A Little Night Murder Read online

  Libby dropped me in front of the Pendergast Building, and I was soon through security and zooming up the elevator to the offices of the Philadelphia Intelligencer, the rag that still paid my salary.

  As soon as I stepped off the elevator, I knew Gus Hardwicke was back with a vengeance.

  Although most of my colleagues usually headed home around four in the afternoon, the whole newsroom was still buzzing with busy reporters. Either we had big breaking news—perhaps a celebrity had been arrested for indecent exposure—or our editor had thrown a tantrum and every writer on the staff was trying to prove his or her value by staying late. All heads were bent, faces turned to computer screens, fingers busy on keyboards—hot in the pursuit of a lurid story for tomorrow’s edition. I heard the clatter of keystrokes and the low hum of reporters intent on saving their jobs.

  I bumped my desk with my belly but caught an avalanche of envelopes before they cascaded to the floor. I didn’t stop in the office every day to check my mail, so invitations to social events sometimes piled up. It was often more efficient for me to arrive at events directly from home, and I wrote my stories in the back of a car that whisked me from place to place. I communicated often with the features editor by phone and e-mail—a system that worked well for us.

  Sometime during the last couple of days, someone had sent me a vase of flowers along with an invitation to a summer gala. The yellow roses were drooping just a little. I scooped up the vase and cradled it in my arm, intending to walk it directly to the ladies’ room for a drink.

  But a loud voice boomed across the newsroom like the crack of a bullwhip. “I’m so glad you could finally join us, Miss Blackbird!”

  I spun around, arms full of invitations and flowers. The whole newsroom looked up from their tasks, too, as if everyone had been anticipating this moment when our temperamental boss finally laid eyes on me, the late arriver.

  Gus Hardwicke stood at the open door of his office, his freckled arms crossed on his chest, wiry dark brows thunderous as he glared with barely controlled rage. He was tall and athletic, wearing an open-necked dress shirt and linen trousers, bristling with Australian brio and the temper of a managing editor ready to prove he hadn’t missed a step during his vacation. His narrowed gaze involuntarily left my face, though, and slid lower to land on my distended body.

  I saw Gus’s green eyes widen. His shock morphed into revulsion before he pulled himself together. “Come into my office, please. We have things to discuss.”

  I left the invitations at my desk. Walking across the floor felt like a trek across the Sahara as all my fellow employees either sent sympathetic looks my way or made little effort to hide smirks. I guessed they had already a formed a pool to bet on whether I was going to be fired.

  Determined not to be intimidated, I breezed into the editor’s office and presented him with the vase of flowers. “Welcome home, Mr. Hardwicke,” I said in a clear voice that I hoped carried out to the newsroom. “I trust your vacation was restful despite all the globe-trotting. You look a little sunburned. Did you get in any spearfishing? And how was the biking in Paraguay?”

  He slammed the door, and we were alone in his office. “The only living creature I felt like spearing was my father. Fortunately, he has bodyguards.” He dropped the vase of flowers directly into the trash can beside his desk, then swung around to give me another appalled stare. “Good God, Nora, what the bloody hell happened to you?”

  I lifted my arms to better show off my enormous figure. “Do I need to explain the facts of life?”

  “I’m well acquainted, thank you. Maybe you need to learn how to avoid this unfortunate outcome. I reckon you’re big as a boomer.”

  I knew Gus Hardwicke was more bark than Aussie bite. So I said with good humor, “We’ve been over this, Gus. I’m deliriously happy about this baby, and I’m allowed six weeks of maternity leave.”

  “I thought that wasn’t happening until the end of summer.”

  “We Blackbird women get big early.”

  “Spare me the gory details. Crikey, I’ve seen kangaroos carrying two half-grown joeys, and they’re not nearly your size.”

  “Some people actually say pregnancy agrees with me.”

  “Don’t expect me to lie. You look appalling.”

  “Is this how you treat the ladies Down Under? If so, I can understand why you were thrown out of the country.”

  “I left voluntarily. More or less.”

  “I was beginning to wonder if you had decided to fight your way back into your father’s good graces and stay in Australia. Or won’t he have you?”

  “Actually, he’s trying to buy some media outlets here in the states. Or hadn’t you heard?”

  I had heard indeed, but I didn’t feel I could press Gus about his media mogul father, who owned at least four television networks and half the newspapers around the globe. Making a move into the U.S., he was bidding to buy a cable company, a handful of tabloids and a radio station or two—all of them owned by a triumvirate of old dragons here in Philadelphia.

  But he had encountered a setback with the fire-breathing sellers, so the rumor mill said, and he was regrouping before staging another assault. Like everyone else, I wondered what the senior Hardwicke’s next move might be—a full-scale attack or a more wily strategy. I knew the dragons slightly—they had been protégés of my grandfather Blackbird—very patriotic, ring-wing fossils. I guessed they resented someone from another country making a bid for their assets, which they seemed to think were as American as the Liberty Bell and should remain so. But, of course, money talks, even to dragons. And Gus’s father had a lot of money.

  Gus didn’t wait for me to answer his question.

