Hiss and Tell (6 page)

“I’m beginning to think that politics really stinks.”

That got a chuckle from Ken Howell. “I’ve been following politics for more than fifty years now, and it seems the field never gets much cleaner—or the participants any smarter.”

“Yeah, well, I’d rather deal with Frank Nesbit than the problem Lee Trehearne and Ellis Wainwright have on their hands.”

“You mean the publicity?” Ken asked.

Will shook his head. “They’ve got an apparent murder on a peninsula cut off from the mainland by a checkpoint and guards. It’s the equivalent of a very large locked room.”

“That’s right,” Sunny said. “Trehearne won’t be able to claim that some hobo or transient did it.”

“Not unless the guy turns out to be a former Navy SEAL,” Will laughed, and then went quiet. “So the suspects come down to staff, security, guests, or the family.”

“Who just happen to be super-influential. You’re right,” Ken admitted. “It’s going to be a real mess.”

“Well, if anybody can straighten it out, I’d bet on Wainwright,” Will said. “The guy is a pro. And who knows? In the end, the story may turn out to be sadly simple—people drinking too much, an argument that goes too far, and then it’s too late.”

“Real open-and-shut stuff.” Ken’s voice sounded sour. “Until the expensive lawyers get involved.”

*

Will wanted to
drop Sunny off at her house, but she insisted on going in to the
Courier
office with Ken. This was a real news scoop, the kind that required a special edition, and Ken would be killing himself to get one out. The least she could do was help.

They arrived at the old warehouse to find the interns already at work . . . in a poisonous atmosphere. It seemed that someone among the summer helpers had leaked one of Sunny’s cell phone pictures. They’d called Ken with the news while he was still in the car, but the horse was already out of the barn by then. The picture by itself was too indistinct for anyone to run, but the phones in the
Courier
office were ringing off their hooks as various news organizations called for confirmation of the story. Ken let his troops admit that there had been a death on Neal’s Neck—so long
as the
Courier
got the credit.
That probably means a whole caravan of media people will be converging on Neal’s Neck to get more of the story,
Sunny thought. The job facing Wainwright and Trehearne wouldn’t be getting any easier, nor would they be grateful to her or Ken for precipitating that.

She pushed the thought away to concentrate on the job at hand, working with Ken on a front-page story while the interns manned the photos. Sunny wasn’t happy that their reportage depended so heavily on unnamed sources; sources whom Trehearne and Wainwright, not to mention the Kingsburys, would easily identify as Will Price. The sensational aspects—a party in an exclusive compound, a victim who’d been drinking—didn’t put Eliza Stoughton in the best light, either. Sunny couldn’t forget the state police lieutenant’s comment: “That poor girl deserves more dignity than you’re about to give her.”

At least they’d found a photo to run that didn’t make Sunny feel as though they were working on one of those awful old-time tabloids that had featured pictures of dead babies found in garbage cans. It showed one of the Kingsbury security guys with his back to the camera, holding Eliza Stoughton in his arms as his colleagues prepared to haul her body up the cliff. His broad back with SECURITY in large letters blocked the view of Eliza’s face and torso, leaving only her legs and one arm showing.

It was a shot Sunny had gotten, and Ken insisted on giving her a photo credit. By that time, sunlight was beginning to filter through the windows, and Sunny was too tired to argue. They put the paper to bed, and Sunny sat numbly at a desk, not even noticing the noise of the press
in action. She finally roused herself and called home so Dad wouldn’t worry. “And don’t forget to feed Shadow,” she finished.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Mike repeated for about the tenth time. “I was up early and heard stuff on the radio.”

Sunny assured her father that she and Ken were perfectly fine, that Will had taken care of them, and that Mike would be able to read the whole story in the
Courier
. By then it was late enough in the morning that Sunny staggered over to the MAX office just in time to open up.

Nancy came dashing in moments later and stared at Sunny. “You look like you slept in those clothes,” was the first thing that popped out of her mouth.

