Authors: Elaine Orr
From Newsprint to Footprints: A River's Edge Cozy Mystery (River's Edge Cozy Mysteries Book 1)
From Newsprint to Footprints
A River's Edge Cozy Mystery
By
Elaine Orr
©2015 Annie Acorn Publishing LLC
Silver Spring, MD 20906
annieacornpublishing.com
By Permission of Annie Acorn
annieacorn.com
Cover Art by Angel Nichols
http://www.angelwingsdesigner.com/bookcovers.htm
The story,
From Newsprint to Footprints
, is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people or events is completely accidental. A few literary liberties may have been taken in the interest of creating great literature.
"DAMN IT TO HELL, Perkins. I sent you to grab photos of a car accident, and half the ones you took are a bunch of crappy flowers."
I managed not to say what I thought. "Those hybrid anemones don't grow here without…"
"You're fired."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Pack up."
With that, Hal Morris, irascible editor at the
South County News
, walked into his office and shut the door.
Silence can be really loud, sometimes.
A low voice behind me said, "Uh, Melanie."
I turned to face Sandi Malcolm, the only full-time staffer younger than my twenty-seven years.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I knew he was ticked, and I wanted to warn you. You just came in…" Her voice trailed off.
I let my eyes travel around the small news room and noted that everyone but Sandi was engrossed in their work. Or pretending to be. Our tabloid-style paper only publishes three days a week now, and half the desks are empty.
"It's my fault, Sandi. I meant to only load the accident scenes onto the system. I wasn't paying enough attention." Images of the deep blue anemones among a large patch of red and white peonies flitted through my brain. I had thought they would make a great photo for the paper's Fourth-of-July issue.
I registered that the typical newsroom sounds of fingers flying on keyboards and the whish of the copy machine had resumed.
Hal thinks subscriptions are down because the economy's been bad. It's because in terms of the news business, he's a dinosaur. If he would just let us do an electronic edition we could sell more advertising.
Us? It's not us anymore
.
Pretty soon all the desks would be empty. Still, it was the only job I had. Now it was gone.
Sandi had the guilty look of someone who has a job when the person they're talking to doesn't. Freckles stood out more on her ashen skin. "You want me to help you pack your stuff?"
"It's not that much. I took a lot of gear home after Fred got canned."
Fred Simmons had written half the stories for our county paper. Besides being a good friend, he was also the highest-paid staffer. When revenue took a nose dive, Hal wanted him gone. Fred's protesting his denial of unemployment benefits. I think he'll win.
If I tried to get unemployment, Hal would dispute it, and I probably wouldn't win. He's told me a bunch of times that I'm only to take photos of story material. I don't know why he cares. It's not like it's film.
Hal's door was still closed, so our oldest reporter, fifty-something Betty Castaway, and perpetual intern Ryan Nichols, offered murmured words of sympathy as they walked by my desk.
It only took five minutes to pack my stuff. I would have left it all, but I had a twenty dollar bill taped to the bottom of my desk drawer and a pen my parents gave me for college graduation inside it.
Each reporter had a small cubicle, but the walls were only four feet high, so no real privacy. We worked separately, most of the time, coming together to do our sections of the paper's layout on a large-screen monitor.
I looked around the expansive room in which all staff except Hal sat. We called it the bullpen, most of the time. If Hal was especially obnoxious, the part-time sports reporter called it Detention Central.
I would miss a few staff, especially Sandi, but even more I'd miss knowing what was going on around the county before the paper was published.
When the copy paper box was full, Sandi and Ryan walked me to the door. I told them I was fine. If it wasn't for money, I would be.
I have friends, and when I'm willing to get off my tailbone I can do a ten-minute mile. Only problem is, even though rent is cheap in rural Iowa, it's not free. I had four hundred twelve dollars in savings. My rent was paid. I could get by for a month.
