Thirty-two
Nadine deliberately and immaturely planned her arrival at the Herald for when Lisanne had a standing meeting with Hetty. There were a few texts on her phone that she couldn’t bring herself to answer. She was still upset after their last exchange about Nadine’s byline but also not willing to address it like an adult, making evasion her current MO. She went straight to the Crypt, hoping to find her quarry alone.
She did.
“What do you want?” Irina asked, looking over the rims of her glasses.
“Monica Olway,” said Nadine, getting right to it. She put the clipping of the Herald story denouncing Monica on the table.
“I don’t know her.” Irina kept typing.
“I think you do,” said Nadine. “I spoke to her yesterday, and she told me about your conversation and that although you weren’t able to run her story, this one by a staff writer was published soon after. Was that you?”
Irina looked up and maintained eye contact as she kept her fingers moving on the keyboard. Nadine didn’t blink. She was going to find out what Irina knew if it killed her, which Irina’s Medusa gaze might.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Irina’s question came as a surprise.
“Yes.” It might be an exaggeration—Nadine had only the faintest idea what she was doing and more than a few unanswered questions—but those were things to talk over with Wes. Not Irina.
Irina gave her a considering look. “I don’t think you do.”
“I’m the judge of that.” The steel in her voice must have convinced Irina, who finally stopped typing.
“Ten years ago, Monica Olway came into the office yelling that John Wilson was a worm and someone had to do something about it,” Irina said, folding her hands in front of her. “I happened to be walking by.”
“Then what?”
“She told me John Wilson wanted her to spy on someone and fired her when she refused. There was no corroborating evidence, no proof of any kind, and Olway was driven by a personal vendetta. But I was curious and called Wilson’s office for a comment. No reply.”
“Did you believe her?” asked Nadine.
“What do you know about John Wilson?”
“Not much besides what I learned online and from Monica. He got into politics because of his father, I believe.”
“Yes, a popular cabinet minister who unfortunately died early. John was so mediocre that the party doubted even name recognition would help. However, mediocrity has never been an obstacle to success, and Wilson managed to get more money than expected to fund his leadership campaigns. He lost but had the cash to get the ears of powerful men until he became one himself.”
“Do you know why he lost? I thought it was because they didn’t think he had the charisma for voters.”
Irina snorted. “Are you going to do your own research, or am I expected to do it for you?”
“I am conducting research with an in-person interview. You.”
Irina looked unimpressed but she said, “The story was Wilson didn’t have the voter touch the way his father had or the brains.” She paused to bark “Twenty minutes!” to some poor reporter trying to come into the library. “Yet it seemed he had money to try to buy the power he wanted. A lot of money, more than one would expect, and with no apparent origin.”
“He was embezzling?” asked Nadine.
“There’s no proof of that. Dot Voline’s book Thirty Pieces of Silver came out with unerring timing during Wilson’s leadership bid. Although there was no way to connect Wilson to the Walton character in the book, some important people who knew Wilson noticed a few similarities. The name, obviously, and the relationship with the father. Wilson always wore his father’s old Rolex, Walton his father’s signet ring. That’s a detail few in the general public would have known.”
“The book is also about a lying politician who takes advantage of a woman who loved him,” Nadine said. “Was that a similarity as well?”
“Unknown. They were concerned Wilson Junior was covering up something though. Again, that wouldn’t have been an issue if he’d come clean with the grand pooh-bahs, but they suspected there were more skeletons in his closet. They didn’t care enough to do a thorough check, since it was only a book and written by a woman, but it was enough for them to back another horse.”
Nadine’s pulse quickened as it always did when she was getting somewhere with a story, tempered with the frustration that Irina hadn’t trusted her to tell her this information sooner. Well, she supposed she should be grateful Irina put her on the story at all all those weeks ago. “Do you think Dot Voline was having an affair with Wilson?”
“Do you have any evidence she worked in his office?”
“No.”
“Well then.”
Nadine took a breath. “I”—better to not raise suspicion with a we —“found some evidence that John Wilson might be connected with Matt White.”
“Some?”
“Photos in a collection of newspaper clippings. Then more clippings about people who had been caught out for professional misconduct, like Monica. I also found there was a web of people who knew Senator Wilson in some capacity and were involved in getting controversial infrastructure projects through. Ones that benefited the White Group.”