Sunny looked down at the sweatshirt and jeans she’d worn for the journey to Neal’s Neck. Probably not the most professional-looking office wear.

“No, I definitely did not get
any
sleep in these clothes,” Sunny replied.

Nancy goggled at her. “You were at Neal’s Neck again, weren’t you? They said on the news that a local paper had broken the story.”

As she spoke, one of Ken’s interns, looking bright and energetic, came into the MAX office with a pile of special edition copies, which he placed on Sunny’s desk.

He must be on something to be so cheerful after the night we had,
Sunny silently groused, and then had the unworthy wish that the guy would share whatever it was.

Nancy pounced on the paper. She’d read a paragraph, stop to stare at Sunny, read another one, stare again, and kept it up until Sunny finally said, “If it sounds exciting, well, then we did our jobs. But really, it wasn’t. A lot of it
was boring, sitting in the dark wondering if we were there yet. Then there were a couple of minutes of craziness, spiced with a bit of terror. At one point I was afraid we were going to get shot as trespassers—”

Sunny broke off when she realized Nancy was just eating this up.

“Anyway, what I need now is coffee.” Her stomach protested at the thought. “Maybe coffee and a muffin,” Sunny amended. “And eggs. Maybe tea instead of coffee. I don’t want to burn a hole in my stomach.” She fished in her pocket and found a couple of bucks, which she held out to Nancy. “Would you mind going over to Judson’s Market and seeing what you could get in the way of breakfast? I’d go, but . . .” After sinking into her desk chair, Sunny wasn’t sure she had the energy to get out again.

Nancy took the money and came back a few minutes later with a scrambled egg on a roll and a large cup of tea. Sunny dug in gratefully, but forced herself to ration her bites. She didn’t want to scarf the whole thing down while Nancy was still giving her the hero-worship stare.

They settled back into work—at least Nancy did. She even got the coffeemaker going. The phone rang, and Sunny picked it up to hear Ollie Barnstable’s voice. “Well, the local news shows are all talking about your midnight ride,” he said.

“It was more like two a.m.” Sunny broke off to yawn.

“Was Will Price there, too? It seems a dead body can’t turn up in this neck of the woods without the two of you being in on it up to your necks.”

Sunny sighed. “Yes, Will was there. And he’s sure that Nesbit’s people will try to make the most of it.”

“Well, I’m sure your dad and his cronies will work on damage control.” Ollie paused for a second. “Speaking of damage control, do me a favor, Sunny. Stay away from the office equipment. Judging by the way you sound, you’re liable to break something.”

Sunny took his advice, sitting at her desk and confining herself to simple tasks done slowly. She left answering the phones to Nancy, who spent a lot of the time saying brightly, “I’m sorry, she’s not here.”

That was how Sunny knew some other newspaper person or TV reporter was trying to find her to ask idiotic questions.

Nancy lies pretty well,
she thought, listening to the girl deal with another member of the slavering press pack.
Maybe she
could
have a future in journalism—or PR.

Still, round about the point of lunchtime, Sunny had pretty much stopped working at all, afraid she might make Ollie’s prediction come true.

She was fighting to keep her eyes open, debating whether she could safely drive home, when the office door opened and Randall MacDermott walked in.

“I need your help,” he said.

Sunny had to
admit that Randall MacDermott was still an attractive man, though up close she could see that a slight dusting of gray had appeared at the temples of his luxuriant head of brown hair, and there was no mischief in his face today. He looked worn, even worried, as he stared down at Sunny.

Now he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I realized that sounded silly the moment the words were out of my mouth,” he said. “Let me try again.” He forced a smile and a brighter tone of voice. “Hey, Sunny. I saw your name in the photo credit on the front page of the local paper. Somebody at the newspaper office told me I could find you here. Are you free for lunch?”

When Sunny hesitated, trying to find a way out of it, Nancy said, “Go on. I’ll cover for you.”

