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  “It’s there,” John said without checking, because Armand Bayne’s wife was totally reliable. She was also totally devoted to her husband. What Armand wanted done, she did.

  “What else you got?” the old man asked.

  John clamped the phone between shoulder and ear and pulled a handful of papers from the briefcase. He had dummied the week’s pages at home the night before. Now he spread out the sheets. “The lead is a report on the education bill that’s up before the state legislature. It’s a thirty-inch piece, across the top and down the right-hand leg, photo lower left. I’m following it with opinion pieces, one from the local rep, one from the principal at Cooper Elementary.”

  “What’s your editorial say about it?”

  “You know what it says.”

  “The na-tives won’t like it.”

  “Maybe not, but we either put money into schools today or into welfare tomorrow.” The source of that money was the problem. Not wanting to argue it again with Armand, who was one of the wealthiest of the landowners and would be soaked if property taxes doubled, he pulled up the next dummy. “Page three leads with a report on Chris Diehl’s trial—closing arguments, jury out, verdict in, Chris home. I have a piece on profit sharing at the mill, and one on staff cutbacks at the retirement home. The newcomer profile is on Thomas Hook.”

  “Can’t stand the guy,” Armand muttered.

  John uncapped the thermos. “That’s because he has no people skills, but he has computer skills. There’s reason why his business is worth twenty million and growing.”

  “He’s a kid.” Spoken indignantly. “What’s he gonna do with that kind of money?”

  John filled his mug with coffee. “He’s thirty-two, with a wife and three kids, and in the six months he’s been here, he’s tripled the size of his house, regraded and graveled the approach road, built another house for an office in the place where a god-awful eyesore stood, and in doing all that, he’s used local contractors, carpenters, masons, plumbers, and electricians—”

  “All right, all right,” Armand’s growl cut him off. “What else?”

  Sipping coffee, John pulled up the next page. “There’s an academy update—message from the head of the school. New year starting, one hundred twelve kids, twenty-two states, seven countries. Then there’s police news, fire news, library news.” He flipped open the Wall Street Journal and absently scanned the headlines. “There’s the week in review from papers in Boston, New York, and Washington. And ads, lots of ads this week”—he knew Armand would like that—“including a two-pager from the outlets in Conway. Fall’s a good time for ads.”

  “Praised be,” said Armand. “What else?”

  “School news. Historical Society news. Tri-town soccer news.”

  “Want some breaking news?”

  John always wanted breaking news. It was one of the city things he missed most. Feeling a twinge of anticipation, he sank into his desk chair, brought up a blank screen, and prepared to type.

  Armand said, “They just read Noah Thacken’s will, and the family’s in a stew. He left the house to daughter number two, so daughter number one is threatening to sue, and daughter number three is threatening to leave town, and none of them is talking to the others. Look into it, John.”

  But John had retracted his hands and was rocking back in his chair. “That’s private stuff.”

  “Private? The whole town’ll know by the end of the day.”

  “Right, so why put it in the paper? Besides, we print facts.”

  “This is facts. That will is a matter of public record.”

  “The will is. Not the personal trauma. That’s speculation, and it’s exploitative. I thought we agreed—”

  “Well, there isn’t a hell of a lot of other excitement up here,” the old man remarked and hung up the phone.

  No, John thought, there isn’t a hell of a lot of other excitement up here. No fascinating book material in an education bill, a computer mogul, or a family squabble; and Christopher Diehl’s bank fraud trial was a far cry from the murder trials he used to cover.

  His eye went to the wall of framed photos at the far end of the room. There was one of him interviewing a source on Boston’s City Hall Plaza, and another of him typing at his computer with the phone clamped to his ear in a roomful of other reporters doing the same. There were photos of him shaking hands with national politicians, and of him laughing it up with colleagues in Boston bars. There was one of a Christmas party—he and Marley in the newsroom with a crowd of their friends. And there was a blowup of his Post ID mug shot. His hair was short, his jaw tight, his eyes tired, his face pale. He looked like he was either about to miss the story of his career or severely constipated.

