Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [22]
“It’s real late,” she said, glancing at the lighted digital clock-radio. “After three.”
“I know,” he said. “I was working on a breaking story.” He leaned over and kissed her brow. “Go back to sleep, hon.”
“Uh-huh. Was it a good night?”
“Yeah, it was. I’ll fill you in tomorrow. Have to be in early. No need to get up with me.”
“Okay. I’m having lunch with Mimi tomorrow.”
“Today. It’s today. That’s good.”
• • •
Georgia and Mimi Morehouse, Paul’s wife, had become friends over the years, and got together a few times each month for, as Georgia termed it, “Girl-talk. Compare notes on the men in our lives.” Joe and Georgia had decided after spending a number of evenings with the Morehouses that only someone with Mimi’s glass-half-full personality and ready laugh could put up with someone like her dour, abrasive husband. When the tenor of their relationship came up one day over lunch, Mimi said to Georgia with a chuckle, “Oh, Paul’s all right. His bark is worse than his bite.” To which Georgia responded, “You take the bitter with the sweet.” And they laughed their way through the rest of lunch.
One day, the two ladies at lunch got on the subject of their husbands’ fidelity.
“I’d really be shocked if Joe had an affair,” Georgia said. “He’s—he’s just not the type, if you know what I mean.”
“What type is that?” Mimi asked.
“You know, the sort who takes off his wedding ring when he goes out of town. A flirt. I’d really be shocked.”
“I’d just as soon not know,” Mimi offered. “I take the military’s approach: Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“I’m afraid I could never be that worldly,” Georgia said.
“Worldly, hell! If I ever found out he was sleeping with some bimbo, I’d take a pair of pinking shears to his manhood.”
“Ouch,” Georgia said, making a face against that painful vision.
The subject never came up again.
• • •
Wilcox set the alarm to go off in three hours and slid into bed next to her. Lying on his back, he waited for sleep to come. But it evaded him for a half hour, during which time he thought of many things, particularly what had happened that evening to shake him out of his lethargy. He felt more alive than he had in months. A vision of a naked Edith Vargas-Swayze filled his thoughts, and he considered reaching for his wife. He fought that urge, and forced Edith from his thoughts, too. As sleep finally did arrive, he smiled at the contemplation of getting up and going to work, something he hadn’t experienced in far too long. His final waking thought, displayed in vivid Technicolor, was Roberta’s face, her beatific smile filling his screen. Then, whether he wanted it to happen or not, everything went to black.
CHAPTER SIX
No one ever accused Paul Morehouse of having an upbeat personality. But this morning his growls seemed even more frequent and pronounced.
“Good morning,” said a young reporter who popped into his office moments after he’d arrived, his takeout coffee still uncapped.
Morehouse nodded and muttered, “How are you?”
“Couldn’t be better,” she said happily.
“I doubt that,” he muttered. “What do you want?”
“I’m pissed about the edit you did on my story yesterday. I—”
“Yeah, I know, I messed with your precious prose. Talk to me later about it, after I’ve had coffee. Close the door behind you.” He watched with an admiring eye as she left, hips and buttocks moving nicely beneath the thin fabric of her skirt.
He’d spent the evening with an assortment of editors from the city’s other news outlets at a dinner hosted by D.C.’s mayor, the purpose of which still escaped him. Did the mayor really think that by serving the press small drinks and a lousy big dinner, he’d buy their good graces when it came to covering his missteps? Maybe for some of the mayor’s media lapdogs, but not for him, Paul Morehouse. Not