“I’ve had enough,” the odd voice began. “Enough of your malicious lies. You delight in ruining people. Well, I’ve had it with your kind. Stop printing stories about me. If you don’t…” The voice paused, heavy breaths puffing through the other end before he finished his threat. “…Tina Bender, you’re dead.”
Chapter Three
I froze, my hand clutching the receiver as the voice mail system beeped and asked me if I wanted to delete, save, or listen to the current message again. On instinct, I replayed it, straining for any sign of the caller’s identity. Was it a friend punking me? Some irritated starlet out drinking with her friends? A couple of kids crank calling the local paper?
No clue. The voice was so distorted I couldn’t even be sure it was male. It was deep, but that could easily have been manipulated by whatever machine he/she had used to make it sound like I was getting a threat from Stephen Hawking.
While the Informer had an entire file of nasty reader letters to the editor, some that even bordered on terrorist manifestoes, this was the first time I had personally received anything this weird. Granted, every now and then I got an irate call from someone’s publicist, but generally Hollywood operated on the theory that there was no such thing as bad publicity. Celebs usually started worrying when they stopped showing up in our paper.
As soon as the message ended, I hit the save button and crossed the newsroom to Felix’s office. I knocked softly on the door before pushing it open.
Felix looked up from the blonde, his gaze slowly shifting from her “girls” to me.
“Tina?” he asked.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I started. Then took my first real look at the new interviewee. She was just as much the sorority girl up close as she was from across the room. Big blue eyes, gooey pink lip gloss, mouth in a permanent sexy pout. And a shirt that was at least a size too small. She looked like she was smuggling cantaloupes under her top.
And, I noticed as I gave her the up and down, she did the same thing back to me.
“Did you need something, Tina?” Felix asked.
“Uh, I need to speak with you.”
“About?”
“Something’s come up.”
“What kind of something?” Felix prompted.
“A phone call,” I hedged, not sure how much I wanted to say in front of Barbie.
“From?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What did they say?”
I glanced at the blonde again. “Um…any chance we could discuss this in private?”
Felix shook his head. “Sorry, where are my manners? Allie, this is Tina Bender, our gossip columnist. Tina, Allie Quick. Our newest reporter.”
I raised an eyebrow his way. Seriously? He’d hired the pair of tits?
“Nice to meet you,” Allie said, extending a hand.
Reluctantly, I shook it. Her grip was firm, though my hand came away smelling like some sort of peachy lotion.
“Allie will be taking over as field reporter,” Felix went on. “Covering my old beat.”
“Fabulous.” I swear I really tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I gave Barbie a week before she realized this job involved actual work, not just cozying up to Christian Bale.
“What was this call you got?” Felix asked.
Obviously I was going to do this with an audience whether I wanted to or not. So, I told him about the weird caller and the mechanical voice and the threat on my life. Though even as I keyed my pin into the system a second time, replaying the message for the boss, I realize how silly the whole thing was. We were a tabloid. It would have been surprising if people didn’t hate us. Ninety-nine percent chance it was just some idiot blowing off steam.
Unfortunately, Felix didn’t bet odds.
“I don’t like this,” he said, replaying the message a second time. “When did this come in?”
“Last night. The time stamp says eleven thirty.”
“Were you here last night?”
“No. At home.”
“Alone?”
“My aunt was in the other room.”
“Any idea what story this guy is referring to?”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Are you kidding? I’ve reamed dozens of celebs this week alone.”
“Any of the articles nasty?”
I shot him a look.
“Right,” he said. “Stupid question. You check the caller ID?”
“Restricted number.”
“Maybe you can trace the call?” Allie piped up.
I nodded. Reluctantly. “Maybe,” I hedged. Techno genius I was not. However, considering our editor in chief’s pockets were tighter than Joan Rivers’s last facelift, our phone system was hardly state of the art. I made a mental note to look into it.
“In the meantime,” Felix continued, “I don’t feel good about you being out there alone today.”
“‘Out there?’” I asked.
“Let’s keep to the desk for now, okay, Bender?”
“Fabulous.”
“Was that sarcasm?” he asked.
“Damned straight.” And before he could say it, I added, “I know, I know. Swear Pig.”
The first thing I did when I left Felix was visit Cece, our accounts receivable/human resources/office manager lady. As her title hinted, anything that didn’t directly end up in the newspaper fell under her fortysomething, sensible-shoe-wearing, über-organized territory. Her desk was in the corner near the elevator and constantly cluttered with beanie babies.
“Hey, Cece,” I said, popping my head around her partition.
“Yes?” she asked, not even looking up from the spreadsheet she was typing.
“I need a favor. Last night, eleven thirty, a call came in. I need to know who made it.”
Her forehead furrowed. “Well, I know our program keeps track of all outgoing calls.” She paused, then sent me a wan smile as she added, “Felix likes to know who’s using up our long-distance minutes.”
“Of course.”
“But, other than a time stamp, I don’t think there’s a way to record the incoming calls.”
Drat. I chewed the inside of my cheeks, rapping my fingernails on the side of her partition. “What about the phone company? They must have a record, right?” Cece nodded. “Most likely.”
“Who’s our provider?”
Cece opened a new window on her screen, then pulled a Post-it from her pink dispenser and wrote down their name and number. “L.A. Bell. But I don’t really think they’re going to give out that kind of information.”
“Wanna bet?” I asked, giving her a wink as I took the Post-it back to my desk.
I immediately dialed the customer service number, going through the automated options until a mere fifteen minutes later I was connected to a real person.
“L.A. Bell, this is Jeff speaking, how may I help you?”
“Hi, Jeff. This is…Carol. Carol Brady. Listen, I have a problem.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Brady. What can I do for you?”
“I’m knocked up.”
There was a slight pause on the other end. Then, “Oh. I…well…oh.”
“That’s right. With child, bun in the oven, in a family way, one condom short of a bikini body.”
Again with the awkward pause. “Er, ma’am, I’m not really sure what I can-”
“Jeff, I’m gonna level with you,” I said, plowing right over him. “When I saw that positive pregnancy test, I may have said a few things. Things I shouldn’t have. Things about my boyfriend not being able to keep it in his pants long enough to roll a condom on. Things that, quite frankly, hurt my boyfriend Mike pretty bad. He left me, Jeff.”
“Uh…I’m sorry to hear that, but Miss Brady, I don’t really-”
“You got a dad, Jeff?”
“What?”
“A father. You have one, Jeff?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“I bet he took you to baseball games, didn’t he, Jeff?”