The Note

by Hunt, Angela

Treasures from the Deep, by Peyton MacGruder “The Heart Healer” is a regular feature of the Tampa Times.

  Dear Readers: I met a woman last week—a woman a few years younger than I, with blue eyes as—

  The rest of the story had been truncated, so Julie clicked on the link. The link took her to Tampa Times.com and a frame containing a feature column.

  She skimmed down the page, her pulse quickening as she read:

  The treasure, which came to me wrapped in a square of fine linen, is not jewelry or currency, but a simple note. From inside its protective plastic sleeve, its words speak of a love as wide as the sea and as unfathomable as the ocean. The note was, I suspect, another scrap from Flight 848, but no single piece of luggage or debris carries the emotional weight of this fragile slip of paper. It is addressed to a particular person, and it is signed simply Dad.

  Julie tightened her hand around the mouse as an anticipatory shiver of excitement rippled through her limbs. A note? Whoever heard of such a fragile thing surviving a major crash? Never had anyone found a note in the debris from an airline disaster, not from EgyptAir Flight 990, or TWA 800, or the ValuJet DC-9 that slid into the Everglades in ’96 . . .

  She sat back, her mind vibrating with a thousand thoughts and pictures. A note. From a father to a child. Why, the human interest in such a story would send her ratings through the roof! WNN was holding its own now, having picked up millions of viewers and advertising dollars during the crash coverage, but a story like this would keep them at the top of the charts. And if she reported it, her Q-rating would soar. Every man and woman in America would know her face and name.

  She skimmed the rest of the story, then clicked on a link to the paper’s home page. The Tampa Times was owned by Howard Media & Entertainment, WNN’s parent company, and the columnist was someone called Peyton MacGruder—she scrolled down to the bottom of the frame—who could be reached at pmacgruder@tampatimes.com.

  Without hesitation, she clicked on the reporter’s e-mail address, then paused when her computer shot up a blank message template. How did one reporter tactfully ask another to share a story? Unless this Peyton MacGruder was a complete fool, she had to know she’d been handed the story of the month, perhaps even of the year. E-mail was too impersonal.

  Shoving her rolling chair away from the computer, Julie swiveled and picked up the telephone.

  Back in the newsroom, Peyton pulled her rolling chair closer to the desk and forced herself to concentrate on the passenger list in her hands. Since returning from Clearwater, every time she closed her eyes she saw Mary Grace Van Owen’s gloomy living room, complete with smiling, wide-eyed infants all in a row. The effect was spookier than reading Stephen King in a thunderstorm, and the last thing she needed now was to be distracted.

  Staring at the passenger list, she ran her finger over the names, checking to be sure she’d highlighted all those who had been Tampa residents. Those obits were waiting in a stack next to her computer, culled from the pages of her own paper. At the little typing table that today served as Mandi’s desk, the intern was engaged in the same task, double-checking Peyton’s findings. The girl had seemed a little exasperated when Peyton told her they’d be working together for the next two weeks, but all signs of annoyance vanished when Peyton explained what they’d be doing.

  “Oh, man, how major!” Mandi had slapped her hand on her chest as though she’d felt the first pang of a coronary. “What a story! I’d love to go undercover with you!”

  Peyton refrained from rolling her eyes. “We’re not cops, Mandi, and this won’t be much fun. It’ll be a lot of reading, probably quite a few phone calls, and I’ll expect a certain level of discretion. I don’t want anyone else to know all the details until we discover the right recipient.” She frowned. “Assuming there is a right recipient. If this is a hoax, we’ve got to leave ourselves a way out.”

  “I hear you, boss,” Mandi had answered, just before striking out on a search for a desk to call her own. And though both the title and the gung-ho attitude had made Peyton grimace, it would be nice to have an extra pair of eyes for research and someone to cover the phone while she was out.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, refocusing her thoughts. At least she’d learned that finding prospects to receive the note might not be as difficult as she had first feared. At the beginning, she struck all the women and children under twenty-one from the master passenger list, thinking the note’s author had to be a man of a certain maturity. Out of the 147 names remaining, 82 had lived in the Tampa area, so she had those obits within reach. If all went well, she would know by dinnertime if any of them had children with T names. She’d need one—her Wednesday column was due by 11:30 Tuesday morning, and without a name she had nothing to write about.

