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Mr. Murder, January 2006 A Sally Harrington Novel by Laura Van Wormer MIRA Featuring: Sally Harrington 352 pages ISBN: 0778321770 Hardcover Add to Wish List Purchase Amazon Powell's Books

"Great mystery filled with murder and sensuality."

Mr. Murder
Laura Van Wormer

Reviewed by Jory Reedy
Posted December 16, 2005

Mystery Woman Sleuth

Sally Harrington, former newspaper journalist now anchoring a newscast for DBS, seems to have everything; a great career, lots of money and a satisfying sex life with Paul Fitzwilliam, the handsome police officer who followed her from California. What seem to be the ingredients for a perfect life do not factor in the sudden death of a millionaire playboy who faced financial ruin after Sally did a story on him and the bombing of her former place of employment, not to mention the mysterious deliveries of white roses.

Trying to stay focused on her career, Sally attends a convention in California for the network and runs into David Waring, a special man she can't get out of her mind or heart. But the happiness is short-lived when another dead body shows up, and there's a connection to Sally. Now she begins to think she could be a target. Are the bodies and white roses connected?

MR. MURDER, the latest installment in the Sally Harrington mysteries, is filled with drama, mystery, murder and sensuality. The story brings to life intriguing and colorful characters in the network news business. Although it's part of a series, Van Wormer's writing is so detailed that the story stands well on its own. I look forward to more in this series.

Learn more about Mr. Murder

SUMMARY

Life is taking some interesting turns as the fiercely bright and beautiful Sally Harrington starts her new job anchoring a newscast created just for her: DBS News America This Morning. For most people that would be enough excitement. But not for Sally. She has to be the last person to talk to a jet-setting millionaire who turns up dead shortly after their interview.

Murder isn't the only distraction in Sally's world, though. Her sexual liaison deepens with Paul Fitzwilliam, the twentysomething police officer who followed Sally east from California. And there's still unfinished business with David Waring, the fortysomething married man she sent back to California.

And then suddenly the feds show up when an old acquaintance is left for dead at Sally's home in Castleford, Connecticut. They've connected this attempted murder to the death of Sally's infamous millionaire. And by the time anyone realizes that Sally herself might be the primary target, it may be too late to stop a killer from achieving his ultimate goal.

Excerpt

I glance at our chief film editor, Clem, who sighs and drops his hands from the console to wait. This is our third interruption since we sat down, but this is what happens in television when you are a producer for DBS News in New York.

I look at the papers Haydn hands to me to read:

Harrington Hammered In Hometown

Since my name happens to be Sally Harrington, I read on:

Everybody with a television set has by now seen the great white hope for DBS News in the shapely form of the blue- eyed, almost-blond Sally Harrington. You know the one. The sensational witness from the Mafia Boss Murder Trial that audiences found so compelling the network decided to launch an early morning newscast to showcase her? Unfortunately for DBS, however, a bitter debate has broken out in Harrington's hometown of Castleford, Connecticut — a debate that has pitted residents who believe Ms. Harrington worthy of emulation against those residents who believe her worthy of deportation.

I read on to an editorial that has evidently run in the Herald-American:

The Castleford Women's Club recently awarded its highest honor to part-time resident and DBS News maven Sally Harrington "for her extraordinary professional achievements, outstanding contribution to the community and overall excellence as a role model." While the Herald- American (as her former employer) is also proud of Ms. Harrington's professional achievements, we must question the motive behind the organization's selection. Given the highly publicized trials and tribulations of Ms.Harrington's personal life, one can only shudder at what kind of role model the Women's Club would consider unsavory. Scribbling a big check to the club from a recently inflated bank account does not, in our opinion, constitute a good role model.

I am left almost breathless by the attack. My old boss, Al Royce, and I have always rubbed each other the wrong way, but I served him and the paper well. Certainly I have done nothing to warrant this kind of viciousness. At least I don't think so.

I lower the paper and cover my eyes with my left hand for a moment.Given the highly publicized trials and tribulations of Ms.Harrington's personal life, one can only shudder at what kind of role model the Women's Club would consider unsavory.

