Gone to Green (22 page)

“Wear those black pants with that black-and-white shirt— that flowy one. And be sure to get your nails done. You’re an attractive woman, and it's high time you found someone in your life.”

I despised dating, but I had to admit being excited about going out for the first time in a year. When you get to your thirties and haven’t married, you’ve probably been out with at least two dozen men who were either weird, rude, boring, or a combination of the three. I felt optimistic about Walt.

We met for Sunday brunch at the nicest restaurant in the area, Brocato's Marina Inn. I suggested we go early, to beat the church crowd, and then worried that Walt was part of the church crowd.

“I go on Saturday,” he said. “My church is very laid-back. My mother calls it rock-and-roll church.”

He was already at the restaurant when I arrived and led me to our table, which had a beautiful view of the lake. Several people we knew came in and stopped at our table to chat. Walt had worked with some of them on cases down our way, and I recognized others from the community.

Everyone wanted to know how we met and how long we had known each other. We both were vague, implying that someone in town had introduced us, which was technically true since Duke had referred me to Walt. For the second time in two days I was deliberately misleading.

The date would have been more fun if I had not been mulling over what to do about Eva's interest in the newspaper. I had thought of little else since our supper. I had listed the paper with a broker. Eva's timetable put pressure on me to move faster than I wanted. It could open up the Asheville job again.

“Don’t you think?”

Walt was talking to me, and I had no idea what he had said. “I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. “I have had a lot on my mind. I think I must have zoned out there.”

“You mentioned you haven’t made it over to Dallas yet, and I was saying it might be fun to go over one weekend, see some movies and eat out. We could go and come in one day if we got an early start.”

“That does sound like fun,” I said. But I had few weekends left in Green and wasn’t sure I wanted to give them up for an excursion to Texas. “There's a lot going on, though, so I’ll just have to see.”

I’d put a damper on Walt's enthusiasm, but the rest of our date was enjoyable. I took him over to the paper for a tour.

“It's been years since I was in here,” he said. “This is great. I don’t remember the press being so big.”

“Do you remember the newsroom being this cluttered?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he said.

We parted in the parking lot with a quick hug, no kiss. I headed home, longing for some of that peace that Pastor Jean had told me about.

I opened the door and the phone rang.

“Lois? It's Iris Jo. Aunt Helen took a fall and is in the hospital. I knew you would want to know.”

“Up in Shreveport or the little Green clinic?”

“She's here. They think they’ll discharge her tomorrow, but they want to keep an eye on her.”

I hurried to the clinic, worried. When I walked into her room, Helen was alone and looked pale and much more fragile than usual. I patted her hand. “So you took a tumble, huh? How are you doing?”

“I’ve had better days,” she said. “But I’ve also had worse.” Aunt Helen was always looking at things from a different point of view. “How about you?”

I wanted to talk about Eva's interest in the newspaper, but I knew the time wasn’t right, so I went for the other high-interest topic.

“I had a date today.”

“Today?” I had gotten her attention. “Not some lowlife, I hope?”

“No, ma’am, a lawyer from up in Shreveport. Nice guy. Walt King.”

“Oh, young Walt,” she said. “I know him. Know his daddy quite well. Used to do some work for the paper. He's done lots of legal work for me over the years. Nearly married him when I was a young woman.”

Helen rarely said anything about her love life. She had never married but had been engaged to a guy who was killed in some sort of farming accident. I was surprised when she continued. “Most people think that Joe Hudson was the love of my life, and that I never married because he got killed. Truth is, Lois, Walt senior was my true love, and darned if he didn’t break up with me and marry someone else. Nice gal, too, but I still don’t know what she had on me.”

Maybe Helen was on more pain medication than I realized. I patted her hand again. “Well, if he's anything like his son, he's a nice man,” I said. “But he must not be too smart if he let you get away.”

“You think this will amount to anything?”

“Oh, who knows? I sort of doubt it. He's a nice guy, but I’m not a Louisiana girl.”

“So it's true, huh? You are planning to sell the paper.”

I will never cease to be amazed at how news travels. When people ask to tell me something off-the-record, I want to laugh. A thousand people probably already know it, or will by the time the day is out. “I’m thinking about it, Aunt Helen. That's been the plan all along. What do you think?”

“Dumbest idea I ever heard. You were made to run this paper. You’ve been better to this place than anything that's happened in years. I can’t even believe you’d ask me about it.”

I pulled my chair up closer to her bed.

“It's always been the plan,” I repeated. “You know the terms of the deal. This paper wasn’t cheap, and there's a hefty note over at the bank with my name on it. I need to take care of that.”

“Oh, that's baloney. It isn’t the money, and you know it. You’re a smart girl, and you could pay that line of credit and take out more and keep it going. You know how that game works. That paper makes good money, too. You’re just running away.”

I had been subjected to these kinds of tirades from Helen before, and I knew she didn’t feel good. I should probably coddle her.

“Running away? Running away? Just what is it that I’m supposed to be running away from?” I decided I didn’t want to coddle her.

“From life, girl,” she said, more gently. “From life. You’ve made more friends in Green in less than a year than lots of people make their whole life. You’ve helped change this place for the better, and you know it. But you’re afraid of letting anyone get too close to you, to commit to sticking around. You’re half scared of failing at the paper, somehow getting deep into debt and not being able to get out. And you’re running from God.”

