If It Bleeds Read online

  If It

  Bleeds

  If It

  Bleeds

  LINDA L. RICHARDS

  Copyright © 2014 Linda L. Richards

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Richards, Linda, 1960-, author

  If It bleeds / Linda L. Richards.

  (Rapid Reads)

  Issued also in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0734-1 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0735-8 (pdf ).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0736-5 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8585.1182513 2014 C813’.54 C2014-901952-1

  C2014-901953-X

  First published in the United States, 2014

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936095

  Summary: Nicole Charles is a gossip columnist for a big city paper who gets the chance to cover a murder after she finds the body. (RL 4.0)

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Jenn Playford

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  17 16 15 14 • 4 3 2 1

  “I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.”

  —Dashiell Hammett

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ONE

  To get ahead in my line, you either get a break, make your own or happen to be in the right place at the right time. I got lucky one night with all three. Too bad that meant someone had to die. I try not to think about that.

  My being there had nothing to do with the death of Steve Marsh. He would have died even if I wasn’t there. Good thing for me, I was.

  When I arrived, I realized he wasn’t at the party. Since I hadn’t taken his picture that would cause trouble if not corrected. I’d been told.

  “But he’s not here, darling,” Erica West told me when I asked if she’d seen Marsh. As my question sunk in, she arched an eyebrow at me. The lights in the gallery made her pale hair shine. It reflected the dried-blood gloss of her nails.

  “He must have been, but I don’t see him now,” she said. She indicated a back entrance with a rapid flick of her fingers. A waiter caught the motion and rushed over with a tray of drinks. No one denies Erica West. She has a way about her. But she wasn’t after a drink. She slid one finger up and down the neck of the ice swan on the table beside her. The motion was innocent enough, yet implied a threat. And not only to the swan.

  “I trust we’ll see his smiling face in your column in the morning?” she said brightly. Too brightly. I felt a sliver of fear.

  I knew I shouldn’t reply. I didn’t have the right answer. Instead, I asked a question. “What’s he drive?”

  “Sam can tell you.” Another flick of those deadly fingers. This time at a thin man with spiky yellow hair.

  “Sam, darling,” Erica called, “what does Steve drive?”

  “Audi,” Sam shot back. “Silver SUV.” He barely missed a beat of his chat with three women dressed in black. I grabbed my purse and charged toward the back. Moving in the direction Erica had indicated, I passed through a back room and came out into an alley. It smelled of old brick and rotten garbage.

  Vancouver summer days are long. It was after nine at night, and the light was starting to fade. It was going to be a beautiful sunset. At another time, I would have paused to enjoy it. But not tonight. The thought of Erica’s perfect nails melting holes in the ice swan’s neck floated in my memory like a threat.

  The alley was a shock. Inside the gallery, everything was white and clean and the kind of empty that comes with a big price tag. White concrete benches on a polished concrete floor. Hidden lighting. Music floating on clouds.

  That gallery could have been on any corner in any good neighborhood in the city. But go out the back door and into the alley, and you remembered it wasn’t just anywhere. It was in a part of town that was changing so quickly no one had bothered to tell the whores and the night crawlers.

  Patrons of the arts enjoy these dances with the dark side. They think it’s cool to have to step over a sleeping drunk or two when they go to a gallery. That way, when they pay big bucks for the work of some artist they’ve never heard of before, they know they’re getting the real deal. It puts them in direct contact with starving for the art. Never mind that most new artists who get those prices for a painting have the support of a good gallery, an arts grant or both.

  So the alley was a shock after the clean gallery. A group of junkies saw me come through the door. They began to move my way. Slowly. I didn’t think I’d be in danger if they caught up with me. But I didn’t feel like getting hassled for spare change. Not in an alley by myself.

  I looked down the alley, thinking Steve Marsh would be long gone. Then I could head back into the gallery and nurse my regret with a drink. So I was not happy when I spotted the silver Audi. It was parked a couple of doors down. Idling. Someone in plain sight behind the wheel. I cursed myself. If only I’d tried to answer some of Erica’s questions. I’d probably still be in the gallery, and Marsh would have had the chance to drive away.

  The junkie pack was closing in on my right. I moved toward the Audi, parked with its taillights facing me. The driver’s window was up. Marsh faced away from me. I thought he was maybe talking on the phone. But I couldn’t see what he was up to and I couldn’t see his face.

  I waited, hoping he’d sense me standing next to his car. But he didn’t move. And the junkies were closing in. I couldn’t just stand there. I raised my hand and tapped on the window. Once, twice, three times. Hard. No response.

