“Now you stay here and wait for the police.” I shook off the shards of glass. Under the overhead fluorescents, I was sparkling. “Lock the windows and the doors and don’t open them until you get badge numbers. Tell them they need to find out who made that phone call, if possible. It’s probably too late.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, panic stricken.
“To Get Together Now! Travel to talk to Ken and I don’t need the cops delaying me one more minute.”
Chapter Seventeen
R
ule #2 was, should a situation arise in which I was not able to stop by the newsroom before going on assignment, I must call in and tell either Mr. Salvo or Veronica where I was headed.
This was why I didn’t have a cell phone, because if I did, Mr. Salvo could follow me wherever I went. Though, I had to admit, I would have appreciated the cushion of security, knowing that I had backup as I headed to Stefko Boulevard, where Get Together Now! Travel was located in a strip mall.
It was a fairly bright day to be stalked by a gun-toting Santa Claus. The sky had cleared to a brilliant blue and it was much colder. We might actually have a white Christmas, instead of rain. Mama would be thrilled. It would be great for business.
I took comfort in assuring myself that even a Santa Claus who fired shotguns willy-nilly on Tuesday mornings would know better than to keep on stalking in this situation. The police sirens were blaring up Fourth when I pulled out of the House of Beauty/Uncle Manny’s parking lot. Surely my would-be assassin was in hiding.
Right?
Even so, I checked my rearview enough to apply a total makeover as I took the back roads to Stefko. Stefko is the strip of strips. Your one-stop shopping for cars, burgers, canned goods and a deep, relaxing Korean massage.
A big black bow hung over the sign for Get Together Now! Travel, not exactly what the bon vivant world traveler would want to see, in my opinion, but it was thoughtful of management to honor Debbie, nonetheless.
I didn’t know if it was the black bow or the fact that Christmas was just days away, but Get Together Now! was markedly cheerless despite the bright posters of Hawaiian beaches and Venetian gondolas. I entered the door, walked past the set of green luggage on sale and went up to the receptionist, who was sorting brochures of Alaska.
“You’ll have to wait,” she said without looking up. “All the agents are busy and we’re down one, so we’re kind of strapped.”
I checked around. The only agent I could see was typing on her computer. She had frizzy brown hair and wore a blue suit. A travel agent’s suit. The nameplate on her desk said FIONA SWYER. She didn’t look up when I came in and I wondered if she might have been the woman who called me at the House of Beauty.
“Actually, I’m here to see Ken,” I said. “I’m from the
News-Times
. ‘Talk of the Town.’ ”
“Oh.” The receptionist looked confused. “Are you Flossie Foreman?”
“No. Bubbles Yablonsky. I’m her temporary replacement while Flossie recovers from knee surgery.” Total lie. I should be ashamed.
“Knee surgery? That’s too bad. Arthritis?”
“Looped Lithuanian with a baseball bat.”
“I hate those. Okay, I’ll buzz Ken.”
I went over to inspect the luggage, which was touted as a hot deal. What I wanted to know was why they didn’t make luggage in colors other than black, navy, dark green or that grandmotherly floral. They all looked the same and you couldn’t tell them apart in baggage claim. If I won the lottery, I was going to go into the luggage business and start manufacturing lavender suitcases, bright yellow totes, orange knapsacks.
“Miss Yablonsky?” A round puppy dog of a man in a puppy brown suit stood by an office door. “I’m afraid I can’t see you. Our lawyer . . .”
I extended my hand graciously. “So you’re the Ken that Debbie raved about. It’s so nice to finally meet you in the flesh.”
Fiona Swyer, the travel agent in the blue suit, frowned.
“Thank you”—I checked the receptionist’s nameplate—“Angela. I’ll only be a moment.” I took befuddled Ken by the arm and led him into his own office, shutting the door behind me.
Ken must have been the head honcho at Get Together Now! because he was the only one with an office and because he had a big, impressive leather swivel-back chair. His walls, too, sported the de rigueur travel posters: ARUBA, JAMAICA, BAHAMAS—taunting reminders of how gorgeous and exotic the world was in places besides steel towns.
“So you know, I mean,
knew
Debbie?” Ken spoke with a flat Midwestern accent.
