Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (7 page)

Chapter 11 Addison

Earlene stared back in terror from the other side of the jail’s Plexiglas visitor’s station.

She wasn’t the beauty I’d seen at the office. There were no blonde extensions in her hair, no industrial-strength drag queen false eyelashes framing her eyes and only holes in her ears where fancy diamond studs once were. Orange scrubs, white cotton socks and open-toed rubber sandals replaced the Lily Pulitzer summer dress and Jimmy Choo stilettos she’d worn to work.

Without make up she looked like the fifty-something female she really was, wan, tired and terrified, nothing like the high-maintenance blonde that made my life hell.

“I didn’t
do
this, Penny!” she hissed into the phone receiver that connected us. “I
didn’t
kill Eve Dahlgren! Yes, we argued but I wasn’t—”

“Earlene, shush!” I said, sharply. “These conversations are recorded and they will be turned over to the prosecutor to be used against you if they think it’s going to help their case, so shut up.”

Earlene clutched the receiver with both hands and her eyes widened even more.

“I’ve got to get out of here! I can’t spend the night here!” she cried. The deputy leaning against the wall behind her looked up from the game he was playing on his cell phone.

“That’s not going to happen, not on a first-degree murder charge. You’re going to have to just suck it up. You can take it for one night not sleeping on Egyptian cotton sheets. You talked to your dad, I assume?”

She nodded frantically.

“He said your lawyer will be here tomorrow for your arraignment. I’m sure your father has managed to engage the best in the business for you. Do what your lawyer tells you, Earlene.” I felt like I was giving the queen of Texas divorce courts a lesson on the criminal justice system.

She nodded again.

“You realize that this is going to have to go on tomorrow’s front page.” Would I have to say this to anybody else? Sometimes I wasn’t sure with Earlene.

“I know.” She seemed to recover some of her old aplomb and sat up straight. “Just do me a favor and don’t use my mug shot. Use the headshot from my column, please? And I suppose you want a quote from me?”

“The last thing I need is your lawyer chewing my ass because he had no idea you were talking to the press. If anything, it’s best that he be your spokesperson, not me.”

Earlene frowned. “I didn’t do this Penny. I don’t need any low-life lawyer to say that for me. There were things that people don’t know about Eve Dahlgren and I hope somebody like you can dig it up.”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to give the prosecutor, any kind of ammunition, one way or another.

I hung up the receiver on my side of the Plexiglas and waved good-bye. Dealing with her while she was behind bars was not going to be easy, not for her lawyer and not for me. I may not have liked Eve Dahlgren for all her high-school queen bee crap, but I didn’t want to see her dead. I didn’t like Earlene either, but I couldn’t see her railroaded for a murder she didn’t commit.

After I got this first story written and up on the web, I’d start looking into what made these two good friends suddenly so toxic.

*****

Charisma was the only one in the newsroom when I got there a few minutes later. Fogged in confusion and shock over Earlene’s arrest, I hardly paid attention to her.

“Holy shit,” I said half to myself, as I slid into a chair at the copy editing station.

“I saw Gary McGinnis at the fire,” Charisma began. “He said there was a homicide?”

“Yeah. Of all the people on this earth…” I hardly listened as she continued to talk, waiting anxiously for my computer to boot up. Maybe I even answered back, I don’t know. I couldn’t shake Earlene’s terrified face, minus the make-up and fancy clothes, behind that bulletproof glass, but still delusional enough about her own self-importance to make certain I got a quote from her for the paper.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t go after it when he came and got me…”

I snapped out of my reverie, remembering that Charisma’s coverage of the Jubilant Country Inn fire was the reason I was chasing down the Eve Dahlgren homicide.

Before I could tell her what happened, her phone rang.

“Don’t call me that!” she screamed into the phone. “Don’t call me here ever again! Do you hear me? That person is gone forever!”

Charisma slammed the phone down and sobbed.

“Addison, I am so, so sorry…” she said through her tears. “I didn’t mean to be so unprofessional.”

I left my computer and pulled up a chair next to her.

“What’s up, kiddo? What’s going on?”

“They… found… me,” she said, through heaving sobs.

“Who found you?”

She was silent for a moment.

“Some private investigator, hired by my late husband’s family. They want to sue the car maker.”

“And he wants to talk to you about the accident.”

Charisma wiped her eyes and nodded.

