“Absolutely. It’s a competitive world. A younger look can give a man an edge in the business world.” Patrice guided me toward a small elevator beyond the registration desk. “Rest, relaxation, and a great massage all help ease away the stress of high-pressure jobs.”
I pulled a notebook from my bag and hunted for a pen. Ordinarily, I could find at least half a dozen at the bottom, but not on this interview.
“Bev,” I called out. “Do you have a pen in your bag?”
It was the first time Patrice Milner noticed another person in the lobby. She stared frankly at Bevin, sizing her up, and then her eyes lit in recognition. “Why, you’re Mrs. White, aren’t you?”
Bev looked up from the Jersey Shore postcards. “Sorry. You’re mistaken.”
“It’s uncanny,” Patrice said. “I could swear you were Barbara White. You and your husband were guests a few months ago—a nice-looking man in his mid to late thirties?”
After a moment of awkward silence, Bevin offered Patrice a sick smile. “My name is Thompson. Bevin Thompson.” To me she said, “I’ll wait for you in the car, Colleen.”
Patrice gave me a pen from the registration desk and we took the slow, claustrophobic elevator to the third floor.
“I hope I didn’t offend your friend,” Patrice said. “She must have a doppelganger.”
I laughed. “They say we all have a twin. I’m sure she isn’t offended.”
But I knew the Milner woman wasn’t mistaken. Bevin’s maiden name was White—too much of a coincidence. And nobody looked like Bevin. I wondered why she’d felt the need to use an alias.
I thought back. Bev had spent a weekend at an art convention in February. It wasn’t like her to take a brief hiatus and indulge in a few days of facials, body wraps, and deep muscle massage, especially not with Franklin in tow. He often got on her case about the money she spent. Besides, there was no lighting scheme anywhere on the planet flattering enough to make Bev’s husband look good. Franklin Thompson had a face like Herman Munster.
Now I was anxious to get the assignment over fast and talk to Bevin in private.
The elevator stopped, and we stepped out into a narrow hallway. I took hold of Patrice Milner’s arm and hurried her along, paying so many extravagant compliments to her decorating skills that I couldn’t stand to listen to myself a moment longer.
We toured the charming bedroom suites and then made our way down to the spa. I asked the proper questions about structural renovations, sea salt scrubs, and whether or not aromatherapy really did aid in sleep and relaxation. The hour I usually allotted for interviews dragged, but finally our meeting ended. I thanked Patrice, grabbed a handful of brochures from the front desk, and ran out to Bev’s silver Mercedes in the parking lot.
“What was that all about?” I asked as soon as I opened the car door.
Bev didn’t answer. I climbed in and barely had time to buckle my seat belt before she put the car in drive and floored the gas. We almost clipped a Toyota exiting the lot, but Bevin was too intent on getting out fast to be rattled by the close call. My foot nearly broke through the floor when I stomped on the imaginary brake
“Would you like me to drive, Bev?” I asked.
“I’m fine! Just fine!” she insisted.
Bevin Thompson wasn’t fine. She looked like all the blood had drained from her face and she was on the verge of tears.
“Let’s skip lunch. You’re in no condition …”
“I said I’m fine.”
“We can do it another time,” I said.
“We can do it right now!”
A tear slipped down her check, and Bev was lost in thought. A NJ Transit bus tried to merge into our lane from the shoulder, and she didn’t notice.
“Bev, watch out! Pay attention!” I braced for impact, instinctively grabbing the dashboard.
She glanced at the bus, gasped, and swerved into the right lane to get out of the way.
“God, that was close,” she muttered. Her hands trembled on the wheel, and her complexion faded even whiter.
“Bev …” I began.
“Let’s talk about it at the restaurant.”
“Maybe we should go home and talk in private,” I suggested.
“At the restaurant,” she insisted. “That’s more private. I wouldn’t want your mother barging in and overhearing anything.”
