A Good Kind of Trouble (A Trouble in Twin Rivers Novel Book 1) (12 page)

"Welcome back," a quiet disembodied voice said from the other side of the cubicle. Slowly, Charlie raised his head above the grey barrier.
 

"Thanks, Charlie," Lindsey said, turning on her computer and reaching for her phone to check for messages.
 

"You got more mail," Charlie said. He stood and passed her a large sealed brown envelope. "I was afraid that Jeff character might start rooting around on your desk looking for it, so I kept it safe for you."
 

"Uh, thanks," Lindsey said. "Has Jeff been here? Looking for me?"

Maybe the idiot realized he was in over his head on the stadium story after all. Charlie dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, his usual mode of communication.
 

"He was looking for you. Yesterday afternoon. I didn't tell him anything."

There was nothing to tell, but at least she had one person on her side in the newsroom. Even if it was crazy Charlie.
 

Lindsey smiled and thanked Charlie for watching her back, then punched her voicemail code into the phone. The first two messages were hang-ups, which she deleted. Then a low voice oozed through the phone receiver.
 

It was the same as always—a low, sinister laugh, barely audible. Then nothing. Not an overt threat, but chilling nonetheless. She should have been used to the menacing messages by now, but each one sent a shiver up her spine. She saved the message and then pressed the right combination of buttons to send it to Sam.
 

It was probably futile, since she did this every time she received a similar message, but the messages managed to disappear before Sam could retrieve them.
 

Lindsey hung up the phone and ripped open the envelope. Instead of another stack of contracts, she found blank pieces of paper and some clipped articles from the
Beacon
.
 

She unfolded two pieces of newsprint. One was a front-page photo from last year, taken at a city council meeting. The mayor sat at the council dais, leaning forward on his elbows, his chin resting on his clasped hands. The next page was another shot from the newspaper, but more recent. Lindsey found the date at the top of the page. It was just after the council announcement on the stadium proposal. The mayor was shaking hands with Bear O'Bannion. Someone had circled the mayor's left wrist, which was gripping the other man's right hand in an enthusiastic two-hand shake. The circle was around the watch on the mayor's wrist, an accessory that was missing from the earlier photo.

She didn't need Ben to explain this message from her anonymous source. The mayor was sporting a huge fancy watch now. The fact that the mayor bought himself a nice watch—if that's even what it was—didn't mean anything. Maybe his wife had bought it for him. Maybe it was a flea-market fake.
 

Maybe she was dealing with a crackpot, someone as crazy as her boss thought she was.
 

What was she doing? She had a good job in a perilous industry. If Sam wanted a story on the sewer bonds, fine. That's what he'd get. She'd go find Jeff and see what he wanted from her, and then she'd blow the damn lid off the sewer bond story. She couldn't give Sam any reason to fire her.
 

Lindsey typed the bank's name into a search engine, looking for news stories on EFB, Inc. The first article on the list of results was a recent in-depth profile of the bank.
 

From the Ashes, EFB Rises:
 
A New Leader Among Wall Street Titans

It was a two-part story that had run just two months earlier in the Los Angeles
Press-Herald
—her father's newspaper. It was part investigation and part celebrity profile of an institution rebuilding its reputation after the financial industry’s meltdown and the bank's own legal troubles. All that was in the past, Wall Street experts agreed. EFB was working hard to be the gold standard for banks.

Lindsey printed the articles and added the pages to her files. Resting against the seat back, she rubbed her temples. Her father's best business and investigative reporters had dug deep into EFB, Inc., looking for any hint of corruption or scandal. They had come up empty.
 

She struggled to reconcile the glowing profile of the bank with what Ben had told her about the contracts between EFB and Twin Rivers. Her certainty about the bond contracts' terms faltered as she skimmed the article again, looking for any hint that the bank might be taking a small city for a ride.
 

But there was nothing. The
Press-Herald
had given EFB a thorough shaking, but dislodged no scandals.