Well, let's see now, what could be considered unsavory about my personal life: I broke up with a Castleford favorite to take up with a slick New York insider; a tape of him and me having sex was distributed all over town; the defense attorney in The Mafia Boss Murder Trial set me up to come across as a nymphomaniac,making me an instant media sensation;and,finally,that slick New York insider was involved in a very messy and very public divorce trial into which my name was dragged. "Sounds like sour grapes to me," Haydn says sympathetically. Of course Haydn's still pretty new and probably isn't yet familiar with my unsavory personal life.

I drop my hand. I have a feeling if Haydn's skin was not black, I might see that he is blushing on my behalf. He's a good guy. "When I graduated from high school," I explain, "the Women's Club gave me a renewable scholarship for four straight years. I couldn't have made college work without it."

"I'm with you," Haydn assures me. "Mine was from our Rotary Club."

"So then my mother tells me that after a hundred years the club can't meet in the cultural center anymore," I continue, "be-cause the air-conditioning is shot and a lot of the older women can't breathe without it. So fixing the air-conditioning seemed like the least I could do."

I look down at the wire service release again — one can only shudder at what kind of role model the Women's Club would consider unsavory. I check my watch and look at Clem. "Can you give me five minutes?"

"Sure,"he says,turning back to the console. "I've got the Puget Sound piece to finish, anyway."

I leave editing and walk down the short hallway into the central newsroom. "Sally —" an assistant begins.

"Give me five," I beg, swerving around him to head into what we call the Fishbowl, a conference room constructed of soundproof glass. I close the door, pick up the phone, punch in my office ID number and make a long-distance call. I look at my watch. It's 4:02 p.m., Friday. Mother stays late at school Tuesday through Thursday to supervise the English lab, but today she should have left right after the bell.

"Hello?" Mother answers with her usual warm grace, giving me, today, somewhat of a pang. How she ended up with a daughter with a temperament like mine is beyond everybody's understanding, although Mother maintains it is our differences that allow us to be so close. (I think our closeness is much more likely due to long-time combat fatigue, the kind remaining family members share in the trenches when the father dies young.)

"Hi, it's me."

Pause. "Oh, darling heart, I am so sorry.When I saw the paper at lunch —"

"At lunch?" I yell. "Are you telling me this editorial ran today and was submitted to the wire services yesterday?" Son of a bitch, I'll kill him.

"Sally, what do you mean?"

"I mean that sleazebag Royce submitted the editorial to the wire services before he even ran it because he knew he'd have to write a retraction. And you can bet your bottom dollar the retraction will never make its way to the wire services."

"Oh, no," Mother says quietly.

"Oh, yes." I drop heavily into a chair. "And it beats me what I've done to set him off."

"It isn't anything you did,Sally,"Mother says. "It's what I did."

"Mother, it's okay, I'm a grown-up, I can handle this."

"No, really, darling."

"Alfred Royce adores you, he always has."

"Stop it, Sally, please," she pleads. "You're breaking my heart." I blink, taken aback.

"Al wrote it to hurt me, not you. Al is mad at me. Do you understand?"

"I don't understand at all," I tell her. The newsroom assistant is trying to get my attention by waving his arms at me through the glass. I make a swatting motion for him to go away.

"He's been harboring this — this feeling about me for years," Mother says. "It's ridiculous."

It's nothing new for a Castleford man of a certain age to have a thing for my mother, not even now that she is in her early sixties. Mother is one of those kind and gentle beauties men always wish they had married.

"Something happened, Mother, didn't it?"

Pause. "Yes." Silence.

"Are you going to tell me what?"

"Only if you promise not to do anything, Sally. And to let me handle it." She pauses for a moment, expecting a protest from me, and incorrectly assumes my silence means I agree. "He begged me not to marry Mack. He said he was in love with me and it was our last chance for happiness."

I think I'm going to scream. Alfred Royce III is one of the worst kinds of human being. He is one of those self- centered brats who inherited enough money and power to make every-one's life miserable.

"Does Al not remember, perhaps, that he already has a wife?" I ask. "A second wife, I might add? For whom he traded in the first?"

