Sand City Murders (15 page)

“Another murder?” she asked with an odd inflection.

“Just the one, sorry.”

“What has Richard Durbin been saying?”

“Nothing so far. Maybe a jogger, a young girl in her twenties. She was found on a bench at Sunset Park this morning.”

“Yes, he called here twice already.”

“Durbin called?”

“He was looking for the new chief.”

“Right.”

“Are you going to do a story on him?”

“Durbin?” I smiled.

“No, the new chief. Inspector Fynn, is it?”

“Absolutely… but for next week, I think.”

“You’ve met him already?”

“We had lunch.”

“What’s he like?”

“Nice… very charming, a little eccentric maybe.”

“You were a busy boy today.”

She was right. I sat down at my cubicle and started searching frantically through my stack of old issues. I made a few noises of frustration under my breath.

“What are you looking for now, Patrick?” tiny Eleanor asked from her giant desk. A cigarette dangled from her mouth.

“The story I did on Arantez, a couple of months back.”

“Last week of November,” she told me. “Right after Thanksgiving and before we went all Holiday Guide.”

“Thanks, El. What a memory...”

She beamed back at me. That’s one thing she was still very proud of: her memory— mind like a steel trap.

There was little doubt that I had learned Inspector Fynn’s name during that first interview with Arantez. Not a name you’d likely forget. And not that I didn’t trust myself, but I was bothered by the fact that I seemed to know him this morning. I convinced myself it was in the story I did on the ICEP. I checked. It wasn’t… I re-read the story
…in exchange for an undisclosed candidate, a DCI from either Holland or Belgium…

“How much do you have on this murder? A whole page?” Eleanor interrupted my sustained confusion.

“Not that much. Enough for the site update though. I’ll print it out for you. I’ve got pictures too, but nothing I’d want to put on the front page. Nothing tasteful.”

“And you’re sure it’s not a suicide?”

“I’ll check with Durbin again.”

“I’ll call him,” Eleanor volunteered. I saw her reach for the phone.

I typed up the murder story in a flash. It was all pretty cut and dry. The printer whirled and Eleanor snatched it from the tray as it spewed out. She set at it with her blue marking pen. I never took her edits personally. I trusted her completely. She handed the revise back to me a few minutes later.

“Why did you cut this part about being barefoot?”

“Well, she either had shoes or she didn’t, right?”

“Yeah, but we saw the marks from her socks.”

“Just thought the less we say the better, and so does Richard.”

“Okay… The earrings too, huh?”

“Durbin doesn’t want that printed either.” Eleanor lit another cigarette. “Aren’t you even going to mention our new guest chief in this story?” she asked.

“No. Not for the website. Cut the guy a break. It’s only his first day.”

“Fine,” Eleanor said, as she often did, though it usually meant the opposite.

“Alright, I’ll add a mention and do it up for the main story tomorrow.”

I had to update the website with the murder. That couldn’t wait for anything, not even Jason. I opened up the web-editing system and started making changes. Usually Eleanor never interfered with this, but today was different. She was all over me when I tried to come up with a good headline:
Murder at the Park

“Murder? Are you sure? Not suicide? Durbin still has his doubts.”

“It’s not a suicide. I guarantee it. I was there. I saw the body.” I typed:
Sunset Murder
.

“No. That’s misleading,” she pointed out.

Murder in Sunset Park

“We don’t actually know the murder took place there.”

Sunset Park Murder

“Probably should be Wright’s Park,” she corrected.

“Should be Dubois Park, if you ask me.” Wow, Eleanor was bing a real pain and I wondered why. I gently reminded her that this was just for the web update and she took a deep breath to calm down.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I guess it’s been a long day.” Eleanor snubbed out her cigarette. “Let me see your pictures for this week.”

“The fallen cell tower? Those came out great.”

“We can start there.”

I shipped the photos over to Eleanor’s computer. Last weekend’s vicious storm did damage all around Sand City, but the pictures of the collapsed cell tower on the salt marsh were by far the most dramatic. My colleague Joey Jegal had commented that it looked like Godzilla had stomped through town, or maybe, Iron Giant stopped for a snack. I wasn’t sure what he meant. The tower lay in ruins like a mangled heap of erector-set pieces.

