The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix) Read online

If only I could distract Boone, distract Jim Hammond from Arnie. Plenty of people had disliked, even hated, Martina. If you keep poking your nose into people’s lives, you may get the end of it caught in something. Or by someone.

  And Martina had poked her nose into other people’s lives. We all knew that she checked the legal notices like a hawk, looking for juicy divorces and lawsuits. Arnie wouldn’t have been the only person she stabbed with that long, pointed nose.

  But what did she do with that information? I’d told Mike I didn’t think she blackmailed people—at least not in the sense of asking for money. And she hadn’t used the information to climb the professional ladder. No, she’d been head copy editor for eight years, and she’d seemed perfectly content in that slot.

  And where did she keep the information she gathered? Had it all been in her head?

  I doubted it. Martina surrounded herself with reference books and special little lists of facts, most of them filed in the computer system.

  She’d had a file drawer in the newsroom, as most of the staffers did. The detectives had taken everything in it away, Ruth had told me, when they searched for the missing shoes. I assumed the detectives had searched her home, too.

  But judging from Boone’s questions, I didn’t think they had found masses of incriminating information about her fellow staffers in either place.

  No, if Martina kept this sort of thing, it was probably in the computer system, I concluded. She very likely had a file of embarrassing information on the citizens of Grantham, with emphasis on the staff of the Grantham Gazette.

  Did the police know about this? Probably not. As far as I knew, they hadn’t gotten into our computer system.

  But now I was convinced such a file existed. I resolved to find it.

  Chapter 14

  Less than six months earlier I’d had a bad experience when a reporter who was temporarily working in the Gazette office opened up the computer, got into a story I’d written, and added some unsubstantiated material. Until that time all three police reporters had shared a file. Afterward, I created my own private file for my stories.

  Every user can create a file on the computer system the Gazette uses. I hadn’t had to ask anyone to do it for me. I just did it. And like my assigned file drawer—in the bank of cabinets along the wall—it probably needed cleaning out. I hadn’t looked in either my electronic file or my file drawer since I moved to the copy desk.

  Had Martina created a personal computer file for herself? I headed for the office. No one would be there on a Sunday morning. I could nose through the computer system all I wanted.

  My Dodge was alone when I parked on the first floor of the parking garage, since the one staff member on duty, the security guard, always took a slot on the second floor. I used my electronic card to get in the back door and waved at the security camera. I wanted the guard to know I was in the building.

  I admit it—I find the Gazette Building scary when it’s closed. The building is four stories high and half a block long. When it’s closed there are a lot of empty offices, locked doors, strange nooks and odd crannies, not to mention that spooky basement. Any other staff member—anybody with an electronic card—could be wandering around in there and could appear suddenly and startle me.

  But the empty parking lot almost guaranteed that the building was also empty of people that afternoon. Grantham’s public transportation system is a joke. If they don’t come in a car, they don’t get there.

  I went to my desk and opened up the computer. Creating a file on our system requires two codes. One can be up to five letters or numbers and the other up to three. Most of us use something fairly obvious. The crime reporters’ file is accessed by typing in “crime” and “rpt.” “Crime reporters.” Easy to remember. My personal file was “Mary” and “Nll.” Very few people know my first name, but it’s an easy word for me to remember.

  But what would Martina Gilroy have used?

  If she’d used anything at all, that is. As copy editor, she didn’t write stories. She would have had little use for a personal file for storing her own work. So if—big if—she’d had a file, how would she have labeled it?

  I typed in “copy” and “dsk,” then hit Execute. The screen remained blank. No stories were filed under those code words.

  I tried “Marti” and “gil.” Nothing. “Gilry” and “mta.” “Desk” and “cpy.” “Copy” and “mar.” None of them worked.

  I stared at the screen. Looking for a private file was a long shot. A real waste of time. Martina could have used “abcde” and “xyz.” I typed those in. She hadn’t. Maybe she’d used her initials. I typed “copy” and “mg,” for “Martina Gilroy.” Then “desk” and “mg.” Neither got any response.

  “Mg.” Did those initials mean something? Were they the chemical symbol for magnesium? I looked up magnesium in the dictionary and learned its melting point and atomic weight and several other things I didn’t intend to remember. None of them seemed helpful.

  But “mg” was a familiar set of initials. It was the name of a make of car. A fun, fast little car.

  I typed in “sports” and “car,” hit Execute, and nearly yelled, “Eureka!” A list of computer files had come up on the screen. Then I told myself to calm down. There was no guarantee that these stories had even been filed by Martina. Any staffer could have created a “sports” “car” file.

  The files all seemed to be news stories—some from the wire and some local. The dates at which each entered the system went back three years, which was the approximate date at which the Gazette has installed this particular computer system. I started at the top and looked them over.

  The first story, slugged “SuperBowl” in the topic line, turned out to be recipes for hors d’oeuvres suitable for eating while watching football. They sounded awful, except maybe the sausage balls. The second story, also an Associated Press story dated several years back, was about an older woman who had sued her employer for sexual discrimination because she hadn’t been promoted. Had Martina had a similar lawsuit in mind? Ruth had jumped over Martina to become city editor. Jack had jumped over her to become assistant city editor. Hmmm. I began to hope that I had discovered Martina’s file.

