Devil's Food Cake (27 page)

“Thank you,” Jane said.

Sadie nodded her acceptance of the gratitude. Anyone would have done as much. She hoped that if Eric did any household chores, it was laundry so Jane could get out of her wet clothes.

“Did you find anything that helped your story?” Sadie asked as she looked both ways at a four-way stop. The roads were empty, many roads not even showing tire tracks in the deep snow. Most people were home—which is exactly where Sadie wanted to be.

Jane let out a breath. “Not really,” she said darkly. Some of the softness she’d had in her earlier comments was decidedly gone. Tough Jane was back.

“Oh,” Sadie said, hoping her own disappointment wasn’t too obvious. If Jane hadn’t learned anything, she couldn’t share it. “I’m sorry to hear that. You’ve certainly put a lot into this story.”

“Yes, I have,” Jane said. She paused for a moment before continuing, her voice taking on an angry urgency. “I’m good at what I do, Sadie,” Jane said, sounding strangely defensive. Sadie wasn’t sure what Jane needed to defend herself against in the Jeep, but she didn’t interrupt her. Emotional venting was often full of valuable information. “I went to their rooms but—”

“Rooms?” Sadie interrupted.

“Yes, the hotel rooms for Thom Mortenson and Mark Ogreski.”

“You got into their rooms?”

“Well, not really,” Jane said, frustration lacing her words. “The police were already there, and so the best I got was to overhear that Mr. O has some serious problems.”

“What do you mean?” Sadie asked.

“One officer was reading off like eight medications.” She reached under her shirt and produced an only slightly wet notepad with Carmichael Hotel stamped on the top. “Prozac, Xanax, Ambien, and codeine. Okay, that’s only four, but still.”

“Those are heavy-duty medications, aren’t they?” Sadie asked, looking at Jane again.

“Yeah,” Jane said. Her tone was a bit dismissive, however, telling Sadie that Jane didn’t think the meds were all that important. “But right then another cop came around the corner and got after me. I said the hotel manager had sent me up to see if they needed anything, but I had to go back downstairs. I had really hoped that . . .” She stopped herself and Sadie looked at her quickly.

“What?” Sadie asked. “Hoped what?”

Jane was silent for a moment, and Sadie concentrated hard on sending out “you can trust me” vibes.

After a moment, Jane let out a breath. “I’m a good reporter, Sadie,” she said again. “And the Ms. Jane column is a good gig—I’m not complaining—but it’s not me. The picture isn’t even me. And while I’m grateful for the work, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life telling coeds whether or not to pay their bum boyfriend’s cell phone bills. I’ve been trying so hard to break out of the mold I put myself in, but the paper’s fighting me. They’ve let me do a story here and there, but nothing exclusive, nothing earth-shattering. And then here I am, in the perfect place at the perfect time with the perfect exclusive that only needs a little fleshing out and I’m stuck. I get into the hotel—a crime scene—and I get two feet from their room, for heaven’s sake, and I end up with nothing. My contact is dead, my sources are used up, and every other journalist in the country is swarming over my story like flies. After weeks of research, I’m going to end up telling the same overdone story as every other newspaper in the Midwest because I can’t get my facts verified. Yet I’ve worked so much harder than any of them. It’s so not fair.”

“I’m sorry,” Sadie said, still aware that Jane had yet to tell her what her story was about. Even though she didn’t necessarily support Jane’s methods, she could relate to hard work coming to nothing. That was never fun—even when that hard work was illegal. She tried to phrase her next question as casually as she could. “What exactly were you researching all these weeks? It must have been big to have taken so much of your attention.”

“It was big,” Jane said, sounding discouraged. “Huge—if I had verifiable facts to support it, which I can’t seem to find.”

“What kind of verifiable facts?” Sadie finally asked, once again in search of the perfect tone of voice that communicated interest without triggering Jane’s defenses.

Jane turned her head to look at Sadie, and Sadie continued to look out the windshield as though she didn’t notice the other woman watching her.

She tried to reframe her question. “I mean, maybe I can help you figure it out.” She hesitated. How much did she want to say about what she’d discovered tonight? She decided on bits and pieces. “It’s been kind of an interesting night for me, too. Maybe I have something that would help you.”

“What?” Jane asked, an edge to her voice. It was hard to believe this was the same woman who’d been humble and apologetic a few minutes ago. “What do you have?”

Sadie glanced at her and hoped she was playing her cards correctly. “What do
you
have?” she asked back.

Jane was silent, but she straightened in the seat. “You won’t just tell me what you know?”

“You won’t just tell
me
what
you
know?” Sadie countered. She came to a stop at a stop sign less than two blocks from Eric’s house. She didn’t continue through the intersection after she’d paused for her required three seconds. Instead she looked at Jane and lifted her eyebrows expectantly.

Jane narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin. “I’ll trade you,” she said. “You tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll do the same.”

That sounded good to Sadie. She went first, a show of good faith in her opinion, but she only told what she knew would be well-known once she went to the police. “There was a young man at the hotel taking pictures of Mr. Ogreski’s body. He said he was with the crime scene, but he wasn’t. I found him in old yearbooks. He was Damon Mortenson’s best friend before Damon died.”

Jane looked impressed. “What else do you have?”

Sadie shook her head. “Your turn.”

“Okay,” she said, looking thoughtful for a moment. “
Devilish Details
is going out of print. The publisher filed a notice, but it hasn’t been made public yet.”

Sadie lifted her eyebrows. “Wow. That must be hard for Thom.”

