The Ugly Truth

by Jill Orr

  In a panicked attempt to warn Ridley, I started to make the sound of a European siren. It was all I could think to do. “Eeee-oooo-eeee-ooo-eeee-oooo!”

  Dale stopped mid-climb. Rosalee looked one part surprised, three parts enraged. “Shut up!” they said in unison.

  I shut up. I hoped Ridley heard me and got my warning, no matter how ridiculous it might have sounded.

  Dale continued his climb down, and after a few silent seconds, in which Rosalee didn’t take her eyes off of us, he called up, “All clear down here. Probably just a rat.”

  Rosalee visibly relaxed. I snuck a look at Hadley, who was the only other person in the kitchen who knew Ridley was down there. She gave a little shrug. I hoped that meant Ridley found the hiding place behind the far edge of the fireplace where Hadley had been hiding when we went down there.

  A couple more silent moments passed until we heard Dale say, “What the—” and a loud thwacking sound. Ridley. I squeezed Holman’s hand and closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear the thought of what he might have done to her.

  “Dale?” Rosalee called to him, her eyes—and gun—still on us. “Everything all right down there?”

  There was no response for maybe three or four seconds. I could see Rosalee was getting nervous, and I wasn’t sure what she would do. We all waited, our eyes on the trapdoor.

  “Actually,” the voice that carried up from the cellar was not Dale’s. It was Ridley’s, sounding as strong and clear and brave as ever. “There’s been a change of plans.”

  Rosalee turned in surprise at the sound of Ridley’s voice, and in that split second Holman yanked hard on my hand and pulled me out through the swinging door that led to the front of the café. I heard a shot go off in the kitchen and what I thought was Hadley screaming. Part of me wanted to go back in there to make sure she was okay—and more importantly that Ridley was—but Holman had a tight grip on my hand as he pulled me through the restaurant and out the front door. We ran in the pouring rain down the sidewalk, and the second we rounded the corner, I pulled out my phone and called 911.

  CHAPTER 42

  She was like Crocodile Dundee down there!” Butter was telling the story for what seemed like the tenth time over at the sheriff’s station. He laughed and shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. “Once we got Rosalee in cuffs, I looked down into the floor and there was Ridley in the cellar, standing with one foot on top of Dale Mountbatten, who was hog-tied within an incha his life. Ridley was pointing a kitchen knife this long—” he held his fingers comically far apart (I’d seen the knife and it wasn’t two feet long) “—at that poor man’s carotid and he was bawling like a stuck pig. Ridley looked like she was just out for a stroll in the park.”

  Apparently, Ridley, who was taller than Dale by at least two inches, had conked him over the head with a loose stone from the fireplace. She used her belt to hog-tie him while he was semiconscious, then positioned him in front of her so that Rosalee couldn’t get a clean shot off without going through Dale. Ridley said that she and Rosalee had a “nice chat” about how quickly Dale would bleed out if anything happened to make her hand slip. Carl and Butter got there within four minutes of our 911 call. Rosalee didn’t even resist.

  Dale and Rosalee would both likely face a laundry list of criminal charges from the prosecutor, including armed criminal action, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder in the first degree, among the other charges for the financial crimes that would come from the federal courts. Carl assured us that first thing in the morning, he’d be meeting with DA Lindsey Davis to go over the evidence and get the criminal charges filed ASAP.

  “They’re already starting to rat each other out,” Carl said. “Dale says hiring Balzichek to kill Greer was all Rosalee’s idea. Claims he knew nothing about her plot to poison him either.” Carl rolled his eyes. “Funny, she’s saying the whole scheme was his idea.”

  “I wonder if we’ll ever really know what happened?” I said.

  “I think now that we know what we’re looking for, the evidence and testimony will paint a fairly clear picture. Fact is, they got greedy. No one probably would have ever known about the money laundering if they hadn’t killed Greer. The amount they ran through that fake butter distributor wasn’t enough to raise any flags. They’d been getting away with it for years.”

  “Have you been able to get into the safe yet?” Holman asked. We had been speculating about what might be inside, given the intense security measures.

  Carl shook his head. “Not yet. We’re gonna have to get a team down here Monday to open it. They’ve both indicated there’s cash in there. Rosalee said something about gold coins as well. We’ll see. It’s probably whatever Dale got from the Qataris that he couldn’t launder.”

  Holman had been quiet the whole time we were at the station, and it was obvious he was taking it hard, finding out about Rosalee. Every so often, he’d look down the hall toward the room where Rosalee was being held for questioning. Carl picked up on it. “Don’t feel bad, buddy,” he said, clapping Holman on the shoulder. “It wasn’t just you. She fooled us all for a long time.”

  I was always surprised at how long it took to process and book people, and by the time those of us not being charged with a crime were allowed to leave the sheriff’s station, it was close to midnight. We were all exhausted. As we walked out into the cold night air, Holman thanked Ridley again.

