Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (19 page)

“We need to talk some more tonight.”

“About what?”

“About where this marriage is going.”

“Oh, for god sake. We’re fine. I’m fine. You’re fine. I love you, OK? You just need to get over this idiotic baby thing.” I pushed him out of my way and picked up my Kevlar vest and helmet from the chair in the corner. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t stop to check in with the wire service’s bureau chief. Downstairs, at the hotel’s front door, Kalil was leaning against his dusty Suburban, his Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder. He looked up and down the street before motioning us forward and into the back seat of his armored vehicle.

“What market are we headed for, the
Muraidi market?” Jean Paul asked, attaching a large telephoto lens to his camera.

The Muraidi market had been the target of a suicide bomber several years ago when a bomb attached to either a motorcycle or a vegetable cart, no one was exactly sure, killing 69 people, mostly women and children, and wounding 150 others. Sadr City was one of the poorest areas of Baghdad and a hotbed of sectarian conflict.

“No. Muraidi is not safe today, not for Americans. We are going to one of the smaller markets, where the bomb went off.”

Kalil shook his head and pulled the Suburban out into the street. Our progress was painfully slow, thanks to the innumerable security checks before we got out of the Emerald City and into Baghdad proper.

“It’s never safe for Americans, Kalil,” I answered, sarcastically. “I need Jean Paul to get me photos for a story I’m doing and I need to interview some folks, real people, not some puppet from one side or the other.”

Kalil looked at me, then Jean Paul in the rear-view mirror, his black brows knit together in consternation.
You need to control your woman
, his black eyes seemed to say. Jean Paul met his gaze and then looked out the window. His body language seemed to say
She’s not my problem, not anymore
.

“You take too many risks,” Kalil said to me.

“Why is it everybody wants to protect me these days?” I rolled my eyes in disgust. “I’m not some damn delicate flower.”

The Suburban drove through streets that were both modern and ancient. He never took a direct route, in case we were being followed. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t have traveled directly. US troops had many streets and roads blocked to traffic due to security concerns; a six-block trip could take hours. We were on one of Saddam’s modern highways when traffic slowed to a crawl.

“What’s going on up there?” I asked.

About ten cars ahead of us, a group of American troops circled an old Nissan, their weapons drawn. A woman stepped out of the Nissan, her hands in the air.

I tightened the strap beneath my helmet and opened the Suburban’s door to get a better look.

“Get back in here!” yelled Kalil.

I ignored him. I stared intently at the young woman, trying to determine her age—she wore a
niqab
, an Islamic face veil that only left her eyes visible, above her burka. Fashionable sandals made me think she was young, maybe in her twenties. Jean Paul stood behind his open door, balancing his long telephoto lens on the open window, waiting for the right shot. He made an unhappy sound and moved slightly from behind the Suburban’s door to get the shot he wanted.

She could be harmless, one of many innocent Iraqis singled out in a US security check.

Or not.

One hand clutched a cell phone, a thumb poised above the keypad.

She was a suicide bomber and the phone was rigged to detonate.

“Put it down!” screamed a soldier. “Drop the phone!”

Those were the last words I remembered as everything around me went black and I felt myself being kicked in the gut with incredible force, back into a deep, dark hole.

*****

I have just a few memories of what happened after the explosion: A medic applying a tourniquet to save my leg, feeling someone’s fingers on my forehead. My damaged brain thought it was a priest making the sign of the cross as part of last rites. I learned later it was a second medic writing with my own blood the time the tourniquet was applied. The back of my head felt wet inside my helmet, the bones in my face were smashed, my perfect, white teeth gone and I caught a glimpse of my left leg at an odd angle and the tourniquet above my knee.

“Jean Paul?” my mangled mouth managed to ask.

The younger, wide-eyed medic looked at his more experienced companion, who may have been older by a mere six months. The older medic shook his head.

“He’s going to be OK,” the young one said. “Let’s worry about you.” I learned later that little lie often kept a patient calm and kept them from fighting the medics to get to their wounded friends. It worked with me.

