Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) Page 9

  Shortly thereafter, a video surfaced of Rowan taking money for throwing a game. Banishment seemed to be fitting punishment; you couldn’t turn on ESPN or open a newspaper without images from the grainy film filling the screen or the page. Sports pundits everywhere (even in our own J-G) decried Rowan Starrett’s sins and proclaimed his sentence just.

  The gambling—and the arrests—continued: drugs, thefts, more gambling, multiple domestic violence convictions and a short-term marriage, along with more arrests. After a while, it seemed cruel to continue to cover Rowan’s disastrous fall from grace, but we did it, long after many other news outlets stopped.

  He finally went to Elkton Federal Prison for bilking folks who believed he needed money for rehab and then made the world think he’d committed suicide after his release.

  I stopped and touched the frame.

  How could we have been so stupid? Of course, out of all the deaths I’d covered over the years, how often did I demand a death certificate or to see and touch the body? Not too damned often.

  I’d bought into the myth both Starrett boys fed me, wrote the story and moved on to the next edition.

  And now Rick tells me it was all a lie.

  I sighed, straightened my shoulders, and opened Watterson Whitelaw’s door.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Prosecutor Steve Adolphus stood as I entered the room, turning a silver laptop away from Watterson and toward me.

  “Hello Penny. Have a seat.” Watt indicated a chair in front of his desk. “Steve has something to show you.”

  Adolphus sighed. “You and I have worked together for a long time, Penny. I can’t believe what the sheriff brought me just now.” He turned, pushed a button on the laptop’s keyboard and, looking harshly at me, folded his hands. “I’ve always thought you were a good journalist, but this takes the cake.”

  The screen came to life and as the video came into focus, I saw Anna Henrickssen, a shackled Rick Starrett entering the jailhouse conference room, as I followed behind. I watched myself circle the table and point to the ceiling camera, my index finger coming into close focus near the lens.

  As Adolphus and Whitelaw watched, Rick Starrett laid out his claims of innocence because of a brother who really wasn’t dead. I winced as I watched Anna Henrickssen hand me the envelope.

  Adolphus sighed as the video clip came to an end.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well, what? What’s pissing you off? The fact that I’m looking at both sides of a story?” I hoped I sounded a lot braver than I felt. “I’m assuming you’re going to look into what you heard Rick say?”

  Steve smirked. “I don’t have to. I’ve got a victim identifying her shooter on her deathbed. And while identical twins may have the same DNA, they don’t have the same fingerprints. Although I haven’t seen it, I’m sure the police have the weapon that killed Mrs. Ferguson with Rick Starrett’s prints on it.”

  Gary hadn’t told me whether they had a weapon or not. He’d just said she’d been shot and they’d found .38-caliber bullets at the scene.

  “And if they don’t, you’d let an innocent man get convicted?” I wasn’t certain what Rick told me was gospel, but I didn’t know what direction the prosecutor would take. “After all, the burden of proof is on you. I would think that however bizarre this story is, it still might constitute reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury. And aren’t you obligated to tell Anna Henrickssen about any exculpatory evidence?”

  “Rick Starrett isn’t innocent.”

  “It doesn’t look good, Addison,” Whitelaw said. “The man was found in your barn and now you are getting information from his lawyer?”

  “I want to know who wrote the story of Starrett’s arrest,” Adolphus said. “If it was Penny, then you’ve got a clear conflict of interest.”

  My stomach sank. Whitelaw was right—that didn’t look good. Adolphus had me there. I’d logged into the computer system under my own name. I’d written the story, but taken my byline—automatically placed by the editorial program at the top of the story—off. Somebody might even make the case that I was harboring a fugitive or obstructing justice. I don’t know which one would be worse.

  “I’m not volunteering that without a subpoena,” Whitelaw said.

  I turned away so Adolphus wouldn’t see the look of relief on my face.

