Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) (9 page)

Chapter 14 Graham

After deadline Tuesday, Addison gathered us all together in her office for a staff meeting. Most of it was plans for the upcoming Labor Day weekend: Who would cover Monday’s parade, how much time Pat could give to that weekend’s festival, Canal Days, for front page art, coverage for the first day of school, crap like that. I doodled aimlessly on the notebook on my lap.

“And I have one more announcement.” I looked up as Addison smiled at Elizabeth. “One of our own, Elizabeth here will be moving on to bigger and better things. She’s accepted a position at the
Akron Beacon-Journal
.”

Addison led the congratulatory applause as Elizabeth blushed; Marcus, Dennis and Pat all joined in. It was difficult, but I managed a smile.

“That’s great news!” Marcus Henning said. “When’s your last day?”

“I start September fifteenth in Akron, so whatever the Friday before that is,” she answered, glancing at me.

“Let’s go out to dinner that night for an official send-off then,” Addison said. “Sound good?”

Everyone around me nodded.

“You available that night, Graham?” Addison asked.

“Sure. I’ll be there.” I tried to sound pleasant.
Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe there will be a four-alarm fire.

There were a few other items Addison needed to go over, but in a few minutes, thank God, the meeting broke up.

“I’m heading down to the sheriff’s office,” I called out, heading for the door.

“Kinnon, let me walk down there with you—I need to go to Aunt Bea’s to get a soda,” Elizabeth said.

I didn’t answer.

“Hey, Kinnon! Wait up!” Elizabeth grabbed her purse and followed me down the stairs, out the front door and onto the sidewalk. At the corner, she grabbed my shoulder. “Graham, hang on! Quit walking so fast!”

“What do you want?” I stopped abruptly.

“You’re going to make these next two weeks a living hell for me, aren’t you?”

“No, I think you did that all by yourself.”

I turned away and started back down the sidewalk, heading east on Main toward the Sheriff’s Office, a block past the big stone courthouse.

“Graham, wait, please!”

“I’ve got work to do, Elizabeth. I’m supposed to meet with Sheriff Roarke in about five minutes,” I called over my shoulder. I didn’t look back. I just kept walking.

Chapter 15 Addison

After Tuesday’s staff meeting, everyone scattered.

“I’m heading down to the sheriff’s office,” Graham Kinnon called out.

As slow as it’s been, maybe he can dig up a story, I thought to myself, closing my office door. Before I checked on tomorrow’s advance pages, I needed to touch base with Gary McGinnis. In a moment, I had him on the phone.

“Hey, it’s me, Penny.”

“So what’s up?”

“I called the church Katya Bolodenka told me she attended as a child in Chicago and the priest there hadn’t heard of her,” I said. “I even called two other churches with the same name and they never heard of the family either.”

“I didn’t dig up anything on her on my end either,” he said. “No previous tax records under that name, no credit rating anyplace.”

“I looked up the deed to that farm on the county Website,” I said. “She paid cash for it. There’s no mortgage.”

“Where would anybody get that kind of cash to buy an entire farm? When I asked her yesterday what her income was, she told me her art and the farm were her only income.”

“You saw her?”

“Right after I left that message on your phone yesterday, she and Graham walked into my office.”

“Really? Nobody said anything to me that she came here.”

“Apparently someone slaughtered two of her cashmere goats—one Sunday night and one early Monday morning. Graham thought that it could be tied to Doyle McMaster, so he brought her to my office to talk about it. ”

“But you can’t help her with that, since she lives in the county,” I said.

“I know. She originally was looking for information from you about McMaster. Apparently her farm manager was at Sheriff Roarke’s office filing a report while she was talking to me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Just what I’d told Graham the other day—that we suspect McMaster may be involved with a hate group that could be moving into this area.”

“Considering the fight he got into with Duncan and Jerome, that wouldn’t surprise me. And there’s another one—that guy Jerome Johnson. You couldn’t find anything out about him?”

“Nope. You said he’d lived in Ashtabula? I sent his BMV photo to the chief of police in Ashtabula and he’s never heard of him.”

