Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (11 page)

Chapter 17 Leland

“My name is Leland and I am an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for five years, three months, one week and two days.”

It was an hour after my breakfast with Charisma and I sat in a circle of fellow addicts at the Methodist Church’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We’d gone around and introduced ourselves, ending with me. The attendees were the kind of folks I figured I’d see in a town like Jubilant Falls—an obese police officer, a couple men in suits, several men in work boots and flannel; a woman who looked like someone’s grandmother held knitting in her lap. The younger woman beside her had multiple body piercings and looked like she’d just graduated college.

Over the past five years, it was the only place I felt safe. Among my brother and sister addicts, I could be honest and open here. I didn’t know these folks any more than they knew me, but we all knew we were powerless over alcohol and served as each other’s lifelines to sobriety.

“Welcome Leland,” said Steve, the group’s leader. “What brings you to Jubilant Falls?”

“I’m a professor. I’m here doing some research.”

There was a chorus of “Welcome” and “Glad to have you” from around the circle.

“Would you like to tell us your story?”

“Well, like I said, I’ve been sober five years, three months and two days,” I began slowly. I closed my eyes and told the story of how alcohol shaped my marriage and then destroyed my family. It wasn’t the first time I’d said the words in this environment. When I was finished, I opened my eyes to see the knitting grandmother wipe a tear from her cheek. “But in the two days I’ve been in Jubilant Falls I’m as close to losing my sobriety as I’ve been in a long time.”

“Why is that?” one of the men in suits asked.

“I’ve met someone through my research and for the first time, I think I’m...” My words caught in my throat. “I’m having feelings for her.”

“Awww, that’s wonderful!” the grandmother said.

“Thank you,” I said. “When I come to AA, I know I’m among friends, wherever I go. There’s something very comforting about being among people who’ve been shaped by the same demons as I have. It’s become a cocoon, someplace I can escape from the world. She’s changed all that and it terrifies me.”

“Tell us about her,” someone else said.

I hesitated before answering. Should I reveal Charisma’s secrets here? Everything revealed by members at AA meetings was kept strictly within the meeting room walls, but would that extend to her? I decided to take the chance.

“She came here to Jubilant Falls to hide. She’s been through hell and she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s here until she’s ready.”

“Is she an alcoholic? We would welcome her here and keep her secret,” Steve said.

“She was a war correspondent. She was severely wounded and a suicide bomber killed her husband on a road in Baghdad. She suffers from PTSD.”

The policeman, who spent the meeting hanging his head staring at the hat in his lap, looked up suddenly. I kept talking.

“But the truth is, these feelings scare me to death. I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve used AA to hide from the world. Even if we’ve just met, you all know me. You know my struggles because you’ve struggled the same way. I’ve relied on that to keep me sober. I’ve never told anyone outside of AA about my story, but for some reason I told her. Now that I have, all I want to do is reach for a bottle.”

“Don’t do that,” Steve said. He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and handed me a business card. “Reach out to one of us instead.”

I nodded and took the card from him. I might be calling him sooner than I thought.

The meeting continued, closing as each one does when we all clasped hands andd said the Sobriety Prayer: “God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as the pathway to peace...”

Back in Philly, I would have taken comfort in those words. I would have returned to my classroom or my apartment, knowing I was strong for another day. Today, however, as I walked back to my hotel at the edge of the downtown, I knew my struggle had just begun.

*****

I knew I wouldn’t hear from Charisma until later this evening, so rather than sit in my hotel room and not do anything I changed into running gear and drove out to Canal Lock Park, the state park just outside town, for some exercise.

A red sedan that had seen better days was the only vehicle parked in the lot. To ensure my solitude, I parked my rental car in the far corner.

Being outside gave me time to think. How was I going to handle the situation with Charisma? Keep my feelings to myself and miss a second chance at happiness? Open my heart and risk rejection? And what if she did reject me? Could I take that without crawling back inside a bottle? More than anything, I wanted to get to know her, not just for her story but also as a person.

