Page 17 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Irene winced and held the phone away from her ear. When Velma got excited she tended to talk very, very fast and she got very, very loud. She was definitely excited this morning. Gloria Maitland’s death with its connection to Nick Tremayne and a legendary hotel known to be the haunt of Hollywood royalty was the biggest storyWhispershad ever printed. Velma had just spent five minutes of long-distance phone time emphasizing that it was also the most dangerous.

Forty-something and constructed along Amazonian proportions, Velma had taken control of the sleepy little paper two years earlier when her much older husband had collapsed and died at his desk. Irene had no difficulty summoning up a mental image of her new employer. An outsized woman with a personality to match, Velma colored her hair scarletred and styled it in a short, sharply angled bob that had gone out of fashion several years earlier. She wore exotically patterned caftans, smoked cigars, and kept a bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer of her desk.

“Don’t worry,” Irene said. “I’m working on a headline for you.”

She lowered her voice because she was using the front desk phone in the lobby of the Cove Inn. Mildred Fordyce, the gray-haired proprietor, was puttering around behind the counter, doing her best to make it appear that she wasn’t paying attention, but Irene knew she was hanging on every word.

“Call me as soon as you have something I can print,” Velma rasped.

“I will but it’s not going to be easy,” Irene said. “The Burning Cove Hotel has tighter security than most banks.”

“So what? Banks get robbed all the time. Do your job.”

“Yes, Boss. But there’s another problem—”

“Now what?”

“I only planned to spend one night here in Burning Cove,” Irene said. Automatically she glanced down at the calf-length skirt and flutter-sleeved blouse she was wearing. “I just brought a single change of clothes with me. Housekeeping at the Burning Cove Hotel took the things I was wearing last night when I went into the pool. I haven’t seen them since. I’m not sure if they survived.”

“Reversing the charges for phone calls is one thing. But if you think I’m going to pay for a new wardrobe, you can think again. Go rob a bank.”

Time to play her high card, Irene decided. “This is about Peggy, Boss. Her death wasn’t an accident. We both know that.”

There was a short, taut silence on the other end of the line.

“You don’t have to remind me,” Velma said finally. She sounded gruff but worried. “Promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want to lose another reporter.Whispersis a Hollywood gossip paper. We care about which actors are sleeping with which actresses. We don’t cover murder.”

“Except when one of our own is a victim.”

Velma heaved a sigh. “Agreed.”

“We need to follow up on this story, Boss.”

Ten days ago Peggy Hackett had drowned in her own bathtub. The death was called an accident. For years she had been a Hollywood legend, the gossip columnist of one of the biggest papers in L.A.

Peggy had also been a chain-smoking, martini-swilling reporter who, in her younger days, had been known to sleep with her sources—male and female—in order to get a story. As her looks began to fail, she had not been above usingleverage, as she termed it, to convince people to talk.

In the end the drinking and hard living had exacted a toll. She was fired from the newspaper that had carried her column for so long.

Six months ago, she wound up on the doorstep ofWhispers. Velma hired her. Peggy had gained some control over the drinking, but she was no longer young enough or pretty enough to seduce her old sources. Most of the insider secrets that she had once used as leverage had become old news involving faded stars. But she had been determined to rebuild her career.

It was Peggy who had convinced Velma to hire Irene in spite of her lack of experience.Glasson’s got the grit,Peggy had argued.That’s what matters. Reminds me of myself when I was just starting out. Hell, I can teach her everything else she needs to know.

Theirs had been an odd relationship, Irene thought. Jaded and afflicted with a chronic cough, Peggy had seemed to gain a new lease on life when she undertook the task of mentoring Irene.I owe you, Glasson,she had said more than once.

I owe you, Peggy.You were a friend when I needed one.

“All right,” Velma said. “Follow the story but just be damned careful.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” Irene promised.

But she was speaking to a dead line. Velma had hung up on her.

She set the receiver back in the cradle and gave Mildred Fordyce a bright smile.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I reversed the charges.”

Mildred turned around, beaming, and studied Irene with rapt attention. “So you’re the reporter who found the body of that poor woman last night.”