Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) (22 page)

Chapter 35 Leland

By the time I got home to Philadelphia, she was national news.

It was a horrible flight. I got bumped off the flight from Cincinnati, then found myself in the wee hours of the morning in the Detroit airport, trying to sleep in unnaturally-formed plastic seats, rather than park myself in the airport bar, before catching a dawn flight home to Philly.

My apartment at Fitzgerald House smelled slightly musty, as if I’d been gone months rather than a little over a week. I set down my bags and flopped into the shapeless recliner, picked up the TV remote and turned on the TV.

“A reporter who disappeared following a story that sparked a diplomatic crisis has resurfaced briefly in Ohio,” the newsman said. “Charisma Prentiss has been working under her married name Christina Lemarnier for nearly a year at the
Jubilant Falls
Journal-Gazette
…”

My forefinger hovered over the remote’s power button, tempted to shut it off, ignore the whole thing.

Addison McIntyre was sitting at a table in front of a cluster of microphones, one arm in a blue sling, tapping the fingers of her other hand. A woman with big, blonde hair and a leopard print blouse sat next to her, smiling inanely. That must have been publisher Earlene Whitelaw, because Addison looked like she was in pain or wanted a cigarette, or both.

“Yes, Charisma Prentiss worked here as my education reporter and my night police reporter,” Addison said. “I knew her as Charisma Lemarnier.”

“Was she a good reporter for you?” a disembodied male voice asked.

“She was an excellent reporter,” Addison answered. “I’ve had a number of reporters come and go through this newsroom and I could always pick out the ones who I believed would go on to bigger and better things. I thought Charisma was going to be one of those reporters. I had no idea who she really was.”

“Why did she decide to reveal her real identity to you?” a female voice asked.

Addison was silent for a moment. I sat up straight and leaned closer to the TV.

“It was a personal decision,” she finally answered. “After she told me who she was, we decided it would be beneficial for the community to know the story.”

I felt like a game show contestant cheering on a team member and shouting “
Good answer! Good answer!”
when I knew we’d just lost the big jackpot
.
She kept me out of it entirely, made it look as though a reporter on her staff just happened to wander into her office and reveal she was a long-missing national reporter. Sure, it could happen.

“And where is she now?” another voice asked.
Addison shrugged. “I have no idea. I came in to work and her office key and her resignation letter were on the copy desk.”

The interview ended; there was some old familiar B-roll footage of Charisma in the field, blonde and brash as the world remembered her, followed by a few seconds on her injury, her husband’s death and the Syrian story. That followed with some self-righteous chest pounding about the state of the media today.

Nothing about the murders that Charisma helped to solve through her work in Jubilant Falls. Nothing about me, the nosy professor who came into town on a hunch based on a name I saw on a byline on a small Ohio newspaper and who inadvertently blew the lid off everything.

I pushed the power button and the television clicked off.

Like she told me the first time we spoke, that woman is gone forever—and apparently gone again.

Unlike her, my question wasn’t ‘Where would I go next?’ I knew where I was headed.

I was going back to rehab.

I’d made the phone call from the Detroit airport in the middle of the night, right after the bartender hefted an empty beer mug my direction and waved me toward the army of cleverly labeled craft beers standing at attention behind him. I knew then if I didn’t get a little fine-tuning I’d be right back where I started—and soon.

I couldn’t do that to Noah’s memory.

I visited his grave on my way to the clinic.

Four weeks later, I was back in my apartment, feeling stronger, more centered. I still, though, hadn’t decided what good it would do to tell my part of the Charisma Prentiss story. Maybe my second-year students would hear the story in a couple weeks when fall term started. Maybe I wouldn’t say a word.

Maybe, too, I’d start venturing back out into the dating world. I couldn’t have Charisma, but she’d shown me I was ready to dip my toe in the waters again. Broadcast instructor Audrey Dellaplain’s office was just down the hall from my office. We’d worked together for several years now. She was divorced, like myself. Maybe she’d have dinner with me. I could drop by her office after the first day of class and ask.

There was a buzz from the intercom downstairs. Who could that be? Probably someone was looking for one of the new professors who I saw moving into one of the other apartments. I walked over to the box by the door and hit the button.

