Scoop to Kill

by Wendy Lyn Watson

  “Fair enough. I didn’t graduate high school, but your aunt Tally did.”

  “What?” I piped up, not sure how I got dragged into this spat.

  “Aunt Tally can register for the class and go with you every day. She’s already told Reggie Hawking that she’s interested in going back to school”—she paused to give me a pointed look, reminding me that I owed her big for helping Alice search through Bryan’s office—“so it shouldn’t surprise anyone when she registers for the class.”

  “Now wait a minute,” I protested. “I have a business to run. I already applied for a permit for a booth at the Bluegrass Festival, and now I’ve got this benefit for Bryan Campbell to plan, not to mention Crystal Tompkins’s wedding . . . it’s going to be a busy summer.”

  Bree turned the full force of her glare on me, and all the good reasons why I shouldn’t go back to college that summer melted away like soft serve in the sunlight.

  After we put away the dishes and refilled Sherbet’s kibble dish, we headed back to the A-la-mode.

  “Y’all go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Once Bree and Alice were out of earshot, I pulled my phone out of my purse and dialed.

  I got voice mail, and said a little “thank you” for that bit of luck.

  “Hey, Cal,” I said to the machine. “Tally here. Uh, I want to be straight with you, okay? This is my official notice. I’m fixin’ to meddle.”

  chapter 18

  Bree promised she would take care of the A-la-mode while I embarked on my new career as a part-time college student, and she honored her word. She headed out the door at five a.m. Monday morning, her flaming curls tied in a sloppy topknot and a travel mug of lukewarm day-old coffee clutched to her breast like a long-lost lover. As she shoved out the door, she speared me with an accusatory finger: “Register. Today.”

  I did as I was told, schlepping down to the Dickerson registrar’s office. Thankfully, the school played fast and loose with registration for community members who weren’t seeking a degree. If you were willing to pay the tuition, they’d let you register.

  My hand shook as I wrote the check. After nine months, the A-la-mode had finally drifted into the black, and I had money in my checking account. But not much. As I scrawled the zeros on the tuition check, I couldn’t help but envision all the things I wouldn’t be buying for another few months. The professional sign to replace the one Bree and Alice had painted freehand. The new waffle cone press I coveted. The brake job for my wretched old van.

  But family came first.

  First and second, as it happened.

  After I got myself officially enrolled in Reggie Hawking’s American lit class, I met Cal by the entrance to the Gish-Tunny Center. He’d set up a meeting with Jonas Landry and George Gunderson to discuss the benefit for Bryan’s scholarship.

  Before we got down to the specifics of the party, though, Cal decided to take me to the woodshed.

  “Dammit, Tally, what sort of nonsense are you and Bree cooking up now?”

  “It’s not nonsense, Cal.” I explained our logic about why we thought Emily had been murdered. “If someone killed both Bryan and Emily and if that someone thinks Alice is a threat, she’s in danger. I’m not about to sit by and let someone hurt our baby.”

  “Those are some mighty big ‘ifs,’ ” Cal said.

  “Maybe. But it’s mighty big trouble if we’re right.”

  He sighed. “Listen, I would ride you more about this, but there’s nothing left for you to meddle in. It’s not official, but it looks like the detectives are closing the book on Bryan’s murder and there won’t be much of an investigation into Emily’s suicide.”

  I noticed he didn’t qualify that word at all. As far as Cal and the cops were concerned, Emily definitely killed herself.

  “If there’s no official investigation,” he continued, “there’s nothing for you to muck up. You may be a busybody, but you’re not a criminal.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said.

  He tipped an imaginary hat. “No problem, darlin’.”

  The two professors joined us as we picked up paper cups of sweet tea from the Jump and Java. They both bought coffee, waving their identification cards in front of the little red eye the way Reggie had done, and then they led us up to the third-floor ballroom.

  “This is the space,” Landry said. “We can drape the whole room in crimson and gold bunting, and we have a parquet dance floor we can lay over the carpet there.”

  The room stretched before us, empty and a bit forlorn, but with the enormous crystal chandeliers blazing and the space softened with furniture, fabric, and music, I could imagine how lovely it would be.

