Cassie had been rapping her upper lip with her knuckles while Lily talked. Now she made a note on the pad. “Someone leaked it. The AG here should investigate that. The problem with the rest—where you shop and vacation—that information is available to the public. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the Internet can get it.”
Lily was discouraged. “Then there’s nothing I can do?”
“Not on that score.”
“But they broke laws, too. Someone tapped into my phone.”
“Do you know for sure?”
“No, but I heard a click when I was talking to my sister, and something from that conversation appeared in the paper the next morning.”
Cassie made a note on her pad. “For that we lodge a complaint with the AG’s office in Massachusetts.”
Lily noted the “we” and spoke with greater hesitance. “I don’t have much money. I’ll give you what I have.”
“Hold your money,” Cassie said. “We’ll discuss it as I incur costs.” She turned to a fresh sheet of paper. “I want to know everything about your relationship with the Cardinal, everything about your talk with Terry Sullivan, everything about what’s happened to you since the story broke.”
Lily talked for the next hour. It was cathartic. Her voice rose and fell with emotion, but she didn’t stutter once. Though Cassie injected an occasional question, she mainly listened and made notes. Finally Lily finished. Cassie sat quietly reviewing her notes. When Lily couldn’t bear the suspense, she asked, “What do you think?”
“I think,” Cassie said, “that you do have a case for libel.”
“But?” Lily could hear it in her voice.
“But there are several issues. A major one is whether, by any stretch of the imagination, you can be considered a public figure. If legal precedent says that you are, a libel case becomes harder to prove. That’s when malice becomes the major issue. In any event, the first step is to send a retraction demand to the Post. It’s required by law before we file a suit. We have to give the newspaper an opportunity to offer a retraction—and in our case, an apology—before we involve the courts.”
“How long do we give them?” she asked. She hadn’t forgotten Funder’s warning about a long, drawn-out, excruciatingly personal experience.
“A week. They don’t need more. Want me to go ahead?”
One week wouldn’t be bad. Lily had anger enough to go for that. She suspected that if the Post either refused or ignored their demand, her anger would carry her further. Besides, she felt strong with Cassie there, felt empowered thinking that there might be a righting of wrongs. As Poppy had pointed out, it was her life, her work, her name. If she didn’t fight for it, no one else would.
“Yes,” she said calmly. “I want to go ahead.”
While Lily and Cassie talked, John rocked back in his office chair with his feet on the desk, his hands around his coffee mug, his eyes on the foggy lake, and his mind on why the Post had ignored Lily. It was no sweat off his back; his book would work either way. But the more he thought, the more annoyed he grew. On impulse he picked up the phone and punched out a familiar number.
“Brian Wallace,” mumbled a distracted voice at the other end of the line. Brian had been John’s editor at the Post. He continued to be Terry Sullivan’s editor.
“Hey, Brian. It’s Kip.”
The voice picked up. The two men had been friends. “How’re you doin’, Kip?”
“Great. You?”
“Busy. It never lets up. There are times I think you had the right idea, chucking the daily grind. So now you’re up there in the sticks. Who’da known a big story would break right in front of your nose?”
“It’s in front of your nose. It happened in Boston.”
“But she’s from your town. Terry says you’re clamming up on us.”
“Terry wanted information I didn’t have. And even if I’d known something, I wouldn’t have given it to Terry,” John admitted, knowing that Brian would understand. Terry made enemies right and left.
“Huh,” Brian said. “That’s blunt. So. Want to give that info to me?”
“What’s to give?”
“She isn’t up there?”
“If she is, she’s hiding out good. People around town haven’t seen her.” Neither statement was a lie. Misleading, perhaps, but Brian Wallace had taught him well. “We’re just following the story. Today’s was interesting. It isn’t often that the paper issues apologies.”
Brian blew out a breath. “The Church was pissed.”
“Now everyone up here is pissed. They’re wondering why Lily didn’t get an apology, too.”
Brian made a harsher sound. “Lily Blake should apologize to us. Christ, if she hadn’t said those things, we wouldn’t be embarrassed now.”
Not wanting to tip his hand about talking with Lily, John began treading with greater care. “Do you really think she said those things? Or did Terry manufacture them?”
“I wouldn’t have run it if he had.”
“Do you know for sure that he didn’t?”
There was a short pause, then a cooler voice. “Is that an accusation?”
“Come off it, Brian. This is me you’re talking to. I know what went on behind the scenes there a time or two. I worked with Terry. I also went to school with the guy. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s fabricated a story.”
“Careful, John.” They were opponents now. “Statements like that can be libelous.”
“And what he’s written about Lily Blake isn’t? Aren’t you worried she’ll sue?”
“Nope.”
He sounded so sure, John was more annoyed than before. “Why not? The story was false. You admitted it yourself. Doesn’t that tell you Terry got it wrong?”