  “You showed incredible bravery tonight. Not to mention an admirable sense of ingenuity. How did you know how to tie someone up like that?”

  Ridley smiled, her perfect white teeth reflecting light from a street lamp overhead. “Let’s just say this was not my first rodeo.” She threw her head back and laughed, somehow appearing humble, sexy, and brilliant all at the same time.

  “Where’s Hadley?” I asked, looking around. Fortunately, Rosalee’s shot missed Hadley by a foot, so I knew she was physically okay. Her emotional state was another story.

  “The sheriff had some more questions for her,” Holman said.

  Hadley Lawrence wasn’t someone I’d want to be best pals with, but I did feel sorry for her. She loved her sister, and in her grief and desperation after Greer was murdered, she made a few really bad decisions. I hoped this whole experience would lead her to get the help she needed. I also hoped she had a good lawyer.

  On the subject of lawyers, Ash had been called down to the station to identify Hadley as the person who took Balzichek’s stuff. He now stood with us outside the station as we downloaded the craziness of what had happened.

  Ryan stood next to Ridley, as he had since the moment he’d burst into the sheriff’s office wild with panic. I could tell he was truly terrified at the thought of her being in danger. Ridley seemed surprised by his level of alarm, but also flattered. At one point, I saw her take his face into her hands and look into his eyes. “I’m okay,” she said softly. I watched as he closed his eyes, visible relief washing over him.

  After a few more minutes spent speculating about what would happen to Dale and Rosalee, Ridley and Ryan left to go back to his parents’ house, because as Ridley said, “The Tavern will open tomorrow at 6 a.m. as usual. Almost being killed is no excuse to let down our customers.” She really was Wonder Woman. I hated—and loved—that about her.

  “I’m gonna get going too,” Ash said, then turned to me and with a casual shrug added, “You want to get that drink sometime this weekend?”

  I had almost forgotten it was Friday. “Uh, sure.”

  “Great.” He shoved his hands into his pockets as his eyes moved over toward Holman and then back to me. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “As long as you don’t call me ‘honey.’ ” I couldn’t resist.

  Ash laughed and walked off in the direction of the parking lot.

  Although I was exhausted, I didn’t feel like going home just yet. Holman and I walked in companionable silence in the direction of the back parking lot. The clouds had moved out after the earlier storms, leaving the air refreshed
and crisp. It was a moonless night that allowed the stars to stand out in all their glory against the inky sky. That was another perk of living in Tuttle Corner—no ambient light to compete with the heavens.

  “He doesn’t seem like your type,” Holman said after a few seconds.

  “Who, Ash?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

  Holman tilted his head to the side, seeming surprised that I required an explanation. “Ryan is warm, friendly, open…he’s basically the human version of a golden retriever. Jay is polished and charming and very brave. And Ash…well, I don’t really know him, but he seems to have a darker sensibility than your typical boyfriends.”

  “Slow down,” I said. “He’s not my anything right now.”

  “Mmmm.” That was the sound Holman made when he disagreed with me but didn’t want to say why.

  “Besides, I think there’s more there beneath the surface. He’s been through some really tough stuff lately. I think he’s a good guy deep down. But don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not jumping into anything. I think it’s time to concentrate on me.”

  The feeling had been sneaking up on me for a while now that it was time to take a break from love and romance. (Even Regina H had been able to see I wasn’t in a good place to start a new relationship.) I wasn’t going to swear off men forever, but it was time to learn who I was outside of a relationship. Everywhere I looked I saw examples of love’s power to transform, for better or worse. It was like a pendulum that swung from the highest highs to the lowest lows. And it wasn’t just seeing the Dale Mountbattens of the world hiring hit men to kill their wives—those kinds of things are born of pure greed. More disturbing to me was seeing how easily Hadley was able to manipulate two people who were supposedly so much in love. She engineered a tiny deviation in their relationship—an unreturned phone call, a missed date—and suddenly they were ready to believe the worst of each other. It reminded me that love was a powerful thing and not to be trifled with. Of course, I’d been reminded of that when I saw how quickly Jay had moved on. It hurt more than I cared to admit. Obviously, I had some unresolved feelings there I probably needed to deal with.

  Perhaps Holman got it worst of all, though. I worried for him. When we got to where I’d chained up my bicycle, I turned to him. “I’m sorry Rosalee let you down.”

  He looked down at his shoes. “She said she liked me.” Holman sounded one part confused and ten parts hurt. It killed me to see him in so much pain. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew the usual “There are other fish in the sea” kind of pep talk wasn’t going to cut it.

