Barn Burner (Jubilant Falls series Book 1) Read online

  Seaford was silent as Golgotha's staff physician, Dr. Rachel Wiseman, stepped through the French doors onto the patio, her right hand in her lab coat. She stood on her tiptoes and whispered something in Seaford’s ear. He nodded then looked her up and down appraisingly—more than a little inappropriately for a college president and a married man who claimed to be such a good Christian, Addison thought. Out of the corner of her eye, Addison caught a pained look flash across Jaylynn’s face.

  "I suppose Jaylynn has shared some of our recent marital problems with you?” Seaford spoke with a sudden icy calm. “I'm aware of your friendship with my wife, despite what you're trying to do to me professionally."

  Jaylynn's eyes widened and darted from Addison to her husband. "Seaford, you must understand! Addie!"

  Seaford held up his hand.

  "You, as well as all of Jubilant Falls, know Jaylynn's previous problems with substance abuse. She's made no secret of her addiction in the past—much to my chagrin, at times. You must know that she is considerably less than blameless here."

  "Seaford!" The charm bracelet chimed as Jaylynn covered her mouth in horror.

  "Have you told Mrs. McIntyre why your nose hasn't stopped running for the past two weeks?"

  Addison shot a look at Jaylynn. Cocaine? It couldn't be! But falling off the wagon was a common occurrence for addicts—just look at the rehabbed celebrity stories that came off the Associated Press wire. If that was the case, and Jaylynn had started back on drugs, Addison couldn't blame Seaford for wanting to take six-year-old Lyndzee away from the situation. Could Jaylynn have anything to do with the missing half million? That's a lot of blow to put up your nose. Jaylynn wouldn't do that, would she? How difficult would it be for her to get access to college money? Golgotha’s largely male administrators liked their wives to be what they considered the Christian ideal: nice, quiet—and submissive. She shifted her eyes back to Seaford as he continued speaking.

  "In fact, Dr. Wiseman and I would like to speak to my wife in private right now."

  "Addie! Don't believe him! I'm not using cocaine! You can't believe what he's saying; I'm just having sinus problems. It's springtime! The pollen is just awful! Addie, you've got to believe—"

  Seaford and the doctor reached over and pulled Jaylynn from the seat. Addison jumped to her feet. The blonde maid was suddenly at Addie's side, steering her through the wide French doors.

  "Get your hands off me, you little creep!" Addie struggled to pull away from the girl's grip, but her hands were stronger than they appeared and Addie couldn't break away.

  The doors parted and the maid hustled Addison through them. She let go of Addison long enough to close the doors behind her. As she did, Addison heard Jaylynn cry out, then caught a glimpse of her sagging between Seaford and the doctor who were holding her beneath her shoulders.

  “You dirty sonuvabitch!” Addison gasped and tried to get back to the porch, but the maid’s strong hands kept her moving through the expensively furnished house and to her Taurus parked in the circular drive in front.

  “That's not what you think it is. Mrs. Thorn has a demon inside her, Dr. Thorn said, and he's only trying to save her before she falls."

  “You and your fundamentalist cohorts don’t really believe that, do you?"

  “Dr. Thorn wouldn't lie. He only has his wife’s best interest at heart." Tina raised her chin defensively.

  Addison shivered. “And that’s how he shows he loves her?” She turned again to look back through the French doors, but the threesome was gone.

  Chapter Two

  “Yes chief. No Chief. I’m sorry Chief.” Addison tried to get a word in edgewise to Jubilant Falls’ Fire Chief Hiram Warder. “I’ll see that it doesn’t happen again.” She jerked the phone away from her ear as Warder slammed his receiver down on the other end.

  It was a few hours after her conversation with Jaylynn, just after the Journal-Gazette's press foreman brought today’s paper, still damp and pungent with new ink, up to her office. On top of trying to understand the scene between Seaford and Jaylynn, Addison had one more item on her plate than she cared to deal with.

