by Nancy Martin
He went very still.
“You recognize them?”
One-handed, he thumbed the skeleton key away from the others. “Not many houses use these anymore. And the high school emblem on the ring? These belong to Rawlins.”
“Michael, I found them near Swain’s body. On the ground, just a few feet away from him.”
He closed his palm around the keys as if to hide them. “Oh hell.”
“I don’t know how the keys got there.”
As if I had not spoken, Michael said, “I knew there was something fishy going on yesterday.”
“But Rawlins came here during the party,” I argued. “Swain was alive then. He was murdered much later. By that time, surely Rawlins wasn’t anywhere near Starr’s Landing.”
“I thought you said Libby came here last night, asking for him.”
I closed my eyes to shut out the possibilities. Last I’d heard, Rawlins hadn’t come home at all, and Libby was still looking for him.
Michael sat back against the cushions and looked at me. “What did the cops say?”
“I told you. They didn’t share their theory with me, but Swain must have—”
“I mean about the keys.”
I met his gaze uncertainly.
His expression changed, going from concern to laserlike intensity in a heartbeat. “You didn’t tell them, did you?”
“No. I took the keys. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Em. I just—if Rawlins was at the farm last night . . .” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t bring myself to complete the thought.
“It’s okay.” Michael put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. “You don’t have to explain to me. But you’ll need to get your story straight for the cops.”
I winced at the thought of getting my story straight.
“The police will come looking for you, Nora. You found the body. They’ll want to talk to you again when you’re calm and thinking straight. You’ll have another chance to tell them about finding the keys. But explaining why you took them—that’s going to need some spin.”
I felt my cheeks turn warm. For all my worry that Michael might be turning to the dark side, here I was the one who’d broken the law by removing evidence from a crime scene. Softly, I said, “I need to talk to Rawlins.”
“Yeah, you do.” He released me. “Just in case, use one of my cells.”
He meant one of the telephones he used when he wanted to be sure law enforcement wasn’t listening in. The thought of needing to be careful on behalf of dear Rawlins made me feel cold all over again. Michael brought me the phone and left me alone. I phoned Libby’s house.
“I just heard the news,” Libby exclaimed. “Emma says you discovered Swain Starr dead in a pigpen! And his new wife nowhere to be found!”
“It’s a shock,” I agreed.
“Emma said maybe Marybeth killed him. The Howie’s Hotties heiress stabbed her husband? What a scandal. It’ll be all over the national news any minute. Do you think they’ll have to recall the hot dogs? I mean, the idea of a dead man being eaten by pigs is revolting.”
“The pigs didn’t eat anything,” I said. “He was dead, but otherwise untouched.”
“Maybe they ate Zephyr!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Libby.”
I must have sounded undone, because she said contritely, “Are you okay? Did you faint?”
“Not this time,” I said, rubbing my forehead, but grateful for her concern. “Libby, listen. Is Rawlins around? Did he come home?”
“That boy is pushing the limits! He didn’t get home until the middle of the night.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“He’s still sleeping.”
I looked at my watch. Nearly five in the evening. Demanding that Libby wake him up to talk to me was only going to arouse her suspicions, though, and suggesting that her son might be involved in a murder would certainly send my sister into an epic tailspin. Keeping her in the dark seemed like a good idea for the moment. I tried to sound casual. “Could you have him call me when he wakes up?”
“Sure,” Libby said, clearly uninterested in what I might want to discuss with her son. “I have to go. I’m helping the twins memorize some lines for a mayonnaise commercial.”
“A mayonnaise commercial?”
“It’s just for practice. Bye-bye!”
Rawlins didn’t call me back.
• • •
At the ungodly hour of five minutes to seven on Monday morning, I presented myself at Gus Hardwicke’s office, determined not to look as if I had spent the night tossing and turning. I wore my trusty Calvin Klein pencil skirt with a crisp white shirt and a simple knee-length coat—my favorite shade of blue was making a comeback—with kitten-heeled Ferragamos and black hosiery, which I hoped made me look more professional than my tulip-printed party dress.
The Pendergast Building was nearly deserted until I reached the floors where the Intelligencer was produced. There, the offices were a hive of activity. Normally, I arrived just as the rest of the staff was clearing out for the day, so I stepped off the elevator and was surprised by the noise and bustle of my coworkers.
I picked up the morning issue from the table beside the elevator door and scanned the headlines.
Fashion Designer Dead
Supermodel Missing
Not quite three inches tall, but definitely screaming. With the paper under my arm, I headed for the executive suite and steeled myself for another trying confrontation with my editor.
Gus’s assistant—the latest young, attractive, unpaid intern from a local university—was just removing her coat and a red beret that gave her a jaunty look not matched by her dour expression. She tipped her head toward the office where we could both hear Gus shouting. She said with remarkable calm, “He’s busy at the moment. He had three appointments before yours.”
“Does he ever sleep?” I asked.
“I think he’s a vampire, but not the sexy kind,” she said in a tone that told me she wasn’t planning on sticking around after her internship was up. “There’s been a big celebrity murder, so he’s all excited.”
