Jake’s cell trilled from his jacket pocket.
“Brogan.” He paused, smiling. “Well, you too, Nate. Here I thought you’d gone all big-shot doctor on me. Not calling back. Or maybe you’re afraid I’ll have a case you can’t-damn it.” Jake looked at his phone. The line was dead. “This freaking elevator.”
He hit REDIAL. Nothing. “I’ll call when we get upstairs.”
“Who is this guy, anyway?” D said. “Nate Frasca?”
The doors opened onto the gray and steel hallway. “Institutional neutral,” Jane always called it. A rank of closed doors. At the end of the hall, an ell of double-tall windows fronted the Homicide squad offices. Jake could smell the coffee.
“Nate Frasca? He’s gonna tell me if Gordon Thorley is Lilac Sunday,” Jake said.
11
“See, Jane? I told you it would work out. It’s all about trust, right? I’d never steer you wrong.” Victoria Marcotte took a sip from a sleek white china mug, leaving behind a faint trace of her trademark red lipstick. She wiped away the color with a manicured thumb. “Jane? You have-someone has to tell you-a smudge on your face.”
The city editor touched her own sculpted cheek, illustrating where Jane’s was dirty. Marcotte was only ten years older than she was, but the editor had developed a kind of destabilization technique. If an employee was uncomfortable, they were vulnerable. Jane tried not to let it get to her.
She wiped at her face with two fingers. “Off?”
“You can fix it later.” Marcotte crossed her legs, leaned back in her swivel chair. The screensaver photo of fireworks on her desktop computer monitor clicked to black. “At least you’re not on TV. Anyway, Jane. Sit sit sit. What’ve you got for me?”
Jane perched on the edge of her boss’s nubby navy sofa, sinking so low into the cushions she had to look up at Marcotte. Jane shifted, sat up as straight as she could. Marcotte probably had a low couch on purpose, another technique to make visitors feel small. Small, and with a dirty face.
Jane cleared her throat, regrouping. “‘Possible homicide.’ Luckily for us.”
“Luckily?” Marcotte raised an eyebrow.
Why even try. “Anyway. Cops say they don’t have an ID yet. I’ll stay on it. Thing is-”
The cell on Marcotte’s desk pinged, and she sneaked a look at it. Then back at Jane. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Thing is,” Jane went on, “I called the Sandovals-they’re the ones who owned the house before the foreclosure. Remember? They were both out doing errands, they told me, all morning. Weren’t at the house, hadn’t been at the house. It isn’t their house anymore, after all.”
Marcotte stood, smoothing her black suit jacket over a narrow black leather skirt. “You could put them in your story, though, Jane. I mean, it’s good headline, a murder in their house, it’s-” She nodded, seeming to agree with herself. “It’s buzzable. It’s water cooler. It’s multimedia. Did you ask if they knew the victim?”
“Knew the victim?” Jane didn’t mean to be an echo, but no, she hadn’t. Could the Sandovals know the victim? “Ah, no. I didn’t ask.”
Jane suddenly felt itchy in her ratty T-shirt and possibly too-short skirt. Her feet were grimy in her flats. Maybe she should have checked on that. But how?
“We don’t know the person’s name, remember, and-”
“Did they say anything quotable?”
“Well, I wrote down a phrase or two. They had no idea, they said, about any of it. The police hadn’t called them.”
“So we broke the story to the grieving family. Fabulous.”
“Grieving?” Fabulous?
“Yes. Grieving.” Marcotte held up her hands, as if bracketing a headline. “Register reporter breaks news of real housing crisis-murder in their own home. Hang on, let me think.”
Marcotte sat at her desk, lips clamped shut, eyes narrowing.
“Ah,” Jane began. That was outrageous. Not to mention incorrect. “Let me call the police, okay? See if they have anything new? And we can go from there.”
“That’s old school, Jane,” Marcotte said. “We have an online edition. We go with it as we get it. When you get more details later, terrific. We’ll use that, too. Figure out something the-what did you say their name was? Samovar?”
“Sando-”
“Figure out something they said. Make it work. We only need a paragraph or two. You gave them the news? That’s hot.”
Jane stood in the doorway, hearing the rumble of the Register’s rattletrap elevator down the hall, the clatter of the air-conditioning system struggling to cool off a newsroom of overworked-and over-worried-reporters and editors. The Register had laid off more than its share in recent days, staffers fearing more cuts at any moment. Newspapers were endangered. Worse than endangered. Jane privately thought editors like Marcotte were the reason why.
“Suburban-no. Neighborhood Nightmare, we’ll call it,” Marcotte said. “Go. Write. You have fifteen minutes. Then we’re going to press.”
“It’s early for dinner,” Aaron was saying. He’d convinced her-Lizzie still couldn’t believe it-to leave the bank early and join him for a stroll across the Public Garden.
She’d actually done it. Told Stephanie she had a meeting, and just-left her linen jacket over her chair back. In her sleeveless dress and little patent heels, she walked through the revolving door and into the May sunshine, out Tremont Street and past the Parker House and the cemetery where Mother Goose was buried.
Free. And off the radar.
Aaron was waiting for her, as he’d promised, by the pushcarts outside the Park Street T stop. He’d handed her a big twisty pretzel, salt crumbling from its warm edges. They’d shared it, walking along the winding paths, the sun gleaming on the gold dome of the State House; the trees, some from hundreds of years ago, in full leaf above them. The last of the tulips, gasping in the heat, spread yellow and crimson across the green.
“Pretty, huh?” she’d said.
“Yes, you are,” Aaron had said.
And then, on the lacquered park bench, he’d draped his arm across her shoulders. She felt the starched oxford cloth of his shirt against her bare arm.
Aaron threw a pretzel piece, landed it at the edge of the pond. Two fat mallards lurched out of the water to get it, ruffling their feathers, green heads and purple-slashed wings shiny in the last of the late afternoon sunshine.
“Be great not to have to work, wouldn’t it?” Aaron tossed another piece at the ducks. “Sit in the sun and do nothing? Have someone feed you? To be that rich.”
“Mmm,” Lizzie said. She’d never thought about it, being rich. Growing up the way she had, her father and all. “I suppose I’m just as interested in helping other people with their finances.”
“Like the Iantoscas?” Aaron said. “Guess they got lucky.”
Lizzie’s heart flipped, just for a second, wondering. Was Aaron checking on her? Had someone gotten wind of what she was doing? She shook her head, trying to dismiss her silly fear. No way. She’d been careful.
“What?” Aaron said. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“Oh, nothing.” She hadn’t realized she’d actually done it. “Work.”
“So, the Iantoscas? I’m only asking because their house was in my portfolio.” He shrugged. “Although it won’t be there anymore.”
“Less work for you, right?” The last of her pretzel devoured, Lizzie didn’t exactly know what to do with her hands. She folded them in her lap, pretended the parade of ducks was fascinating.
“Any other accounts suddenly come into cash, that you know of?” Aaron turned toward her. Taking his arm away.