Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (9 page)

“Then why didn’t you come out the front door?” The pie-face boy asked.

“Because the staff inside knew you goons would do this. Give us a little private time, will ya?”

I buried my face in his chest, hoping my tremors passed for a daughter’s grief.

“We didn’t mean to intrude,” a female reporter said. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

The group turned and walked back to the front of the building. When they turned the corner, Leland released me. I felt a surprising twinge of regret that his arms no longer encircled me.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” I whispered. I stepped back and brushed my hair from my eyes. “What were you doing back here?”

“After you hung up on me, I walked over here, hoping I could talk to you. I saw the group at the door and figured there was no likelihood of you coming out the front door. I took a chance and walked back here, just as you opened the door.”

“Well, you were right.” I twisted my hands together and sighed. “I was heading over to the diner for a cup of coffee. I guess I owe you one, now, huh?”

“Then lets go get one.” Leland smiled.

I looked into his blue eyes and nodded.

Chapter 14 Addison

After speaking with the remainder of the newspaper staff, I returned to my office to finish up today’s edition.

The meeting with advertising went as expected. Until Watt came in to lead the show, if he did, I put the senior-most ad salesperson in charge and cautioned them as well about speaking to anyone about the case. The hostility against Earlene was more palpable in advertising; it took more work to convince them to keep their mouths shut.

Graham had returned from Earlene’s arraignment by the time I got up the stairs; as expected, she pleaded not guilty, but was not granted bail.

I had a few minutes to looks through the clip files in the back of the newsroom to get some more information on Eve to add to our too-thin story, but what we had ended in the mid-1990s, about twenty years ago.

Charisma’s fire story was done; Dennis said she’d stepped out for some breakfast.

I looked over Dennis’s shoulder to see how he’d placed the story on the page; the six-column headline screamed
Publisher charged in woman’s death
across the top of the page. Despite admonitions to the contrary, Pat shot a two-column photo of Earlene in court, wearing orange jail scrubs, standing next to her lawyer and we were going to use it.

“Is her lawyer going to scream about that placement?” he asked.

Big metro newspapers didn’t worry about this crap, why should I?
I thought to myself.
We’ve hung smaller fish from higher heights on stories like this.
But that was the concern of smaller newspapers and I knew it. The editor of a big metro wasn’t likely to have to deal with someone who was related to the person in my lead story, somebody who wouldn’t think twice about pigeon-holing me about the story—loudly—at Tuesday’s Rotary Club’s luncheon. I had people who to this day hated my guts for stories I’d done years ago.

I sighed.

“She’ll scream about it, no doubt. If her lawyer doesn’t like it, her dad definitely won’t,” I said, chewing on my thumbnail. “We’re going to take heat no matter what we do. We play it down low on the page and the phone calls start coming in about how we are minimizing the story. If it’s placed like we do any other homicide, no one can say anything.”

“The fire at the Inn is just as significant,” he said. With a few clicks of the mouse, the murder story was moved to two columns in the upper right hand corner of the page and Charisma’s story, along with one of her photos, occupied four columns on the left side. “We can run Graham’s trial story across the bottom.”

I shrugged. “No. Run the murder big. I’ll take the heat from Watt and his lawyer.” I patted him on the shoulder and returned to my office. I needed to do some thinking about why Eve Dahlgren died.

Why
would
somebody want Eve Dahlgren dead? And why hang Earlene for it? Where would I start to look? So many folks from high school had moved on; it could be difficult to locate them. Maybe Suzanne Porter would have some ideas.

Suzanne and I had been best friends since grade school. While I went off to college, she went to cosmetology school. When I came back to work as a reporter at the J-G, I’d fixed her up with another new reporter, John Porter. They’d married and despite some tough times, were still together, along with their five boys. Several years ago, I was forced to fire Porter, the cops and courts reporter, before Graham Kinnon took the job. Like a lot of skunks, John managed to come up smelling like a rose and now worked as the vice president of communications at the Japanese auto parts plant at the edge of town.

As a cosmetologist, Suzanne was as good a source as I could get. Men told their bartender everything—women did the same with their beauticians. I’ll bet she knew someone who could tell me a lot about what Eve Dahlgren had been doing all these years.

A desktop picture of Suzanne and her family from a long-ago Christmas stared back at me as I waited for her to pick up the phone.

