The calamity Janes (8 page)

“I thought I was talking to one.”

“I’m an attorney, not a psychologist. I don’t testify when we go to court. I bring in professionals who can explain all of this to a jury.”

“But you’re obviously well versed in this. Why not tell me?”

“Because I don’t have time to spoon-feed the information to you. I have a client to defend and a caseload back in Denver that needs my attention.”

“Have you got a list of expert witnesses you intend to call?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, I’ll ask you again. Let me talk to Sue Ellen.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want her to trust you and say something perfectly innocent that you’ll twist in print.”

“Dammit, Emma, I do not twist things,” he snapped, clearly losing patience with her continued distrust. “What the hell happened to you? Did some reporter take something you said out of context?”

“If only it were that simple,” she retorted, swallowing back the bile that rose at the memory of how badly she’d been deceived and betrayed. Never again. The last time she’d trusted a reporter, it had almost cost her her career. It had been the end of her marriage.

“Tell me,” Ford pleaded.

“No,” she said flatly. “I have to get over to the jail.”

For a moment, he hesitated, and she thought he might not let her out of the booth. Then he sighed and stood up to let her by.

“We’ll talk again,” he said mildly.

“Only when you’re more fully prepared,” she said, then turned away.

“Emma.”

Slowly she faced him.

“I’m not the enemy here. In fact, I could turn out to be your best ally.”

If
he were honorable,
if
she could persuade him that Sue Ellen had only done what she’d had to do, yes, he could be an ally. But those were big
ifs.
Emma had
learned a long time ago to hold out for sure things. Anything less was too risky.

Ford considered going straight to the jail, but he knew in his gut that Emma would be furious if he turned up there not five minutes after she’d told him that was where she was headed. He wasn’t going to get that interview with Sue Ellen by alienating the woman’s attorney. He was going to have to be patient. Sooner or later, Emma would see the value of having Sue Ellen’s side on the record and would relent.

Besides, he had a paper to put out. He had enough information now to write this week’s article about the shooting of Donny Carter. He intended to be very careful, to stick strictly to the facts and leave out all the lurid details about the ongoing violence of his marriage to Sue Ellen. Everything he’d heard about that to this point was hearsay anyway. Until Sue Ellen could give him a first-person account, he was going to report only what court documents said and Emma’s confirmation of the basic facts of the case.

When he got to his office, Teddy was waiting for him with a half-dozen pictures of the couple at the dance. It was evident that there was a heated argument going on. Ford studied the telling photos, then sighed. He’d told Ryan even before the shooting that he wouldn’t use them. He intended to keep his word, even though the situation and the stakes had changed.

“Put them in the files,” he told the teenager.

“But—”

“I promised your uncle I wouldn’t print them.”

“Why? Besides, that was before Sue Ellen killed Donny. Maybe it wasn’t news then, but it is now.”

Ford couldn’t argue that point, but he knew of at
least two people who wouldn’t care: Emma and Ryan. He didn’t want to anger either one of them, and using those pictures would be like waving a red flag under the nose of a bull. They would be furious if he printed the potentially prejudicial pictures.

“We have them if we need them,” he said flatly. “But I’m not using them now.”

He’d expected Teddy to be disappointed, but what he saw on the teen’s face, instead, was guilt. “What?” Ford demanded.

“The paper in Cheyenne called about an hour ago. They’d heard I took pictures. I sent one over,” he admitted.

Ford was aghast. “Why the hell would you do that?” he demanded heatedly.

The color drained out of the boy’s face. “I thought that’s what you’d want,” he said, his voice quivering.

“Dammit, Teddy, what gave you the right to sell even one picture to another paper? You’re working for me.”

“I didn’t sell it. The editor said it was more like sharing between newsmen. I thought that was the way it’s done.”

“Sometimes it is,” Ford conceded, fighting his anger. “But the decision isn’t made by an intern. It’s made by the editor. Last time I checked that was me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Now if we don’t use those pictures and the Cheyenne paper does, it’ll look as if we’re sitting on a critical piece of evidence. Not only will it make this paper look bad journalistically, but there’s a good chance the prosecutor will be all over us, demanding the photos and the
negatives. Up until now, only a few people even knew we had them.”

“I didn’t know,” Teddy whispered, his voice shaking. “I was just trying to help. The editor said he was on a deadline. I tried to reach you.”

“Did you ever consider walking down the block to check in Stella’s?”