“Maybe he just didn’t have a record.”

“The Marines have no record of him either, Penny. I should have been able to find something there and I couldn’t.”

“So the story she fed me about him being a guard at the embassy in Moscow was a load of crap.”

“Looks like it.”

“Then they’re both lying. I didn’t find Katya in any school records. She told me she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have no record of any female student under that name. What do you think is going on?”

Gary was silent for a moment.

“Russian organized crime is known for trafficking in heroin and women,” he began slowly. “We’ve had a hell of an increase in heroin use, just like everybody else. The location of that farm, not far from the highway like it is, could be a perfect drop spot. Drugs or women or both could be moved in and out of there without anyone knowing.”

“You think so? I thought the Russian mob was centered on the east coast. You think they would move this far west? Are there any Russian crime families headed by women?”

“Anything is a possibility.” Gary shrugged.

“What about protective custody of some sort? Witness protection?” I asked.

“If they were under federal witness protection, we’d know. Besides, some of the stuff she is doing could be considered pretty conspicuous—I read that story you wrote on her farm. Protected witnesses are generally told to keep a real low profile. A story like that could get her thrown out of the program.”

“Would the feds normally have a handler like Jerome Johnson living on the property?” I asked.

“Witness protection can involve twenty-four-hour security, if someone is supposed to testify in a federal trial of some sort, for example. And you’re assuming Jerome is the federal agent.”

“She’s too tiny to be his protection,” I said dismissively.

“Penny, I’ve seen some little females who could kick ass up one side and down the other. That kind of a story would be a good cover—the poor little Russian lady who can hardly speak English and needs a big, strong man to help her run her farm. The same could be said if she’s running drugs or a prostitution ring out of that farm. Johnson could be her enforcer in that situation.”

“But the only suspicious person I saw there was Jerome Johnson. He creeped me out.”

“No one else? Women or men?”

“Just livestock—llamas and alpacas. And I was inside the house, too.”

We were both silent.

“I don’t think she’s in protected custody,” Gary said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not that.”

I sighed. “There’s something going on there that we don’t know anything about and I don’t like it. I mean, what if the story I wrote on her is a complete fiction?”

“What if it is? That doesn’t make you look bad—it makes her look bad. Would that be a story? So what happens then? You can’t do a story on any suspected illegal activity until an arrest is made. Besides, who is going to believe that a yarn-spinning llama farmer is also a drug dealer? I don’t think it fits together. Let the police look into what may or may not be going on at that farm.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I just don’t like being fooled by somebody.”

“That’s our business, Penny—you and me both, we get lied to on a regular basis. At any rate, whatever is going on, their livestock doesn’t deserve to be killed like that. I’m strongly leaning toward McMaster being stupid enough to keep harassing Jerome Johnson by killing his animals. I’d bet the rent that Judson Roarke does too.”

“We’ll have to see what Graham comes back with. He was on his way over there when I called you.”

“Keep me in the loop,” Gary said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

The rest of the afternoon was routine. I sent Earlene an e-mail telling her about Elizabeth’s new job and letting her know I’d like to fill the position as soon as possible. After that, I checked tomorrow’s advance pages for content and errors; finding only minor tweaks, I shipped them downstairs to pre-press and sent Dennis home for the night. Marcus came back from city hall with a story about a street department employee who was retiring after twenty-five years; Pat was getting the photo. Elizabeth’s story on the new principal was still in the queue, so that could run in Wednesday’s paper.

God, I need some unvarnished human misery, I thought to myself. How much more boring can a page one get?

“Hey, Addison, can we talk for a minute?”

I turned around to see Graham looking somber. “As long as you’re not giving notice, too,” I said, smiling.

“No, ma’am. Can we talk in your office?” As usual, Graham’s face betrayed nothing.

“Sure.”

“I got a call from my mother this afternoon,” Graham began as he took a seat in one of the office’s old wingback chairs. “I need to take some time off.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “You’ve never spoken much about her. I hope she’s OK.”

