The headline read, “Chinooks Spill Blood and Guts,” and that pretty much summed up the game after Chinooks rookie Daniel Holstrom took a puck to his cheek early in the second frame. The puck that dropped Holstrom like a rock had come from a Dallas stick. Holstrom had been helped off the ice and hadn’t returned. Tempers flared, retaliation was sought. The Hammer mixed it up with the Dallas offense, grabbing a winger in the third period and giving him a glove rub in the alley.
After that, things got ugly, and while the Chinooks may have won the battles in the corners, they’d ultimately lost the war. Dallas’s deep offensive lines had taken advantage of every power play and peppered Luc with thirty-two shots on goal.
This morning no one was saying much. Especially after the ass-ream they’d been given in the locker room by Coach Nystrom. The coach had closed the door on reporters and had proceeded to shake the cinder-block walls with his loud tirade. But he’d said nothing they hadn’t deserved. They’d drawn stupid penalties and paid the price.
Luc folded the paper and stuck it beneath one arm. He unbuttoned his blazer as Ms. Alcott stepped from the revolving door to his left. The Texas sun bathed her in bright morning light, and a slight breeze played with the ends of her ponytail. She wore a black skirt down to her knees, a black blazer, and turtleneck. Her shoes were flat, and she carried that big briefcase of hers and a to-go coffee. She added to the visual assault by wearing an ugly pair of sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. They were round and green like a fly. Damn, but she was into looking sexless.
“Interesting game last night.” She set her briefcase on the ground between them and looked up into his face.
“You liked that?”
“Like I said, it was interesting. What was the team’s motto? ‘If you can’t beat ’em, beat ‘em up?’”
“Something like that,” he said with a laugh. “What’s with all the gray and black you always wear?”
She glanced down at herself. “I look good in black.”
“No, sweetheart, you look like the archangel of doom.”
She took a sip of her coffee and said totally urbanely, as if he hadn’t hit a nerve, “I could live the rest of my life without fashion commentary according to Lucky Luc.”
Or at least she tried for urbane. The bloom in her cheeks and her narrowed gaze behind those ugly glasses gave her away. “Okay, but…” He stopped and shook his head. He looked up at the sky and waited for her to take the bait.
He did not wait long. “I know I’m going to regret this,” she sighed, “but what?”
“Well, I just think that a woman who has trouble getting a man might have better luck if she dressed up the package a little. Didn’t wear ugly sunglasses.”
“My sunglasses aren’t ugly, and my packaging is none of your business,” she said as she raised her coffee to her lips.
“So only my business is open for discussion? Your business is off limits?”
“That’s right.”
“You little hypocrite.”
“Yeah, sue me.”
He glanced down into her face and asked, “How’s the coffee this morning?”
“It’s fine.”
“Still taking it black?”
She looked up at him out of the corner of her eye and placed a hand over the lid. “Yes.”
Chapter 4
Good Wood: Jabbing with the Butt End of a Stick
Jane was almost afraid to glance around her. This morning, looking at some of the Chinooks was kind of like looking at a train wreck. Horrifying, but she was unable to turn away. She sat near the front of the plane across the aisle from Assistant General Manager Darby Hogue, a copy of the Dallas Morning News opened to the sports page in her lap. She’d sent off her report of the previous night’s bloodletting, but she was interested in what the Dallas reporters had to say about it.
Last night, she and the area sports reporters had gathered in the media room to wait for their chance to enter the Chinooks’ locker room. They’d drunk coffee and cola and eaten some sort of enchilada concoction, but when Coach Nystrom had eventually come out, he’d informed them all there were to be no postgame interviews.
During the wait, the Dallas journalists had joked with her and shared war stories. They’d even told her which athletes gave them a break and always answered their questions. They also told her which players never answered questions. Luc Martineau topped the arrogant-pain-in-the-ass list.
Jane folded the paper and stuck it in her briefcase. Perhaps the Dallas reporters had been nice because they hadn’t seen her as a threat and weren’t intimidated by a woman. Maybe they would have treated her differently if they’d been in the locker room competing for an interview. She didn’t know and really didn’t care. It was just nice to discover that not all male reporters resented her. She was relieved to know that when she wrote one last column about her experiences, she could report that some men had evolved and not everyone viewed her as an assault to their egos.
She’d sent off two columns to the Seattle Times now. And she hadn’t heard a word from her editor. Not a word of praise or criticism, which she was trying to take as a good sign. She’d seen her first article passed around among the players, but none of them had commented either.
“I read your first column,” Darby Hogue said from across the aisle. In his bare feet, Jane estimated Darby Hogue to be five-foot-six. Five-nine in his cowboy boots. By the cut of his navy blue suit, she’d guess it was custom-made and would probably cost most people a month’s salary. His spiky gelled hair was the color of carrots and his complexion was even whiter than hers. Although she knew he was twenty-eight, he looked about seventeen. His brown eyes were intelligent and shrewd, and he had long sweeping red lashes. “You did a good job,” he added.
Finally, someone commented on her article. “Thank you.”
