Lake News (14 page)

She had always avoided him when she was home, but she knew where he had been and what he had done before returning to Lake Henry. Poppy had told her.

“That's far enough,” she shouted from the porch in a voice that shook with fury. She might have been powerless in Boston, but she wasn't in Boston anymore. “This is my land. You're trespassing.”

He stopped walking. With measured movements he
set a large brown paper bag on the ground not ten feet from the porch. When he straightened, he held out his hands. Slowly, not quite leisurely, he lowered them, turned, and started back toward the boat.

He was barefoot, and wore a gray sweatshirt and denim cutoffs. In other circumstances she might have admired his legs, but today she hardly noticed.

“Stop!” she ordered. She didn't want him there, but since he was, she wanted to know why. He was up to something. Newspapermen always were, as she had recently learned. “What's in the bag?”

He stopped and slowly turned, his expression wary. “Fresh stuff—eggs, milk, veggies, fruit.”

“Why?”

“Because you have nothing inside but canned goods.”

“How do you know that?”

“The woman who keeps up this place is my assistant's aunt.”

“And you asked her? And she
told?”
Another betrayal, another fear. But this was Lake Henry. She couldn't really expect it to be any different. “Who else diii-id she tell?”

“Only me,” he said more gently, “and only because I asked. I was trying to think where I'd go if I were in your shoes. I figured you'd have to come here.”

She looked for smugness, but if it was there, it was hidden by his beard. “How did you know that I had?”

“Your lights were on at one in the morning. Hard to miss, with everyone else's lights off.”

“But you can't see this place from the road.”

“No. I live on the lake.”

Poppy had told her that, too, but even without Poppy,
she would have known. A Kipling on the lake, down from the Ridge, had been the talk of the town. “Where on the lake?”

There was nothing evasive about his eyes. Still, he hesitated as though he was considering another answer. Finally he said, “Wheaton Point.”

Well, at least he hadn't lied about that. He might have tried, but he probably figured she knew the truth. “You can't see Thissen Cove from there,” she said, not about to let him play her for a fool. “So you were out on the lake. At one in the morning?”

“I couldn't sleep.”

“And now you come bearing gifts.” She felt sick. Her hideout had been breached, and by the worst of enemies. “What do you want?”

“Put the gun down and we'll talk.”

She lowered the muzzle but kept it at the ready. “What do you want?” she repeated.

He slipped his hands in his back pockets. “To help.”

She barked out a disbelieving laugh. “You? You're media. On top of
that,
you're Dd-donny's big brother.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn't my choice,” he said. “I was gone when all that happened between you and him.”

“And if you'd been here? You'd have stood up for your brother, just like your dad did, just like your aunts and uncles and cousins did.”

“He was a troubled kid. They were trying to help him. He already had a rap sheet. He'd have gotten twice as much time if he hadn't said you'd egged him on. That was the story he gave my dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins. They believed him. They thought it was the truth.”

“It wasn't.”

He inhaled deeply and stood straighter. “I know that. He told me. I saw him in the hospital the day before he died.”

Donny Kipling had done time for his alleged theft with Lily, and time for breaking and entering two years later. Two years after that, he crashed his car during a high-speed police chase. He died at the hospital a week later, at the age of twenty-eight. That was ten years ago. Lily had been in New York then, working on her graduate degree. When Poppy told her, she had been saddened, not because she harbored feelings for Donny but because the humiliation of her experience with him suddenly seemed all the more wasteful.

“I'm sorry,” she said now, in part because Donny had been John's brother, but also because John had admitted the truth to her, which she hadn't expected.

But John seemed lost in thought. “He was a disaster waiting to happen. I don't know what went wrong. He was fine—perfect up to the age of ten. I was the bad one. So I was sent away, and Donny stayed and took my place.” His eyes met hers. “For what it's worth, my father hasn't been the same since Donny died. He's a tormented man. Hate him if you want, but he's getting punished good.”

I'm glad,
Lily wanted to say. Only, she'd had a glimpse of Gus Kipling in town several years back. He had looked broken and old, yes, like he was suffering. She would have had to have the hardest heart to wish him even worse.

John was something else.

She glanced at the food. “Then this is for guilt?”

He made a sputtering sound, more a sigh than a laugh. “That's direct.”

“I don't have time to play around. I came here to hide. You've found me out. Now I have to leave.”

Immediately, he sobered. “You
do not
. I'm not telling anyone you're here.”

Lily rolled her eyes.

“Why would I?” he asked.

“You're media. Media's job is to air the news. This is news.”

“It's between you and me.”

“You, me, and who else? The
Post? Cityside?
Or are you hoping to get a foot in the door again through something bigger, like a national wire service? Write one article, get it into dozens of papers.”

John stood his ground and shook his head.

“There won't be an article in Thursday's
Lake News?”
she asked.

“No.”

She didn't believe him for a minute and told him as much with a stare. Holding the stare, she drew the shawl in tighter. The shotgun remained in the crook of her arm.

“Good God,” he said, exhaling loudly. “You're hard.”

Dropping her guard for a minute, she cried, “Do you know what I've
been
through in the past week?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” His eyes were dark and troubled. “I've been there, Lily. I've seen what journalists do.” There was a pause. “I've done it myself.”

“So I heard.”

“Good.” Those eyes held sudden challenge. “Then let's put it all on the table. What you probably know—what Poppy probably told you, or Maida, or anyone else in town—is that I ruined a family. I did a story on a Connecticut politician who entered the presidential primary and failed to reveal that he'd once been involved with a prominent married woman. The affair had ended years before, when he got married himself, but there was the stink of adultery and the lure of lascivious details that were sure to sell papers. The man had enemies, and I loved talking with them. So the story broke, and thanks to a goody-two-shoes hypocrisy, the party withdrew its support. His political career ended, right along with his marriage and his relationship with his kids. They wanted to distance themselves from him. The public humiliation was too painful.” He paused. A tic pulsed under his eye. “Did I get it all?”