Traitor,
Sunny thought unkindly. It wasn’t as if Nancy had any reason to know that the very last thing Sunny wanted to do was go spend time one-on-one with Randall.
Well, why not?
the scornful voice inside Sunny’s head chimed in.
Just get it over with now while you’re too tired to care.

“Okay,” she said, getting up from the desk. Sunny suggested the Redbrick Tavern, where the food was good and reasonably priced. The waitress seated them in captain’s chairs and began reciting the day’s specials. Sunny didn’t even hear her. She was too tired, and too busy wondering what Randall thought they had to talk about.

His blue eyes peered anxiously at Sunny as the waitress finished her spiel, then he thanked her in a preoccupied voice. Sunny ordered a hamburger and fries, comfort food. Maybe the protein in the burger would fuel a comeback. Randall went for the same with a pint of beer.

One sip, and I’d be out,
Sunny thought. She ordered an iced tea.

They sat in silence as they waited for their drinks to arrive, the noise of the lunch crowd, mainly tourists at this time of year, clattering around them.

Randall finally spoke up. “It’s been a while. Good to see you, Sunny. You look as great as ever.”

One, maybe two lies out of three sentences. Nothing about this was how Sunny had envisioned seeing Randall again. Admittedly, those visions had had a lot of revenge fantasy involved, with Sunny receiving a Pulitzer Prize and Randall admitting how wrong he’d been. Sunny had imagined herself in a designer gown, looking perfectly made-up and classy.
Instead, I probably look like I’ve just been dug out of a pit,
she thought. Well, Sunny could be
a journalist, too.
Just stick to the basic questions, find out what he wants,
she told herself.
Who, what, when, why.

“How are you doing, Randall?” That was still an acceptable journalistic question.

Randall responded with a
what.
“Nowadays they call me editor-at-large.”

That didn’t strike Sunny as a good thing, not for a guy working at a paper ruthlessly trying to cut expenses. It sounded as though his next promotion would be editor-out-the-door.

“So, what brings you up to this neck of the woods? The Kingsbury-de Kruk wedding seems an odd kind of assignment, even for an editor-at-large.”

“I’m up here on my own, Sunny. The paper thinks I’m taking some vacation time. What they don’t know about me using my press card won’t hurt them.”

Sunny knew the next reportorial question to ask. “Why?”

“I’m following a story.” Randall leaned across the table. “Do you remember the Taxman?”

“I remember him every April,” Sunny replied. “And I often say unkind things about him.”

Randall shook his head. “Not that taxman. Don’t you remember sitting in bars after we put the paper to bed, with the old hands telling stories—ones that they couldn’t print?”

Sunny dredged up a memory. “A society blackmailer, some sort of cross between Robin Hood and the Godfather—is that the one you mean? I remember one of the older crime reporters loved to talk about that. What was that guy’s name? Izzie—Izzie Kritzik! Whatever happened to him?”

“He retired,” Randall said, not meeting Sunny’s eyes.

Sounds as though he went into retirement about as
willingly as I went into the larger job market,
she thought.
At least I hope Izzie got a pension out of the deal. All I got was the Maine Adventure X-perience.

Randall was about to say more, but the waitress arrived with their order. There was a brief moment of silence as they both attacked their burgers. When Randall finished chewing, he sighed. “Izzie didn’t know what to do with himself in retirement. He died recently, and in his will, he left me several boxes of notes. One file held everything he’d found out about the Taxman.”

Sunny frowned, trying to remember more about the older man’s war stories. “What was the deal with this Taxman? He was supposed to be a merciful blackmailer? After getting the goods on people, he’d be satisfied with a one-time payment. But God help them if they didn’t make it, right?”