“Hello?”

“Hey. It’s me. Can I come up?” The voice was soft and warm and familiar.

“Oh my God.” I leaned on the button until I heard the door unlock. In a moment Charisma was at my door. She wore tight jeans, and beneath a white gauzy blouse, her breasts swelled inside a pink tank top.

Without speaking, I pulled her into my arms, drinking in the familiar lavender smell, holding her as tightly as she held me. She looked up into my eyes, a moment of uncertainty in her face. Her hands slid into my graying hair, drawing my face to hers. Our lips met in a deep, passionate kiss.

“You’re here,” I whispered as we parted.

I pulled her inside, closing the door behind us.

“Yes, I am.”

Once again, her fingers slipped into my hair and her lips softly touched mine. I took her face in my hands and swept her brunette bangs away from her face, exposing the angry red scar along her hairline. I brushed my lips across it, following it down her neck. She gasped as I slid the gauzy blouse off her shoulders, exposing pocked scars along her arms and between her shoulder blades.

I looked deep into her eyes, uncertain of what would happen next. This time, I saw no fear, no pulling back. She laced her fingers through mine and brought them to her lips.

“You terrified me the last time you kissed my hand,” she said. “Back in my apartment in Ohio.”

“Was that it?” I asked. “I wasn’t sure what I’d done.”

“I didn’t want you to see how I really looked. When you pulled my hand to kiss it, you could see the scars on my arms. I wasn’t ready for that.”

Don’t ruin this, not now.

“What are you ready for?” My voice was hoarse.

“Oh, Leland,” she said.

I kissed her, sliding my arms down her back, feeling the softness of the tank top, clutching her firm bottom in my hands. Wrapping her arms around my neck, she moaned as I buried my head on her shoulder. In one quick jump, both of her legs were wrapped around my waist; I held her tightly and walked us into the bedroom.

*****

The sun was setting when she awoke. I smiled at her as she stretched like a cat.

“Hey there,” I whispered, running my finger across her collarbone and down between her breasts.

She snuggled closer, tucking her hands beneath her head.

“Hey there,” she purred.

“So I have to ask. Where have you been?”

She hooked her left leg across mine and I caught a glimpse of the long thin reminder of one of her first surgeries in Frankfurt. Blue shrapnel lay just below the surface of her left leg and among the scars on her arms. She sighed, contentedly this time.

“I drove around for a couple days, staying in hotels. Then I couldn’t stand traveling with Monsieur Le Chat any more, so I spent a couple weeks with my parents—some with my mother in Maryland, some with Dad and Kate in DC.”

“What made you come to see me in Philly?”

She propped herself up on her elbow and laid her hand on my cheek.

“Something you said, about rebuilding that old house. I decided that it was time to tear down some of those old walls. I want to start again. I’ve come to terms with the fact I’ll probably never be like I was before, and that’s OK. I just know I want to start again with you.”

“That’s what I want, too,” I whispered, drawing her into my arms. “That’s what I want, too.”

Chapter 36 Addison

I stood next to Gary McGinnis as a city worker ground Jimmy Lyle’s name off of the tornado memorial in front of city hall.

“So, the next time I have suspicions about a murder, are you going to listen to me?” I asked.

We shoved our fingers into our ears as the periodic scream of metal against granite interrupted the conversation. There was a brief silence. Gary opened his mouth to speak as the grinder started again. He shook his head.

A month after the story ran, Jimmy Lyle’s parents asked that his name be removed from the memorial; city council had quickly agreed. The event was going to be our lead story tomorrow, and I wanted to be the one to write it.

Pat Robinette circled the monument, shooting photos as the name was ground off.

“Go ahead, Penny, rub it in,” Gary finally managed to say. “You and I both know we wouldn’t have ever known about half of that stuff if Julia Dahlgren hadn’t confessed to you and Betty hadn’t told that reporter the other half. How’s the arm, by the way?”

I moved my fingers to demonstrate. “Now that I’m out of that damned cast, I’m feeling a lot better,” I said. “I’m almost completely back to normal.”