I THOUGHT my inquiries would generate at least a nibble within a week, but I had nothing by the end of the first week of May. I don't know who I thought I was kidding. Hal writes snotty stories when he's ticked at a local business. Mostly when they cut their advertising budget at the paper. No one wants to irritate him too much.
River's Edge is a community of 7,400, much of it spread along the Des Moines River about fifteen miles before it meanders into the Mississippi in Missouri.
In many ways, it's the best of small-town living. There are baseball diamonds for kids' sports, a huge town chorus that performs for free a few times a year, and an all-day Fourth of July celebration that starts with games in the morning and goes through fireworks at ten.
Idyllic as life along the usually tranquil river can be, there aren't many jobs unless you're into meat packing or working in tourist gift shops, which I’m not. You also don't want to live within a block of the river unless you're willing to risk being flooded out every fifteen years or so.
A couple of the guys at Mason's Diner have told me to look in Des Moines, but I don't want the crowds or the traffic. I also don't want to be away from the garden my landlord let me plant in back of the duplex I live in. Two weeks before I was fired, I had put in enough vegetable seeds to feed twenty people all summer, and almost all the bulbs I planted last fall bloomed.
My brother and his wife live in Dubuque. They said I could stay with them for a couple of months. Trouble is, I like it here. It's mostly friendly, and now that I don't work at the
South County News
, people don't watch what they say to me.
It was warm in my two-bedroom apartment, and I debated turning on the air conditioning, an extravagance in the first week of May, especially given my budget.
Instead, I stared at the clipboard on my lap. I had several pieces of lined paper fastened to it, and the top one had a sixth version of a list of my skills. The problem was I didn't really want to write articles or teach English as a Second Language. I wanted to plant flowers. Weed gardens. Anything that put me outside in the dirt.
The phone rang.
"Melanie? It's Sandi."
"Why are you whispering?"
"Because Hal's door is open. Listen, we just got a classified from the guy who bought the Silverstone place on the edge of town. He's looking for someone to clear weeds and stuff, and then plant some bushes."
I sat up straighter. "Yeah? When will it be in?"
"Who cares? You could call him now and…gotta go." Sandi hung up.
I pictured the acreage that sat at the end of the blacktop. A barn for hay and horses sat not far behind the house, though I didn't think anyone had boarded horses there for years. I'd heard that the man who had bought the place was some sort of consultant who traveled a lot.
The property had been mowed regularly since Mr. Silverstone died, but that was all. The bushes were unkempt and overgrown weeds and roses stood tall against the fence in the front of the two-story house.
If I could convince the man to hire me, I'd be busy all summer. What was his name? Sigmund? Seymour? Something with an S.
He won't have to change the initial on the mailbox by the street.
I felt a slow grin spreading. Hal Morris would have to drive by that house on his way to Fairhaven, where he keeps a small power boat. I could hide behind tall bushes and throw mud balls at his car.
Very unprofessional, but I'd feel better.
I DIDN'T BOTHER changing out of my denim shorts and t-shirt that boasted a "Pella Tulip Festival" insignia. It wasn't as if I needed to wear a suit to apply for a job as a gardener or landscaper or whatever.
The place was not much more than a mile from my house, but I decided to drive. It was one thing to show up in work clothes, another to smell as if I'd been working all day in the May sun.
The driveway had little gravel and was rutted from some heavy truck or tractor. Probably a moving van.
The end of the drive was wider, so more than one vehicle could park there. A late-model, four-door, green pick-up truck graced the spot closest to the side door. It looked as if it had just been through a car wash.
This man is not used to country living
.
I studied the broad porch as I got out of my truck. Someone had replaced a few boards on the steps leading to the porch, and the front door was new. It appeared to be solid oak and looked expensive.
As a reporter I could be quite pushy. As a woman looking for a job in an area where she had no formal work experience, I was suddenly nervous. I'd trailed my dad around our family's dairy farm a few miles from town, planted gardens, and mowed lawns since I was nine or ten. That was plenty of experience. I had to concentrate on selling myself.
