Lake News (51 page)

Tuesday morning, when Liddie Baynes arrived with Armand's column, John was at the door to greet her. “For your better half,” he said, handing her a large envelope as he took her small one. “How's the boss?”

“Crotchety,” Liddie said, but with affection. “His new hip isn't working like it would if he were twenty.”

John grinned and gestured toward what he had given her. “This should cheer him up.”

*  *  *

It took Liddie five minutes to drive home, and Armand another five to see enough of what John had sent to react. His call came within a minute of when John had put down his pen in anticipation.

“What the
hell
is this?” Armand barked into his ear. “Where did it come from? How long you been nosing around? Do you know the
implications
here? Christ, John, why wasn't I told? I'm the publisher. When were you going to clue me in?”

“It was a last-minute decision,” John said, knowing Armand was more excited than angry. “I've been digging for a while, but I wasn't sure what I'd find. So. What do you think?”

“What do you
think
I think? I'm… I'm
psyched!”

John grinned. “There's still time to rework the issue if you don't want to run it,” he teased.

“I want to run it, all right. The question is, what do we do with it once it's run?”

John cleared his throat. “I have ideas. But I'll need your help.”

“That's good. Shut me out at this point and you're fired.”

Timing was everything. The key was to get people curious, without allowing them to look into the story themselves. It was tricky with journalists. They were addicts. One whiff of something new and they hit the ground running.

John and Armand made their separate lists and cross-checked them to eliminate duplications. The plan was to spend Tuesday evening making calls to those reporters
who would need extra travel time, and Wednesday morning for those within easier reach.

It was something of a game for John, calling old friends in the media, asking enough questions about the validity of the Rossetti-Blake story—and how it had played in their neck of the woods—to arouse suspicion, then confiding that Lily Blake was indeed home, that
Lake News
had a scoop, that yes, there would probably be a news conference at press time, and yes, he supposed the big guns would be there.

“Supposed” was a fair enough word. He knew how press people worked. They wouldn't take the chance of ignoring a tip, lest a rival follow it up and hit gold. He didn't earmark Terry; didn't have to. The people he called were insiders who knew Terry's connection with the story. It helped that they respected John. One after another he heard murmurs and the rustle of paper for making notes when he said that if a press conference materialized, it would take place in the church in the center of Lake Henry Wednesday at five.

That was the earliest John figured he could get
Lake News
back from the printer. It meant that Lily could finish up at the cider house, do what she had to do at home, and join him in town. It also meant that the story would break in time for the evening news.

John didn't spend Tuesday night at Lily's but stayed at the office making calls until midnight, then worked on the rest of
Lake News,
local things that he had neglected, things that had nothing to do with the scandal but that were important, very important, to his readers. He was
on the phone again by eight in the morning, made the last of his calls by eleven, put the finishing touches on the paper, and sent it to the printer just minutes before noon.

That was when Richard Jacobi called. The grapevine was active. Richard had heard the words “scoop” and “press conference.” He wasn't happy.

“How much are you telling?” he asked.

“Not much. Just one piece of the puzzle.”

“It must be a hefty piece if our papers are heading up there. Listen, John, I have your contract here on my desk ready to be mailed, but if you're telling everything now, what's to tell later?”

“Details,” John said. “Depth.”

“That's just fine if you're David Halberstam, but you're not. You're a newspaper guy who's forte is breaking news. I was counting on this book to be a shocker. That's what the money's for.”

“I thought the money was for the inside story. The story behind the story. Nothing's changed about that.”

“The deal was for an exclusive. If you run the story in your weekly, that breaks the deal. Hell, John, this is a business. Details and depth are fine and good, but they don't have half the sales potential as shock. I was paying for that. I imagined prepub hype that would have bookstores and readers champing at the bit. Marketing is already on it. So's Publicity and Art. The package was going to be great, and
then
we'd launch with a press conference. You do that now and the deal is off. Hell, maybe this isn't a good match.”

“Maybe it isn't,” John agreed, because what Richard
was describing didn't jibe with his dream. He might
not
be David Halberstam. But the whole point of his doing this book was to prove his worth as a writer.

At least, that had been the dream once. It wasn't now. He wanted to prove his worth as a person. He was doing that just fine without a book.

“Tell you what,” Richard said in what he must have thought was a conciliatory tone, “I'll hold this contract here. Give me a call after your press conference, and we'll see where we stand.”

John hung up the phone doubting he would make that call, and not feeling disappointed in the least.

Lily spent Wednesday morning feeling as jittery as she had those last few days in Boston. Seeking relief in routine, she devoted herself to the cider making, working the racks and cloths with a fever, but the sense of anticipation never left her for long. Each time it returned, her emotions swung wildly—excitement to fear to satisfaction to embarrassment to anger. One thing, however, remained constant: she did want justice.

The irony was that Terry Sullivan had given her the tool to get it. He was the one who had put her name on the map. John barely had to breathe it to his media friends and they were on their way to New Hampshire. Once they were all in Lake Henry, the limelight would shift to Terry. As the saying went, he would be hoist by his own petard.

Thinking about that gave her deep satisfaction.

Thinking about the crowds, about other questions that might come, about a renewal of media attention on her even for a short time made her queasy. But she couldn't have one without the other.

“Something's on your mind,” Maida remarked.