  By now the whole thing was getting to me. Sure, talk on the phone. Sketch. Whatever. But move. Marsh wasn’t doing any of that. I could see the freckles on the back of his neck under short dark-red hair. Even in the dim light, I could see the soft fine hairs on his neck. But there was no movement.

  And the junkies were getting closer.

  I tried the car door. I’d expected it to be locked, but it opened at my touch. Music slid out of the car. The smell of something dark slid out as well. And then, without the support of the door, Marsh began to slide too. I stopped him, pushing him back against the seat. And then I saw.

  A short-handled tool was sticking out of the base of his throat. There wasn’t a lot of blood. Maybe there hadn’t been a great struggle. But somehow I just knew.

  I’d never seen a dead person before, but when you see it, you know just what it is.

  TWO

  I had been covering a gallery opening. That’s what my life looks l
ike. When someone in Vancouver puts together some kind of party and they want the press there, they put my name at the top of the list.

  It might be to raise money for people left homeless by fire. Or when some politician writes a book. Or a developer has a big new project. Whatever.

  A few publicists have told me that when I turn up at one of their events, it’s a good sign. “Sure, the snacks were swell,” they might say. “And the music was great. But did Nicole Charles come?” And if I did, everyone is glad. I never get used to that.

  Every day, Bryce the mail guy delivers a thick stack of invites to my desk on the fifth floor of the Vancouver Post building. I spend an hour or so each day looking through them. Sometimes the mail includes gifts or food, which I don’t want and cannot keep.

  My email has just as many invitations, though no food or gifts. I notice when I get an email invite followed by a snail-mail invitation followed by still another email. It means they’ve got the money to be paying for more promotion. Not just the email, which everyone knows is cheap to do.

  Lots of invites means the food at the party in question will be good. If you have a big pile of invitations, why not pick the one that’s going to have the best food? Most of my fellow journalists would find a lot of things wrong with that, so I don’t tell them. I have to pick somehow, don’t I? I have to choose. That seems as good a way as any.

  There are times when I have no choice. In those cases, one of my editors or a big shot from the business end will hand me an invitation. “It would be lovely to see you and your camera there, Nicole. I know it will be a good party.” They say it like it really is an invitation. But since they’re bosses, they have power over me. I generally put the invitations they hand me near the top of the pile. Then I make sure I go to that party. I go early enough in the evening that everyone isn’t drunk. That way I can get photos of all the beautiful people while they’re still looking beautiful.

  The day of the night Steve Marsh died, Erica West, sales manager, stopped by my desk. She said she was on her way home. Since her office is on the seventh floor and mine is on the fifth, I found it odd.

  “Darling Nicole,” she said brightly as she popped her head into my cubicle. “You look dashing today. Can a woman be dashing? If she can, then you are.”

  Dashing. I looked down at myself. Tried to think what I was doing to have earned it. But nothing about my black pants, black blouse or even the black leather jacket slung over the back of my chair seemed dashing to me.

  “Uh…thanks, Erica. You look…kinda dashing yourself.”

  And she did. At five foot five, my height is average. I have brown hair and brown eyes. Fairly average as well.

  Erica is not average. She’s tall. Close to six feet in the heels she always wears. And she looks even taller when she piles her hair on top of her head, as she had today. She was engaged to the publisher. Not just my boss, but the boss of my whole world. Like a god on his throne up there on the seventh floor in a corner office with a view of the North Shore.

  “Darling,” the drama queen said. I’ve never known anyone who can pull off the whole “darling” thing quite like Erica. I thought of her standing in front of a mirror while she practiced saying it. You’d have to, really, to make it come out that smooth.

  Erica came closer to my desk. I thought I saw her swallow distaste while she avoided looking at my tiny work space too closely.

  She handed me a gold-and-black invitation. It looked expensive. That meant there’d be excellent snacks for sure.

  “You’ve met Steve Marsh,” she said.

  “No,” I said. Erica scares me. She always has. And she’s scary, so I’ve probably got the right idea.

  She raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything for a moment. “Hmmmm,” she said finally. And then again. “Hmmmm.”

  “What?” I said, trying to be brave. “I haven’t met him. So?”

  “His uncle is a friend of mine,” she said. “I promised we’d cover his opening.”

  I stopped myself from asking her what she’d been thinking. After all, she’s not my boss. In the newspaper business, the sales department is equal to editorial, not above it. She really had no business even talking to me. She wouldn’t, that is, if I was a real reporter, I reminded myself. I’d discovered that the society beat fit somewhere else. I wasn’t sure exactly where. But it was clearly below both regular beat reporter and the sales department.