“So what’s our lead this week?” I asked.

“We’ll decide tomorrow, but most likely go with the murder,” Eleanor said flatly. She lit another cigarette. “It is an exclusive, right?”

I nodded. “I doubt Durbin has talked to Jack.”

“Leaning? You mean the
Times
?”

“Yeah. Let’s just say they’re not best friends.”

“Good. That’ll be a nice feather in our cap.”

“What about the cell tower, the storm damage?”

“Below the fold… it’s all fixed now... But these pictures are dynamite.”

“Fixed already? I thought you said Thursday. Is your power back on?”

“Everything is working now. The whole town…. like it never happened.”

“How about the variance story?”

“What variance story?”

“The Blue Dunes Hotel, third floor, and all that.”

“What are you talking about, Patrick?”

“Oh sorry… never mind. Doesn’t Evan have a story this week?”

“Planning board, Thursday.” Eleanor turned and called out in her raspy voice, “Mel? “What did Chamblis tell you today?”

“Oh, we had lunch at the Governor’s Inn,” Melissa Miller replied and sauntered out of the advertising office. She looked perfect as usual, wearing a tailored skirt and a low-cut silky blouse.

“The Governor’s Inn? Ooh, swanky. I always thought you were a Land Ho kind of gal.”

“Depends who’s buying…” Melissa said and smiled at me. She planted herself on my desk.

The whole
Chronicle
staff often went up to the Land Ho Bar and Grill. It was our favorite haunt, our only haunt. Lunch or dinner, or just drinks to unwind after a long week. Eleanor usually picked up the tab.

“Who’s minding the little one?” I asked.

“Madison, you mean? She’s in the evening session now. Hubby is picking her up. Thanks for reminding me though. Better call him to make sure.” Melissa started dialing her cell.

“What did Chamblis say?”

“Thirty-four more units,” Melissa continued, but was paying more attention to her phone.

“What?”

“They’re proposing thirty-four more houses for Baxter Estates. It’s going up before the planning board tomorrow.” She grinned ear to ear. “And, a new community center with a pool.” Her expression changed. “Honey, it’s me. Don’t forget to pick up Madison at seven… Thanks, bye love.” She turned to us both. “He’s always forgetting stuff like that.”

“So, you were saying something about another yacht club?” I asked facetiously.

“No...”

“Yeah, one’s enough I guess,” I countered with a bit of hostility. A couple of years ago, Chamblis had bought up some slips and a bit of beach north of the Marina near the Commodore Hotel to start his own yacht club. Members only, and Baxter Estates residents only. It was painted an awful shade of green. The year before that Chamblis tried to convince the Village to build a golf course… one that would be world renowned, he said… The planning commission thought otherwise, at least for now...  And before that, he tried to re-open the abandoned Blackwater quarry— are you kidding?

“Don’t they still have, like, half a dozen unsold units?” I asked Melissa.

“At the Estates? No, I don’t think so…”

Sand City’s only housing development was named after an old farmer, Nathaniel Baxter, long dead, as well as his ancestors. They had owned the land for generations. Nathaniel himself was probably one of the Village’s founding fathers. Melissa and her husband had bought a house there about three years ago when the market went bad. Picked it up for a song, if I remember right. I’m not sure why the place bothered me so much. I guess it was the startling lack of trees. Or the fact that it was too normal, the people and the houses. It was like having suburbia in our midst. It didn’t seem fair. The rest of Sand City was not normal, nor were its people, so why should we have to deal with these Baxterites?

“Where are they going to build? There’s no room left except in the woods,” I asked Melissa.

“
The Woodlands
, that’s what they’re calling the new development.”

“You’re joking. What, they’re going to chop down the forest now?”

“Of course not. They’re going to leave almost every tree intact. That’s the whole idea. It will probably be gorgeous. All shady and cozy…” Melissa leaned closer to me. “And it means a lot of ads.”

“Legal ads too,” Eleanor said. “Village Hall just sent over a big batch.”

“What?”

“The legal announcements. Miriam is formatting them now.”

“That I noticed.” I glanced over at Eleanor’s desk. Something was different there and it took me a few moments before I realized the picture of her daughter was missing. In its place was another, a photo of a woman in her late thirties, surrounded by a couple of smiling kids. There was still a piano in the background.

