The Ugly Truth

by Jill Orr

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Not great. The doctors don’t sound optimistic.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, and I meant it.

  Ash looked over my head into the distance and blew out a breath. “Yeah, me too.” And then in an instant, the hard shell was back in place. “Is that all?”

  “No, actually,” I said, trying to recalibrate as quickly as he had, “I wanted to know if anyone has come in to claim the remains of Justin Balzichek?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “But you’re running the funeral home now while Franklin is…”

  “It would appear so.”

  “So then you’d know whether someone had come in to claim the body.”

  “I guess I would.”

  “Okay…” I said. This was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. “So just to be clear, you’re telling me, on the record, that there has been no one in to claim the remains of Justin Balzichek?”

  “How many different ways do you want me to say it?”

  I stiffened. “And what will Campbell & Sons do if nobody shows up to claim the body?”

  “Well, Miss Ellison, I imagine Campbell & Sons will work in compliance with Virginia state legislature code 32.1-309.2, which says that if a body remains unclaimed after fourteen days, a funeral service establishment as chosen by the county in which the death occurred will handle disposition of the body and the reasonable expenses shall be paid by the locality in which the decedent resided at the time of his death—which, as you know, is Tuttle County.”

  Damn. I had forgotten Ash was a lawyer.

  “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Just checking my facts, Mr. Campbell.”

  “There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

  “I don’t know what your problem with me is, but I’m just doing my job here.”

  “If you say so,” he said, looking away.

  My thermometer-face had evolved from the pink-cheeked blush of attraction to the nuclear red of indignity. “You know, you’re awfully unpleasant for a guy who’s supposed to be in the business of comforting people during their most difficult moments.”

  An expression rolled across his face that almost made him seem vulnerable. “I’m sorry,” he said and looked directly at me, this time without challenge in his eyes. “It’s just that—well, it’s just complicated and I’m not exactly—” he broke off. “I’ve got a lot going on, and I’m just not myself right now. Sorry if I was rude.”

  His apology and the pained look on his face took some of the sizzle out of my steak. I wasn’t sure how to respond. “It’s okay,” I said finally.

  “Can we start over?” He held his hand out toward me. “Nice to meet you, Riley. I’m Ash.”

  I tentatively took his hand, but as I shook it, I couldn’t help but wonder which guy I’d met that day was the real Ash Campbell.

  CHAPTER 6

  As I walked into the sheriff’s office, I hoped my lifelong local status might convert to some additional information on the case that they weren’t going to release to the general media.

  “Sorry, honey,” said Gail, who was my ex-boyfriend Ryan’s cousin, after I asked her for more details. “We’ve all been warned: no leaks.” Gail Stratham had been working at the front desk at the Tuttle Corner Sheriff’s Department for more than fifteen years. She’d survived through three different sheriffs partially because she knew when to keep her mouth shut.

  “Can you at least tell me if Carl has spoken to Dale Mountbatten again?”

  “Girl, you know I can’t.”

  “Any leads on Rosalee’s whereabouts?”

  She shook her head and lowered her voice. “If that isn’t the craziest thing! You live near someone for years and think you know them…I don’t know if she’s behind any of this, but she sure is making herself look bad by skipping town.”

  “If she skipped town, you mean.”

  Gail raised her eyebrows and lowered her chin. “I think it’s a pretty safe bet. People who are kidnapped—or worse—don’t plan for their disappearance. I’d say Rosalee has gone missing very much on purpose.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “Not if you expect me to ever speak to you again. Carl would have my head.”

  “Have you been able to confirm if Rosalee and Dale were still in touch?”

  Before Gail could answer, or not answer, Carl walked out of his office. “Riley, I just gave all the information I’m going to share in the press briefing. You’re all set for now.”

  “C’mon, Carl. I know you know more than you’re letting on. Just give me a little something—something for the hometown paper that’ll show these city folks they’re not better than us.”

