Deadly Blessings (3 page)

Something reeked to high heaven on this
one.

Before speaking again, I chanced a look over
Bass’s head to Frances, who stood behind him. Tall, and svelte, the
fifty-something woman sported maroon hair, spiked in a style more
suited to a person three decades younger. She rolled her eyes, and
gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. I was gonna lose
this one.

I took a deep breath and blew it out
slowly.

“
Okay,” I said, “Just tell
me why. And don’t give me because I took a half day vacation. I
know that’s not it.”

Bass was not a magnanimous kinda guy. Here I
was, acquiescing, giving up quicker than I normally would, a
combination of the day’s aggravation and the look on Frances’s face
telling me it wasn’t worth fighting the hundred years’ war on this
one—and Bass wasn’t smirking. Wasn’t even smiling. He looked …
beaten.

“
It came
down from on high. Can’t tell you the specifics, just that the new
guy, Fenton …” he said this, elongating the man’s name in such a
way that I got the distinct impression that Fenton wasn’t high on
Bass’s favorite person list, either. Hey, maybe I even moved up a
notch. Hard to get lower than the bottom, I supposed. “… is our
best shot for breaking out of the number two position and
knocking
Up Close Issues
off its mighty perch.”

I raised an eyebrow. Just one.

The office staff was moving again. The
fireworks were over.

Bass put up his hands in a gesture of trying
to ward me off. Again, he seemed more resigned than triumphant.
“Don’t ask.”

“
Fine,” I said. “It’s been
a lousy day, and now that I don’t have this ‘heater’ case to work
on, I’m heading home.”

“
Ah … “

“
What?”

Bass scratched the top of his greasy head.
Several flakes inched away in fear. “You’ve been assigned a
different story. Remember the beauty salons?”

Dread kicked in. “No.”

Bass grinned. His malicious humor was back.
“Yes, Ma’am. Gabriela will be here in fifteen minutes with all the
details.”

* * * * *

I shut the door to my office, not caring
that it made a telltale “whump” as I dropped backward to lean
against it, massaging my eyes with my free hand. I still held my
purse in the other. Remembering the fiasco down at the State
Adoption Records office, I frowned at it and flung it into a nearby
chair.

My office was precisely as I’d left it.
Cluttered. Jordan knew better than to let anyone mess with my mess
while I was out. I could tell you what color notepaper each tiny
bit of information had been recorded on. I could tell you what
color ink I used. I could tell you which pile every note was hidden
in. What I couldn’t do was reach into a cabinet and pull out the
proper file. Because I never put anything away.

Once a case was closed, the story finished,
written, and filmed, Jordan came in and cleared it away, working
her magic to encourage order in my wayward office.

I walked beyond my desk and stood at the
picture window overlooking the Chicago River and the Michigan
Avenue Bridge. The day sparkled, almost to the point where it hurt
to look at the bright white Wrigley Building across the river,
reflecting the sunshine.

The window and its vista over the city was
my favorite part of the room. And my desk was arranged to
accommodate the splendor of it all. It had taken me a couple of
weeks working here before it dawned on me that the gorgeous view
sprawled behind me—that guests sitting across from me could enjoy
it, but that I was missing out on the world going by.

One night, after I’d worked late, I picked
my head up from a couple hours of concentration to find the office
completely quiet, completely dark. The only light in the whole
place came from the Tiffany-style, Wal-Mart priced lamp that I’d
bought to cozy up my office a little.

But it wasn’t only the dark and quiet office
that had surprised me, it was the shimmer of the city lights that
met me when I turned around. Just past Thanksgiving, the city had
been strung with the glow of Christmas. Tiny white glints lit up
the night. Across the river, the massive evergreen in front of the
Tribune towers was so coated with light, the beauty of it caught in
my throat.

