Lake News

by Barbara Delinsky

  “You’re investigating me?”

  John wasn’t about to defend himself. Was he pulling a Terry Sullivan? No way! He wasn’t going public with allegations, wasn’t smearing for the sake of the smear. Like the information on Rizzo and Barr, this was just good to have. “What kind of writer cheats?”

  “In college? College is ancient history. Besides, you have no proof.”

  “The thing is, I don’t think you want the debate. It could hurt your career. And then”—John was on a roll—“there’s the weird personal stuff, like three wives. I thought we were friends back when, Terry, but I never knew you were married once, let alone three times. We were together in college. None of our other friends was married. None knew that you were. Not then, not the other two times. Why the big secret? Three times—why the big secret? What do you do to them, Terry? Keep them tied up and gagged? Something stinks about those wives—I’ll bet they have stories to tell. And then there’s the Cardinal. What the hell is Cardinal Rossetti to you?” There had to be something, had to be something. “Do you have a personal grudge against him? Or against the Church? Are you another little altar boy who was molested by a priest?”

  Terry’s voice was icy. “I was never an altar boy.”

  “Maybe a choirboy, then? There has to be a reason why you battered an innocent woman in an attempt to bring down the Cardinal.”

  “What’s she to you?” Terry threw back. “Are you fucking her, Kipling? Trying to make me look bad to make you look good?”

  John rose from his chair. “I don’t make anyone out to be something he isn’t, but I’m warning you. You look into her life, she’ll look into yours.”

  “She will, or you will?”

  “Same difference,” John said and slammed down the phone. Seconds later, he picked it back up and called Brian Wallace at the Post. “Quick question,” he said when Brian didn’t sound thrilled to hear from him. “That tape Terry made of his conversation with Lily Blake?”

  “If you’re thinking about reporting it to the AG, you won’t be hurting us. We have no proof she didn’t know. We ran the story on the belief that she did. I’ve checked with our lawyers on this. The paper is covered legally. They bring a case against us, and it’ll fail.”

  He sounded a bit too defensive to John—and that wasn’t even why he was calling. “Have you checked the tape’s authenticity?”

  “What do you mean?”

  John thought his meaning was perfectly clear. “Have you checked the tape’s authenticity?” he repeated.

  “Authenticity—as in, was that really Lily’s voice?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s a good point. What I meant was whether the tape had been artificially manipulated.”

  “What in the hell does that mean?”

  “Cut and spliced, Brian. You know how it’s done. Words are shifted around or removed entirely. TV does it all the time. It’s called editing an interview—only, the end result often conveys a very different message from the original. Do you think Terry did that? Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of an editing machine could have helped. Hell, Terry’s a crafty guy. He might have done it himself.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the lady in question denies saying the things he quotes her in the paper as saying. I’m assuming that if you heard that tape, it must sound pretty much the way he reported it, or you wouldn’t have printed it that way.”

  “Have you talked with her?”

  “That’s not the issue,” John said with waning patience. “The issue is whether Terry doctored that tape.”

  There was a groan. “Now, when do you suggest he did that? He didn’t have time, Kip. You forget fast. It was late, and he was working on deadline to get that piece done.”

  “Ten to one, he had the text written days before, all but the quotes.”

  “Yeah, and he left Lily, raced back here, and was on the phone with me by eleven, playing the tape. So when would he have had time to edit it?”

  “Did you hear the whole thing?”

  “I heard the incriminating parts.”

  “But how do you know he didn’t skip around? How do you know he didn’t take those parts out of the context that would have made them a joke?”

  “Because I played it myself the next day.”

  “When? Morning? Afternoon? He could’ve played excerpts for you over the phone at night, then had it edited before you listened to the whole thing in person. Think he did that?”

  Brian grunted. “How in the hell would I know?”

  “You could have the tape checked.”

  “Why would I want to?”

  “To cover your butt,” John suggested. “The story Terry wrote doesn’t jibe with what the lady claims she said.”

  “She lies.”

  “Or he lies. His story’s already fallen apart. Are you condoning shoddy journalism?”

  Brian sighed. “I’m not gonna take that personally. I’m gonna remind myself that Terry wasn’t real nice to you and that maybe, just maybe, you’d like to see him fall. But my interest is this paper, and it ain’t gonna fall. Trust me on this, John. That tape is real.”

  Typically, on a Wednesday afternoon, John visited Gus, but he didn’t today. His exchange with Sullivan had fired him up. He spent the afternoon making phone calls. Following a trail of rental applications, he located two of Terry’s wives with frightening ease. The most recent one still lived in Boston. Her name was Maddie Johnson, and she had been tipped off.