“Well, sure I remember Eve! She’s dead? Oh my God!” she said after I explained what I was after. “Hate to say it, but wasn’t she a bit of a witch in high school? I’m trying to think who I know who would still be in touch with her or know what she’s been up to all this time. Come on over for lunch and I’ll see who I can round up for you to talk to.”

“Sounds good. See you then.” I hung up and headed back to the newsroom where everyone was winding up today’s stories. Dennis had the front page done; he printed out a proof and, after scanning it for errors, I gave it my approval. Within an hour, I had a copy of today’s paper in my hand, the tart smell of wet ink filling my nostrils. I searched for a notebook among the stack of crap on the copy editing station.

“Time for me to get out of here. I’ve got some things I need to look into. Yea verily, thou art in charge,” I said, making the sign of the cross with my hand over Dennis like a consecrating priest. “I’ve got some things to check into on this story. I’ll be back later this afternoon.”

On my way downstairs, I dialed Gary McGinnis’s cell phone.

“Who did Eve Dahlgren run around with in high school?” I asked when he picked up.

“You mean after she dumped me?” Gary asked.

“You forget she left the dance with my date, too,” I answered.

“Does it matter now?”

“Gary, as much as I disliked Eve Dahlgren, I dislike my boss even more. But I can’t believe that Earlene killed anybody.”

“Like I told you, this one is pretty cut and dried, Penny,” he said. “We’ve got Earlene’s fingerprints in the car and they’re fresh. We believe she killed Eve, drove her car to the park and left it there with the body in it.”

I sighed. “I’m going to disagree with you on this one, Gary. I don’t think she did it.”

“I know you too well, Penny. I know you’re going to dig into this and I’m not going to try to stop you, but you’re wasting your time.”

“I don’t think so Gary. I really don’t think so.” I ended the conversation and slid into my Taurus. Hopefully, Suzanne would have something worthwhile for me.

When I arrived, she had three servings of spinach salad with grilled chicken, strawberries and sliced almonds on the table. The salads looked photo-perfect on her collection of pink Depression glass, with strawberry ice tea in matching pink goblets.

Making an edible meal was hard enough for me—making it pretty was impossible.

In a few minutes, there was a knock at the door.

“That’s Angela Perry,” Suzanne said, handing me the dishtowel she had just dried her hands with. “She’s the only one of those ten cheerleaders still in town. I do her hair and her boys were in Scouts with my youngest.”

The girl who had been the tiny top of the cheerleading pyramid had gray streaks in her curly red hair, but was still petite.

“Penny Addison! So good to see you again!” she said as we all slipped into our seats. “Suzanne told me about Eve Dahlgren. Frankly, as difficult as she was in high school, I’m not surprised it happened.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, she had a temper. The rest of the school never saw it in public—she wanted everyone to think she was always so perfect,” Angela began. “But she really had a nasty side as I’m sure you remember, Penny.”

I laid my fork down and began to take notes.

Angela continued to talk as she cut up her chicken. “Because she was the head cheerleader, it was like she thought she was the queen of the school or something. We were supposed to defer to her, and do everything she asked. She dictated who we were allowed to run around with and if she saw us with somebody she didn’t approve of, she’d run to the cheer advisor—what was her name, Suzanne?”

“Mrs. McKnight.” Suzanne rolled her eyes.

“Yes—Pearl McKnight,” Angela continued. “Anyway, Eve would make up these stories that she’d seen us smoking beneath the bleachers or whatever and we’d end up begging Mrs. McKnight to not suspend us from the squad, that it was all a lie… For some reason, she always believed Eve.”

“Did you ever see any violent behavior?”

Angela took a bite of her salad and nodded emphatically. “Oh, god yes!” she said through her food. “Eve was fabulously athletic, more than most of the rest of us. Her strength was unbelievable. If she didn’t like how you did in practice, she’d punch you in the arm as we walked off the football field. ‘Lousy flip there, Angela!’ she’d say, and
pow!
Somewhere where nobody could see her hit you, you know? And if you stood up to her, she let you have it. She could just rip you to shreds—physically and verbally. I’ve never seen anyone with a temper like that in my entire life. I was never so happy to learn she transferred to that girl’s school in Columbus after the tornado.”

“Did you ever tell Mrs. McKnight what she did?”

“Why? Eve had her convinced we all loved her and hung on her every word. I had bruises up and down my arms all through football season that year, but I told everybody they were from falling. Besides, after the tornado, we were all going to school in the next county and it was like all the cliques were destroyed along with the school. We could be friends with whomever we wanted and it was wonderful. The rest of the cheerleaders and I all felt like we’d been released from some evil cult when she left.”

