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

  “Hey, Addison, can we talk for a minute?”

  I turned around to see Graham looking somber. “As long as you’re not giving notice, too,” I said, smiling.

  “No, ma’am. Can we talk in your office?” As usual, Graham’s face betrayed nothing.

  “Sure.”

  “I got a call from my mother this afternoon,” Graham began as he took a seat in one of the office’s old wingback chairs. “I need to take some time off.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “You’ve never spoken much about her. I hope she’s OK.”

  “Yeah, she and my stepfather live in Indianapolis. She’s fine—my stepfather has had a slight heart attack, nothing serious, but she wants me to come home for a few days.”

  “Well, we still have Elizabeth and as slow as it’s been, there shouldn’t be any problem. I can catch whatever breaks,” I said. “How much time off have you taken this year, outside of holidays?”

  “None.”

  “Why do I even ask? Go down to see Peggy, get me a vacation form and I’ll sign it before you leave tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So anything happening at the sheriff’s office?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. They got a few grants for some DUI checkpoints for the holiday weekend. I can write that up before I leave this afternoon.”

  “I talked to Gary McGinnis. He said Katya Bolodenka was here to see me yesterday and you took her down to see him about her goats being slaughtered.”

  Graham nodded. “Her farm manager Jerome Johnson was supposed to be filing a report with the sheriff, but when I checked on it this afternoon, they didn’t have anything. Sheriff Roarke said Johnson didn’t want to file a report, but just wanted extra patrols around the farm.”

  “Hmmm. That’s interesting.” I wasn’t going to spill what Gary had told me, since we didn’t have any proof of anything—including their real identities. And if they were involved in something illegal, like Gary said, it wasn’t a story yet. I was just being nosey and I knew it—all because I just didn’t trust Jerome Johnson.

  “See if you can get either one of them to go on the record about it. If there’s someone out there targeting animals, others might want to know that.”

  “I checked. There have been no other reports of any other farms being targeted.” He stood up. “I’ll get that form and then I’ll run out to their place to see if they’ll talk to me.”

  My desk phone rang—it was Isabella’s cell phone number. I waved Graham out of my office.

  “Hi, Mom!” Isabella sounded excited.

  “What’s up, baby?” Since her suicide attempt in high school years ago and her diagnosis of bipolar disorder, I never could quite take a situation at face value when she sounded overly excited or overly sad. She was good about taking her Lithium and submitting to the frequent blood tests that monitored her medication levels, but I still worried.

  “Dad and I are down here at Buchanan Motors and I’ve found a car that I like. Could you come down and look it over? Please-please-please-pleeeease?”

  I relaxed and smiled. “Why do you want me to look at it? Your dad is the mechanical member of the family.”

  “I know, but it’s so cute! Dad says it drives OK. He got under the hood and said the engine looks fine.”

  “Sure. I can come down for a little bit, but I’ve got to come back to work afterwards.”

  Down at Buchanan Motors, Isabella and Duncan, with his black eye just beginning to subside, were standing beside a little two-door Ford, painted candy-apple red. It was third in a row of used vehicles on Buchanan Motors’ lot. It was an automatic, with an AM/FM radio. It would get her through the rest of college and be reliable transportation to her first job, whatever that would be.

  “Do you like it, Mom? Do you like it?”

  “It’s cute, yes,” I said.

  “It will eat up about half of her savings,” Duncan said. “But it looks like it’s a good car. I told her she made a good choice.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Angus Buchanan sauntering toward us.

  I nodded at Duncan and waved at Angus. “I don’t have any complaints, then,” I said to Duncan. “Go ahead and get it. Hello, Angus!”

  The car dealer reached out with his thick hand to shake mine.

  “Hello, Addison,” he said. “You guys decide on a car?”

  “Yes,” said Isabella, clapping her hands. “I want this one.”

  “Good choice. Need financing?” He began to steer us toward the showroom.

  “Nope,” Duncan said.

  “Yeah, you farmers always pay cash, except when it comes to equipment,” Angus joked as he opened the glass door with one hand and pointed toward a corner desk. “You can just head over there to George—he’s my business manager and he’ll take care of the paperwork for you. I need to ask Addison about some other business.”

  “What’s up?” I asked as Duncan and Isabella headed inside.

  “I just want you to know that I really like this new publisher, this Earlene.”

  “Well, thank you, Angus,” I said. “I’ll tell her that.”

  “I really like the idea of this editorial board, too,” he continued.

  “Editorial board?” I asked. A focus group was bad enough, but an entire editorial board? I shivered at visions of weekly meetings where I defended my front page to people who had no clue about newspapers.

  “She called it a focus group, I guess,” Buchanan went on. “Anyway, I think it will be good for members of the community to have input on the newspaper.”

  “The community has always had input into the Journal-Gazette,” I said, defensively. You’ll have less input than you think, Angus, I thought. You won’t dictate my news coverage.

  “Well, you and I may have to disagree on that, Addison,” Angus gave me his best used-car dealer smile. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s meeting, though.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She didn’t tell you? I just got an e-mail saying she’s set up a meeting for two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t think we were meeting until next week.”