She shoved away from the desk and stalked off to the break room to find a soda. She dropped her coins in the vending machine, and then kicked the side to knock loose the diet soda it owed her. A can rolled out and she picked it up and wandered across the newsroom to the sports section. Three reporters had gathered over a low cubicle wall and were deep in debate.
 

"Hey, Lindsey," one said and Lindsey dredged her memory to find his name.
 

"Hi... Hank," she said, apparently guessing correctly. All the sportswriters looked the same to her. While the rest of the newsroom dressed in business casual, the sportswriters had their own uniform—jeans, short-sleeved shirts with the top buttons undone, sneakers, and two-days growth of stubble. She rarely had a reason to come over to this rowdy corner of the newsroom.
 

"Want to settle a bet for us?"
 

"Does it involve taking off my shirt?"

"Only if you want to," Hank said with a grin. He wasn't a bad guy, just a bit juvenile. "Of the Three Stooges, which one was the smartest?"

Lindsey looked at all three men. "Really?"

"Well, sure, everyone thinks that Mo was because he was usually in charge," said one of the sportswriters. Lindsey thought his name was Brandon. Or Brendon. Or possibly Brett. "But he really had very little control over the other two Stooges, so doesn't that undercut his intelligence?"
 

"Huh," Lindsey said. She did not have time to get sucked into this discussion. "I'm just here looking for Jeff. Have you seen him?"

Hank shook his head. "Out to lunch. You just missed him."

"It's 10:30," Lindsey said.
 

Brandon/Brendon/Brett laughed. "So?"

Lindsey sighed and shook her head. "Thanks, guys," she said, backing away. "If you see him, would you tell him I'm looking for him?"
 

The sportswriters huddled up again to continue their discussion. Lindsey started back to her desk when she heard someone calling her name. Dani Carter, the sports intern, waved and jogged toward her.
 

"Hey, Dani, how are you?"

The young woman shrugged. "You know, working with these clowns," she said, nodding her head at the three stooges behind them. "You're looking for Jeff?"

Lindsey nodded. "He dropped by my desk yesterday, but I was... out."
 

Dani tipped her head to one side, but didn't comment on Lindsey's absence. "He's meeting with the ValCorp people. Again.”
 

"ValCorp? Again?"

Dani rolled her eyes. "He goes out with them a couple times a week. Two-hour lunches, drinks after work."
 

"What a... " Lindsey couldn't even find the words to express her disgust.
 

"Yeah, I know," Dani said. She had worked two summers at the newspaper and apparently knew better than Jeff the rules about fraternizing with the subjects of an investigation. "He says he's working the stadium story, but I think he's just enjoying the free booze." Dani tilted her head to the side, her blue eyes serious. "Wasn't the stadium your story?"
 

Lindsey nodded.
It would be again.
 

"I don't understand why the bosses would put Jeff on it. He's so lazy," Dani said.
 

Lazy, but pliable. He wouldn't dig into the story, and definitely wouldn't read the thousands of pages of contracts that would explain, eventually, how the city was getting conned by Wall Street banks.
 

"Can I ask you a favor?" Lindsey asked.

Dani grinned. "Sure, anything."
 

"Can you get some stuff from the archive librarian for me? On the stadium and on ValCorp?" If Dani requested the archives, Sam wouldn't know that Lindsey was still digging into the arena story.
 

"If anyone asks, I'll say I'm helping Jeff," Dani said, her bright blue eyes sparkling. "He's so lazy, no one will question that he'd send me to do the actual work."
 

"Doesn't it bother you, working with these guys?" Lindsey asked, looking back at the sports area, where the three overgrown children were now laughing uproariously over something Stooge-related. One was attempting to poke the other in the eye and another was crowing, "whoop, whoop, whoop."
 

"They're mostly fine. Plus, knowing that Jeff is a slacker helps me because then I can eventually steal his job covering baseball. But you have to be a good reporter to cover the arena. And Jeff is not a good reporter. The story is too complex to just hang out at long lunches with the stadium promoters and call that work."
 

