“Off the record?” He raises one eyebrow and doesn’t wait for me to agree to the deal. “We’ll need a few days to investigate this. And it would-perhaps-be beneficial to our case to keep the information about Mr. Skith under wraps from the press for, say, a week or so. Maybe more.”
I see light at the end of the parking garage.
Zavala puts a hand to his forehead, shading his eyes, and pretends to look back and forth, as if he’s scouting the area. “I don’t see any of your cohorts around here. Do you? And, I suppose, it’s not in the best interest of law enforcement for us to inform them of what transpired this afternoon.”
I hold out my arms, so delighted my impulse is to hug him. Then I instantly drop them. There’s no hugging in journalism.
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” I say. “I owe you.”
“Nope,” he replies. “We owe you.”
“So then Zavala promised he’d hold off,” I say to Kevin. The last of the Doug Skith arrest video has rolled by on the playback monitor in the news director’s office. I reach across him, push Eject and retrieve our prized cassette. “Great, huh? We have a week. Which is totally doable.”
“We still have to move fast,” Franklin says. “We’ll bang out a draft script tomorrow.”
“We can do it,” I add. “Of course, we still don’t know who’s behind the cloning conspiracy, but-”
“‘Cloning Conspiracy.’ That’s a possible title,” Kevin interrupts. He pauses, looking between me and Franklin, apparently trying to read our expressions. He holds up both palms, admitting defeat. “Okay, fine. Maybe not.”
“I’ll dub the minicam video to a regular tape tonight,” J.T. says, holding out his hand for the videotape. “Gimme that puppy.”
I hand him the little yellow cassette, then plop down on Kevin’s tweed couch, my boots stretched out in front of me. I’m wiped. Josh and Penny will be waiting dinner. My feet hurt. And my brain hurts. I link my fingers on top of my head, thinking.
“The blue Mustang and the red Explorer are both in police custody. So they’re not going anywhere.” I try to organize the elements of our story. “But, you know? There’s one more missing piece. Besides who’s in charge of it all.”
The room is silent for a beat.
“Oh. You’re right,” Franklin finally says.
“As usual,” I say without looking at him.
“What?” Kevin says.
“Well, we know the original red Explorer belongs to us. We also know that’s safely downstairs in the station garage. But someone’s missing a blue Mustang. Right? That car the cops impounded today at Fifty-Five Friend? The clone of Michael Borum’s car? It’s a stolen car. It belongs to someone. Where did it come from?”
“Listen, Charlotte…” Franklin gets up from his chair and motions toward the door. “Let’s go back upstairs. I’ll see if I can get my cop source to check out the stolen-car reports. I think she’ll do it for me. And she’s on the late shift.”
“And we need to find the owners of Beacon Trust,” I say. “Any news on that?”
Kevin’s phone rings, interrupting Franklin’s response. He checks his watch. “Got to take this, team,” he says, picking up the receiver and swiveling his chair away from us. “Keep me posted.”
“NewYork, I bet,” I whisper to Franklin. We push open the glass office door. And then I remember what happened this morning. And what else is going to happen soon.
“Creep. Quitter. Short-timer.” I poke Franklin in the back as I follow him upstairs to our office.
“You could come, too,” Franklin says over his shoulder.
“Right.”
Even from down the hall, I can see the red message light on my phone is blinking. Probably Josh, wondering where the heck I am. Happily, I’ll be able to tell him I’ll be home in half an hour. And I’ll be able to share the blazingly good news about our story.
Franklin clicks onto his computer, pulling up his enviable compilation of alphabetically indexed phone numbers and e-mails.
I’ll also be able to share the blazingly bad news about Franklin. I sit in my own desk chair, one ankle propped on my knee, staring at Franklin’s back. Wondering who’ll take his place. Some burned-out hotshot from the network, ready to rest on his laurels in local TV? Or a twentysomething up-and-comer, all ego and self-importance, burbling about Edward R. Murrow but clueless about the real world? I pick at the zipper of my boot, yanking it aimlessly up and down. I’m doomed.
I stare at my leg. A white thing is sticking out of my left boot.
Oh. Right. My paycheck from WWXI. I pull the now almost-damp folded white envelope from inside my boot. It’s been there for the last four hours or so and it’s somewhat the worse for wear. The edges of the little clear window are beginning to fray. But I guess the bank will still cash the check inside.
“Hey. Charlotte.” Franklin swivels around, his eyes shining. “Listen to this.”
“What?” I say, peeling back the envelope’s flap. It sticks, so I get just a corner. Yanking open my desk drawer, I search through the salt-and-pepper packets, pennies and dimes, and loose Advils for a letter opener. Do I even have a letter opener?
“Here,” Franklin says. He hands me a thin silver point set into a leather handle.
Of course. “Thanks.”
“But wait, before you open that. Look here. It’s major.” He points to his monitor. He’s got an e-mail open. “My guy at the AG’s office is tracking down the real owner of Beacon Trust. He tells me all the legal documents are carefully set up to hide who it is. But for grins, he decides to look up what else the trust owns besides the valet company. Check it out, my little Emmy winner.”
He points to the screen. “See? Beacon Trust also owns…?”
I squint at the screen, scooting my chair closer. Then my eyes widen. I turn to Franklin. The blue-and-white e-mail is reflected in his glasses. His smile is unending.
“The Garage at Fifty-Five Friend Street?” I say. “Whoa.”
“Yup,” he says. “They own the valet company. They own the garage.”
“Fantastic.” I nod. “Two for two. And that’s no coincidence, Franko. That’s a link in the chain.”
“They swipe the cars through the valet service. They clone them in the Newtonville garage,” he says. “And then they stash ’em in their own parking lot while they wait to sell them.”
“No pesky traceable tickets from Bubble-Gum Girl’s machine, no parking fees, just stolen cars hidden in plain sight.” I think back over what I discovered today, the phone numbers as directions.
“And giving that fake phone number on the radio,” Franklin adds, reading my mind. “Everything they did was boring, ordinary and mundane.”
“Until they got sloppy. And got nailed by a leftover parking pass.”
“Poetic justice,” Franklin says, nodding.
“Karma.” I smile at my lame joke. “You know, with a C. Bad car-ma.”
I slide the point of the letter opener under a little gap in the WWXI envelope. With a flourish, I slit open my paycheck and wave the pale blue paper in Franklin’s direction. “At least we know our last story will be a memorable one. You can come back for the Emmys. And hey, this paycheck from Wixie will buy your farewell dinner.”
“You rich?” Franklin asks. “Lots of money in radio? We finally going to splurge at Rialto?”
“Not the way Maysie tells it,” I say. “This’ll probably be enough for Burger City.”
I look at the little box with the dollar amount. And then I stare at the check.
“That bad?” Franklin says. “I’m going to have to buy the burgers myself?”
But it’s not the amount that’s got me speechless. It’s the imprint on the check.
WWXI Radio, it says in the upper left corner.
And beneath that, the name of the station’s parent company.