“You missed the part about his little blond aide,” she prompted.

“Didn't miss it. Repressed it. Turns out it wasn't true. There was no affair with a little blond aide, but that fact only came out later. By then, the wife and kids had bought into the story hook, line, and sinker.”

“You left out the part about the guy's suicide,” she added, intent on not sparing him a thing.

The tic pulsed again. “Yeah, well, that's what I'm living with now. If you think that suicide didn't affect my life, think again. It's haunted me since the day it happened. Afterward, when I went back to work, I was crippled. Couldn't do the hard stuff the paper wanted, because I was paralyzed by ‘what if's' and ‘then what's.'
So I left. Let me tell you, I think about that suicide, think about it a lot. It's the single greatest influence in the work I do now.” He pursed his lips, then let them go. His eyes held hers. “I do know what you went through, Lily. More than anyone else in town, I know.”

She stared at him for a moment, wanting to believe him. Again she let her guard fall. “I didn't want to come back here. If I'd had anywhere else to go, I would have.”

“I figured that. But people will find out you're here without my saying a word. They'll see a light, like I did. Or see smoke coming from the chimney. Or see you on the porch or down by the water.”

“Or see you buying groceries and bringing them here,” she charged. Even as she said it, she was startled by the way her mind had begun to work. The most innocent of acts was suddenly suspect.

But he was shaking his head. “I'm at Charlie's all the time buying stuff like this for my dad. Charlie didn't think twice when I bought these things this morning. So you don't have to worry about me. But Lake Henry is Lake Henry. You won't stay a secret for long.”

“That's fine,” she announced with a show of bravado. “I won't be
staying
for long. Once the story dies, I'm going back to Boston.”

He gave her a doubting look, his brow arched subtly.

“Or somewhere else,” she said, though Boston remained the goal. It wasn't fair that she should be banished for good. It wasn't
believable
. Besides, she couldn't see herself spending the rest of her life in Lake Henry. Celia was dead, Poppy was her only sure champion, and even
aside from the long-ago business with Donny, there were too many heartaches for her here.

But if not here, where?
she wondered, suddenly frightened. “Oh God,” she murmured, beginning to feel over-whelmed by the predicament again.

Correctly reading the emotions in her face, John said, “I have today's
Post
in the boat. It isn't as bad as it's been.”

Lily didn't want to know. But she couldn't afford not to. “What does it say?”

“That you're holed up in your apartment,” he remarked, definitely smug this time. “Then the story shifts to Maxwell Funder. He's quoted ad nauseam on First Amendment rights, the difference between a public person and a private person, the nature of libel cases. There are quotes from other lawyers, so-called experts. Speculation on possible legal action that you may bring. Did you retain Funder?”

She shook her head.

He scratched an eyebrow. “He implies you did. Doesn't say it directly. Just leaves it wide open. Maybe you should.”

“I can't afford him. Besides, me against the
Post?”

“How about you against Terry Sullivan?”

Lily stilled. She hadn't mentioned that name to John Kipling.

“You need to know one other thing about me,” he said, all teasing gone now. “I know Terry Sullivan. We went to college together, then worked together at the
Post
. He saw me as his competition and screwed me good.”

“How?”

“The little blond aide? She was Terry's connection. At the time, I was surprised when he gave me her name instead of using it himself, but he said that it was my story and that he respected that. I'm not saying that he put her up to it, but he knew all along that she lied. That means he deliberately set me up. Don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming him for the damage I caused. The blonde was only one piece of the pie. If I'd been less eager and checked her out better, I wouldn't have printed her story. No, all I'm saying is that I hold a grudge against Terry Sullivan. So we share that, you and me.” He turned to leave.

“I don't hold a grudge,” Lily told him, meaning every word. “It's worse than that. If this gun had been loaded and you'd been him, I'd have shot you on sight.”

With his back to her, John hung his head. When he turned, she saw a crooked smile—and for a second, just a second, she felt a connection.

Then he turned again and walked off. He was at the steps to the beach when he yelled back, “I have ammo! Call if you want it!”

John started up the motor and glided away, but the emotions churning inside him belied the lazy pace. Three years ago, returning to Lake Henry, he'd had a plan. Turning out
Lake News
each week would pay the bills while he moonlighted writing a book that would bring him fame, money, and the justification for having left Boston—and he had tried. He had written the beginnings of a
dozen
books. Only, none interested him enough to keep on.

This one would. It had the potential to be big. The more he thought about it, the bigger it got. Lily's situation was the microcosm of a large and increasingly frightening phenomenon. The media was out of control. Individual rights—in her case, the right to privacy—were being trampled. Admittedly guilty of doing trampling in his day, John knew the media mind. That made him the perfect one to write this book. The subject matter went to the heart of what worried, angered, jaded so very many people.

There was Lily's story.

And there was Terry's story. Terry was a good writer. He was actually a
great
writer—a master with words—and he knew it. He was arrogant and he was ambitious. But ambition alone couldn't explain the kind of meanness that ruined innocent people. John had known enough reporters to separate those who were conscientious from those who were driven. The driven often had cause that went beyond the professional.

John was a perfect example. His driving force was a need to stand out that went back to childhood. When he was young, it had manifested itself in petty misdeeds in school and minor run-ins with the law. When he left Lake Henry, his drive took the more positive path of competitiveness in sports, in school, in work. The last culminated in the debacle at the
Post,
however, after which his need to make a name for himself had been muted.