I guessed this savvy intern would find a good job as far away from the Intelligencer as she could manage.
The office door burst open, and Rick Mendenhall, the medical-desk editor and part-time book reviewer, came barreling out, his face flushed.
Gus shouted after him, “If I wanted a bloody bad story about tumors, I’d be running the New England Journal of Medicine! Bloody hell! Get me a story that will sell papers! Nobody cares about experimental treatments!”
Rick banged the outer door shut. Gus stalked out of the office and glared after him.
“Nobody cares about experimental treatments unless they have sick relatives,” I said calmly.
Gus slapped his forehead. “So that’s what’s wrong with the newspaper business! We don’t have enough dying subscribers!”
“Good morning,” I replied, determined to remain composed. “Should I have brought you coffee? You seem a little sleepy.”
He gave me a sour look. “Tea. I drink tea. Don’t try jollying me this morning. Unless you’re bringing a new headline on Swain Starr’s murder. I hear you discovered the body.”
“I did.” Although he hadn’t invited me, I preceded him into his office. “I am not bringing you any new headlines, however. As far as I know, there have been no developments in the case since I left Swain’s house.”
“Then you’re behind the times.” Gus followed me into his office and closed the door.
The office of the Intelligencer’s editor-in-chief was a domain I had entered only once before—on the day the newspaper’s owner took me to meet my new boss, a man who had lasted in his job only a few more months. Today the office looked as if Gus also didn’t intend to remain long, or el
se he traveled light. Gone were the diplomas and framed awards from civic organizations—the kind of decor that most executives hung to remind themselves of past glories. Instead, Gus had stripped down the office to its barest essentials. He used a tall desk without a chair, as if he were too energetic to sit. His open laptop sat on the desk, e-mail program blinking. A wooden boomerang decorated with tribal markings lay beside it, making me wonder if he sometimes threw it out of frustration. Large sheets of newsprint were tacked haphazardly on the walls, and someone had used a fat red marker to furiously sketch the next day’s layout on the paper—the first sign that perhaps Gus didn’t embrace technology the way nearly everyone else in the building did.
Large portions of the paper bore nothing but impatiently scrawled red question marks.
A Polaroid of a battered surfboard had been stuck to the wall with a pushpin. Otherwise, the room was bare. Windows overlooked the city and the Schuylkill River beyond. There was no chair for me to sit on.
Since there was no place to hang my coat, either, I kept it on.
I said, “Has Zephyr been found?”
Gus commenced to pace. He wore gray suit trousers and a white shirt with a silver tie. I didn’t necessarily think of Australians as fashion-forward, but he looked good. He had already rolled up his sleeves to show the muscles of his tanned and freckled forearms. When he glanced my way, his eyes were narrow. “I’ll ask the questions. How soon can you finish that profile of Starr?”
“I planned on the Friday deadline, but if you need it sooner, I can probably finish it in a couple of—”
“Hours?” Gus said.
With an effort, I suppressed a squeak of dismay.
“Two hours then,” he said firmly. “We’ll run it with the extended obit tomorrow. And I’ll need a profile of Zephyr, too. With as much dirt as you can dig up on her between now and sundown. I’ll get somebody else to find the usual research—my assistant can probably stop bitching about the unglamorous nature of her job long enough to assemble a few pages. Then you can add what you have and write it up.”
“Forgive me,” I said, “but printing a lot of dirt about Zephyr while the poor girl is missing, perhaps hurt or even—God forbid—dead, seems a little heartless.”
“Excellent,” he snapped. “That’s exactly what we want to do around here, Nora. Stir up people, make them want to run out every morning and buy a paper to see what outrageous thing we have to say on every subject.”
“But—”
“Controversy! Excitement! That’s what the Intelligencer is going to bring to the city of Philadelphia.”
“I just don’t think—”
He swung on me. “Have I offended your delicate sensibilities?”
“I’m uncomfortable,” I said, “putting my name on anything salacious.”
“Really?” He stopped pacing to stare at me. “You? The girl who has stand-up sex with her mobbed-up boyfriend in a kitchen closet?”
In the silence that stretched, I must have turned white and then six shades of purple, because Gus laughed rudely.
“Do you think I’m deaf?” he asked. “That’s what you were doing, am I right? Or did my ears deceive me?”
“I—I—”
“You have a charming blush, Nora.” He pulled a pair of eyeglasses from the desk, the better to further examine my humiliation. “I can see exactly why your knuckle-dragger has such a yen for you. You come off like the kind of girl who keeps her knees together. Pure as the driven snow. But you’ve drifted, haven’t you? I bet he buys you sexy undies. If you wear any at all.”
I spun around and faced the window. I tried to focus on the flat, calm surface of the distant river while blocking out the memory of what he must have heard.
He said, “I find this reckless side of you very appealing—very appealing in an employee, that is. I want you to put it to work in your job.”
