Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (15 page)

Chapter 24 Charisma

Who could have done this to me?
Who
?

I paced around my studio apartment, shaking with anger and fear. How did the chief of police find out? Who could have told him? Or did he, like Leland, do a simple computer search, dig up my past and was so damned star-struck he had to open his mouth?

Leland.
Who else could have done this to me except Leland? But why tell the police chief? Where and how did they connect?

I should have known better. I should have listened to that little voice inside me, the one that said he was only working to get me to lower my guard. The feelings I had, that was all crap—manipulations by a man claiming to know what it was like to be the cause of losing someone you loved. Taking me in his arms to soothe my tears, to hide me from those reporters seeking information on Earlene’s arrest, placing a kiss—
that kiss
—on the back of my hand… It was all crap.

I got conned—I was stupid enough to let it happen, to open up my heart. That whole story he told about his son dying in a drunken car wreck, about his nasty divorce? It had to be made up, anything to get him to tell me made up, anything to get him to tell me my story, to get me to say everything that happened that horrible, horrible day when Jean Paul died.

I grabbed my cell from the dinette table and punched in Leland’s number.

“You bastard!” I screamed as soon as he answered.

“What?”

“You broke your promise to me! You exposed me!”

“I have not!”

“Bullshit! The police chief, Marvin McGinnis, knows who I am! ‘We don’t get reporters with qualifications like yours…’” I mimicked. “‘Jubilant Falls must seem awfully dull after Baghdad.’ How the
fuck
would he know who I am?
Huh?
What did you do to me? What did you do?”

He was silent for a moment. “I was at my daily Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. There was a police officer there, it must have been the chief. I mentioned you.” His voice sounded sad, but I wouldn’t be sucked into his game this time. I wouldn’t feel sorry for him.

“You
mentioned
me? How the hell did you happen to
mention
me?”

“What we say at AA is supposed to be kept within the walls of that meeting. Obviously, the chief didn’t do that. I’m sorry.”

“You just couldn’t wait to tell somebody you’d found me, could you? You just couldn’t wait!” My voice shook with rage.

“That’s not true. I promised you I’d keep your secret in the article. I wasn’t going to reveal your location there. I was going to give you two weeks notice before the article came out, so you could give notice or tell your boss or whatever you wanted to do. I even went along with your ruse that I was a private investigator. I agreed to every condition you set.”
“Until you get among your damned AA buddies and you can’t wait to tell them who you’ve found.”

“No, Charisma. That’s not what happened.”

“What the hell did you say?”

Again, he considered his words before answering.

“I said I met someone that I thought I was starting to have feelings for. That I was scared those feelings would impact my sobriety.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“You can believe what you want. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted a woman in my life. I’m falling for you.”

“I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night, Leland. I’m not going to fall for that crap. You can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”

I disconnected the call and threw my cell phone on the couch. Did he really expect me to believe him? Falling for me, for this scar-covered body?

I picked up one of the couch pillows and with an angry scream, threw it across the room.

It landed in front of the bureau where I kept my clothes, next to the only closet in the apartment. I walked across the carpet and yanked open the closet door. Crammed into a corner was the one duffel I’d brought with me when I came to Jubilant Falls. It was military issue; I’d dragged it from one corner of the world to another. After I got out of the hospital the second time, it held everything I had when I came to this stupid little town.

I yanked it into the middle of the floor and, grunting with each angry movement, began pulling all of my clothing out of my bureau drawers, throwing pants, pajamas, tee shirts and jeans at the duffel bag. When the bureau was empty, I did the same to my closet, tossing dress pants, blouses and my winter coat at the duffel. Some of the clothing landed inside, most of it landed on the floor nearby.

I had to leave tonight.

After I packed, I’ll walk over to the newsroom, leave a resignation letter on Addison’s desk, get in my car and hit the road. I could leave a note for my lawyer landlord downstairs: I could tell him to keep my deposit, the dishes I bought, the towels in the bathroom and even the art on the wall. The rent was paid through the end of the month.

