Free Right from the Gecko by Cynthia Baxter Page B

to recognize real talent when they see it.”
    I made a point of not responding. Especially since being sincere about my reaction to Marnie’s colleague would have demanded that at least some of the coffee in his mug end up on his head.
    â€œSo you must be freakin’ out,” he went on coolly. “Having one of your friends end up in Kahului Bay like that and all.”
    Whether he was going out of his way to be offensive or if this was just his personality, I couldn’t tell. But this guy made Forrester Sloan look like Mr. Rogers.
    â€œI guess I’m still in shock,” I finally replied. I glanced around, adding, “Although now that I’m here, I’m finding it kind of a surreal experience, seeing Marnie’s office and meeting some of the people she worked with day in and day out. But who knows? Maybe being in the middle of her work environment like this will help me come to grips with her murder.”
    â€œI suppose you’re looking for ‘closure,’” Bryce sneered, meanwhile making that annoying quotations gesture in the air with two fingers of each hand. “To be honest, I’m not the best person to help you with that. Marnie and I were both reporters, but that’s where our connection ends. Even though we worked in the same place, I never got to know her all that well. For one thing, I never felt there was a lot of potential for a warm, fuzzy relationship between the two of us, given her personality. For another thing, I’ve only been here at the
Dispatch
a few months.” He paused to stuff a large part of his second donut into his mouth, chewing and swallowing it with amazing speed.
    â€œI didn’t realize you’d been here such a short time,” I commented. “Was there someone you replaced, someone who might have known Marnie longer than you did?”
    He looked annoyed, perhaps because he preferred being the one who asked all the questions. “My predecessor’s name was Holly Gruen. But for all I know, she’s left Maui by now.”
    His answer surprised me. “Why would she have left the island?”
    He shrugged. “She just didn’t seem to fit in here. On Maui, I mean. She was too…tense. Not that I knew her that well either,” he added quickly. “She was gone by the time I started. But she used to stop in at the office every once in a while.”
    â€œTo visit, you mean?”
    â€œLook, I never paid that much attention to either Holly or Marnie, okay?” Bryce insisted impatiently. “But there is one thing I can tell you about Marnie. She was a real know-it-all. A lot of people found her extremely irritating.”
    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, I thought with annoyance. Still, thanks to her boss’s comments, I knew Bryce wasn’t alone in that perception.
    â€œMaybe that was just a front,” I suggested. “To convince people she was on top of things. After all, she was pretty ambitious.”
    â€œNo kidding,” he replied with a contemptuous snort. “She thought she was the next Woodward and Bernstein. Y’know, those guys who uncovered the Watergate scandal during the seventies?”
    â€œYes, I think I’ve heard of them,” I replied. And I managed not to sound the least bit sarcastic.
    â€œTrouble was, most of the stuff she came up with was out of Fantasyland.”
    â€œMeaning…?”
    Bryce made an annoying boy-was-that-a-dumb-question face. “Meaning she saw scandal and intrigue and corruption everywhere she looked. Dickie-boy would send her out to cover…I don’t know, the Girl Scout jamboree, and she’d come back convinced that the leader was embezzling the cookie money.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “I mean, it’s one thing to sniff out news. But Marnie was pretty wacky, the way she was always convinced she’d just uncovered the hottest story of the