The Ugly Truth

by Jill Orr

  “Ten million dollars?” I said, surprised. “That’s an awful lot of butter.”

  “You’d be surprised. One hundred thousand dollars in butter per year doesn’t raise any flags in the restaurant business.”

  “How do you know so much about this?” I asked. “And why are you calling me and not the authorities?”

  She was ready for my question, or at least she answered quickly enough that it appeared she’d been waiting for me to ask. “Everyone knows the press is way faster than the FBI. Do you have any idea how long an investigation would take? It could be months before they even got the paperwork to begin looking into all of this. Especially with someone as well-connected as Dale.”

  There was distinct bitterness in her voice when she said his name, like she resented his notoriety. This struck me as odd because when I was with her the day before, I’d gotten the impression she was very much at home with Dale and the boys, like she’d stepped into her dead sister’s shoes almost a little too easily.

  “So you’re hoping that I’ll look into these allegations and print them to force some sort of federal investigation?”

  “I’d also like to see him go to prison for murdering my sister.”

  That got my attention. “You think Dale killed Greer?”

  “I think she found out exactly what her beloved was up to and probably threatened to turn him in—”

  “Probably?” I said. “Wait, is this something you know or something you’re guessing?”

  “I have reason to believe that is what happened.” She clearly didn’t like me drilling down for details.

  “As I understand it, Dale has a solid alibi for the time Greer was killed.”

  “There are ways of being responsible for someone’s death even when you’re not there. Surely, you understand that.”

  Her haughty tone was really starting to chap my hide. “Okay, so suppose you’re right and Dale did have your sister killed. Why? If he’d been laundering money for years like this, why would Greer all of a sudden threaten to expose him? Why now?” I asked.

  “You really aren’t very bright, are you?” she said in a barely controlled voice. The word unhinged came to mind.

  Out of my peripheral vision I saw Holman open his mouth, probably to launch some sort of lukewarm testament to my mental competency, but I held up a hand to stop him. I was trying to bait her. The more frustrated she became, the more likely she’d be to let something slip out in anger.

  “Why now?” she said, mocking my voice. “Because now is when he planned on leaving his wife for that trashy little baguette. Greer wasn’t about to let that tramp reap the benefits of all of her years of support and silence. She was the one who made everything he did possible, she took care of everything else in his perfect life so he could concentrate on his work,” she said, her voice rising. “She could put up with the cheating and the lying and the moral ambiguity, but she could not abide being tossed away like yesterday’s trash—” she broke off and I heard her take a deep breath. When she spoke, again her voice was lower, calmer. “You’ve upset me, Riley. I have to go.”

  “Wait!” I said before she hung up.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Um,” I said, trying to think of something to get her to stay on the phone. “Um, I just wanted to say I think it’s really nice how you’re there for your nephews. I mean, it must be so nice for them to have you around.” It was the only quasi-compliment I could come up with, and I figured I had a better chance of catching this cuckoo bird with honey than vinegar.

  The comment seemed to mollify her. “This is a very difficult time for them.”

  “Is it hard for you to be away from your own family?” I asked, fishing again.

  “I’m not married,” she said tersely, then added, “anymore.”

  “No kids?”

  “I wasn’t able,” she said, answering almost automatically. Before I could respond she snapped, “Why are we talking about me? We should be talking about Dale!”

  “I’m sorry, you’re righ—”

  “You know what? Forget it!” she yelled into the phone. “I thought you seemed like you had it on-the-ball and might be able to take this information and do something productive with it. Obviously, I was mistaken—”

  “Hadley, wait—”

  “I guess I’ll just have to take care of this myself like I have to take care of everything else. Goodbye, Riley!”

  CHAPTER 26

  Holman and I sat shocked in the silence of the car for a moment, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Eventually he pulled back onto the highway and we continued our drive toward Tuttle Corner, hashing through all that we’d just heard. Holman was ready to write her off as a loon, but I wasn’t so sure.

  “She’s an unreliable witness,” Holman said as confidently as if he were saying the Earth is round.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She clearly has a bias against Rosalee because of the affair. She could be saying all this just to get back at her, to get back at them for hurting her sister.”

  I wasn’t anxious to come to Hadley’s defense, but I also wasn’t ready to reject everything she said out of hand. She’d given us some pretty incriminating information about Dale that’d be easy enough to check out. “I don’t know…”

  “Did you catch how sensitive she was when you asked if she had kids of her own?” Holman said, trying another tact. “With her sister dead and her nephews’ father in prison, Hadley would most likely become their guardian. That would not only give her the family she never had, but also possibly control of their trust until they reached maturity.”

  “You think Hadley could have killed her own sister and is trying to frame Dale for it in order to get custody of their near-adult children?” It was a sick thought. Then again, Hadley Lawrence was not a well woman. Still, I had a hard time buying that. “What about Balzichek?”

  “Did you hear her comment about how ‘she had to take care of everything herself’? Maybe she took care of Balzichek? Let’s also not forget that Balzichek led a high-risk life and fraternized with some very dangerous criminals. Maybe he was killed by someone else and the deaths are unrelated?”

