Prime Time

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Unless Melanie’s in on it, too. I feel my eyes widen as I consider this. I’m wrong. I knew I shouldn’t have let my guard down. I let myself be seduced by a moment and a memory. What if she and Josh were having an affair? And maybe they conspired to get rid of Brad. Now they’re trying to throw me off the trail.

  Josh and Melanie. She’s young. And beautiful. Could it be?

  And then I remember—I have two more messages. Pushing Josh and Melanie out of my head, I hit Play.

  Another beep, another time announcement, another whirr, and then, another voice.

  Melanie’s.

  My entire body deflates. Can this be a coincidence? Yes. Damn it. It can. It’s late, and my imagination is out of control. She’s only calling to tell me what the police said about her break-in.

  I bargain with myself. If she mentions Josh, I’ll know there’s something going on, and I’ll have to handle that.

  The message continues.

  “…hope I’m not bothering you. But I did talk to the police.”

  So far, so good. Nothing about Josh.

  Melanie’s voice continues. “They told me there have been a string of break-ins in our neighborhood, and they’re thinking it may be a bunch of teenagers getting high and carousing through empty houses. They never take anything, the officers told me, and since nothing was missing from my house, they’re thinking it’s another of their suburban—‘sprees,’ I think they said.”

  I hear her sigh on the tape, and then she goes on.

  “I suppose they’re right,” she says. “So, thanks so much for everything, but let’s not worry about it anymore. It’s late. I’m going to sleep. Talk to you tomorrow, perhaps.”

  Good again. And it’s simple enough for me to check with the Lexington cops and see if that’s true, so it would be silly of Melanie to give me that much detail, knowing it was a one-phone-call confirmation.

  I open my nightstand drawer and rummage in the dark for ChapStick. Unclicking the plastic top, I try to reconcile the two calls. There’s no connection, I decide, adding another waxy layer of white stuff. They just happened to call.

  One right after the other. What if they were calling from the same place?

  Maybe, if I listened to the messages again, I could get a clue from the background noises. Like if there was a dog barking, or the sound of (God forbid) soft music in each of them, that would prove they were together. And that could mean they were together in Josh’s house on Jordan Beach Road.

  The house where I should have been this weekend.

  How am I supposed to sleep? I’ve just heard two calls from people who could be deeply involved—and maybe together—in corporate intrigue, high finance and, I admit to myself, maybe even murder.

  The blinking of my answering machine distracts me. There’s one more message to retrieve. For the first time in my life, I hope it’s a telemarketer. I push Play.

  I look at the clock on the night table again, and now it’s 4:35. I guess I must have slept a little. I mentally count on my fingers—if I get up at my usual seven-thirty, that’ll be about three hours of sleep. No way I can manage on that. If I get up at eight-thirty, that’ll be four hours of sleep. Four hours of sleep but I’ll be late for work.

  I’ll take four hours. I burrow down into my pillow and pull the comforter up to my ears. But my stubborn brain keeps thinking back over that last phone message. Because actually, there was no message. When I pushed Play the final time, I heard the machine spin into place, and then heard absolutely nothing.

  “To hear this message again,” the mechanical voice said, “push Repeat.”

  I pushed, straining to hear any little sound that would give me some idea of who might be calling. Silence again.

  Who was calling me at home and hanging up?

  I fear I know the answer. Whoever beat up Franklin. Whoever ransacked Melanie’s house. Whoever killed Brad and Mack Briggs. Whoever stole the files right out of my office. And whoever it is, now they’re calling me. On my unlisted phone. At home.

  They know where I live.

  I burst out laughing, the sound shattering the darkness.

  Come on, drama queen, I taunt myself. You’ve lost it. Melanie’s house was burgled by drugged-out teenagers. Franklin was assaulted by a gang of car thieves, and Brad Foreman and Mack Briggs were in similar but separate car accidents. And you, Reporter Girl, are a founding and lifetime member of the paranoia club. I hear the first car of the morning drive by under my window, and I even hear the early birds twittering in the trees.

