Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) (2 page)

Elizabeth, rolling her eyes, handed me a stack of pink phone messages as I walked through the newsroom.

              “You have morons for fans,” she said.

              “Well, obviously,” I said, flipping through the messages. “They bought my book for Christ sake.”

              “One guy doesn’t know the meaning of ‘He’s out on a story and he’ll call you back.’”

              “Sorry about that.”

              “That’s OK. I haven’t got anything else to do but talk to the same asshole ten times in twenty minutes. You know, little things like update the Web site, cover my own stories… After that I just started sending them directly to your voicemail.”

              Our publisher wanted us to have what he repeatedly called “a greater Web presence,” but I’m not entirely sure he knew what that meant. I know we had a second-rate Web site that we uploaded the previous day’s stories and pages to every day and which crashed regularly.

              It was disaster on a daily basis. We were stretched so thin that my one small stumble ruined everyone’s day.

              There was no time to do any editorial planning, no time for Addison to work with any reporters (at least not longer than to tell them not to hand this kind of shit in ever again), no time to write an investigative piece of any significance.

              We were treading water and we knew it.

There was no time for me to think about where Kay was, much less try and call her cell phone. Besides, she said she wanted to be alone. The message light on my phone was flashing, but I couldn’t take the time to check who’d called. Probably the same idiot who’d talked to Elizabeth.

              I spent the afternoon digging through the files at the courthouse, another one of Graham’s responsibilities, for significant cases we’d been following. There was a 21-year-old Cincinnati man sentenced to 20 years for bringing 10 pounds of heroin into Plummer County and attempting to sell it to an undercover cop.

              A mother lost custody of her four children and would spend seven years in jail for trafficking drugs. Her mug shot showed a face with all the haggard marks of meth abuse—rotten and missing teeth, stringy hair and skin pocked with scabs.

              These would be on tomorrow’s front page, along with the full accident story. I made a few more notes and headed back to the newsroom in time to finish my stories.

I managed to check my messages after I sent my final story.

              The first message chilled me to the bone.

              “Hey Dad.” It was PJ. “It’s like ten in the morning and I’m at Logan Airport. Do you know where Mom is? She wasn’t on her plane. The guy here at the airport said she never got on back home.”

              It didn’t matter what the note said now—I flipped open my cell phone and scrolled down to Kay’s cell number.

              There were a few rings and it picked up.

              “Marcus?” It was Kay.

              I sighed, relieved. See? Nothing to worry about. She
was
just out thinking things over.

              There was a voice in the background, the sound of something sharp, like a gunshot. Kay screamed and then the phone went dead.

Chapter 2 Addison

              I was sitting in my office, gnawing on my thumbnail, halfway through reading a sheaf of budget figures—awash in red ink—when he stepped into the doorway.

              “That bitch cost me the election.”

              Even as the day was coming to an end, I was still pissed that Marcus has been late. Of all the goddamn days I needed him to be on time, all hell was breaking loose and he was at home in bed, hung over. I didn’t need this, and I sure as hell didn’t need any crap from the man standing in my office doorway.

              It was Rick Starrett, a local political operative who’d been defeated two weeks ago in his first run for State Senate in the November election. He was tall and muscular, with dark curly hair, even, white teeth and wide shoulders. In his well-tailored suits, with the Ohio flag flying behind him, his campaign photos were perfect.

              He’d done a lot to bring jobs back to Plummer County and was reportedly on the verge of bringing another manufacturing plant in, but who knows what would happen now that his opponent was slated to take his seat in January.

              “Come on in, Rick. Shut the door.” I waved him into the office and gestured he take a seat.

              Before the door closed completely, I heard Marcus say, “What do you mean Mom never got on her flight?”

              I hoped Marcus wasn’t having a problem. I couldn’t deal with any more right now—and Rick Starrett had all the hallmarks of a walk-in crisis. I didn’t have the staff or the patience to deal with anything else today.

              “So who cost you the election?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as exasperated as I felt.

              “You know. Virginia Ferguson.”

              The campaign had been ugly, as only local politics could. So ugly that by the end of October, I was fielding daily phone calls from both Starrett and Ferguson supporters, on reports of stolen campaign signs, threats of filing complaints with the Ohio Elections Commission and how our paper was leaning one direction or the other to the detriment of their candidate.