  Back in her office at the rear of the newsroom, Addison repeatedly dialed Jaylynn's private number until Chief Warder called, but Jaylynn never called back, despite Addison’s numerous messages. Addison didn't know whether that was because she and Lyndzee finally did pack up and go home or because that creepy Wiseman woman had done something, like sedate her. But right now she had to deal with something else.

  Running her stained fingers through her short hair in exasperation, Addison dialed Suzanne Porter, her best friend since childhood, one spent in this small southwestern Ohio town on the banks of Shanahan Creek.

  The name Jubilant Falls came from the tall bright waterfalls where the town’s founding father, McGregor Shanahan built his first log cabin in the days just after statehood came to Ohio in 1803. Some called him a pioneer and a visionary, but others knew him as a patent medicine peddler and con man who tried to finance a second Erie Canal from his self-named creek to the Great Miami River to help local farmers get their produce to market.

  The scheme had failed miserably, after only fifty feet of canal and one lock had been constructed. Shanahan’s Folly, as it was known to local school children had at least resulted in Canal Days, a three-day festival in the center of town over Labor Day weekend.

  Just a block from the courthouse and the city building that flanked it, the Journal-Gazette was on South Detroit Street, in an old building that had once been a hotel in stagecoach days. The paper itself was a rarity in the world of corporate journalism, owned by the Whitelaw family since 1875.

  Everyone seemed to have some connection to the paper at some point in their lives: they’d delivered it, bought ads or seen their faces on the front page.

  Even Addison’s best friend and beautician, Suzanne. She was married to the Journal-Gazette’s police reporter, John Porter. Last year’s Christmas photo of John and Suzanne, along with their five boys, adorned not only Porter’s desk, but Addison’s as well. Addison grimaced as she looked across her desk at Suzanne’s smiling face, her hands resting on the shoulders of the middle boys, Brent and Michael, while John’s lay on the shoulders of five-year-old twins Steve and Tommy’s. The oldest, JP, stood at his full 12-year-old height between his parents, the red badge of adolescence, acne, beginning to erupt across his face.

  Addison didn’t beat around the bush about why she was calling Suzanne in the middle of the day.

  “Hey, what are the odds of your getting more hours at the Clip and Curl?” she asked bluntly.

  “He’s screwed up again, hasn’t he?” Suzanne replied. “Tommy, don’t hit Stevie. Stevie, give Tommy back his GI Joe or you’re both going to your rooms. I kept these little monsters home from school because they all said they had whatever 24-hour bug that’s going around, but now I think I’ve been conned. Just a minute.”

  Addison listened while Suzanne settled the dispute between her twin sons.

  What she had to do would change Suzanne’s life more than it would her husband’s. John Porter would come up smelling like a rose: he always did. A phone call last week from a paper in the Florida Keys confirmed to Addison that the Porters’ marriage was closer to meltdown than Suzanne knew.

  Times like this made Addison hate her job, but she had to think of her newspaper.

  “I’m sorry about that. I’m back. Did John do something stupid again?”

  “Yes. I’d warned John before that if he’d screwed up this badly again, there would be serious consequences.”

  “I’m sure you did, Addie.”

  “This time, I’m going to have to fire him, Suzanne. I know what this will mean to you and the boys.“

  “Addie, no! You’ve got to be kidding! You can’t do this to us!”

  Addison sighed. “Remember that barn fire Sunday night out toward the highway?’

  “Yeah.” Suzanne was subdued.

  “I just got of
f the phone with the fire chief, Hiram Warder, and the story is so screwed up it’s not funny. This is the third story in the last month that John’s made some serious errors in. I can’t let it continue. I put him on probation the last time it happened and told him he had to watch his accuracy.”

  Both women were silent.

  “You know I’ll do anything I can to help you and the boys out, Suzanne, but I can’t let this crap continue with John,” Addison said softly. “I can’t have such inaccuracies printed in my paper.”

  Suzanne sighed heavily on the other end of the line. “I think Louise can get me some more hours. If not, they’re looking for a part-time clerk at Groceryland,” she said softly.

  “Do you know if he even went to that fire? From what the chief told me, I don’t think he did.”