  The photos were trappings of an earlier life, like the deactivated police scanner that sat on a file cabinet beneath them. Listening to police or fire reports had been a way of life once. No bona fide newsroom was without one. So he had started his tenure at Lake News by setting one up, but static without voices for hours on end had grown old fast. Besides, he personally knew everyone who would be involved in breaking news. If anything happened, they called him, and if he wasn’t at his phone, Poppy Blake knew where he was. She was his answering service. She was the answering service for half the town. If she didn’t find him one place, she found him somewhere else. In three years, he hadn’t missed a local emergency. How many had there been… two… three… four?

  Nope, no big best-seller would ever come from covering emergencies in Lake Henry.

  With a sigh he dropped the phone into its cradle, pulled a doughnut from the bag, added more coffee to his mug, and tipped back his chair. He had barely crossed his feet on the desk when Jenny Blodgett appeared at the door. She was nineteen, pale and blond, and so thin that the big bulge of the baby in her belly looked doubly wrong. Knowing that she probably hadn’t eaten breakfast, he rocked forward in the chair, came to his feet, and brought her the bag.

  “It isn’t milk or meat, but it’s better than nothing,” he said, gesturing her around and back down the stairs. Her office was on the first floor, in the room that had once been a parlor. He followed her there, eyed the papers on the desk, thought he detected what may have been separate piles. “How’s it going?”

  Her voice was soft and childlike. “Okay.” She pointed to each of those vague piles in turn. “This year’s letters to the editor. Last year’s. The year before’s. What do I do now?”

  He had told her twice. But she worked sporadic hours, hadn’t been in since the Wednesday before, and had probably lived a nightmare since then—or so the rationale went. She wasn’t exactly competent, had barely made it through high school, and was trained for nothing. But she was carrying his cousin’s child. He wanted to give her a break.

  So, gently, he said, “Put them in alphabetical order and file them in the cabinet. Did you type out labels for the files?”

  Her eyes went wide. They were red rimmed, which meant she had either been up all night or crying this morning. “I forgot,” she whispered.

  “No problem. You can do it now. What say we set a goal? Labels typed and stuck on file folders, and letters filed in the appropriate folders before you leave today. Sound fair?”

  She nodded quickly.

  “Eat first,” he reminded her on his way out the door and went to the kitchen to collect the contents of the bins.

  Up in his office again, he ate his doughnut at the window overlooking the lake. The Woody had disappeared and its wake been played out, but the water had lost its smoothness. A small breeze ruffled it in shifting patches. Beneath his window the willows whispered and swayed.

  Shoving up the screen, he ducked his head and leaned out. Corned beef hash was frying at Charlie’s. The breeze brought the smell across the street and down to the water. On his left, half a dozen old men fished from the end of the town pier, which jutted from a narrow swath of sandy beach. On his right, yellow-leafed birches angled out over low shrubs that led to rocks and then water. Ther
e were houses farther on, year-round homes too stately to be called camps, but most were tucked into coves, hidden around bends, or blocked from view by islands. He could see the tips of a few docks, even a weathered raft still anchored to the floor of the lake. It would be hauled in soon, and the docks taken apart and stored. The lake would be bare.

  The phone rang. Letting the screen drop, he waited to see if Jenny would answer it. After three rings, he did it himself. “Lake News.”

  “John, this is Allison Quimby,” said a bold voice. “My place is falling apart. I need a handyman. Everyone I’ve used before is still working up at Hook’s. Is it too late to put in an ad?”

  “No, but you want the sales desk. I’ll transfer you.” He put her on hold, jogged across the room, and picked up the phone at the sales desk. “Okay.” He slipped into the chair there and began at the computer. “I’m pulling up classified ads. Here we go. Do you have something written?” He suspected she did. Allison Quimby owned the local realty company and was the quintessential professional. Of course she had something written.

