The Pink Flamingo Murders (20 page)

“The next day Caroline marched over to give George and Amanda a piece of her mind. Amanda told her, ‘Why don’t you take it up with the family who was here? I think they’re going to buy the house, and they’re going to pay my asking price, too. I’m so thrilled. They need a big house for their eleven children. You don’t see families like that anymore. Don’t you think a house like this cries out for children, Caroline?
The mother, Maybelle, is a leader in the home schooling movement. She likes to have her children around all the time.’

“Caroline had a contract on that house the next day, and when the loans cleared, George and Amanda were out of there. I don’t think Caroline ever found out there was no other purchaser.”

It was a little after seven when I left Margie’s. The angels looked as glorious as ever in their rainbow fountain, but I no longer thought North Dakota Place was heaven on earth. Those weren’t angels. They were sirens. They’d trapped Margie with a beautiful white elephant and driven Caroline crazy.

I needed to get away from this place. I wanted to see Lyle. I wanted my suspicions to go away. I knew he wasn’t a rat like Charlie. I knew he didn’t cheat like my father. If I surprised him at the university, I’d know for sure. By the time I got to Lyle’s office, I’d convinced myself that I was there because I was eager to see him. Not because I didn’t trust him, or any man, for that matter. My father was unfaithful, and it made my mother crazy, and deep down I was afraid Lyle would do the same to me someday. I was driving out to his office to check on him, and we weren’t even married.

Lyle’s building was all but deserted at eight o’clock. I could hear a janitor whistling and cleaning an empty first-floor classroom. I saw a student stretched out on the floor by the lobby Coke machine, using his backpack as a pillow. When I got to the fourth floor, Lyle’s floor, I saw someone coming out of his office. I hurried down the corridor to get a better look, my heels betraying me with click-tapping noises on the tile. But I didn’t move fast enough. I only caught a glimpse of long blond hair and blue jeans. I heard Lyle call out, “Good night, Pat.”

I was right. He was seeing someone else. I was sure of it. Almost sure. Sort of sure. Not sure at all, but I
knew anyway, as sure as I was standing there, that he was as unfaithful as my father and Charlie. Why else would he be seeing a long-haired blonde at this hour?

I knocked on Lyle’s door. He opened it. His office was about the size of a closet, and lined with bookshelves. More books were piled on the floor, and cartoons torn out of newspapers and magazines were stuck on his shelves, around his desk lamp, and taped on the wall. His blue shirt was rumpled, and he was putting on his light-blue summer jacket. He looked handsome but tired. He was packing what looked like typed essays into his briefcase, clearly preparing to go home.

“Francesca,” he said, “this is a surprise!”

“I bet,” I said, with more acid in my voice than I wanted. But he didn’t seem to notice as he gathered me into his arms. “Let’s go out to dinner,” he said, almost pushing me out of his office. Did he want me out of there because he was tired at the end of the day, or because he didn’t want me to see something?

I wasn’t hungry after that meal at Caroline’s, but I wanted to be with Lyle. We went to a little Greek restaurant up the road, and I poked at the spinach pie with the flaky crust, while he had the cheese pie they set on fire, except the young waiter had trouble getting the fire going, and we laughed about that. I told Lyle about Caroline’s awful death, which maybe wasn’t a proper dinner topic, but he seemed fascinated.

“The flamingo was stuck right in her chest?” he asked.

“Yeah, and her head was bashed in, too.”

“Someone really hated that woman,” he said.

“Lots of people hated her,” I said. “That’s the problem. The police think Margie is the main suspect.”

“Do you?” Lyle asked.

“Not really. But none of this makes sense. Why are
Caroline’s three worst enemies dead? Who killed them, if Caroline didn’t? And who killed Caroline?”

“There has to be some link between them,” Lyle said.

“If there is, I can’t find it,” I said.

Finally we talked out that story. I didn’t tell him about the Nails and Charlie rumor, or any other
Gazette
gossip. I was afraid I’d get a lecture about how I should leave that rag and work somewhere else.

Lyle started telling me about his current university project. If anyone saw us, they would think we were in love and eager to be with each other, but there was an uneasy edge to our conversation, as if this were a first date and we weren’t sure what to say but we wanted to keep the conversation going.

I remembered all the times my father came home late from work, slightly drunk and whistling too casually, and my mother met him at the door, drink in hand, dressed a little too seductively, nervous and eager to please him, afraid she’d lose him for good. Later, after I’d been sent to bed a little too early, I’d hear their bed springs squeaking. I wondered if I’d have the same uneasy, too-eager-to-please relationship with Lyle. Already I was avoiding topics that might upset him.

No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be crazy like my mother. No man was worth that. If I had proof Lyle was seeing someone else, I would break off this romance. I’d . . .

“Francesca,” Lyle said. “Are you there?”

Just barely. “You were telling me about the special project you were working on at the university,” I said. What you were telling me, I have no idea. I was only half listening. I couldn’t concentrate. I went back to brooding. I wished I knew for sure that Lyle was cheating on me. I had to know. I couldn’t live like this, but the next thing I heard myself say was “I love you. Come home with me.”

I couldn’t explain why I invited Lyle to my place that night. He looked as surprised as I felt. We made love with every weapon we had. He drove himself in me. I raked my nails across his back. We bit and scratched, like alley cats in heat, and god help me, I liked it. We did not spend the time afterward wrapped in each other’s arms, falling gently into sleep, the way we usually did. He did not stay the night, either.

“Maybe that will convince you,” Lyle said, as he got up to leave, but he didn’t say what it would convince me of, and I realized I didn’t know myself. As he turned away to put on his pants, I saw some of the scratches I’d carved in his back were bleeding. I wondered if this was passion, or if we were beginning to enjoy hurting each other. I thought about crying, but before I knew it I was asleep and dreaming about a faceless phantom I chased down a long hallway, and every time I was about to catch up, she disappeared around a hidden corner, leaving only a swish of blond hair that lingered in the air like the grin of a fairy-tale cat.