Looking miserable, Teddy shook his head.

“What’s his name?” Ford asked, aware that calling the man to plead with him not to use the photo would be a waste of time. Still, he had to try.

Teddy handed over the name and phone number. “You’re not going to fire me, are you?”

Seeing the genuine panic and contrition on the boy’s face, he sighed. “No, as badly as you screwed up, I am not going to fire you. But there’s a lesson here, okay?”

“Don’t do anything without asking you,” Teddy said at once.

“For starters,” Ford agreed. “And remember that a photograph is a powerful thing. Most of the time that’s exactly what you want on the front page. Sometimes—and this is one of them—deciding whether or not to use something that powerful has to be weighed very carefully. The last thing we want to do is to prejudice the case against Sue Ellen.”

Teddy looked even more miserable. “It could hurt Sue Ellen’s case?”

“It could,” Ford confirmed, glancing at the look of pure hatred and contempt on her face as Donny raged at her. While it might be evidence of Donny’s behavior, it was also overwhelming evidence of a motive for murder.

“Uncle Ryan’s going to kill me,” Teddy said despondently.

Ford thought of his own perception that Ryan had a soft spot for Sue Ellen. He nodded. “He might at that.”

E
mma had barely walked into the house when her sister-in-law emerged from the kitchen, a defeated expression on her face.

“I’ve had it,” Martha announced. “That brother of yours is driving me flat-out crazy.”

“Matt?” Emma asked incredulously. Then the memory of her conversation with her mother came flooding back. “Does this have something to do with his mood lately?”

“It has everything to do with his mood. The man can’t find anything positive to say about anything. I’m tired of it. The kids are tired of it. If it doesn’t change, I swear to you that I am taking them and moving to…” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know, Florida, maybe. Someplace that’s warm all year round. I’m sick of being frozen—both physically and emotionally.”

Emma was too drained by her meetings with Ford and Sue Ellen to go through yet another emotional
meltdown, but she didn’t seem to have any choice. Leaving might be an idle threat, but Martha’s frustration was very real.

“Is Matt here now?” she asked.

“No, he just stormed out the back door because I had the audacity to ask if he wanted to go to Laramie for dinner and a movie tonight with me and the kids. Apparently I don’t understand that he has to get up at the crack of dawn, that he can’t be gallivanting all over the place to see some fool movie, et cetera, et cetera, much less waste money on a fast-food hamburger, when we have a freezer filled with better beef.”

Emma winced. “That’s quite a tirade. Maybe he’s having a bad day.”

“
Every
day is a bad day,” Martha said wearily. “If I point out what beautiful, sunny weather we’re having, he says if we don’t get rain we’re going to be in the middle of a drought. It’s depressing.”

“I can imagine,” Emma soothed. “Come have a cup of tea with me. Let’s talk about this.”

“Tea? I thought you were a dedicated coffee drinker,” Martha said, trailing her into the kitchen.

Emma grimaced. “I was until I went through six cups at breakfast trying to get over a hangover.”

Martha’s eyes widened. “You had a hangover? I’ve never seen you drink.”

“It was one glass of wine.”

“But—”

“Don’t even ask,” Emma said, as she found some herbal tea in her mother’s cabinet and put the kettle on to boil.

Martha took cups from another cupboard and set them on the table, then sat down, her expression subdued. She and Matt had been in love as far back as
Emma could remember. First grade, maybe, when they’d been seated next to each other alphabetically. By junior high they were inseparable. By high school they were a couple. They had married two months after graduation, despite pleas from both sets of parents to wait until after college.

Matt had been a promising student who had earned a scholarship to the University of Wyoming, but Martha had been pregnant by the end of summer, and Matt had dropped his college plans to go to work for his father. They had been in Winding River ever since. At twenty-five, they already had three children. Until this visit, Emma had assumed they were happy.

She poured the tea, then sat opposite her normally exuberant sister-in-law. “Okay, what’s going on with you and Matt? What’s behind this mood of his?”

“He’s miserable,” Martha said, echoing what Emma’s mother had said earlier in her visit. “He just won’t admit it. Instead, he takes it out on everybody else.”

“Mom seems to think he’s unhappy working here at the ranch. Is that your impression, too?”

Martha nodded. “I have begged him to quit and go to college, the way he planned to seven years ago. We could move to Cheyenne for four years. I could work. We could manage, but he won’t hear of it.”

“Why?”

