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Because I’d been engrossed in my own retelling of the day’s events, rather more embellished and less grizzly than they’d been, the voice rather than the mint scent had me jumping half out of my chair and almost spilling coffee all over my laptop.
I turned to face Roger’s bushy brows, raised in surprise. In the short time I’d been working for the publication, I didn’t do such things as jump out of my skin. I especially didn’t risk things like a cup of coffee. Especially since sleep wasn’t something I had been on great terms with. I didn’t normally outwardly project anything rather than that false stillness that I clutched for defense and survival.
Damn Keltan for making it that much harder to fake the stillness. Not the murder scene I’d just waltzed onto.
I could’ve handled that.
I had practice, after all.
“I’m done,” I told Roger, glancing at the screen where I’d just typed the last word of the story.
He eyed the computer too, much like a hungry dog regarded a juicy bone. This was big news. Yes, people got murdered in the City of Angels all the time. But if those people were famous, it was different.
Sad, but true. Worshipping at the altar of celebrity meant that we mourned at their graves much the same way.
Plus, we had the scoop.
News was ever more competitive now. Death like this was currency. Another sad fact of life.
Roger waved his hand at me in a shooing motion, stepping forward. “Well move so I can read it and make sure it’s good enough to send to copy. We’ve got piss-all time to get it in before primetime news. With any luck, they’ll pick up our story.”
I rolled sideways on my chair to give Roger the room to bend over my computer, his muddy brown eyes darting back and forth over my words at an alarming speed. His body may have gotten round and soft with age, but those eyes had a sharpness to them that contrasted with the belly overhanging from his black slacks.
“My story, you mean,” I corrected.
There was a pause as my words filtered through Roger’s reading of my words. “Yes, yes,” he muttered, waving his hand dismissively at me.
I sat perfectly still, despite having the unnatural urge to fidget or chew my fingernails or do something to betray my nerves at having him read my story. I was never nervous about my stories. Then again, stories about Celine’s latest collection weren’t exactly something I needed to worry about. They would take me places, namely to the Celine store, but not the places that included a byline on the hottest story in Hollywood.
I was proud of the words. Writing them was somewhat cathartic, helping me continue to run from the events and the memory of the touch I’d been without for six months.
And the gaping hole in a throat of a woman.
And hiding in the closet from the man who murdered her.
On that thought, something that had been drowned by everything else that happened in the past two hours popped into my mind.
“The manifest isn’t here.”
Old Spice had been looking for something.
Of course, my brain had skimmed over the reason for Lucinda’s murder. My story had touched on possible motives, namely robbery. She was a jewelry designer, after all. And she had four ex-husbands. Who, from what I’d heard, wouldn’t exactly be crying at her grave.
My mind continued to work on the scene I’d entered. Sure, I’d been distracted by the blood and the dead body and then the murderer, but the rest of the apartment hadn’t looked disturbed. It was an explosion of prints and an example of questionable taste and decorating decisions, but not of a thief searching for some shiny baubles.
And slitting someone’s throat is a rather intense method of killing for a robbery gone wrong.
Personal.
Add to that Keltan’s words about added security and the sudden firing of his company.
My mind ticked over all of this while I watched Roger read the story that was so not finished.
It was not finished, and I was not finished with it.
Distraction in the form of investigating this story would work twofold. Helping me continue to run and maybe get myself on more than one byline that wasn’t life or death in the fashion industry but of the real kind.
Then maybe stories that got me back to the grassroots of journalism and muckraking. Maybe make some sort of difference.
Those thoughts silenced, or rather scuttled back to corners of my mind to develop, when Roger straightened, stepping back.
His pudgy pink hand reached into the pocket of his cheap slacks. The man was worth a lot. Journalism didn’t pay much, but he was also a shrewd businessman who’d made good investment decisions in the early 2000s.
Yet he continued to wear polyester pants and button-down shirts that finished at the bicep.
