“Whatta disappointment,” she mumbled. “Let’s get outta here. I was so sure they’d let me do a few tricks with those gators. I’m a lot stronger than I look, you know. I’ve got really strong bones because I take an osteoporosis drug regularly.”
They’d walked only a few steps along the path leading out of the stadium when they heard someone ask, “Did you ladies enjoy the show?”
Mallory turned and saw that the person who’d posed the question was a scruffy-looking man who, like Doug and Lisa, wore a shirt with a GL embroidered over the pocket. But he could have been their grandfather. He had a shock of white hair that puffed upward and a mottled red nose that reminded Mallory of a potato.
“It was great,” Mallory replied.
“Except I didn’t get to wrestle a single alligator,” Frieda said petulantly.
“That’s too bad. But maybe I can make things up to you two lovely ladies.” He sashayed up to Frieda and said, “Let me introduce myself. I’m Zeke—better known as Alligator Zeke.”
“Hello, uh, Alligator Zeke,” Mallory said politely. She needn’t have bothered. Zeke clearly had eyes only for Frieda.
And Frieda seemed to be loving it. “I’m Frieda Stein.” Cocking her head to one side flirtatiously, she added, “Seems to me a man with a nickname like that must have earned it.”
Zeke chuckled. “I admit, I’ve had my share of close encounters with the cute little critters. Got the scars to prove it, too.” Leaning toward Frieda, he added, “I’d be happy to show ’em to you, if you’re interested.”
She giggled like a twelve-year-old.
“But for now,” Zeke offered, “how about if I personally show you lovely ladies some of Gatorland’s highlights?”
“Ooh, I’d love that!” Frieda cooed.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” Mallory said. She knew perfectly well she wasn’t the lovely lady he was interested in impressing, and she had no interest in being a third wheel. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just duck into the gift shop.”
“Be my guest,” Zeke said. “Now, Frieda, if you’ll just step over here into the Snakes of Florida exhibit…”
Anxious to make a quick getaway, Mallory dashed into the gift shop. Not surprisingly, it was filled with alligators made of every possible material. She couldn’t help stroking one of the cute, fuzzy alligators that had somehow morphed from reptiles into mammals. She also spotted a stuffed mommy gator with two babies Velcroed on, which struck her as a terrific way of keeping one’s offspring close by. She wished someone had thought of that when Jordan was little.
She pulled out her pad and took notes on the merchandise: a bean-bag gator with a goofy expression; a foam-rubber mask that made it possible for any human to be mistaken for an alligator; a floating version for bathtub enjoyment, billed as “28 BIG inches of rubbery reptile fun!”
Mallory was tempted to buy Jordan one of the official Gatorland T-shirts on display. But she couldn’t decide between the one printed with Chasin’ Tail—Gatorland Orlando, Florida and the considerably more tasteful one that said, Official Gatorland Gator Patrol—If You See Me Running, Try to Keep Up!
In the end, she decided to chuck the shopping spree and instead take advantage of her last minutes of freedom from Frieda by grabbing some lunch. Even though they hadn’t been at the park very long, it was already close to noon and her stomach was growling more loudly than Judy the bear.
After checking her map once again and weighing her options, she decided that Pearl’s Patio Smokehouse sounded like the best bet for chowing down—even if the menu did include smoked gator ribs and deep-fried gator nuggets.
As soon as she walked into the outdoor eatery, her heart leaped into her throat. The reporter she’d noticed earlier was sitting at a picnic table, an outdoor snack bar, dousing a sandwich with sauce.
She’d just started to head toward him when Frieda came over and placed her hand on Mallory’s arm.
“Mallory, dear, would you mind if Zeke took me on a private tour? He has something special he wants to show me. Something that the general public doesn’t get to see.”
Mallory didn’t even want to know what that was. Thank you, Zeke, she thought.
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said aloud. “Have a ball. Meet me at the ticket booth whenever you’re ready to leave.”
Frieda just winked, then hurried away.
As soon as she was out of view, Mallory sidled over to the reporter, who at the moment had an extraordinary amount of brown sauce dripping down his chin.
“Is the food here any good?” she asked casually.
“Sure, if you like gator meat.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Yeah. This is regular old pulled pork. It’s really good, though. I highly recommend it.”
“Thanks for the review.”
She ordered her own lunch, then carried her tray back to his table. “Mind if I join you? I hate eating alone.”
Since his mouth was full of half-chewed pork, he grunted and made a welcoming gesture.
“You’re a reporter, aren’t you?” Mallory asked as she unwrapped her straw. “I noticed you out front when I came in.”
He swallowed loudly. “Yup, that was me.” Rolling his eyes, he added, “That’s what happens on a slow news day. You end up giving crazies a bunch of publicity they don’t deserve. Fortunately, I can pad the piece with some legitimate news. Coming here today gave me an excuse to interview some of the employees about the park’s recovery from the serious fire they had here a while back.”
“I guess your job is never boring,” Mallory commented. She bit into her sandwich. He was right. The pulled pork at Pearl’s was excellent. “Have you been doing it for a long time?”
He snorted. “Sometimes it seems like forever. But I guess it’s more like, what, thirty-five years?”