Irina gave her a long look. “I sometimes used to get leaks about political staff who had crossed the line. I was told they were from a trustworthy source, though anonymous. Many of those people admitted their wrongdoing, but some I had questions about.” Irina moved her hands back to her keyboard. “That led me to wonder why I was getting these convenient tips. After the Monica story broke and I started asking about where that blackmail story came from, the old editor in chief sent me down here.”
“Oh.” The implication was not one Nadine liked to entertain.
“I ask again if you know what you’re doing.”
“I do.” Nadine thought of something. “Ah, this is currently confidential. If you could not mention it to Daniel, I’d be grateful.”
The heavy silence was enough for Nadine to know she’d misstepped. “I’m not in the habit of gossiping about my work with Daniel,” said Irina coldly.
Nadine turned to go when Irina spoke again.
“Raj quit,” she said.
“I heard.”
“They hired a temp for the obituaries.”
“I’ve been reading them,” said Nadine, unsure of where Irina was going with this.
“Then you know they’re no good.” Irina waved her away. “They need a hand like yours. Off you go. I need to work.”
A hand like hers. Nadine let herself think of what she could change if she was obits editor before reality took over. She was the night web editor, and no matter what Irina thought, obits wasn’t her job.
As she was rushing to get out before Lisanne left her meeting, Jillian Low, an advertising rep and chair of the Herald ’s diversity committee, grabbed her. “Oh goody, Nadine. I was looking for you.”
“I only popped in. I’m on vacation,” Nadine said, trying to keep walking. No go. Jillian stood in front of her. Nadine should have known better than to mess with a woman who did sales for a living.
“This will only take a sec.” Jillian looked frazzled. “The committee has been tasked with testing the new diversity survey, and I need your opinion.”
“Why the committee?” Nadine asked. “Isn’t this management’s job?”
Jillian smoothed her short black hair behind her ears. “Why do you think? Do you know I’m the third person they asked to run this thing? Gabriela Ramirez told me she spent fifteen hours a week on diversity stuff. Unpaid and over and above her real work. Then they dinged her for not meeting her targets.”
Nadine couldn’t leave Jillian hanging and felt bad about letting down her colleagues. “Sure, email it to me, and I’ll look at it when I’m back.”
“Why not now?” said Jillian, handing her a paper. “All you have to do is fill it out so we know the questions are clear. Sorry, but I’m swamped and need this off my plate.”
Nadine took it. She might as well get it over with. “Fine.” She glanced through, then paused. “This section is about racial diversity.”
“It’s a diversity survey.” Jillian looked up from her phone.
“You don’t have anything for mixed.”
Jillian pressed her lips. “Management said it would mess up the data.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Oh my God, I wish I was. Remember when we said the Herald ’s problems had to be tackled at the policy and management level, like how we hire and promote?”
Nadine put a finger to her chin and pretended to think. “Let me see. I believe they said it was out of our scope and we should…”
“Hold a diversity potluck to improve employee morale,” Jillian joined in. They laughed. Laughing was often their saving grace at work. Jillian took the sheet back. “I’ll try again,” she said. “Thanks.”
Catching sight of Lisanne’s hot-pink blazer coming down the stairs, Nadine waved a quick goodbye to Jillian and left, feeling guilty.
By the time she pulled into the driveway at Dot’s mansion, Nadine had gone through several cycles of berating herself for not talking to Lisanne before deciding to let it go. She’d text her tomorrow for sure. The more she wallowed in this, the worse it was going to be. Her mood lightened a bit as she pulled into the driveway, excited to tell Wes about her day.
He took the bag of takeout sushi when she came in. “Thanks for picking this up.”
“You’re not going to believe what I heard,” she said.
“Tell me.” He took the chopsticks out of the paper wrapper and split them open before handing Nadine a pair.
She stirred her miso and plucked out a tiny cube of soft tofu as she ran through Irina’s story.
Wes took some edamame. “That’s another thing connecting John Wilson with big crime to get projects passed and threatening people who don’t play ball. We’re getting close.”
She should look at the positives, but they didn’t have much time left to find what they needed. “We are.”
“Let’s have a glass of wine to celebrate.”
“Sounds perfect. Can I check something on your laptop since it’s out?” she called as he went to the wine fridge, which they’d stocked with a few bottles. “Mine’s in my bag.”
“Password is amell8.” He spelled it out.