  I fall back into my pillows, exhausted and defeated, blinking into the diminishing darkness. Everything is going to be fine, I reassure myself. It always is.

  Skirts. I can’t find any skirts. I know I have skirts. I yank through hanger after hanger, but there are only blouses and sweaters. I have a test this morning! Why didn’t I study? And now I’m going to fail and be humiliated and there’s the bell for class and I’m already late and—

  The teacher is going to be so disappointed in me. Why won’t that bell stop ringing?

  It’s the phone. I bolt upright in bed, still vaguely upset about missing my test, but relieved that once again, it was just a dream. But that phone ringing—that’s real. I glance at the clock, but with no glasses and the sun streaming in my windows it’s difficult to see the numbers—6:46? No, 8:46.

  Not a good omen. I’m late and the phone is ringing.

  “Hello?” I answer. Going for the very-alert-been-up-for-hours-reading-the-newspaper tone.

  “Charlie? It’s Kevin O’Bannon.”

  Isn’t that sweet. The news director’s calling to find out about Franklin. That’s so considerate.

  “Hi, Kevin,” I say. “Thanks so much for calling, so kind of you. Franklin is—”

  “Charlie,” he interrupts. I can’t decipher the unfamiliar tone in his voice. “I have you on speakerphone, and Angela is with me.”

  Apprehension slithers into my sleep-deprived brain. Speakerphone? Angela? I shoo the fear away. They both want the latest on Franklin, and a speakerphone is efficient.

  The news director’s voice continues, crackling through the receiver. “I assume you’ve seen the paper.”

  “Seen the…?” is all I can manage. My mental public-address system starts up a Klaxon wail, an all-hands danger signal. “Newspaper?”

  Angela’s voice now. “Yes, Charlie, the Herald. The front page. Surely you’ve seen it by now.” She pauses. “It’s almost nine, after all.”

  Like I don’t know what time it is. Tension and adrenaline are overcoming my fatigue. We’re in direct competition with the newspapers. If they beat us on a story, our story is dead.

  “Uh, no, I stayed up very late with Franklin at the hospital, and—”

  “So, Charlie,” Kevin interrupts my excuses. “When you do get to the paper, you’ll see the lead story headline—Feds Say No Go to Go-Go Pharma Co.”

  I don’t understand that, but I do understand your boss is not supposed to call you in the morning to read newspaper headlines out loud.

  “What again? Feds say…”

  Angela’s voice again. “Just read it, Charlie. It’s a block-buster story, all about pharmaceutical pricing fraud. Apparently some whistle-blower has ratted out this company Aztratech—it’s local, it’s in Boxford—and is telling the U.S. Attorney’s office Aztratech has been submitting false claims to the government for medical reimbursements. Millions of dollars.”

  I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I have a headache and a stomachache and the walls are closing in.

  “And wasn’t that the story on the list you submitted for November?” Kevin asks. “Your big take-out on the fraud and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry?”

  “How would the paper have gotten wind of this?” Angela asks.

  “How did the Herald reporters get the whistle-blower to talk?” Kevin puts in.

  Angela’s voice. “Did you know who it was? Why didn’t you get the interview?”


  “I’m really disappointed,” Kevin adds.

  I fall back against the pillows, trying to regroup. Nothing I can do, not until I read the story. But even though I truly don’t want to hear about this ever again, there’s one thing I’ve got to know right now.

  “Let me ask you,” I say, heart pounding. “Does it say anything in the story about a Bradley Foreman?”

  Time stops as I figure Kevin and Angela are scanning the paper. If the feds are talking about the lawsuit now, they might name the whistle-blower, and then the article would be all about Brad and his accident and I’d have to kill myself.

  “Nope, nothing about anyone with a name like that,” Kevin says. “Why?”

  “One more question,” I say, not answering him directly. “Does it say who the whistle-blower actually is?”

  Another pause. I wait, still contemplating various suicide methods.

  “The name is Caroline Jill Crofts,” Kevin says slowly. “Says she’s a former Aztratech employee, lives in Boston. Ever heard of her?”

