“Well…” his mother said. She trailed off for a moment, unsure of how she should respond. “I guess nobody likes a complainer. Maybe I’ll just hint about it to Jeanie. You really should be given equal rights instead of being put in second place. I never agreed with you about going to California, and look what happened. That was too big a leap. You belong right here in Lindsay, and you’ll have to agree that I was right.” She paused.
A moment later he said, reluctantly, “Mmm-hmm.”
“This is different, Randy. You could make it to the top in Lindsay. You’re a handsome young boy with a lot of potential and talent. Anyone should be glad to have you as an employee.”
“Thank you, that’s what I think, too,” Randy burst out. “They just act like I’m a part of the furniture, while Ashlee’s some golden idol that everyone has to bow down to.”
“It’s affirmative action gone crazy, I tell you,” his mother said.
“And now she’s up for some award after that shooting story. I should have been on that item. But no, I got stuck reporting on someone adopting ten kittens at once from the animal shelter.”
“I agree. It’s a disgrace,” his momma said, now frothing with anger in her voice. “I really do want to speak to Jeanie. Or make a complaint to the station, or something. This just cannot go on. It’s totally unacceptable.”
“They won’t listen,” Randy said in a downcast tone of voice. “Everyone at the station is under her spell, especially since this new award nomination.”
“Well…” His momma’s voice was tinged with pleasure. “Well, you could get her out of the way somehow.”
“How? I told you, the station manager…”
Celia cut him off. “I’m not talking about Tommy. Be a little clever, Randy. Look at in a different way.”
“What kind of way?”
“Somehow, make her incapable of being on television,” his momma said.
“How would I do that?”
“I don’t know, maybe a tragedy in the family, or a broken limb, a temporary illness… all kinds of things can happen to a person to make them have to take time off from work. Use your imagination for once.”
Her implication hung in the air.
Randy’s heart began to beat faster, and his mind began to swarm with ideas. “Hmm. Good idea, Momma. I think you might be onto something.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jenna Stewart walked out of the kitchen of Jenna’s Diner and wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. Every time she came through those silver doors, she felt like if she wished hard enough, she’d somehow magically see something new and different. But it never worked, and it didn’t work today. The same scene greeted her eyes. Just a few college kids nursing milkshakes and an occasional hamburger.
She felt like crying. Often, when stuck alone on a long evening shift, waiting for a customer, just one customer would do, she did cry a little. The comparison of the present to her bright memories of the past was just too hard for her to take. Only a couple of months ago, there would have been a whole bunch of young men and women bustling around the place. Waiters, assistant chefs, cashiers, all proud to wear the bright red logo, Jenna’s, emblazoned on the back of their neon yellow shirts. She’d watch them swarm around the packed booths like bees busy in a hive and feel incredibly proud. Jenna’s Diner was her baby. It was something she’d created, with no help from anyone. Days of a line of customers waiting at the door were long gone.
Occasionally she thought back to her high school days, where she’d been told by a couple of her teachers that she’d never amount to anything. Most of the other teachers were kinder, but they gave her so little attention she knew they thought the same. But there was one thing Jenna had always been good at, and that was creating an atmosphere. She was the life and the soul of the party all through high school. Her grades were good enough to just barely get admitted to the university in Lindsay, where she’d also been the life and the soul of the parties she attended.
She’d taken a few jobs as a bartender, and always seemed to have a crowd of people glued to their seats at the bar, enjoying her company. She’d toyed with the idea of setting up a nightclub herself. But she’d always planned to have children, and the whole clubbing scene didn’t seem very… compatible with raising a family, so she’d opted for a diner instead.
“But I didn’t plan on opening an ordinary diner,” she’d once said. “I wanted a diner where people came for the experience.”
It didn’t take long for her dream to become a roaring success. Students poured in day after day, night after night, for beer, wine, milkshakes, hamburgers, hot dogs, and buffalo wings. She’d been able to rent a nice little spot just off-campus. It had been a rundown little hair salon before that and had fallen into disrepair, but with the help of her then-boyfriend, Chance Nelson, and a team of friends, they’d redecorated it with lights and quirky signs and bright colors until it looked just perfect. Chance had even managed to find a vintage jukebox that completed the authentic diner experience.
The place had been jam-packed from the night it opened. Jenna passed the years happily. She felt she was at a party every single night, and it was her party. She knew all the college kids, and each year that passed she got to know even more of them as they passed through. She’d had a little girl and even though the father wasn’t around, that suited her fine.
She considered herself to be one of life’s contented people. She knew she was never going to be a billionaire or take fancy vacations to Europe, but she didn’t want to. In fact, she drove her prices down wherever she could, just to keep the college kids coming in and everyone having fun. Jenna loved life, and life seemed to love her back.
