Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) Read online

  The bathroom door finally opened. Her eyes were red and her purple wig slightly askew.

  “You want to tell me now what’s really going on?” I asked softly.

  She leaned against the bathroom doorframe.

  “I got a new job, Kinnon. I’m going to write features for the Akron Beacon-Journal,” she said softly. “I told Addison this afternoon while you and the llama lady were at the police station. She’s going to announce it tomorrow at the staff meeting.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me first? You were going to let me get blindsided at a staff meeting?” I asked angrily.

  “Kinnon, I’m—”

  I didn’t let her finish. “You didn’t think I would be happy for you? That I’d be proud somebody at a big metro thought you were good enough to write for them?”

  “Kinnon, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “So your trip to Shaker Heights wasn’t for your mother’s birthday.”

  “Well, yes it was. We also looked for an apartment in Akron.”

  We were both silent.

  “Find one you liked?” My voice was barely above a whisper. I felt beaten, like I’d just taken a punch to the gut.

  She nodded, a tear running down her cheek.

  “How long have you been looking for a new job?” I asked.

  “A couple months. I wasn’t sure how you’d take it or how Addison would take it,” she said. “It was the stress of applying for a job and then worrying if I would get it or if I wouldn’t. I was thinking all kinds of crazy things: What if somebody called for a reference before Addison knew I was even looking? What if I gave my notice and she fired me for some reason? And us—I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

  “Guess you know, now.”

  She sat down next to me, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Yeah. They told me Thursday I’d gotten the job.”

  “So you woke up Friday morning with me, in my bed, knowing you were leaving, and started throwing up.”

  “I didn’t know what to say! It’s not that I don’t love you, Kinnon—I do,” she said. “It’s just that I’m not ready. If we got married now, I could see us settling down in Jubilant Falls and never leaving. I’m not willing to do that. Not right now.”

  “I’m not planning on staying here at the Journal-Gazette forever either,” I said. “I don’t know what I want to do next. I just know I want you in my life forever, whatever comes next.”

  “Kinnon, please—”

  I pulled her arms from around my neck and looked her in the eye. A note of desperation crept into my voice. “Listen, Beth, why can’t we see each other, even after you go to the Beacon-Journal? On weekends, I could come up to Akron, or you could come down here…”

  “And what happens if there’s some breaking news story? I’m going to sit here while you go chase it?”

  “And you don’t think you’ll have some assignments that interfere when I come up to see you? That’s the business we’re in! Nobody else is going to understand like I do. I understand about the crazy hours, the lousy pay, how frustrating it is when your sources don’t call you back and the story is due in twenty minutes. I understand that, but there’s one thing you need to know. Nobody else, Beth, will love you like I do. Nobody.”

  She pulled away from me and reached for her socks and boots.

  “And I must be the dumbest girl in the world for turning you loose, Kinnon, but right now, I think it’s the best for both of us.” She kissed me on the cheek and slipped out the door.

  I waited until I heard her car pull away from the curb then hurled the cake against the door.

  Chapter 13 Katya

  “You did what? You dumb súka!” Russian profanity spit from Jerome’s mouth. “Why did you do that? Why did you think the editor of the newspaper, of all people, could help you?”

  I tossed my hands in the air. “She knew who struck you. She knew he was bad man! I thought I could find out more to help you!”

  We were standing in the feed room of the barn. Bags of grain were stacked on pallets along two walls. On a third wall hung kitchen cabinets with vet supplies like worming medicines and bandages. Beneath them was a small sink in the center of a small counter. Jerome’s desk was along the fourth, looking out the one window onto the front pasture and driveway.

  Jerome picked up a fifty-pound bag of feed and heaved it angrily into the wheelbarrow just outside the entrance to the barn’s interior.

  “I told you to stay here!” He picked up another bag of feed. “I told you I would take care of it!”

  “But Jerome, I—”

  “No! You listen to me!” The second bag landed in the wheelbarrow with an angry thunk and his voice got louder and louder. “You have made this detail harder than any other job I’ve ever been on. You continually step outside the boundaries of what you have been told more than once are in place to keep you safe. You keep doing these things you don’t think are dangerous — like the state fair and the newspaper article—but they are!”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I screamed back at him. “Sit here and do nothing? Twiddle thumbs until it’s time to move on to next place? Do you know what is like to try to talk to people and everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie? I have never taught art history in my life! I can’t talk about my mother, I can’t talk about my sister—”

  “What don’t you understand?” The veins stood out on his neck. “We’re trying to keep you safe until the trial, Katya!” Grunting, Jerome angrily yanked a third bag of feed onto his shoulder.

  “And then what? I disappear again?”

  He stopped, the bag of feed on his shoulder, and sighed. “No. Not this time. Not if your identity wasn’t compromised. Since this town is so far off the beaten path, the plans were to let you stay here, once we were sure you were safe. I mean, who the hell would come looking for someone in a town called Jubilant Falls?”

  “So now the truth,” I said. “I have blown our cover?”