  Cal nodded. “We’re planning on a silent auction,” he said, “so we could set up the items along that wall.”

  I piped up. “Deena Silver is pretty busy with her daughter’s wedding, but Crystal and Jason knew Bryan, so she’s willing to do the catering at cost as long as we don’t hold the event the weekend of the wedding, which is the third weekend in June. And I’d like to provide dessert, if that’s okay. Since it’s a more formal dinner, I thought I could do an ice cream cake.”

  A faint smile graced Cal’s lips. “That would be just fine, Tally. Since Bryan came to Dickerson, he’s been focused on the finer things, but when he was a kid, he had an ice cream cake from the Tasty-Swirl for every birthday party.”

  He cleared his throat. “So how’s the second weekend in June look? That would work with the college baseball season and still leave Deena free the weekend of Crystal’s wedding.”

  Landry pulled a face. “Unfortunately, I’ll be away that weekend. I have to attend the IAFS conference in Vancouver.” He looked at me. “Sorry, that’s the International Association of Film Scholarship.”

  “Is it official, then?” Gunderson asked.

  Landry chuckled. “As of Friday. I indulged in the osso buco at Fra Cirilo to celebrate.”

  Gunderson explained. “Jonas’s most recent book was nominated for the IAFS Tamke Award, their highest honor. It seems he’s won.”

  “Congratulations,” Cal and I said.

  It must have been a big deal to rate a dinner at Fra Cirilo, north Texas’s poshest Italian restaurant.

  “Yes, well, it means I’ll have to miss the benefit. What a disappointment.”

  Maybe I was projecting my own lack of enthusiasm onto Jonas Landry, but he didn’t sound disappointed at all. In fact, I thought I detected a note of relief in his voice, like he was downright delighted to have an excuse not to attend the benefit.

  “Nonsense,” Cal said. “We couldn’t have this event without you there. We’ll just have to move it up a week.”

  I smothered a curse. Did these men have any idea what this event would involve? I could already imagine the stream of profanity spewing from Deena’s mouth when I informed her that we had less than a month to plan this shindig. And now that I would be trying to balance the A-la-mode and this literature class along with the preparations . . . just thinking about it made me tired.

  That evening, after a day spent running errands, I found a package on my doorstep, a flat rectangle wrapped in brown paper and tied with a big, sloppy pink bow. Were it not for the pink bow, I might have thought it was a bomb, but the pink bow gave me hope it was a real live present.

  And it was. Of sorts.

  I sat on the couch, carefully pulled the ribbon off, and then ripped through the paper, and found a book.

  I like books. I like to read mysteries and romances, cookbooks and the occasional biography. But I never had much of an inkling to read Disciple of Denmark: The Life and Filmography of Christer Rasmussen, by Jonas Landry, which was—I flipped open the back cover—472 pages long.

  There was a note tucked inside the front cover of the book:

  “For Tally, I thought you might like to see what all the fuss is about. And then you can tell me.—Cal.”

  Sherbet jumped up beside me and started nibbling at the end of the pink r
ibbon.

  “I don’t think so, little man. I am not taking you back to the vet tonight.” I tugged the ribbon away and tucked it between the folds of the paper before pulling the cat onto my lap.

  “What do you think, Sherbet? In honor of my new status as ‘college student,’ do you think I should tackle this nasty-looking book?”

  Sherbet squeaked and butted his head on the corner of the hard cover.

  “Do you want to do my homework for me, little man?” He squeaked again. “I didn’t think so.”

  I was petting the cat’s silky head and idly flipping through the first pages of the book, trying to decide whether etiquette required me to actually read the thing, when a word caught my eye.

  It was near the bottom of the third page, just one little word at the beginning of a paragraph, but it rocked my world.

  Ostergard.

  It creeped me out a little that, as we convened around the back table of the A-la-mode, Kyle took the chair Emily had usually occupied. But it was the seat closest to the wall outlet, and he had his laptop fired up.