But as Jenna stood in her near-empty diner, tears began to well up in her eyes. Her mood had been spiraling down and every day she felt a little worse. She’d started to snap at her daughter and the nanny who took care of her when she was at the diner. She found that when students came in and placed their orders, the smile she gave them was forced and obviously fake. The contrived pep in her voice didn’t sound like her. She felt disconnected, like she was watching someone else’s life instead of living her own. To be accurate, it was more like watching someone else’s life swirl down the drain.
“You guys all okay?” she asked, her voice coming out like a croak. She was so quiet that the kids ignored her.
She turned and walked back into the empty kitchen. It had once been the hub of the diner with all of its laughter, fun, and camaraderie. She wondered if there was any way she could get it all back? She’d had to let all of her staff go, with the exception of one. They’d all been students. Some of them had left as soon as they heard the news.
They’d gone from what felt like a family to Jenna, to perfect strangers, overnight. She’d called some of them to offer a small severance payment. She knew she didn’t need to, but she wanted to. They’d worked so hard for her, but they hadn’t answered her phone calls, no matter how many times she’d called.
Jenna let out a little strangled sob that she couldn’t hold back. It echoed through the empty, silent kitchen. She grabbed one of the hamburgers and began to rip pieces off of it and stuff them down her throat. She barely swallowed. She felt so empty all the time, and there was so much food left over at the end of the day, that she tended to stuff herself with it. She’d always been a little heavy for her height, but between walking in the mornings and counting calories, she’d been able to keep her waistline in check. Now she couldn’t face getting on the scales.
She caught a view of her reflection in one of the gleaming silver kitchen surfaces and surprised herself by bursting into laughter.
“Well, if you don’t laugh, you cry,” she said out loud to herself. She tended to do that these days, too. There had always been someone to talk to at the diner, and Jenna loved it that way. She could talk and socialize all day. It energized her, but now there was no one. It wasn’t until this whole incident had happened that she realized she didn’t real
ly have many friends. The diner personnel had been one big happy work family, and that had been enough for her.
Again, she spoke out loud to herself. “All this, over one lousy cockroach and a couple of flies?” No one knew how much she’d cried over that, but now she laughed, and continued to laugh. “Who knew a little roach would hold my diner’s destiny in whatever you call its hands?” A tear escaped her eye and she wiped it away, still shaking with laughter. As she continued to laugh she began to wonder if she was going crazy.
It hadn’t been a big deal at first. A surprise visit from the Kansas Department of Agriculture wasn’t exactly a scene from the Godfather. It had been just a couple of friendly guys checking off boxes on their checklists. They’d found a roach and four large flies, which was not ideal, but it was certainly nothing to write home about. Jenna had provided them with a pest control invoice and told them she’d call the company to come back in, since they’d obviously missed a spot. That reassured the inspectors, who didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the cockroach and flies. “We’ve seen a lot worse,” one of them said. The other raised his eyebrows and said, “You can trust him on that one.”
Jenna had gone home that night, stood over her daughter’s crib and watched her sleeping like she always did, then went to bed herself. She’d thought no more about the pest control.
Until suddenly it all blew up.
Ashlee Nelson, who had been a classmate of Jenna’s in college, had reported it on the nightly news. There was absolutely no reason to, because it had just been an ordinary inspection, but Ashlee loved to make something out of nothing.
The reporting wouldn’t have been so bad, but it had been her particularly charming aside of, “This is off-script, but if my child was going to the university, I’d make sure they never went to Jenna’s to eat or drink,” that did the damage.
Since no specifics of the one cockroach and four flies were mentioned in the news report, suddenly rumors swirled that Jenna’s kitchen was completely overrun with roaches and flies. The fabricated whispers about rodent activity hadn’t escaped her ears either. Some of the kids who worked there tried to stand up for her, but somehow the whole thing became a source of outrage for so many, that their voices were drowned out. Jenna tried to get on TV or in the newspaper to defend herself, but it seemed between the two of them, Ashlee and Chance had the local media in a stranglehold.
Even thinking of Ashlee Nelson made Jenna furious. She stood up and threw the remainder of the hamburger in the trash bin. Far from laughing now, she felt rage coursing through her body. “I will not go down without a fight,” she muttered under her breath. “Not without that evil woman going down with me.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Lacie says Tyler’s already there and has saved seats for us,” Kat said to Blaine, who was at the wheel.
“That’s good,” Blaine said. “Last thing you want is to be crammed into standing room only at the very back of the auditorium. You wouldn’t be able to see much of anything.”
Kat murmured in agreement. She was looking out the window of their car, in awe at the neighborhood where Mitzi and Rex lived. It was the most desirable area of Lindsay and had many large and beautiful homes. Even some Victorian styled ones were nestled among the newly built mansions. What Kat liked most about the area was the wide, tree-lined streets, which dappled the late May sunlight onto the road, and the flowers blooming everywhere. “It really is gorgeous here, isn’t it?” she said.
“That it is,” Blaine agreed, pulling up outside the Warren home. It was a stately red-brick two-story home, and the russet shade of the bricks was a perfect contrast to the white balconies that stood out on every side. The Warrens were both avid gardeners (when they had the time off from their busy medical practice careers) and perennial hibiscus were in full bloom, their stunning whites and reds complementing the colors of the home’s exterior.
