Edited to Death (26 page)

Inspector Moon and I had struck up something resembling a friendship. Since the Neruda
conversation, I knew he was interested in poetry, so I had invited him and his wife
to use two of
Small Town’s
comp tickets and join us for a benefit reading at San Francisco’s flossy new main
library. Mostly, I’d wanted to see if he’d come out on a social outing, assuming that
would mean Michael was really, truly in the clear.

“Don’t you pay any attention in the movies?” Michael asked me. “Cops
like
to socialize with suspects; they catch them off-guard that way.” I felt my face freeze
in dismay until Michael assured me he was joking.

When Moon was in the neighborhood, he’d drop by my office occasionally, and let me
pester him with questions about the investigation. But mostly I was too preoccupied
with the magazine to get into much mischief.

Only Calvin kept after me. I’d come back from lunch and find a message slip with a
terse, “How about the INS?” or “CIA involvement.” For Calvin it was a lark, an adventure—he
had come close to something dangerous and he couldn’t give up worrying it, like our
dog Raider with an old pot roast bone. Of course, every time I heard from him, my
own unfinished business with Quentin would pop up again. I’d conjure Michael’s voice
floating to me in the dark car after dinner with Alf and Claire, wishing Quentin out
of our lives.

At home, the household seemed to have re-settled itself around my work schedule. I
had worried that Josh would suffer the most, since any disruption in routine could
lead to upheavals in his delicate digestive system. But, aside from the usual Friday
morning pre-spelling test jitters, things actually seemed a little easier for him.
Since Michael’s office was just a few minutes from our house, he was often home before
me, and early enough to sweep the boys out for pre-dinner fun playing catch at the
park, riding bikes around Lake Merritt, or drinking hot chocolate at the ice cream
parlor. Sometimes Anya would go with them and I’d come home to a kitchen full of laughter,
all four of them with their cheeks rouged by the fall wind. I’d feel a little like
an intruder until I got caught up in the flurry of dinner, stories, bath, and bedtime.
Maybe, I groused to myself, I should take my wicked, straying self out of the picture,
and let Michael and Anya raise the children. Then I’d remember what a dreadful cook
Anya was and how much my husband valued good food. Saved by the Italian passion for
pleasures of the
cucina
, I thought.

In the back of my mind was one guilt-stricken reality: Michael had all this extra
time on his hands because his partners had asked him to step down from the management
committee of the firm.

Michael insisted he didn’t care.

“One less committee meeting,
cara
,” he said; “maybe you did me a favor.”

I felt awful, especially when we went to social outings with other people in the firm
and I could see people exchange glances when we walked in.

“Gives me big points with the secretaries,” said Michael. “They love the idea that
some stuffy tax lawyer might be capable of a crime of passion.”

Michael was so cool, so removed during these conversations that I knew he wouldn’t
talk to me about it in any serious way.

“Swell, Maggie,” I muttered to myself in the ladies’ room after one particularly self-conscious
exchange with the senior partner’s wife. “Go ahead and ruin Michael’s career along
with your marriage.” But Michael refused to discuss any of these repercussions.

In keeping with our marital malaise, the gray, discouraging November skies began leaking
rain. One gloomy morning I struggled in to the office, books and files under one arm,
juggling an umbrella and a caffe latte on the other side. Calvin was at my desk leafing
through old issues of
Small Town
and sipping out of a commuter mug. I was not charmed to see him.

I flung my coat over the coat rack and shook my umbrella over his head. A mini-shower
of rain cascaded on to him.

“Calvin. Get up this instant, I’ve got tons of stuff to do this morning and I’ve got
to get out of here by three today to see Josh’s soccer game or it’s off to the Bad
Mommy Farm for me.”

“Haven’t we become the little overachiever?” He gestured at the visitor chair. “Sit
down, Maggie. Relax. Suck up that caffeine and let’s talk.”

