The Friday Edition (A Samantha Church Mystery) Page 7

  The woman’s automated, mechanical voice spoke quickly, but clearly. “You have reached an interlink pager. Please touch tone your numeric message after the tone.”

  The voice stopped and Sam heard a series of beeps. She quickly programmed in her telephone number and disconnected the call.

  It was 6 p.m. when Sam made the call and now it was eight and she had heard nothing. She considered sending a second page but talked herself out of the idea. The apartment was so quiet that she heard the furnace rumble. When she jumped it made her realize how intent she had been listening and waiting for her phone to ring.

  By 10 p.m. Sam knew there would be no call tonight. She would try again tomorrow evening. It would be New Year’s Eve, but didn’t matter. She had no plans.

  Sam’s nerves were frazzled waiting out the evening for the phone to ring. She would just have one drink. It would calm her. On the way home from work she had stopped at the liquor store and purchased a bottle of scotch. The clerk greeted her by name when she entered the store. She wondered how he knew her. She bought scotch because she couldn’t remember the last time she had scotch and thought it was time to change to something different.

  Sam made the purchase thinking that she would not have a drink until after she made the call. She held up her end of the bargain. She made the call, but no one called back.

  It was 10:30 p.m. when she opened the bottle over the kitchen sink and poured a glass. She drank quickly. It burned a little going down. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply as the liquid began to warm her insides. She poured another glass, but added water. She went into the living room and turned on the television. She had the cordless phone next to her, resting on the arm of the couch. Just in case it might ring.

  The phone rang, sounding like a megaphone in Sam’s ear. She jumped and the glass between her legs crashed to the floor. She blinked several times to gain her bearings. She was still in the living room. The bottle of scotch was on the coffee table in front of her. She frowned, uncertain how it got there. The phone rang again. She answered it noticing that sunlight was beginning to fall on her balcony.

  “Hello?” Sam said. Her voice sounded excited, questionable and hopeful that it might be the call she had been waiting for.

  “Are you coming in to work today?”

  It took Sam a moment to register who was calling. She recoiled at hearing the sound of her editor’s voice. She liked the publisher of the Perspective the first moment that she interviewed for the job, but not the editor, Nick Weeks. Sam knew before the interview was over he didn’t like her and did not want to hire her.

  She landed the job in spite of him. But he made her life at work miserable, giving her assignments meant for cub reporters or ones that senior reporters didn’t want. She had covered more night meetings and had more weekend assignments in the past ten months at the Perspective than she ever had at the Post.

  “In case you’ve lost track of time, Sam, tomorrow is New Year’s Day, not today,” Nick Weeks said. “We’ll be closed tomorrow, not today.”

  Sam could hear the sarcasm in his voice. She stretched long and hard while looking at the television. It was on a cable news station and she realized she had left the set on all night.

  “Sam?”

  “I’ll be in soon,” she said in a short clipped tone.

  She heard his remark about already starting to celebrate the New Year as she disconnected the call.

  “Bastard,” she said.

  She had no idea of the time and squinted in the direction of the clock on the mantel.

  “God! It’s almost nine,” she said and jumped up from the couch.

  The sudden movement caused a rush of dizziness that made her nauseous. She sat on the couch and waited for the feeling to pass. She looked at her hands. They were shaking. She felt as jittery as though she already consumed a pot of coffee.

  She headed for the kitchen for a clean glass. She hated herself, but couldn’t help it. She felt like a robot as she poured the scotch. Sam put the pager in the drawer by her nightstand. She would call tonight.

  The Grandview Perspective was housed in a two-story brick building on Wadsworth Boulevard on Denver’s West Side. The logo and name of the newspaper were written in large gold letters against a dark wooden sign that hung down from the building.

  Advertising, administration and production were located on the upper level. The editorial staff occupied the entire bottom level where they lovingly referred to themselves as the ‘people under the stairs.’

  It was after 10 a.m. when she arrived. Keeping a low profile, she didn’t greet anyone as she walked to her desk.

  Nick Weeks was standing at his office door when he saw her come down the stairs and enter the newsroom. Their eyes met and locked briefly, but neither offered a greeting. Sam shifted her attention to her desk and remembered how tidy Jonathan’s and Robin’s were. She made a mental note in the new year she would do a better job with her desk. Call it a New Year’s resolution. She decided she would not only clean up her desk, but her life.

  Why not?

  A new year starts tomorrow. Tableau Rosa, Robin used to say. People would be starting over, why shouldn’t I?

  Nick Weeks waited for Sam to settle at her desk. He came and looked at her over reading glasses that he kept permanently perched on the end of his nose. She noticed that his body had already seemed to have lost its battle with gravity. She couldn’t help thinking of the Pillsbury Dough Boy whenever she looked at him. She knew him to be about forty-five, but he looked ten years older. His dark hair, loosely curled, collected around his soft, round face like a storm cloud.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Big time apartment fire. It happened before midnight. Total loss. Give me about eight, ten, inches ...”

