stairs, let them into the building if they forgot their keys, help them with grocery bags. Oh, God, I might have to move.

  And it might have had something to do with that note, the one Tom was inspecting carefully, not even paying attention to my waterworks.

  “David Best’s roommate has a mole on his chin,” he said quietly.

  “What?” I blew my nose.

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re kidding, right? I’m certain it’s Mark Torrey, it has to be. Especially after my interview with him last night. He really didn’t like me asking anything about McGee.”

  “But he didn’t have to talk to you. He knew you were going to ask questions, that’s your job. He expected it. But whoever sent you this wants you to stop doing your job.” He stared at it a little longer, and I drank some of my coffee. “No,” he said, sitting on the sofa, “this is someone else.”

  “But I haven’t talked to David Best since before his arrest. And he was in custody when Allison was killed.”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Posted bond. I didn’t even know about it until I got back to headquarters.”

  “His bail was a million dollars.” I couldn’t believe they’d let him out.

  “And he comes from a very rich and influential family.” Tom had a point.

  I remembered something. “Allison said she saw David the night Melissa was killed.”

  “Do you think David Best knew you were asking Allison questions?”

  I saw where he was going with this. “But wouldn’t it be stupid to get your roommate to deliver a threat? Especially someone with a distinguishing mark on his face?”

  “Criminals are the stupidest people I’ve ever met.”

  He was right. I did a story about two burglars who were caught because the cops followed their footprints in the snow to their house. That was about the mentality of the average criminal.

  “But wouldn’t a murderer be more careful?” I asked.

  “Maybe not,” Tom said. “Maybe it was a crime of passion, it wasn’t planned, it just happened, and he found himself in the middle of it without really expecting it. And David Best is really youn
g, he grew up in a sheltered environment. He could afford to be sloppy because he’d be bailed out no matter what.”

  All points well taken. But it still left me with a threatening note and a feeling that Mark Torrey was just around the corner.

  “I can’t shake the feeling that Torrey’s somehow involved.”

  Tom shrugged. “Maybe he is, maybe not. But I can’t say one way or the other until I can interrogate him, and we can’t find him.”

  “He said he’d go to the police.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Okay, I was batting a thousand today. And it wasn’t even 10:00 A.M. “If it’s David Best, then I can move forward with checking into this McGee thing, right?”

  “Sure, sure. But if Torrey calls you again, I want to talk to him about Melissa Peabody. He was one of the last people to see her alive, and he saw David Best that night, too. Do you have a Baggie?”

  I pulled a Ziploc bag out of a drawer. It had some bread crumbs in it.

  “Do you have a clean one?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. All out.”

  He emptied the crumbs in the sink and put the note in the bag. “I need this for evidence.”

  “In case I’m murdered, too, and you can say, oh, she was threatened?” I was trying to make a joke out of it, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  He didn’t say anything, which made me really start worrying.

  “Do you have any leads on Allison’s murder?” It was my feeble attempt to change the subject, but I couldn’t stay away from death completely.

  Tom shook his head. “Nothing. Crime scene was so goddamned clean. It just doesn’t make any sense.” He absently kissed me on the cheek. “I’m going to go talk to David Best’s roommate.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked, innocently, I hoped.

  “No, you’re not getting that out of me.”

  “Like I wouldn’t be able to find out.”

  “But by the time you find out, I’ll already have talked to him, and that’s the way it should be.” He closed the door behind him and left me with a half cup of cold coffee.

  CHAPTER 11

  Vinny DeLucia was leaning against my car when I left my building. So much for thinking my day could turn around.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He grinned. “Do you know you have very nosy neighbors?” He pointed up, and Amber’s curtain fell back just as I looked. I could see Walter’s silhouette behind his mini-blinds.

  “Ignore them. I’m looking for another place anyway.”

  “Why? This is a great location.”

  I had to agree. I loved this place, but my anonymity was one of the things I loved about it, and now that was gone. I sighed.

  “Why was the cop here?”

  I rolled my eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  “I know he didn’t spend the night, so why would he show up in the morning when he was already at work?”

  “How did you know he was at work already?” I ignored his reference to Tom’s not spending the night. I didn’t want to get into how he knew that.

  “Because I was at the police station earlier and found out David Best was released on bail.”

  I wasn’t even going to ask him what he was doing. I didn’t really want to know, and I didn’t really care.

  “So why did he come here?” he tried again.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “I can find out from one of your neighbors.”

  And he probably would, too. They’d be more than happy to tell him.

  “Okay, I got a note under my door. Said I should stop asking questions.”

  “Will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Stop asking questions.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you think it’s a real threat?”

  I stared at him. “What are you doing here? Why are you leaning against my car?”

  “You met Mark Torrey last night.”

  “What about it, and how do you know?”

  He chuckled. “I’m a private dick, remember?”

  He was a dick, all right.

  “Don’t even say it.”