Randall nodded. “Unlike most blackmailers, who keep demanding money until they drain the victim dry, the Taxman was fairly reasonable—as long as you paid. Izzie talked to one fellow who was in line to become the president of a major corporation. The guy didn’t believe the Taxman actually had the goods on him and refused to cough up. Turned out there was plenty of proof—documentation that the man was conducting several affairs with company funds. He wound up out of a job, divorced, and in prison . . . the poster child for what happened if you ignored the Taxman. What really rubbed salt in the wound was that the cash demand wouldn’t have broken the bank.”

“So he’s not a pig, but there’s still a
Godfather
aspect.” Sunny lowered her voice in a bad Marlon Brando impersonation. “‘Some day, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.’”

“Right. The money was part of it, but the favors he was able to extract were more important. Izzie talked to one woman who expected to move from her seat in Congress into an ambassadorship. She had paid off the initial demand, but the Taxman later asked her to shepherd a bill through her House committee. Instead, she let several colleagues pressure her into backing off—and suddenly some embarrassing photos surfaced to sink her diplomatic career before it even got launched.”

“The favor bit probably explains why the Taxman can be content with a relatively small bite when it comes to money,” Sunny said. “Even after the payoff, he holds onto the incriminating information, giving him leverage with former victims to rope in new ones. That could be a favor, too.”

Randall nodded encouragingly.

Sunny stared at her former editor. “Come on, you can’t take this sort of thing seriously. It’s like an urban legend for reporters. You’d probably do better going after D. B. Cooper. Nobody knows who he really was, but at least there’s verifiable evidence that he hijacked an airliner and parachuted away with the ransom payment.”

“I was just as doubtful as you are when I used to hear Izzie in the bars,” Randall said. “But he had a banker’s box full of notes. He’d talked to people who’d had some spectacular downfalls after not paying, and who were now kicking themselves that they hadn’t just paid up or done what they were asked to do. Izzie knew how to get things out of people, and they probably wanted to vent, but even though he managed to get that far, none of them would ever say anything on the record. They were too scared of the Taxman. Once burned, twice shy.”

“Why would they talk at all?” Sunny ate some fries as she listened to Randall’s answer.

“They didn’t—not officially. The victims were specifically warned off from talking to the police or the media, but the stories about blackmail and one-time payments still spread around as rumor and gossip. Izzie thought it was some perverted form of advertising. It made the Taxman’s job easier with the next victim.”

“Sounds like Izzie had an answer for everything.”
So what do you expect me to do to help you, and why should I?
Sunny added silently.
Unless you intend to take a page out of the Taxman’s book and blackmail me into doing a favor.
She considered that for a second.
Nah. He’s got nothing anymore.
So she didn’t bother to keep the skepticism out of her voice as she asked, “Are you really telling me that you’re taking the old guy’s pet theory seriously?”

Randall’s reply was a vigorous head bob in the affirmative as he took another bite of his burger. Once he’d swallowed, he said, “I got interested and did a little checking. Some of the people Izzie talked to have died by now.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. “That’s convenient.”

“And some of them wouldn’t talk to me.” Randall had a sip of beer before he went on. “But a couple did, and they told me the same stories they’d told him. I kept my ear to the ground, and I heard more.”

“Really?” Even as Sunny scoffed at this story, she had to admit that Randall had piqued her interest. He wasn’t some cub reporter out on his first rodeo. He was a professional.

“And all this brought you up here? Why—” She broke off. The answer was obvious: the big wedding prep. Big enough to be wedding of the year, if not the decade, around
here, for sure. Two famous families about to face a media blitz. A very unfortunate time for some past indiscretion to surface. Perhaps a very profitable time for a blackmailer.

“So who’s got the dirty linen?” Sunny asked. “The Kingsburys or the de Kruks?”

“That’s the thing. The person I wanted to talk with was Eliza Stoughton,” Randall replied, almost causing Sunny to send a mouthful of iced tea out her nose. As she recovered, Randall went on. “Some of the people I’d talked with about the Taxman mentioned that she’d been poking around, too.”

