Deadly Blessings (7 page)

“
Thanks,” I whispered. The
fact that Jordan didn’t think I looked hideous gave me a measure of
comfort.

“
Dan called, by the way,”
she added as Hank cleared his throat to begin his speech. “He’s
dropping by here around four.”

Dinner tonight. I’d almost forgotten.

* * * * *

Our dinner plates cleared away, Dan drained
his third French Burgundy before the subject came up. Up to that
point we’d stayed on safer ground.

“
You look nice,” he’d said
when we first sat down. The lilt to his voice called his sincerity
into question. “Any reason for the fancy ‘do’?”

“
I’m working on a
story.”

“
Really?” he said in
skeptical tone. “Did you wear an evening gown as you
investigated?”

“
Ha ha.” I shot him a
lips-only smile. A flash of his old humor shone in his eyes and for
a split-second I thought I might regret tonight’s impending
breakup. But not really. Better now. The longer you wait in
relationships sometimes, the harder it gets to break up. That was a
lesson I’d learned a long time ago and I didn’t want to make that
mistake again. And deep in my heart I knew it would never work out
between us. Maybe I’d known it all along.

Dan, handsome and suave, with the kind of
allure you’d find in the glossy pages of Abercrombie and Fitch
catalogs, was a shade too old to be one of their models, but his
age suited him. He’d crossed thirty-five early this year, which
made him a bit older than me, but he had an almost chameleon-like
ability to look just the perfect age and maturity level to get what
he wanted, when he wanted it. He should have been a salesman. A
year selling brushes door-to-door, he could have retired.

“
Seriously,” he said, “what
was up at your office today? You looked pretty frazzled when you
came out of that meeting.”

I was sure I had. Dan had been early, and
the meeting had run late. In addition to announcing the hiring of
Fenton and William, Hank had taken the opportunity to explain the
“shake up.”

“
We’re reorganizing,” I
said, not feeling much like talking about it, but Dan
persisted.

“
Bankrupt?”

“
No, not like that. Hank is
always chasing you guys. He wants that number one position like
crazy.”

“
Not if I can help
it.”

“
Yeah, well, they want to
shoot new blood into the works. It seemed to me that they picked
off anyone over sixty. Except Bass.”

“
Tony?”

“
Gone. With a nice package
and a promise that they’ll use him on a consulting basis. And we’ve
pared down my team. Two investigators, me and Fenton.”

“
Who’s this
Fenton?”

I rolled my eyes, “Hank’s nephew. Well,
actually, his wife’s nephew. Fresh out of school. Thinks he’s God’s
gift to the station.”

“
Geez,” Dan shook his head
as he made commiserating noises.

I wasn’t as surprised as Dan seemed to be
that they’d decided to keep Bass on. Despite his idiosyncrasies and
his age, he was a force to be reckoned with. Nothing went to
production without his approval, and his standards were high.
Except for the fact that his personal habits drove me insane, I
respected the guy. It was nice to realize that Hank did, too.

I shrugged, as though the changes didn’t
bother me. “They’re spinning this like it’s the best thing to hit
the station since we went on the air. And Bass is just hopping with
nervous relief. I swear—if I thought he was unbearable before …” I
let the sentence hang, more to gauge if Dan was listening than
anything else.

Dan played with his crystal wineglass,
making indentations on the linen tablecloth with its base. For
several minutes we both watched as the circles disappeared almost
as quickly as they were made. With each tilt and spin of the glass,
the remaining puddle of ruby liquid left in the bottom of his glass
drifted from side to side. A hypnotic rhythm.

I wanted to cut to the chase. I mean,
really. Part of me wanted to lean forward, wink, and say, “Hey,
it’s been fun,” and be done with it.

Instead, having pushed my own glass of wine
to the side, a single and yet unfinished German Riesling, I sat
back to stare out the floor-to-ceiling window to my right. We
overlooked North Michigan Avenue from this fifth floor perch, and
now, at night, the sight was spectacular. It made me feel wealthy
just to sit in a restaurant like this, looking down at the crowds
who waited for walk signals before crossing streets en masse.