Traffic was horrendous. Mall mommies in minivans clogged the lanes, and the ride back to Tranquil Harbor took nearly forty-five minutes. Except for grumbling at incompetent drivers, Bev didn’t speak again until the hostess seated us at our table inside the Happy Garden.
“We need appetizers and white wine right away,” Bevin told our lean Chinese waiter. “Egg rolls and steamed dumplings—and bring a bowl of those crunchy noodles with hot mustard. Don’t forget water. MSG makes me thirsty.”
“No MSG!” the waiter insisted.
“Just bring the water.” With a flick of her wrist, Bev dismissed him.
“What’s gotten into you? I’ve never seen you so rude! What’s going on?” I asked her.
“I guess I’m just a little on edge.”
After the strange encounter with Patrice Milner, I felt the question needed to be asked outright. “Level with me. Are you cheating on Franklin, Bev?”
She lowered her head and her gorgeous red curls tumbled forward. Patrice Milner was right. There was no mistaking Bevin for anyone else.
“I know what you’re thinking. How can anyone cheat on good old stable Franklin? It seems Franklin isn’t as stable as everyone believes.”
I put down the menu and folded my hands on top of it. My friend deserved my undivided attention. “He’s been cheating on you?”
“With a trader at work. Most traders are miserable, burned-out bastards who travel in packs like wolves. They comfort each other in every way you can imagine. He found a hot Wall Street chick without an artistic bone in her lower-Manhattan body.”
Neil once told me all traders should be drowned at birth. I never paid much attention because Neil’s words of wisdom were generally broad, stupid statements. “So you took up with someone for, what, revenge?”
“I needed revenge. And I couldn’t discuss it with you because you had enough on your mind with Neil, even if you didn’t realize it at the time. I knew Neil was cheating on you. All the signs were there, Colleen. Did you honestly think he put in all those extra hours to build up the business?”
I shrugged. Maybe somewhere deep down inside, I knew Neil was carousing and refused to acknowledge it—not that it mattered anymore. “I wish you would have confided a little more in me, Bev. You shouldn’t have gone through that alone.”
“Obviously I didn’t.”
The waiter brought a tray of appetizers, two glasses of wine and two tumblers filled with ice water. Bevin took a dainty sip of wine, then another. I didn’t feel much like white wine. I asked the waiter to bring me a very dry double martini on the rocks with house gin and six olives.
“Who was your revenge stud, Bev?” I asked.
She twirled a strand of her long, red hair. “I’d rather this didn’t get out. It could look—bad.”
“Who would I tell?”
“That hunk editor up at the Crier, for one.”
Generally, I put two and two together and came up with five, but somehow I knew what Bev would say next. “Please don’t tell me it was Jason Whitley.”
“This can’t make the papers!” she hissed.
“Dear God! You can’t be serious! Jason Whitley? I thought you of all people would be more particular! And you call yourself an artist!”
Bevin winced.
I picked up a crunchy noodle and dunked it in the hot mustard. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but you didn’t happen to kill him, did you?”
Bev finished her wine and reached across the table for my untouched glass. “Of course not!”
The waiter returned with my martini, and I took a long, well-earned gulp. We gave our lunch orders. Bev we
nt for the chicken with cashews. I ordered the beef with broccoli.
“Whitley was available,” she continued when the waiter left. “He was kind to me, Colleen. Franklin isn’t, you know. He hasn’t been for a long, long time.”
“How long were you and Whitley, um, hitting the sheets?”
“Since January.”
“And?”
“It went on up until his death,” she said.
“Nearly four months? Yuck! I can’t imagine you and Whitley together! What did you find so appealing about him? He must have been terrific in the sack. It certainly wasn’t his sparkling personality.”
Bev drained my wine and picked up an egg roll. “For God’s sake, Colleen. This is serious!”
“I am serious! Do you know what a gavone is?”
“I’m sure that’s Italian for something terrible,” she said before taking a nibble of the egg roll.
“It’s a Sicilian expression. It means a pig, trailer trash. If you look up gavone in an Italian dictionary, Jason Whitley’s picture will be there.”
