Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4)

by Debra Gaskill

  “Yes. A focus group.”

  Oh, Jesus. Don’t do this to me, I thought. As the newspaper business continued to limp along, I heard stories from other editors at chain newspapers about how head office bean-counters who had never spent a day in a newsroom suddenly decided it was a great idea to bring in folks from the community to find out what they thought of the news coverage. The suits would sit and listen to what people thought, nod sagely, promise the moon and then dump the responsibility on the newsroom, which was already trying to do twice as much with half the staff.

  The Journal-Gazette struggled ever since the economic crash, with outdated computers and a second-rate website that crashed on a regular basis. Advertising revenue was slowly coming out of the tank, but the days of a twenty-eight-page, two-section hometown paper were long gone, thanks to the Internet and Craigslist.

  “What exactly do you think you’ll get out of a focus group?” I poured my coffee and started toward the narrow stairs that led to the second-floor newsroom, knowing she’d follow me, teetering on bright yellow stilettos with turquoise flowers on the toes.

  “Well, I believe we’d hear what the community thinks.”

  I stopped half way up the stairs and turned around. “Earlene, I can tell you what the community thinks: They want more local news coverage. That takes a bigger staff. They want a bigger paper. That takes more advertising. They say they want more good news on the front page, but the truth is nothing, nothing sells better than sex offenders, fatal car crashes or homicides.

  “The day I have a story where a sex offender is shot, or where a pedophile dies in a car crash, the circulation department practically pees themselves with joy over the jump in single copy sales. You can only put so many stories of Happy the Clown visiting a kindergarten class on the front page!”

  “I just thought—”

  I turned and started back up the stairs, then stopped. After all, she is your boss, a little voice said. These last eight months since she’d taken over for her father had been tough, but she was learning. She’d also brought a large pile of cash from her fourth divorce settlement that staved off further staff furloughs or cutbacks. There was even talk of new computers in the newsroom.

  “All right Earlene, I’ll tell you what,” I said, clutching my cup handle so tight my knuckles hurt. “If you want to put together a group of community members for a meeting, I’ll sit down with them and I’ll listen. I won’t promise any more than that.”

  Earlene clapped her hands, like she’d just been promised a trip to the zoo.

  “I have some folks in mind for the group. Let’s meet this afternoon.” She turned and, steadying herself with both railings, headed back downstairs to her office.

  I sighed, knowing I’d just been railroaded. Kill me now, God. Kill me now. At least the meeting was after deadline.

  Once in the newsroom, I flipped on all the lights and turned on the police scanner. Dennis Herrick usually got here right after I did. Photographer Pat Robinette, and reporters Marcus Henning and Elizabeth Day would be in momentarily. Graham would follow them about fifteen minutes later, after he’d stopped at the police station for morning reports.

  I stared up at the white dry-erase board on the newsroom wall, where reporters listed their upcoming stories. So far, the front page would have Graham’s gorge rescue story from Sunday with photos, and Marcus had an update on the city swimming pool. Since she hadn’t been here on Friday to update me on Monday’s stories, Elizabeth hadn’t updated the board. I knew she had two stories ready to go—a profile on the new principal at Jubilant Falls High School and the story of a Golgotha College sophomore who just returned from a mission trip to Romania. The one that fit would be the one we used.

  I walked into my office just off the newsroom and flipped on the computer. As everyone got settled in, I perused the Associated Press wire, looking for national and state stories of interest.

  Right on schedule, Graham wandered into my office doorway, holding the weekend police reports.

  “So how’s Duncan?” he asked.

  “He’s got a lovely shiner, but he’s fine,” I answered.

  “How do you want to handle this?”

  “We don’t make a big deal of any other minor assault. Just because the victim is my husband doesn’t mean we should change policy. List it in the blotter.”

  “Already got it written out for you.” Graham handed me a sheet of paper.

