Nice Girls Finish Last by Sparkle Hayter Read Free Book Online Page B

neighbors. “A sweet, submissive, and devoted wife.”
    Sweet, submissive, and devoted—until one night after an argument, when Cecile Le Doc beat her husband to death with their eighteen-pound turtle, Henri.
    Poor husband.
    Poor turtle.
    I couldn’t resist putting this one aside for the murder scrapbook I entitled “Unusual Weapons.”
    Just as I was about to leave for the day, Kanengiser’s night nurse-slash-receptionist, Vicki Burchill, returned my call.
    The night Kanengiser was killed, she said, a strange man had called, saying that her apartment was on fire. Only there was no fire. Someone had wanted Vicki out of the office. No doubt the same someone who had called the ANN office and left a message with Tamayo to cancel my appointment.
    â€œWere any files missing?” I asked. In that case, it might not be S&M at all, it might be blackmail. Secretly, I hoped it was. Don’t get me wrong. Blackmail isn’t pretty and because Kanengiser was in the JBS building it could hit pretty close to home. But there was a bright side to it, since blackmail is a touchy subject for any public personality, but more so at ANN, as we’d been stung in the past. That angle alone could be enough to kill this story and get me back onto some good news.
    But Ms. Burchill dashed these hopes when she said, “No. We did a complete inventory. Just finished it about an hour ago. So far, nothing’s missing.”
    That ruled out blackmail. A blackmailer might photocopy things, but for credibility he, or she, needed the original. Damn.
    Beyond that, Vicki Burchill had little to offer. She hadn’t worked for him long, had no idea if Kanengiser was into S&M, and couldn’t for the life of her imagine who would kill him.
    â€œBut the person who called you on the false fire story was a man,” I said.
    â€œIt sounded like a man,” she said. “But the police detective says there are gadgets people can use to disguise their voices on the phone, so I can’t even tell the gender of the caller with confidence.”
    Or it could be the killer just paid some bum to make the call.
    It was a dead end.
    All I’d found were dead ends. After a day of dead ends, it’s Miller Time. I put the tape log on Jerry’s desk, and went to meet McGravy.

5
    â€œI t’s good to see you, Robin,” Bob McGravy said.
    â€œIt’s good to see you too, Bob.” I ordered a light beer and slid onto a barstool next to him.
    Bob is the vice president in charge of editorial content at the network, a man with sterling journalistic credentials. He worked for Edward R. Murrow and CBS during their golden era. He’s also the guy who hired me and, with legendary assignment editor Lanny Cane, taught me television news, or at least tried.
    More importantly, McGravy had been largely responsible for building ANN’s reputation from laughingstock to network of record. But ratings were replacing reputation on a number of fronts, and McGravy had declining influence over the network at large. Nowadays, they used him mainly as a fireman, flying him from bureau to bureau to solve one problem or another.
    â€œI don’t see enough of you these days. I’m so busy. Been too long.”
    â€œEven longer since we came to Buddy’s,” I said.
    This place took me back. Great place, Buddy’s, an authentic, unpretentious New York bar Bob had introduced me to years before, back when he still drank and I was a young, promising reporterling who figured she’d be the Moscow correspondent by the time she was thirty-seven. Here, McGravy and his old newshound friends had turned me on to vodka stingers and whetted my appetite for the roguish nature of the business with their bawdy newsroom stories.
    Buddy’s has been around since World War II and, judging by the photos of the original establishment, the decor hasn’t changed much since 1944. The hardwood floors are worn down and the