I needed to disappear now.

The plan had never been to stay here in Jubilant Falls. I was going to get back on my feet here, before moving on to the next step in my career… if there was going to be a career. But where could I go? To my mother’s apartment in Maryland? To Dad and Kate’s condo in Washington? Neither appealed to me. I couldn’t go back to New York. Who would hire me? A newspaper or newspaper service? Not after that Syria article. I couldn’t go on camera without someone commenting on my face and my scars. Maybe I could work as a producer someplace? My passport was still valid—maybe an overseas broadcaster, like Al Jazeera? My Arabic and Farsi were a bit rusty, but each would come back, despite my injuries.

It would, wouldn’t it?

The intercom from my downstairs door buzzed as I yanked open the bathroom cabinet. I stomped over and pushed the button.

“Fuck you, Leland! Fuck you and all you stand for and all you’ve done to me!” I screamed.

“Charisma, please. Let me in.”

“I think you’ve done enough for one day.”

“What I told you on the phone was the truth. I was telling the members of the AA group how frightened I was because I was falling for you. I was afraid I would lose my sobriety.”

“And you just happened to mention who I was.”

“Let’s not do this on the street. Let me come up. Let me explain myself.”

I let my thumb off the intercom button and stomped downstairs.

I threw open the door. Leland stood there, clutching his Philadelphia Phillies ball hat in his hands. Those blue eyes that once drew me in looked sad and filled with pain. It was a good act, anyway.

I motioned for him to follow me up the stairs, but didn’t say anything in greeting. Once inside my apartment, I turned and folded my arms.

“Explain yourself,” I said.

“I was at an AA meeting, like I told you. I said you were a former war correspondent and your husband was killed by a bomb in Baghdad,” he said. “I said you were severely wounded.”

“And how many female war correspondents were injured
and
widowed in Baghdad in the last few years? Huh? One—
me
.” Enraged, I pointed at myself, my pulse pounding in my temples. “It’s not hard to put all those pieces together, Leland.”

He hung his head. “I know. I just counted on the confidentiality of the meeting.”

“And I counted on you keeping your mouth shut at all times, which you didn’t do.”

“I thought I could trust the folks at this meeting.”

Suddenly, all my anger evaporated, leaving me filled with an incredible sadness.

“There’s a reason I never let anyone tell my story, Leland. You and I know how this business works. I’m the prize ‘get’ for anyone looking for the next big headline. I know my story will be spun six ways to sunset and I’m not ready for that. Somebody will interview me, then their version shows up in print or on TV slashing me to ribbons for that Syria story. Somebody else will make me the poster child for traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress or whatever box he or she thinks I’ll fit into. Fact is, I don’t want to be spun. I don’t want to feed someone’s ego—whether that is some big TV reporter or a journalism professor like you. I want the truth to be told, but my way.

“I’m still coming to grips with my limitations. I can’t multi-task like I used to. I’m not the pretty blonde I used to be—I cry every time I take off all my clothes and see every scar that marks my body. I have a titanium rod in my left leg and a scar there that looks like I’ve been filleted. There’s blue pieces of shrapnel embedded up and down the left side of my body the doctors couldn’t get out, like some kind of buckshot tattoo. How can I let any man see me like that?”
Leland started to speak but I held up my hand for silence.

“Crowds scare me sometimes,” I continued. “It’s a good thing I’m the only one living in these apartments up here because some nights I wake up screaming. Last week, a freight train came through town early in the morning after I’d been out on a story and I was convinced it was an incoming missile. I dove beneath the table, screaming for Jean Paul. I couldn’t find my helmet. All I could see was his camera lying in the dirt and covered in his blood, just like the day he died. Then the train whistle blew and I realized where I was and I broke down.”

“I want to make you feel safe. I don’t want you to have to go through that alone.”

