The Note

by Hunt, Angela

  “You’re sure she won’t do it?”

  “I just said I was.”

  Tucking the cigarette between her fingers, Julie looked around for a light. “What do you think? Could her father have written the note?”

  MacGruder snorted. “How do I know? I have no choice but to accept Taylor’s word. By the way, I don’t think you’re going to find her very cooperative if you show up at her place with cameras.”

  Spying the lighter on a table, Julie reached for it, then flicked a flame into existence. “We’ve covered our bases there. Howard Media & Entertainment owns her contract, so she’ll have to cooperate.”

  “What a lucky girl.”

  Though MacGruder spoke in a cool, even voice, there was no mistaking the hostility in her tone. Julie felt her temper rise as she cradled the phone beneath her chin and held the cigarette to the flame. “Listen, lady, I hear you didn’t even put up a fight when Adam offered you the syndication deal. So watch yourself and play along.”

  “Unwilling cooperation is nothing but coercion.” MacGruder’s voice was cold and lashing. “And I don’t think Taylor Crowe will appreciate a heavy-handed approach any more than I do. For heaven’s sake, the woman is grieving.”

  “I thought you said they weren’t close.” Julie brought the smoldering cigarette to her lips.

  “They weren’t—but Taylor’s still not willing to talk about it much.”

  Julie laughed to cover her annoyance. “Well, I certainly hope she recovers from her grief soon. And I hope your final candidate pays off. If not, we may have to visit Taylor Crowe and convince her to—”

  “My columns aren’t about paying off, Julie. They’re about searching for the truth. I really want to know if the note belongs to one of these people or if it’s some kind of hoax. If it is, I won’t hesitate to say so.”

  From what asylum had this woman escaped? Exhaling a stream of smoke, Julie blew her bangs off her forehead, then tried the direct approach. “Listen, Peyton, I know about Tanner Ford. It was simple really, once I had two first names, to figure out that you were looking for names beginning with T. So we uncovered Ford, and we know you’ll be headed next to Gainesville.”

  “Really? I’m surprised you did the research. Last time you just weaseled the information out of an innocent kid.”

  Julie laughed. “I’ve never had to beg for anything. People line up to give me what I want.” She tapped a half-inch of ashes into a mug on the coffee table, making a mental note to remove it in case Adam dropped in. “It all depends on how you ask.”

  No answer from MacGruder but the quiet sound of a huff.

  Annoyed by the writer’s self-righteous attitude, Julie gripped the phone. “You know we’ve already begun to tape promos for the special. We’re ready to go, so let’s stop playing cat and mouse and put our cards on the table, shall we? Why don’t you fax me a copy of the note so I can have a handwriting expert take a look.”

  “Forget it. What’s an expert going to tell you? That the person who wrote it was under duress?” MacGruder’s laughter had a sharp edge. “An expert can’t identify handwriting without something to compare it with, and I can assure you neither Timothy Manning nor Taylor Crowe is going to give you a sample of their fathers’ handwriting—even if they have one.” Peyton’s voice went as chilly as the smoke off dry ice. “I’ll give you everything as soon as I’m finished, but not before. I don’t want anything to leak out and spoil the series for my readers.”

  “The World News Network doesn’t deal in leaks.”

  “I stopped believing in fairy tales years ago, Ms. St. Claire. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a deadline to meet.”

  “I have a deadline, too.”

  “But you’re television news. Don’t you all pride yourselves on being up-to-the-minute?”

  The phone line clicked. Julie dropped the cordless phone to her lap, then raked her nails across the chair’s velvet upholstery. Peyton MacGruder would be no help at all, and she’d ruin everything if she interviewed Tanner Ford and came up empty. A hoax would spell disaster for WNN, but print journalists, especially columnists, had an unfair advantage. They could take a nothing story, paint themselves totally into a corner, and escape by changing the subject to moonbeams and broken hearts, throwing in the mention of a sad little kid for good measure. They didn’t have to come up with the goods and answer the hard questions.