Gary shook his head. “I still can’t believe all that stuff happened in one family. We had the sister in mind as a suspect, all along. When we thought the time of death was Monday, and you said that Earlene Whitelaw had left work early that day we had to check her out. The fingerprints, we thought, sealed the deal at the time.”

“I never knew Eve had a sister, all through school. And
you
, damn you, never told me you had a suspect.”

“I don’t have to tell the press everything, even when it’s you. You know that. If I’d said anything, you’d have had it all over the front page the next day.”

I punched his shoulder gently. “Probably.”

We stopped talking as the grinder began screaming against stone again. My mind wandered back to what had been happening behind the brick walls of the old Shanahan house.

How long had the horror continued there? A murder, conveniently covered up by a natural disaster, a handicapped child raised in secret; no wonder Ed Dahlgren committed suicide. Eve’s rages had been a problem since I knew her in high school—that was evident. Was that abusive behavior learned from her father or something else? Who knows, now? Another question: how and why did Eve’s involvement with Bob Martz start? Too much time had passed on that one. She was accustomed to keeping many mysteries, and the murder of a married man was just one more.

That same rage apparently burned in sister Julia. Forced by Eve’s own controlling anger and financial puppetry to stay behind, watching over her mother and nephew, would be more than galling. No wonder she snapped.

The mysteries of Jimmy Lyle and Bob Martz’s long-forgotten deaths were now solved. The horror of three more deaths—Eve, Andy and Julia, by her own hand—all came at the expense of keeping family secrets, making certain that no one outside their doors knew of any imperfections.

There was one more death I still had questions about. Betty’s reaction to the picture of the young man found dead in the creek.

“Do you think the Dahlgren family had any connection to our other unsolved murder?” I asked. “I told you how Betty reacted to the photo we showed her. That and what she said: ‘Eve never did like that boy.’”

Gary shrugged. “She’s been moved to an Alzheimer’s unit by a family member, her sister I think. Those few things she told Charisma on her way out of the woods were the last coherent things anyone got out of her. The DNA profile we asked for from the state came through, but it had no matches in any of the federal or state databases. We may never know the truth about that one.”

I sighed. “Well, we tried.”

“I guess. What’s going on with the house where they lived?”

“The historical society that supports activities at Canal Lock Park expressed interest in purchasing the ruins of the home and surrounding land, hoping to rebuild it and use it as a local museum,” I said. “Marcus had the story in this morning’s paper.”

Gary nodded. “Do you hear anything from Charisma? That was the damnedest thing. Who would have thought a reporter of that caliber would have chosen Jubilant Falls?”

I shook my head. “I know I didn’t believe it when she told me. I’d bought it all along that she was widowed as a result of a car accident.”

“You never were very good about normal people and their relationships.”

“Yeah, rub it in.” I shook my head. Tonight, Duncan and I would be babysitting Gwennie Kinnon as Graham and our daughter went out again. It was their second date this week.

“But nothing from Charisma, huh?”

“I haven’t heard a word, but then I didn’t expect to. Most of the time, when reporters move on, they are gone for good. I just hope she can come back to be the national reporter she used to be.”

Gary nodded again. “So do you have anyone in mind for her position?”
“Not yet. I’m still working my way through a stack of résumés. I’ve heard from every new college graduate and has-been in three counties. I just have to decide who looks like the best candidate. Then the interviews begin.” I rolled my eyes in mock disgust.

The grinding stopped suddenly. The city worker stood, removed his safety glasses and brushed the dust from the now-flat surface. The rectangle looked odd in the middle of list of tornado victims.

Pat shot a couple more photos.

“I think I got what I wanted,” he said. “I’m going to head back to the paper.”

“I think I need to get back to my office, too,” Gary said. “See you later?”

“Sure,” I said, waving as both men walked off in separate directions.

Once I was sure they were gone, I stepped closer and ran my finger across the now-smooth surface.

The touch of the cold stone beneath my fingers told me Jimmy Lyle wouldn’t be waking me up anymore at night. Memories might return of that awful day the tornado struck, but I knew now when they did, I could have no fear.

“Rest in peace, Jimmy Lyle,” I whispered. “I hope you can now rest in peace.”

I lit a cigarette and walked back to the newspaper.