I let the elevator take me to the fifth floor. I squeaked along the old hardwood floor to the sterile gray office at the end of the hall. I hate to admit it, but I was trembling like a just-hatched peep.
Bob Averill has been editor-in-chief for fifteen years. The owners of The Herald-Union, the Knudsen- Hartpence chain, sent him here to boost the paper’s sagging circulation. They’ve pretty much given up on that impossible dream. Nobody reads newspapers anymore. So Bob’s top priority now, or so it seems, is to coax me into retirement. But as you know, Dolly Madison Sprowls has no plans to hippity-hop into that briar patch any time soon.
I took half a minute outside Mr. Averill’s office to get myself under control-and pick the dog hair off my sweater-then knocked on his door with as much vinegar as I could muster under the circumstances.
“No need to knock, Maddy!”
I was not only confronted by Bob Averill’s sour frown. But also the sour frown of Managing Editor Alec Tinker, and even worse, the sour frown of Detective Scotty Grant. They were slumped in the leather swivel chairs that surrounded the glass-topped coffee table in the middle of the office, a star chamber of medieval inquisitors with a pinch of Larry, Curly and Moe. “My three favorite men,” I said.
There were several empty chairs. Mr. Averill pointed to the one he wanted me to sit in.
I sat. I pressed my nervous knees together.
Tinker handed me a small folded newspaper. It was a copy of the Hemphill College student newspaper, The Harbinger. The story across the top was about a proposed tuition hike. The story across the bottom was about me.
It was not a hard news story, but one of those “notes” columns all newspapers run these days, where style and speculation take precedence over documented fact. The column was cleverly called “Campus Claptrap.” The headline asked this question:
Is Maddy Sprowls At It Again?
As bad as that headline was, it was the byline under it that made me wilt:
By Gabriella Nash
Harbinger Editor
“Heavens to Betsy,” I heard myself hiss, “that horrible girl with the green hair.” I started to read:
Just eight months ago, Hemphill College alumna Dolly Madison “Maddy” Sprowls led police to the real killer of television evangelist Buddy Wing. Now it appears she is trying to beat baffled detectives to the person who murdered archaeology professor Gordon Sweet.
After graduating from HC in 1957, Sprowls went to work for The Hannawa Herald-Union. But not as a reporter. As a librarian. That’s right, the diminutive, 68-year-old Sprowls is the desk-bound gnome who watches over the newspaper’s morgue, where the stories real reporters write are filed away for future reference.
And why is Sprowls so interested in Professor Sweet’s murder? It seems that she and Sweet were old college friends. In fact, both were members of a quixotic band of campus bohemians called The Meriwether Baked…
“Did you get to the sentence about you not being a reporter?” Tinker asked.
“I sure did,” I said. “It’s right above the one that calls me a gnome.”
Tinker was too agitated to let me read in peace. “We’d like to believe this claptrap is exactly that, Maddy.”
Detective Grant seconded the motion. “And so would we baffled detectives.”
I knew it would be hard to plead guilty and not guilty at the same time. But I knew I’d have to try. I finished reading, let out a long, Reaganesque “Welllll” and then launched into a breathless explanation that I hoped would save me from collecting my pension: “It’s true enough that I’ve been asking a few people a few questions, about Gordon’s murder, and other things that may or may not be related, or even important, but I sure as heck didn’t tell that girl at the college what I was up to.”
“Or us,” Tinker pointed out.
“Or us,” Scotty Grant added.
Now Mr. Averill took a turn at me. “So this Miss Nash didn’t give you a heads-up about her story? Didn’t give you a chance to respond?”
“I’m as surprised by this as you are, Bob.”
I watched Mr. Averill’s troubled eyes drift along his office walls. They were lined with a century’s worth of important front pages, in thick black frames, from the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to the most recent addition, the one revealing Buddy Wing’s real killer. “I suppose you’ve earned the right to explain yourself,” he said. “If you think that’s possible.”
So that was the start of my visit to the woodshed. It was the longest damn hour of my life. I apologized for my secretiveness. I apologized for my carelessness. I apologized for my impulsiveness and my loose-cannonness. I agonized out loud over my incurable curiosity, like some bad actor in a Shakespearean play. I also told them everything I knew about Gordon’s murder, who I suspected and why. By the time I finished, they were as exhausted as I was.
Mr. Averill made a motorboat sound with his lips. He drummed his fingers on the armrests. He stood up and buttoned his suit coat over his middle-aged belly. “I don’t think we need to take any disciplinary action here, do you Alec?”
Tinker gave him a terse, “No, sir.”
“How about you, Detective Grant? Mrs. Sprowls hasn’t broken any laws, has she?”
“Not yet,” Grant said.
Mr. Averill walked me to the door. “Now you keep yourself out of trouble, Maddy,” he said. “And if you can’t, I hope you’ll at least keep us in the loop. We do like to sell newspapers around here.”
“And we like to solve crimes,” Detective Grant said.
I squinted at them until their cat-like grins withered. “You bastards,” I said.
I got off the elevator and went straight for the ladies room. Not to pee. To seethe. That hadn’t been Shakespeare up there. That had been a goddamned puppet show. And I’d been the puppet. Detective Grant wanted Gordon’s murderer. Tinker and Mr. Averill wanted a good story. They knew I just might deliver both. I sized myself up in the mirror, my silly hair and my wrinkled face, my gravity-ravaged boobs and shoulders. I took a deep breath and stood as tall as I could. “We’ll just see who’s gonna pull whose strings,” I said.
I went back to my desk. I got my tea mug and headed for the cafeteria. It was empty, except for one rumpled man slumped over a bottle of tomato juice. Detective Grant.
I filled my mug with hot water and dunked my teabag. I walked toward him, not like the frightened puppy I’d been upstairs. Like a full-grown Doberman pinscher. “If you’re staking out the cafeteria to see who’s been stealing the cheese and crackers from the vending machine, I confess. A totally justifiable act of mercy.”
He gave me a culpable smile. “Sorry about that little kabuki dance in Averill’s office.”
I sat across from him. “Did they call you or did you call them?”
He toasted my pugnacity. Took a painful sip of tomato juice. “If I hadn’t called them, I’m sure they would have called me.”
“I’m sure they would have, too.”
He turned sideways, propped his feet on the chair next to him. Started retying his shoes. “You promised me you weren’t going to get involved, you know.”
“I guess I just couldn’t stop myself.”
“And I guess I’m glad you couldn’t.”
“So we’re even-steven then?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Sprowls. We are not even-steven. I’m still the big bad police detective and you are still the private citizen who’s going to mind her p’s and q’s.”
“And it will forever be thus?” I asked
“Sayeth the Lord,” he said.
Our verbal duel was put on hold for a few minutes, while Dusty Eiffel, The Herald-Union’ s talented young political cartoonist, shaking a double handful of quarters like a rattlesnake’s tail, planted himself in front of the candy machine. He bought a bag of M amp;Ms, a Baby Ruth, a Butterfinger, and a package of Strawberry Twizzlers.