  But television reporters did. No broadcast journalist worth her salt could forget Geraldo Rivera’s much-hyped and disastrous TV special on the secret vaults of racketeer Al Capone. The ballyhooed special featured live footage of construction crews opening the vaults only to find a few broken bottles and bucketfuls of dust. Rivera found not a single trace of Capone or his gang, but for an hour viewers stared at live footage of Rivera gamely trying to pretend he’d accomplished something significant.

  Julie St. Claire would not allow herself to be caught empty-handed. Peyton MacGruder’s insistence that the network not air the special until she had completed her series was actually a blessing in disguise. If the columnist came up empty-handed, Julie could always proceed with a creative Plan B.

  But what plan? The preacher in St. Louis was dull, a story footnote at best. Tanner Ford, according to her preliminary research, was a small-time weatherman, no big deal. But the story of wealthy, reclusive Taylor Crowe and her estranged father’s tragic death would tantalize the American public.

  Moving to the carved wooden desk beneath the window, Julie pulled her notebook from a drawer and wrote TAYLOR CROWE in block letters.

  She could pay Crowe a visit. Even if they couldn’t convince her that her father had written the note, they might be able to convince a few million viewers. People would believe almost anything if they saw it on television. And live footage of real people was solid gold— the success of reality TV shows had proved it.

  Julie parked her chin in her palm, then drew a box around Taylor’s name. She could almost hope MacGruder’s third candidate wouldn’t qualify . . . but if the columnist was right about the songwriter’s resistance, perhaps it’d be better to leave Taylor Crowe alone. Unwilling, recalcitrant subjects did not make good tabloid television.

  So . . . this third mystery date, Tanner Ford, needed to claim the note. Simple. And if the fates were kind, she’d be able to find something fascinating in his background.

  The phone rang, startling her out of her thoughts. The caller was Jason Philmore, a WNN broadcast technician. “You wanted to record a new sixty-second promo?” he asked, his voice clipped in her ears. “You got a studio. We’re ready whenever you can get here.”

  “Did the producer get the still shots of Taylor Crowe?”

  “Dunno. But there’s an envelope here with your name on it, hand-delivered from TruBlood Records.”

  TruBlood . . . Julie smiled as she placed the name: another division of Howard Media & Entertainment. She glanced in the mirror above the mantel and pulled at a stray hank of hair. “Let me dress,” she said, turning toward her bedroom. “And tell Hattie to dig up everything she can on—”

  “Hattie’s not here. It’s Sunday.”

  “Call her then, and tell her if she wants a job tomorrow, she’d better come in today. Have her research Tanner Ford—his family, background, present job, everything. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Seated at her desk in the spare bedroom she used as a home office, Peyton rubbed her hands together, then pressed them over her face and breathed deeply, trying to focus her thoughts. The call from Julie St. Claire had wrecked her concentration, and she had promised to have tomorrow’s column in by two o’clock today. This next-to-last in the series had to be perfect; she wanted to set up her readers for the final interview in the most effective way.

  But her brain, still centered upon Julie St. Claire, refused to change gears. The harder she tried to ignore the mental picture of a smiling St. Claire the more it persisted, so she surrendered to an impulse and decided to indulge in a moment of imagination th
erapy—an old trick she’d learned in her Gainesville days. Closing her eyes, she visualized Julie St. Claire on a white sofa, dressed in a soft linen suit, smiling and nodding— and then spilling a cup of coffee all over herself on live television.

  No—not drastic enough. Maybe she’d be sitting with Mel Gibson on that couch, and she’d get flustered and call him Gel Mibson, then spill coffee all over him. No— too cute. For all the aggravation she’d caused, St. Claire deserved to fall flat on her face on the runway outside the Oscars—wearing a too-tight, red satin miniskirt—or be voted one of the nation’s ten worst dressed celebrities in that annual edition of People magazine . . .

  Cut it out, MacGruder. She’s doing her job; you need to get busy doing yours.

