The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix) Page 6

  “Not J.J. Jones?” Martina broke off in the middle of her sentence and frowned. “I can’t imagine him bringing up his wife. She’s done everything to keep him down since the divorce. He’s had a rough time.”

  I found the card and handed it over, and Martina gave a secretive little smile. “Oh, Dan! I didn’t know he was going to be in town,” she said. “Yes, Dan’s wife and I were in college together—along with some really important people, such as Margaret Gordon Jones. I’ll call him when my head doesn’t feel quite so rotten.”

  Ruth’s husband was in the waiting room, ready to take Martina to her house and Ruth on home, so I said good-bye. As I left the cubicle, Martina spoke again.

  “Please forgive me if I was too silly, Nell.”

  I waved casually and went to my car. But as I started it, I wondered about her concern. Was Martina afraid she’d made embarrassing revelations while under the influence of blanket wash? Actually, she hadn’t said anything about herself. She’d been talking about Mike and me.

  She probably had some memory of telling us that we were “screwing.” Well, we were. There was no particular secret about it. Mike and I were both legally unattached; neither of us thought sleeping with another single person was a hellfire offense. Of course, it wasn’t anybody else’s business—certainly not Martina’s.

  And Martina hadn’t seemed shocked. She had assured Mike I was “a nice girl.” Even if I did have trouble with my hyphenation.

  My family problems, she’d said, were not my fault.

  What the heck had she meant by that? True, I didn’t come from an all-American, mom-and-apple-pie family, but having divorced parents doesn’t usually make you an outcast in today’s world.

  And then she’d said that name. And spelled it.

  I shoved the name deep into my brain and thought about something more pleasant. Mike Svenson. The guy I was in love with. The guy with the king-size bed and the walk-in shower. The guy who had given me the opener to his garage and the key to his back door. I drove out of the hospital parking lot in a hurry.

  I swung by my house and picked up some clean clothes, then went to Mike’s. I punched the automatic opener, drove into the garage, and discreetly closed the door. Mike had a neighbor who was so nosy she probably knew more about our love life than we did, and we both preferred not to leave my car sitting in the drive. My key let me through the kitchen door.

  Other people who had worked nights had warned me of something I was finding out was true. You can’t go straight to sleep when you get off work. It may be after midnight, and it might be past your normal bedtime, but coming straight in from work and hitting the sheets is useless. You have to unwind.

  So I hung the outfit I’d brought to wear to the office the next day in the walk-in closet. I took off my clothes, washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on one of Mike’s old T-shirts, then climbed into the king-size bed with the latest chapter of Mike’s master’s thesis.

  Almost immediately the house began to groan and creak threateningly.

  I’ve noticed this about every house I’ve ever been in alone. Day or night, spring or fall—as soon as it’s quiet and there’s nobody else around, the house begins to taunt you with groanings and creakings. They’re meaningless, but they’re spooky.

  I read two pages of Mike’s thesis, but the groanings and creakings continued. I couldn’t get the thesis to make sense.

  So I tossed back the covers and took action. I knew there was no one there, but I also knew I’d never get to sleep until I checked. I went from room to room, and I checked all the doors and windows. I didn’t look under either of the beds—the double in the guest room or the king-size I planned to share with Mike—but I checked the closets and looked behind the shower curtain in the back bathroom.

  I was definitely alone. Still, I left the light on in the living room. I got back in bed confident that I’d settled the spooks, and I sighed with satisfaction as I picked up Mike’s thesis again. This particular chapter was all statistics. It had me nodding in five minutes. I turned out the bedside lamp and scrunched down under the covers, already half asleep.

  “Alan.”

  My eyes popped open. I looked around the room, startled from my first doze and wondering who had said the word. My heart was pounding, and my stomach turned over. Had it been Martina’s voice?

  But no one was there. It had been a whisper from my own past.

  “Stupid.” I said it aloud. “Forget it. Go to sleep.”

  But I was wide awake again. Awakened by a stupid name dredged up from the depths of my own subconscious.