  “I’m not interested in showing anybody anything except for who committed these atrocious crimes in our backyard. Go on now. I’ll let you know when we have more to share.”

  “Fine.” I resisted my urge to stick my tongue out at him.

  I thanked Gail, went back to the office, and filed the story on the press conference after checking it four times for accuracy. I wanted to be sure that the reporting coming out of the Times was as good as or better than the reporting by the larger outlets. Editor in Chief Kay Jackson gave it a once-over before publishing it in our online edition.

  By then it was almost 1 p.m. and Holman was out of the office. I was hungry and didn’t feel like eating the salad I’d brought from home, so I nipped out to Landry’s to grab something less lettucey. Lunch in downtown Tuttle was almost always Rosalee’s Tavern or Landry’s General Store, and since Melvin wasn’t comfortable running it on his own, Rosalee’s remained closed. Landry’s, on the other hand, was bustling.

  “Pretty hectic around here,” I said to Joe Landry when I finally got to the front of the line.

  “I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest,” he said with his easy laugh. “That’ll be nine forty-six.”

  I handed him my debit card. “Well, I guess that’s the silver lining of all this stuff.”

  “I guess so.” He shrugged. “Wonder when Rosalee’ll be back…if she’ll come back?”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “Nope, but I sure hope she’s okay.”

  I took back my card and signed the pin pad. “Did she ever mention any family or friends in the area?”

  He shook his head. “You know Rosalee—she didn’t say much. I talked to her most every week for the past five years and I couldn’t tell you much more than her last name and where she grew up. Dijon, France. I remember that ’cause I used to joke and call her Miss Grey Poupon.”

  I smiled. “Well, good luck! Hope you get to catch your breath before too long!”

  I was on my way back to the office when I spied a very tall, very blond, very look-how-quickly-I-bounced-back-from-my-pregnancy woman pushing a stroller toward me. I might have turned the other way if the stroller in question had not contained Rosie Elizabeth Sanford, otherwise known as Lizzie, otherwise known as the cutest little ladybug you’ve ever seen, otherwise known as my goddaughter.

  “There you are!” called out Ridley, who was Lizzie’s mom and the baby mama of my ex, Ryan. “I was hoping I’d find you.”

  Ridley was ridiculously beautiful, charming, and confident. Naturally, there was a part of me that wanted to hate her, but she was also generous, smart, and loyal—which made hating her much harder. Originally from Sweden, Ridley had dated Ryan briefly while they were living in Colorado right after he’d unceremoniously ended our seven-year relationship with a middle-of-the-night phone call. The relationship between them hadn’t lasted, but Ridley got pregnant and rather than move back to Sweden, she moved here to Tuttle Corner to raise the baby around Ryan’s family. Ridley and Ryan were not together, though they were set to move into the house directly behind mine in just a few weeks. As for Ridley and me, we were not exactly friends but not exactly not-friends either. Our relationship existed in a strange
space, full of closeness and distance, fondness and jealousy.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, already peering down into the stroller to get a look at Lizzie. She was sound asleep, bundled in a light pink fuzzy blanket.

  “Yes, of course,” Ridley said. Of course, like how could I ever think the fabulous Ridley would have a problem. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  “I’m fine, just a little residual pain, but other than that I’m good,” I said. About a month ago, I’d been shot in the leg by a psycho who wasn’t too happy when I figured out he had murdered a local cardiologist and tried to pin it on my friend Thad. But I was healing well, walking without crutches, and trying to put the whole thing in the rearview mirror. “How are you?” I asked.

  “Great! I don’t know why everyone says having a newborn is so exhausting. Lizzie sleeps at least eight hours every night.”

  Of course she does.

  “Anyway,” Ridley said, tucking her long blond hair behind her ear, “I wanted you to be one of the first to know: I am going back to work soon!”

  “You are?” My complicated feelings about Ridley had prevented me from trying to get to know her too well. The truth was, other than knowing she’d been a former junior Olympian snowboarder, I had no idea what she did for a living.