He leaned across the aisle to give her some pointers. “Next time you might want to mention our goal attempts.” Darby was the youngest assistant GM in the NHL, and Jane had read in his bio that he was a member of Mensa. She didn’t doubt it. Although he appeared to have taken great pains to shake his nerddom, he hadn’t quite been able to give up the pocket protector stuck in his white linen shirt.
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Hogue,” she said through what she hoped was a charming smile, “I won’t tell you how to do your job, if you don’t tell me how to do mine.”
He blinked. “That’s fair.”
“Yes, I think so.”
He straightened and placed a leather briefcase on his lap. “You usually sit in the back with the players.”
She’d always sat in back because by the time she’d boarded, the seats up front had been taken by coaches and management. “Well, I’m beginning to feel persona non grata back there,” she confessed. The incident of the previous night had made their feelings for her perfectly clear.
He returned his gaze to hers. “Has something happened that I should know about?”
Beyond the nuisance calls, she’d found a dead mouse outside her door last night. It had been very dehydrated as if it had been dead awhile. Obviously someone had found it somewhere and left it for her. Not exactly a horse’s head in her bed, but she didn’t think it was a coincidence either. But the last thing she needed was for the players to think she was running to management telling tales. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Have dinner with me tonight and we can talk about it.”
She stared across the aisle at him. For a second she wondered if he was one of those short guys who just naturally assumed she’d go out with him because she was short too. Her last boyfriend had been five-seven and had had the mother of all Napoleon complexes, which had butted heads with her own Napoleon complex. The very last thing she needed was a short guy asking her out. Especially a short guy who was also Chinooks management. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want the players to think you and I are involved.”
“I have d
inner with male sports reporters all the time. Chris Evans, in fact.”
It wasn’t the same. She had to be completely beyond gossip. More professional than men. Even though women had been allowed in the locker room for almost three decades now, speculation over women sleeping with their sources was still an issue. She didn’t think her credibility or acceptance with the players could sink lower, but she really didn’t want to find out.
“I just thought you might be tired of eating alone,” Darby added.
She was tired of eating alone. She was tired of staring at the walls of a hotel room or the inside of the team’s jet. Maybe someplace very public would be okay. “Just business?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why don’t we meet in the hotel restaurant?” she proposed.
“Seven sound okay?”
“Seven is perfect.” She dug around in the front pocket of her briefcase and pulled out the itinerary. “Where are we staying tonight?”
“LAX Doubletree,” Darby answered. “The hotel shakes every time one of those airbuses takes off.”
“Marvelous.”
“Welcome to the glamorous life of an athlete,” he said and leaned his head back.
Jane had pretty much already figured out that a four-game grind was just that: a grind. Although she’d already studied it dozens of times, her gaze scanned the itinerary. LA, then San Jose. Just a little over halfway into the road trip and she was looking forward to going home. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, drive her own car instead of ride a bus, and even open her own refrigerator instead of a hotel minibar. The Chinooks had four more days on the road before they returned to Seattle for a four-game, eight-day stretch. Then it was off again for Denver and Minnesota. More hotels and meals by herself.
Maybe having dinner with Darby Hogue was not such a bad idea. It could be enlightening and break the monotony.
At seven o’clock, Jane stepped off the elevators and made her way to the Seasons Restaurant. She’d left her hair down and it fell in soft curls to her shoulders. She wore her black wool pants and gray sweater. The sweater opened on the side of her neck and had flared sleeves, and until Luc had made that comment about her looking like the archangel of doom, she’d really liked it.
Now she wondered if there was some hidden reason beyond her fear of clashing colors that made her gravitate to dark colors. Was she depressed and didn’t know it, as Caroline had suggested? Have some undiagnosed mental disorder? Was she really an archangel of doom, or was Caroline delusional and Luc an arrogant A-hole? She liked to think the latter.
Darby waited for her at the entrance of the restaurant, looking very young in a pair of khakis, red and orange Hawaiian print shirt, and a new dose of gel in his hair. They were shown to a table near the windows and Jane ordered a lemon-drop martini to chase away her fatigue, if only for a few hours. Darby ordered a Beck’s and was asked for his ID.
“What? I’m twenty-eight,” he complained.
Jane laughed and opened the dinner menu. “People are going to mistake you for my son,” she kidded him.
The corners of his mouth turned downward and he pulled out his wallet. “You look younger than I do,” he grumbled as he showed the waiter his identification.
When their drinks arrived, Jane ordered salmon and wild rice while Darby chose beef and a baked potato.
“How’s your room?” he asked.
It was like every other room. “It’s fine.”
“Good.” He took a drink of his beer. “Any problems with the players?”
“No, they all pretty much avoid me.”
“They don’t want you here.”
“Yes, I know.” She took a sip of her martini. The sugar around the top of the glass, the floating lemon slice, and the perfect mix of Absolut Citron vodka and Triple Sec almost had her sighing like a seasoned alcoholic. But becoming an alcoholic was one thing that Jane didn’t have to worry about, for two reasons. Her hangovers were too painful to ever allow her to turn pro, and when she got tanked her judgment went out the window, sometimes along with her panties.