  Peyton opened her eyes and returned to skimming through the Tampa passenger obituaries, then frowned when her phone rang.

  From her little table, Mandi looked up. “You want me to get it?”

  “No. You keep reading. As soon as you get through the list, start calling the out-of-state papers—use the phone at Karen’s desk; she’ll be out for the day. Have them fax the passenger obits to us at the features fax line and tell them we’re on deadline. Be nice. We’ll get results quicker.”

  Annoyed by the persistent ringing phone—didn’t everyone use e-mail these days?—Peyton snatched up the receiver. “MacGruder,” she said, scratching through a female name they’d forgotten to strike.

  “Peyton MacGruder? This is Julie St. Claire of WNN.”

  For a moment the name didn’t register, then the association clicked. Peyton took a quick, sharp breath, then grinned. “Julie St. Claire—I watched you during the crash coverage. I thought you did a good job of handling a difficult situation.”

  “Thanks.” The woman’s voice sounded flat and listless. “Listen, I read your column today. Wonderful writing. And how incredible that you found a note.”

  “I didn’t find it.” Peyton stared at a photo of her cats taped to the border of her computer monitor. “As I wrote in the column, the note was given to me.”

  “Listen.” St. Claire’s voice took on an edge. “While I was reading, a great idea came to me. If you want to wrap up the mystery as quickly as possible, why not take your search national? I could come down there and do a story on you and your little quest. We’ll get some videotape of you with the note and maybe some still shots of the actual page. With the additional coverage provided by our network, you could find your missing person in no time.”

  Peyton stiffened, slapped by a wave of shock. “You want me to go on network television?”

  Like a bright-eyed jack-in-the-box, Mandi’s head popped up into Peyton’s field of vision.

  “I think it’d be a great feature,” Julie continued. “Maybe we could do an entire hour on the note, even an extended special feature. We’ll do the background research together, then my crew and I will go with you as you search for this person. After all”—a smile found its way into her voice—“we are owned by the same corporation. Working together seems only natural.”

  Peyton rubbed her temple. Howard Media & Entertainment, which owned a host of newspapers, magazines, film companies, and the World News Network, had always allowed its subsidiaries complete autonomy. She’d never heard of a project shared between a newspaper columnist and a television reporter—even at the Times, except in a time of crisis or when projects were conceived as joint efforts. Writers rarely shared stories.

  The idea of television—if Mandi’s wide eyes were an accurate gauge—was fairly amazing, but TV coverage would do nothing to help Peyton keep her column. And the calm voice of common sense reminded her that anyone with enough chutzpa to make an offer like this without so much as a how are you, let’s get to know one another might want to run the show entirely.

  Peyton had enough bosses in her life.

  She strengthened her voice. “Thanks for the offer, but I really want to cover this story my way. You see, I’ve
thought a lot about it and I want to do this as a continuing feature for my readers. I have four columns a week to fill, and two weeks to interview prospects for the note. Television coverage isn’t part of my vision for this story.”

  Silence rolled over the phone line, and for a moment Peyton wondered if the connection had been broken.

  “You sure I can’t change your mind?” St. Claire’s voice now contained a teasing note. “You’d be surprised how a little airtime can boost your ratings.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but yes, I’m sure. Thanks for thinking of me.” Peyton smiled into the phone. “I guess I’m a little amazed someone like you even reads the Tampa Times. Where are you headquartered? New York?”

  “I read it on the Web,” Julie answered, then the phone clicked.

  Peyton pulled the receiver from her ear, frowned at it for a moment, then dropped it back to her desk.

