I felt bad about all of these fatalities, including that of the pitiful pooch, but the story that claimed my closest attention was the one about the sixteen-year-old girl who was found stripped and stabbed to death in a roadside motel room in Middletown, Rhode Island. The two sailors who had rented and subsequently fled the room had already been tracked down by police and were being held for questioning. I snatched up my scissors, cut the article out of the paper, and placed it in the labeled and dated manila folder sitting on top of my desk. This was the kind of killing Daring Detective readers were interested in. Brutal murder, with a nice thick slice of sex on the side.
What a way to start the day, I thought, taking a bite of the buttered English I’d bought at the coffee shop in the lobby downstairs. A muffin and a murder for breakfast.
The office entry bell jingled and in walked Harvey Crockett, my boss, the corpulent, white-haired, cigar-smoking ex-newspaperman who-in spite of his gloomy, cynical, don’t-give-a-damn outlook on life-was still shocked and dismayed to find himself employed as the editor in chief of a lowly (okay, sleazy) true crime magazine. “Coffee!” he grunted, giving me his usual one-word greeting. He took off his hat, tapped it against his thigh to remove the snow, and then looped it on an upper branch of the coat tree near the front door.
“Good morning, Mr. Crockett,” I said, batting my lashes, grinning like an idiot, doing my best to look properly submissive and worshipful. (If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this odd, out-of-bounds-for-a-woman occupation of mine, it’s that you must treat the men you work for like gods. If you don’t, they will act like the gods they know themselves to be, and make your life a living hell.) “Did you have a nice weekend?”