He frowned, remembering Jack Fremont’s arm around her. She was too free with her favors, to say the least. The woman was a real whore. Ben Sheridan, Jack Fremont, and God knows who else. Probably her own cousin.
He sat musing over what he might have to do in order to purify her of such defilement.
He stopped himself before the richness of those imaginings caused him to become overly excited. There was a great deal of work to do.
He studied his maps, mentally going over the routes he had already driven, considered once more all the possible hazards along the way.
He changed the plates on the Honda, and chose a blond wig for today’s disguise. He had already called the newspaper, had already filled out the vacation hold form for the post office. The tools he would need for the first phase of his work were already in the trunk of the car.
He looked again at the small piece of paper the Moth had given him and felt a frisson. How had this information been obtained? The Moth was up to something. He did not believe the story the Moth had given him about this.
He disliked having to expend energy thinking about the Moth, especially at a time like this. He must stay focused.
He looked again at the markings on his map. Most were in blue. His eye was drawn to the single red mark.
He knew its exact address: 600 Broadway.
The Wrigley Building.
Home of the Express.
47
SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 17
Las Piernas
I hesitated outside the front door of the Wrigley Building. The arrangements Jo Robinson had made were not even close to what I had in mind when I had asked for a “return to work,” and my pride was smarting. I knew Frank was watching from the Volvo, waiting to make sure I got safely inside. For a good ten minutes or so, I seriously contemplated going back to the car and asking him to drive me straight back home. Then I’d get Jo Robinson and Wrigley on a conference call, and tell them both to shove it.
Wrigley gave me twenty hours back at the paper, all right. He scheduled me to work a part-time graveyard shift, from ten at night until two in the morning on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday — after deadline. To add a little additional punishment, I was also scheduled to work Saturday and Sunday from seven to eleven in the morning. That meant that on Friday nights, I had exactly five hours off before I’d have to report the next morning.
John gave me less than forty-eight hours of warning, saying my first shift was going to be the next Sunday morning. “I guess Wrigley assumes I have no plans?” I said. “That I’m just sitting here waiting for him to invite me to take complaint calls at the Express?”
“Do you have plans?” John asked.
“Yes, but not until later on Sunday,” I admitted.
A phone call to Giles’s office had finally resulted in getting Gillian’s new number — his secretary had to find it for me — and Gillian had agreed to meet me on Sunday afternoon. Gillian was working as a waitress now, at a small café that served breakfast and lunch. “Just part-time,” she had said. “I’m off after two o’clock.”
“So you can come in?” John asked me.
“Yes, I’ll be there. I guess he’s determined to make me grovel.”
“I don’t like it, either, Kelly, but up until now, the fight has been to keep him from firing you. It’s going to take some pressure from the board to get him to ease off on the hours. You know I’m doing whatever I can for you.”
Knowing that John and others were making efforts on my behalf made me decide to go ahead and push the front door open that Sunday morning.
The building was all but empty, which, I decided, was not so bad. I didn’t look forward to facing everyone who had seen me go haywire.
I could hear the phones ringing before I reached the top of the stairs. You work a Sunday morning, you listen to people bitch. They don’t check to see which number is the one for circulation, which one for the city desk. So they dial whichever number they see first, and whoever sits in the newsroom takes complaint calls.
The calls were being picked up on the second or third ring though, and soon I heard voices. So I wouldn’t be alone after all.
I stepped into the newsroom to see Mark Baker and Lydia Ames answering phones. I was puzzled. Neither of them should have been working that morning. Lydia waved me to a seat next to her.
Another line rang. I answered a call from a man who claimed that the guy who delivered his paper that morning had tossed it into a mud puddle. The man went on at length, never seeming to need to come up for air; the only thing making it bearable was watching Lydia and Mark comically gesturing and rolling their eyes as they each answered another call.
I finally managed to end the call with Mr. Mud Puddle just as Stuart Angert entered the room with a box of breakfast rolls and four cups of hot coffee.
“Welcome back!” he said.
“Thanks, but what are the three of you doing here at this ungodly hour on the Lord’s day?” I asked.
“John told us what Wrigley was pulling,” Mark said, “so we decided to change a few schedules of our own — with John’s approval, of course.”
“We didn’t want to miss your first day back,” Lydia said.
“You shouldn’t be sticking your necks out for me like this,” I said. “What if Wrigley decides to stop by?”
“He won’t show up,” Mark said. “He’s scared to death of you.”
Another round of calls came in. By nine o’clock they had slowed enough to allow us to talk to one another for more than two minutes at a time. I apologized to Stuart for wrecking his monitor.
“Feel free to use any of my other desk equipment the next time you want to launch a missile,” he said. “I love the new computer monitor. Everybody’s jealous of me.”
“No, we’re jealous of Irene. We’d all like to know how it feels to throw something at Wrigley,” Lydia said.
“Not as wonderful as you’d think,” I said.
This led to some all-too-serious “How are you really?” talk. I was evasive. They got the hint, and acting against journalistic instinct, let up.
At ten-thirty, I realized my shift was nearly over, and I hadn’t even started sorting my mail. Lydia offered to help while Stuart and Mark covered the phones. I was able to give Lydia a few items that would need immediate dayshift follow-up. Some of it, I’d ask John to let me work on at home. Most of it could wait, or could be answered with a letter. I decided to save answering my e-mail for my first graveyard shift. One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that it’s open 24/7.
Among the envelopes was a strange lumpy package with no return address. Lydia eyed it doubtfully and said, “Now what are your strange fans sending you?”
I used a letter opener to slit it open and dumped the contents out with a flourish.
I watched a pair of panties fall onto the desk.
“My underwear,” I said blankly.
For an awful moment, all I could see and hear was Nick Parrish in the mountains, taunting me, telling me he had my scent.
Then I heard Stuart laughing uproariously.
For a brief moment, I felt humiliated.
Then he said, “Jesus, Kelly, I’ve heard of having your laundry sent out, but this is ridiculous.”
The humor of the situation struck me — Stuart was right, it was just a pair of underwear, after all. I started laughing, too.
Mark and Lydia seemed uncertain, but when Mark asked, “Shouldn’t you call the police?” Stuart and I laughed so hard, they lost it, too.
When we had all calmed down a little, I said, “Hell, I guess I should call the police. But I think I’ll call Frank first. I don’t even like to think of what he’s going to be hearing from the other folks at work.”
Frank, as it turned out, didn’t think there was anything funny about what had happened. Far from being worried about what kind of teasing he’d get at work, he insisted on being with me the rest of the day.