  Sighing, Peyton opened her eyes. She should have known St. Claire would already be working her nails to the nub on this story. Like Peyton, she had to stay in front of the pack, because the pack was growing larger and more vicious by the hour. Over two hundred e-mails waited in Peyton’s mailbox, and she shuddered to think about listening to her backlogged voice mail at the office. Everyone wanted a piece of the story, and there weren’t enough pieces to go around.

  The days when one reporter could truly own a story were long gone. Once a feature hit print, every newspaper and television station in the country could pick it up and run with it. At least, Peyton reminded herself, she still carried the ball.

  Sports analogies. She was reverting to her past.

  Dropping her hands to the computer keyboard, she struggled to pull her thoughts together. She wanted to give her readers a picture of the man she was going to meet, but she didn’t want to name Tanner Ford. She’d identify him afterward, but only if he claimed the note. And if he didn’t . . . she shoved the thought aside. Some bridges could wait until one absolutely had to cross them.

  From the Internet and news archives she’d been able to compile an extensive background report on the late Trenton Ford, Tanner’s father. Before boarding the doomed PanWorld jetliner, Trenton Ford had been owner and CEO of FordCo Oil of Dallas, a multi-million-dollar corporation. Apparently everything the late Mr. Ford touched turned to gold, including a string of Ford Club hunting lodges scattered throughout Texas and Arkansas. The Ford mansion had been featured in Architectural Digest and House Beautiful; the lovely Mrs. Blythe Ford had been a close personal friend of Nancy Reagan’s and still spoke often to Barbara Bush.

  Though Peyton read pages of material on the oil tycoon and his wife, she couldn’t help but notice that not a single article mentioned the Ford children. Ford’s curriculum vitae, found on the Web site for FordCo Oil, did mention a son, so apparently Tanner was an only child. He was also the only child listed in Mr. Ford’s obituary.

  Odd, Peyton thought, that Tanner Ford had not stepped into the family business. She knew less than nothing about the oil industry, but in all of Mr. Ford’s varied interests he surely could have found a place for his son . . . unless they had parted company.

  Her pulse quickened in the way it always did when she suspected she had stumbled onto something important. What the elder Mr. Ford’s history did not reveal might be far more significant than the details she’d sprinkled through her notebook.

  Eager for an answer, she glanced back over her notes on the son: weathercaster Tanner Ford, employed by ABC-affiliate WJCB in Gainesville, lived at 49578 NW Fifth Avenue. From a WJCB Web site she learned that he’d moved to Florida from Dallas, where he’d spent five years at another (smaller, she assumed) independent television station. The station’s Web site listed hunting and horseback riding among his avocations—activities that would definitely appeal to his Florida viewing audience. Alachua County people were big on horses and hunting.

  For the briefest moment, a picture of Garrett leaning against a three-rail fence appeared in her mind’s eye— faint at first, then sharpening like a Polaroid. He had loved riding, even though they couldn’t afford a horse, and she’d often gone with him to the equestrian park to watch other riders. He’d been to an equestrian event on New Year’s morning, only hours before the accident—

  “Stop it!” she snapped, infuriated that her muscles had begun to quiver with the memory flash. She couldn’t do this, not now. She had no time to spare, and no energy left for a panic attack . . .

  “You’ve got to focus.” She lowered her gaze, staring at the palms of her upturned hands. She knew how to combat the fear; years ago she had memorized the Ten Commandments of Resisting Panic. But it’d been so long since she’d had to use them, and yesterday on that blasted boat not a single coping mechanism had come to mind . . .

  “One—feelings of panic and fear are nothing more than an exaggeration of normal physical reactions to stress,” she whispered, hearing the calm, collected voice of her therapist through a veil of memory. His voice had once brought her back from darkness; perhaps it could help her again.

  “Two—these feelings are unpleasant and frightening, not dangerous. Nothing worse will happen to you.”

  Unless you jump overboard. Or go into the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet.