I had a hickey on my neck. Thirty-seven years old, and there I was with a bite mark the size and color of a purple plum, courtesy of last night with Lyle. Damn that man.

I rubbed some foundation on my neck. It didn’t cover the hickey. In fact, it seemed to highlight it. I rummaged in my dresser drawer, found a long, filmy leopard-print scarf, and wrapped it around my neck. There. The chiffon looked rather chic with my beige summer suit. I stepped outside and blinked at the blinding summer sun. The sticky, humid air felt like warm soup, and the chiffon scarf felt like a wool muffler.

“Why are you wearing that scarf in this heat?” asked Marlene, as I took my favorite booth at Uncle Bob’s.

“Uh, it’s the style,” I said. This sounded lame even to me, two quarts low on my morning coffee.

Marlene peered at me closely. “Hides that hickey fairly well,” she said. “Lyle give you that?”

“Yeah, I feel like a high school kid,” I said.

“Is he trying to mark his territory?” she said. How could that woman be right so early in the morning? I kept the scarf on anyway, figuring Marlene was smarter than 99 percent of the population. I wasn’t worried about the
Gazette
staffers noticing anything. If I pranced through the newsroom naked, the only thing
they’d do was make bitchy comments about whether I’d shaved my legs.

I got to the office in plenty of time for Charlie’s big meeting. The staff straggled in, resentfully slouching on desks or stealing chairs from empty desks. Others, like me, leaned against walls and pillars. We could slip away easier. We hated this interruption. The editors would leave work at their usual time, but reporters with stories due would have to finish them, no matter how long management blabbered on.

Charlie was standing in front of his office, plump, proud, and expansive, like one of the pigs in suits on the
Animal Farm
paperback I read in high school. Nails looked like she was expanding, and rapidly. Today she was definitely wearing a maternity dress. To complete the maternity ensemble, she had a shiny new gold wedding band. Pregnancy seemed to make her more substantial. She had a lot more weight, and she wanted to throw it around.

Smiley Steve put on a big insincere smile, like a game-show host. He was a good courtier, who kept his shoulders hunched and head lowered respectfully round Charlie and Nails. Smiley Steve was curt and arrogant to his underlings, but he knew how to cringe before his betters. He had two serious contenders in the current cringing contest: Roberto, the city editor, eager to abase himself before anyone more powerful, and Babe, our gossip columnist. If Nails had worn a train, Babe would have held it. Instead, he fetched her bottled mineral water (impending mothers do not drink coffee), laughed at her jokes, and told lies about the sex lives of staffers she didn’t like. I pulled up my hickey-hiding scarf. In my case, the truth was vivid enough.

Promptly at ten, Smiley Steve stepped forward and, speaking into the portable microphone brought out for these ceremonies, treated us to an earsplitting feedback
shriek. “Good morning, Gazetteers,” he said. “Before we hear from our managing editor, I want to offer him and Miss Noonin our congratulations on their marriage. Let’s give them a big hand.”

There was the sound of six hands clapping: Babe, Roberto, and Smiley Steve, plus a light pattering from people who thought clapping might advance their careers. The rest of the staff stood there sullenly. If the applause was small, the wedding gift was smaller. Smiley Steve beamed while the bride unwrapped a silver-paper package. Inside was a stingy silver bowl, about the size of a teacup. Smiley Steve couldn’t have collected much more than my twenty and Georgia’s for this useless present. Nails gave it an appraising look and dropped it contemptuously on the nearest desk, without so much as a thank you.

After the grand opening Charlie bounced to the microphone. He was so short, there was a delay while he lowered it considerably to talk. “Good morning, people,” he said. “Thank you for your good wishes on my marriage to Nadia.” Dimpletoes paused to throw Cupcake a little flirtatious smile. She threw it back. I nearly threw up.

“But along with this good news, I am sorry that we have bad news,” he said. “We have hired the Frobisher Corporation, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to conduct a series of focus groups, and the results have not been good.”

The staff groaned. More consultants. In the past few years, the
Gazette
had spent millions on focus groups and consultants, sometimes hiring two sets of consultants at once. Each had different ideas about how to pull the
Gazette
out of its slump, so we’d been pulled in a dozen different directions. We needed to write short, light, uplifting stories, said one set of experts, and the front pages were infested with chirpy eighty-year-olds who went back for their college degrees and high
school classes who raised four hundred fifty dollars for AIDS by washing cars. We needed more local news stories, said another set of consultants, and the front pages were overrun with car crashes, drug-related shootings, and six-column photos of downed trees after every storm. We needed stories that were “local but positive” said a third expert, and the shootings and accidents were pushed off the front page by unmarried mothers who graduated from college at age thirty-five in a double ceremony with their oldest child (These were always African Americans. White women were not unmarried teenage mothers in the
Gazette)
and car dealers who donated almost-new cars to worthy causes. The charitable dealers were always major advertisers and the donated cars looked shiny in the six-column photos.

What we needed was to kick out the consultants and put in editors who knew what they were doing. When the
Gazette
thrived, it scoured the city like a hard rain. We did stories about senators involved in swindles. We ferreted out corruption at City Hall, the police, and the school board. We did lighthearted but insightful features in far-flung suburbs from Florissant to Fenton, places most current
Gazette
reporters had never seen.

But real reporting cost millions, and the
Gazette
had already spent that money on consultants. It also took guts, and
Gazette
editors didn’t even like to take phone calls from readers. Which is why the reporters were going to be stuck with the latest consultant scheme.