The anchor then treated his viewers to a professionally whitened smile, and said, “Related to these events, but on a lighter note, there is this: It unfolded just a short time ago, at Mr. Elstrom’s residence in Rivertown.”
The screen switched to a shot of Benny Fittle, leaning against his corroding Maverick, working his jaws with the strength of an industrial composter on something he’d snagged from the doughnut box. From there, the camera zoomed over his shoulder, to Leo and Endora, in tangerine, chartreuse, and neon yellow, looking up at the turret. The lens then rose, to close in on the king-sized salad dressing label that hung from the second-floor window.
“‘You can’t always believe what you read,’” the news anchor read, chuckling so that we at home would know to laugh, too. “That flapping bedsheet refers, of course, to the case pending against Elvis Derbil, zoning commissioner in Rivertown. Sources tell us he is about to be indicted for switching out-of-date salad oil labels before reselling the product.”
It was diverting, indeed, and it was all the mirth I could stand. I switched off the tiny television, walked to the window to look out. The news vans had all left.
They’d done their work.
I’d hit the fan… and splattered all over Amanda.
That afternoon, I worked wood, ate Ho Hos, and listened to my landline phone transfer one reporter after another to my answering machine. The recording device maxed out at five o’clock, which was also when I ran out of Ho Hos. And self-control. At the next ring, I hefted a particularly nicely figured piece of oak that I’d just cut perfectly, and considered throwing it like a spear through one of the windows. Interior carpentry, sugar fueled, can only be battered by a ringing phone for so long.
I edged to the window to look out, at the ready to duck back before some cameraman could record my peeping face. Framed by one of the turret’s narrow slit windows, I’d photograph like a man looking out of a prison.
No vans had returned. Only one vehicle had come to park in front of the turret. A Prius. Jennifer Gale leaned against it. She wore a black skirt and a black sweater and was sipping an enormous Starbucks coffee.
She smiled up, raised the cup, and toasted me with it. She was at the door when I got downstairs.
“Dusty,” she said, eyeing my work duds. “I’ve been drinking coffee all afternoon. Can I use your bathroom?”
“It’s on the third floor. It is a man’s bathroom, a man who lives alone. It’s particularly dusty.”
“It’s a question of need,” she said, going up ahead of me.
I waited in my office.
“Besides the dust, closets are also a problem here,” she said, when she came down.
“I’ll build some, someday.”
“You’d better, if a woman is ever to occupy this place.” She sat down on one of the card table chairs. “About you standing me up last evening?”
“I got detained.”
“So I saw, on the news-our news, in fact.”
“I really am sorry. I was looking forward to dinner.”
“You were on the news again today, at noon.”
“Nothing substantive. Just for comedy.”
“We’ll have dinner now?”
My instinct was to say no-not with a news reporter; not with a beautiful woman; not now. Then I had the thought that it would give me the opportunity to show off the expensive new duds Buffy Griselda had gotten me that morning. It was rationalization, and it was enough. I went upstairs, showered quickly, and descended, transformed, ready for applause.
“Don’t you ever wear anything but khakis and blue shirts?” she asked.
CHAPTER 24.
She probably took it as gentlemanly that I said I’d drive us to dinner. She didn’t complain when we had to walk along the river to get to where I’d hidden the Jeep from the reporters. She climbed into the car without commenting on the splotches of rust, or the strips of duct tape that covered the slashes on the plastic side windows.
After buckling her seat belt, though, she made a point of touching the wires protruding from the dash where the radio used to live.
“You’re an outdoorsman, right? A rustic? This vehicle is for fishing and hunting?”
“This is my principal mode of transportation,” I said, sounding every bit the college graduate that I am.
“How interesting,” she said, though whether it was about the wires or me, I couldn’t tell. Then, “Where shall we have dinner?”
“Someplace well lit,” I said, a bit too quickly.
Barely a foot away, she smiled. Or at least her perfume, a heady, floral mix, did.
“I meant someplace where I don’t have to worry about someone breaking into this fine car,” I said, fumbling the joke.
She was too smart. “Rich girlfriend,” she said.
“Rich girlfriend,” I agreed.
I knew a diner with big windows, lit brightly enough for microsurgery, and parked on the street. “We’ll sit by the window, to make sure nobody peels off my silver tape,” I said.
“Of course.”
We both laughed, getting out, but that just made me more edgy.
“You’re Jennifer Gale,” the woman behind the cash register said when we walked in.
The diner was only half full. It was easy to hear. Most of the heads turned.
Smiling as though delighted to be recognized, Jennifer turned to me. “That booth in the back corner, away from the windows, you said?”
“Perfect.”
I sat on the side facing the rest of the diner, so people coming in wouldn’t notice her. We ordered mushroom burgers and Cokes, because I wasn’t elegant and she was.
“How’s your investigation into Rivertown coming?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation.
“Elvis Derbil hasn’t even been indicted yet.”
“The Feds are taking their time?”
“I suppose.”
She was being deliberately vague. I remembered the morning I’d found her sitting on the bench by the Willahock. She’d made herself almost unrecognizable behind huge sunglasses, wearing dressed-down clothes. She’d said she’d been in the neighborhood and had thought to drop by. She’d been evasive then, just like now. Something very hushed was going on between Elvis Derbil and the Feds, and Jennifer knew what it was.
“You do recall my bringing you the photos of the clown going off the roof, and getting you in to see the rope?” she asked, changing the subject. “How you agreed you’d give me the complete Sweetie Fairbairn story?”
“I don’t recall Ms. Fairbairn’s name coming up in those negotiations.”
“Well, surely you remember calling the police to her penthouse yesterday?” A smile played on her fine face. “Why are you now trying to divert me from Sweetie Fairbairn, the biggest story in Chicago, and her connection to that poor clown?”
“What makes you think there is a connection?”
“I don’t think you’re working two separate cases. Just a little over a week ago, you were spending your time painting windows. Clients, for you, are rare.”
“Interesting observation.”
“Accurate?”
“I have competing commitments. One is to my client-a rock, so to speak.”
“Let’s call her Sweetie Fairbairn,” she said.
“My other commitment is to a hard place.”
“That would be me, the all-too-accommodating television reporter?”
Our mushroom burgers came, and with them, the opportunity to fill my mouth with meat instead of an answer.
“How do we resolve this?” she asked, as I raised the hamburger to hide behind it.