Lake News (40 page)

“What problems did the gourd help you with?”

An innocent question. She released the breath. “This all happened in the early fifties. I wasn't born then.”

“Oh. Okay. Go on.”

“So,” she said, relaxing, “people
felt
something after they visited this gourd. They'd go home and tell friends in neighboring towns, and pretty soon those people were
coming to see it. Word spread to the city, and once it got there, well, you
know
how word spreads there. One little bitty article in the paper, and people were coming from cities
all over New England
to see it.”

“Must have been one crowded yard.”

Poppy said, “Never underestimate a Yankee. They're orderly and they're shrewd. They managed the crowd by setting up stands selling local goods on the perimeter of the field. That way, people coming to visit had a diversion while they were waiting to see the gourd.”

“That way,” Griffin put in, “the locals cashed in.”

“That, too,” she admitted, “but could you blame them? It was harvest time. They had bushels of sweet corn and apples, and gallons of cider, right on hand.”

“So, if I visited there, saw that gourd, and bought that cider and went home feeling better, I'd never know whether it was because of the gourd, the cider, or a day in the country.”

“Oh, it wasn't the gourd,” she assured him. “It was an old ordinary gourd that just happened to have unusual coloring. The locals ruled out anything miraculous from that gourd early on.”

“Then the whole thing was a marketing ploy?”

“Brilliant, wouldn't you say?”

Griffin didn't say anything during the short pause that followed, but she could hear a grin in that deep voice of his when he asked, “What happened to the gourd?”

“A pig ate it at the end of the season. Weud was,” she laid on the accent, “that paw-kuh made soo-puh bacon.”

He chuckled. “The moral of
this
story being that Lake
Henryites are wily when it comes to looking out for their own interests.”

“Right-o,” she said.

“Sounds like a place I'd like. I really should come take a look.”

But the fantasy was that he was her prince, and she could walk right into his arms. If he came to visit, the fantasy would be shot. “You wouldn't be welcome here,” she warned. “Not with things the way they are.”

“With Lily there, you mean?”

“No,” she said with care. “I didn't mean that. I never said Lily was here. But I'm not the only one tired of getting calls asking if she is.”

“Tell me for fact that she isn't, and I won't call again.”

For an instant, Poppy was trapped. But one of the things about losing the use of her legs was that her mind had grown sharper to compensate. Her voice grew gentler. The fantasy revived. “But I want you to call again. I like talking to you. So call again, Griffin Hughes. Anytime.”

John felt pressured Wednesday morning. He was scrambling to put the week's
Lake News
to bed, but Jenny was home with a cold and the phone kept ringing. The calls from outside media were handled fast; he said that he didn't know where Lily was, which was technically the truth at any given time. The call from Richard Jacobi was more demanding.

Richard had heard that Lily was back in town and was worried that if John didn't get something together fast, someone else would beat him to it. John pointed out that there were no other Lake Henry insiders on the scene. Richard reminded him that the deal was for an exclusive story to be published in book form in time for summer reading. John said that he understood, but countered that he knew for a fact that publishers could execute a one-month turnaround from manuscript to bound book if they chose. Richard argued that a turnaround like that made things harder—especially with a book so legally sensitive, written, he might point out, by someone with no track record—and that he had already
gone out on a limb offering John the deal he had. John reminded him that he didn't have a contract yet. Richard said it was in the works.

They ended on an amiable note, but John hung up the phone feeling a churning in his stomach the likes of which he hadn't felt since he was the stressed-out journalist seen in the mug shot on the wall. Part of the problem was time; good books weren't dashed off in a handful of days. And of course, part had to do with Lily; he liked her too much to push for information she wasn't ready to give. He even felt guilty when he thought about nosing into Maida's history in that little logging town in rural Maine.

Part of the problem, though, was
Lake News
. This was still his real job. It might only be a small-town weekly, but there was much work and great responsibility—and he took pride in it. Since his name was prominent on the masthead, he wanted each issue to be good.

So he wiped all the rest from his mind and focused on inserting post-deadline community service ads, rereading his major stories one last time, rewriting a poorly done piece from Center Sayfield, and finalizing the placement of photos with regard to local town and sports news. He sent the last page off to the printer just before one, then sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the feeling of pressure in his head.

His stomach was slow in settling, and he sat there remembering that he had returned to Lake Henry to escape this feeling. He was thinking that maybe he wasn't cut out to be writing books after all, when Terry Sullivan called.

So John wasn't starting off in the best of humor. It didn't help when Terry said a smug “Your girl was seen with her niece in a store in Concord yesterday. Are you still playing dumb about where she is?”

Irritated, he sat forward. “Why are you calling me? Why are you even
thinking
about Lily Blake? The story's done. I told you that last time you called, and it's still done.” He was disgusted. “It was a lot of hot air that amounted to nothing. You blew it, Terry.”

“Not me. My story stands.”

“Because of that tape?” John charged. “She didn't know about any tape. That's illegal.”

“Ahh. So you did talk with her. That means she's back.”

“Illegal, Terry. I'd be worrying about that, not about whether she's here. What is it to you, anyway?”

“I'm doing a follow-up story.”