  The feedbag slid from his shoulder into the wheelbarrow, more slowly this time. Jerome pulled his smart phone from the holder on his belt and, after touching screen a few times, turned it so I could see: It was the photo of me from Saturday’s newspaper article, smiling into the camera, seated at my spinning wheel surrounded by llamas and alpacas.

  “Where is that?” I asked.

  “It’s on the newspaper’s website. Anybody looking for you can do an Internet search and find it. That story was posted Sunday while we were at McIntyre’s house having lunch.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “And when we come home, Dasha is dead, then today, Zaneta, ” I said softly. “I am dumb súka.”

  “What happened when you went to talk to Addison this afternoon?”

  “I started to tell you—she wasn’t there. So I talk to reporter, his name is Graham Kinnon,” I began. “He said the man who hit you might be doing other things, bad things.”

  “Like what?”

  “A ‘hate crime’ was what police chief called it.”

  “You also talked to the fucking police?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything except that my animals were dying! Graham Kinnon, he tells me the police are watching this man and police chief might have more information for me, so we walked down there to talk to him.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Katya.”

  “I told him you were talking to the sheriff.”

  “I didn’t just talk to the sheriff, Katya.”

  “Who else did you talk to, then?”

  “Who do you think?”

  I closed my eyes.

  I knew the answer.

  “I have to protect myself, too, Katya. I can’t let another detail like this go south. I screwed up once and it cost me my career in the Marines. I’m assigned to protect you, but you’re not making it easy on me,” he said. “I have to tell my superiors what you are doing and how that compromises your safety. It doesn’t make it any easier that we are sleeping together.”
r />   “Oh, and I’ll bet you were completely honest with them about that, weren’t you?” I snapped. “I’m tired of hiding everything in my life. I want to be able to live the kind of life everyone else lives. I’m tired of being everyone’s dirty little secret.”

  He sighed. “You won’t be a secret forever. I promise. But I had to let my superiors know what happened.”

  “What did they say?”

  “The trial is next month. You are the lynchpin of the entire federal case, the prosecutor’s main witness. We have to keep you alive, but you have got to follow the rules. They were adamant about that.”

  “What if the person killing our animals is this bad man, this Doyle McMaster? What if it’s not—?” I couldn’t even say his name.

  “It doesn’t matter, Katya. If you’re dead, you’re dead and the case is over. I’m out of a job—and Kolya Dyakonov goes free.”

  Chapter 14 Graham

  After deadline Tuesday, Addison gathered us all together in her office for a staff meeting. Most of it was plans for the upcoming Labor Day weekend: Who would cover Monday’s parade, how much time Pat could give to that weekend’s festival, Canal Days, for front page art, coverage for the first day of school, crap like that. I doodled aimlessly on the notebook on my lap.

  “And I have one more announcement.” I looked up as Addison smiled at Elizabeth. “One of our own, Elizabeth here will be moving on to bigger and better things. She’s accepted a position at the Akron Beacon-Journal.”

  Addison led the congratulatory applause as Elizabeth blushed; Marcus, Dennis and Pat all joined in. It was difficult, but I managed a smile.

  “That’s great news!” Marcus Henning said. “When’s your last day?”

  “I start September fifteenth in Akron, so whatever the Friday before that is,” she answered, glancing at me.

  “Let’s go out to dinner that night for an official send-off then,” Addison said. “Sound good?”

  Everyone around me nodded.

  “You available that night, Graham?” Addison asked.

  “Sure. I’ll be there.” I tried to sound pleasant. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe there will be a four-alarm fire.

  There were a few other items Addison needed to go over, but in a few minutes, thank God, the meeting broke up.

  “I’m heading down to the sheriff’s office,” I called out, heading for the door.

  “Kinnon, let me walk down there with you—I need to go to Aunt Bea’s to get a soda,” Elizabeth said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Hey, Kinnon! Wait up!” Elizabeth grabbed her purse and followed me down the stairs, out the front door and onto the sidewalk. At the corner, she grabbed my shoulder. “Graham, hang on! Quit walking so fast!”

  “What do you want?” I stopped abruptly.

  “You’re going to make these next two weeks a living hell for me, aren’t you?”

  “No, I think you did that all by yourself.”

  I turned away and started back down the sidewalk, heading east on Main toward the Sheriff’s Office, a block past the big stone courthouse.

  “Graham, wait, please!”

  “I’ve got work to do, Elizabeth. I’m supposed to meet with Sheriff Roarke in about five minutes,” I called over my shoulder. I didn’t look back. I just kept walking.

  Chapter 15 Addison

  After Tuesday’s staff meeting, everyone scattered.

  “I’m heading down to the sheriff’s office,” Graham Kinnon called out.

  As slow as it’s been, maybe he can dig up a story, I thought to myself, closing my office door. Before I checked on tomorrow’s advance pages, I needed to touch base with Gary McGinnis. In a moment, I had him on the phone.