  Oh, I’d read all the books. I’d taken psychology. I’d talked to a counselor about it. And every time I thought I had this particular problem whipped, here it came again.

  “Damn!” I said. I turned on the bedside lamp and began to read Mike’s thesis again. No good. Statistics didn’t interest me enough to bury the memory. All I could think of was Alan. I got up and went into the living room, looking at the bookshelves until I found something soothing. Aha, a shelf of boys’ books, left from Mike’s childhood. Mike’s mom had been the ultimate conscientious mother. He’d had all the classic boys’ books. Should I pick Huckleberry Finn or Treasure Island?

  When Mike came in at seven-thirty the next morning, I turned over and realized Treasure Island was open on my chest. The bedside lamp was still on, and sunlight was oozing in around the edges of the room-darkening shades.

  Mike was locking his pistol in the box on the closet shelf. He kicked his shoes off, then walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his uniform shirt. “You okay?” he said.

  “Now I am,” I said. I sat up and helped him with the buttons. Then I helped him with his zipper.

  “I ought to take a shower,” he said.

  “Later,” I said.

  Later we took a shower together—I’ve kidded Mike about exactly why he installed an ultra large walk-in shower with a built-in bench, but he swears I’m the only person he’s ever shared it with. Then Mike made coffee while I dried my hair. Then I scrambled eggs, and he buttered toast.

  “We make a good team,” Mike said as we sat down at his kitchen table. “Pass the salt.”

  It was comforting there with Mike, doing simple domestic chores, sitting around in no makeup, wearing his robe. Food, drink, sex—privacy and no-strings companionship. It was safe.

  But it was threatening, too. Our deadline was approaching. I knew Mike wasn’t going to be satisfied with the situation forever. He’d told me that. We’d agreed not to talk about firm commitments for six months, but the six months were nearly over. Unless we had a major fight within the next two weeks, Mike was probably going to ask me to marry him.

  I loved him, I enjoyed being with him, we were compatible in and out of bed, and we didn’t even argue about money. I couldn’t think of any logical reason to refuse to marry him.

  Did that mean I’d have to come up with an illogical reason?

  That had been my pattern in the past. I’d thought I was in love before. One guy had even given me a nice diamond ring. But when things got too serious, when he began to press me to set a date, I picked a silly quarrel and gave the ring back.

  I didn’t want that to happen with Mike. But I was terrified that it would.

  Mike spoke. “More toast?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “More coffee?”

  “All that caffeine is going to keep you awake,” I said. “It’s about time for you to go to sleep and for me to get dressed and think about leaving.”

  “Let’s drink one more cup and communicate for a few minutes.” Mike filled both our cups, then clicked the coffeepot’s warmer off. He sat down, pulled an empty chair out from under the table, and propped his feet on it. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready?”

  “To communicate.”

  “Oh.” I sipped my coffee. “Ready as I ever am, I guess. Do we have a topic for communication?”

  “Yeah.” Mike pulled one
knee up against his chest, rested his elbow on it, and drank coffee. When he put the cup back on the table, his gaze became level, and I knew he was ready to say something serious.

  “Who is Alan?” he said. “And why did you run away when Martina said his name?”

  Chapter 6

  The big build-up Mike had given the question had let me guard myself against it. It wasn’t the question I’d expected—I’d been afraid he was scrapping our deadline and talking about marriage—but I had immobilized my face before he spoke. So I hoped he didn’t see how shaken I was.

  I sipped coffee, concentrating on keeping my hand steady. “Alan is a common name,” I said. “I don’t know who Martina was talking about.”

  “Why did she upset you?”

  “Rescuing a fellow copy editor from death by asphyxiation—barely—tends to be upsetting.”

  “You didn’t act upset until she began to talk about Alan.”

  I shrugged.

  “Okay.” Mike drank coffee, then rested his mug on the knee that was against his chest. “Let me guess. Since the only time you and Martina get together is at the Gazette, Alan has got to be somebody related to the newspaper. I’ll bet Alan was another copy editor. He tried to rape you on those circular stairs.”