“Knew her?” I let out a laugh. “I was there when she died. That’s how well I knew her.”
“Oh, my. I had no idea.” He pulled out a chair. “Have a seat. I really don’t have much time, what with the holiday crush coming up. So many people like to get away after Christmas. Me? I prefer the weeks right after Thanksgiving. You can get terrific deals on cruises then. Most folks are unaware.”
He smiled insipidly, clasping his hands on his desk. A woman had died, an employee, and here he was yapping on about the best time of year to tour the Panama Canal.
I pulled out my notebook. Ken’s venetian blinds were open behind him, giving me a good view of the parking lot. If I so much as spotted a flash of Santa red or the chrome bumper of a Mercedes, I was out of there.
“Is this a piece for ‘Talk of the Town’? Angela said you wrote for ‘Talk of the Town.’ ”
“Yes,” I said absently. “It’s a quick profile on Debbie. We do that, occasionally.”
He scratched his ear. “Really? I don’t think I’ve ever read a profile in ‘Talk of the Town.’ You wouldn’t happen to be a regular reporter, would you? Because our lawyer said we shouldn’t talk to regular reporters, though for ‘Talk of the Town,’ I wouldn’t mind. Flossie Foreman’s a wonderful—”
“Why would your lawyer say a silly thing like that?” I interrupted.
He regarded me skeptically. “I’m not sure I should say.”
“Oh, please.” I leaned forward and touched his hand, making sure I flashed a bit of this and that. “You don’t have to worry about Bubbles. Look at me? Do I look like a
real
reporter?”
He took in my white, off-the-shoulder shirt and my purple acrylic nails still on his own hand. “I guess not.”
“I write for the women’s pages, Ken, just so I don’t have to deal with messy stuff like numbers and money and icky crime. I’m here only because Debbie was a friend of mine, a dear, dear friend, and I’d like her to be remembered for the delightful person she was, not for the not-so-delightful person the police are saying.” I batted my eyes.
Ken examined his tie as though looking for stains that might tell him whether to talk to me. “What are the police saying?”
“I don’t think I should say.” Sometimes I liked to throw it back in their faces.
“I’d really like to know. It might be important for Get Together Now!”
“I have an idea. Why don’t you show me yours and I’ll show you mine? I’ve often found that this is the best way to stave off negative publicity.”
He thought about this. “If the police are saying anything about the money, I want you to make sure in your ‘Talk of the Town’ story that you note I had no idea whatsoever and that I stopped her activity as soon as it was brought to my attention.”
I stepped on my left toe to keep my face straight. So my tipster had handed me the straight skinny. Debbie’s trouble had to do with money. Well, that wasn’t a surprise, was it? Money’s always at the root of evil.
Ken was on a roll. “Customers get so squeamish when they read stories in the papers about their money being mishandled, even if the stories aren’t true.”
“I know. They’re so unreasonable,” I agreed, “especially when Debbie didn’t mean to take the cash.”
“Well, we don’t know that, do we? Gee, it’s an awfully bright day. Do you mind if I close the blinds?”
“No! I mean, yes!” I yelled.
Ken turned with alarm.
“I get claustrophobic.”
“That’s too bad.” He sat down again. “Now what was I saying?”
“The credit card numbers Debbie had used, unknowingly of course, for her own purchases.” She reels, she casts . . .
She hooks a big one! “Right. Those. It was good Visa found out before too much money was lost.”
“Only a few thousand dollars.”
Ken blushed. “I don’t know if I’d call fifteen thousand a few dollars.”
“Silly me. I told you I was bad with numbers.”
He smiled as though I was adorable. There was a knock at the door and the sourpuss agent Fiona Swyer in the blue uniform opened it without waiting for an invitation. She glanced at my notebook, clearly not pleased to see it on my lap. Nor was she delighted by the amount of cleavage I was showing.
“Mr. Abrams. May I see you a moment?”
Ken pointed to me. “Can’t you see I’m in the midst of an interview? If it’s the St. Augustine’s Girls Choir, tell them the bus tickets to Washington, D.C., are in the pack on Angela’s desk.”
“It’s not the St. Augustine’s Girls Choir,” Swyer said. “It’s important.”
“Maybe I should come back later,” I offered.