  “So you’re willing to cost Plummer County thousands when the jury pool is poisoned by her story?”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Her story is going to fill the heads of anybody who reads it with this crap about his dead brother pulling the trigger!” Adolphus exploded. “The prosecution will have to move this trial to another county because we can’t get twelve impartial jurors.”

  I started to laugh. “You’re kidding me, right? Maybe Anna Henrickssen will ask for a change of venue, too! You seem to have forgotten who told Gary McGinnis that Rick Starrett made threats against Virginia Ferguson the day she died—me! Who called the police when he was found on my farm? Me! I’m not hindering a police investigation, for God’s sake, I’m helping it!”

  “Calm down everybody, calm down,” Whitelaw waved his puffy, wrinkled hands. “As the publisher of the Journal-Gazette, don’t you think I know our circulation numbers, Steve? If you are only looking for twelve people who neither subscribe nor buy a copy when they buy their coffee every day, you’ll have that many plus another dozen alternates within thirty minutes. Your biggest problem is not any story Addison might write about some cockamamie excuse for a murder.”

  Adolphus sank back in his chair.

  “Steve, you know I wouldn’t compromise any police investigation,” I said. “You know who my father is. I’ve got too much respect for cops and what they do.”

  “And you know that the J-G has editorially supported every police or fire levy that’s ever come on the ballot,” Whitelaw interjected.

  “So what is my biggest problem, then?” Adolphus asked.

  “Your biggest problem isn’t that this crazy story of Rick Starrett’s is true,” Whitelaw said. “Your biggest problem is the next election. This district hasn’t got anyone in the Statehouse right now. It’s up to the central committee to appoint someone now—what if Virginia Ferguson was as good as anybody could do?”

  The tension in the room dissipated.

  Adolphus smiled. “True, true. Whoever they appoint has to serve out Virginia’s term, then win against whoever runs against him—or her.”

  He stood, shook his head, and closed the laptop, sliding it into his briefcase.

  Whitelaw and I stood. I reached out my hand.

  “I’m glad we talked, Steve,” I said. “You know I won’t ever prejudice your investigation, unless you believe my search for the truth prejudices your oath of office.”

  Steve shook my hand and then Whitelaw’s. “I hope not,” he said, turning on his heel, left the office, shutting the door behind him.

  Whitelaw turned to me, once the sound of Adolphus’s footsteps died down.

  “I don’t know what Rick Starrett gave you and I don’t think I want to know. You and your staff tend to go hog wild on some of these stories and they put this newspaper at more than a little legal risk. Frankly, I’m more than a little sick of it. If you or any of those cowboys upstairs do anything to stand in the way of Rick Starrett’s prosecution—that means conceal evidence or obstruct justice or anything that stands in the way of this case—you’re fired. Fired, out the door and gone.”

  Chapter 16 Marcus

  After my breakfast of coffee, eggs—and a side order of guilt—I left the hospital cafeteria and went back up to the ICU to find all three kids outside the unit.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Is Mom OK?”

  “That detective is in talking to Mom. He wanted us to wait out here,” PJ said.

  For a few minutes we made small talk—which kid slept where in the house last night, what they had for breakfast, why we didn’t keep a favorite childhood cereal on h
and anymore. In a few moments, we ran out of things to say and silence settled around us. Andrew leaned against the wall and stared at the ceiling as Lillian snuggled under Bronson’s arm. PJ folded himself into the corner of the hallway couch and pulled out his iPhone, his thumbs working furiously on the touchpad, probably playing a game.

  In a few minutes, Detective Birger came out of the unit.

  “You guys can go in and visit her now,” he said, smiling at the kids. “I think she’s going to be OK. You”—he pointed at me—”We need to talk.”

  The kids quietly walked into the ICU unit and Birger and I sat on the couch.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I said, and briefly explained the entire situation with Charlie Deifenbaugh—or Charlotte De La Guerre or whatever the hell her real name was. At this point, I didn’t know what to believe.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier?” Birger asked as he scribbled notes on a small legal pad held in a leather binder. “If we’d known you had a stalker, you could have had protection. We might have been able to prevent this.”