  Nick’s voice dropped off as he paused to look at the calendar on Sam’s desk. She looked with him. The paper, a large weekly, published on Friday. Nick looked at Sam.

  “By the time your story comes out, no one will give a shit, ’cause it’ll already have been on our Web site and in the dailies three times,” Nick said. “I’m assigning another reporter to do an aftermath of the fire. You just give me the facts.”

  That’s all Sam ever did, the basics. The who, what, where, when and why. She never did features, profiles or in-depth articles, like she did at the Post. Just eight, ten, twelve inches of copy.

  “Make it a two-day lead,” Nick said and turned to leave.

  “A two-day lead,” Sam grumbled under her breath as she watched him walk away from her desk. “He acts like I don’t know a thing. Bastard.”

  Sam made a few phone calls to gather the information, thinking of those now without a place to stay.

  What a way to end the old year and start the new, homeless.

  She disliked her apartment, but at least it was hers. And it was a safe, warm place where she could go each day after work.

  Sam had a difficult time concentrating. Her mind kept drifting to the number on Robin’s pager. It made her angry that no one had called back. She tried to keep focused on the fire story. It was useless. As she left her desk to head for the water cooler, her cell phone buzzed.

  She checked the number: 555-1618.

  She frowned. The number looked familiar, but she didn’t immediately recognize it. Then it came to her. It was the number in Robin’s pager she had called last night.

  “How’d they get my cell?” she whispered softly, shaking her head.

  Sam quickly returned to her desk and made the call. She was greeted by the same electronic voice. “You have reached an interlink pager, please touch tone your numeric message after the tone.”

  She responded promptly, wondering if another ten hours would pass before her call would be returned. Within five minutes, the receptionist buzzed her with a call holding. Sam closed her eyes for strength. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She grabbed a pen and reporter’s notebook and punched the only line blinking.

  She cleared he
r throat and said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Sam Church.”

  “I’m returning your page,” the voice said.

  It was a male voice. Her first impression was that he was Hispanic.

  “How’d you know my cell?” she asked. “I punched in my home phone number last night, not my cell. How’d you get this number?”

  “Your sister gave it to me.”

  Sam said the obvious, too shocked to say anything else. “Robin?”

  He did not respond. Sam heard his soft breathing on the other end of the line. She suddenly felt giddy with fear and excitement and had to make a conscious effort to keep her voice to a minimum. She knew taking this call that she could share Robin’s fate, but she had no choice. She had to find out what happened to her sister even if it meant losing her own life.

  “How did you know my sister?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why? I’m trying to help her. I need to know what happened to Robin.”

  Sam stopped talking and glanced surreptitiously around the newsroom. There were no reporters within earshot, but still she whispered.

  “They say my sister committed suicide. But she was murdered wasn’t she?”

  “Why did you call me? Robin wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about our relationship. She assured me it would be kept secret,” the caller said.

  “She never said a word,” Sam said quickly. “She wouldn’t. Not even to me. When someone trusted her into silence, she never broke that confidence. I was searching her office when I came across the pager with your number.”

  “Where was it?”

  “In her desk drawer.”

  “What the hell was it doing there?”

  “Is that how you two communicated, by pager?”

  There was a weighty pause. “Yes.”

  “You’re an informant, aren’t you?” Sam said and her tone was accusatory.

  “No,” he said quickly.

  “Then help me. What happened to Robin?”

  She was greeted by extended silence.

  “Hello?” Sam said.

  “I’m here.”

  “Do you know what happened to Robin?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why,” Sam asked and disliked the caller for his reluctance.

  “I have a family to think about and I don’t want to end up like her.”

  Sam closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead hard between the tips of her fingers.

  “At least tell me if she was murdered.”

  “You’re persistent.” There was a slight pause. The caller cleared his throat and said, “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Sam bit her bottom lip. “Did Robin know something?”

  “I said I can’t tell you. I didn’t return your call to help you. I only called back to tell you not to call again. I can’t help you.”

  “At least tell me your name,” Sam said, trying desperately not to sound as though she were pleading.

  There was a long pause.

  “It’s Rey,” the caller said finally.

  Sam wrote his name in her reporter’s notebook.

  “That’s Rey, not Ray. It’s R-E-Y. People always get it wrong,” Rey said, as if he knew she was writing down his name.

  “I promise, Rey, I won’t get it wrong,” Sam said and scratched out Ray and rewrote it correctly.

  “Does Rey have a last name?” Sam asked. She was immediately sorry she had asked for a surname and apologized.

  “I can’t help you. Please don’t call back,” Rey said.

  Sam opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, the line went dead. She sat for a moment with the phone against her ear. Fuming.

  She did have one solace, however small. One consolation.

  Whoever this Rey was, he had confirmed her suspicions.

  Sam was unaware that Nick Weeks had been standing over her. She didn’t notice him until she had returned the phone to the receiver. If he had heard her conversation, he gave no indication.

  “What have you got on the fire?” he asked.

  “Just the basics,” Sam replied.

  “Good,” Nick said and nodded.