“Yeah, she and my stepfather live in Indianapolis. She’s fine—my stepfather has had a slight heart attack, nothing serious, but she wants me to come home for a few days.”

“Well, we still have Elizabeth and as slow as it’s been, there shouldn’t be any problem. I can catch whatever breaks,” I said. “How much time off have you taken this year, outside of holidays?”

“None.”

“Why do I even ask? Go down to see Peggy, get me a vacation form and I’ll sign it before you leave tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So anything happening at the sheriff’s office?”

He shrugged. “Not really. They got a few grants for some DUI checkpoints for the holiday weekend. I can write that up before I leave this afternoon.”

“I talked to Gary McGinnis. He said Katya Bolodenka was here to see me yesterday and you took her down to see him about her goats being slaughtered.”

Graham nodded. “Her farm manager Jerome Johnson was supposed to be filing a report with the sheriff, but when I checked on it this afternoon, they didn’t have anything. Sheriff Roarke said Johnson didn’t want to file a report, but just wanted extra patrols around the farm.”

“Hmmm. That’s interesting.” I wasn’t going to spill what Gary had told me, since we didn’t have any proof of anything—including their real identities. And if they were involved in something illegal, like Gary said, it wasn’t a story yet. I was just being nosey and I knew it—all because I just didn’t trust Jerome Johnson.

“See if you can get either one of them to go on the record about it. If there’s someone out there targeting animals, others might want to know that.”

“I checked. There have been no other reports of any other farms being targeted.” He stood up. “I’ll get that form and then I’ll run out to their place to see if they’ll talk to me.”

My desk phone rang—it was Isabella’s cell phone number. I waved Graham out of my office.

“Hi, Mom!” Isabella sounded excited.

“What’s up, baby?” Since her suicide attempt in high school years ago and her diagnosis of bipolar disorder, I never could quite take a situation at face value when she sounded overly excited or overly sad. She was good about taking her Lithium and submitting to the frequent blood tests that monitored her medication levels, but I still worried.
“Dad and I are down here at Buchanan Motors and I’ve found a car that I like. Could you come down and look it over? Please-please-please-
pleeeease
?”

I relaxed and smiled. “Why do you want me to look at it? Your dad is the mechanical member of the family.”

“I know, but it’s so cute! Dad says it drives OK. He got under the hood and said the engine looks fine.”

“Sure. I can come down for a little bit, but I’ve got to come back to work afterwards.”

Down at Buchanan Motors, Isabella and Duncan, with his black eye just beginning to subside, were standing beside a little two-door Ford, painted candy-apple red. It was third in a row of used vehicles on Buchanan Motors’ lot. It was an automatic, with an AM/FM radio. It would get her through the rest of college and be reliable transportation to her first job, whatever that would be.

“Do you like it, Mom? Do you like it?”

“It’s cute, yes,” I said.

“It will eat up about half of her savings,” Duncan said. “But it looks like it’s a good car. I told her she made a good choice.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Angus Buchanan sauntering toward us.

I nodded at Duncan and waved at Angus. “I don’t have any complaints, then,” I said to Duncan. “Go ahead and get it. Hello, Angus!”

The car dealer reached out with his thick hand to shake mine.

“Hello, Addison,” he said. “You guys decide on a car?”

“Yes,” said Isabella, clapping her hands. “I want this one.”

“Good choice. Need financing?” He began to steer us toward the showroom.

“Nope,” Duncan said.

“Yeah, you farmers always pay cash, except when it comes to equipment,” Angus joked as he opened the glass door with one hand and pointed toward a corner desk. “You can just head over there to George—he’s my business manager and he’ll take care of the paperwork for you. I need to ask Addison about some other business.”

“What’s up?” I asked as Duncan and Isabella headed inside.

“I just want you to know that I really like this new publisher, this Earlene.”

“Well, thank you, Angus,” I said. “I’ll tell her that.”

“I really like the idea of this editorial board, too,” he continued.

“Editorial board?” I asked. A focus group was bad enough, but an entire editorial board? I shivered at visions of weekly meetings where I defended my front page to people who had no clue about newspapers.