  I sighed. “I know that now. I wasn’t entirely sure those voicemails on my work phone yesterday could have been her until I thought about it,” I said. “I hadn’t heard from Charlie for a couple months.”

  “When was that?”

  “Maybe late August, early September. She’d called at work and left some message about being in Muncie, Indiana, at a writer’s conference at Ball State in October. She wanted to know if I’d signed up for the conference and if we could meet.”

  “Did you call her back?”

  “No. I deleted it.”

  “Could that have made her angry?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. You would think that when somebody doesn’t return any of your four thousand messages, you’d get the hint they don’t want to talk to you and you stop calling.”

  “Unless you’re a stalker, in which case you ramp up your efforts. You say there had been no further phone calls until Monday morning when you discovered your wife had left?”

  “No, sir.”

  Birger nodded and wrote some more.

  “We found several messages from a 773 area code on your phone, plus several from the hotel where we found Mrs. Henning, and one from your son PJ’s cell phone. Elizabeth Day also said she took ten messages from what she believed to be the same person that morning,” he said.

  “ Yes—she told me that. The area code, 773, that’s Chicago. Charlie lives in Chicago. It’s got to be her.”

  He nodded and we stood. Birger snapped his binder closed, a signal the interview was finished.

  “I’m headed back to the office now,” he said. “I’ll keep in touch. Does your wife know any of this about this woman?”

  “No. I haven’t told her. Not yet.”

  “You’d better—and soon. This Charlie might come back to finish the job. I’ll talk to the chief about maybe getting some uniforms out here to the hospital.”

  Birger headed to the elevator and I wandered back into the ICU unit. Through the glass windows that separated each patient bay, I could see the kids surrounding their mother’s bed. Bronson saw me enter the unit and motioned that he, too, wanted to speak to me outside the ICU in the hall.

  “Mr. Henning, do you have a moment?” he asked, swallowing hard. “I know this probably isn’t the best place to do this, but can we talk?”

  I looked up at Bronson, a full six inches taller than me. The collar of his gray Columbia University sweatshirt poked out from around his navy pea coat. A Burberry scarf was stuffed in a pocket and the blue canvas belt that held up his designer jeans had preppy, yacht-club anchors woven into it. His white-blonde hair was styled enough so as to appear disheveled, and there was apprehension in his blue eyes.

  “Sure, kid.” We walked back out into the hallway. If I were taller, I could have put a fatherly arm around his shoulder. “What’s up?”

  He took a deep breath. “Well you know Lillian and I have been dating for over a year now, and…” He took another deep breath. “Before all this happened, I was going to ask her to marry me when we were in Paris on Christmas Day—my parents have a small apartment there. We were going to come back with the news.”

  I nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, she’s obviously not going to want to go to Paris now, until Mrs. Henning is better.”

  “Sure.”

  “I still want to ask her to marry me, sir. I want you to know that I love Lillian with all my heart and I’ll be a good provider—I’m going to work in my father’s firm as a stockbroker after the first of the year while I finish up my MBA. She’ll never want for anything.”

  There was a pleading look in Bronson’s eyes. The trust-fund baby I saw only as Lillian’s way out of Jubilant Falls actually did love her. I realized he would do anything to make her happy. Much like I felt when Kay and I and the children stood in that small church and became a family all those years ago.

  I sighed. Where had I gone wrong? By keeping secrets, by lying to Kay—even if I thought I was protecting her. Could we bring back this same hope I saw in Bronson’s eyes?

  “I have no doubt about that,” I said. “Sure Bronson—I’d be proud to have you as a son-in-law. You have our permission to ask for our daughter’s hand.”