  “Was that really Julie St. Claire?” Mandi whispered, breathless. “I heard you say her name, and then I heard something about TV—”

  “Cool your jets, girl, it’s not going to happen.” Peyton pressed her lips together for a moment, thinking. If she’d been forewarned she might have come up with an alternative to cutting off Julie St. Claire completely. Television coverage might be useful in her search . . . but she’d made a decision to follow this story until she ran out of road and she’d promised her readers she’d give it her best. The distraction of television wouldn’t help her accomplish either goal.

  She gave Mandi an apologetic smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, kiddo, but this search isn’t going to be romantic. Most newspaper work is reading and research, and we need to get back to it. I need at least one T name before we leave tonight.”

  “Okay, boss,” Mandi said, heaving a sigh as she lowered her head back to the paperwork. “Whatever you say.”

  Julie St. Claire glared at the phone and drummed her acrylic nails against the polished desktop. Peyton MacGruder’s words kept buzzing in her brain: Television news coverage isn’t part of my vision for this story. What did a thirty thousand dollar per year newspaper columnist know about vision? The woman was a pencil pusher, and she had no idea what she held in her hands. That little scrap of paper would translate into emotion and ratings, and ratings were the key to everything in this business.

  Julie stood, fumbled in a desk drawer for her cigarettes, then shook one out. She lit it, then drew deeply on the fragrant tobacco and moved to the window. Her reflection stared back at her—large eyes shadowed by dark hair, one arm crossed at the waistband of her leather skirt, the other holding the smoldering cigarette. Adam was constantly on her case about smoking—bad for the public image. But this was her private world, and cigarettes her private indulgence.

  Staring at her reflection, she brought the cigarette to her mouth and drew heavily on it, making the tip glow bright, then allowed a thin plume of smoke to drift from her pursed lips. Too bad she wasn’t an actress. She could cop an attitude with the best of them, maybe even manage to bring a semblance of sincerity to a role. But actresses, when they hit it big, attracted too much attention. No one cared about the private life of a newscaster; no one was likely to go digging into her past. So Esther Hope Harner would remain hidden forever.

  Not that it’d matter much. Anyone who knew that Howard Cosell began life as Howard William Cohen or that Wolfman Jack was really Robert Smith wouldn’t bat an eye to realize that Esther Harner had reinvented herself as Julie St. Claire after leaving Mississippi. A nosy reporter might be surprised by the trailer . . . and the skinny man in the white T-shirt who had left his thumbprints above Julie’s collarbone on several occasions. A tabloid snoop might even be horrified by the woman who sat in front of the TV in an indentation of the couch that had literally formed around her ample behind. That such a woman, whose grease-caked hair straggled lank around her face, could have given birth to a luminescent star like Julie St. Claire—well, such an idea would be immediately dismissed. No reporter in his right mind would want to report that story, for it would call attention to the unwilling and unmotivated poor—a situation not even the politicians wanted to address.

  Julie tasted her cigarette again. She’d started smoking at eleven, when Jimmy Tennant caught her behind the school and taught her how to kiss and smoke, two lessons in one day. She’d learned a lot since then—and from men far more knowledgeable than Jimmy. She’d left the tracks of her stiletto heels on a few backsides, but she’d climbed out of poverty and left Mississippi in the dust. She’d left Esther Harner in the trailer, along with the woman and the man in the sweat-stained T-shirt.

  She brought the cigarette to her lips but didn’t inhale, staring instead at her reflection in the wide window. The brute in the trailer wasn’t her father, and somehow she’d known that for as long as she could remember. Her mother didn’t like to talk about the husband she’d abandoned, but sometimes Julie would dream of a man with kind eyes and a soft voice . . . a weakling, her mother would have called him, a weak-livered fool without the gumption to say boo to a goose.

  One afternoon, just before passing out, her drunken mother had looked Julie in the eye and cackled like a crazy woman. “He wanted to adopt you,” she said, wiping spit from her chin with the back of her hand. “What a fool! You weren’t even his brat, but still he wanted to give you his name!”

  Drawing deeply on the cigarette, Julie felt the acrid smoke invade her throat and lungs. Her mother had played Mr. Harner, whoever he was, like a violin. She’d married him, taken his name and given it to her daughter, then cleaned out his bank account and left town on a Greyhound bus.