  I’ve heard it said that people tend to look like their dogs, and it seemed the same could be said about laptop computers. Where Emily used a sleek white machine, all slim curved lines, Kyle’s laptop had a dark case, its clunky frame covered over with stickers for bands and skateboard manufacturers.

  “Tally, you don’t have Wi-Fi here, do you?” Finn asked.

  “Huh?”

  Alice laughed, and Kyle snorted. “No,” he said. “But McKlesky and Howard does.”

  “The law firm?”

  “Yep.”

  “Isn’t their network password protected?” Finn sounded incredulous.

  “Nope.”

  “Incredible.”

  “I know, right?”

  Kyle and Finn bumped fists. Apparently their mutual disdain for McKlesky and Howard’s idiocy provided some sort of cement for their boy-bonding.

  “Ostergard?” Kyle asked.

  “That’s right. Walder—with a ‘d’ instead of a ‘t’—Ostergard.”

  “Huh.”

  “Let me see,” Alice said, pulling the laptop around in front of her. Kyle held up his hands, seemingly surrendering his machine to her.

  She read silently for a second, clicking keys on the computer.

  “This must be him,” she said. “Walder Ostergard, ASC. Cinematographer. His Wikipedia entry says he’s from Denmark but lived in the U.S. for the last thirty years of his life. Died last summer. Worked extensively with Christer Rasmussen before immigrating.”

  “That’s the guy,” I said. I scanned through the paragraph in Landry’s book, the one that mentioned Ostergard. “Landry thanks him for helping arrange the interviews he did with Rasmussen.”

  “That’s why the book is such a big deal,” Alice said. “From what Reggie said, Rasmussen was notoriously reclusive—like J. D. Salinger reclusive. The fact that Landry got to interview him extensively before he died, it’s huge.”

  “But what’s fake?” Bree asked. “Wasn’t that what Bryan’s calendar said? That Ostergard was fake? But he’s a real person. Dead, but real.”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said. “Maybe there’s something in his blog.”

  “Blog?” Bree asked.

  Kyle rolled his eyes. Working with old ladies like us about drove him nuts.

  “Blog,” he said. “Web log, like an online diary.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Kyle Mason,” Bree snapped. “What kind of idiot keeps a diary out on the Internet where everyone can read it?”

  “Oh, just everyone,” Kyle drawled.

  “I don’t suppose he blogs in English?” Finn said.

  “Actually he does,” Alice replied. She read silently a moment. “Broken, profane English, but English.”

  Something jogged loose in my brain.

  “That’s got to be it,” I said. “Reggie mentioned that Landry was pissed at Bryan last fall, and he made some comment about Bryan spending too much time reading blogs. Reggie thought Bryan wasn’t doing his work, but maybe Landry was upset over something Bryan found on a blog.”

  I felt a growing certainty that this was it, the key to everything. In my experience, when people cheated on their spouses they displayed a fundamental lack of character, a failing that spilled into other aspects of their lives. If Jonas Landry could cheat so boldly, what else might he do? Lie? Kill?

  Still, my innate dislike for Jonas Landry wouldn’t get us far in a court of law. If Jonas killed Bryan, we’d have to unravel the whole story, start to finish.

  Alice moaned. “But what?” she said, echoing my own thoughts. “What did Bryan find? Geez, if it’s something on Ostergard’s blog, we’re doomed. The guy may not have spoken English very well, but he sure liked to write. It looks like he averaged a good twenty posts a month, and the index goes back for years.”

  “I’ve got it,” Finn said. “I’m taking my mom to the hospital for some tests tomorrow. It’ll take all day. So just give me the URL for the blog and the book, and I’ll see what I can figure out.”

  chapter 19

  I was an average student in high school, earning mostly As and Bs, but through hard work rather than native brilliance. I probably could have gotten into college, but I had no way to pay tuition. Mama and I had to pinch pennies till they squealed just to get by, my daddy had a whole other family to support up in Tulsa, and I sure wasn’t in a position to win scholarships. Heck, even if I’d been able to find the cash, I couldn’t have gone far: my mama needed constant supervision when she was drinking. Which was always.

