Deadly Blessings Read online

  “Hello,” the man said.

  I think I made a noise that came out something like “hurmulp.”

  He offered his hand. “Ms. St. James?” he said. “I’m William Armstrong. Pleased to meet you.”

  I managed to put my hand in his, as warmth from my chest raced up my neck to my face. Sweat beads popped out at my hairline—and I remembered with a suddenness that made me sweat all the more, the ridiculous hairstyle I sported from today’s adventures.

  William Armstrong was a doll. Of course he was. Just over six feet tall, with a crop of slightly wavy, light brown hair, he was solid and sturdy, looking at me through eyes that sparkled bright blue. His face impassive, I couldn’t tell if he was amused or angry, or if he’d even heard my crazed diatribe. Fenton might have been a child, but this William was a man. With the kind of looks I’d cross the street to say hello to.

  His hand was warm, and it gripped mine with friendly pressure, as I finally found my voice. “Nice to meet you.” A bubble of embarrassment shot through me. In sticky situations I find myself prone to giggling; I was having a hell of a time keeping my composure.

  “Yes, I gathered that,” he said, utterly deadpan.

  So he had heard.

  I went into damage control, “What I meant was …”

  He let go of my hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

  As we were walking in, he turned to me, holding his palm out as though to let me examine it. “It wasn’t too greasy, was it?”

  Humor glinted in his eyes, but I would have felt better if he’d smiled or something. I processed that even as other thoughts ran through my mind. I wished my hair didn’t look so stupid, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut a moment ago with Bass, and I wondered how I’d ever make up for looking like such an idiot.

  Bass stood next to me and actually tugged at my sleeve, like a little kid. “C’mon, we’ve got the meeting. They’re waiting.”

  When I walked into the conference room, an enormous high-ceilinged corner space, I was taken aback. Not by the view; I’d been in here plenty of times before. Windows overlooked both the sparkling yet dirty Chicago river to the north and busy, dark Wabash Avenue to the east. What surprised me was the group.

  Not only was the support staff present—I’d expected that as we’d made our way through the uninhabited hub—but everyone, from Gabriela, and our hotshot producer Hank, who almost never showed up here, to Dennis, the mailroom guy. There must have been thirty people milling about, all going through the polite nibble, sip, chat motions so common to business get-togethers.

  The two men had allowed me first passage into the conference room. Since it was already crowded, I took the opportunity to escape from William—maybe he’d forget he met me and tomorrow we could try again—and moved toward Tony Wender, who I spotted, standing in the far corner, holding a clear plastic cup of white wine. Wine? In the middle of the day? Something was up. And it appeared that I’d be finding out soon what it was.

  I made my way around the huge oak table. A perfect circle, it must have been at least eight feet in diameter and took up a good percentage of the room. I sidled up next to Tony and he grinned at me through glassy eyes. Must have been at the wine for a little while. One bony hand held the cup and the other reached up to run through his hair. Tony tended to hunch over. Although he wasn’t too tall, he was very skinny, and he had a full crop of salt and pepper hair that he was extremely proud not to have lost yet.

  “Didja hear?” he asked me, in an almost-shout.

  I shook my head and moved closer, hoping he’d take the hint and lower his voice. Even though the room was doing a murmur-level hum, his pronouncement boomed loud enough to make the gaggle of secretaries hovering around one of the many cheese trays look up.

  He boomed again. “They’re putting me out to pasture.” He gave me one of those drunken nods that people do when they’ve just imparted some pearl of information and want you to grasp the significance.

  This was surreal. As though my life as I knew it had suddenly been repositioned, like one of those flat puzzle games where you have to get the numbers in sequential order between one and fifteen, by sliding them around. My fifteen constants, which had been nicely aligned, were now all jumbled up, and part of me wondered if through some great cosmic equalizing algorithm, my foray into the adoption question had started the game. Payback for digging where I should have left well-enough alone.

  At least everyone else was as confused as I was. Or, at least, they looked it.

  “What happened?” I asked Tony.

  Instead of answering, he tipped his plastic tumbler toward the far end of the table, where Hank stood. Hank, his white hair gleaming in the brightness of the overhead lights, his tall, portly body the picture of a well-to-do successful businessman, focused his gaze on person after person, to quiet the chatter.

  For all I knew, he was about to put me out to pasture, too.

  Jordan made her way toward me. She maneuvered her way in so that she could stand next to me and still keep an eye on the proceedings. We both faced Hank, leaning back as we rested our butts on the low red-oak cabinets behind us. She raised her glass up to about mouth height, folding her other arm underneath as though to cover up the fact that she was talking. Like anyone who looked our way wouldn’t know.

  “What’s with the hair?” she asked, not looking at me.

  Hank was waiting. The room would be quiet in moments.

  “Long story. I didn’t have a chance to take it down.” I glanced over to her, “How appalling is it?”

  Her brown eyes moved my way for a moment and I watched her take a long appraising look. “Actually, it’s not bad. You don’t like it?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re just not used to it. And it’s a little fancy for the office, maybe.” She waggled her head a bit. “But if you were going to a wedding or something, I think it’s a good look. Frames your face better than your usual.”

  “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 mi
d-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.