The Good Byline

by Jill Orr

  “Did he say anything about Jordan? Or Romero?”

  “Um—”

  “What does ‘um’ mean?”

  I rubbed my head. “It means I can’t remember.”

  “Because the alcohol killed your brain cells?”

  “Yes, Holman, because the alcohol killed my brain cells.”

  He spared me a lecture about drinking, which I really appreciated. I took the opportunity to look at my phone. I could see why Holman had been worried enough to come over this morning.

  11:24 p.m.: Think Ajay is hide somethinn – hes weird whn i ask bout his life. Def secretive. But cute and nice. Ok. Room spinnnnng. over n out, Sherlck.

  “I wish I could remember.” I closed my eyes, trying to recall something useful.

  “Riley, I think we have to consider the possibility that your car getting blown up may have had something to do with this investigation. Vandalism seems unlikely; another thing that is just too coincidental.”

  Part of me agreed with him, but another part thought it could easily have to do with the threats on Dr. H and the library. Holman didn’t know about that, and I was sworn to secrecy. I needed some quiet time to think all this through. Maybe once I had a minute to myself I would remember more of what happened last night?

  I nodded. “I’ve got to go to the sheriff’s office,” I said, standing up to signal it was time for him to go.

  CHAPTER 28

  The rest of the morning was a blur of activity. It’s amazing how inconvenient it is to have someone blow up your car. In addition to the obvious fact that I had to walk into town to get to the sheriff’s office, I spent nearly two hours there filing a report and answering questions.

  Fortunately, Joe Tackett was out on a call when I arrived, and I didn’t have to deal with him. Unfortunately, Ryan’s cousin Gail was manning the front desk, which meant that shortly after I got there, Ryan came bursting in like a wild animal.

  “Riley! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “Shhhhh,” I said and dragged him over to a bench near the front of the office. I was still furious with him, but I could see he was genuinely scared for me. “I’m fine. My car is another story.”

  “What happened?”

  It occurred to me at that moment that I hadn’t told Ryan a single thing that had been going on in my life over the past week. He didn’t know anything about my suspicions about Jordan’s death, working with Holman, Ajay being married and a possible/maybe/hopefully not gangster, or Dr. H being attacked. And the Tuttle County sheriff’s office was certainly not the place to start explaining, especially if there was a double agent here.

  “It was probably just a teenage prank,” I said, taking my voice down to a whisper.

  “Kids making car bombs in Tuttle?” he scoffed.

  Just then Gail said, “Riley, Carl needs to see you in his office.”

  It irritated me how Ryan walked back to Carl’s office with me as if he still occupied that place in my life—the adviser, the confidant, the protector. But I was too tired to argue with him to stay put.

  “I’m just finalizing this report here,” Carl said. He looked down at his screen and ran a finger along it scanning for something. “Tell me why you left your car in the library lot overnight? Had your battery died or something?”

  “Um, no, as I mentioned previously,” I stammered, deliberately not looking at Ryan, “my date picked me up from work, and when he dropped me off later that night, I was, um, not exactly in the best condition to drive. So he just took me home.” My eyes flicked to Ryan. “And then he left. Last night. After dropping me at the door.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to clarify that Ajay had not spent the night, but I did.

  Carl had sat back down and was typing my statement into his form. I could feel Ryan’s eyes on me the whole time. After a couple of seconds, Carl hit the enter key with a decisive punch. “Okay, Riley,” he said, “you’re free to go. We’ll call you if we get any information on who did this, but it looks like a simple case of vandalism. Could’ve been some teenagers from West Bay or Cyprus coming out here to raise heck. We see some of that from time to time.”

  I nodded, though I didn’t believe that for a hot minute. We shook hands and walked out front, where Gail stopped Ryan to show him pictures of her three-year-old son, Silas. I was already halfway down the steps of the police department when Ryan caught up to me.

  “You had a date last night?”

  I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to sound wounded. “Yes. I did.” I kept walking.