  Angus pulled his Blackberry from his shirt pocket. “Nope. This e-mail just came a few minutes ago. We’re meeting tomorrow. I guess I’ll see you then, huh?” Angus shook my hand and headed toward another couple looking at used vehicles.

  “I guess so.” I tried to sound pleasant, but somehow, the only thing I really felt was aggravation.

  Shake it off, Penny, I told myself as I went into the dealership to find my husband and daughter. Earlene’s your boss now. Things are bound to be a little different.

  Once the papers for Isabella’s car were signed, and the check written, she and Duncan headed back home. I headed back to my office.

  Graham’s vacation form was on my desk; he’d requested the rest of the week off. Beside the form was a page from a reporter’s notebook, scrawled with Graham’s handwriting:

  Addison—KB and JJ don’t want to go on the record about the slaughtered goats, so no luck there for a story. The story about the DUI checkpoints is done and in the system. I’m on my way to Indianapolis. See you next week—Graham.

  “Well, shit,” I said to myself. “I can’t make up the news. Maybe something else will happen while Graham is gone.”

  Sighing, I tied up a few more loose ends, found and responded to Earlene’s e-mail about tomorrow’s focus group meeting, and submitted the ad for Elizabeth’s job to an online journalism job board. I turned off the computer and, slinging my purse over my shoulder, shut off the lights as I closed the office door.

  As I turned around to lock the door, I heard the sound of a sniffle. It was Elizabeth, wiping tears from her eyes.

  “You OK, Elizabeth?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said, wiping her nose. Her purple hair made her eyes look that much redder. “I guess I’m going to miss this place more than I thought.”

  “We�
�re going to miss you, too,” I said, patting her on the shoulder. “You’ve done a good job here. You’ve grown a lot professionally and you’re going to do a great job in Akron.”

  “Thank you.”

  I patted her shoulder again and headed down the back stairs toward the pressroom and the employee parking lot. As I left, I caught a quick glance of Elizabeth holding a toothbrush and sobbing.

  Chapter 16 Graham

  Bill didn’t really have a heart attack, but Addison didn’t have to know that.

  The ruse got me to get out of the office for a few days, enough time to do a little digging.

  I also wouldn’t have to look at Elizabeth for her final two weeks in the office. Before I left town, I dropped the toothbrush she kept at my apartment on her desk, along with some other personal belongings.

  The drive to Richmond, Indiana, took me slightly over an hour from Jubilant Falls—about the same time it had taken Mother to get there from her gated community outside Indianapolis. Enough time to think about the questions I wanted to ask her about Benjamin Kinnon.

  The restaurant was dark and Mother was waiting for me in an inconspicuous corner. She was impeccably dressed, as always, in a pair of slim black pants and a short-sleeved, pale pink blouse. Shiny black sandals encased her painted toenails; pearls hung from her ears and around her neck. Her subdued makeup was flawless. A wide-brimmed summer hat and large sunglasses sat on the seat next to her purse.

  The dinner crowd was beginning to filter in. She twirled the stem of her martini glass between her fingers as we looked over our menus. She ordered a salad. I chose crab linguini—this meal would be on her tab.

  I started by asking about my two younger brothers.

  “So how are Jackson and James?”

  “They’re fine. They’re spending the week at soccer camp. Jackson starts his freshman year in high school this year.”

  “So where’s Bill?” I asked.

  “He’s in Florida this week, on a golfing trip. We bought a condo outside of Boca Raton last year and he takes clients down there for golf outings.”

  “Sounds pretty fancy.”

  “You know, only the best for Bill. So what did you want to ask me about?”

  “Tell me about Benjamin Kinnon.”

  She sighed and cast her eyes toward the ceiling. “I knew this was coming. I just didn’t think it would take so long.”

  “So is he my father?”

  “You have to understand, Graham, I was going through some hard times then—I’d made several extremely poor decisions…”

  “Yes or no, Mother. Is he my father?”

  “The social worker at the hospital kept pushing me to name someone as the father on the birth certificate. Benny Kinnon was around the most, so I wrote down his name. There were…” She paused, took a ladylike sip from her martini, and looked across the room at the other diners, no doubt checking to see if anyone might know her. “…A lot of men in my life at that time. I don’t know if Benny is really your father or not.”

  I pulled Kinnon’s folded police photo from my shirt pocket and took my press pass from around my neck. I laid the two of them side by side on the table. She flinched.

  Sarcasm seeped into my voice. “Looks like you guessed right.”

  “Graham, please. You don’t understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I snapped. “I have spent my life as the dirty little secret from your past. You were a drug-addicted hooker when I was a kid. You were a topless dancer when you met Bill and after you married him, I became a painful reminder of everything you wanted to forget!”

  “That’s not true! We always gave you the best of everything!”

  “As long as it didn’t involve anything more than writing damned checks! You and Bill shipped me off to boarding school the first chance you got—and kept me away as long as you could pay my tuition!”

  “Graham, that’s not fair!”

  “I remember the day you were arrested, Mother. I still remember your torn tee shirt and the ragged jeans. I can still see your busted lip and the black eye Ben Kinnon gave you. You’ve got fancy clothes and nice jewelry today, but I know the truth about you.”

