Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) (16 page)

              Right now, I needed to head downstairs. Who were the two suits Watt wanted me to meet? And what had Dennis been telling me earlier this week? The office gossip was that more furloughs were coming. Watt’s retirement had also been a long awaited event; his high-maintenance daughter had wanted him to retire for ages. Suddenly, it hit me: these folks could be buyers.

              As many small newspapers struggled through the recession, a lot of larger chains were circling like vultures, picking up smaller, family-owned publications for a song. Many times, they’d buy up a paper, gut the management, replacing editors with “content managers” and writers with “content providers,” asking journalists to become “multi-platform,” providing print and Web copy, shooting and editing video while tweeting out details of the upcoming story to subscriber’s smart phones. It resulted in a lot of bad journalism in a lot of simultaneous places, rather than one excellent story on just the front page.

              I took a final drag on my cigarette, tossed it into the alley below and closed the window.

              So was it a pair of corporate vultures waiting for me downstairs? And if not, who were they? Well, hell. If they were buyers, how much latitude would I have? Could we continue to pursue the stories we’d done in the past? Would something like the Starrett brothers’ story get a green light? Who knows? I honestly didn’t know how Watt was going to react when I put the whole situation in front of him. But if I was going to be fired, I might as well go out in a blaze of glory.

Chapter 27 Marcus

            
 
I was silent until we got outside of the
Journal-Gazette
, slipped in the Lexus and shut the doors.

“You never did go running, did you?” I asked.

PJ gave me the house keys holding the Lexus key fob and shook his head.

“No. I couldn’t let you know that Graham heard from her,” he said, hanging his head. “But I never, ever talked to her, never identified myself as your son. Graham never identified me as anything but PJ the intern. He did all the talking, asked all the questions. I just listened.”

              The car engine began to purr as I pushed the ignition button. “Probably wise. Stick to that story. Before this is all over, we may end up in court,” I replied quietly.

              We pulled into the sparse Saturday traffic, both of us silent as I came to the first stoplight. The light turned green and I steered the car into a left turn, heading for home.

              “So what did she tell you?” I asked. How much of that drunken night in Seattle did he hear? How much did Charlie embellish it? Or was she so drunk she didn’t remember and just thought that we’d spent the night in some sort of intoxicated tryst when she woke up in my hotel room?

              “She’s been through a lot, Dad,” he began.

              “The first rule of journalism is to assume everybody is lying to you, at worst, or, at best, has some kind of agenda,” I replied sharply. “I would argue that Charlie represents both of those situations. I hope you didn’t fall for her story. She hasn’t exactly been the victim in all this.”

              He nodded. “I agree—but she’s claiming that this all started when you guys met on the plane to Seattle.”

              “It did.”

              “Charlie said she went into rehab six months after you guys met in Seattle, for alcohol dependence. It wasn’t her first time. She and her husband Deke—or Rowan, or whoever he is— are both addicts, she said. They met six years ago in rehab and got married after they got out.”

              “What was Deke’s drug of choice?”

              “Pills, gambling I guess, and alcohol. They stayed sober for a while, and then started using again, this time worse. Charlie went back to drinking. She said she was drinking pretty heavily during her book tour.”

              PJ was silent for a moment.

              “Dad, what happened between you and her in Seattle?”

              I took a deep breath. “We were drinking. She came on to me, I said no.”

              “Why didn’t you include that when you first told us about Charlie?”

              “I didn’t think it was something that you needed to know. You all may be adults now, but there are still things that parents keep secret.” I sighed. “And I thought your sister wouldn’t take it well, no matter what I said.”

              “Probably—she’s such a drama queen. Charlie said she woke up in your hotel room, but you weren’t there. Said she was so drunk she couldn’t remember whether or not anything happened.”

              “I wouldn’t do that to your mother,” I said firmly. “Charlie passed out. My door was half opened, so I brought her in the hotel room, laid her on the bed and found myself another room for the night.” He didn’t need to hear that I found her thong wrapped around my wallet.

              PJ sighed. “Charlie said Mom called in the morning. She said she laughed and said something off-color when Mom asked her where you were. Mom got pissed and hung up.”

              “Oh God. What did she say?”

              “She said, she said…” PJ’s face colored to the roots of his hair. “That you were probably off signing someone else’s flyleaf the way she’d gotten hers signed.”