  I can’t decide whether this is the good news or the bad news. Good news because we’ve never heard of her, so at least the paper doesn’t have exactly the same story we do. Bad news because we’ve never heard of her. And that means our story—Brad Foreman as whistle-blower who gets mysteriously killed after he spills the beans to the government—is completely and utterly wrong.

  “Tell you what,” I say, trying to sound calm. “Let me check the Herald. See what their story is. Maybe it’s different from ours.” This is beyond wishful thinking. I know we’re scooped bad, but I need to stall. “I’ll grab the paper and call you back, okay?”

  There’s another pause from the Chamber of the Inquisition.

  “Fine,” Kevin says. “Let me know.”

  “And tick tick,” Angela adds. I can just picture her sneery expression. “Five weeks until the rating book.”

  The phone goes dead. Just like I wish I was. The dial tone buzzes dismally in my ear, and I finally put down the receiver.

  If I just stay in bed and never get up, I’ll never have to face it. I briefly contemplate how long I could just lie here until someone notices or comes to try to find me. Or what if I just quit now, just called Kevin back and said you know, forget it. I just don’t think I’m coming back to Channel 3 anymore. Then they’d be on their own for November and I could just, um…

  I realize I’m crying. I stink at my job. My producer’s in the hospital. My cat’s still at the vet. My best friend’s out of town. And the one man who I thought might be my Prince Charming turns out to be a toad.

  I can’t bring myself to get up to get the newspaper. The reality of that front page is going to be proof in black and white that I’ve lost it. And I can’t figure out how it happened.

  When “Charlie McNally, Action News” becomes just “Charlie McNally”—who will she be?

  Chapter Seventeen

  I

  ’m so miserable I can barely drag myself down the hospital hall. I feel as if I weigh twice as much as usual, carrying the double burden of having to tell Franklin about the infinitely disastrous newspaper story and also about the missing files. He rarely gets upset, but the combination of being scooped, burgled and beaten up is definitely a new emotional challenge. When I reach his room, Franklin’s sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows. His room is filled with beribboned vases of fragrant lavender and white flowers. And at least his IV thing is out. But I can’t see his face because he’s—reading the newspaper.

  “Can you believe it?” I wail, throwing myself into the bedside chair. I yank off my coat and unwind my long plaid muffler. “How, how, how did this happen? How did the paper get this story?”

  “Yeah, this is not the best outcome,” Franklin admits. “I really hoped we’d break the whistle-blower story for sweeps, but while you’ve been moping and worrying, I’ve been—”

  “Hoped? We’d break the—?” Then something in Franklin’s face stops me. “Franklin Brooks Parrish,” I say slowly. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Quite often, as a matter of fact,” Franklin retorts. “And if you’d stop planning your professional demise and start listening to me, you might want to hear about it.”

  “Spill it,” I demand. “Save my life.”

  “All right, quickly.” Franklin ticks off the points on his fingers. “First, everything in the paper is from the lawsuit’s court file. And second, since the story’s written by the Herald’s courthouse reporter, I figure she came across it on her routine daily check of new cases.”

  “Right,” I acquiesce. “We knew the case was in the court clerk’s office, but sealed. So the Herald reporter must have been able to open it. But how…”

  “Easy,” Franklin says. “They unseal the files when the feds decide to get involved. Since I was laid up here in Ben Caseyland, and you were sneaking into funerals, neither of us was at the courthouse when the case file was opened. The Herald was.”

  “Yeah, and they got the story,” I whine.

  “True,” Franklin agrees. “And that’s indeed the bad news. The good news is that clearly there’s something more going on. The Herald has the story about the whistle-blower suit, but you didn’t hear about any newspaper reporters getting beaten up, did you? We must be on to something bigger.”

  It’s my turn to smile, shaking my head in admiration. “Franklin, you’re truly the only person on the planet who could turn assault and battery into a positive experience.”

  “What’s more,” Franklin continues, holding up the paper, “there’s nothing in here about Brad, or Mack Briggs or any of the Miranda owners. Or about any refinancing spam. That means there’s another story—not pharmaceutical price fixing—that pulls all those things together.”