The day’s schedule rolled through my head, scrolling at top speed like a computer
screen out of control. I sighed. “Come on. I really don’t have time.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Things to do. People to see. Just chill one little minute. I
want to show you something.”

“Okay, five minutes. I mean it. Show me, and then you’re history ’cause I’ve got to
get to it.”

Calvin swept my desktop debris into a corner. “Wait, wait a second,” I protested.

“You know, Maggie,” he said, “it never looked like this when Quentin had this office.”

“Thanks,” I said grimly. “I’ll add tidiness to my ‘improving my character’ list.”

He grinned. “Good idea. What else have you got on that list?”

I glared at him. “Upgrading the company I keep, thank you very much. ”

Calvin ignored me. He was busy lining up past issues of
Small Town
in front of me. Each was open to a spread, and each featured a black and white pen
and ink illustration.

“Uh huh,” I said. “Orlando’s stuff. I don’t like it much, but I know Quentin and Glen
used him a lot. So?”

Calvin rearranged the spreads carefully, aligning them just so. “Take a good look.”

I was getting exasperated. “I have. I know his stuff.”

Now Calvin was getting excited. “Okay, look at these. See how they’re all different
subject matter?”

“Yes, they are. They’re all illustrations for very different stories.” As I glanced,
I could see one on a boxing program at the Y, a piece on erotic bookstores, one on
classic Viennese bakeries, a profile on a city supervisor.

Calvin leaned forward, pushing up the sleeves of his sweater impatiently.

“Now, what’s the same on every illustration?”

I looked. Hard. They were all in the same style, intricate, almost scratchboard-like,
a little William Blake-ish.

“I don’t see anything, Calvin. Unless you mean that they all have the same look—and
the same signature.”

He exploded out of his chair. “Exactly! They all have the same signature—or almost
the same. Look closely.”

I did. Each was signed with the illustrator’s last name—Orlando. And the first O was
heavily ornamented. Calvin sat back down at my desk, yanked open the center drawer,
and began pawing around.

“Calvin! Do you mind? What are you looking for?”

“Where’s your loupe? Aha! Got it.” He held up the small magnifying glass used to look
at photographic contact sheets. He came around in back of me and placed the loupe
on one of Orlando’s signatures. “Okay, take a close look.”

I bent over and put my eye right on the loupe. I could feel Calvin leaning over me,
quick intakes of breath.

“Hey,” I mumbled. “Could you back up a little? I can’t see anything with you hovering
over me.”

Under the loupe, the O’s ornaments came into focus. Ivy leaves, with what appeared
to be “2/3/345876” inside the leaves. What were they? The dates the illustration was
complete? A file number? Did the guy inventory his work? What?

I looked up at Calvin, bewildered. He gestured to the next spread. “Look at a few
more, go ahead.”

I did. I moved the loupe from drawing to drawing, Orlando to Orlando, O to O. And
in each initial O, upon close inspection, there it was—some sort of leaf-bedecked
set of numbers, 1/6/231572—none of these could be dates.

I looked up at Calvin. The morning’s work seemed like an annoyance, a mosquito buzzing
around. I slipped my shoes off, put my feet on the heat vent under the desk, and felt
the soggy nylons start to steam.

“What is this? Do you know what these numbers are?”

Calvin shook his head. “No idea. But don’t you think it’s exciting they’re there?”

I did. And I felt—no, I knew—we were about to get in over our heads. “How’d you find
them?”

“I’m a genius,” he said. “Well, maybe not. I was just looking at his stuff, I spread
it around. You know—we visual thinkers—we need to look at things.”

“Nice work,” I said. “If it means anything.” I mused, “It’s like Hirschfeld.”

“Pardon?” said Calvin.

“So, Mr. Visual Thinker, you know the illustrator who did all those sketches of theater
people? Anyway, he sometimes draws his daughter’s name right into the sketch. If you
squint at a necktie someone’s wearing in one of his illustrations, you’ll see the
lines of the design form her name.”

