Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) Read online

  “How can I find out their names, then?”

  “You’d have to contact whoever was in charge of his campaign. There are so many people in and out of that office, sometimes I get confused.”

  Dad shot me another hard look. Was Rosalee just so clueless she hadn’t noticed?

  “Well, thank you for your time and for your delicious coffee,” I said. I helped Dad stand as he balanced on his cane.

  “Oh, not a problem. I wish I could have helped you more.”

  Within a few minutes, we were back in the Taurus.

  “I don’t think we accomplished anything today—I’m ready to head home. How about you, Dad?” I turned the ignition key and my old car sputtered to life.

  “We’re not going anywhere until I can find a bathroom. By the way, did you bring one of Rick Starrett’s envelopes with you? The ones that came from the convenience store she was talking about? While we’re here, we really should chase down who bought those money orders.”

  Down in the bottom of my purse, my cell phone began to ring.

  “Hang on—” I pulled out the phone and touched the screen to answer. “Addison,” I said.

  It was Whitelaw. “Addison, where are you? You’ve got to get to the paper—right now!”

  Chapter 25 Marcus

  “Dad. Wake up.” It was Saturday morning, and PJ was shaking my shoulder. “Dad. The hospital called.”

  “What? What? Is your Mom OK?” I sat bolt upright in bed.

  “No—Jesus, Dad! They’ve moved her into a step-down unit from intensive care,” PJ said. He handed me a piece of paper. “Here’s her new room number. Lillian and her boy toy are getting ready to go visit her. You probably want to go with them.”

  “His name is Bronson, OK? Are you going too?” I slipped into my bathrobe and ran my fingers through my thin hair. As we talked, I stumbled to the master bath to empty my bladder. Our conversation continued through the closed door—I was never one to be comfortable with the locker room habits of most men.

  “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m going to meet Graham.”

  “Graham Kinnon? Why?”

  “He and I were talking Friday afternoon about some of the stories he’s done and he invited me to go for a run with him this morning.”

  I stepped out of the bathroom, tying my robe and looked at PJ, leaning against the wall. PJ was wearing a pair of sloppy sweat pants, a battered sweatshirt and newer running shoes. A black stocking cap covered his brown hair. He looked like he was going to rob a liquor store.

  “Graham has been a really good reporter for us over the years. You could learn a lot from him. I didn’t know he was a runner—it doesn’t surprise me, though.”

  “Really? He said he tries to run three times a week, mainly on the weekends. Says it clears his head.”

  “Probably a good thing. None of us knows a whole lot about that young man—except that he works really, really hard and he plays his cards close to his vest.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nobody knows anything about his personal life. He does take some big risks when it comes to stories—running would be a good way to deal with stress.”

  We wandered to the kitchen. Lillian and Bronson were seated at the kitchen island, waiting on a pot of coffee to brew, picking through all twelve pages of the Saturday morning Journal-Gazette.

  “You guys going to see Mom?” I asked, pulling four coffee mugs out of the cabinet.

  “Yes, Daddy, we are,” Lillian answered. The coffee pot beeped to signal the end of the brewing cycle and she began to pour cups for each of us.

  “Want me to drive?” I grabbed one of the mugs and gulped down some coffee. “You make coffee as well as your mother does, my dear.”

  Lillian smiled in reply and pushed mugs towards her brother and Bronson.

  “I was going to ask if I could take Mom’s car to meet Graham,” PJ interjected.

  “We can take you then, Dad,” Lillian said. “Not a big deal.”

  “OK then.” I pulled Kay’s keys from the hook by the door leading to the garage and tossed them to PJ. “See you later. Enjoy your run.”

  Within the hour, the three of us were standing in the door of Kay’s new hospital room. The oxygen tubes beneath her nose were gone and her facial bruises were fading, but an intravenous line was still taped to her right hand, leading to a bag of clear fluid hanging from a pole at the head of her bed. One good sign: on a tray beside her bed sat a bowl of broth and lemon-lime soda. Kay seemed clearer, less doped up and the head of her bed was slightly elevated.