  I couldn’t help think of what Carl had told me, about how he was looking at the same possibility.

  “Okay,” I said, pumping the brakes on this conversation. Holman was obviously trying to come up with any theory that would exonerate Rosalee from wrongdoing. But facts were facts and we needed to sort through what we knew. “Let’s back up and think this through. Let’s just say what Hadley told us is true and Greer found out about Dale and the money laundering and Rosalee and everything. It makes sense she might have confided in her sister.”

  I tapped my pen against my bottom lip. “But why would Hadley call a reporter and not the police? If she thinks Dale killed her sister, why not go straight to the cops? I’m not buying her answer that the press is faster.”

  “I agree,” Holman said.

  “And why me? I mean, there are tons of other reporters covering this story for far bigger news outlets. Why do you think she decided to give me this information?”

  “Another good question. I’m telling you: unreliable witness.”

  I ignored him. “You know, another thing that has been bothering me is, remember when someone vandalized Rosalee’s Tavern? Balzichek was arrested for that crime, and he said Greer had hired him to do it.”

  “Yes,” Holman agreed. “Rosalee said that was Greer’s way of trying to get the authorities to look into the Tavern more closely so they’d get in trouble for money laundering.”

  “Again—why not just call the authorities and tell them?”

  Holman shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to threaten Dale but not actually turn him in. She had a pretty lavish lifestyle. If he got caught, I’m sure the first thing they’d do is freeze his assets.”

  “I guess,” I said, not feeling completely satisfied with that explanation. “But she had money of her own. And besid
es, it just seems like the long way around. Just like Hadley calling me, a reporter, instead of the police. What if—and I’m just thinking out loud here—what if Rosalee hired Balzichek to vandalize the Tavern herself? And maybe even to kill Greer?”

  I could feel Holman’s resistance to my suggestion in a kind of molecular shift around him. “Why would she do that?” His voice was tighter than usual when he spoke.

  “Well, if she and Dale had been laundering money together all this time…what if she got tired of waiting around and decided she wanted it all for herself? She’d have to get Dale out of the way somehow. And what better way than to have him go to prison for murder.”

  Holman was shaking his head before I even finished my sentence. “No, that doesn’t make sense. If Rosalee was really after the money and she’s the cold-blooded killer you think she is, then why wouldn’t she just kill Dale? Then she could escape with the money before anybody even figured out she did it.”

  I had to admit he had a point. I thought some more. “What if none of this has to do with the money at all, and Rosalee killed Greer out of good old-fashioned homicidal jealousy?”

  “After nine years? I would think the fire would have gone out of her jealousy in that length of time.”

  Again, he had a point. I couldn’t explain it, but I just felt like Rosalee was involved in these killings somehow. The more I thought about her story, the more I found parts of it unbelievable. Like why did she suddenly break things off with Dale after all this time? And if she felt so scared for her life, why not go to the sheriff? At best, her story was filled with half-truths. At worst, it was an elaborate lie. Holman obviously disagreed with me, and it was time to address the reason why.

  I turned my shoulders so I could face him. He was driving, so his eyes were straight ahead, but I knew he could feel me looking directly at him. I took a deep breath. “Will, I know you like Rosalee. And I know you think she’s pretty, and smart, and sophisticated…and she is all of those things…but I think she may also be dangerous.”

  “I disagree,” he said immediately, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

  Since Holman was someone who relied on facts, I presented him with the facts as we understood them. “Okay, let’s think about what we know: Rosalee told Ryan and Ridley she was going to be leaving town—”

  “—lots of people take vacations, Riley,” Holman said, a defensive edge in his voice.

  “She has no alibi for the time of either murder—”

  “She lives alone. Is that a crime? Because if it is, you and I are guilty as well.”

  “She bought a sledgehammer just days before Greer—her lover’s wife—was bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer.”

  “Rosalee was planning to do renovations in the Tavern’s cellar. She even told Ryan that! What else do you use to break up brick and plaster?”

  “Holman…”

  “What?”

  “I think you’re letting your feelings for Rosalee get in the way of your judgment. I’m not saying she’s guilty, I’m just saying we shouldn’t rule her out because you like her.”

  Holman said nothing, my accusation hanging in the air between us like thick smog. After several seconds of silence, he said, “You don’t know her like I do, Riley. She isn’t capable of killing anyone.” He said this with such finality I knew there was no point in trying to convince him…until I had proof.

  CHAPTER 27

  Oh look, it’s the Queen of England and her merry man,” stupid Spencer jeered as we walked into the Times office.

  It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about until I realized it must be Camilla’s suit. I had nearly forgotten I was wearing it until his comment. I could have quipped something back at him, but I decided to let Holman take this one. This was a perfect opportunity for his particular skill set.