“Did you stay in touch with her after high school?”

Angela rolled her eyes. “My mother, thinking we were friends, gave her my address and phone at college. She called me at my dorm once and I told her I didn’t want to ever speak to her again. Other girls heard from her though, I remember, but it’s been so long that I couldn’t tell you who.”

“Do you remember what they told you?”

“Eve got a business degree and she would go into these companies, con whoever was in charge that she could help them cut costs and operate more efficiently and then slash the staff to the bone.”

“That’s no surprise. Every company today is doing that,” I said.

“Yes, but I heard she really took entirely too much pleasure in ripping people up professionally before she cut their jobs. People were emotionally shredded by the time she was through with them. I’m surprised somebody didn’t kill her before this.”

“Did she ever get married? Do you know?”

“Not that I know. I never heard of her even dating anybody after Jimmy Lyle died.”

Suzanne looked across the table at me and arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. For years, Suzanne listened to me as I tried to rationalize that the boy’s death was anything but the result of a natural disaster. “Poor Jimmy Lyle—killed in the tornado.”

Angela took the bait. “I know! That was one of the weirdest things, that post-hole digger through his chest. But I guess there were a lot of weird things that happened when the tornado hit.”

I stopped writing. “Did you ever wonder about Jimmy? Whether he really died in the tornado or if somebody killed him?”

Angela put her fork down and swallowed hard. Her words were a whisper. “Tell me I’m not the only one who had those thoughts.”

“Are you saying you think Eve put the posthole digger through Jimmy’s chest?”

“I’ve always thought his death was bizarre. I mean, could those high winds from the tornado pick up a piece of equipment that heavy and put it through him? And who could prove it wasn’t the tornado?”

“I saw cars thrown through store windows downtown,” I said. “The junior high collapsed and you know the damage that happened at the high school. There were houses in our neighborhood reduced to piles of sticks. Theoretically, anything could have happened. With all the other deaths and injuries at the time, it sure would have been easy to blame his death on the tornado.”

“Eve hated you, Penny, for tutoring Jimmy on that English project. Can you believe I remember it, all these years later? We all knew she was crazy, but she went absolutely nuts when your name came up.”

“She didn’t make it easy for me to help the poor dumb kid out, I’ll admit that,” I said. I wasn’t going to share how Jimmy Lyle haunted my dreams, even all these years later.

“You all may think I’m nuts for saying this,” Angela said slowly. “But I think Eve Dahlgren was crazy enough to do it back then. You don’t seriously think her parents moved her to another school just out of fear of another tornado, do you?”

*****

Back in the newsroom, I had one more thing to do before I could get back to figuring out who would want to kill Eve Dahlgren. From what I’d learned at lunch, there could be no limit to the suspects.

A note from Charisma told me she was about to put the finishing touches on the first cold case story. She’d interviewed the former fire chief Hiram Warder and Police Chief Marvin McGinnis and was working with Pat Robinette to choose photos to go with her words, but was out hoping to interview one more person. There was nothing to identify who she meant, if anybody.

Dennis was on the phone with someone and Graham was leaning back toward Marcus’s desk, showing him the baby pictures on his phone.

“Graham, can I see you for a moment?” I asked.

“Sure.” He slipped the cell phone into his shirt pocket and followed me into my office and closed the door. “Is there a problem?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Huh?”

“I have to say I was really shocked to have my daughter answer your phone last night.”

Graham colored to the roots of his sandy hair. “Is that a problem? I anticipated a verdict on the Jessop trial before I left that day, but then they decided to keep deliberating. I had to pick up Gwennie and then find another sitter. I called you to ask how you wanted me to handle it, but you were already gone, so your daughter volunteered to watch my daughter. Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” I said. “I want to make certain everything is OK with you and if you need any other help.”

How times have changed,
I thought to myself. When I started in this business, I would have gotten reamed and even been fired for worrying about my childcare arrangements over a story. It was most of the reason why Duncan ended up raising our daughter.

Graham sighed. “It hasn’t been easy since Elizabeth died.”

Elizabeth Day had been a reporter with the J-G for a number of years, covering the schools, the college and writing features for me until she left for the
Akron Beacon-Journal
. I didn’t know at the time she was pregnant, much less that she and Graham were dating. They married soon after her departure, but she died from an aneurysm while giving birth to their daughter. Graham, once the ace crime reporter I could count on to cover anything at any time, became tied to a schedule dominated by his daycare center.