  “He said you’d call. I have nothing to say.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have nothing to say,” she repeated.

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “He warned that you’d push me.”

  “Push you about what?” John asked, keeping his voice even and reasonable. “Hey, I don’t want to know anything about you. Terry’s the one who interests me.”

  “Yeah, well, we were married,” she grumbled.

  “But you aren’t anymore. Why would you protect him?”

  “Because he’s dangerous! I tell something about him, he tells something about me. I have secrets, just like the next guy. And you’re media, like Terry. You know exactly what I mean. You’re all dangerous.”

  John expected her to hang up on him. When she didn’t, he grew gentler. “I don’t know what Terry did to you while you were married—I truly don’t want to know—but he ruined an innocent woman in this Lily Blake thing. I’m just trying to understand why.”

  “Ego. He wanted headlines. He always wanted headlines.”

  “And that’s it? No deeper motive? No grudge against the Catholic Church?”

  “Why are you asking me?” she cried. “You think he only lies in his work? I was married to him for four years and I never knew he was married before until his ex-wife called on the phone. So he told me the marriage had been so bad that he had to pretend it never happened or he’d go crazy, but then I called someone at the paper, and he didn’t know about me. How do you think I felt then? I kept asking Terry why we never did anything with people. He just wanted me home. Didn’t want me to work, nothing. He’d get angry when I saw friends, and I was the one who lived here even before he came to town. He said he wanted kids. Hah! I bought into the bit about waiting until we had enough money saved up, only we weren’t saving a whole lot. He was sending it to his mother—a woman I never even met because he said she was crazy and totally out of his life. But she was dead. I learned that during the divorce. I mean, after a while you start to wonder what’s real and what isn’t!”

  In the sudden silence, she must have realized what she’d said. “Fu-uck. He’s going to kill me.”

  “No, he won’t,” John assured her. “He’ll never know you talked to me.”

  “You’ll print what I said.”

  “I won’t. I told you, Terry’s the one I want. My guess is that any one of his other wives would say the same thing you have.”

  “There was only one wife befor
e me.”

  “There were two.”

  She swore again. “He’s crazy.”

  “I’d say so, but I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just a writer who’s wondering why he went after Francis Rossetti. Have any thoughts on that?”

  She gave a sarcastic laugh. “I am the last one who’d know. A week after we met we were married in a no-name town in the middle of the night by a justice of the peace whose shingle was hanging in front of his house. In the four years we were together, Terry insisted he knew from nothing about religion. Considering all the other lies, I’d say he probably lied about that, too. If there’s an answer to your question, I’d be real interested in hearing it.”

  John ended the call feeling that he was inching toward answers. He came even closer with Terry’s first wife. Rebecca Hooper sounded like an even quieter and simpler sort. She, too, recognized John’s name.

  “He said you’d call,” she said in a timid voice. Based on when they were married, John guessed she had to be at least forty, but she sounded half that.

  Gently, he asked, “Did he say why?”

  “He said you’d try to blackmail me into telling things about us. But there’s nothing to tell,” she said quickly. “Honest.”

  John wasn’t pushing her on that, any more than he had pushed Maddie. “Did he tell you that I went to college with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have recognized my name from that.”

  “No. He never talked about school when he was home.”

  “Why not?”

  She was slow in answering, and then she said, “I don’t want to talk with you.”

  “I won’t hurt you. I’m only trying to understand Terry a little.”

  “Good luck.”

  John chuckled. “Yup. He’s an enigma. He only lets you get so close. I figure something happened when he was a kid to make him that way.”

  “Do you know where he grew up?”

  “No.” No one did, not even Ellen Henderson, who had checked Terry’s college files for John. They showed a Dallas address for the last two years of high school only. He had called the high school there, but it was a large one. He had been passed from office to office, to no avail.

  “Do you?” he asked Rebecca now.

  “Meadville.”

  “Pennsylvania?” John asked.

  “Yes.”

  It was a start. “I appreciate your telling me that.”

  “I only knew him in Lancaster.” The college was there. “But you’re right.”

  “About what?”

  “Something happening in Meadville.”

  “Any idea what?”

  “No. I have to go.”

  She hung up the phone then, but that was fine. John turned to his computer and began to browse. Meadville was workable. It was a fraction of the size of Dallas.

  In no time he had the phone number of the assistant principal at the high school in Meadville. The man seemed delighted that John had called and was more than happy to talk. “Terry left here well before I arrived, but you can be sure all of us newcomers know about him now. Our current principal actually taught him when he was here. He was the one who tipped us off that Terry had broken that story. I mean, what do we know about reading bylines, and in the Boston papers? Never would have known a thing if the principal’s sister wasn’t living in Boston and recognized the name from Al talking about him all those years ago.”