              There was an empty bank parking lot to my right. I pulled the Lexus into the lot, put it in park and laid my head on the steering wheel. Only Charlie could make an autograph session sound dirty.

              “It’s a wonder your mother didn’t divorce me right then,” I whispered. “Charlie and I never had sex, PJ. I have never been unfaithful to your mother.”

              PJ sank against the car door. “I know, Dad.”

              Without lifting my head, I asked, “What else did she say?”

              “She said she pretty well stayed drunk for the next couple months, then went into rehab. As part of rehab she said she was supposed to ask for forgiveness from the people she’d hurt while she was using. You were one of those people she was trying to make amends with, but when she called the house, you wouldn’t ever call back.”

“She called constantly—you know that,” I said. “Would you have called her back?”

              “No. I really think she’s kind of nuts, whether she’s sober or not. Is she the reason why we changed our phone number?”

              “Yes. What else did she say?”

              “Apparently Deke didn’t go back into rehab with her—but she felt she needed to apologize to him for the way she acted during the book tour. She told him the story and he went ballistic, said he was going after us to get back at you.”

              “Did Detective Birger hear all this?”

              “Yes. What’s worse, she said Deke disappeared at the beginning of last month, right after she got out of rehab, and she hasn’t seen him since.”

              I sat up straight and stared at the roof of the car.

              “Dad?”

              “Yes?”

              “Do you think this guy is really that dead hockey player?”

              I’d been at the
Journal-Gazette
when Addison reported the death of Rowan Starrett, as well as the stories of his run-ins with the law and his ban from professional hockey. I wasn’t involved in covering any of it, since I covered the city and county beats, but kept up with the story in the same way someone can’t stop watching any kind of train wreck. And ten years ago, Rowan Starrett was Jubilant Falls’ favorite celebrity train wreck.

              That Rowan was still alive and being blamed for Kay’s shooting and a politician’s murder was stunning.

              “I have no idea, son,” I said. “It’s a little crazy, but I guess it’s possible, if his brother has been in on the whole thing, like Addison said.”

              “So what happens now?”

I put the car in gear and slipped back into traffic.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But I think the situation has changed—and not to our advantage.”

Chapter 28 Addison

              The door was open to Watterson’s dark office when I got downstairs, but I knocked anyway.

              “You wanted to see me?” I asked.

              He waved me in. He was alone. I sighed in relief, knowing I wouldn’t be forced into some kind of goddamn happy-face verbal tap dance for people I didn’t know and had no idea of their intentions.

              “Sit down, Penny, sit down.” Watt indicated one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. “We need to talk.”

              “What’s up?” I asked as I settled into the chair.

              How often had I asked that question? Certainly it was hundreds of times over the last twenty-some years. The first time was during my first week at the
Journal-Gazette
, sitting with the editor who’d just hired me but thought my request to cover the occasional crime story wasn’t exactly something for “girls.” He’d wanted to get Watt’s blessing on letting me do it, “just to see if I could handle it,” in addition to my beat covering whatever fluff he could throw my way.

              He was probably hoping I’d come back crying or vomiting or both, with a story that couldn’t be deciphered. He’d backed off after I covered my first homicide and the staff photographer got a snarky shot of me calmly interviewing a witness standing next to a wall of bloody handprints. The men in the newsroom shut up after that and the black and white photo sat on my desk for years.

              The next time was five years later when the next editor, Jess Hoffman, was assaulted in the newsroom—come to think of it, over a story Marcus was doing—and Watt promoted me to editor.

              Was this going to be the last time I’d come into this office? I wondered. I needed to check in with Fisher Webb over that hospital PR job. Maybe it was still available.

              “Penny, I’m not going to bring up everything that happened here this afternoon, but suffice it to say that first thing on Monday we need to make certain that we have some sort of security plan in place for our staff,” he began. “The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is the people you saw here today.”

              “Who were they?”

              “I’m not going to beat around the bush with you, of all the folks in this building. I think we’ve worked together long enough to know that I’ve been thinking about retiring for a while.”

              I nodded.

              “My daughter, Earlene, has wanted me to retire for some time now, as you know,” he said. “She’s not interested in taking over the paper and I don’t think her matrimonial track record indicates I should ever consider approaching her husband. He might not be around in six or eight months and things could get ugly.”

