Lake News (23 page)

The pledge he had made wouldn't break him, assuming he didn't incur major expenses with other research. Two fortunate things suggested he wouldn't. First, Terry rarely went places without offending people. Second, John was just the opposite.

Jack Mabbet was a former FBI agent. Ten years earlier he had been involved in the investigation of a notorious mobster working out of Boston's South End. Terry Sullivan had written a series of scathing articles critical of the investigation in general and Jack Mabbet in particular. Jack had been forty-five at the time, with a wife and four children, all of whom suffered a public tarring. The mobster was subsequently tried and convicted, with no single mention of Jack Mabbet as a potential G-man on the take. The case had gone to archive heaven with no further mention of Jack.

He resigned from the FBI soon after that. It didn't matter that his superiors had total confidence in him; he felt the doubt of his fellow agents. Worse, his family had become known for being related to “that man” and “that case.”
So they sold the little house they had bought in Revere and moved to Roanoke, Virginia, where he became a private investigator. His firm was a legitimate one that specialized in doing background screenings for employers hiring new help, and “due diligence” probes for corporate clients approaching mergers and buyouts.

John had come to know Jack Mabbet in the course of covering other cases on which Jack had worked, and he had the utmost respect for the man. John had argued with Terry when the incriminating articles were printed, had even argued with editors, but the situation was like many in the media. Terry hadn't made any libelous accusations. He simply made suggestions. He quoted bad guys, who loved the idea of bringing down a good guy or two with them. He used innuendo to do to Jack Mabbet what he was currently doing to Lily.

John figured that Jack would sympathize with her.

“Damn right I'll help,” the man said before John had done much more than say that he was looking into the underside of the Rossetti-Blake case and wanted information on Terry. “What do you need?”

“What can I get?”

“Legally? Most anything. Just like Sullivan did with that case. I work with information wholesalers on a regular basis. They have data banks filled with information that's right out there for public consumption. Before they get their hands on it, it's just scattered around. They collect it and put it in one place. Insurance investigators use them. Business competitors use them. Parties in contentious divorces use them. For someone like me, they're a dream. So what do you want?” he asked, clearly enjoying
himself. “Credit card activity? Phone records? Bank balances? Life insurance policies, medical history, motor vehicle records? I can tell you if he had a parking ticket in the last ten years. Give me five minutes.”

John knew about information wholesalers, but hearing it spelled out so bluntly was frightening. “God. I'd think the American public would be up in
arms
about the free flow of information.”

“They are. At least, some people are. There are dozens of bills pending in Congress to stop the flow. Guidelines are springing up. Some database companies are even agreeing to follow them, for what good it'll do. The information is out there. And PIs are exempted. We can gather what we want and do what we want with it. There are sixty thousand of us in the country. Some states don't even require PIs to be licensed. If you want to talk scary, that's it. Me? I'm duly licensed. I have resources at my fingertips and no love for Terry Sullivan. You want information on that jackass, I'll get it. No charge.”

They were the magic words. But John wanted to be involved. This was his story, his revenge as much as Lily's. So he had Jack teach him how to get information himself. When Jack sounded disappointed, he added Paul Rizzo and Justin Barr to the search. Jack could work on those. Terry was John's.

What was he looking for? Anything and everything. He knew surprisingly little about Terry, given that they'd been friends—a relative term, there—for nearly twenty-five years. He wanted little mistakes and big mistakes. He wanted things that didn't add up. Ideally, he wanted a
reason why Terry had gone after Francis Rossetti with the kind of vengeance that people like Steve Baker described.

Steve had dismissed the possibility that Terry held a personal grudge against the Cardinal, and John knew Terry would deny it. So he picked up the phone and called Rossetti directly—or tried to. The closest he got was to his personal secretary, a nice enough man, well versed in his answers, who said that the Cardinal knew Terry only in a media context and that, prior to the current problem, there had never been contention between the two.

John had barely hung up the phone when Armand called asking about the week's paper, but the anticipation in his voice suggested he had something particular in mind.

Sure enough, John had barely outlined the lead story on Lake Henry refugees when Armand said, “What are you putting in about Lily Blake?”

“Not much,” John answered.

“Why
not?”
Armand roared hoarsely. “This is the big time. It's a national story on our turf.”

“It's not on our turf. The story's in Boston.”

“You know what I mean,” the old man grumbled. “What in the devil do we need to lead off with a story on newcomers when we have a na-tive whose name and face is known all over the country, all over the
world?”

“Everyone's seen her there. We don't need to see her here, too.”

Armand persisted. “But she's one of us. We know her. Christ, John, this is our chance to scoop the buy guys.”

John rose from his chair. He put a hand on his hip and stared out at the fog. “I don't think so.”

“Why
not?”

“Because she
is
one of us. That demands a certain amount of compassion. The mainstream media is committing character assassination. I won't stoop to their level.”

“I'm not askin' you to do that, but we can't just
ignore
the story. We print news, and that girl
is
news.”

“The
Post
said the allegations were false. There's no more story.”

“That's a story in itself.”

John gave a little. “Okay. I'll do something on an inside page. Mention the story and the apology to the Cardinal.” He was comfortable with that. The more he thought about it, it was actually a good thing to do. Actually, he began picturing a small piece about the apology on the front page after all. Lily deserved that.