  “Of course I have something written.”

  She read. He typed. He fiddled with the spacing, helped her edit it to make it work better, suggested a heading, quoted her a price, took her credit card number. As soon as he hung up the phone, he made a call of his own.

  A tired voice answered. “Yeah.”

  “It’s me. Allison Quimby needs a handyman. Give her a call?” When he heard a soft swearing, he said, “You’re sober, Buck, and you need the work.”

  “Who are you, my fuckin’ guardian angel?”

  John kept his voice low and tight. “I’m your fuckin’ older cousin, the one who’s worried about the girl you knocked up, the one who’s thinking you may not be worth the effort but that girl and her baby are. Come on, Buck. You’re good with your hands, you can do what Allison needs done, she pays well, and she’s got a big mouth if she likes what you do.” He read the phone number once, then read it again. “Call her,” he said and hung up the phone.

  Seconds later he was back at the window by the editorial desk. Seconds after that he had a grip on his patience. All it took was a good long look at the lake and the reminder that people like Buck and Jenny didn’t have that. They had the Ridge, where houses were too small, too close, and too dirty to uplift anyone, much less someone battling alcoholism, physical abuse, or chronic unemployment. John knew. He had the Ridge in his blood as well. He would hear it, feel it, smell it until the day he died.

  A movement on the lake caught his eye, the flash of red on a distant dock. He focused in on it; then, half smiling, took a pair of binoculars from the bottom drawer of the desk and focused through those. Shelly Cole was stretched out on a lounge chair, all sleek and oiled in the sun. She was a well-made woman, he had to say that. But then, Cole women had been sorely tempting the men of Lake Henry for three generations. For the most part they were kind creatures who grew into fine wives and mothers. Shelly was something else. She was heading back to Florida in a week, when the weather here became too cool for her to flaunt her tan. John wouldn’t miss her. He might be as tempted as any man around, but he wasn’t touching her with a ten-foot pole.

  With a slight shift of the binoculars, he was looking at Hunter’s Island. Named after its first owners, rather than any sport there, it was another of the tiny islands that dotted the lake, and it did have a house, albeit a seasonal one. The Hunter family had summered there for more than a century, before selling it to its current owners. Those owners, the LaDucs, were teaching their third generation of children to swim from its small pebbled beach.

  Strange family, the LaDucs. There were nearly as many scandals woven through its generations as there were Hunter scandals. Growing up, John had heard rumors about both families. Returning as an adult who knew how to snoop, he had done research, asked around, made notes. They were locked in his file cabinet now, along with the rest of his private stuff, but none were crying out to be a book. Maybe he hadn’t read them in the right frame of mind. Maybe he needed to reread them. Or organize them. Or chronologize them. Maybe something would hit him. After three years he should have come up with something.

  The phone rang. He picked it up after the first ring. “Lake News.”

  “Hi, Kip. It’s Poppy.”

  John grinned. How not to, when conjuring up Poppy Blake? She was a smiling pixie, always bright and upbeat. “Hi, sweetheart. How’s it going?”

  “Busy,” she said, making it sound wonderful. “I have someone named Terry Sullivan on the line to your house. Do you want me to patch him through?”

  John’s eye flew to the wall of photographs, to one of the prints in which he was partying with other reporters. Terry Sullivan was the tall, lean, dark one, the one with the mustache that hid a sneer, the one who always stood on the edge of the crowd so that he could beat the rest out if a story broke. He was competitive to the extreme, self-centered to a fault, and wouldn’t know loyalty if it hit him in the face. He had personally betrayed John, and more than once.

  John wondered where he found the gall to call. Terry Sullivan had been one of the first to blow him off when he decided to leave Boston.

  Curious, he told Poppy to make the connection. When it happened, he said, “Kipling here.”