  Bottom line, college simply wasn’t an option.

  As a result, most of what I knew about universities I’d learned from watching television. I expected the offices of the faculty to be grand affairs with wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and tall, leaded-glass windows. Lecture halls should be filled with oak desks, a stately podium at the front of the room, golden sunlight streaming through ivy-draped windows, and the scent of leather-bound books heavy on the air. The outside of Dickerson, and even the big public atrium in Sinclair Hall, fit my Hollywood image of a private university. But once you peeled back that top layer and got down to the real working part of the school, the image shattered.

  When I crossed the threshold into the main lecture hall in Sinclair Hall, the fusty scent of lunch meat and damp socks hit me hard.

  Buzzing fluorescent tubes cast unforgiving light on the chipped laminate desks bolted into a tiered floor covered in stained commercial carpet. The chairs, too, were bolted in place, their hard plastic contours splattered with Magic Marker graffiti. The walls of the room were covered with a chaos of posters for study-abroad programs, sorority fund-raisers, and summer subletting opportunities.

  At the front of the room, Reggie stood beside a lectern resting on an office desk. Behind him, a vast whiteboard bore the ghostly marks of lectures past. He glanced up and gave me a quick smile before returning to studying the black binder in his hands.

  I spotted Alice sitting in the front right corner of the classroom, narrow shoulders squared beneath a baby blue cardigan, a half-dozen sharpened pencils and two highlighters lined up next to an open notebook on the table in front of her.

  I made my way toward the middle of the classroom, wanting to be close enough to Alice to keep an eye on her but not so close as to make her self-conscious. I found a seat about five rows from the front and only a few in from the aisle. As I settled in, I could tell that even my ample behind would be no match for a full three hours in that hard plastic seat.

  “Hey, Mama.”

  I craned my neck around to see the boy who had spoken, a thick-necked young man with Greek letters emblazoned across his chest, knee-length khaki shorts, and leather flip-flops. The sort of flip-flops that cost more than my best dress shoes. He wore a puka shell necklace, a backward ball cap, and sprawled in his chair, slumped down so far his butt about fell off the edge of his seat.

  I hadn’t gone
to college, but I knew his type. I’d wrangled boys like that when I worked at Erma’s Fry by Night Diner in high school, the rich kids from Dickerson who had more money than manners. I’d watched those boys grow into men with florid faces, sports cars, and inappropriate girlfriends. And I’d watched those men grow fat and sad with middle age, turning into pitiful caricatures of themselves. Basically, I’d watched the life cycle of this boy’s type, and I would bet he wouldn’t be smiling such a smug grin if he knew what was in store for him.

  A half-dozen smirking boys formed a gangly knot around the boy who’d spoken. This particular breed of jerk tended to travel in packs.

  “I haven’t seen you around campus,” he said, undeterred by my most thin-lipped glare of annoyance. “You new? Cuz maybe I could, uh, show you around.” He bobbled his eyebrows suggestively, and his posse sniggered.

  The ringleader high-fived the kid next to him and laughed, but the sound had an ugly edge to it. Whether he ever pantsed a kid in gym class or not, this guy was a bully.

  As a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, I’d learned that the best way to beat a bully is to ignore him. I swiveled back around, prepared to do just that, but my rebuff only prompted a round of catcalls from the peanut gallery.

  I swung back around. “Sugar, I’m old enough to be your mama, so don’t think your cute will work on me.”

  “Me-ow,” he said, swiping a playful claw through the air. “A real live cougar!” His backup bullies laughed way louder than his comment deserved.

  I opened my mouth to put him in his place, but before I could utter a word, someone behind me came to my defense.

  “Put it back in your pants, Bubba. She doesn’t have time for your bull crap.”

  I turned around to thank my champion and found Ashley Henderson, the perky desk clerk from the Lady Shapers, a high-end all-girl fitness club in town. I’d done a little undercover work—emphasis on the “little” instead of the “work”—there the year before, and Ashley had inadvertently given me some very useful information. Given how transparent middle-aged women were to vivacious young girls like her, I couldn’t imagine she would remember me, but she surprised me.