  Two police officers still sat outside her door.

  Lillian, Bronson and I hugged Kay in greeting, exchanging a few pleasantries, although my hug felt a bit more brittle and formal.

  “You missed Detective Birger,” Kay said after we’d removed our coats and settled into the visitors’ chairs around the room.

  “What’s he got to say?” I asked.

  “Well, apparently those two officers who allowed your pal Charlie to visit me.”

  “Mom!” Lillian interjected. “That’s not fair!”

  “Kay, I have apologized, more than once—” I began.

  “OK, allowed your father’s alleged stalker to visit me.” Kay shot me an angry look. “The officers were auxiliary officers who claim they were never told that they both couldn’t leave at the same time. They were apparently reprimanded and the new orders are that no one except the family and nursing staff is allowed in. Anyone else has to show identification.” Suddenly, the anger faded and sighing, she smoothed the blankets on her bed. “Where’s PJ?”

  “He went for a run with one of the reporters from the paper,” Lillian said.

  “God, what I wouldn’t give to get out of here,” Kay answered. “I guess I’ve got a few more days here yet.”

  “ You must be feeling better if you want to come home,” I said softly.

  Kay looked at me again, and changed the subject. “I guess tomorrow I’ll be up and trying to walk,” she said.

  “That’s great!” Lillian exclaimed. “I know you’ll be glad to move a little more.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled around us. Kay picked at her blanket and lay back against the pillow.

  Bronson nudged Lillian. “Let’s let them talk,” he said. “Let’s go get something in the cafeteria.”

  Lillian looked at her mother, who nodded. Standing, she took Bronson’s hand and waved at Kay. “We’ll be right back.”

  I slid my chair closer to Kay’s bedside. She turned her head away from me.

  “Kay,” I said softly. “I don’t know what else to say to you. I’ve apologized more than once. I did not sleep with this woman—I have never once been unfaithful to you. I fought too hard to win you, all those years ago. I wouldn’t do anything as stupid as that. I don’t want to lose you.”

  I touched her shoulder and she turned her head back to face me. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  “Then what happened to us?” she asked. “Where did we go wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Kay, I don’t know. Maybe life overwhelmed us, maybe we just got complacent. But I know that this whole situation has gotten out of control and we need to do what we can to get back to what we had before. That’s what I want more than anything else.”

  Tears rolled down Kay’s cheeks. “So do I.” She reached up and touched my cheek. I leaned over the bed, our lips touched, once, then twice. Kay’s arm slid around my neck and she buried her face in my chest, sobbing. I pulled her close, as gently as I could.

  “Tell me you love me, Marcus,” she gulped through her tears. “Tell me you still love me.”

  “Kay James Armstrong Henning, I love you. I love you more than anything,” I whispered into her red hair. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  “I’m just so scared, Marcus. I’m just so scared,” she whispered, letting me go and sinking back into the pillows.

  “I know. I am too.”
r />   “It wasn’t Charlie who grabbed me on the bike path—I know you don’t believe that, but it wasn’t a woman,” she said. “It was a man. A nasty, dirty man with horrible breath and horrible body odor.”

  As much as I wanted to believe Kay, I couldn’t believe Charlie wasn’t her shooter. I knew what could go wrong. I’d seen too many eyewitness accounts that were dead wrong—stories where even victims had identified the wrong assailant. My wife had been knocked out with what was probably chloroform, then shot when she came to, and then on God knows what drugs following surgery. Who knows what that could have done to her memory of the true event?

  Why else would Charlie haunt her hospital room if she hadn’t finished the job she set out to do? Why come to the ICU in the early morning hours and tell her “This isn’t over” unless she wanted Kay dead? But until police could rule her out as the perpetrator, Charlie was the most likely suspect and that line of investigation had to be followed until the end.