  Holman was a unique person, and I don’t mean that in the way Southerners used the word. (“Unique,” like “bless her heart” and “God love ’em,” took on new meaning south of the Mason-Dixon line—and not a good one.) Holman was unique in the sense that he was truly singular, exceptional. Finding someone who would love him for all his exceptional singularity would not be easy. I suspect it had already been hard, particularly in light of what Camilla had said about his father leaving.

  I lifted my arm and pointed into the sky. “Do you see Orion’s Belt there?”

  Holman’s eyes followed to where I was pointing. “Yes.”

  “Okay, so you see those three stars that sort of look like they’re hanging from Orion’s Belt?”

  He squinted and scrunched up his nose. Eventually he said, “Yes.”

  “So that’s Orion’s Sword. Now, I want you to look about midway down the sword. Do you see that hazy area that sort of looks like a reddish glowing apostrophe?”

  It took him a minute, but he found it. “Yes.”

  “That’s Orion’s Nebula. It doesn’t look like much from here, but if we were looking at it through a telescope, you’d see four bright blue stars surrounded by hundreds of other stars in every celestial color imaginable. They look like jewels in a felt-lined box—red rubies, yellow diamonds, blue sapphires—surrounded by wispy tendrils of orange, purple, and pink. It’s magnificent, one of the most awe-inspiring structures in our galaxy.” I paused. “From here, the view is sort of ordinary, but if you look closer, it takes your breath away.”

  Holman continued to stare at the spot, straining with the effort of trying to see it as anything other than a chalky smudge in the sky.

  “That’s you.” I turned to him and smiled. “You’re just like Orion’s Nebula. On the surface you may appear kind of ordinary, but when you take a closer look, what you see is truly remarkable.”

  He was quiet for a long few moments, his gaze held steady at the sky. “Thank you, Riley,” he said eventually. He paused again and then added, “You are more than merely a co-worker.”

  I laughed. “Thanks, Will. You are more than merely a co-worker too.”

  Dear Miss Ellison,

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  Personal Romance Concierge™

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  CHAPTER 43

  SATURDAY

  I woke up before dawn to the sound of my house phone ringing. My landline had never rung before. In fact, the only reason I even had a landline was because my parents insisted I have a security system installed a few weeks ago, after my house was broken into. I had no idea who could be calling me this early. I hadn’t given anyone that number, mostly because I didn’t even know it myself.

  I reached for the cordless phone sitting in the cradle on the floor by my bed. “Hello?” I said, sounding unsettlingly like one of Marge Simpson’s sisters.

  “Ellison?” It was Kay Jackson.

  I sat up, struggling to rouse myself from sleep. “Kay?”

  “I’ve been calling your cell and couldn’t get you.”

  I picked up my cell from the nightstand and sure enough there were four missed calls from her. I must have really been asleep.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Kay said, sounding overly kind. Something was wrong.

  “What is it?” I swung my feet onto the floor and gathered the blanket over my lap, a chill seizing me that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

  “It’s Flick.”

  The words knocked the wind out of me, and for a moment I couldn’t speak. “What happened?”

  “He’s been in an accident.” She paused. “It’s bad.”

  My pulse began to pound in places you shouldn’t be able to feel your pulse, like the edges of my eyeballs, inside my eardrum, and at the base of my throat. “Where?”

  “Carilion Memorial Hospital in Roanoke.”

  “What happened?”

 
; “His car went off the road on Route 58.”

  “Fifty-eight?” I asked, rising to my feet. “No. No, Flick was in Chincoteague just the other day. He—he…”

  “The police called me because they found his business card tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt.” Kay paused. “I think you should get up there, Riley.”

  Flick didn’t have any children of his own. He had a niece who I think lived overseas and a couple of nephews on the West Coast. His ex-wife was living in Washington, DC, and had remarried years ago.

  I grabbed my jeans from the chair where I’d thrown them last night, holding the phone between my shoulder and ear. “I’ll drop Coltrane at my parents and then I’ll—shit,” I said, realizing I didn’t have a car.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay. And Riley?” she said, her voice low and serious. “Come by the newsroom before you go. I have something I’m supposed to give you.”

  A little over a month ago, Flick told me that he left a file for me with Kay that I was to ask for should anything “happen to him.” I closed my eyes against the possibility that that time had come.

  “He’s not going to die.” My denial sounded so foolish, so childish, but I didn’t care. I needed to believe that Flick was going to be okay, and if I had to say it out loud a thousand more times, I would.

  Kay was quiet for a couple of seconds. “No, of course he isn’t.” She cleared her throat. “Listen, I know you guys were looking into Albert’s—I mean, your grandfather’s—death. Flick didn’t tell me much, but I know he was onto something.”

  The name Shannon Miller flashed into my mind, but I didn’t say a word. Whatever Flick was looking into, he felt it was so sensitive, he didn’t even want me writing it down. I wasn’t going to confirm or deny anything to Kay, as much to protect her as myself. “I’ll meet you in the newsroom in fifteen minutes.”