from the press flacks at the cop shop. There’s a press conference at five. I’ve got two tickets.”
“I’m on my way into town.” She spoke loudly to be heard above her scanner, which crackled in the dashboard holder. “Any idea what it’s about?”
“No one’s talking. Maybe they’ve arrested someone. Maybe they’ve got the autopsy results and he died of a heart attack.”
She could hear his engine racing in the background.
“Where are you now?” she asked.
“Been shooting a wedding in the suburbs,” he said. “Stuffed myself on canapés. I’m on my way back in.”
Miles worked freelance. Weddings were a lucrative sideline.
“I hope you saved me a crab puff.” Harper stopped at a red light, studying the traffic behind her. A dark BMW had been back there for a while. She was keeping an eye on it. Maybe things were heating up with the Xavier Rayne case, but she couldn’t lose sight of Martin Dowell. Somehow she had to juggle both cases. “Look, I’m going to stop by the paper first. See you at the police station?”
“I’ll be the one with bells on,” he said.
The newsroom was Saturday quiet when she walked in. The lifestyle-section writers had already finished and gone. She could hear the sports guys down the hall yelling at some basketball game. No other reporters would be expected in. The Sunday paper was mostly written on Friday, except for crime.
Baxter was sitting at her old desk underneath the three wall-mounted televisions. All the screens were blank, and she was staring at her computer, a silver pen held absently in one hand.
“Did Miles call you?” she asked.
“Press conference at five.” Harper perched on top of a nearby desk, feet dangling. Baxter looked up inquiringly.
“I talked to the next-door neighbor,” Harper said. “She told me Xavier and Cara ‘fought like cats.’ And that’s a quote.”
Baxter’s nose wrinkled. “If we use that I’ll have the chief of police on my doorstep on Sunday morning screaming at me.”
“Yeah, but then I talked to Hunter and Cara.” Harper prepared to drop the bombshell. “They verified that Xavier and Cara broke up the night he died. Cara said she broke up with him because he cheated on her. She was going to fly back to LA in the morning and never come back to Savannah again. Except someone murdered him before she got that chance.”
Baxter looked astounded. “They told you this on the record?”
“Oh yes.”
“My God. Haven’t they got any sense at all?” The editor threw the pen down. “You need to talk to your detectives. Tell them what the girlfriend told you. Get a comment. Then we can go with, ‘Police are looking into reports of a domestic disturbance at Rayne’s house the night he was killed.’”
“You got it,” Harper said. “I’ll grab someone after the press conference.”
The phone in her pocket began to ring. She answered it without getting off the desk.
“McClain.”
“Ah, Harper,” a male voice drawled. “I’ve missed the dulcet tone of your gracious hellos.”
She knew that sardonic, amused tone, but for a second she couldn’t place it.
“That’s sweet but I’m busy,” she said. “Get to the point.”
He chuckled. “There was a time, Harper, when you were more deferential to me.”
The second he laughed she knew who she was talking to. “Hang on,” she said into the phone. Jumping down, she hurried down the hallway, beyond the break room with its smell of scorched coffee, and out onto the back staircase. Only when the door closed behind her did she speak again.
“Dells?” Her voice echoed off the scuffed white walls. “Is that you?”
“The very same. I’ve got to say it’s nice to hear your voice again, even when you’re snarling at me.”
Paul Dells had been managing editor until six months ago, when he was fired for refusing to lay off staff. Rumor had it he’d left town—gone up to Charlotte to run a business magazine. Harper had assumed he was out of her life forever.
“Yours too.” She found herself smiling. “Are you in town?”
“I am—that’s why I’m calling. I have something I’d like to talk with you about. But not on the phone. I have a … proposition to make.”
His choice of words sent heat to Harper’s face. On the night Dells was fired, after a long drinking session, they’d kissed. It hadn’t gone any further but that was bad enough.
It was the last time she ever saw him.
“How about we meet for lunch on Monday?” he suggested, before she could think of anything to say. “Do you know The Public?”