After tonight I’d be a free woman again.
Although I might come to regret that when invited to couples-only
doings, I knew I could live with it. Easily.

I gave a small chuckle. Some romance. Maybe
that’s why I was feeling less than morose this evening. Our being
together made terrific sense—the way these things sometimes
do—people would shake their heads in wonder saying, “Wow, aren’t
they just the perfect couple?”

But I knew better. And I hoped he did too.
We looked good on paper, two-dimensional and flat. But I wanted all
three dimensions. I wanted togetherness in mind, body, and
spirit.

The background music was perfect for
tonight. A slow, melancholy tune, with a hint of Spanish guitar, it
suited my mood to a T.

The minimal light in the restaurant and the
smoked-glass walls that separated us from the other diners, was
what had drawn us here the first time, and had kept us coming back.
A fat white candle, flickering within its cylindrical glass
enclosure atop a sterling base, sat between us. I ran an index
finger over the tip of the flame and smiled at the line of soot I
came up with. The fire danced as I did it again.

Wiping my finger on the linen napkin, I
focused back on Dan, who continued to play with his wineglass. He
looked up to signal our waiter. I guess he was going for that
fourth burgundy.

“
Would you care for
another?”

I tapped my half-filled glass. “I’m
fine.”

Now, he gave me a once-over and grinned.

“
So, your priest story.
What’s the status on that?”

“
Not mine anymore,
remember? Fenton’s.”

He shot me a quizzical look, then shrugged
and stared at his hands as he spoke. “Doesn’t make sense to take
you off it. I was hoping we could compare notes on this one. It’s
big.”

I felt lousy enough about losing the story.
His mood was starting to bring me down even further. I considered
telling him about Sophie and the opening I’d almost crow-barred at
the hairdressers this morning, but all of a sudden I realized how
desperate that sounded. Like I was grasping at straws. Too
self-conscious to admit that I’d followed the story through that
channel, I kept silent.

He tilted the glass against his open mouth,
draining the last few drops.

“
I still can’t believe they
gave the priest story to the new guy. Why would they do
that?”

I brought myself mentally back to the table.
It bugged me that he wasn’t letting the subject go. My words came
out peeved, snappish, “How should I know?”

“
Well,” he said, tugging at
his sleeves, the way men used to do when they wore cufflinks, till
the white oxford cloth showed the proper amount from the edge of
his suit jacket. Tiny, perfectly embroidered initials in a deep
maroon DBS, for Daniel B. Starck, faced back at him. I always
wondered about the purpose for the embellishment. To remind him of
his name, perhaps? “Maybe that’s just a cover,” he said.

“
A cover? What in the world
would they be covering for?”

“
Not them. You.”

I sat up straighter. Confused would be an
understatement at this point.

“
You aren’t holding out on
me, are you?” he asked, then responded to my look of puzzlement. “I
mean, you said that Hank’s breathing down your neck about trying to
stretch to the number one spot. Maybe you’re still on the story,
but you just don’t want to tell me about it?” He gave a half-shrug
as though my answer to that wouldn’t matter a whit to
him.

I was pissed. No matter
that I actually
had
followed the story down to Milla’s place of business and had
chosen to keep that quiet, I’d been taken off the hottest story in
months and that ticked me off. But not as much as his suggestion
that I was being duplicitous. “They gave Fenton my story,” I said,
punctuating each word with a pause for effect. “I’m stuck with this
stupid hair-care feature that Gabriela came up with.”

Dan’s face was blank.

“
Look at me.” I pointed to
the pile of hair atop my head. “Why in the world do you think I let
someone do this to me if it wasn’t for a story?”

“
Well …” he said, and his
brown eyes told me he was being totally honest here, “I thought you
got all dolled up on purpose.”

“
On purpose?” I repeated,
dully. “For the big meeting at the station today?”

