Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [46]
Maggie, a Maine coon cat that LaRue had adopted from the local SPCA shortly after moving in, greeted him the moment he stepped through the door. Michael LaRue liked dogs and cats, and might have opted for a dog, were he not away from the apartment so often, working double shifts at the office supply company for the overtime. He’d changed out of his deliveryman’s uniform before leaving work, placing it in his employee locker, and put on a tight black T-shirt that followed the contours of his sculpted torso, and jeans that enhanced his lower half. After checking the cat’s food and litter, he went to the bedroom where he stripped off his clothing, slipped into a pair of gym shorts, and inserted a workout video into the VCR. At the end of the half-hour video, he showered away the sweat, changed back into what he’d worn home, and stood before the bulletin board that was covered with articles carefully clipped from The Washington Tribune. They all carried Joe Wilcox’s byline.
He sat at the desk, turned on the lamp, and withdrew a thick folder from one of the file cabinet drawers. Although he’d already read everything in the folder dozens of times, he began reading each piece of paper as though never having seen it before. There were photographs, too, many of them old and faded, others much newer. Some were shots he’d taken recently with a small, inexpensive digital camera; others had been snipped from local newspapers and magazines.
He dwelled on what was in the file folder and on the bulletin board, his mood vacillating from pleasurable memories to profound sadness, and anger, too. Maggie had climbed up on to the back of his chair and draped herself over his shoulders and around his neck, which the cat often did, much to Michael’s satisfaction. He had no concept of the passage of time until the cat suddenly leapt to the floor, her front claws digging into his neck. He touched the skin and examined his fingertips to see whether she’d drawn blood. She hadn’t. “You devil,” he said playfully, shaking his finger at her.
He looked at his watch. It was time to do what he’d decided he would do that night. He picked up the phone and dialed Joe Wilcox’s direct line at The Washington Tribune.
• • •
He sat in silence after the call to his brother. Hearing Joe’s voice seemed surreal, and he tried to hear it again in his mind. He’d been planning that phone call for months, always putting it off for one reason or another, finding excuses to delay another day, trying to script what he would say, and how he would respond to what Joe might say. Hearing Joe answer the phone provided a momentary shock. He’d deliberately called his work number at night, hoping to be connected to voice mail. The conversation had gone by so fast that he wondered whether it had ever taken place. But he knew it had, and he was glad.
He picked up the phone again and dialed another number. A woman answered.
“Carla, it’s Michael.”
“Hello there,” she said. “What are you up to?”
“Thought I’d go over to Kramerbooks for some coffee and conversation. Join me?”
“I don’t know, I—”
“Oh, come on, Carla. The night is young. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about a concept I have for a novel based on Homer’s Elysian Fields. I’ve been reading the Odyssey again and want to discuss my idea with you.”
• • •
Carla, whom LaRue had met at Washington’s venerable Kramerbooks and Afterwords Café, in Dupont Circle, agreed. She was an editor at a small publisher of regional guides, and they’d hit it off almost immediately, their love of literature, and an even greater fondness for discussing it, cementing the friendship. She was a good-looking woman in her mid-thirties, a few pounds away from being overweight and always assiduously working to avoid that happening. Her glasses were extremely large and round, with black frames and thick lenses. Her hair was dark, touched with premature gray, and she wore it loose so that it reached halfway