  “I can’t vouch for him, Addie. You know how bad things have been around here. I don’t even know where John was Sunday. Probably with his little whore.”

  Both Addison and Suzanne knew Porter had something on the side for some time—it wasn’t the first time after all. Suzanne always held her head up high and figured this, too, shall pass. For the sake of the marriage and the five boys, she always hung around. But then lately, so had Porter’s latest dalliance, a Wal-Mart clerk named Tabitha. The pressure was getting to Suzanne. She’d stopped going to her Wednesday night Methodist church services, escaping instead to the McIntyre’s’ clapboard farmhouse to cry.

  “I’m, I’m going to have to fire him. I don’t have any choice. Suzanne, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get by.” Addison heard Suzanne sigh heavily as she replaced the receiver.

  I’m really pulling the rug out from under her, Addison thought to herself. She lay her head down on the desk for a moment, and then screwing her courage to the sticking place, sat back up and looked at the fire story. It was bad. She’d talked to her city editor Dennis Herrick about how he needed to really watch Porter’s stories, but an editor just had to take it on faith that details like the address and the cause of the fire were accurate.

  She picked up the phone again and punched in the number for payroll. She spoke briefly to the woman at the other end and hung up. Gathering the newspaper pages in her hand, she opened the door to her office.

  “Porter, I need to speak to you.”

  John Porter stood at his desk in the far corner of the newsroom, hiked up his pants and glowered at her.

  He’d been a pain in her side since the day she took this job ten years ago. While they’d worked together just fine when she was covering city hall, his attitude had soured when Whitelaw promoted her to editor. Porter was the only stumbling block in making the entire newsroom staff a cohesive team.

  “Today, Porter?” Addison felt like she was dealing with a ten-year-old.

  Porter stomped into her office. As he passed by, he carried the scent of stale whiskey. Addison caught a glimpse of the dented silver cap of a flask peeking from inside his jacket pocket. Addison shut the door behind her and calmly spread yesterday’s front page across her desk.

  “I just got off the phone with the fire chief and he says there’s a number of problems with your story.”

  “Like what?” Porter looked at her with his lip curled. She wanted to reach across the desk and slap him, scream obscenities about how poorly he treated his wife and kids, what a lousy human being (not to mention writer) he was, and then can him. Instead she took a deep breath and continued as calmly as she could.

  “The address is incorrect. Chief Warder says that’s the farm house across the street where the 911 call originated.”

  “Yeah? We get addresses wrong occasionally. I’ll run a correction.”

  Addison took another deep breath and tried to keep a lid on her temper.

  “It’s not just the wrong address. There are several things Chief Warder had a problem with. For starters, the time between the 911 call and the time the fire trucks show up make it took like crews didn’t respond for an hour and you even got the cause of the blaze wrong. It wasn’t an electrical fire, it was arson! The chief said there were three cans of Sterno cooking fuel outside the barn door. On top of that, the barn belonged to Walt Kernenberger, the only Amish man in Plummer County!” Her voice was escalating. She stopped long enough to gain control of herself. “He doesn’t even use electricity!”

  "That’s not true, Addie. There are some occasions when the church will permit—" Porter met her gaze. He didn’t care about this story—that much was written all over his face.

  Addison exploded. “Did you even read the reports before you wrote this piece of shit? Did you even go to this goddamned fire?”

  Caught, Porter slumped down in his chair.

  “I’m not a complete loser as a police reporter, Addison, you know that,” he said weakly.

  “Only as a human being, John. Only as a human being. What’s going on with you?” she asked, although she knew the real answer. This time it wasn’t as his boss that she asked, it was as his wife’s best friend. “Things used to be so great between the four of us, you and Suzanne and me and Duncan.” The four of them had been good friends, spending Fridays and Saturday night’s together playing cards or having a few beers.

  “I know.” Porter turned his head away.

  “Then all of a sudden, when I take this job, everything goes to hell.”

  “I dunno.”