Which meant she’d been right about his age. “I don’t suppose you ever ran into a reporter named Phil Diamond who wrote for the Orlando Observer?”
“Phil Diamond?” he repeated, startled.
Mallory did her best not to react. “Did you know him?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” He frowned. “I guess you know he was murdered last night.”
She nodded. “I’m one of the travel writers who came down on the same press trip. We’re all staying at the hotel where he was killed.” She decided not to mention that she was also a suspect, since that probably wasn’t the best way to get him to open up. “I’m Mallory Marlowe. I write for The Good Life.”
“Al Zimmerman. Orlando Sentinel.” He stuck out his hand, then drew it back as if he’d realized it was too sticky for human contact. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same here.” She hesitated. “I understand that Phil Diamond had a pretty successful writing career back in the eighties. He had his own column, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. He called it ‘Diamond in the Rough.’” Smirking, he added, “I don’t know how well you knew Phil, but that name fit him pretty well.”
“I didn’t know him well at all,” Mallory replied. “Actually, I just met him yesterday.”
“Yeah, well, I knew Phil forever. He and I actually started out in the newspaper business together. I was just out of college with a degree in journalism. As for Phil, I seem to recall he didn’t graduate from college. He was one of those ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ types. I think he’d taken a few writing courses somewhere, but he mainly learned the writing trade by working for local papers. They didn’t pay much, but he was willing to do whatever they asked to learn the business.
“Phil was a decent writer, but not a great one. To give him credit, he did get better as time went on. But what he was best at was getting the story.”
“You mean he was good with people?” Mallory asked, surprised.
Al smiled crookedly. “More like he had a certain ruthlessness when it came to beating people down. He was one of those guys who had no problem showing up at a murder victim’s home at two o�
�clock in the morning and asking his mother, ‘How do you feel about your kid being shot to death two hours ago?’”
“But isn’t that a necessary skill in the newspaper business?”
“For certain kinds of reporting. The problem with Phil was that he didn’t know when to let it go. He was a diamond in the rough, all right. And not only at work. Unfortunately, he carried it into every part of his life, including his personal life. His marriage was the perfect example.”
Mallory pricked up her ears. “It didn’t even occur to me that Phil might be married.”
“He’s not—or I guess I should say he wasn’t. At least, not anymore. He and Patrice got divorced a long time ago. Early nineties, I think. It was pretty ugly, from what I understand.”
“Was she a reporter, too?”
“Patrice? Nah. I seem to recall that she tried a couple of different things. Eventually, even she got caught up in the tourism business. After the divorce, she opened one of those ice-cream stands that’s actually shaped like a huge ice-cream cone. After that, I don’t know what happened.”
Mallory was about to press Al for more details about Phil’s failed marriage, but he said, “Anyway, Phil got to be pretty popular at the Observer. Readers loved him because he always got the story. He had no problem telling it like it was, no matter whose toes he might have been stepping on. But his columns were so abrasive that our editor, Jim Tillson, got loads of angry phone calls from the local citizenry. Politicians, too. The cops, even. When it came to offending people, Phil didn’t discriminate.
“After a while, Jim got pretty tired of it. But by that point Phil had a big enough following that Jim didn’t want to let him go. So he came up with the idea of giving him his own column.”
“A travel column, right?” Mallory asked.
“He covered travel, but it was actually more of a lifestyle column,” Al replied. “Phil wrote about anything he felt like writing about. It was mostly stuff about the local scene. Restaurants, trends, the growing tourism trade, the long-term repercussions of Disneyfication, and the tremendous growth that was changing the face of central Florida.”
Mallory’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t tell me Phil was concerned about preserving Florida’s past. Or that he was worried about what overdevelopment might do to the environment.”
“Ha! Not Phil. He was much too self-serving. But so are a lot of people, and I guess he put in print what many of them were thinking. That’s what I meant about developing a following. People liked his curmudgeonly style. It was something different, something a big portion of the paper’s readership could relate to.”
“If he was that popular, why did he give up his column and leave Florida?”
“I’m afraid that’s where there’s a hole in my story,” Al said. “Phil seemed pretty happy being a big fish in a little pond. As for me, when I suddenly saw the big three-oh staring me in the face, I decided I wanted more. So I applied to the Journalism program at Columbia University. I figured having a Master’s degree from a name school would help me move into the big league. I went up to New York for a couple of years, and Phil and I lost touch.
“After that, I worked at a bunch of papers all over the country. It’s only recently that I came back. I think of myself as semiretired. The work here isn’t that demanding, and I live in a nice condo with my wife. We’ve got a pool, a clubhouse, the whole shebang.”
“But what happened to Phil?” Mallory persisted. “Why did he leave Florida?”
The creases in Al’s forehead deepened. “I don’t know the details. All I know is that I heard through the grapevine that Phil was suddenly out on his keister.”
“He was fired?” Mallory exclaimed. “Why? What happened?”
“He apparently got involved in some scandal. Something pretty serious, too, I understand. But it was all kept very hush-hush. I guess the people who were in power at the time were afraid it would hurt the paper’s reputation. All I know is that one day Phil Diamond was the golden boy, and the next day he’d vanished.”