When the young woman blew herself and everything around her up, the doors had blown off the Suburban, killing Jean Paul instantly and injuring me. Kalil, who didn’t leave the vehicle, survived with serious injuries. We were among the nearly two hundred, including the soldiers working the checkpoint, who were killed or injured.

I must have blacked out then—I don’t remember a whole lot after that. I was medevac’d back to the Green Zone, where I was stabilized, then shipped on to a second hospital and finally, with a nurse who never left my side, flown to Landstuhl army hospital in Germany.

By that time, doctors put me into a medically induced coma to control the swelling in my brain. I don’t even remember the number of times I went under the knife. There were a couple brain surgeries, multiple surgeries on my leg, surgeries to dig out the larger pieces of shrapnel, facial and dental reconstruction surgery; I only know that I made it thanks to the dedication of my military caretakers.

Some memories slide in and out. At some point, my parents arrived in Landstuhl, with a VP from the wire service and my brother. They were the ones to break it to me that Jean Paul had been killed. Mom and Dad stood on either side of my hospital bed, each holding my hand as they gently gave me the news. My jaw was wired shut, so I couldn’t do more than feel the tears slid down the side of my face.

Even if I wanted to, I learned later, I couldn’t have. The brain damage I suffered stole the one weapon I’d always used—my words. It took forever for them to come back.

Somewhere through the fog of pain, rehabilitation, and medication, I realized that I alone, in my arrogance to get a story, to stay at the top of whatever heap I thought I was on, was responsible for the death of my husband and Kalil’s serious injuries.

When I got Jean Paul’s belongings back, the long telephoto lens was dotted with his blood. The final picture on the disc inside the camera was of the young woman in her
niqab,
circled by US soldiers, holding the cell phone detonator aloft.

If my appearance upset my parents, they never let on. Later, I learned both Mom and Dad, who after their divorce would fight over whether or not the sun came up in the east, presented a united front to the media. Ironically, Kate served as the family spokesperson as the insanity to cover my story grew and grew and grew.

None of it was enough to quell my ego.

It was a plastic surgeon’s comment that wafted through my fogged brain as I came out from under anesthesia yet one more time, this time for facial reconstruction. I don’t know to whom the comment was made. I just know the visceral reaction I had to it, despite the medication.

“Yeah, we did what we could, but I doubt that she’ll be in front of the camera anytime soon,” he said.

Somebody else murmured something I couldn’t make out.

“Well, at least she had a career in print. That can always continue,” the surgeon said. “There’s always radio, too.”

I knew at that moment I had to come back. I would show them
nobody
could keep Charisma Prentiss down.

I had one more lesson to learn—or did I?

*****

My stomach was roiling by the time I stopped writing. I stood up and stretched, hoping no one could see my hands shaking. Addison, working at the copy desk with Dennis on tomorrow’s advance pages, looked up and caught my eye, arching an eyebrow as if to ask, “Are you OK?”

I shook my head imperceptibly and walked from the newsroom to the ladies room, where I stepped into the last stall, locked the door and vomited.

Back at the row of sinks, I poured a splash from the communal mouthwash bottle on the counter into a paper cup, rinsed and spit.

I stared at myself in the mirror with eyes ringed in exhaustion. I looked as emotionally spent as I felt. I pushed my bangs back from my forehead and turned my head to more clearly see the scars that ran along the side of my face and into my natural brown hair.

Once, that line was an angry red incision, held closed with shiny metal staples across my shaved scalp, but not now. Once it defined everything that limited me—physically, verbally, and emotionally. I’d come far in many ways, but in others, I’d barely taken a step, like the night the freight train came through town, sending me diving beneath my dinette table.

I could have left right then, and Addison wouldn’t have said a word, but my promise to her wouldn’t let me. The second half of my story needed to be written—and today. I owed that to Addison before I disappeared from Jubilant Falls.

I stepped back into the newsroom and ran right into Leland Huffinger.

Chapter 31 Addison

“Dr. Huffinger, I presume?”

The tall, bearded man standing in my newsroom stepped back awkwardly, nearly knocking into Charisma, barely keeping his hands on the folder he clutched. His eyes widened in further shock as he realized who was standing behind him.