  I took it from him and began to read: “Doyle McMaster, 31, of Jubilant Falls, was arrested Saturday about noon following an assault at the Grower’s Feed Mill. According to police reports, McMaster got into a physical altercation with the victim after McMaster reportedly used a racial slur. A second man was also struck when he tried to intervene in the altercation. McMaster was charged with misdemeanor assault; both victims’ injuries were minor and were treated at the scene.”

  “It’s not a ‘physical altercation,’ it’s a fight. You also didn’t include McMaster’s address or the feed mill address,” I said, handing the story back to him. “Change those and it’s fine. Didn’t you tell me McMaster was possibly involved in some hate crimes in the next county?”

  Graham nodded. “Assistant Chief McGinnis said the police there are watching some suspicious activity, but there’s nothing local yet. He said he’d let me in on anything when it happens.”

  I nodded. “Anything else going on?”

  Graham shuffled through the reports. “Not really. This is mostly blotter stuff—a couple public intox charges and a teenager took his mom’s car without permission. Stupid stuff.”

  “OK. Well, write them up as briefs for the public records page. By the way, did Gary say anything about Jerome Johnson to you? The black guy McMaster hit?”

  “No, why?”

  “Just asking.” I waved him out of my doorway. “No big deal. Go get started. Keep an eye out on that hate crimes thing, though—if McMaster gets nailed on anything out of town, we need to do a story.”

  Graham nodded and headed back to his desk.

  With Graham’s story on the gorge rescue, the front page came together easily that morning. We only had to use a small amount of wire copy, a short story about a tropical depression threatening to turn into a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. After catching what few errors there were, I sent the last page down to prepress nearly twenty minutes early. I ducked back into my office and closed the door: I had a few phone calls to make.

  Whoever Jerome Johnson was, I didn’t trust him. We may have all sat beneath the tree in my front yard yesterday and shared a meal, but that didn’t mean I believed his story about growing up in Virginia, or joining the Marine Corps or living in Ashtabula. Something about that man pegged my bullshit meter and I was going to find out why.

  I punched Gary McGinnis’s number into the phone. He picked it up on the second ring.

  “Hey Penny. How’s it going?” Gary and I had known each other since high school. We were comfortable with each other, the kind of ease that comes from working together for years, building trust, but knowing where the boundaries between a cop and a reporter lay. If he could tell me, he would. If he couldn’t, I knew when and how to push.

  “Not bad. Hey, I need a favor. You know the deal Saturday where Duncan got hit in the eye by Doyle McMaster?”

  “Yup. What do you need?”

  “I need information on the other victim in that mess, Jerome Johnson.”

  “What do you need it for? A story?”

  “No, not really.” Briefly, I explained about seeing Johnson taking photos of Pat and me on Friday afternoon, his odd hostility at our doing a story at Katya Bolodenka’s farm, and his story on Sunday about meeting her in Ashtabula. “I just don’t trust him, Gary, and if Duncan is going to be inviting this guy over to my house on a regular basis, I’d sure as hell like to know who I’m dealing with.”

  “Let me see what I can do. I’ll call you back later this afternoon.”

  ***


  “Hi Penny! Ya’ll come on in!” Earlene had her back to the open door when I knocked. Her elbows were planted on the Queen Anne credenza behind her matching writing table. She recognized me by my reflection in the makeup mirror she held in one hand; the other was carefully outlining her lips with a red pencil.

  She smacked her lips together, blending the liner with her cherry red lipstick, and turned around, clicking her matching nails on the desk surface.

  Following her father’s retirement, before she even knew what the word deadline meant, Earlene’s first project had been to remodel the publisher’s dark masculine office. She pulled down the knotty pine paneling, and had new drywall hung in its place. Baby-chick yellow paint now covered the walls. She’d also replaced her father’s desk with the more feminine Queen Anne writing table and credenza, but kept the towering bookshelves that lined two walls.

  She’d also replaced the two Morris chairs in front of the two desks with more feminine upholstered chairs in matching yellow striped fabric.