             
Thank God
, I thought to myself. Watterson’s only daughter Earlene was slightly younger than my own fifty-some years and she was on either her fourth or fifth marriage. Tall, buxom, platinum blonde and spoiled since birth, she’d perfected the art of picking rich husbands, then picking them clean. She was currently in Dallas, married to her plastic surgeon, but everyone expected that to change, hopefully before Botox permanently froze her face or her implants began to leak.

              The thought of her running the
Journal-Gazette
caused my stomach to churn.

              “I do have to tell you I am considering selling the paper,” he said. “I’m just getting too old for this, Penny. I’m close to eighty. It’s time for me to retire to my condo in Fort Myers and spend my days golfing.”

              “I hate to hear that, Watt, but it doesn’t surprise me,” I said.

              “I was going to bring it up in one of my next department head meetings, but since you saw these visitors here, I wanted to let you in on what was going on.”

              “What newspaper chain were they from?”

              “No chain. They’re brokers.”

              “Brokers?”

              He nodded. “There’s quite an active business in picking up distressed newspapers these days, as I’m sure you know. There’s no need to lie: the
Journal-Gazette
is hurting financially and has been for some time. Maybe some new blood in here can bring in some new revenues. I’m getting too old and too tired to keep trying.”

              “What about the newsroom? What will happen to them?”

              “That’s up to whoever buys the place, but in my mind, your department can’t be cut any more and still do its job. But you know I can’t make those promises.”
              I nodded.

              “All I ask is that you keep this information under your hat for now. You might see some folks you don’t know coming in and out. I wanted to minimize that, bringing them in on weekends or after hours to keep office gossip to a minimum, but obviously that didn’t happen today. Once I decide what to do, though, we’ll do a story and slap it on the front page.” He lowered his head and hunched his shoulders, making his expensive suit look ill fitting and baggy. Suddenly, he looked very much like the elderly publisher he was. He waved his fat old hands in my direction.

              “Now go home, Penny. Spend some time with your family. Leave an old man to his thoughts.”

*****

              “So how was your trip to Columbus?” Duncan looked up from the kitchen table. He had covered the kitchen table with old newspapers and was disassembling a motor from one of the portable milking machines. “Find out what you needed?”

              “And then some,” I said, hanging my jacket on the hook beside the kitchen door, next to my barn jacket. I stopped at the kitchen counter long enough to pour myself a cup of coffee, and glanced into the living room where Isabella was lying on the couch studying.

              She’d come so far since her bipolar diagnosis, although the Lithium had caused her to put on a few pounds. She turned a page in the textbook and I caught a brief glance of the stars tattooed across her inner wrist. They covered the scars from her high school suicide attempt.

              “Hey, baby,” I called out. “I’m home.”

              Isabella looked up, smiled and waved, then went back to studying.

              “She’s got a big test Monday,” Duncan said, moving motor parts so I could join him at the table. “She hasn’t moved off that couch all day. So, how did it go?”

              “Well, nobody could identify Rowan from the old mug shot we had of him—not surprising, since, as I found out later, a couple years in the slammer and a serious addiction have pretty much ruined his looks.” I stopped to take a sip of coffee. “Then Dad and I talked to Rick Starrett’s secretary, Rosalee Levenger, who told me that Rick regularly sent money personally to what she thought was his ex-wife as some sort of extra child support payment. When I told her that the courts handled all that, she seemed a little confused.”

              “So what happened next?”

              I sighed. “Well, about that time I got a call from Watterson Whitelaw. Apparently Graham was interviewing the woman who was stalking Marcus. Remember the suspect who we all thought shot his wife? Marcus happened to drop in at the newsroom after visiting Kay and saw this woman there. Watt was there on some other business and there was a huge confrontation in the newsroom. Police were called, the whole nine yards.”

              “Wonderful.”

              “Well, the best parts are yet to come. Turns out this woman who is after Marcus, this Charlotte De Laguerre, which is a pen name I guess, is married to the man we all knew as Rowan Starrett. Only she knows him as Deke Howe. This all came out after the police hauled Charlotte away and we compared pictures. And then the real fun started.”

              “Hmm.” Duncan didn’t look up as he picked up a screwdriver and began to tighten a tiny screw. “What else happened?”