“He served his purpose.”
“You sound like Betty Vernon. Did you know she was doing him, too?” I asked.
“They broke it off,” she told me.
“So you were the last fling. That means the county car parked at your curb isn’t there to spy on me. They’re watching you!”
Bev ducked her head. Her hair tumbled forward again and shrouded half her face. “You can’t tell Ken Rhodes. Promise me!”
“If the cops are watching your house, he probably already knows. No wonder Rhodes wanted me to write about the murder in my column. He probably thought I knew all about you and Whitley.”
“Just my luck,” Bev said.
“Did Haver grill you?”
She nodded. “He gave me the third degree, as well as the fourth and fifth. Listen to us. We sound like we’re in a cheap detective novel.”
“Not too cheap. We live in a nice neighborhood.”
She offered me a wisp of a smile. “Then we’re trapped in an upper-middle-class detective novel where cops question a suspect the same day her best friend trips over the murder victim.”
“Good timing,” I said.
“If you had known about me and Whitley …”
I cut her off. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it. I would have lectured you on your appalling lack of good taste, however.”
The waiter brought our covered entrées, and I picked up my chopsticks.
“If this gets around town, my little Dennis won’t be able to hold his head up,” Bev told me.
It felt like the whole world was cheating. I hadn’t thought so until I found out about Neil and Theda Oates, Jason and Jennifer Whitley, and Bevin and Franklin Thompson. The sanctity of marriage had as much staying power as the Chinese food were about to eat. You married someone from column A, and a few years later you were hungry for someone from column B.
“Bev, does Franklin know about you and Jason Whitley?” I asked.
She shook out a pink linen napkin and draped it over her lap in a ladylike fashion. “Not so far. For the time being, I’d like to keep it that way.”
The table was filled with food, and there was no sense letting it go to waste. I stabbed a dumpling and dipped it in sweet brown gingery sauce, then loaded my plate with beef and broccoli. Bevin seemed to experience a profound lack of appetite. She used her chopsticks to move chicken around on her plate, but never actually put any food in her mouth.
“The news of the day certainly hasn’t ruined your appetite,” Bevin observed.
“Food is a great comfort for me.”
She pushed her plate aside. “I told Haver you didn’t know anything at all about me and Jason Whitley. I don’t know if he believed me or not. I guess I’m the prime suspect.”
“There has to be a way to clear you,” I said.
“The only way to clear me is to find out who killed Whitley.”
“Then I’ll just have to figure out who that was.”
Bev’s eyes widened. “Oh, no you won’t! You think I want to see you floating dead in the bay because you’re trying to get me off the hook?”
“Too late. I already floated in the bay, and I’m still alive.”
“How long do you think your luck can hold out? First you get run down, then your car sinks with you in it,” Bev said.
“Technically, I was outside treading water when the Escort went under,” I told her.
“Stay out of this, Colleen. I have enough on my conscience as it is. Leave it up to Haver, or Rhodes, or anybody else.”
“I’ll talk to Rhodes about it this afternoon.”
“Please make sure he doesn’t print anything about my affair with Jason Whitley,” she begged.
“I’ll do my best,” I promised, but I knew if Rhodes decided to go with the story, nothing would stop him from printing it.
14
Bevin dropped me off at home, and I borrowed my mother’s little red Sentra to drive to the newspaper office. Relying on my friends and family for wheels was going to get old quickly. I passed Meredith’s cubicle without as much as a fast hello and went straight to Ken’s office. His door was wide open, and I found him beside his desk in the middle of a one-sided debate with Calypso Trent, the head of advertising.
“I need a word with you right now!” I said.
Callie, at least, looked relieved at the intrusion. “We can finish this later,” she said. She gathered up her papers and gave me a sly wink on the way out.
Rhodes wasn’t nearly as happy with the interruption, but he looked great despite his plum-purple complexion. His suit looked Armani-expensive and his shoes were polished to within an inch of their life.
