Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [15]
“You’d better call for help,” she told Robert, who carefully retrieved his cell phone from the vehicle. A half hour later, a tow truck arrived and pulled the Range Rover back onto the road. It was drivable, and Robert and Lucianne followed the truck the rest of the way down to the airport. Her flight to Puerto Rico had left—The one time it’s on time, she thought, and it has to be today. She remained at the tiny airport for six hours until the next flight took her to San Juan. There were more delays. She arrived home in Miami at three in the morning.
She had intended to sleep late in her oceanfront Fort Lauderdale apartment and take the day off. But that plan to enjoy a day of leisure was dashed by the one message on her answering machine.
“Lucianne, this is Baumann. Sorry the BVI story didn’t pan out, but I’ve got another one for you. Different. Top priority. Ten o’clock in my office. Welcome back.”
She managed four hours of sleep, showered, put on jeans, white T-shirt, and tan safari jacket—at least she could dress as though it was a day off—grabbed a doughnut and tea at a nearby outdoor cafe, and drove in her red Fiat Spider convertible to her TV network’s broadcast center. Located on the Dixie Highway, it was a year-old, ten-story building whose glass curtain-walls reflected its surroundings, distorting shapes, and, when the sun shifted, wiped them off the huge, multipanel screen. As far as Lucianne was concerned, the building represented a rigid, unimaginative, and distinctly ugly blot on the landscape, not that the landscape was any great shakes, either. That she spent most of her working days on the road covering stories was fine with her.
She swore at the car parked in the slot with her name on it, pulled into another marked space, slung her large, heavy leather bag over her shoulder, and entered through an employee door, flashing her badge at the guard, who greeted her by name.
Robert Baumann’s office was in the rear of the building, on the top floor. Lucianne fielded a succession of greetings as she passed desks in the spacious newsroom and breezed through the open door into the news director’s corner office.
“Hello,” he said from behind a boomerang-shaped black desk. He was in his shirtsleeves, a tie pulled loose from his neck. Baumann was a burly forty-five-year-old man with hair like a bear, a black thatch of it curling out from his neck through the shirt’s opening. He’d come to TV news after a good career in print journalism. His news judgment was considered solid; management liked and backed him at almost every turn. Lucianne liked him, too, although she wasn’t always in agreement with his judgment calls where her assignments were concerned.
She dropped her bag on the carpeted floor and pulled a director’s chair closer to the desk.
“So,” he said, “tell me about the BVI. They must be pretty good at covering up if they kept you at bay.”
“I’ll break through,” she said. “I’ve got a few sources working on it.”
Baumann looked up from something he was reading and laughed. “You have more sources, Lucianne, than Miami has Cuban restaurants.”
“Lots more.”
“How close do you get to them?”
Now, a laugh from her. “You mean do I sleep with them? A few. That they’re still my sources must mean I’m pretty good at that, too.”
Baumann dropped his reading material on his lap, leaned back in his high-backed black leather chair, and fixed her in a bemused stare.
Lucianne Huston was a star at the network. Her willingness—no, make that enthusiasm—to be where the action was, no matter what danger it posed for her, had made her compelling to millions of TV news junkies: hurricane winds threatening to blow her over, rockets whistling past her