  “With Mr. BMW?”

  “Yeah, so?” I stopped and put my hands on my hips.

  “Nothing, it’s just that I thought you might have waited more than two seconds before going out and getting drunk with some douchebag.”

  “He’s not a douchebag,” I said loudly. A couple of people looked over at us. I lowered my voice. “If anyone’s a douchebag, Ryan, it’s you. You get another girl pregnant, and you’re still trying to tell me who I can and cannot date?”

  “But I love you, Riles.” He grabbed my hand.

  “Riley?”

  My head whipped around at the sound of Ajay’s voice, and I dropped Ryan’s hand like a hot stone. Ajay. Here. With me and Ryan. My pulse ticked up.

  “Ajay!”

  “Mr. BMW. Why am I not surprised?” Ryan muttered under his breath.

  Ajay nodded to Ryan, a look of caution on his handsome face. Then he looked at me. “You okay?”

  I was so not okay. I felt sick to my stomach.

  “Riley?” another voice called out.

  It was like a bad dream. Holman was now walking up the path toward us. All the men in my life, such as they were, were standing in the same spot at the same time.

  Riley Ellison, twenty-four, spontaneously combusted into a puff of smoke when the three men in her life converged upon her outside the Tuttle County sheriff’s office. Each man represented a different faction of Ms. Ellison’s life—Ryan, the past; Holman, the present; and Ajay, the would-be future. The result of their confluence proved too much for Ms. Ellison’s delicate constitution. Mostly because she was super hung over.

  “Who’s this?” Ryan asked, nodding toward Holman.

  “Ajay, Ryan, this is Will Holman. Will, this is Ryan and Ajay,” I said.

  Holman shook hands with them both and I noticed the veins in his spindly arms bulged slightly when he shook Ajay’s hand.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked Holman.

  “Just checking on you.”

  “Is everything okay?” Ajay asked, clearly confused.

  “My car was vandalized last night.”

  “In the library lot?” Ajay looked astonished. If he was acting, he was doing a pretty good job.

  “She calls it vandalism. I call it a car bombing,” Holman said.

  Ajay seemed too shocked to notice Holman’s glare. “Someone blew up your car?”

  “Yeah,” Ryan chimed in. “Someone got her drunk and made her leave her car there all night.”

  Holman added, “Tuttle Corner is becoming a very unsafe place for young women these days, don’t you think?” He followed it with another intense glare.

  “I…I…” Ajay started, “I’m sorry—who did you say this guy was again?” He jerked a thumb toward Holman.

  In the animal kingdom, this is the part where they’d start peeing all over each other. I had to stop this madness before it came to that.

  “Guys.” I snarled through my teeth. I gave Ryan a hard look first. “I’ll talk to you later.” He scowled at me and then at Ajay before turning to leave. Next, I looked at Holman and said in a slightly nicer tone, “You too. Okay?”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded my head as Ajay looked on, confused. “Yes.” Then I mouthed “GO” to him when Ajay looked away.

  “What happened?” Ajay asked once the others were gone.

  “Where do I start?” I still was not clear on the events of last night. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d sa
id or done, but I felt the need to apologize. “First, I’m sorry about last night—I don’t usually drink that much.”

  Ajay looked down. “Yeah, I figured. Listen, I think we need to talk.”

  My stomach lurched. We need to talk. I knew what that meant. After all the stress of trying to fake-date Ajay in order to get information out of him, he was going to dump me. He, a married man who was clearly hiding something big—possibly criminal activity—was going to break up with me. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard.

  There was a sudden intensity to his posture, and he sort of leaned toward me when he spoke. “You and I have certainly gotten off to an interesting start.”

  A wave of shame rolled over me. My stomach churned with fear, dread, anxiety…and tequila. The stress of the morning, in addition to the mass quantities of alcohol, were proving too much for my GI system. My mouth started sweating, and I knew I was going to be sick. Like imminently.