I reach over and patted her shoulder sympathetically. “You knew this had to happen sometime, especially with your byline in the paper and on the website every day. I told you that when I hired you.”

Keeping her PTSD, her unbelievable amount of medication and the Cincinnati neurologist appointments under wraps was difficult, especially in an atmosphere where working together for years built a team I’d never trade. I kept her secret because I wanted somebody else solid on the staff—and because, I wanted, when she was ready, to see her move on to a bigger and better paper. She might not believe she was ready for it, but I could see in the future she would be.

Now, it looks like someone was getting there before she was ready to talk.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I had just hoped that I could come here… and heal.” She wiped her eyes again and sighed. “I wanted to let people know on
my
own time, when
I
was ready.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“He was at the fire tonight. He was staying at the Inn. He heard Gary McGinnis call my name and introduced himself.”

“Do you know that’s what he really wants?”

“I don’t know. The family blamed me for a long time about what happened. There was a lot of bad blood, part of the reason why I left town,” she said. “I need to think about what I want to do, whether it would open up a lot of old wounds to talk to him.”

“Let me know what you decide to do. You know I’ll support whatever decision you make. Meanwhile, we need to get these stories done and up on the website.”

I returned to my computer station and began to bang out the story. The first few paragraphs were easy: the arrest, the murder, her father’s quote and how Eve and Earlene met in high school and remained friends throughout the years.

But what else did I have to say about Eve? Why was she in town? Where had she been these last several years and what brought her back? Maybe that was what Earlene wanted me to look into.

I ended the story with a simple sentence: “Whitelaw is slated to be arraigned in Common Pleas Court today.” What else could I say? I scribbled a Post-It note asking Graham to cover the hearing and walked across the newsroom to stick it on his desk, which backed up to Charisma’s.

I looked over the top of the computer at her. She’d stopped crying and was focused on the fire photos splashed across her screen. Not one of them was a bad picture: I’d have a rough time tomorrow morning choosing which one to use for the front page.

What time is Earlene’s arraignment?
I wondered.
Maybe I ought to call Graham and tell him rather than leaving a note. That way, if he needs to adjust his schedule in any way, he’s gotten plenty of notice.

I punched his home phone number into the phone on his desk. Two rings on his end and a female voice answered.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Isabella? What are you doing at Graham’s apartment?”

Chapter 12 Leland

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

I’d fallen asleep watching the television when the electronic ring of my cell phone roused me. The moon was full and shone across my hotel bed; an infomercial for women’s skin care flickered in the blue light of the TV screen. I didn’t even ask who was on the other end of the phone.

“You know why: You’re Charisma Prentiss.”

“I’m not. And if I were, I wouldn’t talk to you without a lot of conditions. Steep conditions.”

“That depends on what those conditions are, Charisma.” I swung my feet over the side of the bed.

“If I was who you think I am, why would I want someone to tell the world where I was?”

“It wasn’t hard to find you. I Googled your name together with Jean Paul Lemarnier, who was working for the same wire service as you the day he was killed—”

“Why do I have to keep telling you I am
not
who you think I am? Even if I was, I don’t want to be found!”

“And I’m saying I don’t believe you. If I can find you, so can anybody else!”

Charisma disconnected sharply.

I looked over at the digital clock beside the bed. It was nearly four in the morning.
God, did this woman ever sleep?
If she was wrangling with the same guilt and horror I had, probably not nearly enough.

I flicked through my cell phone with my thumb, searching for her number. I found it and called her back.

“Listen, I know what it’s like to feel responsible for the death of someone you love. Let’s talk.”

She was silent for a moment.

“OK,” she whispered.

Within minutes, I stood in front of her apartment door. Jubilant Falls’ Main Street was empty. The red, yellow and green lights of the traffic light at the corner reflected off the lawyer’s office window beneath her apartment.

I knocked and a light appeared in the stairwell. I heard footsteps come down the steps; the door jerked open and Charisma Prentiss stood in front of me.

She wasn’t wearing the make-up I’d seen on her face at the corner or at the fire. There were pockmarks on her face and dark circles beneath her brown eyes. She didn’t look like the confident professional I’d seen just a couple hours ago when the inn burned. She was haggard, worn and trembling. She ran one hand through her hair as she reached with the other to shake my hand; puckered scars ran along her scalp and down her neck.

“You OK?”

She sighed. “Hot spots developed at the inn after I left. I had to go back when they sent two engines. The place is completely destroyed now.”

