by Gin Jones
* * *
Helen automatically speed-dialed the number to arrange for Jack to come pick her up, and the line was ringing before she realized that Jack wouldn't be available. He was still being questioned about Melissa's murder.
She cut off the call. She didn't need a fancy vehicle, and it wasn't worth the price without Jack as the driver. A regular cab would do until she could get Jack out of jail.
A cab driver would expect a specific destination, though, and would be less inclined to wait around for her to make up her mind about where to go. She'd better make sure Betty and Josie were back at the nursing home before she arranged her ride.
The receptionist at the nursing home told her that Betty and Josie had been confined to their rooms until late afternoon, to make sure they'd rest after their exhausting day out with family. She left a message for them to call her when they were able to have a visitor.
With Jack in custody, she couldn't waste the hours until then. She needed to do something to help him.
Helen settled at her desk to review her spreadsheets on suspects for Melissa's murder. She, herself, was the first entry, but of course she hadn't done it. Jack was next, just for the sake of thoroughness, but she was equally certain that he wasn't guilty either.
Then there was Melissa's employer, Gordon Pierce, who annoyed her, but she couldn't see what motive he'd have had for killing one of his own employees.
Beyond that, there were mostly just generic possibilities: family, significant other, co-workers, patients, friends. Who could put names to them, other than Betty and Josie? The reporter, Geoff Loring, perhaps, but he was out of commission and probably too scared to talk to anyone about Melissa. There was Gordon Pierce too, but she'd rather not talk to him again until the contract with his agency had been terminated. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure she believed anything he said. He kept pretending he cared about Helen's well-being, while making it clear he only cared about her money. That wasn't unusual for a business owner, and providing nursing services was a business after all. She wouldn't normally consider his puffery to be dishonesty, but he'd made other comments that made her doubt him. He'd claimed that Melissa had no family or significant other, but Betty and Josie seemed to think otherwise.
What else had Gordon Pierce told her that she could check on?
Helen pulled out a pad with random notes she'd made before starting the spreadsheets. She scanned it until she found a summary of Pierce's visit when he'd scared Rebecca off. Most of it was just a rant about how annoying he was and how sorry she felt for Rebecca. At least Helen could look forward to an end to her dealings with Pierce, but Rebecca would continue to be bullied by him, probably for her entire career, too meek to look for a better job. What if Adam could rescue Rebecca at the same time he was getting Helen out of the nursing agency's contract?
Helen sighed. She didn't have the time to save Rebecca right now. Maybe later, after Jack was absolved of Melissa's murder.
She read her notes on Pierce's visit again. He'd said something about Melissa interning at the local radio station on her days off. Maybe she'd managed to upset someone there. The people there would make better suspects anyway, since they weren't confined to the nursing home and could easily follow Melissa to Helen's cottage.
The cab driver dropped her off in front of a downtown bank building. The place had been built around the same time as the local courthouse, but at least this landlord had heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act and had installed an elevator, which took her to the second floor where the radio station was located.
Across from the elevator glass doors opened into a bland reception area that could have belonged to an insurance agency or dentist's office or just about any other sort of small business. There was a cheap, built-in counter between the lobby where Helen stood and the three work desks. Two of them were unoccupied, although there was enough personal clutter and piles of paper to suggest that they were used regularly. The third desk held a cheap, plastic-encased sign indicating that its occupant was the sales manager for the station, and the tense-looking woman perched on the edge of her chair and stared intently at her computer monitor without ever looking up. Helen wondered if the woman was as uninterested in visitors as she seemed, or was she merely pretending to be too busy to care about a potential advertiser. Helen wasn't sure if she should take the woman's lack of interest personally, as yet another example of being ignored. The woman might act like this all the time, as some sort of ploy to convince advertisers of the scarcity of the service he was buying.
Helen had more important things to worry about, so she concentrated on the receptionist, an elderly woman wearing an earbud and wrapping up a conversation on it. Apparently having disconnected the call, the receptionist greeted Helen with a nod. "If you're looking for the Chamber of Commerce, they moved three buildings down the street."
"I'm in the right place," Helen said, glancing at the only decoration on the wall, which was a three-foot high version of the station's logo. "I'd like to speak to whoever coordinates your volunteers."
"Volunteers?"
"Maybe you call them interns."
"We don't have any interns. Not anymore."
"I know," Helen said. "That's why you need me. I'm looking for some volunteer opportunities, and I heard that Melissa Shores interned here, and now that she's unavailable, I thought you might be looking for someone to take her place."
"Were you a friend of Melissa's?"
The sales manager had torn herself away from her studied lack of interest and was staring at Helen, intent on hearing her answer. Was it guilt or mere curiosity? Could she have had some sort of personal relationship with Melissa, either positive or negative?
Helen watched the sales manager while answering the receptionist. "We were just acquaintances."
The sales manager sighed and turned back to her computer. It looked more like disappointed curiosity than any real anxiety about the situation. Nothing personal there.
Helen focused on the receptionist. "What about you? Did you know Melissa well?"