  “Did you tell Detective Birger that?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wrote it all down and said they’d look into it. He did say something else —”

  “What?”

  “There was an article in the paper about me, wasn’t there?”

  “ Just an update on your condition and that they had identified a potential suspect,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell her the idea had been PJ’s, that a story would be one method to bring Charlie—or whomever—into the open, and that I’d willingly cooperated with Graham Kinnon.

  “Birger wasn’t happy about it,” she said.

  I leaned in to kiss her again. “You know that happens in my business. Hey—I do have some good news,” I said, changing the subject.

  “What?” Kay touched my face again.

  “We may have a wedding to go to soon.”

  “Really?” Kay’s eyes lit up for the first time in a long time.

  “Yes, Bronson says he’s going to propose to Lillian. We talked about it the other night. She doesn’t know a thing about it, so don’t say anything about it for now. He was originally going to ask her when they went to Paris over Christmas, but…” I let my words drift off and gestured to the medical equipment surrounding us. “He told me he wants to ask her after you come home from the hospital.”

  Kay smiled and hugged me again. “Oh that’s wonderful, Marcus! He’s going to take good care of her. I know he will.”

  “He will.” I lifted Kay’s left hand and examined the indentation where her wedding rings had been. The night of her shooting, they’d been removed in case of potential swelling. When the nurse first handed them to me in the emergency room, I was convinced Kay was dead. Right now, they lay in a small china dish on Kay’s dresser back home. The engagement ring was a small solitaire and the band was plain, but between them was a one-carat band of diamonds I’d given her for our tenth anniversary.

  I kissed the back of her hand.

  “Maybe we ought to think about our vows, too. After all we’ve been through, Kay, would you marry me all over again? Would you let me put those rings back on your finger?”

  She smiled and kissed me again.

  “Yes, Marcus, yes, I would.”

  “This time it’s going to be different, though, I promise,” I said. “I won’t exclude you when I’m writing. We’ll go together to these mystery conferences.”

  “OK.” She stroked my cheek and again our lips met. “I promise I’ll be better at understanding.”

  “New beginnings,” I said.

  “Good God, you two—get a room!” Lillian laughed as she and Bronson reappeared, carrying a large bouquet of daisies. “We brought these to celebrate you moving out of ICU. Looks like we need to celebrate you guys working things out.”

  Before Kay could reply, a nurse stuck her head in the door. “Mrs. Henning, we need to have your visitors leave for a little bit—we need to check your incision and change your bandages.”

  I stood. “We’ll just go ahead and leave then,” I said. “We’ll come back this afternoon.” I grabbed my coat and leaned over one more time to kiss Kay. Whatever happened next, we were back on track—we were together and strong.

  “Here’s to new beginnings,” I said.

  “Yes. New beginnings,” she answered.

  *****

  Bronson’s rented Chevrolet slid easily into the residential streets that surrounded the hospital. Six blocks north of downtown Jubilant Falls, Plummer County Community Hospital was originally built just before World War II. Old timers said residents complained then that the hospital was too far out of town for anyone to ever use. Within a few years, returning soldiers had filled the area around the hospital with streets of GI Bill-financed brick ranches and now complaints centered on the sounds of sirens in the middle of the night.

  “Can we stop at the newspaper before we head home?” I asked. “I need to see if there are any voicemails of any importance.”

  Bronson nodded and turned south. Within minutes we were in front of the Journal-Gazette.

  “Hey, look! Lillian pointed to Kay’s Lexus parked in front of the building. “PJ’s here.”

  “ He must be done with his run,” I said. “Just drop me off —I’ll catch a ride back with him.” The Lexus was parked behind Watterson Whitelaw’s black Lincoln Town Car. Ahead of his vehicle were a few cars I didn’t recognize with out-of-state plates.

  Bronson nodded again and stopped the car in the traffic lane.

  “Wonder what Whitelaw’s doing here?” I thought as I jumped from the car and, stepping across the sidewalk, slipped my key into the front door lock.