John was incredulous—and it had nothing to do with his competitive streak. “For what paper? In case you haven't noticed, the
Post
dropped the story. Besides, what in the hell would you do a follow-up
on?
Journalists who create bogus scandals?”

“Try nightclub singers who get carried away and confuse the lines between fantasy and reality.”

“Yeah. Right. You gonna prove that with an illegal tape?” He had a sudden thought. “How about a tape that's been edited?”

There was a pause, then a cold “You have nerve.”

“Not me, pal,” John said. He could feel the tiny pulse throb under his eye. “It takes nerve to pursue something that's already been discredited. But here you are, calling
me again. I'm just letting you know there's another side to this story. Last time we talked, you said I'd lost it. Don't you wish. For starters, I know who called the wife of the chief of police here under false pretenses and tricked an innocent old lady into mentioning a case whose file was sealed eighteen years ago. Know how I know? There's a tape. Funny, isn't it? What goes around comes around, pal. Only this tape's legit, because it's an official police line, and it has your voice on it. If you don't trust my recognizing it, we'll take it to an expert. I also have a growing collection of articles you may have plagiarized during college.”

“You're investigating
me?”

John wasn't about to defend himself. Was he pulling a Terry Sullivan? No way! He wasn't going public with allegations, wasn't smearing for the sake of the smear. Like the information on Rizzo and Barr, this was just good to have. “What kind of writer cheats?”

“In college? College is ancient history. Besides, you have no proof.”

“The thing is, I don't think you want the debate. It could hurt your career. And then”—John was on a roll—“there's the weird personal stuff, like three wives. I thought we were friends back when, Terry, but I never knew you were married
once,
let alone three times. We were together in college. None of our other friends was married. None knew that you were. Not then, not the other two times. Why the big secret?
Three times
—why the big secret? What do you do to them, Terry? Keep them tied up and gagged? Something stinks about those wives—I'll bet they have stories to tell. And then there's
the Cardinal. What the hell is Cardinal Rossetti to you?” There had to be something,
had
to be something. “Do you have a personal grudge against him? Or against the Church? Are you another little altar boy who was molested by a priest?”

Terry's voice was icy. “I was never an altar boy.”

“Maybe a choirboy, then? There has to be a reason why you battered an innocent woman in an attempt to bring down the Cardinal.”

“What's she to you?” Terry threw back. “Are you fucking her, Kipling? Trying to make me look bad to make you look good?”

John rose from his chair. “I don't make anyone out to be something he isn't, but I'm warning you. You look into her life, she'll look into yours.”

“She will, or you will?”

“Same difference,” John said and slammed down the phone. Seconds later, he picked it back up and called Brian Wallace at the
Post
. “Quick question,” he said when Brian didn't sound thrilled to hear from him. “That tape Terry made of his conversation with Lily Blake?”

“If you're thinking about reporting it to the AG, you won't be hurting us. We have no proof she didn't know. We ran the story on the belief that she did. I've checked with our lawyers on this. The paper is covered legally. They bring a case against us, and it'll fail.”

He sounded a bit too defensive to John—and that wasn't even why he was calling. “Have you checked the tape's authenticity?”

“What do you mean?”

John thought his meaning was perfectly clear. “Have you checked the tape's authenticity?” he repeated.

“Authenticity—as in, was that really Lily's voice?”

“I hadn't thought about that, but it's a good point. What I meant was whether the tape had been artificially manipulated.”

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“Cut and spliced, Brian. You know how it's done. Words are shifted around or removed entirely. TV does it all the time. It's called editing an interview—only, the end result often conveys a very different message from the original. Do you think Terry did that? Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of an editing machine could have helped. Hell, Terry's a crafty guy. He might have done it himself.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the lady in question denies saying the things he quotes her in the paper as saying. I'm assuming that if you heard that tape, it must sound pretty much the way he reported it, or you wouldn't have printed it that way.”

“Have you talked with her?”

“That's not the issue,” John said with waning patience. “The issue is whether Terry doctored that tape.”

There was a groan. “Now, when do you suggest he did that? He didn't have time, Kip. You forget fast. It was late, and he was working on deadline to get that piece done.”

“Ten to one, he had the text written days before, all but the quotes.”

“Yeah, and he left Lily, raced back here, and was on
the phone with me by eleven, playing the tape. So when would he have had time to edit it?”

“Did you hear the whole thing?”

“I heard the incriminating parts.”

“But how do you know he didn't skip around? How do you know he didn't take those parts out of the context that would have made them a joke?”

“Because I played it myself the next day.”

“When? Morning? Afternoon? He could've played excerpts for you over the phone at night, then had it edited before you listened to the whole thing in person. Think he did that?”

Brian grunted. “How in the
hell
would I know?”

“You could have the tape checked.”

“Why would I
want
to?”

“To cover your butt,” John suggested. “The story Terry wrote doesn't jibe with what the lady claims she said.”

“She lies.”

“Or he lies. His story's already fallen apart. Are you condoning shoddy journalism?”

Brian sighed. “I'm not gonna take that personally. I'm gonna remind myself that Terry wasn't real nice to you and that maybe, just maybe, you'd like to see him fall. But my interest is this paper, and
it
ain't gonna fall. Trust me on this, John. That tape is real.”