              “Watt had these two corporate types with him throughout all this mess—”

              “Great first impression.”

              “Exactly. Turns out they’re brokers. Watt’s finally going to retire, but he’s going to sell the paper. His daughter doesn’t want it.”

              Duncan looked up sharply from his work. “What does that mean for you?”

              There’s a saying, “Behind every successful farmer is a wife who works in town.” That was the situation with Duncan and me. My job, while it didn’t pay a whole lot, did provide health insurance and a steady check when harvest was poor or milk prices tanked. The hours were crazy, the demands on my time were insane, and I definitely gave the
Journal-Gazette
more time than it deserved, but, outside of the money Duncan’s Henhouse Graphics sometimes generated, my paycheck was the safety net that sometimes kept this farm going.

              “I don’t know, honestly,” I said, reaching for his grease-stained hand.

              “Have you talked to Fisher Webb any more about that PR job at the hospital?”

              “I haven’t had time. I’d like to get this mess with the Starrett boys straightened around before I decide.”

              “You make them sound like some sort of Wild West gang.”

              “It may not be too far from the truth.”

              “The job may be gone by then. You know the money he offered you would solve an awful lot.”

              “I know.” Duncan was silent for a moment. “You’re not much of a hockey fan, are you?”

              “Huh?” His change of direction surprised me.

              “If Rowan Starrett wanted to truly disappear, he should have chosen a better fake name.”

              “Why?”

              “In hockey, a deke is a move to fake out another player—it’s short for decoy. And Gordy Howe was one of hockey’s greats.”

              I raised my eyebrows, surprised. “Really? That almost makes sense then as a fake name.”

              Duncan nodded. I could see fear in his eyes—either that I’d lose my job at the
Journal-Gazette
when it was sold or that I’d waited too long to tell Fisher Webb my decision on the hospital PR job.

              I could also see that he knew I wasn’t going to let go of a story until it was finished. My mind was already churning about what direction to take next.

              I didn’t know. I was stuck. I needed to talk to Rick Starrett to learn the background of the relationship with his brother, what happened to make them continue a ruse supposedly begun by their mother. Why didn’t they reveal it when Rowan was drafted into the NHL or Rick started his bid for the Statehouse? Had it just gone on so long they didn’t know how to break the bonds of their own lies? Or did keeping it going serve some other purpose?

              How was I going to find out?

              Steve Adolphus certainly would pounce on me if he knew I’d gone back to the jail. And even if the newspaper was going to be sold, I needed this job, at least for a little bit longer.

              I couldn’t call or visit without it being recorded—I knew that now—and once again feeling the wrath of the prosecutor.

              And what about Charlie? Her story could be the basis for getting Rick’s charges dismissed, if there was any truth to them. What kind of a drunken mess of a marriage did she have with the man she believed to be Deke Howe? And why keep it going if he abused her so badly?

              I needed to talk to Anna Henrickssen, Rick’s lawyer, and tell her what transpired today in the newsroom. She would have to take it from there.

              Or did I? All I should do was write the story.

              Graham’s story certainly shook the nuts from the tree—Charlie was proof of that. Maybe a second story would do the same. But how could I write one if I didn’t know all the facts?

              I looked over at Duncan. He’d gone back to tearing down the milking machine motor. He looked up at me, grimaced and shrugged.

              “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

              “What do you think I’m going to do?” I answered, taking a sip of the strong black coffee.

              He sighed and gave me a lopsided smile.

              “Go get your story. Before anyone else does.”
              I kissed his cheek and ran upstairs to call Anna Henrickssen.

*****

              Sitting on the bed Duncan and I shared, I dialed Anna Henrickssen’s home number.

              “Miss Henrickssen? It’s me, Addison McIntyre. Have you got a minute? I know it’s Saturday and you’re probably—” What
would
a young, single lawyer be doing in Jubilant Falls on a Saturday night?

              “No, it’s OK. I’m not doing anything. What have you found out?”

              I stopped before answering. How much should I reveal? This is why journalists stay neutral and just report the facts. I wasn’t her investigator paid for getting the evidence to clear her client.

              So where did my loyalties lie? With a man I’d known all my life? A man I’d gone to high school with and watched as his star climbed personally and professionally? Or with my reporter whose wife lay in a hospital bed with a bullet wound, thanks to that same man’s brother or sister-in-law?