  “No!”

  “Then he was one of your news sources. Offered you a big story—but to get it you had to put out.”

  “Mike!”

  “Wrong again? Then he was the twelve-year-old paper boy who fathered your illegitimate child.”

  “That’s it!” I glared at him. “You’ve discovered my secret. I have a perverted passion for little boys. Immaturity turns me on! Now you understand why I’m nutso about you.”

  Mike looked at me steadily. “Oh. A passion for little boys. That explains why you fell asleep reading the ultimate boy’s story, Treasure Island. And why you had to have a night light.”

  I forced out a laugh. I couldn’t stay mad at Mike. And we were both aware that he knew how to manipulate me.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You’ve made your point. The things you can imagine about Alan are worse than the truth could be. And, yes, bringing up the name did give me a bad night. But the Alan who’s my personal bête noire is not the one Martina was talking about. That couldn’t be true.”

  “So who was he?”

  I still had to gulp a little coffee before I could answer. “My father’s name was Alan,” I said. “Alan Matthews. Spelled A-L-A-N.”

  Mike didn’t say anything.

  “If you’re such a great detective, you should have figured that out,” I said. “You already knew I have all kinds of hangups about my father.”

  “I know you won’t talk about him. But you won’t talk about anybody in your family except your grandmother.”

  “There’s not much family to talk about. Just my aunt and uncle and one cousin. I don’t like my aunt much, and she keeps my uncle under her thumb. My cousin, Carrie, and I were close when we were growing up, but she got married and had three kids—bing, bing, bing—in less than five years. All she can talk about now is diaper rash and Dr. Seuss. They all live in Amity, where I went to high school and where I worked before I got on at the Gazette. I used to go down there to see Carrie—until I got so involved with you I didn’t want to leave town on the weekends.”

  “So what about your dad?”

  “I haven’t seen him since I was eight. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. And, frankly, I don’t much care.”

  Mike drank coffee. He didn’t say anything. So I had to speak.

  “Well, obviously I do care. If I didn’t care, the sound of his name wouldn’t give me a sleepless night. But he knew where I was all those years. If he didn’t care enough about me to look me up, then I’m not going to try to track him down.”

  Mike remained carefully deadpan. “It’s a natural phenomenon for kids to blame themselves for problems between their parents.”

  “No, it’s more than that. He left my mother, true. I could accept that—they fought all the time. But, Mike, my mother was killed just a couple of weeks after they separated. My mother was gone! But my father didn’t come back for me. He just wrote a note to my grandmother and grandfather, naming them my guardians. He gave me away!”

  “Maybe he didn’t have a lot of choice, Nell. He may have felt that he couldn’t take care of a little girl. He may not have had much money—”

  “That’s true! He must have been practically poverty-stricken. He was a newspaper man!”

  That information hung over the breakfast table like poison gas. I could see Mike’s brain processing it. After thirty seconds of silence, he put his foot back on the floor, put his coffee cup on the table, and turned to face me directly.

  “Nell, if that’s true, Martina might have known your father. Didn’t you say she’d worked for several newspapers in different parts of the country?”

  I shook my head. “Martina had been around the newspaper world, true. But if she’d known my father, she would have mentioned it. Rubbed it in.”

  We both drank coffee, thinking. Mike broke the silence. “Whoever Martina’s Alan was, she said he was a fugitive.”

  “That’s one reason I don’t think Martina was talking about my father. My aunt hates him so much that I feel sure she would have told me about it if he’d been in trouble with the law.”

  “That’s probably right. But you need to find out who Martina was talking about. Ask her.”

  I shook my head. “Not Martina. I couldn’t ask her.”

  “I know you don’t like her, but—”

  “Mike, it’s too humiliating! It’s dreadful to tell you, and I know you love me. I simply couldn’t face asking Martina if she knows anything about my father—admitting to that bitch that I don’t!”