  “Hey, it’s me, Penny.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I called the church Katya Bolodenka told me she attended as a child in Chicago and the priest there hadn’t heard of her,” I said. “I even called two other churches with the same name and they never heard of the family either.”

  “I didn’t dig up anything on her on my end either,” he said. “No previous tax records under that name, no credit rating anyplace.”

  “I looked up the deed to that farm on the county Website,” I said. “She paid cash for it. There’s no mortgage.”

  “Where would anybody get that kind of cash to buy an entire farm? When I asked her yesterday what her income was, she told me her art and the farm were her only income.”

  “You saw her?”

  “Right after I left that message on your phone yesterday, she and Graham walked into my office.”

  “Really? Nobody said anything to me that she came here.”

  “Apparently someone slaughtered two of her cashmere goats—one Sunday night and one early Monday morning. Graham thought that it could be tied to Doyle McMaster, so he brought her to my office to talk about it. ”

  “But you can’t help her with that, since she lives in the county,” I said.

  “I know. She originally was looking for information from you about McMaster. Apparently her farm manager was at Sheriff Roarke’s office filing a report while she was talking to me.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Just what I’d told Graham the other day—that we suspect McMaster may be involved with a hate group that could be moving into this area.”

  “Considering the fight he got into with Duncan and Jerome, that wouldn’t surprise me. And there’s another one—that guy Jerome Johnson. You couldn’t find anything out about him?”

  “Nope. You said he’d lived in Ashtabula? I sent his BMV photo to the chief of police in Ashtabula and he’s never heard of him.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t have a record.”

  “The Marines have no record of him either, Penny. I should have been able to find something there and I couldn’t.”

  “So the story she fed me about him being a guard at the embassy in Moscow was a load of crap.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Then they’re both lying. I didn’t find Katya in any school records. She told me she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have no record of any female student under that name. What do you think is going on?”

  Gary was silent for a moment.

  “Russian organized crime is known for trafficking in heroin and women,” he began slowly. “We’ve had a hell of an increase in heroin use, just like everybody else. The location of that farm, not far from the highway like it is, could be a perfect drop spot. Drugs or women or both could be moved in and out of there without anyone knowing.”

  “You think so? I thought the Russian mob was centered on the east coast. You think they would move this far west? Are there any Russian crime families headed by women?”

  “Anything is a possibility.” Gary shrugged.

  “What about protective custody of some sort? Witness protection?” I asked.

  “If they were under federal witness protection, we’d know. Besides, some of the stuff she is doing could be considered pretty conspicuous—I read that story you wrote on her farm. Protected witnesses are generally told to keep a real low profile. A story like that could get her thrown out of the program.”

  “Would the feds normally have a handler like Jerome Johnson living on the property?” I asked.

  “Witness protection can involve twenty-four-hour security, if someone is supposed to testify in a federal trial of some sort, for example. And you’re assuming Jerome is the federal agent.”

  “She’s too tiny to be his protection,” I said dismissively.

  “Penny, I’ve seen some little females who could kick ass up one side and down the other. That kind of a story would be a good cover—the poor little Russian lady who can hardly speak English and needs a big, strong man to help her run her farm. The same could be said if she’s running drugs or a prostitution ring out of that farm. Johnson could be her enforcer in that situation.”

  “But the only suspicious person I saw there was Jerome Johnson.
He creeped me out.”

  “No one else? Women or men?”

  “Just livestock—llamas and alpacas. And I was inside the house, too.”

  We were both silent.

  “I don’t think she’s in protected custody,” Gary said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not that.”

  I sighed. “There’s something going on there that we don’t know anything about and I don’t like it. I mean, what if the story I wrote on her is a complete fiction?”

  “What if it is? That doesn’t make you look bad—it makes her look bad. Would that be a story? So what happens then? You can’t do a story on any suspected illegal activity until an arrest is made. Besides, who is going to believe that a yarn-spinning llama farmer is also a drug dealer? I don’t think it fits together. Let the police look into what may or may not be going on at that farm.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. I just don’t like being fooled by somebody.”

  “That’s our business, Penny—you and me both, we get lied to on a regular basis. At any rate, whatever is going on, their livestock doesn’t deserve to be killed like that. I’m strongly leaning toward McMaster being stupid enough to keep harassing Jerome Johnson by killing his animals. I’d bet the rent that Judson Roarke does too.”

  “We’ll have to see what Graham comes back with. He was on his way over there when I called you.”

  “Keep me in the loop,” Gary said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  The rest of the afternoon was routine. I sent Earlene an e-mail telling her about Elizabeth’s new job and letting her know I’d like to fill the position as soon as possible. After that, I checked tomorrow’s advance pages for content and errors; finding only minor tweaks, I shipped them downstairs to pre-press and sent Dennis home for the night. Marcus came back from city hall with a story about a street department employee who was retiring after twenty-five years; Pat was getting the photo. Elizabeth’s story on the new principal was still in the queue, so that could run in Wednesday’s paper.

  God, I need some unvarnished human misery, I thought to myself. How much more boring can a page one get?