              Virginia Ferguson had more money than sense and, to my mind, so did her supporters. Her political career consisted of getting appointed to the state Board of Education, and, after being defeated in her run for that office, running for State Senate on a platform of shaking up the status quo in Columbus.

              She had a big smile, classy suits and designer eyeglasses, and pinned her dark hair up in a sloppy, casual way that made her look like she’d just had sex on the floor of some CEO’s mahogany-paneled office.

              Maybe she had.

              Her chic style made me feel even more boxy, even more dumpy and middle-aged. But at least I could string a sentence together.

              With pockets of cash from the old boys club in the next county, she spoke well at events that involved heavily rehearsed scripts, but she was largely vapid and ill spoken in a one-on-one situation.

              “I’m for jobs and education,” she’d said in our first meeting of the editorial board prior to our endorsement of Starrett.

              “Are you saying your opponent endorses stupidity and unemployment?” The question popped out before I realized it, but Ferguson’s blank-eyed stare told me all I needed to know.

              After we put the audio of the interview up on our Web site, she never met reporters alone again.

              But Rick Starrett had ghosts in his family’s closet—ones that Virginia Ferguson exploited mercilessly and it cost him.

              I knew what Starrett was talking about before he said another word.

              “You’re talking about the commercial about your brother,” I said.

              “Yes.” His chin fell to his chest.

              Rowan Starrett took an unusual route to success from Plummer County. While a few boys from Jubilant Falls High School and a few others from the county schools went on to notable college and even professional careers in basketball, baseball or football, only one son of Plummer County went on to hockey greatness. Following a brilliant college hockey career at Ohio State, Rowan got a contract as a goalie with the Detroit Red Wings, then Chicago Black Hawks.

              From 1948 until 1970, Don Gallinger was the only professional hockey player suspended for gambling—until Rowan Starrett came along some twenty years later. The Chicago papers christened Rowan the “Black Heart of the Black Hawks” after his frauds became known.

              It was hard to deny his guilt when he was caught on video being paid off for a game he had just thrown.

              Rowan’s addiction to drugs and gambling led to larger and larger frauds, more game throwing and, eventually, federal prison. He served seven years in Elkton, Ohio’s minimum-security federal prison, and then he was suddenly found dead in his Columbus apartment, an apparent suicide six months after his release.

              “It was pretty harsh,” I agreed.

              The commercial began with Rowan, tall with dark curly-hair like his brother, holding the 1997 Stanley Cup aloft, morphing into his perp walk into the Cook County Jail, the image shifting again to Rick Starrett and back to Rowan, in shackles, being led away from the defense table to jail. “Is this what you really want in Columbus?” flashed onto the screen, followed by ‘Vote For Virginia Ferguson. It’s a Vote You Can Trust.’

              Rick leaned across my desk. “I’m going to file a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission,” he said. “My brother’s poor choices had nothing to do with me. I have never,
ever
bet on anything! I have never ever even had a damned parking ticket!” His words came faster, his eyes shooting fire as he spoke. “She exploited my brother and his death in order to win this election and I… will… not… tolerate… that.” Rick slammed his fist on my desk with each word, bouncing my pens and cigarettes on the wooden surface.

              “So are you going to file a complaint? It’s a story only when you actually file. I’m not getting into some verbal pissing match now that the election is over. I haven’t got the staff right now.”

              “I’m not only going to file a complaint, I’m going to make that bitch’s life miserable.” Rick stood and I stood with him. “You watch.”

              I extended my hand. “I will,” I said.

              Rick didn’t shake my hand.

              “I’m gonna hit Virginia Ferguson where it hurts,” he said. “And she’ll know it when it happens.”

              He turned and stomped from the newsroom, slamming my door as he went.

              I picked my cigarettes up off the stack of budget papers and sighed. Hopefully, by the time he filed his complaint, I’d have everyone back from furloughs to cover the goddamned story.

              I tossed open the window and let in Monday’s cold November wind. It would take the smell of the cigarette I was lighting out into the alley behind the paper.

              I had a lot to think about, the least of which was whether or not Rick Starrett filed an ethics complaint. I had to keep this newspaper going, despite anything else that came my way.

              I suppose the biggest lesson to take away from everything the industry was undergoing was change or die. All I knew was that the state of newspapers today was certainly killing me.

              Staff reductions, people on unpaid furloughs—the business wasn't what I'd remembered twenty-five years ago when I started. At a time when I should have been sailing through the middle of my career, I felt instead like I was hanging on to the edge of a windowsill by my fingertips, ready to fall ten stories.