“
No. To impress me. To—you
know—keep me.”

The small area we sat in seemed to close
around me. They say that happens when your mind can’t quite grasp a
situation. It was happening now. I wasn’t understanding and yet I
knew that when I finally did, I wasn’t going to like it.

“
Pretend like I’m dense,
okay? Explain that.”

Dan looked around the restaurant before
leaning forward, as though searching for the right words. Like they
were at the next table, ready to jump over at his beck and call. He
took a deep breath and it occurred to me that he was uncomfortable.
“We both know we’re here tonight to talk about our … relationship,
right?”

My turn to shrug.

“
Well, I knew it was going
to be tough on you and I wanted to let you down easy but now, you
went and did your hair. And I like it, by the way.”

Tough on me? Let
me
down easy? As if my
words were knives, I could feel the sharpness of them as they left
my mouth. “I didn’t get my hair done for you.”

“
Whatever,” he said,
clearly not believing me. “Be that as it may, I hope we can stay
friends,” he winked at me as he reached for the check two
heartbeats too long after the waiter dropped it off.

Still fuming I nodded. “Sure.”

“
Maybe
you and I can have lunch next week and talk about …
Fenton’s
… progress on
the priest story.”

And then, he winked again.

Chapter Five

For being mid-morning, my office was pretty
dark. Roiling black clouds from a thunderstorm that had made its
way across Lake Michigan onto Chicago’s shores shadowed the
skyline. The storm was intensifying by the moment, scary in that
awesome way that made me fear the power of nature, even as I sat
safe and dry in the dusky gloom. I’d been staring at my computer
screen, my left hand gripping a large chunk of hair atop my head as
I studied the display and tried to make sense of my notes. Every so
often a burst of lightning caused my eyes to flick upward in
surprise, as though someone had just taken my picture.

“
So, your real name’s …
Alexis? Or is it Alexa?” a voice asked, pulling me from my
concentration.

My gaze meandered up at the voice. It
belonged to Fenton, leaning in my doorway, wearing a smug smile.
With his skinny arms folded and feet spread in an arrogant stance,
he lifted his chin in anticipation of my response.

Since the notes on my screen had nothing to
do with the hair interviews I had scheduled for today and
everything to do with Milla Voight’s murder, I hit the “close”
button before answering.

“
Nope.”

“
I dated an Alexis
once.”

Like I cared. “That’s nice.”

His hands came up in a quick gesture of
frustration and he took on a petulant tone that made me revise
downward my original guess at his age, his emotional age anyway.
This guy was a case of arrested development at the level of junior
high.

“
Come on.
What
is
your name? Might as well tell me. We’re going to be working
together, you know.” Then he did this head movement thing that
until this moment I hadn’t realized was a habit. Kind of like a
horse whose bridle was too tight, he would lift his head and shake
it, to get the hair out of his eyes. Brown eyes. Or at least they
looked it from here.

“
Actually, we don’t ever
need to work together. You handle your stories; I handle
mine.”

He moved into the room and glanced at my
computer screen. I caught the quick assessment he made. Piles of
information were scattered all over my credenza and on a set of
filing cabinets across the room from me. Because I had interviews
scheduled, I’d taken a few minutes to tidy things up and my desk
looked, if not clean, at least orderly. “So, what are you working
on?” he asked.

I generally don’t mind people asking me
that. And sometimes I even have an answer. But this Fenton guy’s
very existence grated on my nerves.

“
A hair story,” I said.
“Nothing exciting.”

“
I noticed you’re a lot
less dolled-up today.” He pulled one of my chairs back and settled
into it, his elbows on the wooden arms, his fingers
interlaced.

Give him a point for observational skills.
Today, almost back to normal, my hair hung loose, skimming my
shoulders, straight. But the wispy bangs Sophie had cut in and the
highlights were still there. I had to admit, when I’d checked them
out in the bathroom mirror this morning, I kinda liked the
change.