Jane shrugged and waited expectantly.

“I found the original letter requesting the full manuscript for Thom’s book. It was dated a few months before Damon died.” She didn’t really know why that detail might be important, but it was a discovery she could take credit for.

Jane, however, looked rather skeptical. “Really?” she said, her tone doubtful.

“Yeah,” Sadie said. She kept to herself the fact that she had the actual letter in her pocket at that very moment. “Your turn.”

Jane paused and then took a breath. “Thom Mortenson didn’t write
Devilish Details.
”

Chapter 35

It was a good thing Sadie was already stopped. “What?” she breathed, staring at Jane, who, despite her shivering, seemed rather pleased with Sadie’s reaction. “What do you mean Thom Mortenson didn’t write it?”

“Trade,” Jane said, then continued before Sadie had a chance to respond. “What’s this guy’s name? The photographing-former-best-friend of the deceased Damon Mortenson.”

“Josh Hender,” Sadie said.

Jane dug a pen from her pocket and quickly scribbled the information in her notebook.

Sadie didn’t wait for Jane to finish writing before she fired her next question. “If Thom didn’t write it, who did?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said, frowning slightly and tapping her pen against her notebook. “That’s what I planned to find out from Mr. Ogreski tonight. But that letter you found is part of the fraud, I guarantee it. They’ve worked very hard to keep it a secret.”

“If you’re right, and they worked so hard to hide the truth, why would Mr. Ogreski suddenly decide to talk to you?” Sadie asked. If Thom didn’t write
Devilish Details,
it was big news. Very big. Too big to just hand over to some advice columnist at a regional paper.

Jane smiled, looking very pleased as she turned to face Sadie. “Because I asked. And he knew I’d find the answer sooner or later.”

“Wait,” Sadie said, putting up a hand. “This isn’t working. We’re both getting jumbled answers. Just details, not the full picture. Let’s cut to the chase. You said you’ve been researching this for weeks—why? What triggered it? What started the search?”

“Come on, Sadie,” Jane said, shaking her head slightly. “You’re asking me to give up my story. Journalists don’t do that.”

“What if I made it worth your while?” Sadie said, not taking her eyes off the other woman. It was time to pull out the big guns.

“And how would you do that?”

“Give you another story,” Sadie said. “And maybe, with your journalistic wiles, you can help fill in some of the blanks that are making me crazy.” She wriggled forward in her seat, suddenly eager to impart what she knew to someone as interested as she was. “While you’ve been in the hotel poking around and finding nothing, I’ve been all over the city. I tracked down Josh Hender, got attacked by his psycho mother, and made nachos for Thom Mortenson. Then there’s a guy, Eric . . . something or other, who’s trying to figure out the lock that this key I found will fit in, and my son is holding Josh Hender until I can figure out what’s going on.” It sounded pretty impressive when she said it all at once like that.

“Holy cow, woman,” Jane breathed, looking at Sadie with surprise and perhaps a little admiration too. “You did all that tonight?”

Sadie nodded, trying not to come across as too proud. In truth, proud wasn’t the right word anyway. She was rather embarrassed by all she’d been a part of, and terribly worried about what was going to happen to everyone involved. But still, it was nice that someone seemed to appreciate what she’d done.

“What makes you think Thom Mortenson didn’t write
Devilish Details?
” she asked.

“Because Diane Veeter said so.”

For the second time in three minutes Sadie was completely stunned.

“Diane Veeter?” Sadie said, certain she’d missed something. “That’s impossible. Diane Veeter is dead.”

“I know,” Jane said. “That’s what made this story so irresistible.” There was a longing tone to her voice that spoke of her surrender to the fact that things were not going to work out as well as she’d hoped they would. She paused and took a breath before continuing. “Before I tell you this, you have to swear you won’t talk to any other reporters about it. There’s a chance I can still salvage what I’ve learned into a story that will at least have something different than everyone else’s. I need your word.”

“I don’t even know any other reporters,” Sadie said. “Well, except for Linda Knight. She writes up the Garrison pieces for the
Logan County Journal,
but she mostly focuses on quilting groups and motocross, so I don’t think she’d even know what to do with this kind of thing. But I promise not to tell her anyway.”

Jane nodded and began speaking. “About two months ago, I threw a tantrum about wanting a new office. I’d been sharing one with a couple sportswriters who were continually predicting the imminent end of life as we knew it if LeBron didn’t make his foul shots. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I got the new office, but it had no windows and had been used for storage—mostly personal stuff previous employees hadn’t taken with them when
their
tantrums didn’t end up as profitable as mine did. I didn’t care—I had my own space and I was happy.

“For a few weeks I just let the boxes sit there, but then I decided I’d rather have a LoveSac than these stupid boxes full of junk. So I got permission to go through them. Mostly I threw things away—although I found a sweet Montblanc pen that’s the bomb.” She paused, realizing she was off track, and then picked back up again.

“Anyway, about halfway through these boxes I found a stack of mail for a reporter who hadn’t been with the
Post
for years. Apparently, the mail had come after the reporter left and was thrown in the box, waiting for her to come back and get it—which obviously she never did. Most of the mail was bills and ads, but there was this hand-addressed envelope marked confidential.” Jane chuckled. “Well, if there is one way to get a reporter obsessed, it’s to write
confidential
on an envelope. So, I, of course, open it up and find a letter from a woman named Diane Veeter who is telling this reporter that she knows Thom Mortenson didn’t write
Devilish Details
and that she can prove it and she wants a face-to-face meeting to discuss it.”