“Pride. Stubbornness. Fear. Who knows? He won’t talk about it. He bites my head off every single time I bring it up.”

Emma resisted the temptation to ask just how often Martha brought it up. Had she been nagging him? Like all males, Matt was resistant to what he viewed as “pestering.” But instead of suggesting that might be
the problem, Emma focused on her sister-in-law. “What about you, Martha? Do you regret not going to college?”

Martha shook her head. “No, I have everything I ever dreamed of. I love Matt and our kids and our life. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“Maybe that’s what’s holding him back,” Emma speculated thoughtfully. She was a bit uneasy being cast in the role of marital arbitrator, but this was clearly an emergency, and she did know the parties involved as well as anyone. If she could help, she had to try.

“How?” Martha asked.

“Maybe he knows you’re happy and thinks there must be something wrong with him if he’s discontented,” Emma speculated. “Add to that the prospect of making you
unhappy
by changing the status quo, and he’s in a real quandary.”

“But it would only be for four years,” Martha said. “And if he would be happier getting his degree and doing something else, then that’s what I want for him, for
us.
Things certainly aren’t working the way they are now.”

“Have you told him that?”

“Over and over.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

Martha’s expression brightened. “Would you? He admires you so much. If you said it was the right thing to do, maybe he’d believe it.”

Emma squeezed her sister-in-law’s hand. “I’ll do my best. Hang in there, sweetie. Matt loves you. That’s the one sure thing in all of this. Don’t lose sight of it.”

“I’m trying not to,” Martha said, then glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to run. My mom has the kids, and I told her I’d be back for them right after their naps.
They have so much energy then, they’re too much for her.”

Emma grinned. “I can imagine. Caitlyn has more stamina than I can handle sometimes, and there’s just one of her.”

“Where is Caitlyn? I haven’t seen her today since I got here.”

“Probably with Dad in the barn. She wants to do everything he does.”

“Maybe she’ll grow up to be the rancher and take the pressure off Matt,” Martha said wistfully. “I have a feeling part of his problem is not wanting to let your father down.”

“You could be right,” Emma admitted. Matt had always been sensitive. No doubt he had seen how badly hurt her father had been by her decision to leave. Even though her father had refused to make her feel guilty, Matt had probably picked up on the unspoken disappointment. Add to that Wayne’s decision not to stay on the ranch, and no doubt Matt felt doubly responsible to take over and not let their father down. “Don’t worry. We’ll get this straightened out.”

As soon as Martha had gone, Emma went in search of her brother, but she found Caitlyn instead. Emma’s daughter was sitting astride her pony in the corral, listening intently to her grandfather’s instructions. Her gaze never wavered as Emma approached.

The pony began to canter, and to Emma’s amazement, Caitlyn maintained perfect control of the animal. She looked as poised as if she’d been riding for years. She reined in the pony right in front of Emma, a beaming smile on her face.

“Did you see?” she asked excitedly. “Did you see me ride?”

“You were wonderful,” Emma said as her father scooped Caitlyn out of the saddle.

“Better than wonderful,” he told his granddaughter. “Better even than your mom was at your age.”

“Really?” Caitlyn breathed, wonder in her eyes. “Am I, Mom?”

“You are,” Emma confirmed. “You’re a natural, no question about it.”

Caitlyn threw her arms around her grandfather’s neck and hugged him tightly. “I hope we can stay here forever and ever,” she said fervently.

Emma met her father’s troubled gaze over Caitlyn’s head.

“Sorry,” he mouthed silently.

Emma stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

He lowered Caitlyn to the ground. “Go into the house and see if your grandmother’s back from her trip into town. She might have those cookies she promised you from the bakery.”

As Caitlyn scampered away, he looked at Emma. “Any chance of you staying?”

“Not permanently,” she said, knowing that she was disappointing him all over again. “My job’s in Denver, Dad. You know that.”

“Seems to me like you have a job here right now.”

“One case,” she insisted. “That’s not a career.”

“Seth will be retiring one of these days. The town will need a good attorney. In fact, I think the only reason he hasn’t retired already is out of loyalty to the town.”

Emma thought of the challenging cases on her plate in Denver. Drawing up wills, handling misdemeanors
and traffic violations couldn’t compare. “I can’t do it,” she said. “The people I work for need me.”

“Do they really?” her father said lightly. “Any more than somebody like Sue Ellen?”