"Actually, he's been married three times," Mother says almost conversationally, "but the first was over so fast no one remembers it.She was some kind of lady of the evening and your father thought it was just hilarious, and of course his parents were beside themselves."

"Mother," I nearly shout. "Tell me what happened."

"I went to the club with the Levys Saturday night for dinner. They knew Mack was at a conference and they asked me if I'd like to join them." (I'm trying to be patient.) "Al was at the bar with the golf committee, and when our group was leaving he walked me out to the car." Faintly. "He had had a few and he made a pass at me and I told him to stop it, but then he grabbed my arms and said all these things about us having one last chance."

What makes it worse, in my mind, is that I have no doubt Al felt that he was entitled to Mother. That's the way he is.

"I had to slap him across the face. And then he stared at me, as if he couldn't believe it —"

I feel the stirring of rage. "And then he stormed off." Her voice comes close to breaking and so does my heart. "He said some loathsome and wicked things and I'm not sure I will ever be able to forgive him, Sally."

The newsroom assistant is now moving along the glass wall to keep in my line of sight, making entreating motions. I turn my back on him. "Why didn't you tell me about this, Mother?"

"You were in the field,Sally,"Mother says,upset. "I didn't want to upset you."

Suddenly the conference room door bursts open and I turn around to see the assistant. "I'm sorry," he says in an exaggerated whisper. "Could you please hang on a second, Mother," I say, impatiently covering the mouthpiece. "What?"

"Somebody's been murdered," he says breathlessly, "and Will says it's got something to do with you."

I rush across the newsroom — from much practice neatly avoiding desks and computer stations — to reach our executive producer,Will Rafferty,who is standing with Haydn in front of the affiliate monitors we use to view any "film"(everything is digital these days) our affiliate newsrooms submit to use on DBS NewsAmericaTonight with AlexandraWaring. Will is talking into a headset while looking into monitor 4 at what appears to be the charred remains of a small house or cabin. Monitor 4 means the image has come from one of our affiliates in the Southern Atlantic region. I grab a headset andWill looks over at me gratefully while I plug it in. "Sally's here now,Kit."

He must be talking to Kit Whitehawk, a rookie reporter from our affiliate in Gainesville, Florida. He recently assisted me on a story I covered for DBS News Magazine.

"What am I looking at, Kit?"

"All that remains of Wilson Delafield."

I glance at Will and then focus back on the screen. The story I did for the magazine had been about Wilson Delafield, a jet-setting playboy and horse breeder who lived outside Gainesville.

"You mean he's dead?"

"Someone locked him in his garden shed and torched it." I flinch. "When was this?"

"About five before three."

Just over an hour ago.

In my story on Delafield I showed how he had been on the verge of bankruptcy when his highly prized stable of Thorough-breds burned to the ground, killing all seven of the horses in it, and how he received a little over thirteen million dollars in insurance money. Delafield denied any connection between his pending financial ruin and the fire, maintaining, "The insurance payment is proof the entire tragic event was completely and thoroughly investigated to the satisfaction of all parties."

Well, er, no, that wasn't quite right.Wilson Delafield had been born Warren Drubber and, I discovered, was distantly related to the supervisor in charge of the insurance investigation. Not only did I learn that Delafield and the insurance investigator supervisor had met four years before at a wedding, but I even had pictures of them sitting together at the reception dinner. That meeting alone should have prompted the supervisor to abstain from working on the Delafield fire,but he hadn't.Instead he conducted the investigation himself with the assistance of a relatively new company trainee.

I had no hard evidence proving Delafield arranged for the fire. The evidence was circumstantial: Delafield's disastrous financial situation before the fire, the fact the supervising insurance investigator knew Delafield personally, and a long trail of broken-hearted wealthy women and furious former business partners who said Delafield was a liar,a cheat and a crook.Because the evidence was only circumstantial I was tempted to put the story on the shelf until something more concrete turned up, but then my boss, AlexandraWaring, who has always kept horses, explained to me exactly what those poor animals had to endure before they finally died in the fire. After that I was ready to go with what I had.

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