Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

it?”
    “Look, he was a critic, right? It was probably somebody whose career he ruined— somebody who didn’t even know him.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because what have you and McKendrick got in common? You also get your name in the paper occasionally and also have a job that could be perceived as giving you the power to destroy people. Maybe it was someone you went up against in court who wasn’t all that stable. So he decided to kill McKendrick and frame you for it.”
    Both Chris and Rob looked excited.
    “The down side is, it means you have to look at everything McKendrick ever wrote and see if you recognize any names.”
    “It beats being a convicted psychic.” She glanced at Rob uneasily, but he didn’t seem to be listening; he had other things on his mind.
    “So what do you think?” he said. “About working with me. Think of the money you’ll save.”
    “How’s that?”
    “You won’t have to hire an investigator.”
    I said: “Your call, Chris.”
    “He’s got conflicts right and left.”
    I assumed the lawyer role: “What about it, Rob?”
    He spread his hands, all innocence. “Well, technically I do, but who cares about technically? What I want is a story, and you two look like the quickest way to it. There’s no conflict there.”
    I knew Rob as well as I knew Chris, and six words he had just spoken summed up his whole personality, indeed his raison d’etre (and incidentally, the main reason we were no longer together): “What I want is a story.”
    Nothing could be truer. But would he sell us out to get it?
    I said: “You have to promise you won’t withhold stuff.”
    “Done.”
    “I mean really, really promise, Rob. This is Chris’s life we’re talking about. You have to give us any information relating to the case exactly as if we were paying you.”
    “No problem. I swear to God, no problem. As long as you promise not to pass it to the Ex. ” The Examiner .
    Chris nodded, looking pleased. “I think we’ve got a deal.”
    I’d loved Rob for a long time, and in some ways I was sure I’d love him the rest of my life. And I trusted him, sometimes. But I knew him too well to be completely happy. We needed the Rolodex, and certain other inside info I’d been planning to hit him for anyway— but now I couldn’t unless we made the deal. I wanted it, too— with one little refinement. “There’s just one thing. Whenever possible, we
really
work together— I go with you on interviews, all that sort of thing.”
    To my amazement, a look of pure delight started at his mouth and, as the notion sunk in, spread out over his features. “Sure,” he said. And for the first time I caught on that he might be motivated by something more than journalistic aggression.
    But on the surface, he was all business. “Chris, I’d like to take you to the Chron right away to look at clips. And I need to fill you both in on some things I know from the office.
    “First of all, McKendrick was a serious ladies’ man— by which I don’t mean a philanderer, though he may have been that too. What I mean is someone who spent a lot of time dating. Think about it— he had to go out nearly every night to review something, he always had free tickets, and he was kind of a famous guy, a man about town. It was a great way to get dates and he had plenty of them. Always with good-looking, sophisticated ladies.”
    “So maybe we should go and see some of them?”
    “Eventually, maybe. But first things first.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The woman he lived with. And thereby hangs a tale.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Couldn’t miss.”
    “His assistant is a young woman named Adrienne. Real young— twenty-two or -three, maybe. McKendrick was in his late thirties and pretty much dated women that age or older. Sophisticated women, as I said. Very slick articles. Adrienne is a punk in more than one way. Big on attitude. Stupid-looking hairdo, black clothes and eye makeup. Cute in a junior highish kind of way. But definitely not McKendrick’s type— in fact, it’s kind of weird he even hired her as his assistant. But that I can kind of see if I really stretch things— she gives the impression of hipness, which didn’t hurt his image any, and she’s got a mouth on her that had to be useful for getting rid of supplicants. Of whom there were hundreds, as you can imagine. Anyway, I thought I’d go talk to her outside the office, so I got her address from the payroll files, and guess