“Christ, John,” Brian shot back, “do you honestly think we’d have run a story like that without damn good cause to believe it? Do you honestly think I’d have run it based on Terry’s say-so? I know what he’s done in the past, so I watch him closely. He’d been telling me about that relationship for weeks, right from the very first rumors that Rossetti might be elevated, and I told him I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole unless he got more than circumstantial evidence. But he got it. I have a tape. A tape, John. Lily Blake said those things, no doubt about that. So maybe she’s crazy. Maybe she has a crush on the guy. Maybe she’s fantasized about him so long and hard that she started thinking it was true. But she did say those things. I heard it myself.”
John hadn’t expected that. His mind shifted gears. “Did she know she was being taped?”
“We were told she did. But, hey, we’re being cautious. That’s why we haven’t gone public with it. We’re not stupid, Kip. This tape wouldn’t be admissible in court. But it justifies our running the story. Listening to the tape, we had cause to believe the story. There was no malice involved on our part. The lady’s nuts.”
Poppy had known about the apology issued to the Cardinal well before Lily called to get in touch with Cassie. She had heard about it early from three separate friends, all of whom had heard it on television and were shocked that the apology stopped short of Lily. Between calls from those friends, she fielded others coming in from the media. The callers’ names were familiar, their voices urgent. They wanted to know the reaction of Lily’s hometown to this latest turn of events.
She told the one who called looking for Charlie Owens, “We believed in Lily all along.”
She patched the one wanting Armand Bayne on to Armand’s house, trusting that he would handle the man with ease.
To the one who called looking for Maida, she said, “We’re relieved that Lily has been exonerated,” though that wasn’t anywhere near the truth. But Maida was at the cider house and wasn’t about to take the call, and Poppy figured that if the papers were going to print comments, those comments might as well stress Lily’s innocence.
The phone rang for Willie Jake. She pressed his button and said into her headset, “Lake Henry P
olice Department. This call is being recorded.”
“William Jacobs, please,” said a voice she hadn’t heard before. It was wonderfully deep and decidedly male.
When Willie Jake had called in, he was on his way to Charlie’s for an early lunch. “He’s not here. May I help you?”
“That depends,” the man said in a good-humored way. “My name is Griffin Hughes. I’m a freelance writer putting together a story on privacy for Vanity Fair. I’m focusing on what happens when privacy is violated—the side effects to the people involved. I thought that the Lily Blake situation would fit right in. Lake Henry is her hometown. It occurs to me that people there may have thoughts about what’s happened to her.”
“Damn right we do,” Poppy said with feeling.
He chuckled and went on in the same deep-throated, easygoing way. “I thought I’d start with the chief of police, but his dispatcher sounds like she might be good. So. What do you think?”
“I think,” Poppy said, attempting to sound as easygoing as he had, “that I would be crazy to share my thoughts with you, because anything I say may be twisted and turned. If what’s happened to Lily has taught us anything, it’s that. You and your media colleagues are scum.”
“Hey,” he said gently, “don’t group me with the others. I don’t work for a newspaper. Besides, I’m on Lily’s side.”
“And you’re not looking to be paid for your story?”
“Of course, I am. But Lily is only one of the people I’m researching, and she isn’t the first. I started this project weeks ago. Most of my subjects have suffered when medical information was leaked, so Lily’s situation is different. I’m doing the story on spec. The magazine may reject it when the article’s done, but I think it’s an important piece to write.”
He sounded very nice and very reasonable. There was none of the urgency or arrogance she had heard in other media people who had called. She pictured him as a man of average height and weight, with a friendly smile and a sense of decency. He had to be a phony.
“What kind of a name is Griffin Hughes?” she asked disparagingly. “It doesn’t sound real.”
“Tell that to my dad,” came the answer. “And to his dad. I’m the third.”
“You’re trying to trick me. You’re deliberately sounding friendly and kind.”
“And honest.”
“That, too, but I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding sincere. Curiously, he asked, “Are you a native of Lake Henry?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“Few people my age here do. We’ve spent time in the big, wide world. We’re not rubes,” she said more harshly than she intended, but that deep voice conjured up an Adam’s apple full of virility, and she felt defensive.
He said a gentle “Shhhhh. No need to convince me. I’m on your side—uh—what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t say my name. See, you are trying to trick me.”
“No,” he said, sounding sorry again. “I’m just trying to imagine that we’re friends. You’re blunt. I like people like that. I like knowing where I stand.”
“Poppy,” she said. “My name is Poppy. I’m Lily Blake’s sister, and I’m angry about what happened to her. So’s the rest of the town. You can print that.”
“I’m not printing anything yet. All I’m doing is gathering information. I mean, there you are in a small town where everyone knows what you’re doing and when. Nothing’s private there. So maybe you don’t feel the need for privacy that city people do.”
“I just said we’re upset.”
“Yes, but are you upset about what happened to Lily, or about people like me intruding on your life?”
“Both.”
Griffin Hughes sighed. In a voice that was low and smooth, he said, “Okay. I’ve exhausted my welcome. I’ll try the chief another time. Take care, Poppy.”
“You, too,” Poppy said, severing the connection with a sense of relief. She might have liked to listen to that voice more—and then God only knew what she might have been charmed into saying.
