Gayle Roper - Caught In The Middle

“I’m sure I would have,” Curt agreed amiably.

He seemed to be studying me. My hand went to my spikey hair, but it stuck out above my head as it should. I glanced down at my gray slacks, jade sweater and navy blazer. They weren’t covered with Whiskers’s hair, so they looked all right to me. I sucked discreetly at the gap between my teeth. I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d brushed, but I always worried since the spinach-in-the-teeth fiasco eight years ago. I cleared my throat self-consciously.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Curt asked.

I lifted an eyebrow and looked at him in surprise. “Isn’t that line a bit old?”

“I’m not giving you a line,” Curt said earnestly. “I honestly think I know you from somewhere.”

“Oh. Well. I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve only lived in Amhearst since the beginning of September.”

He shook his head and squinted at me.

I flipped my notebook open and asked, “Don’t you find painting and coaching a strange combination?”

He took the hint and got right to the issue at hand.

“Painting and coaching are good foils for each other if you think about it. Painting is creative and energizing and sedentary and solitary. Coaching is restorative and repetitious and active and social.”

By the time the interview drew to a close thirty minutes later, I knew Curt laughed a lot, talked with his hands and had a lot of work still to do for tomorrow night’s opening.

“This article will be in Friday’s paper,” he told me, as if it was his choice. “Right?”

“Probably Saturday’s edition,” I said.

“I’d like it to be in tomorrow’s.”

“I don’t think you get to choose. It’s the editor’s call.” I smiled so I wouldn’t sound defensive, but I hate it when people try to tell me what to do with the articles about them, especially since I have no control over when anything is printed, only when it’s written. “If it comes out Saturday, I can cover the opening tomorrow night and people can read about it in time to stop in Saturday if they wish.”

He nodded, not overly happy but wisely recognizing that he had no say in the issue. “Why don’t you come and see the chaos tonight or tomorrow morning? Then by contrast, the professionalism of tomorrow night will really impress you—I hope.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll have to see. I know I can’t come tonight, but maybe tomorrow. It depends on what else I’m assigned to do.”

“Tell Don I said to let you come,” said Curt.

“You know Don?” I asked.

Curt’s smile dimmed. “Yes. I know Don.”

I returned to The News to find the office in an uproar. Don was waving his hands as he talked to Mac Carnuccio. Mac was listening intently, looking like the proverbial thundercloud. Larry Schimmer, the sports guy, and Edie Whatley, the family and entertainment editor, were deep in conversation at Edie’s desk. Edie was wiping at tears that continued to flow despite her mopping efforts.

I stopped at Jolene’s desk. She was staring at her computer screen, the earplug for her transcriber in place, but she wasn’t working.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Jolene transferred her blank stare to me. She had gorgeous skin, great brown eyes that she dramatized expertly, and enough hair to make Dolly Parton jealous, though Jolene’s was a rich chestnut. “Oh, Merry, isn’t it terrible?”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Trudy McGilpin. She’s dead.”

“Trudy? Trudy the mayor? But all she had was the flu! At least that’s what they told us yesterday evening at her office when she didn’t show up for the meeting.”

Jolene nodded. “But she died sometime last night. We got a call about it just a few minutes ago. She didn’t keep her morning appointments, and her secretary couldn’t reach her by phone. She got worried and went to Trudy’s, and—” Jolene paused, then continued with great drama. “And there she was.”

I sympathized with the unknown secretary. I knew that finding bodies could take the starch out of the crispest individual.

Jolene, whose husband had just left her, took a long and shaky breath. “That just shows what happens when you live alone.”

I blinked. “I doubt that living alone did her in, but she must have been a lot sicker than anyone realized.”

“A lot,” agreed Jolene as she coughed delicately and leaned toward me. “I don’t feel like I have a fever, do I?”

I looked at her carefully made-up face and her clear eyes.

“You look fine to me, Jolene.”

She leaned forward some more, one hand raising her bangs off her forehead. “I don’t know. Check for me.”

I placed a couple of fingers on her cool forehead and looked thoughtful.

“I knew it,” she said, distressed. “I’m getting sick.”

“You’re fine,” I said.

“But you frowned.”

“I was thinking about Trudy,” I said.

“Well, think about me. Do I have a fever?”

I shook my head. “You do not.”

She didn’t believe me. “But I know I’m getting sick.”

“Merry!” Don’s voice boomed across the room. “Come here. And, Mac, I need you, too.”

Thank you, Don! I eagerly left the sick bay.

The News office space was cramped, old and reeked of smoke in spite of the fact that no one had been allowed to smoke in the room for at least five years. The desks were battered and scarred, the linoleum pattern had worn off decades ago and the file cabinets were dented and scratched. Only the lighting and the computer system were modern, and they were both state-of-the-art.

The other highly unique aspect of the newsroom was the greenery. Plants sat on every available surface and on some they shouldn’t. And every plant was lush and full and in better health than I was. I could only imagine what Don paid a service to tend these beauties, though why he wanted them in the first place, I didn’t know.

I dodged Larry’s and Edie’s desks, the fiche machine and the soda and coffee machines. The latter two were placed near Don so he could keep an eye on loiterers. A Wandering Jew draped over the soda machine in such rampant health that I always thought of Little Shop of Horrors and the plant that ate people. I gave the machine and its decoration wide berth.

“You heard?” Don asked as I approached.

“About Trudy?” I nodded. “Jolene just told me.”

I stared in surprise at my boss’s large, cluttered desk. Cluttered? Don? Usually he sat in organized splendor in front of the huge window that looked down from the second-floor editorial offices onto the business district of Amhearst. If it weren’t for the incontrovertible proof of the daily issues of The News, I’d think Don never worked, because his desk never showed it. Except now.

“I want you to do the personality obit. Contact family, friends, get some good quotes. You know. Mac will do the political and public-service analysis and contact the police and hospital.”

“The police?” I said, startled.

“They’re involved because it’s an unwitnessed death. Mere form,” said Mac. “I have to talk to them about your body, anyway.”

“It’s not my body!”

Mac grinned. “That’s not what I heard.”

“Mac, come on!”

“From what I hear, he seems about the right age for you.” He gave his trademark leer.

I wasn’t sure whether I should be offended by a joke about a dead man. “How old was he? And how old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know about you, but he was twenty-five.” Mac glanced at the notebook he had in his hand. “He lived at 594 Lyme Street with his mother, Liz, and worked as a grease jockey at Taggart’s.”

“So I got him at Taggart’s garage?”