  I didn’t fool myself. When it came to being a reporter, I was as low as anyone could go and still carry a press pass. I was twenty-seven, not that many years out of journalism school. I had a union job. A lot of my friends were still covering school-board meetings and minor hockey for small papers in small towns. That was when they’d been able to find a job.

  Even when the news industry is at its best, it’s tough to find a job. This wasn’t one of those times. I’d been at the right place at the right time and had ended up with my own beat on the largest metro daily west of Toronto. The fact that my beat was easy enough that Bryce the mail guy could have done it was something I tried not to think about. But it was the truth.

  There’s a rhythm to my job. When someone plans a public event for some company or organization, they hope the news agencies will send a reporter. If they hope it’s someone from the Vancouver Post, I get sent. I arrive in party clothes with a high-end digital camera so small it fits in my purse.

  When the publicist sees me, she puts a drink in my hand. Then she spends way too much energy trying to make sure I have a good time. But I’m not there for a good time, even if I’m partly there for the snacks. These are not my friends and coworkers. I’m doing my job.

  Every event, I try to make sure I get at least one good boob shot. This was not my idea. My predecessor was an old guy. Like a lot of people at our newspaper, he was carried out of the building in a box. Union newspaper jobs are hard to find. No one leaves unless they have to.

  It’s not like the States, where the next metro daily is just across the street. In Canada, you can count the big papers on both hands. Maybe add in the toes on one foot if you’re not too picky.

  So the old guy before me blazed the trail. He let the publishing team know that breasts sell newspapers. My column always has to have breasts. Since I tend to cover evening events, they are usually in good supply. Plus, the society women have worked out the whole boobie angle and wave them in my face as soon as I walk in the door. Sometimes it makes me wish I was a guy or a lesbian. All those barely covered boobs are wasted on me. But I know the people reading the paper want to see them, so I get them into as many photos as I can.

  It’s not just boobs that make my column. I always get at least one handsome-couple shot. He’ll have a strong jaw. She’ll have a heart-shaped face. Both of them will have teeth whiter than the paper the picture gets printed on. Of course, any famous people who are there make the cut. People like to see the celebs as much as they apparently need to see boobs.

  Some nights, I only have one event to attend. Most of the time, I’m running around town getting to all the events on my list. After my stops have been made and the photos taken, I go home or back to the office and choose which photos will run. Then I write all my clever captions and, if there’s room, a witty couple of column inches on each event.

  The stars were out tonight! Theater under the stars, that is. Or, at least, anyone who’s anyone who works with them. Martinis flowed while maidens delivered angels on horseback. This reporter thought that was an entirely appropriate touch, considering that the first production of the season will be a musical version of Equus. Elsa Bergermeister glowed in a gown by Vancouver’s own Catherine Bert while her daughters, Sara-belle and Jenna-belle, wore Stella McCartney designs selected from the current collection.

  And other stuff like that. None of it high art. None of it what I trained for. None of it doing anything beyond scratching the well-dressed surface.

  But then, who trains for this? Does anyone go to journalism school and say, “When I
graduate, I want to be the chick who goes to parties and writes about everyone”? Everyone wants to report crime or war, which, these days, is almost the same. When you study journalism, you want to tame the mean streets. You want to solve the city’s problems. To be like a cop with a keyboard and smartphone instead of a gun.

  Then life happens. I was lucky. I wanted a byline in the first section. Sure I did. But not enough to kill for it.

  Then a dead guy almost fell into my lap. And everything changed.

  THREE

  I stood there for half a minute, looking at the corpse in Steve Marsh’s Audi. Looking at the person that had been Steve Marsh until not so long before.

  I stood there while I thought about what to do. And then I knew.

  I pulled out my phone and looked at the crack zombies still shuffling my way. “Dead guy here,” I said in a loud, clear voice. “The cops are on their way.”

  My words had the desired garlic-like effect, the way the mention of police always does with street people. They scattered. It would have been funny had I not been so scared. And I was scared. As much as I’d ever been.

  I could have run into the gallery and gotten help. I wanted to. But part of me recognized that bad as this was, it might also be a chance. I dialed Mike Webb, the city editor. I hoped he’d know who I was.

  “Mike, this is Nicole Charles. You might not know me, but we met at the Christmas party last year and…”

  “Christ, Nic. Sure I know you. Everyone in the city knows you.”

  I’d forgotten that my picture ran with my column every day. Plus sometimes I ended up in the photos I was supposed to be taking. The third wheel in the handsome-couple shot, for instance. Or standing next to a celebrity at some fundraiser. A local quasi celebrity, a face and name familiar to everyone who read the paper, even if they were never quite sure why my mug was known.

  “I’ve got a…I’ve got a situation here, Mike.”

  “Where’s here?”