Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) (19 page)

Chapter 32 Addison

            
 
It was Monday morning, just after deadline. I’d walked to Aunt Bea’s, the diner around the corner, to grab a cup of black coffee, smoke an entire cigarette—maybe two—and to clear my head. I’d almost made it back to the front door of the
Journal-Gazette
when I heard him.

              “Addison! Addison! Wait! I need to talk to you!”

              The presses were already rolling. The circulation department had increased the press run by an additional 5,000 copies and the advertising department was salivating at the number of unique visits to our Web site thanks to the Starrett story. Whitelaw had already called the newspaper’s attorneys to alert them as to any potential legal ramifications. They assured him we were on solid ground legally.

              It was going to be a wild week. At least I had more bodies in the newsroom. Marcus was still burning his accumulated vacation time, but I had PJ upstairs in the newsroom typing in briefs for me. At least Pat Robinette, our photographer, was back from furlough and Graham and Elizabeth were slated to be here all week.

              The morning TV news led with our story, but didn’t have anything more than what we’d splashed across our front page. A few were able to dig up the footage of the Stanley Cup victory and a few B-roll shots of Rowan being led off to some unnamed jail, but most of the segments were talking heads leading with “A local newspaper is reporting…”

              Fortunately, jail visiting hours weren’t until this afternoon, so none of them could talk to either Charlie or Rick, although a couple Cincinnati stations set up their remote trucks across the street from there to get a good wide shot.

              I turned around. It was Mike Flagg, a fixture at one of the Collitstown news stations, known for his over the top, melodramatic delivery on his news stories. He was running, microphone in hand, followed by his cameraman, carrying a Sony on his shoulder.

              I stopped.

              “What do you want, Flagg?”

              “Just want to ask you a couple questions about the Rick Starrett story.”

              I knew this was coming. I’d primed Marcus and Graham to be ready for interviews on the story, too, but now I had to take a little bit of my own advice.
Be patient. Be kind.
I gave myself another piece of advice:
These are the assholes you’ll have to deal with on a daily basis if you take that PR job. Might as well get a little practice.

              “OK. Shoot.”

Flagg waited a few moments while the cameraman got set up. The cameraman had me spell my name, say my job title and asked me to stand in front of the brass name plaque near the newspaper’s front door. When the cameraman was ready, he nodded in the anchorman’s direction. Flagg grimaced as he adjusted his tie, tilted his microphone towards himself and spoke:

“How did Rick Starrett, the suspect in Virginia Ferguson’s murder, end up in your barn?”

              “That’s a good question, Mike,” I said, trying on a professional-sounding voice, and holding my cigarette down at my side, out of the camera shot. “I had been working late the night before. It was dark when I got home and I didn’t notice any tire tracks. My husband Duncan is a dairy farmer and, that morning, Tuesday, we were headed out to the barn for the morning milking about five in the morning when we discovered the tire tracks leading to our equipment barn. I opened the door and found Mr. Starrett there.”

              “Your husband Duncan had no part in hiding Mr. Starrett there?”
              “Uh, no. He’s up by four-thirty to milk cows. That means he’s in bed by nine-thirty or ten o’clock at the latest.”

              “You have a long history with Rick Starrett,” Flagg began.

              “Yes. We went to high school together. As the editor of the
Journal-Gazette
, I also worked with Mr. Starrett during his terms as city manager and county commissioner.”

              “Would you characterize your relationship as friendly?”

              I glanced back to see the J-G advertising staff clustering around the window to watch the interview.
Great.

              “Friendly, yes, but it was more professional than anything else.”

              “Rick Starrett also told you the story of his involvement in faking his brother Rowan’s suicide.”

              “Yes. Mr. Starrett’s attorney told me he wanted to talk to me following his arraignment.”

              “Did you know Rowan Starrett?”

              “Again, we went to high school together—he was two grades behind me, so I knew Rick better than Rowan. I’m also not a sports writer, so I didn’t cover any of his games. The
Journal-Gazette
frequently ran the Associated Press stories on him due to the local connection, however.”

              Flagg slipped his hand inside his sports jacket and pulled out a newspaper.

              “Our staff did a little research and we found that you also wrote the story about Rowan Starrett’s death,” he said, showing the ten-year-old cover story of Rowan’s funeral to the camera. “Isn’t it a little strange?”

              My jaw tensed and I wished I could take a draw on my cigarette.

              “Knowing that newspapers like ours have small staffs, I was probably the only person available to do the story that day.”

              “Some of our viewers are wondering if you were in on the cover-up. Can you address those rumors?”

              Some of your viewers are fucking morons.

“Learning that Rowan Starrett was still alive was a shock to me, I can assure you,” I said through gritted teeth
.

              “Has Prosecutor Steve Adolphus contacted you regarding your jailhouse interview with Rick Starrett? Is he concerned about any interference by the
Journal-Gazette
into the police investigation?”

              “He did originally, but we here at the newspaper have always cooperated fully with law enforcement in Plummer County and will continue to do so. Our role as a newspaper, like yours in television news, is to provide a voice for those in our community and serve as a record for the events of our county. We believe this constitutes one of those events.”
Damn. Maybe Fisher Webb was right. Maybe I could do PR.

             
“He has never spoken to you about filing obstruction of justice charges?”

              “No.”

              “Interference with a police investigation?”

              “No.”

              “Can you talk to me a little bit about what happened here Saturday, when the author Charlotte De Laguerre was arrested in your newsroom?”