  Behind the desk, above the credenza was a six-foot tall self-portrait of Earlene herself in full English equestrian apparel, mounted on a sleek black thoroughbred. She appeared considerably younger; her hair was still platinum blonde and her waist was thin and trim—whether that was fact or the painter’s doing, I couldn’t tell. She cupped her riding helmet under one arm and held the reins with the other hand. Her jacket was royal blue and her light tan jodhpurs slipped into the tops of black knee-high riding boots. In the background, a large barn sat at the end of a long line of oak trees.

  Her third husband had the portrait painted at the beginning of their short-lived marriage. It hung in the foyer of their palatial Fort Worth home and when they split up, it had been the one item he had gladly given her. Everything else had been bitterly debated, but in the end she’d walked away with half his oil money and all of his Porsche. It was parked next to my Taurus in the employee parking lot with the vanity license plate ‘WAS HIS.’

  “So, let’s get started. I have a bunch of people I’d like to include in this little focus group.” Earlene ruffled through the papers on her desk. “Oh wait—here’s the list.”

  “Before we get started, I want you to know that I have some fundamental problems with letting a focus group dictate our coverage,” I began.

  “Oh, no—don’t you worry about that, darlin’! I just want to get the pulse of the community, hear what people are thinking. These are folks who have come by my office and introduced themselves to me and I thought they’d make a good sounding board. The first name is… let’s see… Reverend Eric Mustanen.”

  “He’s pastor at the Lutheran Church,” I said, nodding. “He comes to the newsroom every year during the week before Ash Wednesday with his annual listing for mid-week soup suppers and Easter services and again at Christmas. He seems like a reasonable guy.”

  “Angus Buchanan?”

  “Hmm. He might be a problem.”

  Redheaded and beefy, Angus Buchanan was the local car dealer and reminded me more of a polled Hereford bull than someone who spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in advertising with us each year.

  I had to remind him periodically that he might have the right to determine what goes in his ads, but he couldn’t influence my newsgathering. He snorted like a Hereford bull, too, when he stomped out of my office.

  “But he spends so much money with us!”

  “That’s the ad department. That’s not the news department!”

  “He did say something about a story that ran last year that he wasn’t happy about.”

  “One of his mechanics was caught selling meth. He was selling it from his apartment, not out of the dealership. We never identified him as one of Angus’s employees, but he took offense that the story ended up on the front page.”

  Earlene cringed. “Oh. That is unfortunate.”

  “Earlene, the last thing I’m going to do is to temper my news coverage to suit our advertisers. This guy was caught with a meth lab in his living room, for god sake! It’s not my fault he decided to sell to an undercover cop! We only reported it. Am I supposed to know the name of every Buchanan Motors employee?”

  “Well, that is true,” she said slowly. “Here’s a couple more names: Naomi Callum and Hedwig Ansgar.”

  “They are both presidents of the area’s two garden clubs,” I said. Retired teacher Naomi Callum was the leader of the upstart Plummer County Peonies, which had been founded in the 1950s.

  Hedwig Ansgar, another retired teacher, presided over the older, more sedate and prestigious Garden Club of Jubilant Falls, which had been founded during the town’s golden age in the 1890s. Hedwig was nearly as big and beefy as Angus Buchanan, but better dressed. I privately referred to her as The Dowager Empress.

  While anyone with an interest in getting dirt beneath their fingernails could join the Peonies, those who wished to join the Garden Club had to be nominated by a current member, vetted by the membership committee and approved by a two-thirds majority. Many of the ladies who belonged were married to Jubilant Falls’ old guard business and themselves tottering toward decrepitude, but they managed to have their finger on the social pulse of the city.

  “They seem to be delightful little old ladies, I thought.” Earlene looked at me over her list, hopeful I wouldn’t object to them.

  “They’re not bad,” I shrugged. “I do think they probably have a vision of our business that is about thirty years old, but I think they are big supporters of a hometown newspaper.”

  “OK, what about Melvin Spotts?”