  “Hey, Kip. It’s Terry Sullivan. How goes it, bro?”

  Bro? John took his time answering. “It goes fine. And you?”

  “Aaah, same old rat race here, you know how it is. Well, you used to. It must be pretty quiet up there. There are times when I think I’ll retire to the sticks, then I think again. It isn’t me, if you know what I mean.”

  “I sure do. People up here are honest. You’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

  There was a pause, then a snort. “That was blunt.”

  “People up here are blunt, too. So, what do you want, Terry? I don’t have long. We have deadlines here, too.”

  “O-kay. Chuck the small talk. I’m calling journalist to journalist. There’s a woman named Lily Blake, born there, living here. Tell me all you know.”

  John slipped into his chair. Lily was Poppy’s sister, the elder, but barely, which would make her thirty-fourish. She had left Lake Henry to go to college and had stayed in the city for a graduate degree. In music, he thought. He had heard she was teaching. And that she played the piano. And that she had a great body.

  Folks around town still talked about her voice. She had been singing in church when she was five, but John wasn’t a churchgoer, and long before she would have been old enough to sing at Charlie’s back room Thursday nights, he had left town.

  She had been back several times since he had returned—once for her father’s funeral, other times for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but never for longer than a day or two. From what he heard, she and her mother didn’t get along. John might not know Lily, but he did know Maida. She was one tough lady. For that reason and others, he was inclined to give Lily the benefit of the doubt when it came to who was at fault.

  “Lily Blake?” he asked Terry, sounding vague.

  “Come on, Kip. The place is tiny. Don’t go dumb on me.”

  “If she doesn’t live here, how in the hell am I supposed to know about her?”

  “Fine. Tell me about her family. Who’s alive and who isn’t? What do they do? What kind of people are they?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I met her. I’m thinking of dating her. I want to know what I’m getting into.”

  Thinking of dating her? Fat chance. Lily Blake was a stutterer—much improved from childhood, he understood, but Terry Sullivan didn’t date women with problems. They demanded more than he wanted to give.

  “Is this part of some story?” John asked, though he couldn’t imagine what part Lily could play in a story that interested Terry.

  “Nah. Purely personal.”

  “And you’re calling me?” They might have been colleagues, but they’d never been friends.

  Terry missed the point. C
huckling, he said, “Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny, myself. I mean, here she comes from this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and it just happens to be the same place where you’re hiding out.”

  “Not hiding. I’m totally visible.”

  “It was a figure of speech. Are we touchy?”

  “No, Terry, we’re pressed for time. Tell me why you really want to know about Lily Blake, or hang up the goddamned phone.”

  “Okay. It’s not me. It’s my friend. He’s the one who wants to date her.”

  John knew a lie when he heard one. He hung up the phone, but his hand didn’t leave the receiver. Waiting only long enough to sever the connection with Terry, he snatched it back up and signaled for Poppy.

  “Hey, Kip,” she said seconds later in her sassy, smiling voice. “That was fast. What can I do for you now?”

  “Two things,” John said. He was on his feet, one hand holding the phone to his ear, the other cocked on his hip. “First, don’t let that man speak to anyone in town. Cut him off, drop the line, do whatever you have to. He’s not a good person. Second, tell me about your sister.”

  “About Rose?”

  “About Lily. What’s she been doing with her life?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Boston, Massachusetts

  In the weeks to come, when Lily Blake was trying to understand why she had been singled out for scandal, she would remember the soggy mess she had made of the Boston Post that rainy Monday afternoon and wonder if an angry newspaper deity had put a curse on her as punishment for her disrespect. At the time, she simply wanted to stay dry.

  She had waited as long as she could at the foot of Beacon Hill, under the high stone arch of the small private school where she taught, thinking that the rain would let up in a minute or two, but it fell steadily in cool sheets, and those minutes added up. She couldn’t wait forever. She was due to play at the club at six-thirty, and had to get home and change.