The June sun shone through the leaves and danced on the ground. I heard the occasional bird in the trees, but I was alone on the beaten path, which ran along a deep, rocky gorge. I picked up my pace, moving to a jog, hoping the exertion would clear my head and sooth my agitation.

My thoughts began to run as well. What was I really looking for? Companionship? Sex?

She’d been in my arms twice now and I was shocked at my reaction. I shuddered as I remembered the tempting way her collar dipped between her shoulder blades as we walked up the stairs to her apartment last night, her lavender smell and the feeling of her hands on my back as I clasped her to me this morning in the parking lot. Was this the reaction of a horny old prof who found himself ogling female students on the last day of class? Or was I just a man who was all too lonely?

I stopped to catch my breath and clear away the sudden thoughts of Charisma’s soft hands clutching my naked back as we moved together in the darkness of my hotel room. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the fantasies of her naked skin against mine, her legs wrapped around my hips, and how I imagine she’d cry out when we climaxed.

Stop it.

I began running again, harder and faster this time, to further clear my head. I was well down the trail when my cell phone rang. I found a rock to sit down on and answered the call. My heart skipped a beat: it was Charisma.

“I need a favor,” she said. Her words were choppy and short and she didn’t say hello.

“Anything,” I said, instantly regretting it.

“I’m not alone.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m at an interview, with my boss. I need you to do some research on somebody. She’s the victim of the homicide I told you about this morning.”

“The one your publisher is in jail for?”

“Yes. This town is really, really small and word gets around quick. There’s nothing ethically wrong with us looking into the victim’s past, but Addison just doesn’t want anybody to know we’re doing it.”

“Sure. I’d be glad to help. How about we talk about it over dinner?”

This time, Charisma was silent.

“I don’t go out to dinner.”

“How about I get some carryout and bring it to your apartment?”

“That’s fine.”

“What sounds good?”

“There’s a Chinese place on Second Street, the Mandarin Moon. Their food is good.”

“See you at seven?”

“Make it six.” She hung up.

I slipped my cell phone back into my pocket and continued my run, hoping the exertion would burn off my growing need—for a drink or for her, I wasn’t sure.

*****

At the appointed hour, I was standing on the sidewalk in front of her door, holding white carry-out boxes in plastic bags, waiting for her to come to the door.

The door swung open and I sucked in my breath. Charisma had on a thin, long-sleeved flowered blouse, buttoned up over her bosom; tight jeans accentuated her slim legs and she wore white sandals. Her face was flawless, with makeup covering the scars along the left side of her face.

Had she done that for me?

“Hi,” she said and smiled. This wasn’t the harsh, all-business reporter I’d talked to the night the inn burned or on the phone this afternoon. The haggard look I’d seen nearly fourteen hours ago was gone. She seemed relaxed and glad to see me.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I brought Kung Pao chicken, beef lo-mein and fried rice,” I said. I felt like a sixteen-year-old boy, all fear and hormones. I hoped she couldn’t sense that.

How long had it been since I’d been on a date? Or was this really a business dinner? I wasn’t sure how to consider it. Bitch Goddess and I married at twenty-seven. Noah was born two weeks before my twenty-ninth birthday; my life effectively ended when he died at twenty-three and I was fifty-two. That meant any dating etiquette I had stored went back least thirty years—when Charisma was in kindergarten.

Her fingers brushed my hand as she took the bags from me and I caught a whiff of lavender. “Come on up,” she said.

In the little studio, she had the dinette table set with a pair of china plates, mismatched silverware and iced tea in plastic glasses.

“It’s not Martha Stewart, but it works,” she said as she placed the carryout containers on the table and opened them. I took a seat across from her as she spooned generous helpings from each container onto each plate.

“So what exactly do you want me to look into?” I asked. “I bought a copy of today’s paper, so I know the name of your victim and how she died, and the name of your publisher, but that’s about it.”

