Read Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons for Free Online Page B

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 what?”
    But he’d already given us the punchline. I said, “It was the same as McKendrick’s.”
    He nodded.
    “Okay, let’s catch her tonight. What about right after work?”
    He nodded again, looking so satisfied I don’t think the word “smug” would be amiss.

Chapter Four
    There was nothing to do at that point but face Curry and Martinez. I phoned first and discovered that by that time there was only Curry, which sounded like a good sign and was. Rosalie had refused to give him the names of the three other Raiders without Chris’s permission, and so Curry was there to get it— not to read Chris her rights. I could have supplied the names, but did I? Ha. I made a big show of phoning Rosalie and telling her it was fine with us to give the nice police inspector their names and addresses— in fact, I said, we encouraged it. Fortunately, since she had the grace not to answer the phone, I delivered the information by mechanical means and could only hope