  “I’m so sorry, Ajay, but—” a gurgle erupted from my throat; it wouldn’t be long. “I’ve really got to go!”

  “Wait, Riley,” he called, but I was already halfway down the sidewalk. I hoped I could make it past the corner so I could yak on a side street instead of right there on Main. The only thing worse than being dumped in front of the sheriff’s office would be puking right after being dumped in front of the sheriff’s office.

  I heard Ajay calling my name as I ran down the street, but I kept going. I turned the corner onto Beach, and as soon as I was sure I was out of sight, I threw up directly onto Mrs. Holyoak’s boxwoods.

  CHAPTER 29

  A couple of hours later, after a shower, a nap, and a piece of dry toast, I was feeling semi-human again. Ajay had texted me like five times, but I had yet to respond. For the moment, I was going to stick to messes that I knew how to clean up. So I’d walked back to Mrs. Holyoak’s, knocked on her door, and told her it was me who threw up in her bushes. I’d brought my bucket and asked if I could fill it from her spigot to wash away the mess. She was very understanding about the whole thing.

  “The shock of what happened to your car would be enough to make anyone feel sick,” she said, then put a hand up to the base of her throat. “I’m praying for you, honey.”

  After I finished at Mrs. Holyoak’s, I stopped at the library. Tabitha confirmed that people were indeed talking about the incident and said the prevailing theory was that I’d been the victim of a hate crime against librarians. “Which is totally weird, because you’re not even a real librarian.”

  “Yes, Tabitha,” I said. “It really should have been you.”

  “Ladies,” Dr. H called from his office, before Tabitha could respond. “I need to show you something.”

  We walked into his office, where he directed our attention to a picture on his large computer monitor. It was a blown-up version of a grainy photograph from a newspaper. The snap showed Juan Pablo Romero getting into his Escalade after leaving a fundraising event in Richmond to benefit the March of Dimes. Dr. H pointed to the man driving the truck; he was talking on his cell phone, clearly unaware his picture was being taken.

  “That,” he said, “is Twain.”

  A cold chill spread over my body. Twain and Romero. That connected Jordan’s death with the threats on the library. I felt sick all over again.

  “So?” Tabitha said.

  “Twain, or Fausto Gonzalez, according to this article, works for Romero as the head of security operations for Romero’s LLC. I tried to check into his background, but all I could find was that he moved here from New Jersey about three years ago and has been working for Romero ever since.” Dr. H’s eyes searched mine. I got the feeling he could tell this news had shaken me.

  I stared at the screen. My mind flicked through all the pieces of the puzzle that were very slowly coming into focus. Romero. Jordan. Ajay. Dr. H. LJP Park. The library. Twain. My car. They were all connected. They had to be. I just needed to figure out how.

  Tabitha exhaled impatiently. “Okay, so what does that mean?”

  “If Twain works for Romero, then we can assume it is Romero who is behind this bookmobile business—”

  I interrupted him. “I gotta go.”

  Both Tabitha and Dr. H turned toward me in surprise.

  Tabitha narrowed her eyes. “Why do you look so weird?”

  “Nothing!” I grabbed my purse and walked quickly toward the exit. I called over my shoulder, “I mean, no reason. I think I forgot to, uh, do something, and I really need to go do it. I’ll see you later—bye!” And before they could say anything else, I was on my way home in a dead sprint.

  As soon as I walked in, I texted Holman and told him I needed his help. He was at my house in less than ten minutes. I told him everything I knew about Dr. H, the threats at the library, and Twain’s connection with Romero. He listened silently, and when I finished, he leaned forward to place his forearms on his knees. “I know you’ve already connected this.”

  I didn’t answer. Although he was right, I needed to hear him say it first. I’d been at the edge of this conclusion all afternoon, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

  Holman had no trouble. “If Romero is behind the threats at the library, then he might also be behind the attack on your car.” He paused, watching my reaction. “And if Ajay is working for Romero, he could have been the one who planted the bomb in your car. He had means, motive, and opportunity.”