Sunny coughed and took another sip of her tea. “You think she was being extorted?”

He shook his head. “About a year ago, she took a big financial hit. I think that was her making the payment. But she was trying to figure a way out of owing the favor. I think the Taxman made a demand she couldn’t or wouldn’t meet, and Eliza lost her life over it.”

Having someone threatening to ruin your life unless you did as they commanded—that might be a reason to drink too much and lash out. Sunny shook her head, trying to stir up some activity from her brain cells. She must be pretty tired to be taking any of this seriously. And instead of waking her up, the food was only making her feel more sluggish. Too much blood heading down to the stomach, not enough getting up past her neck.

She pushed her plate away. “Randall, this makes a pretty interesting story. But I’m really too tired to be having this conversation. Besides, I think it’s fiction, not journalism. After all, why would this shadowy blackmailer, who had the atomic option of ruining Eliza Stoughton’s life, kill her instead?”

“I think maybe she recognized him,” Randall said. “Or her. If so, that person may still be out on Neal’s Neck.”

Will’s locked-room mystery again,
Sunny thought.

Randall pushed his plate away, too. “I know I’m rolling the dice, following up on this,” he said. “But what else can I do? I need a big story, Sunny. Something that can save my job—or make me more attractive to other news organizations. It was a real shock to see your name in print this morning. Where did you learn to take pictures like that? And when I went to their office and the kids there told me what you’d done to get the story—whoa!” He shook his head in wonder. “If this Taxman thing pans out, it could be a career changer. For both of us. That is, if we worked together on it. You’ve got all the local knowledge, and I’ve got all the background that Izzie collected. If we teamed up, it would be just like the old days.”

“Not exactly like the old days. How’s the family, Randall?” Sunny ruthlessly poured cold water over his enthusiasm. “Speaking of family,” she went on without waiting for a reply, “I’m in this small town to be closer to my dad. Maybe you remember I came back here to take care of him after his heart attack. He’s much better now, thanks for asking, but he still needs someone around. As for that photo you praised, I took classes to make myself a more valuable employee for the
Standard
. Funny how that worked out. At least some of the media stuff I learned helps me run a tourism website. That’s how I earn a living around here, along with doing the occasional piece for that little paper you mentioned.”

She paused, partly to draw breath but mainly because of the pained look on Randall’s face.
Maybe it would have
been better if I’d gone with my first plan and just smacked him,
she thought. Instead, she stood up. “You stay and finish your food. I’m going home to sleep.”

Sunny got up and left the Redbrick, her steps a little wobbly, both from exhaustion and a little leftover adrenaline from what she’d just said to Randall. That made her laugh a little.
Folks will think I had a liquid lunch.

She walked back to the MAX office, but no way was she going to try and drive the Wrangler home. Sunny made up her mind. “You’ve been covering for me all day as it is,” she said to Nancy. “I’m going to make it official and head home to bed.”

Then she called the number she’d known since childhood. Mike answered the phone.

“Hi, Dad,” Sunny said. “I need some help. Do you think you could drive me home?”

Mike came to pick her up on the double, his eyes anxious as he came through the office door.

“Don’t worry,” Sunny told him. “I’m just tired.” She yawned. “Really tired.”

Sunny kept yawning the whole way home, bigger and bigger until she was afraid she’d dislocate her jaw. “Maybe that hamburger for lunch wasn’t a good idea.”

“Not when you’ve got a drive ahead of you,” Mike agreed. He ought to know, having been a trucker who’d delivered road salt to over half of New England.

He escorted her into the house and up the stairs. “Do you want to take a shower?”

“After I wake up,” she replied. “Maybe in a day or two.”

Sunny kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed fully clothed. The sheet and light blanket lay in disarray. She
hadn’t had time to make the bed after Ken had called. Swinging her legs up, Sunny pulled the sheet over herself. Her dad’s face loomed over her and he bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll take care of supper. You just rest.”