              “Mrs. De Laguerre was in violation of a protection order filed by my reporter Marcus Henning. She is a suspect in the shooting of Mr. Henning’s wife Kay.”
OK, Flagg, wind it up. This is nothing you couldn’t have gotten out off the Web site.

              “One more question—”

              Behind Flagg, Graham stood in the newspaper’s front window and gestured for me to come inside. I could see Pat Robinette behind Graham, his Nikon camera fitted with what he called his “stalkerazzi” lens. Had the judge decided to open Rowan’s grave?

              “I’m sorry, I have a newspaper to run,” I said politely, stepping around Flagg and toward the door.

              The camera kept running.

              “There you have it,” Flagg continued to talk into the camera lens. “Addison McIntyre, editor of the
Journal-Gazette
denies she had anything to do with the Rowan Starrett suicide cover-up. Although McIntyre hasn’t been charged with anything, she could face up to ninety days in jail for obstruction of justice, should authorities here in Plummer County decide to pursue them. We’ll continue to follow this complicated story as it unfolds.”

              I took a final, precious drag off my cigarette with one hand and exhaled as I reached for the door with the other hand.

              “Hey Flagg,” I called.

              “What?”

              I flicked my cigarette at his fancy Italian shoes and he jumped back like a batter avoiding a bad pitch.

              “Fuck you.”

              Inside, Graham pulled me aside, away from the waiting advertising staff, who wanted to ask about the interview.

              “We have a bit of a conflict.” Graham was somber.

              “Oh, me telling another reporter on camera to fuck off isn’t a conflict?” I asked sarcastically.

              “No, seriously. The probate judge agreed to open Rowan Starrett’s grave. Charlie’s arraignment is in twenty minutes. Can you get one of these? I can’t get them both.”

              “Sure. Let me run up to the newsroom and get a notebook,” I said. “Pat, get me whatever photos you can and as close as you can. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. I know Birger said Saturday he wasn’t going to be real welcoming to any media.”

              Pat nodded.

              Mike Flagg and his cameraman were still on the sidewalk in front of the paper as I pulled out of the alley leading from the employee parking lot.

*****

              I pulled my Taurus through the vine-covered wrought iron gates of the city’s cemetery, trying to remember where I’d stood ten years ago to cover Rowan’s fake funeral.

              The cemetery had been founded as a final resting place for Jubilant Falls’ Civil War dead. That lawn of white government-issue headstones, crowned with the statue of a Union soldier leaning wearily on his weapon, was still the centerpiece of Plummer County Historical Society’s spring walking tours, much like Dad’s Victorian neighborhood near the downtown.

              Other sections fanned out from the center, reflecting the county’s history. Sometimes that history wasn’t anything to be proud of: For many years, Section 4A was only where blacks could be buried, next to Section 4A, was 5B, where Irish immigrants found their eternal rest. Those sections extended along the black, wrought-iron fence, with the more socially prominent members of early Jubilant Falls closer to the Civil War dead, their tall monuments overlooking the peaceful banks of Shanahan Creek, named for Jubilant Falls’ founder McGregor Shanahan.

              Another gentler rise in the rolling cemetery property became the resting place for the town’s more modern leaders, next to veterans’ graves from the two world wars, Korean, Vietnam, and more recently, Iraq and Afghanistan. Here, Rick and Rowan chose to begin their fraud and where a granite tombstone stood, marked the dates of Rowan Starrett’s fictional birth and death, engraved with an image of the Stanley Cup.

              Two unmarked police cars, the coroner’s van, and a cemetery dump truck towing a backhoe on a flatbed trailer were parked at the bottom of the rise. Pat Robinette’s aging MG was about two hundred feet back, far enough around the curve of the narrow cemetery road that he couldn’t quite be seen. I pulled my Taurus in behind his car.

              “It doesn’t look like anything has happened yet,” Pat said as I stepped beside him, notebook in hand.

“Good.” I pulled the cap off my pen with my teeth and flipped open my reporter’s notebook.

              “I can walk up there”—Pat pointed toward the weary Union soldier—”and get a good shot, particularly with this lens. We probably have a few minutes before the actual digging starts.”

              “That’s provided there aren’t any obstructions. They could move the trucks and the cars around the gravesite if they see you.”

              “And I can stand on the base of that statue.”

              “OK.” I shrugged and nodded. Pat would do anything it took to get the shot he needed. That’s what made him the best I’d ever worked with.

              “What are you going to do?”

              “I’m going to sit right here until I see that backhoe open the grave. Then I’m going to wander up and start asking questions.”

              Pat nodded, shifted the camera strap on his shoulder and began walking toward the statue.

              Ten minutes passed before the engine rattled on the backhoe, bringing the yellow monster to life. It rolled off the flatbed, onto the ground and between the other graves, with a procession of cops, cemetery administrators and workers with shovels on their shoulders behind it. I recognized JFPD Assistant Chief Gary McGinnis, and Detective Mike Birger, along with Plummer County Coroner Dr. Rashid Bovir, in the march towards the grave.

              The backhoe stopped in front of Rowan’s headstone and four yellow steel legs extended, insect-like, to the ground to steady it. The operator shifted the engine into a lower gear and the bucket began to cut into the dirt, my cue to wander up to the site.

              Gary McGinnis nodded in my direction as I approached. No one spoke, or seemed to care that I was there, somber with the responsibility of their actions.

              While the odds of Rowan’s body being in the grave were slim to none—there was too much evidence that he was alive—there was still the chance that
someone
could be in that coffin. If that was the case, that body deserved respect—and all of law enforcement’s attention for what could be a new homicide. That possibility was what brought Dr. Bovir to the gravesite.