"We never really had the chance to get to know her well," the receptionist said, and the sound of a stifled snort came from the sales manager. "Okay, so no one really wanted to get to know her well."
Helen wondered if Melissa had even noticed that no one liked her here. "She was a difficult person to get along with. But she'd been coming here for a long time, and this is a pretty small space. There must have been someone who dealt with her regularly."
"She worked in a back room most of the time. It was make-work mostly. She had some sort of local political connections, I think, so the manager had to find something for her to do. It wasn't anything that really needed doing." There was no animosity in her voice, not even true irritation. Nothing that might give rise to murder.
The receptionist smiled apologetically. "It's not likely that we'll need an intern again, but I can take your name and number, and keep it on file."
Even if none of the rank and file employees had anything against Melissa, there was still the station manager. He could have resented the way Melissa had been foisted on him by someone with political connections. Or he might have spent enough time with Melissa for her to have pushed him into the same sort of unreasonable anger Helen herself had felt toward the nurse. She needed to talk to him before she wrote off the station's employees as potential suspects.
"Maybe the station's manager could find me something to do," Helen said. "Could I talk to him?"
"It's not a good time."
The place wasn't exactly hopping with activity, as far as Helen could see. The sales manager was dutifully staring at her monitor, but she'd relaxed, dropping the pretense of being in high demand by other advertisers.
In other circumstances Helen might have accepted the polite brush-off, but with Jack on the verge of arrest, she couldn't afford to give up so easily. She hated to do it, but there was one way to guarantee that someone would talk to her. She wouldn't do it for herself, but J
ack didn't have many other options. Whatever connections Melissa might have had to get this job, Helen was certain her own connections were even better.
"It's just that Governor Faria—he's my ex-husband, you know, but we're still on good terms—always said that I'd be an asset to any news organization if I weren't already working for him. Now that I'm on my own, I figured I'd see if he was right."
"You know the governor?" the receptionist said, her hand hovering over a button on her telephone console.
"We're just friends these days," Helen said. "We don't see each other much, but we do talk."
"Let me see if Sam's back from lunch."
A minute later, a short, thin man in his sixties, came through an unmarked door to the left of the reception counter and stood in the opening. "Mrs. Faria," he said, in a booming radio-announcer voice completely at odds with his small size. "It's an honor to meet you."
"It's Binney now," she said. "Call me Helen."
"I'm Sam Johnson, the station manager." He backed through the door he'd just come through, holding it for Helen. "Let me show you around."
"I've heard so much about this place." Most of the time Helen hadn't been listening to Melissa's constant chatter, but some of it must have been about the radio station. "Where did Melissa work when she was here?"
"Melissa?" he said. "Oh, you mean the woman who got killed the other day. We had her doing transcripts of shows, in case someone might request a copy. Not that anyone ever does, but it kept her busy and out of our way."
"I had the impression she wanted to work in the studio booth itself."
"Everyone does," he said with a smile that, like his voice, was bigger than seemed physically possible. "But we start them out in a safe location. After a while, everyone in radio develops a sort of extra-sensory awareness of the on-air light, so they just know when to stay out of the studio and even to keep quiet in the hallway. Melissa never got the hang of that, so she never graduated from her initial assignment."
That fit with the chatty woman Helen had known. Melissa would have wanted to be on air, spouting her own opinions. Sam seemed to take his work seriously, although she had a hard time envisioning him in a murderous rage. Sam turned the corner, and a door marked Studio A had its on-air light glowing. Across from it was another door marked Studio B, and that light was off. He jangled a key ring that weighed more than he did and opened the door to the dark studio. He turned on the ceiling light, revealing a cramped space, crowded with computer monitors and less easily identifiable electronic equipment. He ran a loving hand over the tabletop's electronics. "This is where I do my shows."
It was still a long shot, Helen thought, but she could imagine him engaging in a physical defense of his beloved electronics. "Melissa wasn't the sort of person to accept limitations. Did she ever sneak into the studios?"
A brief flicker of horror passed over his thin face at the idea that she might have touched his electronics, but no flash of anger. "Not as far as I know."
"I guess she was happy enough just listening to your show," Helen said. "You're a news station, right? Where are the reporters?"
"We do talk shows," Sam said in a defensive tone. "Mostly national issues, not local stuff. Nothing for us to actually investigate."
"You don't do any local news at all?"
"It's not like we're ignorant of what's happening. I do read a dozen newspapers every day, and that information gets passed along in my shows." He brightened. "Plus, we've got Geoff Loring. He does a weekly show about local stories. Sunday afternoons."
"I heard he'd been injured," Helen said. "Will he still be able to do his show?"
"He should be," Sam said. "We can give him some help with the controls until his wrist heals."
"He isn't afraid to come back to work? I heard he'd been told not to talk about some big story he was working on. How can he do his show if he's not going to talk about his big story?"
"I don't know anything about any big story. I just need him to fill an hour of otherwise dead air on Sunday afternoons."
