82 Desire

make money, you don’t get respect, nobody likes you, and you have bags under your eyes.”
    Jane felt her eyes moisten.
    “Oh, honey, don’t get mad. I didn’t mean nobody likes you—I mean, it’s an adversarial job. Nobody you call likes you; nobody you write about likes you.”
    “Some of them do,” she said sulkily.
    “And you never meet any decent men.”
    “Amen to that.”
    She wanted to blame the whole debacle on David Bacardi, but she simply couldn’t shake the notion that she didn’t have to do it—that she should have refused even if it cost her her job; that at the very least she could have taken her byline off the story.
    The byline trick theoretically wouldn’t have cost her a thing; but she hadn’t wanted to antagonize David. She could kill herself for ever having gotten involved with him, either professionally or personally.
    Jeffrey said, “You miss Walter, don’t you?”
    And the waiting tears finally spilled.
    Jeffrey was cool, though. “Hey, hey, hey! Don’t get mad, get even.”
    She smiled through her tears and said, “Yeah!” or something fake like that, and let him first buy her another drink, then skillfully turn the teary mood around with stories about his neighbor, Sharleen, the queen-sized drag queen. (“She’s too fat!” Jane insisted. “It’s ridiculous.” “Oh, honey,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve seen her without her makeup. Trust me, this way is best for everybody.”)
    She floated home on a cloud of tequila, but she awoke in the night, sweaty and panting from nightmares. What was chasing her she couldn’t quite remember, but for some reason, Jeffrey’s words echoed in her head like the tell-tale heart: Get even.
    She woke up mad, which made her oddly energetic for a woman with a hangover. The first thing she did was call in sick. The second was make strong coffee, and the third was use the high from that to get to the Camellia Grill, where she ordered a hamburger. Jane believed devoutly that hamburgers could cure hangovers.
    If it didn’t work, at least it made a dent.
    She couldn’t do a damn thing about David Bacardi being her boss, or her ex-lover, or a perfect prick, but he wasn’t the only one she was pissed at. In her shame at what she’d done, she’d almost lost sight of the fact that she’d been a prize marionette for too long.
    The time had definitely come to turn the tables on the tipster.
    I’m an investigative reporter, she thought. Why not put my skills to good use for a change?
    Find the tipster or bust .
    She went home and drank three more cups of coffee, turning the whole thing over in her mind and making lists. She approached it like a crime, which didn’t seem to her a bad way to think about it.
    First, she listed the tips themselves:
    1. Russell Fortier’s disappearance
    2. Fortier and Cindy Lou Wootten an item
    3. Gene Allred’s murder
    4. Baroness’s reading
    5. Bebe and LaBarre
    Okay, good. Obviously 1, 2, and 5 were connected—the players were the same. All five must be part of a whole, but how?
    Gene Allred was a private eye, so he must have been working either for the Fortier family or investigating them. (So far, Bebe had claimed to know nothing.)
    The Baroness was a tougher row to hoe. The fact that the tipster had invited Langdon to the reading bolstered the idea of a connection. Jane sat and chewed her pencil. She was guessing Langdon knew what it was. Also, for that matter, that she knew what Allred’s was—but she hadn’t solved the case, so she sure didn’t know everything,
    Her second list was entitled “Things I Need to Know.” It had seven entries:
    1. Russell’s whereabouts
    2. Tipster’s identity
    3. What this is all about
    4. Tipster’s motive
    5. Baroness’s connection
    6. Allred’s connection
    7. Identity of Allred’s murderer
    The last she underlined three times. She had almost forgotten Langdon’s warning to be careful. It was very possible the tipster was the murderer, but why was Allred murdered? She added to her list:
    8. Murder motive
    Well, hell, for that matter:
    9. Reason for Fortier’s disappearance
    It was a little on the overwhelming side, especially since none of the entries were simple little things like addresses or dates, arrest records … wait a minute, arrest records were a possibility. She made a third list, “Sheets On:”
    1. Sandra Wallis
    2. Russell Fortier
    3. Eugene Allred
    Because it was easy, she made that the first chore. She knew a friendly cop (not Langdon)