  They both knew real truth. Porter had gone as far as he could go at the J-G. He'd been here just a few months less than Addison and when she got the managing editor’s position instead of him, it poisoned their relationship. Addison was too much of a friend to be a good supervisor then, and it was hard to tell him his writing had become hackneyed and trite and full of serious errors, like yesterday’s fire story. She could work with any of the younger reporters that came and went on their way up to bigger papers, but she and Porter had too much of a history to allow her to coach his writing.

  Then there were the other women.

  Porter wasn’t smart enough to cover his tracks. Every time he didn’t come home at night, Suzanne would call the McIntyre farmhouse crying. The first time he'd stepped out on his wife after a drunken night at Otis's Tavern, the lawyers’ hang out across from the court house, he woke up at the Holiday Inn with a blonde legal secretary.

  It had been Addison he’d come to first and Addison who’d told him to go home and explain himself to his wife before he dared set foot in her newsroom.

  But after a few more nights with a few more women, what he was doing to his wife didn’t seem to bother him. He ignored Addison—and Suzanne. It made life difficult for both women. The weekend card games stopped and Suzanne and Addison only met during the week for lunch. Addison’s relationship with Porter soured and they became strident adversaries in an otherwise cohesive newsroom.

  “Addie, before you fire me—because that’s what you really want to do—I’m giving you my notice.”

  Addison had been waiting for this conversation since getting a call last week from an editor at a weekly paper in the Florida Keys. Over the phone, the guy sounded like a cross between Hunter Thompson and Jimmy Buffet. He wanted John Porter to come down and cover the cops’ beat for him. If this idiot wanted to hire him, he could have him. It wouldn't be long before John Porter would be having piña coladas with toast at breakfast and then this Hunter Thompson wannabe would have to deal with it. She’d just have to deal with the fallout from Suzanne.

  Porter repeated himself. “I’m giving you my two-week notice.”

  “So you got the job.”

  “You knew.”

  “What, you think editors don’t talk to each other? Besides, you were stupid enough to list me as a reference.”

  Addison pulled a pack of cigarettes from the desk drawer, offering one to Porter.

  The Journal-Gazette had long been a smoke-free workplace, but Addie's office at the back of the first floor newsroom had an old single-pane window overlooking an alley that made skirting that regulation
easy. She took a green Melamine ashtray from its perch on the windowsill and pushed it towards him.

  Nodding, Porter sucked the filter of his cigarette until the end glowed red. He exhaled smoke toward the slightly opened window. They sat silently for a moment, sharing the intimacy of a nearly outlawed vice, a smoke.

  “Think you’ll like Florida?” She inhaled on her cigarette, hoping to sound non-committal.

  “I think so.”

  “Do me a favor, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you move out, don't take that little whore of yours to the house.”

  He colored to the roots of this thinning hair, nearly sucking his cigarette down his throat as he sank deeper into his chair.

  “And another thing,” she slammed her hands on the desk and stood up. “Go clean out your desk right this minute then go down to payroll and tell them I just authorized full pay for you for the next week and a half, although you sure as hell don’t deserve it! I don’t ever want to see your face in my newsroom again.”

  Porter sprang towards the doorway.

  “One more thing —"

  “Yeah?” Porter’s hand rested on the doorknob.

  “I hope you’re proud of yourself. This is going to kill Suzanne and those boys.”

  Porter hung his head.

  He closed the door behind him. As he left, she flopped back into her chair. She lit another cigarette, staying encased in the cocoon of her office until she knew Porter was packed and out of the newsroom.

  Firing Porter would make things complicated for the newsroom staff and for her, but it had been a long time coming.

  Small town papers don’t have the layers of editors and writers that big metros do. Five writers—three to cover features or hard news and two sports writers—a photographer, typist and a city editor made up the entire staff of the Jubilant Falls Journal-Gazette, but Addison liked to think they were the best that small town journalism could buy. When she first started at the J-G, there’d been a whole copy desk and a complete composing room. Technology and falling circulation had resulted in staff cuts and reporters being responsible for putting together a page or two each day. Still, something would simply have to give somewhere, until a replacement could be found for Porter.