  “No. Just flat out no.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you have any idea what a crackpot he is?”

  “He seemed rather, well, intense when he came to my office.”

  “Intense?” I asked. “At least twice a month, he leaves a nasty message on my phone or sends an e-mail accusing me or my staff of covering up the real corruption he feels is going on in Jubilant Falls. It’s everything from crooked cops to upper level federal cover-ups and unidentified flying objects landing outside the city. You know he told me that he thought the federal government was hiding barrels of radioactive waste in the old landfill? It took me two weeks to convince him that wasn’t true. I’d take him seriously if his voicemails didn’t have a parrot squawking, “Don’t tread on me!” in the background.”

  Earlene’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Oh, dear.”

  “You didn’t promise him a place on the focus group, did you?”

  She grimaced.

  “You didn’t.”

  She nodded. “I thought… he seemed to have so much valuable information.”

  “Oh Jesus, Earlene.”

  “I’ve scheduled a meeting for next week with these folks—next Monday at two o’clock.”

  I stood up and closed my eyes, resisting the urge to blow up at her. Maybe she would see what a disaster this group could be after one meeting. I could only hope.

  “OK,” I said, gritting my teeth and gathering my cell phone and notepad. “I’ll be here.”

  My phone’s voicemail light was blinking when I dragged myself back to my office and shut the door. I shook off my need for a cigarette and punched in the password to listen to the message: “Penny, this is Gary. I looked into your buddy Jerome Johnson. I don’t know what to tell you, but the guy doesn’t exist. Neither does Ekaterina Bolodenka. Outside of a social security card and an Ohio driver’s license, neither of them has any records of any kind. Anywhere.”

  Chapter 10 Graham

  “You didn’t come over Sunday night.”

  I took my chance while the newsroom was empty except for the two of us and made a beeline for Elizabeth’s desk.

  For once, everyone else scattered. Addison came back from lunch and disappeared into a meeting with Earlene. Dennis slipped down to advertising to flirt with Jane the secretary, and Marcus was scouring the halls at city administration office for a story. Pat was down at the high school, getting p
hotos of the high school football players at practice.

  “I got into town late. I’m sorry,” she said. She didn’t look at me as she pulled a plastic container with her lunch salad out of her bottom desk drawer.

  “I called your cell phone a couple times. You never answered.”

  “You know I don’t use the phone when I’m driving. Traffic was awful.”

  “Everything OK? You feeling alright?”

  Her brown eyes met mine.

  “I’m fine.” Her tone told me not to ask again.

  Last night, awaiting her arrival, I’d set my table with flowers and the two dishes I could find without cracks in them. Elizabeth’s favorite marinated pork chops still sat in the fridge, along with baking potatoes and fresh green beans. I bought a chocolate cake from an out-of-town baker with the words ‘Will You Marry Me?’ written in frosting across the top with the blue ring box embedded in the center. After eleven o’clock and no return phone calls, I put everything away, turned out the lights, and sat in my darkened apartment, alone.

  “Would you like to have dinner tonight? My place?”

  Before she could answer, I heard a woman with a heavy Russian accent speak.

  “Can someone help me, please?”

  We turned to see a tall slender woman with curly black hair standing in the entranceway. She looked like she’d been crying.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Is Miss Addison in office?”

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s in a meeting. Can I help you with something?”

  “I have farm with llamas—”

  “Oh!” Elizabeth spoke up. “You’re Ekaterina Bolodenka—Addison did the story on your animals and your fiber arts for Saturday’s paper.”

  “Yes. Someone is killing my animals. Last night it was my cashmere ram—this morning it is female cashmere goat.” She stopped to wipe her eyes. “My farm manager, Jerome Johnson, he find dead goat on doorstep this morning.”

  “Jerome Johnson? Is that Jerome Johnson the same man who was assaulted this weekend?” I asked, directing her to my desk.

  Nodding, Bolodenka pulled a wadded tissue from her jeans pocket and wiped her nose.