  I got up and began to clear the table. Mike sat frowning while I made two trips back and forth to the sink. On the third trip he reached out and caught my hand. “I’ll do the dishes,” he said.

  “I have to leave, and you need to go to bed. If you leave the dishes sitting around dirty, you’ll get bugs.”

  He pulled me onto his lap. “I love you, and I’ll do the dishes,” he said. “Later.”

  He kissed me then, under my jaw, and I put my arms around his neck. “I’m not sure I feel romantic,” I said. “But I sure do need a hug.”

  “I have an ample supply of hugs,” Mike said. “And they’re distributed without any romantic requirements.” Then he demonstrated his non-romantic hugging technique, and I demonstrated mine.

  One of the reasons I like to wear Mike’s robe is that if I tie the belt in the proper knot, a tweak opens it. I think that’s also one of the reasons Mike likes me to wear it. So after a few minutes of non-romantic hugging, I tweaked the belt. He ran his hands around my rib cage, inside the robe, and demonstrated a different hugging technique. We clutched each other, bare skin to bare skin, and we nuzzled each other’s necks.

  And I realized I was crying. In a minute Mike realized it, too.

  He didn’t say anything. He just held me tight against his chest, with my head buried in his neck.

  “Mike,” I told his shoulder. “I sent my father away.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “It’s true. The night he and my mother split up, he came to my room to say good-bye. I was so unhappy. I was so frightened. I finally yelled at him. I said, ‘Just go away! Just go away and leave me alone.’ I never saw him again.”

  Neither of us moved. Mike finally spoke. “You were just a little kid, Nell. Your dad wouldn’t have taken that as a permanent rejection.”

  “I’ve told myself that for years,” I said. “I didn’t really mean it. But I’ve kept on doing that same thing all my life. The people I love best—I get afraid, and I send them away.”

  “You’d better not try that with me,” Mike said. “I’m not going, no matter what you tell me to do.” He hugged again.

  Later, back in the king-size bed, Mike seemed to be soundly asleep. I
got up, took my clothes into the bathroom, and dressed as quietly as I could. As I tiptoed past the bed, Mike opened one eye. “If you want, I’ll call Martina and ask about Alan for you.”

  I leaned over and kissed the eye closed. “No, I’ll ask her myself. As soon as she’s back at work.”

  I figured that would give me a couple of days to gather my courage, but Martina was back at work that afternoon. She looked haggard, but her blond hair had been teased until it was cranky, and she was wearing her highest heels and her brightest print dress. Naturally, her white air-conditioning jacket topped the outfit.

  I was sorry to see her. I knew it was no good putting our interview off. Mike would nag me until I talked to her, until I found out who Alan was. And I knew he was right. I needed to ask what she’d been talking about.

  Martina and I worked slightly different hours. I came at two p.m. and usually left at ten. Martina came at four and stayed until midnight, or until all the copy was read for the street edition. I’d stayed late the night before, when Martina was taken to the hospital, so Jack wouldn’t be facing the local copy without a copy ed.

  I decided to let Martina get her work under way before I tackled her about Alan. She had, of course, read the morning paper thoroughly before she came in. Naturally, she had found some errors I should have caught. And naturally she pointed them out smugly. She was the most maddening woman. It wasn’t that I minded her finding the errors—I like to do good work—but I hated the pleasure she took in finding them. Her corrections turned into insults.

  No wonder she was the most unpopular person at the Gazette. Maybe somebody really had tried to do her in.

  If I hadn’t told Mike I’d talk to her about Alan, I would have shied off. But I had told him I’d do it, and I knew I should. So after she’d been there about an hour, I walked the six feet around to her desk—the four editors who handle local copy sit in a pod of four desks, but I didn’t want Ruth or Jack to overhear. I leaned over the top of her VDT.

  Martina looked up and gave her usual saccharine smile. “Yes, Nell?”

  “Martina, when you were under the influence of blanket wash yesterday, you did say one rather odd thing.”