“It’s kind of a long involved story,” Charisma began. “But here’s the basics: Eve Dahlgren and my boss Addison McIntyre apparently went to high school together—Eve was a year ahead of Addison and the head cheerleader. She was also a real bitch, intimidating other members of the cheer squad, physically violent, that kind of thing. During Addison’s junior year, there was a really bad tornado that pretty much destroyed Jubilant Falls. From what she told me, there was a boy her age, Jimmy Lyle, who died in the tornado and who was dating our victim. He was found on his grandfather’s farm with a posthole digger in his chest.”

I grimaced as Charisma continued her tale.

“I’m not all that familiar with tornados, but I guess they are pretty common here in Ohio and some pretty odd things can happen. Addison told me about a piece of straw that got shoved through a tree branch or something like that. So when Jimmy Lyle was found with the posthole digger through his chest, everyone thought it was just one of those weird things that happened in the tornado. There’s a bronze plaque in front of the city building with the names of all the tornado victims—his is on it.”

“What does this have to do with Eve Dahlgren?”

“Addison told me she always believed there was something fishy in Jimmy Lyle’s death—nothing to back it up, just a feeling she had. Since the high school was destroyed in the tornado, the kids were all bussed to a school in the neighboring county to finish the school year. But not Eve—her parents transferred her to a boarding school in Columbus, where apparently she met Earlene, who is now charged with killing her.”

“OK. Again, what does this have to do with your victim?”

“I’m getting there.”

Charisma was completely focused on telling her story. There was no trace of the post-traumatic stress that sent her into hiding. I could see how she would be a formidable force in the field. But I couldn’t understand why something that dated back to her boss’s high school days was important.

“Addison met today with one of the other cheerleaders, who told her that she also never believed Lyle died in the tornado, that Eve Dahlgren killed him,” Charisma finished.

“Why would Earlene kill Eve? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Earlene and Eve went out this weekend and apparently argued, according to what Earlene told my boss. We surmise the argument started when Eve let it slip that she killed Jimmy Lyle back in high school. Maybe Earlene said she was going to the police about it, a fight ensued and for once, Eve got the worst end of the deal. The police say Earlene’s prints were found on the steering wheel of the car where Eve was found dead.”

“Then why would your publisher walk away from the scene? Why wouldn’t she call the police? Why wouldn’t she turn herself in or claim self-defense?” I took a drink of my iced tea. “This definitely doesn’t rise to the level of some of the stories either one of us have covered in the past, Charisma. Why should either one of us waste time on this?”

“Because we don’t know a lot about where Eve Dahlgren has been between 1994 and when she showed up dead in the park downtown.”

“And your editor wants to pin a death that clearly occurred during a natural disaster on somebody she didn’t like in high school so her boss doesn’t hang for murder? No matter what led to this Eve woman’s death, Charisma, trashing the victim is pretty tacky. I’m surprised you’d get involved in this.”

Charisma slammed her fork on the table and her brown eyes sparked with fire.

“Trust me, none of us, least of all my boss, like Earlene Whitelaw and I am
not
involved in trashing the victim. We have reason to believe Eve Dahlgren might be involved in another crime. You may be used to a big city like Philadelphia, Leland, but here in this little town, before you know it, our efforts will get back to the prosecutor, who will scream that we’re poisoning the jury pool and slam a gag order on any kind of coverage. That’s why neither Addison nor I can look into it. That’s why we need you to do it.”

“So your boss knows about me then?”

“Yes.” Charisma looked away. “I told her the night of the fire.”

“Before or after I called the newsroom to talk to you?”

“After I’d screamed at you and hung up—but I didn’t tell her the truth.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Addison thinks that these scars came from a car accident, one that killed my parents and my husband, the same story I told you. She thinks you’re a private investigator hired by my in-laws’ family to look into the accident. It was all I could come up with at the time.”