  “Riley is from Virginia, not England, Gerlach,” Holman explained. “And if you were meaning to describe me as her ‘merry man,’ ” he went on, “I should tell you that despite my genial countenance, I’m not feeling very merry today. I’m also not her man. To put a finer point on it,” he continued, raising a long finger into the air, “because we live in a time when people no longer belong to other people—thankfully—no one really is anyone else’s anything, man or woman. But I recognize the idiom you were using, that people who are dating are said to belong to each other. For instance, Kanye West regularly refers to Kim Kardashian as ‘his woman’ and I don’t think she minds because they are married and she knows he doesn’t mean it literally, i.e., she does not legally belong to him. However, idioms aside, since Riley and I are not romantically involved, it would not be appropriate to refer to me as her anything, except her co-worker.” He stopped, then quickly added with a furtive glance at me, “Or friend.”

  Spencer, who got more than he bargained for (but less than he deserved) stared back at Holman, slack-jawed. As we walked past him on the way to Holman’s office, I gave him a royal wave and whispered, “Cheerio, old chap!”

  I got the final version of the Klondike obit turned in just before the deadline. Flick did an excellent job, as always, and my contributions were minimal, but I was proud of how it turned out. I thought our readers would enjoy it. Of particular note was an interview Klondike had given a few years earlier in which he said, “I believe you should live generously. Use butter generously, pour gas on your fire generously, pour your drinks even more generously, laugh generously, give generously, and love generously.” Good advice to live by, I thought. One of the reasons people in Tuttle liked our longer-form obits so much was because they were full of small details that make up a life well-lived. We didn’t focus on the big contributions that changed the world, we left that to The New York Times. Our column focused on the small things the average Joe or Jane—friends, neighbors, community members—did that people remember after a person has passed on. I hoped people would learn from Jonathan Klondike. If there was one thing working the crime beat had taught me, it was that the world could use a little more generosity.

  As soon as I finished with the obit, I walked into Holman’s office. He sat behind his computer, the movement from his fast typing causing him to bob up and down on his ergonomic ball chair. He didn’t look up when I came through the door. I knew he was still upset with me for what I said in the car ride back from DC. What I didn’t know was if he was upset because he knew it was true or if he actually believed he was being objective about Rosalee.

  “You ready to head over to the sheriff’s office?” I asked. We’d decided we would go tell Carl everything we knew as soon as we’d both caught up on a few things.

  He kept his eyes on the computer screen. “Give me five minutes.” His voice was flat, terse.

  “Will, I—”

  Kay Jackson’s voice crackled over the intercom on Holman’s phone, interrupting me. “Can you and Ellison come to my office, please? Now.”

  That couldn’t be good. Holman finally looked up. I shrugged; I had no idea what we did wrong. We walked to the far end of the hallway in silence, neither of us sure what awaited us. Kay sat behind her desk. From the threshold of the doorway, I could see the back of a man’s head and a grim expression on Kay’s face.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” she said.

  Right on cue, Dale Mountbatten swiveled around to face me.

  Confusion and dread hit me like a wrecking ball. What on earth was he doing here? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  “Hi, Riley,” he said, looking me up and down. “Nice dress.” His expression then morphed into a poor facsimile of contrition. “You said to call if I thought of anything else. I decided to just come on by. Hope that’s all right?”

  Once we were settled in the conference room, Kay made sure Dale understood that nothing he told us would be kept confidential; this conversation was not privileged.

  “We’re reporters, Mr. Mountbatten,” she said, looking him directly in the eye. “Our job is to find out the truth and reveal it.”
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  “I understand,” Dale said.

  After getting preliminary disclosures out of the way, Kay left the three of us to do the interview. We set up Holman’s phone to record and he asked the first question. “Why are you here today, Mr. Mountbatten?”

  “Because I believe that Rosalee Belanger killed my wife and is now trying to kill me.”

  I saw Holman’s hand clench under the table, but when he spoke I was glad to hear his voice was even, controlled. “Tell us why you think that,” he said, maintaining strong eye contact the whole time.

  Dale’s story started out much the same way Rosalee’s had. The two had a passionate affair. Greer found out and forced Rosalee to leave the house. She agreed not to have her sent back to France if Dale would agree to stay in the marriage. That was the deal they made.

  “I loved them both,” Dale said. “Greer, for giving me the family I’d always wanted, and Rosalee for…everything else.”

  He said he was familiar with Tuttle Corner and thought it would be a perfect place for Rosalee to live while he figured out what to do next. “It was selfish. I can see that now,” he said, stating the obvious. “But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Rosalee was like an addiction. I was consumed with her—being with her, trying to find a way for us to have a future. I just thought if enough time passed, eventually the path forward would become clear.”

  “You wanted to have your cake and eat it too,” I said, unable to help myself.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right,” he said without meeting my eyes. “I bought the restaurant and set Rosalee up in the little house on Ninth Street. We were in love, and even though it wasn’t ideal, there was a sense of optimism about the whole arrangement. Rosalee told me she loved small towns and had always wanted to own her own café, so I felt like she was getting something out of the deal too, you know?”

  I didn’t, but I kept quiet.

  “We saw each other every chance we got under the cover of business travel or whatever. After a while, it seemed like Greer either accepted my relationship with Rosalee or convinced herself it was over. Greer could do that—convince herself of whatever it was she needed to believe. Either way, we never talked about it. Life went on at home as usual. And if Rosalee minded sharing me with my family, she never said.”