Mitzi’s bright red Mercedes Benz was parked in the driveway. Her husband, Dr. Rex Warren, had his silver Lexus parked alongside it.
“It’s really something,” Kat said. “With all the flowers blooming, their home just looks incredible.”
Blaine was more interested in eyeing the cars as they walked up to the front door of the Warren’s home. He glanced back at his trusty old Ford Explorer. “District Attorneys don’t make the kind of money that allows two brand new luxury cars to be parked in the driveway. My Ford’s got plenty of years in it yet.”
Kat laughed and nudged him in the ribs. “If you hadn’t given almost all the money you inherited to all of those charities, you could probably afford one, too.” She was teasing him, but secretly she was proud he had such a good heart.
He nudged her right back, a grin turning up the corner of his lips. “Perhaps you could get one with Sexy Cissy’s book money?”
“Hmm. That would take an awful lot of book sales.”
Mitzi and Rex were waiting for them, and dressed in their best for the graduation, they quickly got into the back seat of Blaine’s car. When they arrived at the auditorium, they discovered the parking lot resembled a tailgate party at a football game. Young men stepped out of Hummers while young women in fancy dresses stood on the backs of shiny trucks popping the corks on champagne bottles. The whole place was abuzz with excitement, and it was hard not to smile at the festivities of the day.
Kat grinned from ear to ear. “If the sophisticated people in the big cities could see this, they’d never believe it. They think all we have around here are cattle and wheat, hardly bottles of expensive French champagne!”
Mitzi laughed. “I think they’d be shocked to see this scene.”
The air pumped with music emanating from various different vehicles, and the atmosphere was completely electric. It took a while for Blaine to find a parking spot, but before long they were heading for the auditorium. Kat smoothed down her periwinkle blue dress and shook out her hair. It was nice to get dressed up. She read a quick text from Lacie, forwarded from Tyler, letting them know where he had their seats reserved.
When they reached the right spot in the packed auditorium, Tyler stood up and gave both Kat and Mitzi a polite double kiss each, shook Blaine’s hand, and then Rex’s. As Kat settled into her seat with Blaine on her left and Mitzi on her right, she felt a little guilty. She’d started to think a little badly of Tyler in spite of herself. What if he’s secretly just like his sister? That was the thought that kept popping up in her mind.
Mitzi looked over at her. “Hey, Kat,” she said in a whispered voice. “Lacie’s boyfriend seems nice. I’m getting good vibes from him.”
That made Kat laugh. “Well, a good vibe sounds good to me.”
Mitzi smiled. “Don’t judge him by his sister. He seems to be totally different from her. After all, look how different my brother and I are.” She didn’t even speak to her brother. It was like he was from a different planet. Decency, hard work, and being a good citizen meant you were a sucker as far as he was concerned. Mitzi was always full of stories about him.
“Hmm, you’re right,” Kat said. “And Lacie’s a great judge of character. She knows what she’s doing.”
Mitzi took Kat’s hand in her own and squeezed it. “She sure does. That’s a great young woman you’ve raised there.”
“Aww,” Kat said, her heart melting. “Now don’t start, Mitzi, or I’ll be crying before the graduation even begins. I’m trying to hold out as long as possible.”
Mitzi scoffed. “Kat, you’ll be crying two minutes in. That’s your baby. I sincerely hope your mascara is waterproof.”
It turned out Mitzi was right.
Before the speeches even began or diplomas were handed out, there was a short welcome speech from the dean. Nothing tear-jerking there. But then they began to play the national anthem, with a live orchestra no less, and Kat found herself hurriedly reaching in her purse for some tissues with her left hand, while she put her right hand over her heart. Even the first few rousing notes stirred her, and by the time they were nearing the e
nd, she had to purse her lips together to stop from letting out a big sob.
And I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this, she thought.
Once the national anthem was finished, Blaine put one of his strong hands on her back and gave her a kiss on the cheek. When she looked up at him, he, too, looked beyond words and emotion creased his lined, handsome face.
When Lacie was handed her diploma, Kat surprised herself by breaking into a huge smile, instead of sinking into the crumpled, teary mess she’d expected she would be. She was so, so proud of her daughter and she wished for a moment that Lacie’s late father, Greg, was there to see their daughter graduate. Lacie looked so grown, a real adult, proudly standing on that stage in her cap and gown. Kat’s heart swelled with the same pride and affection it always did when Lacie was involved in her thoughts.
It was only when she looked up at Blaine that she couldn’t hold back her tears. The graduates threw their graduation caps up in the air, and Blaine lifted a hand to his eye to wipe away a tear or two. Mitzi burst out crying, too, and a wave of emotion overtook Kat until she couldn’t keep from joining them in shedding a few tears. The world became blurred for a few moments through her happy sobs, and it felt like her heart just might burst.
Murdered by News Page 6