Despite the fact that I was bone-tired and
had a headache from twelve hours work, I saw possibility. Drawing
on energy reserves that unfailingly appear when an appealing idea
dawns, I managed to move the heavy desk, so that it now sat
perpendicular to the window, allowing me to view my slice of the
city all the time.

The following morning, everyone who stopped
in gave me a curious look, but no one said a word. Not only was I
the only female in a managerial role, but I was also the eccentric
one as well.

That was then. Right now, I
needed to call Dan. Another fun thing on the agenda for the day. We
still had issues to work out.
If
we were going to work them out. Dropping into my
chair, I pulled the phone over and dialed.

His “hi” was tentative. “How was your trip
to Springfield?”

After I told him, he said, “Tough
break.”

At that moment, I could hear his mind get up
and leave the conversation, looking for something more interesting
to engage itself in.

“
Yeah,” I said. I let the
silence hang. “And I lost the priest story.”

That got his attention.

Dan worked for the
competition,
Up Close
Issues
, the number one, locally filmed
television newsmagazine. They were so far ahead of us in ratings
that they’d recently moved from the weekly format we followed, to
twice weekly. And they were trouncing us further.

Dan and I had met at a
fancy-shmancy television awards dinner over a year ago, right after
I started at
Midwest
. Dan was the anchor, which meant he got much better pay than
I did. Although most of the time we weren’t working on the same
feature, or the same angle, we still enjoyed discussing our
“cases.” This time, as luck would have it, we’d both drawn the
“fleeing priest” gig. Dan had been assigned first. When he’d heard
that I’d gotten the nod, too, he’d brought home champagne to
celebrate. Not only was this a big one, but he was expecting to
benefit from whatever information I uncovered. After all, I’d be
able to interview Milla without the impediment of an interpreter.
Not to mention that my being a woman and Catholic would likely
encourage her to open up more.

Sure, I would have shared some information.
Not everything, of course. I had a responsibility to my station
after all. But over time, Dan and I had developed a symbiotic
relationship with regard to breaking news, and there was room for
cooperation.

“
What? They can’t do
that.”

“
They did.”

“
Shit.” I could tell by the
way he spat the word that he wasn’t upset solely on my
behalf.

“
Let’s talk about it
later,” I said, changing the subject. “I was hoping to cut out
early, but Bass has me following something else. I thought I might
get back around seven.”

“
You mean my apartment?” he
said, sounding slow and stupid.

So, it was “my apartment” now, even though
I’d been staying there for most of the past six months. “Yeah …” I
let the sentence hang.

“
I thought you were staying
at your folks’ old house for another week or so. Till everything
was settled with their move.”

“
Everything
is
settled with their move. Remember?”

“
Oh, yeah,” he said, but
something was wrong. “Listen, why don’t you take it easy and not
worry about making it back to my place tonight. You’ve had a rough
day.”

I knew we weren’t the stuff of which long
relationships are made, but his easy dismissal bugged me. Stung, I
forced myself to say, “Okay, sure. Not a problem.”

“
Maybe you and I can have
dinner tomorrow night? What do you think? Give us a chance to
talk?”

“
Yeah, that’s probably a
good idea.” I wondered if my voice sounded as fake as it
felt.

“
Catch you later,” he said.
He started talking to someone nearby and hung up before I had a
chance to respond.

They say bad news always comes in threes. I
couldn’t wait to see what was next.

* * * * *

“
Here she
comes.”

At Jordan’s whispered warning, my eyes shot
up. Emerging from the elevators, Gabriela, an “I just broke a nail”
expression on her face, walked with that famous-person wiggle of
hers toward the glass doors at the front of our office. Even from
this distance I could tell that her eyes were focused on the
reflective surface, checking out her flawless looks, no doubt. One
hand reached up to pat the side of her face, tucking aside errant
hairs. Then, with a flash of a grimace, she stopped her approach,
taking a moment to reach inside her open suit jacket and, giving a
bit of a squirm, she straightened out her snug red dress. With a
happy little tilt of her head, she plastered a mega-watt smile on
her face and came through the doors.

