Dear Irene by Jan Burke

of on the rebound, I guess you’d say. Some clown from school remembered seeing Edna and me together once, and told the cops I was her boyfriend.”
    I heard noise in the background, and he excused himself then covered the phone. I could hear him say, “In here. I’m on the phone. No, some reporter. Aw, Connie, for godsakes, she’s dead. Give it a rest, would you?” He came back to me. “That’s Connie. I’ve got to go.”
    “Look, Mr. Taylor, I need to talk to you a little more. Is there a number where I can reach you?”
    “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”
    “How about when you get back?”
    “Maybe. But I’m pretty busy. Gotta go.”
    He hung up. Connie didn’t sound so forgiving. But there was no chance of talking to Henry Taylor or Connie until they came back from Michigan. I wondered if she would say yes to his proposal.
    I tried Steven Kincaid again. No luck.
    John came by my desk and talked me into going down to City Hall to cover the first reading of a zoning proposal. So much for Thanatos. But I agreed with John that the proposal might turn out to be more than the routine issue it appeared to be. I learned long ago that sometimes the most important issues in the city were decided in the most boring meetings.
    Sure enough, by Wednesday morning there was a story on the front page of the
Express
that would guarantee a handsome turnout for the second reading of the proposal. It was my first story on page A-1 since the Thanatos letter, and I was working very hard at not showing how pleased I was by it.
    The proposal would have changed the extent and type of building that could take place on the site of a Las Piernas landmark that had been destroyed by a fire. The council was already reneging on promises made in the last election. My phone was ringing off the hook. I felt like a kid who had just aimed a water hose at a hornet’s nest. Better yet, I felt like I was back to being a reporter. At times, the two sensations are not unalike.
    In between calls, I cheerfully went through my mail sorting routine, opening Christmas cards and humming “Jingle Bells” to myself. All the same, when I was down to the final group, I opened them carefully, using the letter opener to pull them out, so that I didn’t touch the contents with my hands. Four flyers for meetings I would not attend. One more to open. Did it really matter that I was careful? I stopped humming when I unfolded it on my desk.
     
Dear Cassandra,

Have you missed me? You must be patient.

Thalia is next. It has already begun.

You tell me you need time to prepare. I will give you the time you need. Wait for Janus.

Enjoy the Saturnalia, Cassandra.

Thalia will learn the agony of Tantalus and more. Who helped Psyche to sort the seeds that

Venus placed before her?

Your beloved,

Thanatos
     
    My phone was ringing again, but I didn’t answer it. As soon as it stopped, I called Doris, and in as calm a voice as I could manage, asked her to hold all my calls.
    “I don’t think John will like it,” she began. “We’re getting a big reaction to your story.”
    “Yes, well, I’ll talk to John.”
    I called John on the intercom, asked for a moment of his time, used a folded strip of paper to cover my fingers when I gingerly picked the letter up by a corner, grabbed a mythology book, and somehow made it to John’s office without dropping anything.
    He looked up from reading copy and raised an eyebrow as I dangled the letter forward and dropped it on his desk.
    “Is it going to bite?” he asked sarcastically. But his face set into a frown and he swore under his breath when he saw what it was. He read it, then said, “Since we hadn’t heard any more from him, I was hoping this creep had been run over by a car or something.”
    “Are you going to turn it over to the police?”
    “You know how I feel about that, Kelly. I’m not going to let the Las Piernas Police Department tell me what we can and cannot publish, but I’m not