CHAPTER 11
John couldn’t stop thinking about the tape. Its existence added a whole new twist to the story. But it was Monday, which meant that the week’s Lake News was priority one. He had dummied the pages and scanned in photos. Now he had to add meat.
The cover story was of three families that had recently moved from big cities to Lake Henry. The Taplins—Rachel and Bill and their four-month-old daughter, Tara—had come from New York. The Smiths—Lynne and Gary and their teenagers, Allyson, Robyn, Matt, and Charley—had come from Massachusetts. The Jamisons—Addie and Joe and their two chocolate labs, plus their three grown children, who visited during vacations—were from Baltimore. The three couples ranged in age from their late twenties to their late sixties, but the search for a better quality of life was common among them.
John had conducted interviews with each family the week before and had outlined the story by hand at home on Sunday. Pulling in his chair, he began composing on the computer. The writing was interrupted by the usual calls regarding public service announcements and classified ads. When the interruptions grew tiresome, he went down to the parlor and asked Jenny to answer the phones.
He explained to her twice what she needed to do. He made sure that the proper forms were on her desk. He highlighted in yellow the most important questions she needed to ask. When she looked terrified, he went over the procedure a third time. A third time, too, he told her that she was ready for this, that it was good training, that he knew, absolutely knew, she could do it well.
Closing the door to his office, he returned to his computer, but rather than writing about the lure of small-town life, he found himself in cyberspace, accessing the Post’s archives. There had always been grumbling when Terry Sullivan fabricated stories. John quickly located and printed out four such questionables that had appeared during his own final years with the paper. Then he called Steve Baker, an old pal who was still a reporter there.
“Hey, you!” Steve said with pleasure when he heard John’s voice. “Your ears must be burning. You’re the talk of the newsroom. We’re all wondering what you know about Lily Blake.”
“Not much,” John said. “She left here when she was eighteen, and I left ten years before that. Me, I’m wondering what you all know about Terry Sullivan. Is this another one of Terry’s cherries? Did he make it up?”
“That depends on who you ask,” Steve said without missing a beat. “The official story is that Lily misled Terry. Taken with all the other stuff he gathered, what she told him had the ring of truth.”
“That’s the official story. What’s yours?”
There was a pause, then a lower “He’s been building this story for months.”
“Following Lily?”
“And Rossetti. When he was named Archbishop of Boston, everyone knew he was in line to be elevated. The only question was when. The Catholic community expected it sooner. Once rumor spread that the elevation would come on or around the third anniversary of his coming to Boston, Terry got busy. That was six months ago. It was a fishing expedition. He was looking for anything he could find. He tried focusing on other women, only nothing panned out.”
“Did Brian propose the story, or was it Terry’s all the way?”
“Terry’s.”
“Does he have something against the Cardinal?”
“Terry doesn’t need something to savage a subject. He’s vicious when he smells a good story. He wanted this one for the Headline Team. Brian resisted.”
That was consistent with what Brian had told John. “Okay. But the paper says Terry’s work was on the up-and-up. What’s the newsroom buzz?”
“Geez, Kip. I’m not exactly unbiased. Terry has stolen good assignments from me.”
“The buzz?” John coaxed, then waited out a long pause. He knew how it would end. Terry Sullivan was a powerful
writer who made powerful enemies.
Steve kept his voice low, but it was vehement. “He decided there was a story, only he couldn’t find anything incriminating. He was out of time, and everything else had fallen through, so he wrote a piece that was half speculation, half imagination. Most of us have met Rossetti. If ever there was a decent, honest, upstanding guy, he’s it. Hey, I’m saying that and I’m not even Catholic.”
“But Lily Blake is quoted as saying it was true.”
“Oh, yeah. We know how that works. Ask a leading question, you get a malleable answer.”
“Do you know about the tape?”
Steve’s voice remained low, but its monotone was telling. There was buzz about a tape, too. “What tape? If there was a tape, you’d have read about it on page one. Did you?”
“What about if he made a tape without her knowing?”
“That’s a crime. If the paper knew about it and didn’t do anything, they’re guilty of aiding and abetting. So the Post is in potential deep shit here. And”—Steve hurried on, talking under his breath—“the shit thickens if the Post ran a potentially libelous story on the say-so of an illegally gotten tape. So the paper won’t mention any tape. I’d say that gives Terry Sullivan the kind of protection he likes.”
John agreed. So did two other old media friends he called. He made notes on these conversations. Then he called Ellen Henderson, a college classmate of Terry’s and his. The college was a small one, where students knew one another and alumni stuck around. The entire Development Office staff had been students at one time or another. That was how John knew Ellen was there. She had called him several months earlier looking for money. He had pleaded poverty at the time. Now he wished he hadn’t.
“I’ll make a deal,” he told her right off the bat. “Send me a pledge form and I’ll do what I can.”
“In exchange for?” Ellen asked, sounding amused but affectionately so.
“Information on Terry Sullivan.”
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