Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [120]
“I really don’t think that’s any of your—”
“That depends,” the detective said. “Look, Roberta, you have your job and I have mine. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Helping us solve a couple of murders would give you a juicy inside scoop. So if there’s anything you want to share with me, do it now. Once I hang up, all bets are off. We can be collaborators—or, we can butt heads. Your choice.”
She could almost hear Roberta’s mind working.
“I have to go, Roberta,” Vargas-Swayze said.
“What?” she heard Roberta say to someone.
“Edith? I have to go, too. Can I get back to you?”
“Sure. But don’t let much time pass, Roberta.”
Vargas-Swayze recited her cell number and hung up.
• • •
Joe Wilcox didn’t go directly home. He drove deliberately slowly, taking a long, meandering route, his mind racing, hurtling past major thoughts so fast that he couldn’t linger long enough to process them. He pulled into a small parking area in Rock Creek Park and held his head in his hands, massaging his temples as though to knead clarity.
The conversation with Edith was a blur. It had happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that he’d been unable to formulate rational responses to her accusations. He’d acquiesced almost immediately, had admitted he’d written the letters without putting up a defense. He could have denied it, of course. He could have held firm and dismissed her charge, hung tough, challenged her to prove it, told her to put up or shut up. Bring it on!
But he hadn’t. Her knowing about Michael had shocked him into inaction. She was right about the letters, although her assumption that he’d written them at Michael’s apartment was nothing more than speculation. But what did it matter where he’d written them? His fingerprint was beneath the typed words, she’d said. Was that true, or was she lying? Cops lie all the time to get people to confess to something. He rubbed his temples harder. Think, damn it! It had to have been the fingerprint. Why else would she even imagine that he’d written the letters to himself? A stakeout at the house? Who was to say that the cops assigned to it hadn’t fallen asleep, hadn’t been distracted enough to miss someone other than the mailman and him going to the mailbox?
He’d reacted the way Michael had the morning Marjorie Jones was found dead in the berry patch. His brother hadn’t denied what he’d done, aside from hiding in the closet and yelling, “I didn’t do nothing!” But by the time he’d been dragged from the house, he was blubbering and saying he didn’t mean to kill her and that it was a mistake and that he was very sorry and—
He envisioned facing Paul Morehouse, dreading that more than facing his wife. Georgia would be stunned by what he’d done but would stand by him, get over her shock and comfort him as she always had when things went poorly, when he was despondent and low. Morehouse wouldn’t. Oh, he might feign concern and portray himself as a friend. But there would be no real comforting from his editor and boss. The growling would get louder: “I don’t have any choice but to take it upstairs, Joe,” he would say, and he would—take it upstairs—where he, Joseph Carlton Wilcox, would join the ranks of other wayward journalists who’d created stories out of whole cloth, been disgraced, cited in J-schools across the country as a miscreant.
His thoughts went to the Press Club and his colleagues, whose friendship he treasured. They’d be nice to him initially, would slap him on the back, make a few jokes out of it, and then gradually and subtly avoid him as if his disgraced side might rub off on them. It didn’t really matter, he knew, because he wouldn’t step foot in the club again once word got out that he was a fraud, a media whore who’d sold out for self-gratification and fame—and yes, ultimately money. Maybe the esteemed club’s by-laws would call for his expulsion despite being a member of long-standing. The shame…
Roberta!
What would he tell her? How would he tell her?
From the day she decided to pursue a career in journalism, he’d preached fidelity to the profession, citing examples