  A sludge of nausea roiled in her belly. “Three,” she said, strengthening her voice. “Let the feelings come. Take a deep breath and let them go as you breathe out.”

  Exhaling in a rush, she stared at the keyboard, then reached out to touch it. Four, she typed, watching the words fill her computer screen, stop adding to your panic with thoughts of where it might lead. Take one day, one moment, at a time.

  The plastic felt cool under her fingertips, and the quiet clatter of the keys steadied her nerves. The rising fear seemed to flow out of her, borne away by the steady rattle of persistent typing.

  Exhaling again, Peyton turned her attention to her notebook. This feature wouldn’t write itself, and the longer she put it off, the less time she’d have to craft the column she wanted to share. She had to begin now.

  “Five,” she murmured, skimming through her notes, “try to distract yourself from what is going on inside you.”

  Like a swimmer about to dive into cold water, she took another deep breath and began to type.

  FOURTEEN

  MONDAY, JULY 2

  The Heart Healer

  By Peyton MacGruder

  © Howard Features Syndicate

  Dear Readers:

  As you read this, I’ll be preparing for a meeting with the third and final prospect for the note of Flight 848. This young man lives in Gainesville, Florida, only three hours from me, so I’ll have many things to consider on the drive north.

  Gainesville is a lovely town—actually more like south Georgia than tropical Florida. Alachua County has more pines than palms, and the land rises and falls in soft swells. The University of Florida occupies a solid chunk of the city’s real estate, and many area residents are affiliated with the university. Outside the city, owners of graceful farms breed and train winning racehorses within pristine picket fences. This is an elegant area, a place anyone would delight to call home.

  Even elegance, however, has to contend with darkness. Gainesville’s reputation suffered terribly in the late summer of 1990. Danny Rolling, a.k.a the “Gainesville Ripper,” murdered five students in a single terror-filled weekend. Today, more than eleven years later, a single wall near the university campus is painted with the names of Rolling’s victims. The people here will never forget, but they are determined to move on.

  The man I’m going to interview next is undoubtedly a part of Gainesville’s bright future. My prospect, a young professional adult, is a transplant from Dallas, Texas (nearly everyone in Florida is a transplant from someplace), and he seemed eager to hear my news when I called to set up our appointment.

  I’ll give complete details in my next column when I hope to settle the matter of the note. Its message—which I’ll share Wednesday—is disarmingly simple. I have a feeling millions of people would give anything to receive such a note with their name at the top of the page.

  I began this search with a sim
ple goal: find the person for whom the note was intended. But over the past few days, the search has broadened for me.

  You see, though I lived in and left Gainesville years before Danny Rolling committed his crimes, the thought of that city will always evoke unhappy memories for me. Something in my spirit shrivels at the thought of returning to those rolling hills. The memories are personal, so there’s no reason to explore them here, but this realization has made me wonder . . . what sort of memories are my prospects facing when I bring them a note that awakens recollections they have safely tucked away? Most of my memories have been buried deep in the well of memory, but the specter of Gainesville keeps stirring the waters . . .

  Perhaps, as Nelson Mandela once said, “true reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.” I used to think forgetting was enough, but life has a way of dredging up even the most deeply buried memories.

  Strange, how the note with its six-word message has the power to probe a conscience. Or maybe the note is like radioactive material—the more you’re exposed, the more deeply you’re affected.

  I’m beginning to feel scorched down to the bone marrow.

  As I ready to bring this series to a close, I can’t help thinking about second chances. Each of the three prospects who fit the criteria defined by the note’s salutation has been given another opportunity to hear from his or her father. Yet the first two people I interviewed did not even seem eager to receive the message of the note. I would have thought they’d be eager for an occasion to bring closure to an abruptly terminated relationship.

  After all, we pride ourselves on being a country where a man can declare bankruptcy one year and earn millions in the next. You would think our overriding love for the underdog and lost causes would drive us to grasp every opportunity for a second chance.