Jane and Darby’s conversation turned from hockey to other interests. She learned that he had graduated summa cum laude with an MBA from Harvard at the age of twenty-three. He mentioned his membership in Mensa three times, and that he owned a five-thousand-square-foot home on Mercer Island, a thirty-foot sailboat, and drove a cherry-red Porsche.
No doubt about it, Darby was a geek. Not that that was necessarily bad; besides being a fraud, she sometimes felt like a geek herself. To keep up her end of the conversation, she mentioned her undergraduate degrees in journalism and English. Darby didn’t seem all that impressed.
Their food arrived and he looked up from putting butter on his baked potato. “Am I going to end up in your Single Girl column?”
Jane paused in the act of placing her napkin on her lap. Most men feared showing up in the column. “Would you mind?”
His eyes lit up. “Hell, no.” He thought a moment. “But it has to be good. I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was a bad date.”
“I don’t think I can lie,” she lied. Half the stuff in her column was made up.
“I’d make it worth your while.”
If he wanted to wheel and deal, the least she could do was listen. “How?”
“I could tell the guys on the team that I don’t think you’re here to report on the size of their Johnsons or strange sexual habits,” he said, which immediately made her wonder exactly who had strange sexual habits. Maybe Vlad the Impaler. “And I could assure them you haven’t slept with Mr. Duffy to get this job.”
Complete horror dropped her jaw, and she raised a hand to her mouth. She’d figured that there might be some small minds in the newsroom who’d assumed she’d exchanged sexual favors with Leonard Callaway, because, after all, he was the managing editor and she was just that woman who wrote that silly column about being single in the city. She wasn’t a real journalist.
But it had never entered her head that anyone would think she’d slept with Virgil Duffy. Good God, the man was old enough to be her grandfather. Sure, he had a reputation for dogging younger women, and there had been a time in her life when her standards had hit a real low patch and she’d had sex with some men she’d rather forget about, but she’d never dated anyone forty years older than herself.
Darby laughed and dug into his beef. “I can see by the look on your face that the speculation isn’t true.”
“Of course not.” She reached for her martini and polished it off. The vodka and Triple Sec warmed a path to her stomach. “I’d never even met Mr. Duffy before that first day in the locker room.” The unfairness of it hit her and she signaled for another martini. Usually Jane hated to cry “no fair.” She believed that life wasn’t fair, and that crying about it only made things worse. She was a get-over-it-and-get-on-with-your-life type of girl, but in this case it really wasn’t fair because there was nothing she could do about it. If she made a fuss and denied it, she doubted anyone would believe her.
“If you write about me in your column, make me sound good, I’ll make things easier for you.”
She picked up her fork and took a bite of her wild rice. “What, are you having trouble finding a date?” She’d been joking, but by the brilliant blush to his cheek, she could tell she’d hit a nerve.
“When women first meet me, they think I’m a dork.”
“Hmm, I didn’t think so,” she lied, risking the bad karma.
He smiled, and the risk was worth it. “They never give me a chance.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t talk about Mensa and about your advanced degrees, you’d have better luck.”
“Think so?”
“Yep.” She was halfway through her salmon when her second drink arrived.
“Maybe you could give me some pointers.”
Right, like she was an expert. “Maybe.”
His shrewd gaze bored into her as he took a bite of potato. “I could make it worth your while,
” he said again.
“I’m getting nuisance calls. Make them stop.”
He didn’t appear surprised. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”
“Good, because it’s harassment.”
“Look at it more as initiation.”
Uh-huh. “There was a dead mouse outside my door last night.”
He took a swig of his beer. “It could have crawled there by itself.”
Sure. “I want an interview with Luc Martineau.”
“You’re not the only one. Luc is a very private guy.”
“Ask him.”
“I’m not the best person to ask him. He doesn’t like me.”
She raised her lemon drop to her lips. Luc didn’t like her either. “Why?”
“He knows I advised against trading for him. I was fairly adamant about it.”
That was a surprise. “Why?”
“Well, it’s old news, but he was injured when he was with Detroit. I’m not convinced a player his age can come back from major ACT surgery on both knees. At one time Martineau was good, maybe one of the best, but eleven million a year is a lot to gamble on a thirty-two-year-old man with bad knees. We traded a first-round draft pick, a heavy-hitting defender, and a pair of bookend wings. That left us weak on the right side. I’m not sure Martineau was worth it.”
“He’s having a good season,” she pointed out.
“So far. What happens if he’s reinjured? You can’t build a team around one player.”
Jane didn’t know a lot about hockey, and she wondered if Darby was right. Had the team been built around their elite goalie? And did Luc, who appeared so cool and calm, feel the tremendous pressure of what was expected of him?
It took a frantic call from Mrs. Jackson for Luc to learn that Marie hadn’t been to school since Luc had left Seattle. Mrs. Jackson told him she’d dropped Marie off every morning, and Marie had walked into the building. What he also discovered was that she’d then gone straight out the back.
See Jane Score Page 6