“Should I send Joey to planning instead? Or do you want to take it?” Eleanor asked.

“No, no, Evan will do fine. He’s going, right?”

“It’s on his schedule.”

“That’s for next week anyhow. Murder this week, environmental collapse next week.”

“Patrick, how can you say that?” Melissa complained.

“The runoff… the waste water from Baxter Estates is killing the swamp, the salt marsh, the whole ecosystem… drains right into it.”

“That’s a total lie.”

“C’mon, Mel, you know it’s true. It’s not like it’s your fault or anything.”

“Of course it’s not my fault.”

“When was the last time you took a walk along the salt marsh?”

“I don’t know... last fall, I guess.”

“And?”

“It looks the same as it always does… kind of dead.”

“My point exactly.”

“But it always looks that way… even in the spring and the summer.”

I said nothing, but made an expressive gesture with my arms and smiled at her.

“You’re such an idiot, Patrick,” Melissa said with a certain affection.

“Where’s Jo tonight?”

“Jo?”

“Jo-Anne...”

“Oh. Picking up a new ad from the hardware store… a half page co-op, I think.” Melissa smiled and walked back to her office.

I called out to Miriam at reception. “Hey Em darling, how many inches so far?”

“Quiet,” she yelled back. I could hear her typing, the keyboard clanking, and then silence. “More than eighty so far. I’m almost done.”

“El, what do you think? Should we go up to thirty-two pages? Pagor says we’re at sixty-eight percent this week... And you just heard Miriam.”

“Can we even fill the rest up? Another eight pages? That’s all I need…”

“Twenty-four is a pretty slim paper.”

“Not for the middle of March,” Eleanor responded a bit defensively.

I heard the front door close and Frank Gannon, the sportswriter, sauntered into the thick of things. “Frank, just the guy I wanted to see. Could you fill two extra pages this week?”

“Two, only two? I could give you six.” Frank fiddled with the brim of his Seattle Mariner’s cap.

“We only need two… but I’m talking
extra
pages.”

“Well, yeah, that’d be great. One small problem though.”

“What’s that?”

“My camera died, the digital one… I had to use film.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” He handed me three cans of film. “Can you develop them?”

“I guess… What’s on ’em?”

“Basketball finals.”

“Okay, you’ve got three extra pages then.”

“Hey thanks, I owe you.”

I turned to Eleanor. “See… Frank will take three, even four if we need it. Basketball finals.”

“Fine,” she said. Eleanor rarely left her desk so when she did, everyone knew it was about something important. She reluctantly followed me to the studio. Pagor stopped his bellowing as soon as we opened the door. Eleanor spoke quietly, “Sorry Donald, Amy. We’ve decided to bump the paper up by eight pages. We’re going to thirty-two.”

“Let’s see, sixty eight divided by twenty-four was… um, no it’s thirty two… that’s about forty nine percent ads. Still a good number,” Pagor boomed as usual.

“Are we changing the back pages?” Amy asked but it sounded more like a complaint.

“No,” I said. “They’ll go in the middle. We’ve got two pages of legal at the back. Some more sports pages, and we’ll need lots of jump space from the front page.”

Amy strolled over to the drawing tables. She swayed close to me. I felt her hand trail against my leg. “Okay, whatever.” She gave me a small smile and a wink unseen by anyone else.

“Can you re-stack the ads?”

“Whatever, okay,” Amy said again. She was leaning against the drawing table and against me, though just barely. Something was wrong. Two days ago, I was a creepy old guy, and now Amy actually seemed more than a bit flirtatious.

Miriam had finished her formatting. The keyboard had gone silent. She floated into the office again and I could see her putting on her coat.

“Eric from the printing plant called about the green color,” she told me.

“Did he leave a message?”

“He said you forgot about the twenty percent dot gain… something about uncoated newsprint.”

“Right. Okay. Can you call back for me? Tell him three thirty eight.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’ll know.”

“Now?” Miriam made an angry face. “I’m on my way out.”

“Don’t worry about it, Miriam. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

She was happy to leave. “Oh, and don’t cash your paycheck till Friday,” Miriam added on her way out.

I looked at Eleanor and she gave me her look. It wasn’t the first time cash flow was a problem.