“Or not at all.” Swyer had the nasty I-don’t-like-you face down.
The face didn’t fool me, though it might have fooled Ken. Days from now, soon after my story about Debbie’s pilfering hit the newsstands, Ken would first curse himself for inviting me into his office and then transfer his guilt to others in the office. He would wonder if someone in-house had called in a tip. He would remember that Angela the receptionist had been nice, that Fiona Swyer had disapproved of me.
Ipso facto, her chilly demeanor.
I got up and shook Ken’s hand heartily. “It really was a pleasure. Thank you so much. This is going to be a great article about Debbie.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said more than you know.” I blew him a kiss and wedged my way past Fiona Swyer, the pin on her lapel catching my eye. It was of a star inside a pentagon. I’d seen the same symbol recently, but where?
“I assume you can see yourself to the door,” she said.
I couldn’t discern if hers was the voice on the other end of the phone call. However, as a woman who worked among women, I could easily understand Fiona Swyer’s motivation for calling me about her formerly perky, popular and apparently felonious coworker Debbie Shatsky. There is no deadlier force on the planet than female jealousy. And Swyer was anything but perky.
“Don’t knock yourself out,” I said.
She pursed her lips.
Outside on the sidewalk, Angela was fixing a garland that had fallen off the NOW!
“Turns out you’re not Flossie Foreman’s replacement.”
This caused me to revamp my theory about Fiona Swyer. Maybe Angela had been the tipster after all. “Aren’t you an intrepid secretary.”
She pinned the garland and turned. “What did you come here for?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to find out.” Then, thinking that Angela might actually have some brains behind those overtweezed brows of hers, I added, “Maybe I should talk to Zora in Debbie’s allergist’s office. I hear she has some pretty strong opinions. Her and Tess.”
Angela didn’t so much as raise a goose bump. “What Debbie did to those women was unforgivable.”
“Unforgivable.” I had no idea what she was talking about except my assumption that the unforgivable stuff was connected to the fifteen thousand dollars in Visa charges.
“Have you spoken with Zora?”
“Not yet. Don’t know how to find her.”
She flicked her gaze to the parking lot, trying to decide. “She works for an allergist right here in Lehigh. Should be easy enough to find if you have a phone book. That way you didn’t get her name from me.”
“Right,” I said. “I just like to call allergists randomly from the phone book.”
“That’s good. Because there are a lot more than you’d think.”
The rest of the day might have proceeded uneventfully if I’d just done what Dix Notch wanted me to do—forget Debbie’s case and accept that her death was an accident, nothing more. Even Detective Burge seemed to have lost interest, since he didn’t try to contact me as I’d been warned.
I had no idea what he was putting Sandy through. My frequent calls to the House of Beauty and Sandy’s home were fruitless. She still wasn’t answering her phone and here I had so much to tell her about Debbie’s shenanigans at Get Together Now!
Of course I couldn’t update Mr. Salvo, either. Couldn’t even tell him about the guy who shot out Sandy’s front window. I was supposed to be off the case, remember? What was it Notch had said? That if he found me asking
one
question, going through
one
file on Debbie Shatsky’s death, I would be canned on the spot.
“Where have you been?” Mr. Salvo asked when I tried to hide my late arrival to the newsroom by coming up the back way and going straight for the mailboxes.
He was wearing a baby blue shirt today with short sleeves, even though it was December. And he had a yellow clip-on tie. A clip-on. And he can’t understand why he’s still single.
I gathered up my mail and started flipping through it casually, tossing out the Mahoken Town Council agendas as I went. They were just so boring. “Sorry, Mr. Salvo. Jane, Dan and I had an appointment with our family therapist. Then there was some stuff I had to do.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff, stuff.” I got to my copy of
Cosmopolitan
and kissed the cover. I missed
Cosmo
so much after leaving the salon. I felt so lost not knowing the twelve ways to drive my man wild in bed so he’d beg for more.
“Nice piece on the Help the Poor Children Fund-raiser.”
“Thanks.” I went over to the watercooler to get a cup of water.
“Kind of bizarre that Flossie would injure her knee on the day Stiletto blows into town so she can’t cover an event where he’s on the auction block and where you two were spotted sneaking off to suck face.”