  He turned and walked away and she watched until he disappeared into his office. How she managed to get through the rest of the day, she wasn’t sure. She wanted a drink so badly, her mouth watered every time she thought about it.

  It was New Year’s Eve and the office would close early. She overheard some of the staff talking about a New Year’s Eve party. She had not been invited.

  Sam was the last employee to leave. It was just after four o’clock. Dark clouds dusted the foothills casting the city in a premature, gloomy twilight. Amber streetlights along Wadsworth Boulevard glowed eerily. Sam put on her coat and not bothering to button it, followed her breath to the car, not noticing the cold.

  There was something about the late afternoon light, or the lack of it, that made an emptiness within her stand out. It pulled at her as she crossed the parking lot toward her Mustang. She quickened her steps, trying to leave the feeling behind, but she couldn’t.

  She stopped at a liquor store on the way home and bought another bottle of scotch and a bottle of Chianti. The clerk wished her a Happy New Year as she left the store, but she said nothing in return.

  When Sam got home, she ordered a pepperoni pizza and poured a glass of wine. By eleven, she had eaten half the pizza and drunk most of the wine. She felt tired, but not enough to sleep. She looked around her place and remembered the apartment fire that had left so many homeless.

  She thought of April. She went to the window over the kitchen sink where she kept a picture of April. It was a small, round picture frame, one that Sam could almost wrap her hand around. It showed April beaming at the camera, her arms folded over the top of the sofa. Sam smiled as she thought about wrapping her arms around April’s small, fragile body and holding her, smelling the freshness of her daughter’s hair.

  She carried it back to the livingroom. Each time she called, Jonathan had some excuse why April could not talk. Sam had tried another afternoon shortly after Christmas to see April, but Jonathan would not let her beyond the front door.

  She thought about Rey spelling his name. He was her only link and he had refused to help. He had his own family to think about while hers was falling apart.

  He’s a coward.

  The clock on the mantel showed three minutes to the New Year. She turned on the television set. Happy faces were telling her the New Year was eminent. She watched as an endless display of fireworks exploded, lighting up the night sky. She could hear voices in the background cheering in the New Year. The countdown began at thirty seconds before midnight. Zero hour. The New Year.

  Sam watched happy people toot party horns and raise their drinks toward the sky. She wished she could be as happy as they were. She wondered how the party with her co-workers had gone.

  At five minutes after midnight, Sam turned off the television. The quiet rushed in. She went to the balcony and stepped outside, still holding the picture of April. She wondered what Robin would have been doing tonight were she still alive.

  The night air was clear and cold. The clear sky spread out like a velvet blanket. She could hear the distant sound of traffic on the street nearby, an occasional crackle of fireworks. The light at the corner blinked from green to yellow to red and cars moved accordingly. Thoughts worked endlessly against her mind, reminding her that nothing in life was ever completely still.

  She returned to the warmth of the apartment. The room was still. The Charlie Brown tree was dark. The room was so quiet that the walls seemed to press themselves against her. She turned on the television again. The noise was a welcomed guest. It would keep her company. Keep the sound of silence at bay. She needed that now.

  She had never cared for the sound of being alone.

  Thirteen

  The odor assaulted Sam the moment she opened the door to Robin’s condo. She instinctively pinched her nose closed between her finge
rs and realized that she had not given Morrison a thought until now.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” Sam called.

  Before she could move deeper into Robin’s place, something soft rubbed against her. Sam smiled and picked the cat up and gave him a healthy scratch behind his ears.

  He purred loudly. Morrison was a scrawny kitten the day Robin brought him home two years ago. She had found a litter of kittens in a box one afternoon near her mailbox. It was raining and the motley kittens were scrambling to get out of the box and the rain. The others were trampling Morrison, the runt of the litter. Robin took the kittens to an animal rescue shelter.

  She drove away, but the scrawny kitten, the black one with the dash of white on his nose and two hind paws, stayed on her mind. There was something about the way he fought the others to get out from beneath them. Robin returned to the rescue shelter. She left with the scrawny little black one draped in a towel and cradled in her arms. She named him Morrison.

  Morrison meowed loudly.

  “I don’t blame you,” Sam said and walked toward the kitchen. “Here alone for days. You must be starved! Let’s see what Robin has that’s good for cats to eat.”

  Sam passed the stereo on the way to the kitchen. She pressed the play button and the distinct voice of Van Morrison filled the air. Sam rummaged through several cabinets before she found cans of cat food. Morrison pressed himself in and around her legs, giddy with excitement as she prepared his dinner.

  “I know, I know you poor thing, you must be starved.”

  With Morrison eating, Sam scanned the perimeter of the kitchen and dining room, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Robin’s laptop that the detectives said contained her suicide note was gone from the table. The bottle of Jack Daniels was gone too, but there was a circle on the table marking the glass. Sam absentmindedly traced her finger around the circle, lost in thought, as Coney Island began to play. The song captured her attention. Familiar stirrings began to move in her chest. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes to listen. When it got to Robin’s favorite part, tears fell as the words came.