They were walking down to the house for lunch. The day was clear but cold. Lily had her hands tucked up into the sleeves of her jacket. Now she tucked the sleeves under her arms.

Maida would have to know. The press might be arriving en masse that afternoon. Or no one might come. John had said it was possible. Not probable but possible. In that case, Maida
didn't
have to know.

In either case there would be a gathering at the church. Lily wanted to tell Maida about it and about the thinking behind it. She wanted Maida to say they were doing the right thing. But Maida wouldn't do that. She didn't want the press around. She made that clear when Lily had first returned.

“Does it have to do with John Kipling?” Maida asked now, holding open the door. The phone was ringing inside, but with Poppy to pick up, she didn't hurry to get it.

Lily followed her into the kitchen, frantically wondering whether she'd heard or guessed, and if so, how much she knew. “Why do you ask?”

The phone rang again. Ignoring it still, Maida draped her jacket over the back of a chair. With a hand on the refrigerator door, she sent Lily a disbelieving look. “I'm not stupid, Lily. Nor am I deaf. Even if I managed not to hear the calls you make, even if you hadn't told me yourself that you were with him the whole time Gus was dying, then again at the funeral, even if I hadn't seen you with him at church, I'd have heard it from friends. They said you were quite a hit at Charlie's Thursday night.”

“I didn't plan that,” Lily said quickly. “It ww-was a
spontaneous thing. Charlie came over and asked. I just did a couple of songs.”

Maida took a pot of soup from the refrigerator. She put it on the stove and lit the gas. “Are you serious about John?”

On a serious scale of one to ten, professions of love ranked up at the top. But Lily didn't know where it would go from here, and she couldn't get a handle on Maida's feelings about John. So she said, “I'm not sure.”

“He's a Kipling.”

“He didn't have anything to do with the car business. And Donny and Gus are both gone.”

Maida lifted the lid and stirred the soup with undue force. “Did you
have
to go to the funeral?”

There it was. Disapproval. But at least it wasn't outright condemnation of John. Lily was grateful, but she wasn't cowed. She said a quiet “Yes. I did.”

When Maida didn't respond but stayed with the soup, Lily went to the cupboard for dishes. The table was nearly set when the phone started ringing again. Her eye flew to the instrument, but Maida was already there.

“Yes,” she snapped into the receiver.

Lily heard threads of an excited voice at the other end of the line. Maida looked sharply back at her. She put her free hand on her waist and her eyes on the wall. As she listened, her shoulders grew stiff.

Lily had a sinking feeling. When Maida hung up and turned, she braced herself.

“That was Alice,” she said, looking pale, sounding worse. “She says phones are ringing all over town. Something about a press conference.”

“Yes.”

“Something about John and you. About reporters coming
today?”

What could Lily say? “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we have information on Terry Sullivan that proves—”

“I don't care about Terry Sullivan,” Maida cried, looking betrayed. “I care about
us
. Everything had quieted down. The press lost interest. It was over and done.” She grew pleading. “We were doing just fine, you and I. Weren't we?”

If Lily could have turned back the clock in that instant and vetoed the idea of a press conference, she might have. Maida was right. They were doing just fine.

But life wasn't about doing just fine.

Softly, she said, “This isn't about you and me.”

“It
is,”
Maida argued. Her hands were on her hips one minute, on the counter behind her another. “It's about respect,” she said, raising both hands to the back of her neck. “It's about respect, which you have never once shown me. Singing at church wasn't good enough. You had to sing at Charlie's. You had to sing and dance on Broadway. You knew I'd hate it, but you did it anyway.”

“It was what I did well.”

“And then the business in Boston.” Her hands were back to her hips. “Well, that was over and done, and now you've revived it. Couldn't you have let it
rest?”

Lily had asked herself that a dozen times. Now she sighed. “No. I couldn't. He's taken ss-something from me. I need to try to get it back.”

“What did he take? An apartment that was too expensive to begin with? A nightclub?”

“My name.”

“Your name is perfectly good here. Isn't that what Thursday night at Charlie's was about? Why do you always need
more?”

“Not more, Mom. Different.”

“But you're
not
different,” Maida shouted. She snatched up a dishcloth and began wiping perfectly clean, dry hands. “You're not
any
different. You let people take advantage of you, just like I did—let people
use
you, just like I did. Donald Kipling—Terry Sullivan—
John
Kipling now. He's not doing this for you,” she cried in disdain. “He's doing it for
him
. So don't you stand up there on your high horse and say we're different. You're not any better than me. If there's any difference at all, it's that I had the sense to put it behind me once and for all.”

With a cry of dismay she tossed the dishcloth on the counter and stalked out of the house.

Lily didn't eat lunch. She turned off the flame under the soup pot and waited in the kitchen for Maida to return, but there was no sign of her when time came to go back to work. So Lily walked up to the cider house alone. As she neared, her apprehension grew, but she needn't have worried. Maida didn't show up for the afternoon shift.

Lily called in one of the pickers to work the racks and cloths with Bub while she took Maida's part, but she didn't feel exhilaration or pride now. She did what she had to do, and she was distracted, but not by the prospect
of the press coming to town. Her heart was heavy wondering where Maida was, what she was thinking, whether they could patch things up. She didn't know why Maida was still so upset about things that had happened so long ago. She didn't know why she should
care
so much what her mother still felt. But she did.