  The third story was local and about a year old. I had to read it twice before I figured out why Martina would have kept it. Way down in the bottom I found the name of Jake Edwards’s wife. She’d resigned from some committee at Grantham State, where she taught math. So what?

  A fourth story, eighteen months old and off the wire, was about the merger of two chains of small newspapers. The merger had nothing to do with the Gazette, though it did involve several papers in the state. I wondered if Martina had once worked for one of them. The story quoted the president, one Margaret Gordon Jones, as saying that some “staff consolidations” would occur. A crappy word for layoffs.

  So it went. There was a national story about the union that represents our printers. They were having trouble with their pension fund. There was a New York Times story on the legalities of assisted suicide.

  There were a few local stories with startling errors and odd sentences in them. One of them was on a couple celebrating their seventy-fifth anniversary. “They have loved on a farm in Catlin County since 1940,” it read. I grinned.

  These convinced me I had found Martina’s file. Apparently she collected these funny mistakes. Why? Just for fun? Or did she rag the reporters who wrote them? I had written one of the crime stories, goof and all, but I didn’t remember her ever twitting me about it.

  And way at the bottom of the file—an item three years old—was a routine story about a disturbance outside a bar. Why on earth had Martina saved that? I read the screen of type twice before the address caught my eye. Then I gasped.

  The disturbance had happened outside the Blue Flamingo, the bar Rocky owned. We don’t run the name of the establishment where a fight occurs unless the fight happens inside, but it was the right block.

  However, I saw with relief, t
he incident had happened before Rocky bought into the bar. I knew he and the current partners had tried hard to attract a respectable crowd from the gay community. People who got into fights were not welcome.

  Then I hit End, just to make sure I’d read all the story, and I discovered that a second story had been merged into it. This one, a follow-up on the first story, gave the names of two men charged with disturbing the peace as a result of the fight.

  One of them was named “E.J. Brown.”

  E.J. Brown? Could that be our Ed? Our building manager and purchasing agent? Mr. Respectable?

  I was seized with a great desire to run over to the police station and look up the arrest record. Instead, I walked around to Martina’s desk and dug the heavy Grantham City Directory out of the rack of reference books the copy editors share.

  Everybody should know about the city directory. Nearly any city of any size has one, and it can be consulted at the public library and usually at the chamber of commerce. The largest section lists everybody in town by their name, address, phone number, and employer or profession. Another section lists every street address and tells who lives there. A third has all the phone numbers in the city, in numerical order, matched with the subscriber’s name.

  Of course, a city directory is often out of date. You may find out what ol’ Joe’s phone number was four years ago. And people can refuse to give the canvassers information. But hardly anybody does. The city directory is a treasure trove for a reporter. Or a bill collector, or a real estate agent, or a salesman, or any other nosy person.

  I looked through the dozens of Browns in the city directory until I found one who worked at the Gazette. Sure enough, his full name was Edward J. Brown, initials E.J.

  There was a Mrs. Brown, too. Mary.

  I closed the book and went back to my desk. I’d found out that Martina had something on Ed Brown, and I didn’t like knowing it. I didn’t care what Ed Brown’s sexual proclivities were. But if he didn’t want his wife to know—if he didn’t want the tough crew of electricians, carpenters, plumbers, and janitors that he supervised to know—if he didn’t want his boss to know—getting arrested outside a gay bar would have been a disaster.

  Had using his initials been enough to hide his identity?

  If Martina had threatened to reveal his secret, would he have been capable of killing her to make her keep quiet?

  Darned if I knew. Ed seemed too neat and buttoned up to do anything as violent as kicking Martina downstairs. But asphyxiating her with blanket wash might fit his personality.

  I closed out Martina’s secret computer file. I was sorry I’d found the thing.

  Then I opened it again. Martina had been murdered. I couldn’t take the responsibility for withholding information that might help the police figure out who killed her. Besides, whoever killed her also might have used his Cadillac and a pistol to try to kill me. But I felt like a fink.

  I longed to ask Mike’s advice. I even called his number, but the machine answered.

  I couldn’t just pretend I hadn’t found Martina’s file, I decided. I had to do something with it.

  I saved every item in the file to my own personal file. Then I commanded the computer to print out every item.

  Printouts made from the newsroom computers appear, seemingly by magic, in a different place. They come out on a printer located in a room at the back of the newsroom floor, a room that is ruled by our computer expert and his lampful of genies. I went there, ready to collect my printouts as they clicked out.

  The printout room is at the back of the building, in a secluded spot, and with the entire building empty, it seemed to be way out in the boonies. I was feeling a bit nervous as the dozens of giant green and white sheets headed SPORTS . . . CAR spewed out of the printer. What if the killer tracked me down in the printer room? It was too crowded with electronic gadgets and loops of cable for me to run. That room is kept just above freezing—to keep the computer from overheating—but it wasn’t the temperature that made me give a little shiver as I accordion-pleated the sheets as they came out of the printer.