  She nodded, a huge, life-altering smile lighting up her face. “I’m going to be the new Rosalee!”

  Of all the things I thought she might say, that was not one of them. “Um…huh?”

  “I’m going to take over Rosalee’s Tavern!”

  “Take over the Tavern?” I asked, more confused than ever. “Is that…I mean, do you even…”

  “I know a little something about the restaurant business.” She threw back her head with a devious laugh, which I knew meant How silly of you to question my skills.

  “But…how would that even work? I mean, we have no idea where Rosalee is, if she’s coming back, if she’s even okay?”

  Ridley looked suddenly contrite. “Yes, well…”

  “What?” I eyed her suspiciously.

  “Nothing, it’s just that…well, let’s just say I have Rosalee’s permission.”

  I sucked in a quick breath. “Ohmygod, do you know where she is? Has she been in touch with you?”

  Ridley took a step closer and lowered her voice. “Look, I don’t know where she is, I only know that she’s safe.”

  “Ridley!” I squeaked. “This is a big deal. You have to tell Sheriff Haight. Everyone’s looking for her!”

  “I don’t want to get involved.” Ridley shrugged like the investigation was either beneath or beyond her. “All I know is that the people of Tuttle Corner deserve to have choices about where to dine, and I think I can help out with that. Besides, what else am I doing?”

  As if on cue, Lizzie made a soft gurgling sigh as she adjusted herself. Ridley looked down at her daughter with an adoring glance. “Lizzie can hang out at the Tavern with me—can you imagine all the people who will want to hold her while I work? It’ll be fun!”

  Fun? Only Ridley could think something like this would be fun. Rushing in to take over for Rosalee felt like a leap. There were just so many unanswered questions. Plus, and I was not necessarily proud of this, the thought of Ridley becoming so enmeshed in my beloved Tuttle Corner as a purveyor in one of our central businesses felt vaguely threatening. It shouldn’t, and while I knew that intellectually, emotionally it felt like one more way Ridley was living a life that should have been mine.

  “What does Ryan think?”

  “He is in full support.”

  I sighed and looked toward Rosalee’s Tavern sitting empty on the main square. I had to admit, it did leave a void in our town. But why did Ridley have to be the person to fill it?

  “What happens if—when—Rosalee comes back to town?” I asked, my voice already dripping with the tepid blessing we both knew I’d give.

  Ridley shrugged. “I’m sure it will all work out!”

  Of course it would. Things had a way of always working out where Ridley was concerned.

  CHAPTER 7

  When I got back to the paper, I went directly to Holman’s office to tell him the news that Roslaee was alive and well enough to be making plans for her restaurant to reopen. Damn. He was still out. I really needed to process this information with someone, but I wasn’t ready to go to Carl or Kay with it yet. What did I really know for certain anyway? Only that Rosalee had been in touch with Ridley at some point. It wasn’t like I knew where she was or anything. At least not yet. Plus, it felt wrong to implicate Ridley if she didn’t want to get involved. Besides, if Ridley did end up opening the Tavern, Carl would be there in a hot second to talk to her about the how and why.

  I tapped my pencil against the edge of my desk, a habit I had when I was deep in thought. (I knew this because sometimes when I did this, stupid Spencer would yell across the newsroom, “Ellison! Quit it!”) If Rosalee was out there communicating with people in Tuttle, I wanted to be one of them. And I needed to figure out how. I’d already interviewed her cook Melvin, who predictably said nothing. No surprise there. I knew he would never rat out his boss and old friend even if he did know something. But if Rosalee had been in touch with Ridley, maybe Ryan knew something? I started to formulate a plan. If there was anyone in this town I had a chance of sweet-talking into giving me information, Ryan Sanford was it. He’d made no secret of the fact that he still had feelings for me and hoped we might be able to get back together someday.