I shook my head and continued my story. “I went back to work long before I was ready and got pulled into the situation in Aleppo through a combination of things: an editor who wanted to be first, the second source I never sought out, and my own ego, which didn’t take into account how damaged I really am. I was so damned close to the edge with my PTSD, sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was some kind of hallucination. If that’s what really happened, I was psychotic and needed to be in that mental hospital, not hung out to dry on every network and in every newspaper.”

“What mental hospital?”

I shook my head. He wasn’t going to hear that story now.

“Somebody should have been looking out for me and forced me into treatment, but they weren’t. The woman that everyone knew as Charisma Prentiss was a commodity, not the wounded, damaged woman that I am. They needed the ratings, the next story and what about me? What about me?

“So now you know why I came to Jubilant Falls. I thought I could work here. I thought I could hide here. I thought I could heal, figure things out. You want to keep me safe? Well, you’re a little too late. You think you have feelings for me? That’s too damned bad.”

“What are you going to do now?” he asked, gesturing at my clothing on the floor.

“I’m going to disappear. I have to. It won’t be long before either Marvin or Gary McGinnis says something to somebody, who says something to somebody else, and then the word gets out and I’m not in control of the situation anymore. It’s not ego for me to say that—my own well-being ranks ahead of somebody else’s scoop.”

“Are you going to tell Addison?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What about the Eve Dahlgren information you had me dig up?”

“You can fill Addison in tomorrow and collect your check. I won’t be there.” I opened my apartment door and showed him the stairs. “You can go now. You’ve got what you want—spin it any way you see fit. I hope it gets you where you want to go.”

Without a word, Leland walked out through the door. I closed the door behind him, sank to the floor and sobbed.

It was nearly one in the morning by the time I had my duffel packed and ready to load into my car. It sat next to Monsieur Le Chat’s cat carrier by the door. Monsieur Le Chat sat atop the carrier, his tail whipping angrily.

I tried to call Addison, but the voice mailbox on her cell phone was full. At this time of the morning, I didn’t want to call her home phone. Instead, I found myself walking around the corner to the newsroom.

I could leave a note, load my car and be on my way, I reasoned. Where that would be, I still didn’t know. Head east and show up on either of my parents’ doorsteps? Head west and see what happens? I slid my key into the pressroom door and slipped inside.

Across the darkened room, the light in the employee break room was on, as was the coffee pot. Was somebody here or had both just been inadvertently left on? Who knows, the way staff from all departments came in and out of the building. I switched off the coffee pot, but left the light on as I passed through to the stairs and up to the newsroom. I would need it on my way back out.

I jumped back as a man’s tall, hulking shadow passed across the newsroom door.

“Oh hi, Charisma.” It was Chris Royal, the sports writer. “What brings you in tonight?”

“Oh, um, I forgot something… My camera.”

Royal, holding a stale donut and a cup of coffee, didn’t seem to catch my nervousness as he blathered on. “I got a west coast Reds game on rain delay. I’m waiting until two, and then taking what story the AP already has on the wire and getting the hell out of here. You got a police call or something? I didn’t hear anything on the scanner.”

He leaned back in his office chair, donut crumbs in his scraggly beard. Like most sports writers I’d known, he was a creature of the night. Most of the staff never saw him unless they were here in the evenings. He had on a dirty tee shirt, wrinkled khaki shorts and his hairy legs and feet disappeared, sockless, into a pair of beaten tennis shoes. He’d apparently been at the J-G for a couple years, and managed to establish a reputation for decent sports writing, but sometimes-questionable hygiene.

His presence meant I couldn’t clean out my desk or write my resignation letter. What did I have in my desk anyway that I couldn’t walk away from? A stack of notebooks? An old coffee mug? All I had was my camera—Jean Paul’s camera, actually. No family pictures, not even a photo of Monsieur Le Chat. Nothing I couldn’t leave behind. Besides, Leland would be more than happy to fill Addison in on what happened.

“No, I, um, have an assignment first thing in the morning,” I said.

“Oh, OK.” Royal brushed the remaining donut crumbs from his hands and beard and turned back to his computer.

Over at my desk, I opened a drawer and pulled out the familiar camera bag.