  “We don’t know if he has motive or not!” I jumped to Ajay’s defense.

  “C’mon.…”

  “I know it looks bad, but I just don’t feel like he could do that.” I still didn’t want to believe Ajay was involved in any of this, but it was getting hard to deny.

  Holman sighed. “Let’s take a look at the facts. We know Ajay is an explosives expert. We know Ajay works for Romero. We know Ajay dated Jordan.” Holman ticked each item off on his long, bony fingers. “We know he asked you out right after you started looking into Jordan’s life and death.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Riley,” Holman said firmly. I looked up. “I know you like him. I know he’s successful and attractive, and he makes you feel good. But you can’t let that distract you from what the data is telling us.”

  I played with the frayed hem on the bottom of my T-shirt. It was my UVA shirt that Ryan had given me when we’d both been accepted. I’d been leaning toward going to Cardwell College closer to home, but he encouraged me to go to UVA. He said it would be our first of many adventures together. I believed him. Was Ajay just another guy I wanted to believe was telling the truth?

  “I don’t know.…”

  “Listen, I’m not saying he definitely blew up your car or that he killed Jordan. We don’t know the extent of his involvement yet. But I think at this point, it’s obvious that he is involved.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath, unable to deny it any longer. “You’re right.” I owed it to Jordan to keep a clear head about this. I’d have to accept that Ajay was not the guy I wanted him to be and open my eyes to the image of him that was becoming clearer with each new piece of information we uncovered.

  Holman took out a huge manila folder and opened it on my ottoman. “I’ve been poring over Jordan’s notes, and I came across something odd.” He slid the folder over to me. “She had copies of a bunch of handwritten arrest citations in her file,” he said. “None of which had anything to do with Juan Pablo Romero.”

  “Maybe they were for another story she was working on?”

  “Doubt it. They were in the Romero file, and Jordan was very organized.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure, but I am going to try to find out. There were hundreds of them; it’ll take me a while to comb through them all, but whatever it was, she didn’t share it with me. Just like the anonymous tip. Jordan was obviously working her own angles.”

  “By the way, what does Kay Jackson plan to do about your piece on R
omero?”

  “She’s letting me run with it for a while, but I’m not sure how long she’ll let me stay on it if I can’t come up with anything concrete. I just have to hope we can break this story soon.”

  I hoped so too, but it wasn’t looking good. Holman started going through the arrest citations, while I took Jordan’s notes and began to read them, trying to uncover what her working theories had been.

  So far, we knew that the IRS had been trying for years to prove that Romero’s restaurants were a money-laundering front for Uncle Mateo’s drug trafficking up in New Jersey. We found evidence that Romero’s holding company had been audited eight times in the past fifteen years. But the audits never turned up any evidence of wrongdoing.

  “Either he’s paying off the Feds,” Holman said under his breath, “or he is actually running a legitimate business.”

  Uncle Mateo was another story. He’d been arrested several times in the past two decades for everything from gambling to racketeering to attempted murder, but managed to get off every time. He didn’t bother hiding his deep dislike for the authorities. In almost every picture of him, Mateo was spitting at the camera, spitting at the police holding him in handcuffs, spitting at reporters. He looked the part of a gangster, too. He had a square face with mottled skin and a scar that ran from his cheekbone to his chin. His eyes were small and brown, and he had a thick, black mustache that in recent pictures had started to develop gray flecks. He looked, in a word, hard. His son, Dante, had the same hard look, further enhanced by a neck covered with swirling black and red tattoos.

  Juan Pablo, on the other hand, was always dressed well and groomed impeccably. If you put pictures of all three men side by side, you’d never believe that they were family, let alone business partners. But they were. And I suppose it was that inconsistency that had intrigued the government enough to have all of them on their radar.

  About two hours later, Holman and I were both tired and hungry and frustrated at the slow progress we were making. Still a touch hung over, I begged Holman to go get us a pizza. He happily obliged.