Free A Carnival of Killing by Glenn Ickler Page A

long lavender coat and a fashionable red cap. “Kitty!” I yelled.
    Kitty Catalano stopped and turned around. “Oh, hi,” she said. She forced a smile and offered each of us a black-gloved hand for shaking.
    “Thanks for the phone call,” I said. “I planned to get back to you later. Were you at the autopsy report?”
    “Yes, I was,” she said. “We’re all terribly interested in finding out anything we can about poor Lee-Ann. Isn’t it awful that she was pregnant?”
    “It is,” I said. “Two lives wasted instead of one. I don’t suppose you have any idea who she might have been seeing?”
    “None. Like I told you, I really didn’t know her all that well. Apparently Toni and Esperanza weren’t able to help the police, either, and I think they were her two best friends in the world.”
    “Can you think of anybody else she was close to?”
    “Oh, God, I don’t know. Maybe Hillary Howard. She’s another Klondike Kate.”
    “Could you have her call me?” I asked.
    “Sure,” Kitty said. “A bunch of us are having lunch to discuss what we can do for Lee-Ann’s family. I’ll talk to Hillary then, if that’s okay.”
    “That’s fine,” I said. There went the prospect of brightening my day by lunching with a beautiful woman.
    Oh, well, I thought, things could be worse. And I’d no sooner sat down at my desk than they got worse. The phone rang, I answered and the doleful voice said, “This is Morrie.”
    Every newspaper has a timewaster like Morrie, who called to talk nonsense when a reporter was digging into something important. Our Morrie was a dumpy, disheveled, middle-aged man who walked around downtown with a little shaggy white dog on a leash. Usually he phoned to complain about the Russians watching him on radar. Sometimes the calls were about someone named Robinson, who Morrie claimed was trying to kill him. For some reason, the little kook usually asked for me.
    This call had to do with Robinson. “If you put something in the paper, Robinson would be scared and leave me alone,” Morrie said.
    “Get a pencil and paper, I know just the person you need to talk to,” I said, flipping through the scribbled scraps of paper on my desk. “Call this number.” I gave him the number and extension of the Minneapolis Enquirer Capitol Bureau. Let John Robertson, Jr., deal with the Robinson dilemma.
     
     
    It was mid-afternoon when Hillary Howard called. Dave Jerome, our editorial cartoonist, was sitting on that tiny uncluttered area at one corner of my desk telling me about his morning conversation with Sean Fitzpatrick when I got the call.
    “It’s a good thing that Al was the one carrying the gun,” Dave said. “If that redneck bastard had come in with a gun in his hand I’d have been under the drawing table having a heart attack.”
    “I got the impression that Sean didn’t care much for your cartoon,” I said.
    “Some people don’t understand that cartoonists exaggerate things for effect. And gun nuts in particular don’t have any sense of humor.”
    “Sean certainly didn’t get a bang out of your AK-47.”
    “I’m just glad his little show-and-tell gun wasn’t loaded or he might have shot off more than his mouth.” When my phone rang, Dave waved goodbye and slid off the desk.
    Like all of the women chosen to be Klondike Kate, Hillary had a strong voice. It was so strong, in fact, that I was obliged to hold the receiver an inch away from my ear when she spoke. We exchanged greetings, and I expressed my sympathy for the loss of her friend before I asked Hillary if she had any knowledge of Lee-Ann’s love life.
    “I knew Lee was seeing some guy she really liked,” Hillary said. “But she never mentioned his name.”
    “Did she tell you anything about him?” I asked.
    “Not much. He must have been pretty good in bed because she was always full of piss and vinegar after she’d been with him. She never actually said it, but I got the impression that the reason their