“You were supposed to—” he began.

“Lets finish this conversation in my office, shall we?” I said sharply. I pointed toward the door. My reporters stared as the three of us walked by.

Once inside, I slammed the door.

“So you’re the reason I’m losing a reporter?” I pulled a cigarette out of the package on my desk and tapped it hard on the desk surface. “Does that mean I don’t have to pay the private investigator rate you quoted me?”

Huffinger looked at Charisma and then back to me.

“She knows the truth,” Charisma said sharply.

“Yes, I know the truth,” I repeated.

“Mrs. McIntyre, you have to understand it was not my intention to expose Charisma Prentiss. We had talked on several occasions, and I had agreed that I would not expose her whereabouts without her permission.”

“Until you opened your mouth to Marvin McGinnis,” Charisma shot back.

“What is said in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is supposed to be kept confidential. Chief McGinnis broke that confidence, but I still plan on holding up my end of the bargain. My article will not expose your location and I will give you two weeks advance notice prior to publication,” Huffinger said in sad acknowledgement.

“You gonna guarantee that McGinnis might not run out and call somebody at, oh I don’t know, CNN?” Charisma shot back. “Fox News and MSNBC would love to chew me up and spit me out again. They both did their part to trash me while I was recovering.”

“Charisma, I have already apologized to you.”

“At least MSNBC waited until I was out of the mental hospital.”

“Calm down everybody, calm down,” I said, holding up my hands. I could be cool about the situation. By noon tomorrow, I’d have my revenge. Dr. Leland Huffinger would be scooped—provided the chief kept his mouth shut. “While I don’t like losing Charisma, I understand her anger. However, I specifically asked you, Dr. Huffinger, to do some research on our murder victim, Eve Dahlgren. What did you find out?”

“Here’s the biggest item.” He opened the folder he was holding, and handed me a piece of paper. “It’s a birth certificate. Eve Dahlgren had a baby boy in October 1974.”

“What?”
I snatched the paper from him. So, there was no trip to Europe after all, despite what Earlene told me. Thanks to the Texas Department of Health’s Vital Statistics Unit, I held the real reason Eve Dahlgren didn’t show up to the fall term at Texas A&M. I showed the paper to Charisma.

“She named him Andrew, Andrew William Dahlgren. It says it was a live birth, but there’s no father’s name listed,” she said.

Huffinger nodded. “I’m going to bet it was your tornado victim, Jimmy Lyle. If he died in April 1974, that’s about the time she would have just found out she was pregnant. With Andrew’s October birth date, she would have been about a month and a half, two months into her pregnancy before the tornado hit.”

“Where is this child today?” I asked.

Huffinger shook his head. “I don’t know. There are no death records in Texas or here in Ohio and no school records in Austin or here in Jubilant Falls.”

“That means that kid is still out there,” Charisma said.

“He’s not a kid now,” Huffinger said. “He’d be close to forty. He had to have been educated somewhere, gotten a job, maybe even had a family. I couldn’t find anything. It’s like he was a blip on somebody’s radar screen and then disappeared.”

“Eve told Earlene that Jimmy Lyle ruined her life. I’m going to bet that child is the reason Jimmy Lyle was killed,” I said. “What if she brought the baby home from Texas and killed it? Or the baby died, for whatever reason?”

They both cringed.

“Well, it’s a possibility!” I said, exasperated. “We’ve tied her to Bob Martz’s murder and the boy in the creek. What’s one more murder? Nobody here even knew she was pregnant—she could have gotten away with it easily.”

“But a baby?” Huffinger asked.

“Seriously, think about it, you two,” I continued. “Wouldn’t the kid have had to generate some kind of records
somewhere
? As an adult, there should have been a Social Security card issued, some tax records or proof that he had a job.
Something.
”

“If he was adopted by someone, the records would have likely been sealed,” Huffinger said. “I checked some of the online forums where adults were looking to connect with birth parents and didn’t find anything. It’s possible he realized how good he had it and never searched for his mother.”

We were silent for a moment, pondering the bombshell information.