Mr. Whoever-he-was answered the door within ten seconds.
I'm not sure what I expected. Someone older than forty-something. And maybe not so tall.
"Hi, I'm Melanie Perkins. I live here in town, and I wondered if you needed any work done on your property. On the lawn. Like landscaping."
Why are you babbling?
He stared at me for several seconds, and then fully opened the door and nodded. "Sylvester Seaton. Syl. And I need a lot of work done." He gestured that I should come into the foyer.
The house is a center-hall colonial that has had a couple of additions. At the far end of the main hall from the foyer is a large kitchen, with a formal dining room behind it. I know this because when I was a child, the then-owner, whose name I'd long forgotten, put the house on the town's garden tour, and I'd gone with my Mother.
I followed Sylvester, Syl, into the living room. It looked as if it had had a fresh coat of paint, but its wood floors needed to be refinished and someone appeared to be stripping paint from the wide mantle above a stone fireplace. Boxes were piled against one wall, and several Queen Ann chairs were grouped in front of the fireplace.
At his gesture, I sat in one, and he sat across from me.
I could tell from his expression that he wondered if my five-foot-four frame would let me dig out dead bushes and pull huge weeds from the several flower gardens that surrounded the house. What I lack in height I make up for with broad shoulders and sturdy legs. I'm not heavy, but no one would call me a pixie.
"Your timing is good. I stopped by the paper today to put in an ad for some yard work. Do you have experience?"
"About fifteen years, but not for pay. You could go by where I live here in town to see what I can do. You'd get a better idea if I showed you the before pictures I took." I grinned, hoping to hide my nervousness. "I get reduced rent for maintaining the property."
"Ah. Okay." He hesitated. "Tell me where you'd start."
"Anytime, really. I just…"
"Not when. Where. What would you do first?"
I should have been prepared for the question, and the lawn was so neglected it was hard to quickly think of priorities.
I swallowed. "At the Keyser place, that's where I rent the top floor, I started with the growth around the house. It wasn't as overgrown as here, but I think you see progress faster when you make the area at the front of the house look better. Clear out growth, put down mulch."
He nodded slowly, still appraising. "You have your own tools?"
"I have tree pruning shears and any hand tools and shovels. Rakes, that kind of thing. If you want big stumps taken out, a couple guys in town have equipment for that. Cheaper than paying anyone to dig them out manually."
Syl's direct look was unsettling. He had dark brown eyes that didn't seem to blink, and as I held his gaze, I took in his styled brown hair with its distinct part on the left side of his head. It was not a haircut you'd get at a corner barber.
He stood. "Come on. Let's walk around outside."
I followed him off the front porch, and paused by my twelve-year-old, dented pickup. It looks more grey than black because I often drive on gravel roads. "Have to grab my hat."
He waited while I reached for it. The one I use most is black canvas with an Iowa Hawkeyes logo and has a brim all the way around. Maybe the sweat lines on the band would convince him that I worked outside a lot.
Syl looked amused for a moment, and then was straight-faced again. "Trying to keep the sun off your face?"
"Trying not to get skin cancer on my nose. We redheads burn easily."
"Ah. Of course." We had walked behind the house, and he pointed toward a dense clump of bushes by the back door. "I hear rustling in there, so maybe that's a good place to start."
"Rustling like ground squirrels or snakes?"
"Not real loud," he offered.
I pointed at the exterior of the stone fireplace. "Even before that, I'll take down all that ivy. Won't take long. Do you want me to burn…?"
"I kind of like the ivy look."
This must be the first house he's owned
.
"It's pretty, but it eats into whatever it latches onto." I walked a few steps and pulled a trailing end back and snapped it. "See these tiny growths on the vine? Those are roots, and roots look for a place to expand. These dig right into even minute cracks in stone or brick. In a few years, moisture'll get in, and you'll be good friends with the stone mason."