  Julie exhaled sharply, sending twin streamers of smoke through her nostrils. Her mother probably wouldn’t have hesitated to leave her daughter behind if the man hadn’t been weak enough to care. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave him with anything worth caring for.

  Like her mother, Julie had gathered the courage to run away, but at sixteen she turned her back on that listless life, more than happy to leave the beatings and abuse and ignorance. She lied about her age and took a job at a diner in Tupelo, working hard to change her speech, appearance, and manners. Her hard work paid off when she earned a college scholarship. At school she made new friends and a new life, all but forgetting the past. And now . . .

  The ghosts from that trailer couldn’t touch her now.

  A thin covering of gray fog hung over the Manhattan skyline at this hour; the noise of late afternoon traffic bustled far beneath her. Common sounds could not reach this plush office; no annoyance should be able to slip past security to enter her door . . . but one had. Irritation had invaded Julie’s cocoon in the person of Peyton MacGruder, and she could not rest until she set things right again.

  She walked back to her desk, took a last drag, then placed the cigarette in an ashtray to smolder. Curling in the leather chair, one leg tucked beneath her, she picked up the phone and pressed a button on the speed dial. As the number rang, she ran her nails through her bangs and drew a slow, deep breath to soften her voice and attitude.

  Adam Howard, CEO of Howard Media & Entertainment, did not care for irritation either. He had to be approached in exactly the right way.

  “The best thing about the World Trade Center,” historian Francis Morrone wrote in his Architectural Guidebook to Manhattan, “is that when you’re in it, you don’t have to look at it.” From his office on the one-hundredth floor of the WTC, Adam Howard agreed that the view from thirteen-hundred feet above the city was far superior to what the average man saw from the gray and granite street.

  He was not enjoying the spectacular view, however, when his phone chirped. He glanced toward the desk, annoyed that his secretary had put a call through when he’d expressly told her he needed time to consider the Digital Media offer, then he remembered that the chirping phone belonged to his private cell number, known only to fifty or so close associates who owed him money, time, or a personal favor.

  He pulled the tiny phone from his coat pocket, flipped ope
n the case—Why do they make them so small?— and held it to his ear. “Yes?”

  “Hello, Adam. This a good time?”

  He recognized the husky voice immediately. “Of course.” Actually, it was a good time. The entire month had been a continual banquet. His World News Network had finally crested and crashed over CNN, and his magazines, the monthly Newsworld and weekly tabloid Celeb! had sold out their print runs, largely because of articles featuring victims of the recent plane crash. As luck would have it, an ex-convict had been aboard the ill-fated flight, seated next to a reclusive multimillionaire’s mistress. The major newspapers had missed both stories, but his bloodhounds had ferreted out the connections and hit pay dirt two days ago.

  “I’d love to see you tonight.” He smiled. No mistaking the seduction in the voice now.

  Adam pulled his electronic organizer toward him and glanced at his list of appointments. He had a dinner with Mavis and her theater group scheduled for tonight, but he could blow it off. Mavis wouldn’t be the only woman present without her husband.

  “How’s eight o’clock?” he asked, reaching for his stylus. “I’ll meet you at the apartment.”

  “Eight is great,” she said, then she hung up.

  Adam smiled as he snapped the phone shut. Julie St. Claire possessed many talents, but he especially appreciated her directness.

  By five-fifteen, most of the desks in the Times newsroom had emptied. The telephones fell silent, and the constant waves of chatter and clatter had faded to the dull roar of a cleaning woman’s vacuum. Peyton thought she could actually hear the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights, a sound usually drowned out in the bustle of the newsroom.

  Hunched over her desk, she picked up yet another page of local obits and forced herself to read every formulaic word. Halfway down the page, her heart skipped a beat: PanWorld passenger Winston Manning of St. Petersburg was survived by two children: a daughter, Victoria Manning Storm of Brooklyn, and a son, Reverend Timothy Manning of St. Louis.