"But if he had a big story, and he's abandoning it, wouldn't it be a great opportunity for you to take over and get the scoop?"
"I'm just the manager and the news announcer," Sam said. "No one here is a reporter. At best, they're on-air personalities. I read from the syndicated feeds we subscribe to, and press releases from the town departments. But that's not what anyone really wants to hear. If we want to stay in business, we need to stick to what people really want to hear."
"Which is uninformed people throwing sound bites at other uninformed people?"
He shrugged. "We just give the audience what it wants. They'd love to hear from you. Someone who has an insider's view of the governor's mansion."
"It's not all that interesting," Helen said. "They'd probably rather hear from people who don't know what it was like. The stories I've read about my life were always more interesting than the reality."
"See?" Sam said. "That's exactly the sort of comment that would make you such an interesting addition to our line-up. We could try it for a few weeks, and see what the response is before we make any long-term commitments."
"No, thanks," Helen said. "I like my privacy too much to risk becoming a 'personality.'"
"It may be too late for that," Sam said. "Wharton is a small town, and people are already talking about you."
"It's not my fault that Melissa got killed," Helen said. "And my attorney would insist on my adding that I didn't kill her. Just in case you were wondering."
Sam chuckled like the trained radio announcer he was. "No one thinks you killed Melissa. And that's not what they're talking about. It's the way you talked back to Judge Nolan, in open court. We're all amazed she didn't have you tossed into a cell for contempt."
"I didn't back-talk her," Helen said. "I just asked her a question."
"Same thing, in her court," Sam said. "I'm not saying she's a bad judge. She does a lot of good for this community, on and off the bench. But she's been a judge for two decades now, and she might be just a little too used to getting her own way all the time."
"Sounds like a good topic for one of your station's call-in shows."
"That would be one heck of a show. The ratings would probably be worth the cost of the lawyer we'd have to hire to defend against the judge's defamation suit," he said. "Are you volunteering to moderate it?"
"Still not interested." Even if she did want the job, she couldn't take it now, not while the judge held Jack's fate in her hands and might blame him for Helen's actions. "I'd just as soon let my notoriety fade away."
"Yeah," he said. "That's how everyone feels after they've dealt with Judge Nolan. But if you change your mind, just give me a call."
That wasn't going to happen, but she didn't want to antagonize anyone else in town, at least without provocation. Sam Johnson might not be a reporter, but he obviously knew a good deal about the behind-the-scenes working of the town. He'd be a good addition to her Rolodex.
"I'll get one of your business cards on the way out," she promised.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Helen glanced out the window of the taxi as it turned onto her street, trying to concentrate on what she'd learned at the radio station, but all she could think was how much she missed having Jack in the driver's seat.
The current cab driver was everything he was supposed to be—polite, careful, efficient—but he wasn't Jack.
It was annoying to realize just how much she'd come to depend on him. Not just the transportation around town, which the taxi company had adequately replaced, but Jack himself.
If Lily were here she'd be saying, "I told you so. Everyone could use a little help."
Fortunately, her niece didn't need to know about this little epiphany, if Helen could just get Jack out of jail and make sure the real killer got put there instead.
Except that to get Jack out of jail, she needed him to already be out of jail, and giving her feedback on her impressions of the radio station employees.
As far as she could tell, no one there had cared enough about Melissa, positively or negatively, to have a motive to kill her. No one was obviously in mourning, and no one was obviously gloating over her demise. But Jack knew the community better than she did, and he might have had some deeper insight into the station's employees that would have given her a reason to doubt them.
The taxi turned smoothly into Helen's driveway and bumped along the gravel surface. Once the vehicle had stopped, the driver hopped out and held the rear door for Helen while she struggled to climb out. He offered his hand, the way Jack would have known not to do, and Helen ignored it to struggle out on her own.
It was only after she'd handed the taxi driver his fare and tip, that she noticed another vehicle was parked in front of the garage. An expensive car, the sort she associated with her ex-husband's cronies. It didn't belong to Tate, who would never waste that much money on a second car when he could have spent it on wood. So who else might be visiting her uninvited?
She turned to ask the taxi driver to wait a minute in case the newcomer was someone Helen wanted to avoid by leaving again, but the taxi was already halfway to the end of the driveway. Jack wouldn't have left without saying anything, and he'd have known she might want to make a fast getaway.
Helen dug in her pocket for her cell phone, in case she needed to call 911, and headed for the cottage, hoping to get inside before the unannounced visitor could come out from wherever he was hiding.
She had only taken a couple steps before a woman—it took a moment for Helen to recognize Judge Nolan in a classic beige skirt suit instead of the formal black robes—came around the far corner of the garage. Her beige pumps were getting grass stains, and the heels that narrowed to a tiny point were sinking into the spring-rain-softened ground.
"Oh, there you are," Judge Nolan said. "I thought maybe you'd be out in the back yard somewhere on such a lovely spring day."
"I went for a drive instead." Helen dropped her phone back into her pocket and waited at the foot of her front steps. "What can I do for you?"