  I put down my pencil and texted Ryan to see if he wanted to meet up for a drink later. I said I had something I wanted to talk to him about. I suggested we meet at five o’clock at James Madison’s Fish Shack, home of Tuttle’s best happy hour. When he replied with: “It’s a date,” I squashed the protest from my internal ethics department. Even though Ryan and I had a long history, and even though he and Ridley were no longer romantically involved, my burgeoning friendship with her made for conflicting loyalties.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon working on a story about the new softball fields planned in West Bay and the recent vote by the town council to approve a change in recycling bins. At about 4:30, Kay Jackson called out from her office, “Ellison, can you come in here a sec?”

  This prompted jeers from stupid Spencer as I walked, heart-in-throat, to see what she needed. Historically, when Kay called you into her office like this, it was not to praise you for a job well done.

  “Close the door,” Kay said without looking up from her laptop. After a few more silent seconds while Kay’s focus remained on something she was reading off her screen, she looked up. “There’s been a development. In the Mountbatten story.”

  “What is it?”

  “It wasn’t us who reported it.”

  I felt my face heat up.

  “The Daily Reporter out of Fairfax is reporting that Justin Balzichek was poisoned.”

  “What? How the hell did they get that information?”

  “An unnamed source with knowledge of the investigation says, ‘Mr. Balzichek died from respiratory failure thought to have been caused by a chemical agent introduced into his bloodstream,” Kay read from her computer screen.

  Not only was I surprised, I was angry. How could Carl have given this to another reporter? We’d worked together on two high-profile cases over the past few months and he knew I was trying to establish myself in my field—just like he was. This felt like a betrayal.

  “Listen, Kay,” I said, noting the whine of desperation in my own voice. “I’ve been over at the sheriff’s office every day. I was just there, but no one would talk to me. I don’t know how this reporter got this info, but I’ll find out. I promise.”

  “Better yet, get some new information.” Kay didn’t sound mad, but she didn’t sound happy either. “Find out who they’re looking at—is it just Rosalee, or is it the husband too? Anyone else? Dig into possible motives, alibis. Anything new.”

  I nodded. “I’ve asked about all these things, of c
ourse, but all I get is ‘No comment.’ ”

  “Find someone who will comment.” Kay nodded toward the door. “I don’t like being scooped in my own backyard.”

  “Trust me, Kay,” I said on my way out, “neither do I.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I left Kay’s office seething with the kind of irrational anger that’s made up of fifty percent humiliation and fifty percent hurt feelings and fifty percent envy. (Math was never my strong suit.) But the truth was that I had no one to blame but myself for not having gotten the same information as the Reporter. Obviously, I hadn’t asked the right questions of the right people. I had put too much weight on the fact that I was the local girl and assumed, incorrectly, that if there was any information to leak, it would be leaked to me. I decided that first thing in the morning, I’d head back over to the sheriff’s office. I had a bone to pick. If they were going to be talking to the press, the decent thing to do would at least be to talk to me.

  I zipped home to change and take Coltrane, my spoiled-rotten German shepherd, for a quick walk before I was due to meet Ryan for drinks. And after my meeting with Kay, his enthusiastic you-are-the-sun-and-the-moon greeting was just what I needed. The walk did me some good too, and I left Coltrane with a big bowl of kibble and promises to come home again soon.

  Despite its name, the Shack was Tuttle Corner’s nicest restaurant by a mile. It sat close to the James River in an old house that had been converted into a restaurant. On any given day in the spring, summer, or fall people would sit outside on the large deck overlooking the river, but tonight the crowd was mostly inside. The main floor housed the bar and dining room, and the upstairs was a lounge space filled with comfy furniture, low tables, and intimate lighting. I walked in and was on my way upstairs when I caught a glimpse of Ash Campbell’s red-and-blue-plaid shirt. He was sitting at the bar with a beer and a shot glass in front of him. I walked over to him in the spirit of our “new start.”