“I think,” I finally managed to say in a strained voice that trembled in time with my ker-thunking heart, “it might be best if I go write my letter of resignation, Mr. Hardwicke.”
He laughed again. “I don’t want your resignation. And, honestly, you don’t really want to give it. You’d be stupid to abandon a paying job, and I know you’re not stupid. Let me sweeten the pot. I am giving you a raise.”
“A—?” At last, I could look at him. Although he sounded amused, he wasn’t smiling. If I was uncomfortable before, I was on pins and needles now.
“You’re officially on the fast track,” he snapped. “I liked the notes you sent me over the weekend. They were very complete, only need a little sharpening of the poisoned pen. If you don’t want your name on the byline, just say so. We’ll make up a name, something clever, so people start guessing who you really are. That’ll help sell papers, too.”
“I’m uncomfortable,” I began again.
“In case you haven’t gotten the point yet, I like making people uncomfortable,” he said. “It makes my pulse race, my heart sing. But to keep you working here, I’ll increase your salary by ten percent.”
“I just don’t feel—”
“Twenty percent.”
I couldn’t respond. Mostly out of shame.
“Thirty percent,” he said. “And not a penny more. I’ve seen your house, Nora. You can use a raise. Of course, the new cash won’t kick in until your next paycheck, so you’ll have to keep the haunted mansion standing for another couple of weeks, but maybe you can ask your gorilla to hold up the roof. He looks as if he could lift some deadweight. Must be all that practice burying his enemies late at night.”
“You should be careful about Michael,” I said.
“Is that a threat?” Gus asked on a disbelieving laugh.
“He can’t be intimidated. Or manipulated.”
“But you can,” Gus said wisely. “Why do you think I brought you in here this morning instead of discussing it all at your home? I want you working for me, Nora. For a lot of reasons. Foremost among them is that you are connected. On Saturday you proved to me that you know the movers and shakers of this city like nobody else I’ve met. You’re an insider, and I’m not. I need you—you, who can sneak into any hallowed hall on my behalf.”
“I do not sneak,” I said.
“No, you walk right through the front door. I see exactly what you’re doing—using your friends and your reputation as an Old Money heiress to gain entrance into special places, to see special people. It may not feel like using them, but you are. You belong to the secret society, Nora. You’re a long-standing member, in fact, a card-carrying Philadelphia aristocrat. For me, that makes you a golden goose.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“Have you guessed?”
No, I hadn’t guessed yet. I felt as if I had been ambushed. My face must have said so.
Gus smiled. “I want to start a little competition.”
“What kind of competition?”
“With the police. Remember Watergate? It was the reporters who broke that case. And they sold a hell of a lot of newspapers while they did it. I think the Intelligencer can beat the police in solving the murder of Swain Starr.”
“How?”
“You, Nora Blackbird, can walk into the workrooms of fashion designers and the living rooms of hot dog heiresses all over the city, and people treat you like their best mate. I’ve seen you do it. So I want you to figure out who murdered Swain Starr.”
He went on. “You practically live in his backyard. And you know all the right things to say. People trust you. That makes you an ideal detective for this case. You will phone all your discoveries to me, and I—or someone on the staff—will write up your daily reports.” His gaze glowed with ambition. “We’ll stand this city on its ear with the story.”
“What makes you think we could possibly—”
“Here’s th
e latest on Zephyr,” Gus said. “She was found in a very nice hotel suite last night. Not alone.”
“She’s alive,” I said with relief.
“Very much so.”
“What hotel?” I asked without thinking. “Who was she with?”
Gus’s smile broadened as if I were a star pupil who had just blurted out a correct answer. “The cops won’t say, bugger them. When you find the hotel, you’ll get more answers. She managed to send her companion out the service entrance before anyone could identify him. But you’re going to find out.”
“I have no idea where to begin, and if you want the profile done by tomorrow—”
“I’ll give you a break,” he said. “I’ll dust the mold off your profile of Swain myself. I’ll take out a few commas and add some exclamation points. It’ll run tomorrow under a byline other than your own, if that makes you less uncomfortable.” He said the word with dripping sarcasm.
I said, “The hotel will have security tapes. They’ll know who was in her room.”
“See? You already know where to start.”
Gus’s cell phone jingled in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the screen. “Nick off now, Nora. I’ve got a newspaper to rescue. And you’ve got legwork to do.”
“But—”
“Go,” he said. “I expect your first results before noon.”
CHAPTER SIX
I fled Gus’s office. The roomful of reporters turned to look at me, the latest staffer to get rough treatment from our esteemed editor. Before anyone could flag me down to ask sympathetic questions, I rushed to the elevator and rode it down to the street. The last thing I wanted was anyone else in the building to hear about the particulars of how Gus browbeat me into doing his bidding.
Who had killed Swain Starr? I hadn’t a clue.
But I did know one thing nobody else did.
My nephew Rawlins had been at the Starr farm the night Swain was murdered.
I knew in my heart my nephew had not killed the fashion designer. Why would he do such a thing? But he had not phoned me back when I asked, which telegraphed to me that he was over his head in something bad.