“Amell is for your sisters, but what’s the eight for?” she asked curiously.
“They make me change the password every ninety days.” His voice was muffled from looking in the fridge. “This is the eighth time. Red or white?”
Nadine wasn’t listening. She was too busy reading the story Wes had been working on and had left up in the main window. The excitement from her Irina news faded into sick disbelief at what he was typing straight into the Spear ’s editorial software.
The story about Dot Voline and John Wilson.
***
Wes’s antennae were so attuned to other people’s moods he knew something was wrong before he turned to Nadine with the two bottles in his hands. He could feel it, a pressure on his skin that made him prickle with dread.
Nadine sat at the table in front of his laptop. She wasn’t looking at him, but her eyes were dancing over the screen and her finger scrolling as she read.
He relaxed when he realized it was only his Dot Voline notes. That was fine. He’d been in the middle of writing up his thoughts to make his pitch to Jason, despite Tyler’s indifference. So why did he have this feeling he’d done something wrong?
When she finally raised her face, it was with a look of utter betrayal. “What is this?” she asked.
He put the wine down, unsure of what was going on. It was obvious what she was looking at, so the question had the feeling of a trap. “My notes on what we’ve found,” he said.
“I can see that.”
He was more baffled. “Then why are you asking? I went to the Spear to pitch the story about Dot and John Wilson.”
Nadine’s eyes, always big, went as huge as an anime character. She looked as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “You absolute asshole. You were going to go behind my back about this? We agreed we wouldn’t say anything yet.”
“What?” This made no sense. “We talked about it last night.”
“At no point did I say, Yes, green light to talk to editors. I said the opposite. The opposite .”
“That is not what happened at all.” Wes was angry now, matching her energy and turbocharging it with a big dose of unfairness. “You knew I was going to talk to the Spear .”
“No, you said you wanted to tell them, and I said no. The exact word, no. I said we didn’t have enough information yet. We didn’t have any proof! How could you? You said you were going by the Spear to check in.” Nadine stood up so violently, the backs of her knees knocked the chair over. She cursed as she snatched it into place.
A little doubt rose in him. Had she said that? He could have sworn they’d agreed they had different approaches but he was good to go. Right? Or had he heard what he wanted to hear? Being unsure led to feeling defensive. “We have enough for me to pitch the story. There’s no need for you to be so upset. It’s no big deal.”
He knew this was a mistake the second he said it.
“No big deal.” Nadine’s eyes narrowed. “You were trying to get the jump on me. You were trying to scoop me the way you thought I did to you. I should have known you wouldn’t be able to get over me getting the best of you all these years.”
His defense shifted to offense, because that was untrue, and it was unfair of her to bring up the past. “Is that what you think of me? We talked about that. We resolved it.”
“I thought we did, but I guess I was wrong.”
“I don’t need to scoop you.”
She shoved her hair back. “Why, because I’m such a loser at the Herald you don’t think they’d take the story anyway?”
Wes spread his hands, trying to follow her train of thought. “What the hell, Nadine? I never said that.”
“You don’t need to.” Her fingers on the back of the chair looked like claws, and he saw her chest rise with a deep, deliberate breath.
Wes glared at her. “Stop that,” he said.
“Stop what? Breathing?”
“That big I’m-so-patient breath you take when I’m irritating you.”
Her arms came up to cross in front of her chest. “Wes, I’m not breathing at you, for God’s sake. Quit jumping down my throat!” She stood straighter. “I should have known better than to trust you. You were using me to get the story. I bet you wanted to try to use it to get into the Herald since you failed at the Spear .”
Wes knew it was his job to de-escalate this fight. It was always his job to apologize first, even if he did nothing wrong. But he couldn’t. The injustice of her accusation and its sheer meanness made him livid. All the feelings of the day rose up and burst out. All the feelings of his life .
“I was using you? You seriously think I want to take your job? You’re barely holding on to it, so it wouldn’t be hard. If I want to write that damn story and run it in lights along the CN Tower, I can. I worked with you because it was easier. That’s it. Jesus, you’re being ridiculous.”
The words echoed in the kitchen as Nadine stared at him. Between them, a deep silence grew and spread.
“I…” Nadine blinked and dipped her head down, then put up her hand as if she’d had enough. “I need to get some fresh air.”
She left him standing in the kitchen alone with the celebration wine, feeling the regret take over. What had he done?