  “Lower your voice!” She hissed, leaning across the table. “People will hear you!”

  I complied, but anger still came through in my words. “I want to know how much you know about Ben Kinnon.”

  Mother gripped the stem of the martini glass and continued to speak low.

  “Sometimes he had a job, but mostly he boosted cars, then sold them to chop shops. When he couldn’t steal cars, he stole credit cards then sold what he bought with those cards. When he got some extra cash, he bought drugs and brought them over to share with me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Graham, do we have to go through this? Really?”

  “What kind of drugs did you do with Benjamin Kinnon?” I asked again.

  She sighed. “Heroin mostly. I used to shoot it between my toes so no one could see the needle marks. Sometimes we did crystal meth.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “He was arrested the same day I was arrested. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “You were charged with heroin possession, right?”

  Mother looked around, hoping no one was listening. “Yes, Graham. I was.”

  “What was he charged with?”

  “Distribution. He had a lot more heroin on him than I did. We were both high on smack and got into a fight. The neighbors called the police and they found the heroin.”

  “The neighbors weren’t the only ones to call the police, Mother. I did.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “What did you expect? You were getting the shit beat out of you! Where did you meet Benny, anyway?”

  Mother took another genteel sip of her martini. “Junkies always seem to find each other. I was his lookout when he stole cars.”

  “Did you ever work with him on the stolen credit cards? Like when he tried to buy stuff?”

  “Sometimes, if it was a female name on the credit card…” Mother’s voice trailed off, then turned whiney. “Graham, you have to understand that those were different times for me. I met Bill and he really was a savior for me, for both of us. You understand that don’t you?”

  “I understand that I spent four years in foster care while you spent two years in prison and then took two more years to get yourself together. I understand that you stopped doing drugs and married a very rich man who wrote a lot of checks to keep me out of his hair.”

  “Don’t look at it that way, Graham,” Mother wheedled. “You couldn’t have had the things you had if it wasn’t for Bill.”

  “I also understand that you had all your Indiana court records sealed right after you got married. Was that Bill’s doing, too?” A quick online search before I left Jubilant Falls confirmed that for me.

  “He understood that I’d made a few mistakes and deserved a new start.”

  “Including hiding a son by a known heroin dealer and thief.”

  “We never hid you! That’s not fair!”

  “No, but after Jackson and James were born, I certainly wasn’t made to feel part of that family.”

  “Oh, Graham, I’m sorry. You have always been my son and I have always loved you.” She reached over and patted my hand and I dropped the interrogation bit, despite the anger I still felt. She was my mother, after all. She had come a long, long way from what she had been and, however poorly she may have handled the situation, she took me along for the ride. “I just have one question, Graham. Why ask about Benny Kinnon and why now?”

  I took a deep breath. “My girlfriend and I—we had a little pregnancy scare. It kind of got me thinking.”

  “Oh! You have a girlfriend! How wonderful!”

  “Had a girlfriend. We broke up.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to go into the details with her. Instead, I changed the subject. “Do you kno
w where Benny Kinnon is now? What he’s into these days?”

  She looked shocked. “No. Why would I?”

  “No reason, just asking. We never talked about it before and it wasn’t until this other... mess… that I even thought about him.”

  The waitress brought our meals to the table and the conversation changed: Bill’s golf habit, the boys new private school, Jackson’s newly discovered fascination with girls, the death of an aged Yorkie I never met, and where James was considering going to college. She never asked about my job and I never volunteered anything. We shared a piece of cheesecake, she paid the bill and we got up to leave.

  “I know I made a lot of mistakes, Graham, and I’m sorry about that,” she said as we hugged. “I’m sorry to hear you and your girlfriend broke up, too.”

  I shrugged. “Can’t do anything about it now—about either situation.”

  She ran a manicured hand through my short brown hair, no doubt a show for those around us. “I know. I love you Graham.”

  “I love you, too.” I turned to leave, heading toward the door and the parking lot. We wouldn’t walk out together—we never did. As I pulled out into the street, Mother was standing at the restaurant’s front door, hiding behind the large floppy summer hat and big designer sunglasses.

  That’s OK, Mother, I thought. I won’t tell anyone we met, either.

  ***

  “Hey Kinnon, where are you?” It was Elizabeth calling on my cell phone. I was back on the Ohio side of the state line, driving down the highway and contemplating what I was going to do next.

  “I’m on my way to the hospital in Indianapolis. My stepdad had a heart attack,” I lied. “I’m off for a couple days.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Addison said.”

  “So why are you calling me?”

  “Because I don’t believe her—or you.”

  “Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?”

  “Kinnon, c’mon. Do you have to be such a prick?”

  “You don’t tell me you’re leaving to take a new job, you let me make an ass of myself proposing to you and I’m the prick? Tell me how that works.”

  “Kinnon, please.”

  “What do you want?” I slid my Toyota into the exit lane. It would take me down another interstate through Collitstown; midway through the city, I’d take an exit for the two-lane state highway that would bring me back to Jubilant Falls in about forty-five minutes.