  How did he know everything I was thinking? This guy was nuts. “I’m in one piece, okay? It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “But you got a threatening note this morning. You don’t think they’re connected?”

  I did, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Tom thinks David Best is involved.”

  Vinny bit his lower lip thoughtfully. “I guess so. Could be. But my bets are on Torrey.”

  “What’s your interest in all this, Vinny? What’s my mother got you working on?”

  He smiled, a slow, seductive smile that made my toes start to curl; then I reminded myself he was the geek from high school. He couldn’t have that effect on me.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he teased.

  “Is it about Melissa Peabody’s family suing the school?”

  “You have to ask your mother. I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “All right then, why were you following me to Torrey and why are you here now? I don’t have anything to do with Melissa Peabody’s death.”

  “But you did have contact with Allison Sanders, who is now dead. And you’ve talked to Mark Torrey, who until then and since has spoken to no one else. You seem to be some sort of key.”

  To what? The door to nowhere? “I have no key. I just get phone calls and I talk to people.” We stared each other down. “Hey, wait a minute. It’s Torrey, isn’t it? It’s not Melissa. It’s Torrey. What’s he done? Why is my mother so interested in him?”

  “Give the girl a gold star. But I still can’t say.”

  “Maybe I could help. He did talk to me. Maybe he’ll contact me again.”

  Vinny smiled.

  I was slow on the uptake, but once I started to figure things out, there was no stopping me. “So why didn’t you get to him last night, after I left him?”

  “Who says I didn’t?”

  Something else dawned on me. “That’s why you’re watching me. To see if he contacts me again.”

  He still didn’t say anything. It was infuriating.

  “What did he do, Vinny?”

  He shook his head. “You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.” He pulled himself away from my car and started down the street.

  “You’re a real asshole, you know that?” I yelled after him.

  He turned and laughed. “You’re such a charmer. I’ll see you around.”

  I slammed the car door and cranked up the radio, as if the Rolling Stones could erase Vinny DeLucia’s voice from my head. But he’d gotten me thinking despite myself. Mark Torrey was into something that my mother knew about. I was going to have to see her, continuing the day’s unfortunate course.

  I had to drive around the Green more than once before I found a parking space near my mother’s office building. I refuse to pay to park in one of the garages or lots. Luckily, someone was pulling out just a block away from the building when I came around the corner for the fourth time. I slipped my parking pass on the dashboard so I wouldn’t have to feed the meter and hoped this wouldn’t take too long.

  I could feel my heart quicken in that panic-attack sort of way I get when I smell fresh paint and clean carpets. I remember the smell of the hot wax in the composing room where we pasted up the stories in the old days, before computers, before everything went straight to the pressroom, rendering the waxers useless. They were idle for a while, until one day they were gone. It would be like that in the newsroom, too. One day we’d come in and we’d all have cubicles instead of being out in the open where phone conversations could be heard five desks away and we all knew when our society reporter arrived because we could smell her perfume before we saw her.

  I had a theory that the only thing that kept the company from dividing us up now was its fear that we’d somehow misuse our time if we weren’t able to be watched constantly.

&
nbsp; “Hello, Angie. Is my mother in?” My mother’s secretary was about my mother’s age, but without my mother’s style. She was intelligent, and I have the utmost respect for secretaries, who usually know more than anyone and are invaluable sources, but she lacked that certain something that made other women her age go back to school and become hotshot lawyers.

  “She has a meeting in a few minutes.” Angie’s eyes flickered with the lie, but I played along.

  “It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” I said as I pushed open the door to my mother’s office.

  It’s never ceased to amaze me that my mother, who once spent her days creating floral baskets and ironing underwear à la Martha Stewart, now had a corner office with a huge window overlooking Church Street. The mahogany desk shone with its polish, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother stayed after hours to give it her own elbow grease. She certainly had never trusted anyone else to clean her belongings before, but times had changed.

  “Oh, Annie, yes, what is it?” Her eyes were wide, she looked like a rabbit about to flee. But I closed the door.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I have a meeting in a few minutes.” She pushed some papers around on her desk to make it look good. But the full cup of coffee gave her away. My mother would never get a cup of coffee if she was going into a meeting, for fear of dribbling in front of those she felt should be in awe of her.

  I plopped down on the leather chair in front of her desk. “Mark Torrey. I know you’re after him. What for?”

  She stared at me over the top of her glasses, trying to figure out how much I knew. “I can’t tell you,” she finally said.

  “Bullshit. Off the record then. I’ll find out from someone else officially.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Annie, I’m your mother, but I’m also a lawyer. And you’re a reporter. You can’t take advantage of the fact that you’re my daughter.”

  “Bullshit,” I said again, for lack of anything else. “I met with Torrey last night.”

  “I know. I read the paper.” She probably read it in bed with Bill Bennett, the thought of which made my stomach turn.

  “Vinny DeLucia wants to talk to him. So do the cops. But I’m the only one he’s contacted. Want in on the action? I can make a deal.”