“If Earlene and Eve were such good friends, how could she not know her friend was pregnant?” Charisma spoke up.

I shook my head. “It’s not like today. An unplanned pregnancy was a mark of shame in the mid-seventies, although attitudes were starting to change. And somebody with the social standing Eve’s family had here in Jubilant Falls, they would have done anything, I mean
anything,
to hide that fact.”

“So she could have not known—or she could have kept Eve’s secret all these years,” Charisma said.

I shrugged. “She could have done either of those things, yes. As self-involved as Earlene is and always has been, I can’t see her stepping outside her comfort zone to help anybody, not now, and not in college. And as concerned as she was with appearances and control, Eve probably kept the information to herself.”

“Giving birth in Texas would have kept anyone back home in Ohio out of the loop,” Huffinger said. “She could have come home, left the baby there—or whatever—and returned to college without anyone being the wiser.”

“What else did you dig up on Eve?” I asked him.

Huffinger flipped through a few more pages in the folder.

“She was at a number of different Texas firms and did exactly what you said she did: she went in and cut the fat from companies that had just been taken over. I let the folks I talked to think that I was doing a story on her, following up on her murder. She didn’t leave a whole lot of friends behind. A number of people filed complaints against her with the company and a couple times with the state after she fired them.”

“Anybody ever track her down and try to talk to her after she canned them?” I asked.

“Like our creek victim?” Charisma echoed.

Huffinger shook his head. “Not that I could find out. I couldn’t get the names of anyone she’d canned to speak to them directly, or cross-reference them with missing person reports. There wasn’t time. Even the long-time HR folks I talked to didn’t have a high opinion of her.”

“You know the one person who had a high opinion of Eve?” Charisma asked.

“Her mother, Betty Dahlgren,” I said.

“That home health care worker won’t let us get within a mile of that place, and especially now, since our story is on today’s front page,” she said.

“We’ve got to try, though,” I said.

There was a knock on the door. It was Marcus, holding a fast-food milkshake in one hand.

“What?” I asked.

“A missing senior citizen just came over the scanner,” he said. “Graham went out to chase it, but I thought you might want to know.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s Betty Dahlgren, the same woman you mentioned in your story. She apparently had a GPS attached to her ankle. The 911 caller said she found it cut off and laying on the front porch and the car, a Buick, is missing.”

“Charisma, I need you and Leland to get out to that farmhouse
now
,” I said, gathering up a notebook, pencils and tossing them, along with my cigarettes, into my purse. “Pat and I can chase down Gary McGinnis or the sheriff and see how they are doing, get a photo. Who made the 911 call, Marcus?”

“The daughter.”

“
Daughter?”
Charisma and I chorused.

“Yes. Betty Dahlgren’s younger daughter, Julia, called 911. Why?”

Chapter 32 Leland

“Just shut up and get in the car.” We were in the employee parking lot. Charisma pointed her key fob at her red sedan. The lights blinked and, with a soft click, the doors unlocked.

“Charisma, you have to understand…”

“I don’t have to understand shit. We’re on an assignment, OK?” She slid inside, quickly buckling herself into the driver’s seat. I followed suit, belting myself into the passenger seat.

She turned the key in the ignition, unconsciously reaching up to touch a photograph rubber-banded to the sun visor above her head. It was a European-looking young man with curly black hair smiling confidently, holding a camera with a long telephoto lens as he half-leaned, half-knelt against an ancient crumbling wall. His chambray shirt, dirty jeans and work boots looked as suave as only a Frenchman could make them look. It had to be Jean Paul Lemarnier.

“Is that your husband?”

“Shut up.” She put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot. “I’m not telling you squat.”

We were not en route to the Eve Nil’s family farmhouse as originally ordered. After Addison McIntyre learned murder victim Eve Dahlgren had a sister, she insisted on going there with the photographer Pat Robinette. Instead, Charisma and I rushed to the scene where Mrs. Dahlgren’s abandoned Buick had been discovered, nose down in a ditch on a two-lane road somewhere on the east side of Plummer County.

