Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [40]
Wilcox stood abruptly and walked to the bar. He ordered a Scotch, neat, signaled for the waiter to bring him the check there, and watched Hawthorne strut from the room.
“Damn!” he muttered to himself as the drink was placed in front of him, dismayed at how he’d handled the encounter. He’d intended to calmly put this annoying bugbear in his place, to show him up not by confrontation, but by encouraging him to self-destruct. It hadn’t happened. He’d allowed his emotional dislike to trump his intellect, even to the extent that he’d invited Hawthorne’s mocking claim of having slept with Jean Kaporis.
“Everything okay, Mr. Wilcox?” the barman asked.
“What? Yeah, everything’s okay.”
“Fill ’er up again?”
“No, no, thank you. I have to get back to work.”
The bartender must have noticed that he’d become unraveled. Embarrassed, Wilcox signed the checks, returned greetings from others at the bar, and left the club, intending to go back to the office to further prepare for his four o’clock interview with Colleen McNamara’s mother and sister. Instead, he walked without purpose, stopping in at a bookstore. Maybe I should retire and write a book, he thought, but realized that he had nothing to write about. He sat at an outdoor table in front of a luncheonette and sipped a coffee and watched the world pass by. There was a moment when he considered skipping the interview with the McNamaras, going home and going to bed. What had the TV talk show star Jack Paar once said? “They can’t hurt you under the covers.”
But that spasm of defeatism passed. He decided to not bother getting his car. Instead he took a taxi to the apartment shared by Colleen McNamara and her fiancé, Philip Connor. By the time he arrived, his depression had lifted, replaced by a renewed burst of enthusiasm. You’re damn good, he told himself. Get in there and prove it!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
While Joe Wilcox suffered the aftermath of an acidic lunch with young master Hawthorne, detectives Vargas-Swayze and Dungey stood on the loading dock of an office supply company warehouse in an industrial area of Southwest. With them was Michael LaRue, one of the company’s many deliverymen. He was a tall, trim man with a coppery tan, and black hair pulled into a small ponytail.
“And you delivered the supplies that night and left the building?” Vargas-Swayze said.
“That’s right,” LaRue said through an engaging smile. “The Tribune is part of my regular route. I’ve been there often since I came to work here.” His voice was deep and well modulated; Dungey quietly observed that LaRue spoke well, like a teacher or some other educated person. Detective Dungey also decided that he dyed his hair.
“And you took the supplies up to the newsroom? Why didn’t you leave them downstairs in the receiving area?”
His laugh was meant to reassure. “When I have a large delivery to make, that’s where I take it, to receiving. But that night, as I remember, we’d gotten an emergency call for some supply or other—I don’t know what it was exactly—and I was dispatched to run it over there. You can check inside. They’ll have a record of what I delivered.”
“But why were you allowed by the security guards to bring it upstairs?” Dungey asked.
“You’ll have to ask them,” LaRue replied, meaning the Trib’s private security force. “It’s not the first time they’ve waved me through. I think the people up in the newsroom leave word with the guards when they know that something they really need is on its way. I don’t know that for a fact, but I believe that’s the way it works.”
Dungey pulled out a photograph of Jean Kaporis and showed it to LaRue.
“That’s the same photo you showed me the last time,” LaRue said. “What a tragedy. She looks like such a lovely young woman.”
“Do you remember seeing her when you made your delivery that night?”
Another cheery, gentle laugh. “I’m sure I didn’t, Detective. I think I would have remembered such a beautiful woman. No, I didn