Thea Devine Read Online Free PDF

interrupting her reverie.
    “Maybe not. Arch Warfield was waiting at the station. I wonder what information he’ll come back with.”
    “Now, now, Miz Maggie, if it ain’t right, we’ll fix it.”
    “ ’Ain’t we always fixing it?” she asked tartly.
    “He’s all we got,” A.J. reminded her.
    “We’ve got me.”
    “Miz Maggie, you go on and fire us all and do the whole thing your own self, and I’ll come visit you in Doc Shields’ office in about two weeks’ time.”
    “I wish we had … well, I wish I could go out and do it all,” Maggie said wistfully. “All right. Enough. The survey team is here, and you can bet I’m going to survey the survey team. Is that your copy, A.J.? Why don’t I rough it up before I start the page layouts, and then you can go check the express office. We’ll close early, and the devil with the deadline.”
    She watched A.J. pay his informant and then begin the subtle overtures that would sweep the office clean of loiterers in a matter of moments.
    He was so good at it. He couldn’t write; he wasn’t a reporter or a manager; he was just A.J., who knew how to handle people and get information. His value was unquestionable, and indefinable.
    She took his page of notes and made her way to her worktable. She was most at home here, with a pencil inher hand and words at her command. She could always make words do what she wanted them to do. She wasn’t nearly so facile with people. She was too blunt, too curious, too apt to ask for whatever she wanted. She didn’t know how to circle around things or to pretend. She had never mastered the kind of comaraderie that made people beholden to her. But Frank, Frank had been very good at that.
    He just hadn’t been very good with her.
    She shook away the thought. Not even a year could wash away the betrayals and disappointments. She had been sure she had buried all that with Frank.
    A commotion behind her told her that Arch Warfield had just burst into the room. And wasn’t Arch a prime example of Frank’s ability to handle people? She couldn’t manage Warfield and all his resentments, even after a year, the way that Frank had. Arch wouldn’t let her fire him, and he stayed around and sulked. It was almost as if he believed Frank had not died and would walk in the door in the next moment. All his loyalty lay with the man who had hired him, and if he and Frank had had some secret agreement, she knew nothing about it. When Frank died, he had been free to leave, and still he remained, waiting, irritating her, handing her biased copy he knew she would immediately rewrite.
    “There it is.” His voice came from over her shoulder and simultaneously his hand thumped down his notes.
    “There what is?”
    “The lowdown on the survey team. Got everything you wanted, lady boss. Every detail, fairmindedly as possible, just the way you like it.”
    She slanted a look up at him. “How refreshing.”
    “Don’t get smart, Maggie mine.”
    “I’ll get even smarter,
Mr
. Warfield. I already have the report, down to the names and the room numbers at the hotel. You’re late, and we paid less for the informationthan we pay you, Mr. Warfield, and somehow I think we got a better deal on this one.” She turned back to her papers. “I think that’s all.”
    “
You
think that’s all,” Warfield sneered. “That ain’t all, Mrs. High-and-Mighty-Frank, not by a long shot. You don’t know nothing about what’s going on with this Denver North project.”
    “And of course
you
do, Mr. Warfield. I’ve noticed how diligently you’ve been expending your efforts on behalf of the paper. Perhaps there are other interests that might be willing to pay your salary.”
    “Oh no, Maggie Colleran, you don’t get rid of me. Frank promised me, wrote me out a contract—”
    “Which no one has ever seen,” Maggie put in, unperturbed by his vehemence. She had heard this story before and had provoked him in this very same way innumerable times, always with