  My future son-in-law’s shoulders sagged with relief, and he shook my hand vigorously. “Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

  “So when are you going to ask her?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Not until Mrs. Henning comes out of the hospital, at least.”

  I started to speak, but stopped as I saw the ICU door open. It was Lillian coming from her mother’s bedside, followed closely by her brothers.

  “Hey, Daddy, what are you guys talking about?” she asked.

  I looked at Bronson and tried not to smile.

  “Nothing. Guy stuff,” he said.

  She shrugged and rolled her eyes at him, then looked at me. I could see her sliding back into what her mother and I called her “Marian mode.”

  Yup, Bronson was going to have his hands full with that one, I thought to myself.

  “Mom is pretty doped up, and her doctor is coming by soon, so we were talking about going home for a little bit,” Andrew said. “You ought to too, Dad. You, more than us, need the sleep.”

  “I’ll stay for a little longer, then I’ll meet you guys at home.”

  We said our goodbyes and I stepped back into ICU. Kay’s eyes fluttered when I touched her arm, and she mumbled something unintelligible. I leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  “I love you, Kay. More than you know,” I whispered. “This is my fault. This is all my fault…”

  Birger was right. I had to tell her the truth of what was going on, that we were being stalked and for whatever reason, Charlie had turned her focus from me to her. It would have to wait, though, until Kay was awake enough to understand.

  “Mr. Henning?” A nurse stood in the doorway. “I have a phone call for you. She says she’s your wife’s sister.”

  “My wife doesn’t have a sister. My wife is an only child.”

  Chapter 17 Addison

  The newsroom was empty when I got back from Watterson’s office.

  According to the white board posted above Millie’s former desk, Graham Kinnon was at court and Elizabeth was meeting with the city school superintendent, their destinations scrawled in red markers next to their estimated time of return.

  Photographer Pat Robinette had written FUR-LOWED TILL FRIDAY beside his name with a happy face scrawled inside the O.

  There was no destination or time of return listed for Marcus.

  I stepped back into my office and pulled a reporter’s notebook from my desk drawer, quickly writing down the details of Rowan Starrett’s life of deception as Rick had told me.

  Despite Watterson’s warning, I wasn’t going to let this whole thing go. If Rick was guilty of murder, he was guilty of murder. I wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. B
ut if Rowan was still alive, whether he shot Virginia Ferguson or not, that was a story I was honing in on, regardless of the consequences.

  I thought about the contents of the envelope I spilled onto my dad’s kitchen table: How easy would it be to trace those money orders? Those phone calls?

  Rick wouldn’t have been stupid enough to buy a money order himself or use a credit card, would he? In his job, he could have had some intern or staffer do it.

  No, I thought. He would have been too smart for that—staffers and interns, particularly ones with a grudge, could spill their guts. I shuddered as I envisioned some earnest young kid fresh out of college in a white shirt and tie, standing wide-eyed in front of a TV camera, a microphone in his face, “Yes, I went down to the convenience store five blocks from the state office building every month with a wad of cash from Mr. Starrett.”

  It would have taken a lot of effort on Rick’s part for Rowan Starrett to remain hidden for ten years. A casual errand by a staff member discovered by the wrong person would have undone all of that.

  And what about Rowan’s funeral? There was a casket—I’d seen it myself. But was there a body? How could that deception have occurred without some collusion with a local undertaker?

  A quick search of “Rowan Starrett” in the editorial computer system gave me several dates for stories containing that name appeared with a note “see archives.”

  I walked back through the newsroom, to a room slightly larger than a closet that we called our morgue, where stacks of past bound volumes and binders of CDs containing PDF formats of old editions were stacked. I began searching for the story I’d written on Rowan’s funeral.

  I found the binder of CDs for the year Rowan was supposed to have died and headed back into my office. A little more searching and I found the disc, inserted it into the computer and, after a few clicks began to read my story directly from that day’s front page:

  Former Hockey Player Rowan Starrett Laid To Rest