There was no comparison and Emma knew it. But, thankfully, a case like Sue Ellen’s would come along once in a blue moon around here. The rest of the time, she would be practicing the kind of law that any new law school graduate could handle. She’d be bored to tears. And it would be tantamount to an admission that she couldn’t cut it as a big-city lawyer, something her ex-husband had taunted her with on a regular basis.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” she said, even as she fought considering the possibility that her clients in Denver could get along just fine with some other attorney in their corner. She was good, maybe even exceptional, but so were a dozen others, possibly even more, in Denver alone.

“No,” he agreed. “It wouldn’t be the same, but it could be better.”

“Oh, Dad, I wish I could, but I can’t.”

He nodded. “You know best, I’m sure,” he said stiffly.

“Not about everything certainly,” she said, “but about this, yes, I do. Denver is where I need to be.”

But despite her fervent argument on that score, right this second she was having a hard time remembering one single reason why.

Ford was really pleased with the front-page story he’d written about the death of Donny Carter and the arraignment of his wife on manslaughter charges. With a vision of Emma front and center in his brain, he felt
he’d walked a careful tightrope in his description of the crime and the woman who’d committed it.

The article was impartial and fair, just the way good journalism should be. He quoted neighbors and the sheriff, then added several quotations from his interview with Emma. And, as a result of the debate he’d had with Emma, he’d spent most of the afternoon on the phone tracking down experts on abuse for additional insight.

Because he’d gone the extra mile, he was startled when he walked into the diner for lunch a few hours after the paper hit the stands and every single person in the place looked away, either down at their food or toward a booth in the back.

Then he saw the front page of the Cheyenne paper, which was stacked in a rack by the door, with that damning photo splashed across four columns. He already knew that the photo credit had gone to the
Winding River News.
Nothing he’d said to the editor in Cheyenne had dissuaded the man from using it or giving the credit to Ford’s paper.

Looking from that damning front page to the patrons at Stella’s, he wanted to shout an explanation, to defend himself and the paper, but a part of him believed that the Cheyenne paper had done nothing wrong. If he hadn’t given his word to Ryan, he might have reached a similar decision himself, despite all the arguments he’d recited to Teddy the day before. That picture told a story. The incident had happened and the photographer had witnessed it. It was less suspect, less open to misinterpretation, than any of the words he’d written.

“You going or staying?” Cassie asked, regarding him with a defiant expression.

Ford had never walked away from a fight in his life.
He intended to spend the rest of his life in this community. They needed to know he stood behind his actions, even if in this case it had been Teddy who’d sent that picture to Cheyenne.

“Staying,” he said succinctly.

“Well, steer clear of Emma. She’s in the back, and she’s not too happy with you at the moment. I don’t want her any more upset than she is already.”

“Emma’s here?” He searched the diner and spotted her at a booth. No wonder everyone had been looking in that direction when he’d first walked in.

He’d taken a step toward her when Cassie put a restraining hand on his arm. “Didn’t you hear me?” she demanded.

“I heard you, but Emma doesn’t scare me.”

“I’m not worried about
you.
I’m worried about
her.
”

He gazed down into concerned eyes. “It will be okay. We need to talk about this.”

Cassie sighed and stepped out of his path. “Don’t blame me if she poisons your coffee.”

“Not law-and-order Emma,” he chided.

“No, probably not, more’s the pity. I’ll bring the coffee. The decision about what to do with it will be up to her.”

As he started to make his way toward the back, he heard a collective intake of breath. Clearly everyone in the place was waiting for an explosion the minute he reached Emma. He fixed his gaze on her and kept on walking, ignoring the fact that she was regarding him as if he were little better than pond scum.

When he reached her booth, he didn’t ask permission. He just slid in opposite her.

“You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” she said, though it didn’t much sound like a compliment.

“If you have a problem with me, why not spell it out to my face?”

She tossed the paper across the table. “
This
is the problem. Why would you give them a picture like that, especially after you promised Ryan you wouldn’t use it? If you think I’m furious, wait till you cross paths with him. He’s bouncing off the walls over at the jail. Ryan’s always been the most mild-mannered guy around, but he’s developed a whole new vocabulary to describe what you’ve done.”

Ford wasn’t going to explain Teddy’s role in what had happened. “Once the shooting took place, that picture became a legitimate news photo. Don’t I get any credit for not running it here?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Not when you gave it to a paper with an even bigger circulation.”

“How about a little credit for the story I wrote in today’s edition of the
Winding River News?
”