“I have a meeting with the publisher at three o’clock and those advertising figures have to go with me,” he said. “Make this quick. What’s your problem now?”
“You’re my problem!”
Rhodes sat in his chair and leaned way back. “How, exactly, am I your problem?”
“I just had lunch with Bevin Thompson, and we had a long, heart-to-heart talk.”
“And?” he asked.
“Did you know Bev was having an affair with Whitley? No wonder you offered me that column. You think my best friend is a killer!”
“You might have mentioned the affair when this whole column business started.”
“I just found out about it today,” I told him.
“You’re asking me to believe your best friend had an affair and didn’t confide in you?”
“Her husband cheated on her, and she used Jason Whitley to get her revenge. She never told me. She didn’t want to bother me with it because I had my own problems with Neil at the time.”
“It doesn’t make much difference either way. She’s still a suspect, Colleen.”
“You’re the one who told me having an affair doesn’t automatically make a person guilty. Does Ron Haver really think Bevin murdered Jason Whitley?”
“How would I know?” he said. “Haver isn’t talking.”
“So how did you know about the affair?” I asked.
“I surmised as much from talking to Haver, though he didn’t come right out and say it. Think about it—a county car parked across the street from your house, in front of your best friend’s house. Did you honestly think they were watching you?”
The situation seemed to be getting worse and worse. An affair with Whitley might have provided Bevin with a motive, but the whole idea seemed absurd. Bev was too levelheaded for a crime of passion. “You’re not going to run a story about her connection to Whitley, are you?”
“I don’t like going the rumor route,” he said.
His answer surprised me. “Don’t newspapers use the word ‘alleged’ anymore?”
“That’s too close to yellow journalism for my taste. Reputations get ruined by gossip, even false gossip. People can get crucified, whether the rumors are true or not.”
A newspaper editor with a conscience, I thought. I wond
ered what the odds were on something like that. “You sound like you’ve encountered a few ethics questions.”
“Firsthand,” Rhodes told me. “You can tell your friend we won’t print anything unless she’s arrested.”
“I’m sure she’ll take a great deal of comfort in that,” I said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in my voice. “She’s not the type, you know. Bev would never kill anyone.”
“That’s what neighbors always say about the serial killer next door.”
I stood to leave. “By the way, I want my column back. If anyone’s going to write about this, it’s going to be me!”
“Haven’t you been through enough? Just how long do you think you can keep this up without getting yourself killed for your trouble?”
“Long enough to keep Bev out of jail. Don’t you dare change my work to fit some stupid op-ed column!”
Rhodes glared at me. “You give a lot of orders for a stringer.”
“I’m writing about the murder whether I’m a stringer or not,” I told him. “I want to know who killed Whitley. Nobody’s arresting my friend!”
“You realize you’ll have to run your tail off. You’ll have to be more careful, too. That means you can’t shoot off your mouth to anyone, and you have to check in with me each time you speak to someone involved with Whitley.”
“Uh-huh,” I somewhat agreed.
“The bat used to kill Jason Whitley came from the Pirates equipment bag. That means you probably know the killer.”
“Probably,” I told him.
“What are you working on now?” he asked.
“I have to write up The Grand Duchess story,” I told him, “and cover the fundraiser for the Fitzpatrick kid on Saturday.”
“May 16th deadlines for all of them, right? Someone else can cover the fundraiser. That’ll take some pressure off you.”
“Not on your life!” I protested. “I need the extra cash.”
“Let’s hope it’s not on your life.”
* * *
On the drive home, away from Ken’s pricey suit and gruff personality, I hoped I wasn’t getting in over my head. I had to find a way to clear Bevin. Unfortunately, she had access to the equipment bag. So did Ron Haver, Jennifer Whitley, Eugene Steiner, Stanley Da Silva, and possibly Kevin Sheffield—as well as all the kids on the Pirates and their parents. Even Neil had access to the bag. Worse still, so did I.
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