"I appreciate your help. I'll give you a list of what I need."
 

"No problem. I won't even ask for a byline," Dani said with a cheerful smile. "Maybe a contribution line."

It wouldn't hurt to have another ally at the newspaper. Even if that meant her "team" was a crazy obits writer and Dani, the cute unpaid sports intern.

She was going to save her job by doing her job.
 

She had an appointment this afternoon to meet with the city attorney to talk about the sewer plant bonds and she wasn't going to waste the trip to City Hall. Lindsey thumbed through a pile of papers that were in her to-be-filed stack until she found the latest public records request she had sent to the city. It was time to head back to City Hall and do what Sam told her to do—cover the sewer bond story, a more interesting prospect now that Ben had enlightened her about the con game happening in the contract language.
 

Lindsey walked the ten blocks to the large brick building that housed most of the city government offices. It was early enough she could enjoy being outdoors without fear of heat stroke, and she’d remembered to wear more sensible shoes this time. She kept an eye on her surroundings, looking for any sign of the ominous SUV or the bike messenger.
 

She flashed her press pass at the security guard, who handed her a "visitor" sticker to wear on her shirt. She took the elevator to the seventh floor where she was to meet with Teri Schulman, the city attorney who had agreed to answer questions about the sewer project. It had taken repeated phone calls and emails before the city's lead attorney would agree to an interview. Lindsey couldn't blame her for the lack of enthusiasm. She hadn't wanted to talk about sewage, either.
 

"Miss Fox, please come in," Teri Schulman said, ushering Lindsey into her office. A wall of windows overlooked the grassy area in front of City Hall and faced the library across the street. Ms. Schulman took a seat behind her desk. She was a tall woman, imposing in a severely tailored, drab olive-green suit. She wore simple diamond earrings and no other jewelry except a thin gold band on her left hand. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she wore no make-up that Lindsey could discern.
 

"Please have a seat." She waved to a pair of comfortable upholstered chairs across from her desk.
 

Lindsey took a seat and, after retrieving her notepad and pen, she scribbled the date at the top of the page. "Thanks for making the time for me, Ms. Schulman."

"Please, call me Teri. It's nice to meet you finally. I know you're new to covering City Hall, so please feel free to call me or my office if there's anything you need."

The welcoming attitude was unexpected. Lindsey had only been on the City Hall beat for four months, banished there after the threats from Bear O'Bannion got her taken off the arena story. She had worked hard to learn the players, but the city attorney's office wasn't on her list of frequent sources of information. Still, she wasn't going to turn down any offers of help.

"Thank you, I appreciate that," Lindsey said.
 

"You know, I went to law school with the newspaper's in-house counsel, Lara Ingalls. Well, I guess she's been Lara Petrie for several years now."
 

Lara Ingalls? Lindsey couldn't wait to drop that delicious nugget of information on Ben. She pictured the paper's in-house counsel wearing calico. And a bonnet. "I didn't know that," she said, choking back a giggle.
 

"I see her from time to time, mostly at local bar association meetings. Please tell her hello for me when you see her," Teri said, then leaned back in her chair with a smile. "So, you're writing about the sewage project? Did you anger someone at the newspaper?"

Lindsey returned the smile. That was a fair assumption. "It's a big investment for the city and I cover City Hall."

"Well, what would you like to know?"
 

"Knock, knock." A chirping voice from behind her interrupted the interview and Councilwoman Rae Waters walked in to the office. "Hope you don't mind if I join you for the interview, Ms. Fox. Teri told me you might be doing a story on the wastewater renovation project."
 

Lindsey struggled to keep the surprise off her face. Rae Waters had refused her previous attempts to talk to her, but those stories had been about funding for parks and police projects—which had been cut to the bone in the last budget. Now the plump grandmotherly council member was settling into the seat next to Lindsey with a bright smile, an unexpected enthusiasm for sewage treatment, and a plate of homemade cookies, which she offered to Lindsey and Teri.