              I laid the budget figures aside and unfolded Monday’s newspaper across my desk. I turned the pages of the paper, which still smelled of fresh ink. A pressman brought one of the first papers off the press up to my office and it was the best part of the day. It used to be I could take the paper with me to lunch. Most days—like today—I didn’t get to it until I was almost ready to go home.

              We were one of the few evening newspapers left—something I’d feared was coming to an end. The staff started the day at seven-thirty in the morning, banged out a story or two, I gave it a quick edit and, with a few computer commands, slid stories onto a page that existed only on the computer screen in front of me.

              Under normal circumstances, the story and the page would get a second and third look by a copy editor and a page designer, but they were both casualties of the economy. And like it or not, my city editor Dennis Herrick was too busy checking his own pages and stories to give my work a second look. Everything had to be done for the press, which started rolling by eleven, and papers were on the street by noon.

              The
Journal-Gazette
as I knew it was dying, but I wanted to hang on to it.

              I also knew my publisher J. Watterson Whitelaw was getting up there in years—he should have retired ages ago. There was talk of selling the paper to one of the bigger chains, which would mean centralized printing sites miles out of town, a deadline at some god-awful early morning hour, even more staff reductions and corporate types more concerned with the bottom line than the First Amendment.

              Whitelaw’s daughter, a high maintenance blonde who lived in Dallas with her latest husband, was encouraging her father to retire and sell. Maybe the next divorce settlement wasn’t looking as good as she thought and, as a partner in the paper, she would need the money—or maybe Daddy wanted to hang on to the anachronism that was the
Journal-Gazette
as much as I did.

              Around town, I’d heard others wonder how long the J-G would hang on.

              “You know, there’s a lot more money to be made in PR,” said John Porter, a former J-G reporter now toting around the hefty title of vice president of communications for the local Japanese auto parts factory. “Real hours, real money. You could do this, Addison.”

              I’d shrugged him off, but couldn’t help thinking about the irony of working for a man I’d fired.

              Then more and more people kept asking me if I’d consider PR.

              The most recent conversation was last week, right after the Kiwanis meeting. The president of the Plummer County Community Hospital, Fisher Webb, was walking me to my car from the meeting room at one of the restaurants out near the hotels clustered around the highway.

              “I have a position you’d be perfect for,” he said.

              “Oh?” Not really listening, I fished through my purse for my lighter, my cigarette hanging from my lips.

              “I’m looking for someone to head up the hospital communications office.”

              I flicked my lighter and, watching the flame, held it to the end of my cigarette. I sucked the comforting nicotine into my lungs, exhaled up into the night sky and met his eyes straight on.

              “Keep going.”

              “You’d be responsible for the monthly newsletter, press releases to local media and serve as spokeswoman for the hospital,” Fisher said.

              “Oh come on. You can’t see me in front of any goddamn camera, can you?” I laughed out loud. “The first thing I’d say to some Twinkie TV reporter would be ‘and what kind of fucking idiot question is that?’ You want that, Fisher?”

              “You wouldn’t do that, Addison. I’ve known you too long.”

              “Oh, but I could.”

              “I’d make it worth your while.”

              “I’d be your worst nightmare.”

              “We have real insurance. There’s tuition reimbursement if you wanted to go back to school—or if your family members want to go into health care. More money than Whitelaw pays you—at least double that, I’d guarantee you.”

              I inhaled again and raised my eyebrows. “You don’t know what I make.”

              “I know what most folks in your business make, Addison. I could double your salary easily.”

              I unlocked the door of my Ford Taurus and, flicking the glowing cigarette across the newly plowed parking lot, opened the door. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

              I told my husband Duncan about the conversation that night when I back to the farm. He was rinsing the remains of a bowl of ice cream down the kitchen sink. His welcome home kiss tasted like butterscotch.

              “Look into it. Talk to the guy,” Duncan said. “Worst that can happen is you say no.”

              Today, a week after that conversation, I was still ruminating.

              I ran my hand across today’s paper, drawing the inky smell deep into my lungs. I couldn’t leave here, could I? I’d been here since forever. I loved what I did and I wanted to do Rick Starrett’s story in the worst way. Could I be some corporate spokesperson on the other side of the story, tap-dancing around the edge of truth for a big paycheck?

              And if I didn’t take the job, would I have a paycheck at all?

              My office door swung open—it was Marcus.