  He said, “My current goal is keeping this sinking ship afloat a little longer. While I was away, the bludgers around here started slacking off again. This newspaper is actually on the brink of disaster. I have to fight to earn back every quid I made here all over again, or we’re out of business. I need news. Got anything good?”

  “You mean more sordid stories about male body parts?”

  He laughed. “In the States, dongers do seem to sell newspapers. It’s a great country, isn’t it?”

  Gus leaned against his desk, the only stick of furniture in the office. It was my observation that he preferred to work on his feet, pacing and shouting, rather than sitting in a comfortable desk chair like a normal human being. Which meant there was never anywhere for me to sit. The walls were decorated only by large sheets of blank newsprint, where he scrawled his ideas for the next day’s edition. Each night he ripped down the previous day’s work and hammered up fresh paper to begin anew.

  He folded his arms over his considerable chest again and said, “We will now have a natter about your dubious contribution to journalistic excellence while I was away.”

  “You were reading my work while on vacation?”

  “On holiday doesn’t mean brain-dead. I read your piece about the ten worst charities.”

  “It was the ten best, actually. I added the ten worst because—”

  “The worst are what kicked up reader interest. Which I like. As for the rest of your work, all I can say is there was certainly a lot of it.”

  “Everybody checks news on their electronic devices so often nowadays that I thought we should frequently post something to keep readers interested.”

  “News about the blithering social scene? Or what frock somebody’s empty-headed secretary wears to a ladies’ luncheon?” Scorn dripped from his words. “You call that news?”

  “I call it content. Content that readers want to see. Yes, updates from Washington are more important, but what a stylish office worker wears to a fund-raising lunch is what keeps people coming back. Our online advertising is up eighteen percent,” I said, pleased to have pried the number from the ogre who ran the advertising department. “I don’t think that’s only because t
he public wants to read about exhibitionists. My frequent social posts keep readers coming back, but they make advertisers take notice, too.”

  He did not argue with me. “I hear you were the one who insisted Tremaine post my video clips in the online edition.”

  “I did not insist. I suggested. The results were phenomenal. Readers loved everything. Who knew Paraguay was so scenic?”

  “I sent those videos to Tremaine because he’s a bike enthusiast himself. I intended them to be seen only by him. I did not give permission—”

  “Our page views were better than ever,” I said. “Maybe it was those shots of you in tight shorts, but I truly believe our readers are interested in what the rest of the world looks like. Your video clips were a perfect example of how we could expand our view of the world. I wish you’d sent more.”

  “Are you free for dinner? I can show you all my sightseeing photos.” His temper was definitely cooling, because a gleam of naughtiness began to shine in his green eyes.

  Gus had made a serious bid for my affections when he first came to Philadelphia. I thought I had successfully diverted his efforts, and now here he was playing his game again.

  I maintained my composure. “Despite the graciousness of that invitation, I must decline. I have several events to attend this evening. In fact, if you’re finished with me now, I should get moving.”

  He gave me a wry look. “Are you off to lift a coldie with your Pommy friends?”

  “Cocktails at an apartment around the corner. It’s a party to raise money for leukemia research. Some of the Phillies will be volunteer waiters.”

  Gus grabbed a white linen jacket off a peg by the door and swung into it. He opened the door and held it for me. “I’ve been cooped up here all day listening to your lazy colleagues whinge about their work. Let’s go. I could use a drink, and I don’t care what local cricket player gives it to me.”

  Reporters surreptitiously watched us walk to the elevator. Gus punched the button, and we took the plunge together.

  He said, “How’s your jailbird friend? Lexie Paine, the murderer? You know where she’s hiding out, I suppose? First on my list of things I want now that I’m back on the job is an article about her.”

  “You won’t get it from me.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Not lately,” I said, thinking not in the last hour.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “Because like half the city I want the confessed murderess to explain why she’s out of jail several years early.”

  “She confessed to manslaughter, not murder.”

  “In this pistol-packing country, doesn’t that simply mean she cut some kind of shady deal? That’s what she does, right? Shady deals? And what is she up to now? More unscrupulous plans to get even richer?”

  “She was a respected investment adviser before things went . . . a little crazy. She never cut deals. And she’s not unscrupulous.”

  “You’re such a lamb, Nora. You always assume the people around you are just as innocent. Your friend is corrupt,” Gus said flatly. “How did she acquire her home, for example? It’s in some kind of historic location, correct? And the rest of the buildings have been owned by boating clubs for—what?—centuries? So she pulled strings to get it. And what about bilking her clients of their life savings? She’s a notorious public personality now. And you—the blue blood who knows everybody important—are the perfect reporter to get all the nasty details of the story.”

  “She did not bilk her clients. Her partner did.”

  “And she killed him for it.”

  “It was manslaughter, not—” I caught myself and said more calmly, “I am not going to write about my friend.”

  “I assumed as much. So I assigned Hostetler to start mucking about.”

  Hostetler was a particularly unpleasant weasel who shoveled up the worst sort of mud that Gus liked to print. Plus he stole other people’s food from the staff refrigerator, which ranked Hostetler very low in my book—especially now that I seemed to be hungry all the time.

  I said, “Has Hostetler run out of penises?”