Within minutes, we arrived at the lonely country road surrounded on both sides by old-growth woods. A wrecker was pulling up to the Buick’s up-ended bumper as a collection of sheriff’s deputies and volunteers stood in circles, examining maps as they planned to search for the old woman.

Charisma pulled off the side of the road and shut off the car. Covered in her icy silence, we walked toward a man in a black uniform. He was medium height, slightly younger than I, with a weightlifter’s bulk through his shoulders. He wore a black ball cap with the word ‘SHERIFF’ across the front; one hand rested comfortably on his service revolver, the other hooked around his belt. He was speaking to Graham Kinnon, the young man I’d seen previously in the newsroom, who nodded as he took down what the sheriff said.

The sheriff, whose name was Judson Roarke, nodded as Charisma introduced me.

“This is at the back side of Canal Lock Park, which is not too far from our missing subject’s home,” Roarke said. “While it’s a good thing that she isn’t posing a danger to others while she’s behind the wheel, I am concerned that she may be injured from the accident. We haven’t found Mrs. Dahlgren walking along the road and deputies have checked in both directions. If she’s not injured and wandering through these woods, my other concern is that the gorge is two miles due east from here. We’ve got to find her before she falls into the gorge. We’re organizing groups of people for a grid search through the woods.”

“I’d be glad to help search,” I said.

“So would I,” Charisma chimed in. “If this goes late, I can take over for you, Graham. Just call me on my cell.”

Graham nodded.

“What do you think was the reason Mrs. Dahlgren fled her home?” Charisma asked Roarke.

Roarke motioned us over to the Buick and asked the tow truck driver to stop pulling the car onto the back of his flatbed. He pointed through the window to the front seat of the car.

“There’s your reason right there,” he said.

It was today’s issue, laying flat across the upholstered seat; the headline ‘Victim linked to other crimes’ screamed across the page.

“It’s likely she read the paper and, in an instant of clarity, realized what was going on,” Roarke said. “Sometimes that happens with dementia patients. If what you and Addison wrote is true, who knows what’s gone on in that family? She might be running for her life. We just need to find her before she gets hurt.”

Charisma shot the sheriff a sharp look. Did he know her secret? Was his comment a reference to her disastrous Syrian story?

“We wouldn’t publish it if we couldn’t verify it, sheriff, ” she said. “Twice.”

Within the hour, three groups of volunteers, each with a deputy leading, spread out along the side of the road and began walking through the woods. Charisma and I were in the group walking to the east. I was the last searcher on the deputy’s left, with Charisma the next searcher in line next to me. Each person was about ten feet from the other, too far to hold an intimate conversation, but close enough for him or her to hear a yell if Betty was found.

I swept the underbrush along with the rest of the walking group, catching glimpses of Charisma out of the corner of my eye. She never looked at me—at least I never caught her looking. Instead, I listened as her steps, like mine, crackled on the fallen sticks and branches underfoot and she called out the old lady’s name.

The alcohol fog in my head began to clear the more we walked, thanks to the cool clear air. The smell of the deep woods reminded me of that final camping trip in southwestern Pennsylvania with Noah and his mother. I still loved her then—
we
still loved each other—and we were looking forward to a new stage in our lives, one where Noah was officially launched and we could go back to that time where our lives were our own.

The further I walked among the thick, heavy trees, the more that last family weekend came back to me. Eschewing tents, we’d slept in hammocks strung between the pines—Noah in his and his mother and I in another. I’d held my wife close in my arms as we stared up at the stars. The campfire’s embers crackled and sputtered in the night, sending up golden sparks into the sky and I wanted our weekend in the woods to last forever.

Pamela.
Her name was Pamela, not Bitch Goddess. I hadn’t spoken her name in years, even in my thoughts. But that night as we hung suspended between the pines, we couldn’t leave the alcohol behind. My speech that night was slurred as I spoke her name into her hair.

I looked to my right. Charisma and the line of other searchers were still walking deliberately through the woods. Their steps were purposeful, but not fast. No one wanted to miss anything—a piece of jewelry or clothing, the contents of a purse—that could tell us we were on the right road to finding Mrs. Dahlgren.