Murder at The Washington Tribune by Margaret Truman

When I pressed, she cut me off.”
    â€œDo you think there’s an angle in this?”
    Wilcox shrugged and lifted his hands, palms up. “Like what?”
    Morehouse massaged his nose. “Do you think—and I’m only playing what if, Joe—what if Jean was in some way moonlighting? What if she was turning tricks on the side and got one of her Johns mad enough to kill her?”
    â€œOh, come on, Paul, that’s—”
    â€œThat’s thinking outside the box, Joe.”
    â€œMaybe it is, but it does nothing for me.”
    â€œFollow up on it.”
    â€œHow, asking the roommate whether she’s a whore?”
    â€œThat’s not a bad start.”
    Wilcox knew it was futile to argue the point at that moment and changed the subject. “I’m meeting tonight with a good contact at MPD. She sounded as though she might have something for me.”
    â€œWho, the spic cop, Vargas-Swayze?”
    Wilcox’s frown was one of disapproval.
    â€œAll right, the Spanish cop.”
    â€œShe’s the lead detective on the Kaporis case,” Wilcox said. “By the way, L.A. police interviewed a former boyfriend of Jean’s. He’s clean, was nowhere near D.C. the night she got it.”
    â€œWhere’d you pick that up?”
    â€œA friend at lunch.”
    â€œGet somebody out in L.A. to interview him, get a better handle on what she was like out of the office. Or out of her clothes.”
    Wilcox nodded. “I’m meeting with Rick Jillian and the rest of our group at six. Want to join us?”
    â€œNo. I’m tied up tonight.”
    As Wilcox started to leave the office, Morehouse said, “Why don’t you pick Hawthorne’s brain. He’s really wired in around the District.”
    â€œSure.” Wilcox said. “I’ll talk to Gene.”
    He had no intention of asking his least favorite young reporter for anything.
    He called Georgia at home to say he’d be late that night.
    â€œYou reporters,” she said lightly. “Roberta was going to stop by for dinner tonight, but she was given a last-minute assignment.”
    â€œA couple more years and I’ll be home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
    â€œI’d like that.”
    â€œNo you wouldn’t, Georgia. I don’t play golf or make pretty wooden furniture. No hobbies. I’ll drive you mad.”
    â€œTry me,” she said. “Take care. Don’t be too late.”
    The six o’clock meeting was no more productive than most meetings, although it did result in a semblance of organization, with Wilcox handing out specific tasks, including assigning someone from the L.A. bureau to track down and interview Kaporis’s ex-boyfriend. It ended at 6:45. Wilcox left the building and drove to busy Georgetown where he found, of all things, a parking space only a few feet away from Martin’s Tavern, the oldest such establishment in Washington. Management knew him and plopped a RESERVED sign on a corner booth in the most secluded portion of the restaurant. He considered having a drink but decided to wait. He window-shopped up and down Wisconsin Avenue for an hour, stopping in Britches to admire a sport jacket that was too expensive for his budget, and in Olsson’s Books and Records where he browsed the classical music section without purchasing anything. Having killed sufficient time, he returned to the tavern, took the booth, and indulged in some serious introspection and reflection, a Scotch, neat, oiling the process.
    He was dismayed that Morehouse saw a story potential in the possibility that Jean Kaporis’s roommate might be a prostitute, and was sorry he’d even mentioned it. He worked for the prestigious
Washington Tribune,
not some supermarket tabloid. Was it so important for the paper, particularly its Metro section, to have a story every day about Jean Kaporis’s murder that it would be content to manufacture