  Nobody came in and chased me. I merely took my folded printouts and went back to my desk, ready to collect my purse and go home. I was opening my desk drawer when I heard a noise behind me.

  I whirled my chair around and gave a loud gasp as Ed Brown—the very man I’d been reading about in Martina’s hidden file—popped up about fifteen feet away.

  He’d apparently been kneeling near the bank of filing cabinets on the wall closest to the city desk. He’d probably stood up when he heard me.

  He looked as startled as I felt. We stared at each other, equally horrified.

  “Mr. Brown?” I said.

  “Miss Matthews?” he said. As usual, he looked young. In fact, he looked like a young kid caught smoking behind the barn. Then he began to walk toward me, and he entered his older mode, aging before my eyes as the deeper lines in his face became visible.

  I remembered that Martina had saved blackmail information on Ed Brown. That made him a suspect in her murder. I didn’t want to be alone in the newsroom with Ed Brown.

  I clutched my bundle of printouts and my purse, jumped to my feet, and moved away, toward the back door. But that door was clear across the building.

  Could I outrun him? Not backward, I decided. And since I couldn’t make myself turn my back on him, I couldn’t run away from him forward. I’d have to outtalk him.

  “Oh, Mr. Brown, you startled me,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you here on a Sunday.”

  I could swear he was blushing. “I was trying to locate a file cabinet,” he said.

  I gave a nervous giggle and waved my hand at the rows of file cabinets that lined the walls. “We have plenty.” I backed up a few more steps.

  Ed Brown came forward the same number of steps. “I see there are lots of file cabinets, Miss Matthews. But how are they assigned?”

  “I don’t think they are.” I backed up some more.

  He looked horrified again. And he followed me. “Not assigned! Who has a list of them?”

  “No one that I know of. You could ask Ruth tomorrow. Or Jake.”

  “But how do the reporters know which drawer is theirs?”

  “When I needed one, I just looked until I found an empty one. I put my name on it, and it was mine.” I backed into a desk, then sidestepped until I came to its end. I kept backing in the general direction of the back stairs.

  “But who assigned it to you?” Ed Brown kept right up with me.

  “Nobody. I just took it.”

  “That’s most unbusinesslike!”

  “Well, this isn’t the business office, Mr. Brown. Are you looking for some particular drawer?”

  He looked startled. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

  “I might be able to locate some particular reporter’s drawer,” I said. I didn’t ask why he thought he had the authority to look in some particular drawer.

  Ed began to look embarrassed. I thought he was blushing. “Well, uh—I was hoping the drawers would be labeled,” he said.

  “Some of them are,” I said, “but the labels aren’t always correct.” I backed up again, and again I bumped into something. This time it was the partition around the city government reporters’ cubicle.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we get a new reporter—for city council, for example—then the new reporter may simply appropriate the old reporter’s files. And the new reporter may not get around to replacing the label on the drawer.”

  Ed Brown stepped closer to me and waved his arms wildly, gesturing toward the walls on all sides of the newsroom. “Are you saying that these dozens of file cabinets and drawers are in use by individual reporters—and nobody knows who’s using what drawer?”

  “That’s pretty much the situation. As I said, you can—”

  “That’s terrible.”

  Ed went into a real tirade then. He began to talk rapidly and angrily. His face got redder and r
edder, and any youthful appearance disappeared. He stepped closer again, and I became acutely aware that my back was against the partition. He was rapidly taking over my comfort zone.

  Should I scream? It wouldn’t do any good. The security guard was two flights down. And Ed Brown was closing in, still raving.

  He finally paused for breath, and I heard a wonderful sound.

  A door closed.

  I recognized the sound. It was the door that led to the back stairs. It was a heavy metal door, as required by fire safety regulations, and it made a loud metallic thud when it fell shut.

  It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. It meant that someone else was in the building. Someone else was on the third floor. Ed Brown and I were no longer alone.

  Ed evidently heard it, too, and he backed away a few inches.

  It was enough. I sidled away from him and headed for the back.

  I hollered over my shoulder as I ran. “You’ll have to talk to Jake about this!” And I trotted rapidly along until I came to the back door. There, standing in front of it, was J.J. Jones, the advertising department’s Mr. Folksy.

  “Well, little missy, you’re covering territory like a Texas tornado,” he said.

  I was so relieved to see someone besides Ed Brown that I almost laughed at his cornball remark, and I didn’t feel at all put off by his bright red sports shirt.

  “I read that most tornadoes never touch ground,” I said. “And I’m flyin’ out of here.”

  “What’s your hurry?” J.J. grinned his folksiest grin.

  I looked at him sharply. What was that about? He wasn’t going to make a pass at me, was he?

  He stepped in front of me, and I thought he was going to stop me.

  “I was just leaving, and I got into a discussion with Mr. Brown,” I said.

  J.J.’s eyes popped open. “Ed Brown? Is he here?”

  I gestured over my shoulder with my thumb. J.J.’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped aside.

  “Wonder what he’s up to,” he said. “You run along, young lady.” He opened the door to the stairwell for me, but he didn’t say anything more.