But Armand had something else in mind. In a voice that was a little too enthusiastic to be genuine, he said, “I have a better idea. This will tie in with your lead about why people are moving to small towns in droves. I'll focus my column on the forgiving nature of places like Lake Henry. I'll talk about how judgmental and quick to accuse the outside world can be. I'll talk about how Lake Henry is more tolerant of mistakes and more forgiving of its own.”

“That implies Lily Blake is guilty. Do you know that she is?”

Armand grew cranky. “She must be guilty of
something
. Otherwise it couldn't have gone this far.”

“Sorry, Armand. We don't do that to our own.”

“It doesn't have to be bad,” Armand wheedled. “We'll just give a little local history, tell a little that only we know—”

John cut in. “I won't do it.”

“I said
I
would.”

“If you do,” John warned, “I'm gone. If I'd wanted to do sleaze, I'd have stayed in Boston. We've had our differences, Armand, but this is as big as any. Fuel that farce with stories about Lily and you'll have my resignation in your hand so fast you won't know what hit you.” Furious, he hung up the phone.

Startled by the strength of his feelings, he strode to the far end of the room, then back, then threw open the lakeside window and stuck out his head. There was something about newspaper offices that reeked. Stale smoke was a thing of the past, as was the smell of gummy white stuff from the kind of cut-and-paste that left shoe bottoms covered with paper shred. What was left was the smell of cold coffee, pepperoni-and-onion sandwiches wolfed down at desks in open cubicles, perspiration, and messy hair when a story required late nights and early mornings.

But all that was back in the city. There was none of it here. Still, he smelled it.

John suspected that some of what he smelled was his own sense of guilt. He might not cover the Lily Blake story for the paper, but he had a drawerful of information, and it was growing by the day. Dummying up the week's paper wasn't all he'd done yesterday. He had spent hours writing up thoughts, organizing ideas, weighing approaches he could take in his book.

Sinking into his chair, he opened that drawer, pulled out his notes on Lily, along with a file he had made earlier on her father. George was newly deceased when John first returned to town. At the time, John had seen him as exemplifying the old-time town families that had made their living off local land. There was a potential book here, hence the file, but the idea had gone stale early on. Now that file held potential from a different angle.

By all accounts, George Blake had been a gentle man, in every respect more easygoing than his wife. And then there was Lily, who had overcome a debilitating stutter and made a successful life for herself. So, was she easygoing like George? Driven like Maida?

His book would focus on the big picture—the power of the media to destroy—but he needed detail and depth to make his point. Terry was the way he was for a reason. Same with Lily. The past explained things.

His certainly did. He had left Lake Henry at fifteen and gone years without seeing Gus, but he had never been free of the man. As a kid, with Gus telling him he wouldn't amount to anything, he had been determined to prove him right. As an adult remembering those words, he was determined to prove him wrong.

Frightening, how heavily Gus affected his life. There had to be a Gus in Terry's life. There had to be one in Lily's. John was curious, as all journalists are. He wanted to know how these two different people, motivated in entirely different ways, had come to cross paths.

Psyched, he put in a call to Richard Jacobi. Richard was an executive editor at a small but savvy publishing house
in New York. John knew him through a mutual friend in Boston.

Richard was at a meeting, but his assistant put John through to his voice mail. Wary of saying much in a place where others might hear, John left a short, friendly greeting, followed by his phone number and the request for a call back.

Lily spent the rest of Monday alternately curled in a chair by the woodstove and bundled in a chair on the porch. She remained angry, but for the first time, her anger was overlaid by the calm that came with having a focus. She had a lawyer now, which meant she wasn't quite so alone. Within an hour of their meeting, Cassie had called and read the proposed retraction demand. It had been faxed to the
Post
shortly thereafter.

Lily imagined the
Post
receiving it, calling a meeting, discussing it. She liked the idea that a bunch of egotists in an unfeeling newsroom were being forced to consider that she was a human being, not a doormat. All she needed was one sensitive soul insisting on issuing a retraction, and the matter would be done. She took perverse pleasure imagining an ashamed Michael Eddy, a regretful Daniel Curry, a smug Elizabeth Davis. She took even greater pleasure imagining Terry Sullivan looking like the fool he had tried to make
her
out to be.

So, when would she return to Boston? She thought
about that a lot, sitting on the porch by the lake, and it occurred to her that she wouldn't rush back. She missed the Public Garden, missed her piano, her apartment, her car, and her friends. But she still had no job, still had no taste for media attention, and a hasty return to the city would rekindle that.

Better to wait a few days, maybe even a week or two. The more distance she put between herself and the scandal, the better. Besides, it was nice being in Lake Henry. There was comfort in the quiet of Celia's cottage, comfort in the lake's serenity. There was also unfinished business with Maida. Once the
Post
issued its retraction, Lily wanted to talk with her. There were things that needed saying.

Fog clung to the water for most of the day, leaving the scent of wet leaves in the air. A gaggle of mallards emerged from the mist to swim past the dock at one point. At another, a loon broke through. She heard its call then and later, when the dampness had driven her inside and the woodstove was stoked. She imagined that the loon's cry spoke of strength, because that was what she felt. Strength and hope.

She woke up Tuesday morning feeling energized. She waited only long enough to give John time to buy the paper, before calling him for the news.