From the Heart

It wasn’t accurate to call him flashy. Thorpe dressed down on the job, wearing nothing to distract the viewer’s attention from his reporting. His style was straightforward. His reports had depth and bite, while he remained objective. There was no fault to find in the way he worked. All Liv could criticize him for was arrogance.
    She watched him now as he stood with the White House lit in the background. He was recapping the Larkin story. It was obvious he had spoken to Larkin personally, something she had been unable to do though she had pulled all the strings available to her. That alone grated. Thorpe, too, listed prospective candidates for the position. He named Dell first.
    Carl nodded behind her back as Liv scowled at the screen. He felt it put a bit more power into her hunch.
    “This is T.C. Thorpe, at the White House.”
    “Tell the desk you have an assignment,” Carl announced, and drew hard on the butt of his cigarette. Liv turned to him, but his eyes were still on the screen. “Take crew two.”
    “Fine.” She swallowed the annoyance that it was Thorpe’s influence more than her own that had gained her what she wanted. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
    “Bring me something for the noon news,” he called after her, and squinted to focus on the next segment.
    Liv looked over her shoulder as she opened the door. “You’ll have it.”
     
    It was eight A . M . and freezing when Liv and her two-man crew arrived at the iron gates of Beaumont Dell’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. Liv had been up since five, preparing her questions. After half a dozen phone calls the evening before, she had elicited a promise from one of Dell’s aides that she would be granted a ten-minute interview that morning. A good reporter could learn quite a bit in ten minutes. Sliding out of the crew van, Liv approached the guard at the gate.
    “Olivia Carmichael with WWBW.” She flashed her press pass. “Mr. Dell is expecting me.”
    The guard examined Liv’s credentials, then his clip board, before nodding. Without a word, he pressed the button to open the gates.
    Friendly sort, she decided as she climbed back into the van. “Okay, be ready to set up fast; we’re not going to have much time.” She was reaching in her purse to take out her notes for a final check as the van wound up the drive. “Bob, I’d like a pan of the house, and one of the gates when we leave.”
    “Already got one of the gates.” He gave her a grin as shesmiled back at him. “And of your legs. You’ve got some great legs, Liv.”
    “Think so?” She crossed them and gave them a critical stare. “You’re probably right.”
    She enjoyed his good-natured flirting. Bob was harmless, happily married with two growing children. A serious flirtation would have frozen her. She separated men into two categories: safe and dangerous. Bob was safe. She could relax with him.
    “All right,” she said as the van stopped in front of the three-story brick house. “Try to look like respectable members of the working press.”
    Grinning, Bob muttered a short expletive and climbed out of the back of the van.
    At the front door, Liv was once again the cool, aloof newswoman; no one would dare to comment on her legs. Not out loud. She knocked briskly, leaving the crew to follow with their equipment.
    “Olivia Carmichael,” she announced to the maid who opened the door. “To see Mr. Dell.”
    “Yes.” The maid glanced past her with the slightest moue of disapproval at the blue-jeaned crew hauling equipment up the front steps. “This way, Ms. Carmichael. Mr. Dell will be right with you.”
    Liv recognized the maid’s disapproval. She thought little of it. Her own family and many of her childhood friends felt the same way about her profession.
    The hall was an elegant, refined entrance to a wealthy home. Liv had seen the same hall in a dozen homes in a dozen styles when she was growing up. There had been hundreds of teas, stiff little parties and carefully organized outings, all of which had bored her to distraction. She never cast a glance at the Matisse on the wall on her left. She heard Bob’s low whistle as he entered behind her.
    “Some place,” he commented as his sneakers moved soundlessly over the parquet floor.
    Liv made a distracted sound of agreement as she went back over her strategy. She had grown up in a home not so very much different from this one. Her mother had preferredChippendale to Louis XIV, but it was all the same. Even