  Delighted, Gus gave a rollicking laugh. “Anywhere in the world there’s a woman with a hatchet, Hostetler can get her on the phone for a quote. It makes me uneasy about his childhood, but I gave him a raise anyway.” As we stepped off the elevator, he said, “I hear your thug is back to his life of crime.”

  Exasperated, I burst out, “How long have you been back in Philadelphia? Twelve hours? And already you want to make up tales about Michael?”

  Gus put one finger to his lips to indicate we should not let ourselves be overheard by the lobby security guards. As we crossed the lobby, he lowered his voice. “It doesn’t take long to hear the buzz about the Abruzzo family. I’ve even seen the photos. He’s hanging around with petty drug dealers now? Care to make a statement to the press? An insider’s view of current mob activity?”

  I kept my voice down, too. “Michael doesn’t deal drugs. Never has, never will.”

  “And the rest of the family?”

  I remembered Michael saying some of his pots had boiled over, but I said, “His father and his brothers are serving sentences for some misdeeds, and that’s all I know.”

  “Nora—or shall I call you Pollyanna for all your pretending to know nothing?—let me explain. Abruzzo père, Big Frankie, is in jail, so your thug has been promoted. Except instead of making a fortune in illegal gambling, he’s breaking up the old gang. Putting longtime employees out into the street, poor dears, ending the rackets, the numbers, the whole enchilada, as you Yanks say.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s what I hear,” Gus said blithely. “Except it’s not going smoothly.”

  No, it wasn’t. I knew quite well that Michael was trying to dismantle his father’s crime domain. It seemed a wise course of action now that we had a family on the way. But his cousins were angry. They didn’t want the flow of easy money from sports betting and the car-theft ring to end. So Michael had been maneuvering a lot of pieces around the chessboard, working things he didn’t want me to know about.

  But what photos showed Michael with petty drug dealers? That was news to me.

  Gus said, “Think your thug will be around to see your baby born? Or will the rest of his family take action, and parts of him will float up in a secluded billabong someday soon?”

  Without a word, I put on my sunglasses and stalked out through the revolving door of the building and out onto the sunny sidewalk. I walked away from Gus.

  He caught up and fell into step beside me. “Sorry,” he said.

  “That was uncalled for.”

  “I apologize. I’m a bullying sod, I admit it. And you’re probably in no condition to be toyed with.”

  If he’d punched me in the nose, I couldn’t have felt more stunned. His words were very cruel. But I was determined to show no weakness. “You must be very angry with me to say a thing like that.”

  “I am,” he admitted, sounding far from unhappy. He put his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and we walked together with the throngs of people heading home for the day. “You made a spectacle of me in the newspaper during my absence. Otherwise, you did your job exceedingly well while I was away. I was also pleased to hear you stepped up while Stan took ill. Lending a hand around the office—that’s unusual for you.”

  “Unusual? Of course I’d help Stan.”

  “What I mean,” he said as we walked, “is that you don’t normally take editorial initiative.”

  “I’m hardly qualified to take any initiatives. I’m a social reporter, not Pulitzer material.”

  “How will you ever get ahead, Nora, if you have so little ambition? Do you want to report on weddings the rest of your career? Haven’t you heard?” Gus asked. “Women need to l
ean in, not step back when opportunities arise.”

  “I can’t tell. Are you happy with my work or not?”

  “You’re doing your work commendably. But you disobeyed my order.”

  “Which order?”

  “The one about not putting yourself in any newspaper photographs.”

  I stopped short on the sidewalk and took off my glasses to stare at him. “That’s what had you sending me furious text messages from the other hemisphere? One silly photo?”

  “It wasn’t silly. It was you—a reporter—on the same page with the people you were covering. You compromised the story by making yourself part of it.”

  “The story? Gus, it was a party! A party for expectant mothers, raising money for the March of Dimes! Not exactly breaking crime news or political intrigue. I thought it was a nice cross-section of mothers from Philadelphia. Not just a highbrow crowd. What on earth do you imagine I was compromising?”

  “I don’t want your photo in the paper,” he said, flushing.

  The photograph in question had been a lark. At a garden party full of friends, I had indeed impulsively posed along with half a dozen equally pregnant young women—all of us laughing over the size of our bellies. It had made a darling picture, nothing worth getting red in the face about.

  “You’re not making sense,” I said. “Your photos brought us readers. Is my picture totally repulsive? What do you have against pregnant women?”

  “I have nothing against pregnant women.” He reached out and distractedly touched the shell button at my throat. Then he shook himself and took me by the elbow instead. He turned and walked me down the sidewalk again. “I have something against you being pregnant, that’s all. And I don’t want it in my newspaper.”

  I laughed. “You’re squeamish! Didn’t you know where babies come from?”

  “I don’t like the idea of his baby coming from you,” Gus clarified. “Under different circumstances—well, things would be different. Between us. And you know it.”

  “Things aren’t different,” I said evenly, keeping up with his brisk pace. “I’m with Michael—for life. You and I agreed not to do this anymore, Gus. We work together, and that’s the extent of our relationship. If you had a change of heart while you were away—”