  “So…” I say. I’m exhausted and I wish my brain was working better.

  “And what’s more—” Franklin pauses, dramatically taking a sip from the bendable straw in his water cup, and then carefully replacing the cup on his nightstand “—our database search.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say, leaning forward in my chair. “Is it—?”

  “It’s finished. And it’s huge,” Franklin says, looking more animated than I’ve seen him in a while. “Those executives own tons of stuff together. Boats, property, racehorses, office buildings, apartments, shopping malls. Seems like they’re on a big-time international shopping spree. There’s big bucks out there, coming from somewhere.”

  I’m skeptical. “How about from their salaries? Plus, wouldn’t it be simple for the feds or the tax people to find? Track down if they’re scamming somehow?”

  Franklin waves a hand to accept the possibility. “Maybe. But the co-ownership’s not instantly obvious. You’d have to specifically look for it. And on the other hand, maybe the feds do know, who’s to say. We can’t find out how much these guys are reporting on their taxes.”

  He smoothes down his blankets. “But here’s the key question. All that money? I checked their pay info in the annual reports, and I don’t see how they could possibly afford all this stuff.”

  I look behind me to make sure no one is coming, then scoot my chair closer to his bedside. “Listen, Franklin,” I begin earnestly, “this is all about the spam. I’m sure of it. I was thinking—”

  “Can you tell me later?” Franklin interrupts. He looks at the plastic clock next to his bed. “We’ve got to hurry or you’re going to be late.”

  “Late for what?” I ask.

  Franklin smiles. “I’d be patting myself on the back if my arm didn’t hurt so much. Charlotte, my girl, put your coat and that extravagant scarf right back on. Got a notebook and a pen? You’re going on an interview.”

  I run my finger down the list of apartment residents to find the buzzer marked Crofts. I’ve got to give Franklin credit. Tracking down whistle-blower Caroline Crofts to the new Ritz condos on Avery Street, and even more, convincing her to talk to me, was nice work from a hospital bed. I push the button for P32.

  The
door’s locking mechanism softly clicks me in, and I enter the lobby, floor-to-ceiling art deco. Enormously high mahogany walls, embossed copper tiles glowing in the soft lighting. Elegant black-and-white scroll-worked elevator doors open into a mirror-paneled compartment and glide me upstairs.

  I look around, impressed, wondering who could afford a place like this. And when the elevator stops, I see P means penthouse. Huge windows, glistening in the morning sun, surround the landing and offer maybe the most glorious view of the Public Garden and Boston Common I’ve ever seen. I hear the door of number 32 opening, so I put on my best reporter face and turn to meet Caroline Crofts.

  But it’s not Caroline at the door. I’d pictured a nerdy accountant stereotype, overpermed hair, frumpy glasses. One of those skirts with an elastic waistband and scuffed, flat-soled Mary Janes. Pencil on a cord around her neck.

  “Miss McNally?” Not-Caroline says. “I’m Caro Crofts,” she adds with a smile. “Come on in.”

  I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s twenty-five or so, with choppy fuchsia hair, about a thousand earrings and essentially black lipstick. She’s wearing ultrapetite ripped jeans and a minuscule T-shirt that says Boys are Stupid. Throw Rocks at Them. I did get the glasses right—but hers are black with cat’s-eye corners, and they’re dotted with rhinestones.

  “Thanks,” I answer, following her into the apartment. “You spoke to my colleague Franklin Parrish on the phone—”

  “Sure, gotcha, have a seat.” Caroline gestures toward a gorgeous wing chair, which I recognize has the signature Napoleon bees of Scalamandré silk. I’m almost even afraid to sit down on it, until I see Caroline curl up on my chair’s twin, tucking her clunky Steve Maddens under her.

  “Uh, thanks.” This isn’t computing. Maybe she doesn’t live here. Maybe it’s her lawyer’s apartment, and he’s loaned it to her for the interview. Good theory, except her name was on the buzzer.