  Whitelaw’s door must have been open. I could hear voices from down the hallway that led to his office as I bounded up the front stairs to the newsroom, but didn’t think much about it.

  Weekend traffic in and out of the Journal-Gazette wasn’t all that uncommon. The quiet phones made it easy for department heads—Whitelaw, Addison, the advertising manager, the bookkeeper and the circulation manager—to come in on weekends and get caught up. It was more common for the editorial staff, though. The sports staff would come in after a game; Graham Kinnon and Addison were known to come in for breaking stories and get them up on the Web site. More than likely, there had been some breaking news this morning and Graham simply took PJ along for the ride.

  That would be a good experience for PJ, I thought. Too bad he looked semi-homeless in that ratty running gear he had on this morning.

  Turning a corner, I came into the newsroom and stopped dead in my tracks.

  It was Charlie, seated beside Graham’s desk as he looked at her intently, breaking his gaze only to write down her words. She was dressed in a bulky fuchsia sweater, with black skinny-legged jeans and brown leather boots that came above her knees. PJ, his arms crossed, leaned against the cabinets that filled the wall behind Kinnon’s desk and stared at the woman who shot his mother. He wasn’t dressed in the crappy running gear he’d left the house in, but in a sweater and khaki pants.

  She looked up and jumped up from her seat, a smile breaking across her angular face. “Marcus! My darling! This is all such a horrible misunderstanding! We have got to get this worked out!” she cried in her dark tobacco-stained voice.

  “Don’t play innocent with me, Charlie,” I said. “Stop right there—don’t come any closer. You want Graham to think this is all one big misunderstanding, that you’re some poor, put-upon victim. I know better Charlie. I know better.”

  “But Marcus, honey—” She ran toward me, her arms outstretched.

  I’d never struck a woman before, but within two steps my hands reached her throat. All the rage of the last year bubbled through me—I slammed her against the filing cabinets. She cried out as she struck them, sliding to the floor. She grabbed the back of her head and curled into a ball crying.

  I stood over her enraged. "What the hell are you doing here? Why the hell did you shoot my wife? Why did you shoot Kay? Why don’t
you just leave me alone, Charlie? Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “Dad! Stop it!” PJ cried. “She says she didn't do it and I believe her."

  Chapter 26 Addison

  By the time I’d arrived, the police had already been to the newsroom and left with the woman who’d been stalking Marcus and supposedly shot his wife.

  Watterson grabbed my arm as I came up the stairs. I could see Detective Mike Birger had Graham, PJ and Marcus cornered in the newsroom. Marcus was rubbing his chin, like he’d either been struck or forgotten to shave—I couldn’t tell. PJ stared at his feet. Two strangers—a man and a woman in corporate suits—stood behind Watterson, their eyes round as saucers.

  “Would you tell me what the hell is going on here?” he hissed. His face was purple.

  I took a deep breath. “Remember the story on Marcus’s wife getting kidnapped and shot? Followed by the story on the suspect, a woman that Marcus met on his book tour?”

  “Yes?”

  “From what I could gather on the phone with Marcus, she showed up here and wanted to talk to Graham, who’s been covering the story.” I didn’t tell him that Graham heard from this Charlene Deifenbaugh—pen name Charlotte De Laguerre—the day his story came out and invited her to come tell her side of the story when the newsroom was empty. Unfortunately, Marcus happened to walk in on them.

  “And when were you going to tell me about this situation?”

  I sighed. “Last week, but I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  “We all have a lot on our minds, Addison, but staff safety should always be at the top of the list. And what took you so long to get here? I called you nearly an hour ago!”

  “I was in Columbus. Having breakfast with my father.”

  Watterson knew me well enough to see I was lying. He shot me a sharp sideways glance. “This better not have anything to do with Rick Starrett and his damned undead brother,” he said.

  The corporate types looked at both of us as though we were off our medications.