“It was hard for you to cover, wasn’t it?”

“Not that anyone could tell.”

She motioned for me to come inside and I followed her up the stairs. The collar on her summer blouse slipped between her shoulder blades exposing larger, jagged scars as she clutched the stair rails on either side of the faded blue wall.

Once inside her studio apartment, she silently motioned for me to sit down on the couch. She reached inside the half-size fridge, pulled out a soda and offered it to me.

I shook my head as I took a seat. “So why did you call me?”

Charisma popped the can open and took a sip. “I wasn’t going to until I came back from the fire the second time.”

We were silent. Charisma took another sip from the soda can; her hands shook like a heroin addict in need of a fix.

“When the inn walls collapsed, I’ll bet you flashed back,” I prodded. “I’ll bet when that happens, you go back to those places where you faced the most danger, don’t you? Most times it’s Baghdad, sometimes it’s Aleppo, sometimes, it’s Damascus, isn’t it?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I kept on.

“This time, wherever you found yourself—the tribal regions of Afghanistan, one of the markets in Baghdad, wherever your mind took you—it was all you could do to keep from diving under the nearest fire engine.”

“No!” She glared at me.

“The PTSD won’t leave you alone, will it? It’s hard sometimes for you to cover it up, to not let people see, but you still struggle. The day that bomb went off in Baghdad—”

“Shut up, goddammit, shut up!” she screamed. I ducked as the soda can hit the wall above my head, splattering fizzy brown liquid.

“Admit it. You’re
the
Charisma Prentiss. I just want to know how you ended up here, in some dump called Jubilant Falls, Ohio, writing for a third-class paper like the
Journal-Gazette
.”

“It’s not a third-class paper.”
“C’mon! What’s the circulation? Ten thousand, tops? Truth is, it’s not the wire service and you’re not at the top of your game anymore.”

She sighed. “I’m here because I wondered if I could ever do this job again and Jubilant Falls seemed like a good place to hide from my in-law’s family.”

“I understand wanting to hide, but that’s the story you hide behind. It won’t work with me.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

Charisma leaned back against the dinette chair and sighed. The fat cat I’d seen in the window earlier came out from behind the couch and rubbed against her leg. Charisma scratched its head as she spoke.

“Nobody, not even my boss knows the truth about who I am, not the people I work with, nobody. Some folks are starting to ask questions, saying they think I look like someone they know, but I’m not ready to tell anybody anything. I wasn’t when you left that first message on my phone.”

“Are you admitting to being Charisma Prentiss?” I asked. I turned to wipe the soda-spattered couch cushions.

She dipped a shoulder as if to acknowledge her real identity. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know about your injury, your recovery, about Jean Paul, and how you ended up here.”

“If I am who you think I am, you can’t reveal where I am. If I need to disappear again, I will.”

“Again, I can’t do that. If I found you, someone else could, too.”

“Then no, I’m not. I’m a widow who happens to have a well-known name. My husband and my parents died in a car crash in Connecticut.”

“Give me the date and the location.”

She opened her mouth and closed it.

“I didn’t think you could. Here’s what I’m looking for: Charisma Prentiss was going to be part of a series of interviews with others who are no longer in the news business because of big stories or events that…” I started to say, “blew up in their faces,” but glancing at her scars, I reconsidered. “… Fell apart spectacularly. It would be part of an article.”

“And that public implosion was the first one you thought about.” Her words were flat.

“So you are Charisma Prentiss.”

“No.”

“You had to have known—”

“
If
I was the Charisma Prentiss you think I am—”

“OK, somehow, the real Charisma Prentiss would have known about all the attention surrounding her injuries and her recovery. The real Charisma Prentiss was too much of a risk-taker and had too big an ego to not want to be in the spotlight again. That’s why she went to Syria to get that story.”

Charisma shot me a harsh, sidelong glance. She reached down and picked up the cat, scratching it behind the ears. I sensed her emotion building as the cat, irritated at the attention, jumped from her lap. Charisma stood and walked to the window, sweeping the curtain open and staring down at the street.

I followed and stood next to her, watching as the sun began to peek over the horizon and the traffic begin to build in the street below.

She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and began to sob, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I just want to be able to do what I used to do,” she wailed. “I want to be the person I used to be. I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen again.”

I put my hand on her shoulder and without thinking, drew her toward me.