“How do you know all this weird, miscellaneous stuff, Maggie?”

I shrugged. “I don’t really understand the infield fly rule or the names of all the
big-time Catholic saints. Leaves plenty of room in my brain to fill up with trivia.
But here’s the thing about those Hirschfeld drawings—you wouldn’t find Nina’s name
unless you knew to look for it. Kinda like this situation.”

“Good point,” said Calvin. “Now, very quietly, very calmly, we’re going to figure
out what the options are. And then,” he gestured theatrically, “we’re going to crack
this case.”

“This case? Calvin, we don’t know that these numbers have meaning, sinister or otherwise.
And we don’t know they have anything to do with Quentin’s death. I mean, they may
just be some weird numbering system this guy has. Who knows?”

I wiggled my toes, grateful for the warmth creeping in. I retrieved my coffee cup,
pried the lid off, and took a sip. “Besides, old John’s got some ironclad alibi. He
was at the restaurant, and zillions of people saw him.” Calvin leaned against the
window sill and closed his eyes. “Are you ill?” I inquired politely. “Because I’d
just as soon you not throw up in my office. I’m only cheerful about cleaning up if
it’s one of my kids.”

“Jesus, Maggie,” he said without opening his eyes, “I thought you mother types were
supposed to be compassionate. And I’m not sick. I’m just thinking.”

He held up a finger. “Theory one, there’s some weird code in these O’s—and all those
zillions of people who saw Orlando at the restaurant are lying.”

“Trust me, Calvin,” I said. “I know group behavior. I’ve done time as chair of the
PTA World Culture Day. You can’t get more than three people to agree on a time for
a meeting, how could you get them all to agree to tell the same lie?”

I continued, “Still, I kinda like your theory. It could be a code of some kind, you
know, like ‘one if by land and two if by sea.’”

“Very patriotic, Mags,” said Calvin.

“Okay, a code for what?”

He shook his head. “Smuggling something? Industrial espionage? Maybe when they all
add up, it’s a series of addresses on the Internet. Maybe it’s insider stock trading
or something?”

We looked at each other. “Inspector Moon,” I said.

“I know. We’ve got to call him. But I just wish, I mean, there’s something there,
I know there is.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I muttered. “Something’s nagging at me.”

Calvin regarded me eagerly. “Go with the flow, babe. Let it happen.”

“Calvin, cut the New Age crap.”

“You know what I mean. If you stop struggling over something, if you just relax and
let it happen, it’s like it’s out there waiting for you.”

And the bell went
ping
! “Calvin, that’s it. This is tied to time in some way. Remember how particular Quentin
and Glen were about when these things ran?” Calvin looked puzzled.

“Of course, you don’t,” I said. “Somebody here at
Small Town
told me that, and they told me because I wanted to hold up on a drawing. They said
something about… the drawing had to be fresh.”

“That’s nuts,” said Calvin, “unless they’re political editorial cartoons, which they’re
not as far as I can tell, these things don’t have shelf lives.”

“I know, I know. Of course they don’t. But somebody told me they did, and then—who
was it? Maybe Andrea said that when they couldn’t use an illustration, it ran right
away, that same month, in the Sunday supplement. So it must have something to do with
timing!”

Gertie chose that moment to enter, with Glen hard on her heels. “Maggie—” they both
began.

Calvin leaned over my desk and in one swift move, began folding the magazines up,
stacking them neatly. Gertie looked puzzled. “What is this? A review of past glories?”

“Yes,” I said, at, of course, the same moment Calvin said, “No.”

Glen looked from one to the other of us. “Well now, and which is it? I’ve only seen
guiltier faces goin’ into the confessional.”

Instinctively, I knew I didn’t want to talk about Calvin’s discovery.

“Calvin’s going to squeeze us into his ever-so-busy schedule,” I said. “We were looking
at editorial photographs in past issues so that he could be darn sure he out-did everyone
else.”

“I see,” Glen said dryly. “That certainly explains everything.”