While Gabriela rarely graced us with her
presence here in the newsroom, she had to know that we’d been able
to see every move she made as she approached. Maybe she just didn’t
care.

I exchanged a look with Jordan before
returning my attention to the files on the desk before us. As
assistants go, I couldn’t ask for a better friend. Jordan had come
to the station fresh out of secretarial school, pride in her top
grades evident on her café-au-lait face. A beautiful girl, she
reminded me of Halle Berry. The resemblance was so strong that when
I interviewed her, I’d expected a prima donna attitude, but she
surprised me with a maturity and enthusiasm that the other
candidates for the job couldn’t match. My instincts hadn’t let me
down; I was lucky to have Jordan on my team.

Most of the secretaries in the hub nearly
fell over themselves whenever Gabriela stopped by. Their brush with
glamour, I supposed. I felt a tinge of regret for having taken that
wide-eyed awe away from Jordan. Through lack of tact, lack of being
able to hold my tongue, and the occasional, yet intentional,
disparaging comment, I believed I had single-handedly influenced
her cynical views of our star.

Gabriela made a beeline for my office,
stopping up short at Jordan’s desk as though surprised. Almost like
she’d expected me to scurry back to my office when I saw her
approach.

“
Alex.”

I knew my name. While I assumed she knew
hers as well, just to be sure I said, “Gabriela.”

Her face went through a curious blinking,
pursed-lip movement. Then she scrunched her nose. At last year’s
Christmas party, drunk, she told me she’d hired an image
consultant. Cost her a bundle, but through hiccups and grins, she
admitted that it was money well spent. The guy, whose client base
was so stellar that he refused to name names, had told her that the
nose scrunching was her signature. That she should use it. I’d
never reminded her of our conversation; I’m sure she wouldn’t
recall it anyway. But now, with her scrunching that perfect little
nose at me, I had to fight the urge to make a biting, un-PC
wisecrack.

She expected me to ask what she needed. I
knew that, but the woman was such a priss that I decided to make
her ask for it herself.

I gave her a little smile, resisting the
temptation to scrunch my nose, and turned back to Jordan. “Will you
be able to get this done by three?”

Jordan avoided looking Gabriela’s way. “Not
a problem.” With a nearly imperceptible grin, she took the folder
from my hand. That left me with Gabriela, still hovering in the
area of my right shoulder.

“
Alex?”

Oh, this time we were going to phrase my
name as a question.

“
Yes, Gabriela.”

“
Did Mr. Bassett speak with
you about my story?”

They were all her stories. Week after week,
feature after feature, it was Gabriela’s visage that took up the
screen, commenting and narrating the adventures we investigators
had researched for her, explained to her, and coached her through
pronunciations for. From the viewers’ perspective, she never took a
vacation. We did double duty several weeks a year so that Gabriela
could continue reporting the stories, uninterrupted. Local magazine
and newspaper interviewers often asked what drove her to push
herself. After all, other stations had substitute anchors who were
generally well-received by the public.

Gabriela’s pat line was that she’d worked so
hard to achieve a bond with her loyal viewers that she would hate
to ever let them down.

The truth, I believed, was that Gabriela was
afraid of giving up her anchor spot, even for a week. Being in
second place in the ratings meant that the powers-that-be were
always looking for a way to nudge our numbers upward. Gabriela’s
face was synonymous with our station, and I knew she wanted to keep
it that way.

She’d taken an unusual interest in the
recent replacement of one of the national news anchors who’d done
the unthinkable. Taken maternity leave. It was a tidbit that often
made it into Gabriela’s conversation. Gabriela wasn’t married, but
I knew the fact that another mouthpiece had been so easily replaced
bugged her.

“
Your story?” I was being
difficult, I know, but I swear I wasn’t in the mood to deal with
her.

“
Can we …” she made a
wiggly finger gesture toward my office, and scrunched her nose, yet
again.