“I know, I know, I know,” I whispered into the top of her head.

Charisma clutched my back as she buried her face in my shirt, sobs racking her body. She still smelled like smoke from the fire, but there was a lavender scent I suddenly wanted to find the source of. Her breasts were firm and pressed against my chest; I could feel her short legs against mine.

How long had it been since I’d held a woman in my arms?
Entirely too long, apparently.
I felt an unprofessional stirring and released her before it turned into a full-blown embarrassment.

She looked up at me and wiped her big, brown eyes. “I didn’t want you to see me cry. I’m sorry.”

I wanted to take her face in my hands and kiss the scar from its beginning along her temple, down past her ear and into the space I’d glimpsed between her shoulder and collarbone. Instead, I took her hands in mine and stepped back.

“I’ve been where you are. I was at the top of my game, just like you were, when my personal life imploded and took my career with it,” I said. “Remember I said I know what it’s like to feel responsible for the death of someone you love?”

“What happened?” Charisma didn’t take her hands from mine. My heart skipped a beat.

“I’m an alcoholic. I was married to an alcoholic who was also in the news business and together, we raised a son who probably had a drinking problem.”

“Had?”

“Noah and I were coming home drunk from a bar one night. The car hit a tree and he was killed. Noah was driving. My marriage fell apart and I lost my job. I was with the
Philadelphia
Inquirer
when it all happened. I was pretty well
persona non grata
there until a friend got me a job teaching journalism.” My voice was hoarse.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Huffinger.”

“Please. Call me Leland.”

“Leland,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry you lost your son.”

It had been years since my name had been spoken so softly. Perhaps she understood my pain, no doubt she understood my loss, but after more than five years of poisonous invective from the Bitch Goddess, I never thought I’d hear a woman speak so tenderly again. Water crested in my eyes and I turned my face away. Charisma pulled her hand from mine to reach up and wipe away the single tear, but I was quicker. I couldn’t let her touch me—not like that, if at all.

I let go of her other hand and stepped back, hoping to recover my professional demeanor and hide my pain. No one, outside of my fellow alcoholics at AA meetings knew my story. What made me reveal it to her?

“So how do you want to do this?” I asked, clearing my throat. “I’d like to talk to you more extensively, maybe shadow you at work?”

“I haven’t admitted that I’m the person you think I am.”

“Come on! Yes, you are! I can see the resemblance in your face. It’s a little different through the cheekbones, but it’s still you, Charisma Prentiss! What if I came in and talked to your boss?”

“No you
can’t
. I suffered a lot of facial trauma in the accident. Doctors had to rebuild nose and my cheekbones.”

“There’s video from every major news outlet of your surgeons talking about what they had to do to fix your face. I’ll bet I could take your photo back to them and they’d identify you.”

“I’d still deny it. I’d say they were wrong.”

“You’re fighting an uphill battle. Just say you’re Charisma Prentiss. Admit it and let me interview you. Let me talk to the folks you work with.”

“You show up in the newsroom and start asking questions and I disappear, for good. You can take the blame for it.”

“What if I agree to your conditions? What would those conditions be?”

She chewed her lip thoughtfully.

“OK, here’s the deal: I’m working on a couple stories about some unsolved murders. The police have formed a task force and they’re hoping my stories will spark some clues. You can come with me while I’m working outside of the newsroom and we can talk then. But that doesn’t mean you have any input on these stories while I’m working on them. When you publish your article, you still can’t tell anyone where I am.”

“So you are admitting you’re
the
Charisma Prentiss?”

“I’m admitting it to you. You say anything to anyone else—anybody I work with, anybody I know or even come in contact with—and this whole thing is off.”

I’d found her.

I nodded in agreement. Awkward silence hung in the air between us, as if something else needed to be said. Was I just overreacting to her body against mine? Her soft words of comfort touched a part of me I’d long buried. Did she want to say something else? What was it?
Leland, would you have coffee with me? Dinner?
I would if she asked, but I wasn’t going to scare her off by asking first—not yet. Or was I the one who was scared?
Keep it professional. Just because you think you felt something doesn’t mean she did. What woman would want a man who’d killed his own son, even accidentally?

I started to head for the door.

“Well, you have my cell number. Just give me a call and I can be ready whenever you want me to go with you.” My hand trembled as I handed it to her.

By the time I got out the door and back to the street the sun was up. For the first time in five years, I needed a drink.