“Running from God? I am not running from God. What in the world are you talking about?”

I was getting increasingly louder, and an aide stuck her head in the door. I lowered my voice. “I am not running from God or from my friends or from anyone. Except I may run from you if you keep at me. Aren’t I supposed to be giving you a sponge bath, or something?”

“No sponge baths, no chicken broth, and no bedpans,” she said. “But you are running from God. I’ll tell you one thing— you’re going to Nineveh whether you like it or not. So, you can go with good humor or you can keep running. God has a use for you, Miss Lois Barker, and you will not escape, no matter how hard and fast you run.”

I looked at her, wondering for a moment if she was losing it. “Nineveh?”

“Yes, Nineveh—where God told Jonah to go. He ran and ran and landed in the belly of a whale and still wound up in Nineveh. One way or another, you’re going to Nineveh.”

“Thank you to my neighbors in the Caroline community
who sent me recipes to share with my faithful readers.
After nearly a decade of laying the groundwork for this
coup, Sarah Johnson pried her mother's amazing turnip
green recipe out of her. She calls them the world's finest
turnip greens because they are. ‘Just serve them with a hot
pan of cornbread—and don’t expect any leftovers.’”

— The Green News-Item

O
n my third date with Walt, I figured out how Lee Roy was stealing from the paper.

I made a picnic lunch for us, and we went out to the state park on one of those beautiful Louisiana autumn days that I had fallen in love with. We were eating sandwiches and talking when a flashy boat came by at high speed, with people yelling and laughing. I noticed an older man in an aluminum fishing boat shaking his head as the big boat's wake rocked him back and forth.

“What kind of an idiot goes that fast when people are close by?” I asked.

“A rich one, I’d say,” Walt said. “That's a pretty expensive toy right there.”

As the boat circled around, I noticed none other than Lee Roy Hicks himself at the wheel. “That's Lee Roy. Now how does he afford that boat on his salary?” I said, asking myself as much as Walt. Lee Roy was well paid by Green standards, but hardly made enough money to support his lifestyle, now that I thought about it. He lived in a fancy house out at Mossy Bend, drove a very nice car, and was always dressed in expensive, name-brand clothes. I had wondered how many of those fancy golf shirts he owned.

Suddenly an advertisement from the Friday paper popped into my mind, a full-page color ad for Lowrey Marine, a big regional boat dealer. Lee Roy had been ecstatic when the contract on Lowrey's came through. “The Lowreys are going to be great customers,” he said, smiling more than I had seen him smile in months. “I’ve been trying to get their business for years.”

But when I had looked at the financials for that day's paper, the revenue from Lowrey's was low. I asked Lee Roy about it, and he gave me a complicated story about how they signed a contract and would pay higher rates later on. “I wanted to hook them good, so I worked with them on the front end,” he said. “They’re going to add at least twenty grand to our bottom line this next year.”

Suddenly some of the gaps in the numbers came together for me. Had Lee Roy cut better deals for certain advertisers, giving himself a percentage along the way? He was well liked by many of the businesspeople in town, a loud, friendly guy who dressed well and loved to tell a good joke. He was very close to Major Wilson and the McCullers and had not forgiven me yet for the stories we were running and never missed an opportunity to complain about the newsroom.

He didn’t like me, and I had been especially suspicious of him since Aunt Helen had suggested he might be stealing. But I could never put it all together.

Resisting the urge to hop up and rush to the paper, I tried to focus on Walt. With a complex theft scheme unwinding in my brain, that was difficult.

Even though we had been out several times, I had not invited Walt to my house yet. The drive out to Route 2 made his trip down to Green even longer, and keeping him in town kept him at arm's length. Meeting in the newspaper parking lot was easy.

He seemed surprised and a little hurt, though, when I wrapped up our date early and asked him to take me back to work. “I’m sorry, Walt, but I just have so much going on. I need to go over some records at the paper and take care of a few things.” As soon as he drove off, I ran into my office and started digging through files. The clues were pretty obvious. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t picked up on this before.

I called Iris Jo. “I’m so sorry for bothering you at home on a weekend, but is there any way you can come to work for a while?” This was a woman who had worked for the Big Boys for years, so she didn’t seem surprised at all by my request. When she arrived, I was practically dancing around my office, in excitement, anger, and nervousness.

“You sell the paper?” she asked in a somber tone.

“What? No, no, no,” I said. Sooner rather than later I was going to have to come clean with all of these people who cared about this paper, this town, and me. “It's something else, something big. I need you to promise me you won’t mention it to anyone, not anyone. Promise me.”

“I promise. You know I don’t talk about the paper's business, Lois,” she said, sounding a little hurt.

She was right. She wouldn’t tell any of my secrets. She was loyal, honest, and she liked me. “I know, and I’m sorry if I implied otherwise. I’d trust you with my life, but I’m not sure what we’re going to find out.”

By now she was totally confused.

“Have you ever wondered if Lee Roy was stealing from the paper?”

Her eyes got big, and she hesitated. “A time or two. But I never could pinpoint it. Why?”