So good old Phil had gotten into some kind of trouble, Mallory thought. Before she managed to press Al for more details, he crumpled up all the barbecue sauce–streaked napkins he’d used and pushed back his bench.
“Speaking of vanishing, I’ve got to get out of here. Big press conference at the mayor’s office. Seems he found a new way to cut taxes without cutting services—or so he claims.” As he stood up, he added, “Nice chatting with you.”
“Same here.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for your article. Hey, I like living the good life as much as the next guy.”
Mallory was about to respond when her cell phone erupted into its signature melody. She was about to answer when she noticed the number. It was Trevor Pierce, calling her again.
I got off easy with the last call, she thought. I may not be as lucky this time around.
So instead of answering, she waited until the words 1 NEW MESSAGE appeared on the screen. Then she punched in her password and listened.
“Mallory, Trevor Pierce again. Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on down there?”
8
“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey!”
—Fitzhugh Mullan
Cringing, Mallory listened to the rest of Trevor’s message.
“I just logged onto the Orlando Sentinel’s web-site to check out the weather,” he continued. He sounded as if he was doing his best to remain calm but wasn’t doing that great a job of it. “I wanted to see if you had any rain down there. But instead of getting the weather report, I read in the headlines that a journalist who sounds like he’s on the same press trip you’re on was murdered last night! For God’s sake, Mallory, call me!”
Mallory hesitated for only a moment before turning off her cell phone and tossing it into her purse.
Okay, so he knows I wasn’t exactly telling the truth when I said everything was going well, she thought guiltily. But right now, I have enough to deal with without trying to explain my situation to my boss.
And that included dragging a libidinous senior citizen away from her gator-filled love nest.
“You should see how strong Zeke is!” Frieda cooed as she toddled through the parking lot a little behind Mallory, after turning up at the ticket booth much later than Mallory would have liked. At least she no longer appeared to be intoxicated. At least, not on alcohol. “And how brave he is! He actually picked up an alligator and held it in his arms like a baby! Of course, it was a baby. And the little guy’s teeth didn’t look much bigger than mine….”
As soon as Mallory managed to strap Frieda into the front seat, she snapped on the car radio.
“Police have no leads in the death of Phil Diamond, the seasoned journalist who was visiting Orlando to write an in-depth investigative piece on the city’s tourism industry….”
Okay, that’s just one station, she thought, fighting the wave of anxiety that was rapidly descending and pressing the Seek button. And a local station, at that.
“According to Desmond Farnaby, general manager of the Polynesian Princess Hotel, security has been stepped up and the hotel staff is doing everything possible to cooperate with police….”
Another local station, Mallory thought desperately, punching Seek again. Al Zimmerman told me himself that today was a slow news day.
“This is National Public Radio,” a dreamy female voice said, “and today’s top story is the murder of journalist Phillip Diamond, the voice of the highly respected travel website BeenThereDoneThat-dot-com….”
“Sounds like poor old Phil getting bumped off is big news.” Frieda cackled. “Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen a long time ago.”
Mallory kept jabbing buttons until she finally found a country station. It wasn’t her favorite type of music, but she gritted her teeth and turned the volume up enough that it discouraged any further conversation.
“Our lo-o-ove is like a di-a-mond, shiny and stro
ng…” an ersatz cowboy caterwauled.
Biting her lip, she snapped off the radio. He’s everywhere, she thought, trying to quell the anxiety rising in her chest by taking deep breaths. I can’t get away from him.
Amazingly, Phil Diamond is turning out to be even more trouble dead than he was alive. But while I have no control over how the rest of the world deals with him, the one thing I can do is spend every waking moment trying to get him out of my life.
“Thanks for taking me to Gatorland,” Frieda said as she and Mallory strolled through the Polynesian Princess lobby, toward the elevators. “I’m sure it’ll be one of the highlights of the entire trip.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Mallory replied. “It’s nice that Zeke made the time to give you an insider’s view. Who knows? Maybe you two will even keep in touch.”
Frieda cast her a surprised look. “Zeke and I are going out tonight. He promised to show me some of Orlando’s hot spots.”
“That should be something your readers will be interested in,” Mallory said politely, wondering how many of those hot spots were located on Zeke’s body.
“Ha! Forget my readers. I’m taking the night off, baby. Party on!”
When the elevator doors opened, Frieda stepped in. “Time for my nap,” she announced. “Not a long one, just twenty minutes to recharge the batteries.”
Mallory hesitated. Up to this point, she had been looking forward to returning to her hotel room, the only place in town that afforded her a room with a door—a door that could shut out the rest of the world. Yet now that she was back, she realized there was a much better way to use her free time: paying a visit to the scene of the crime.
While she couldn’t anticipate what she might find—and in fact didn’t even have a very good idea of what to look for—she’d seen enough crime shows on TV to know that viewing the crime scene was a crucial element of any investigation. Besides, even if she didn’t manage to spot anything the cops had missed, something in that room might spark an idea or give her a clue as to who had been there when Phil was murdered.
Murder Packs a Suitcase Page 11