  “Was he that memorable?” John asked. A lot of time had passed since Terry’s high school days.

  “To an English teacher he was,” the assistant principal answered. “He was an anomaly among sixteen-year-olds. He could write. His brother couldn’t. That one was a total loss in the literary department, but he was smart, peoplewise, the nicest guy in the world.”

  John hadn’t known there was a brother, as he hadn’t known there were wives. “How many years between them?”

  “Oh, a good four or five. Maybe more. Like I say, I wasn’t here then. Someone mentioned it the other day, but mostly they’re talking about Terry. Al had him for freshman and sophomore English. He was a standout, light-years above the others. Are you doing a story on him?”

  “I am,” John admitted. “Did he have friends?”

  “Well, I couldn’t tell you about that, not being here myself at the time. We’ve only been talking about his writing. He did some wonderful pieces for the school magazine. One that he wrote as a sophomore won all sorts of awards. It was even reprinted in the Tribune.”

  “The Meadville Tribune?”

  “The same. I have a copy of it sitting right here on my desk. We circulated it when we learned of Terry’s role in exposing the Rossetti-Blake affair. I’d be happy to fax it to you, if you’d like.”

  Five minutes later, John was reading a copy of the article. It was about life in an Italian neighborhood in Pittsburgh in the aftermath of World War II. The piece wasn’t long. Reading it, John saw germs of Terry’s current style and skill. Even back then, Terry didn’t use three adjectives when a single potent one would suffice, and he did choose potent ones. He described local personalities in ways that made them come alive. Not that John wanted to cross paths with any of them soon. The piece wasn’t flattering. Its villain was the local Catholic church.

  The view was surprisingly dark to have been written by a sixteen-year-old. But it wasn’t surprising at all, if that sixteen-year-old had a gripe.

  John was on the right track. He could feel it in his gut. He needed to know what that gripe was.

  But later. Lake News was ready for pickup. Satisfied to put Terry on hold at such an optimistic point, he drove up to Elkland, loaded three thousand copies of the paper into the Tahoe, then delivered them to post offices there, and in Hedgeton, Cotter Cove, and Center Sayfield. All of the towns but the last had general stores, so he delivered additional copies to those, and to the small family restaurant in Center Sayfield; and inevitably he saw people he knew and stopped to talk, even caught dinner with a friend in Cotter Cove. It was well into evening by the time he returned to Lake Henry. He dropped a bale of papers at the post office, at Charlie’s, and finally at Armand’s, and through it all, there was enough to distract him that he didn’t think about Terry again until he was heading around the lake road toward Wheaton Point.

  Then it hit him.

  * * *

  Lily was out on the dock with her legs folded and her elbows on her knees. There was a loon out on the lake tonight. She had heard a single call, then nothing. She peered through the darkness, trying to spot it, but the lake was an inky mass of shadow and flow.

  The whisper of a paddle broke the silence, the approach of a canoe. She held her breath, thinking it might be John, but it passed her dock without turning in.

  A night rower? A gawker? She might have worried, now that word of her being here had reached the outside world, if she hadn’t known that the outside world couldn’t get onto the lake. A few more locals than usual had boated past the cottage of late, but if they were hoping to catch sight of her, they were respectful enough not to stop.

  Sure enough, this canoe was soon out of sight and sound. Not John, then. He would have stopped. She might have liked that. He wasn’t all bad.

  But being without him was fine, too. It was a mild night for early October. She wore jeans and John’s sweater, which was miles too big but a comfortable substitute for the sweaters she had in Boston. The shore smelled of pine. It blended with the jasmine oil—Celia’s jasmine oil—that she had poured into her bath after work. She felt clean and fresh, comfortably tired, oddly content.

  She began to sing softly, hoping to coax a loon into song, but the night remained still. After a time, she returned to the house, put on a CD, and sat on the porch listening. It was a Harry Connick, Jr. kind of night, smooth and rhythmic, a little lazy, sexy perhaps. She was humming to “Where or When” when she heard tires on gravel. She stopped, turned her head, held her breath.

  Was she found out?

  The en
gine stopped. A door opened and shut. It was a heavy sound, from either a van or a truck.

  “Lily?” John called.

  Relieved but cautious, she rose and went to the porch rail. He spotted her the minute he came around the side of the cottage.

  “Good news,” he fairly sang, taking the first two stairs in a single stride.

  Lily was afraid to hope.

  He hooked his wrists over her shoulders. His face was nearly level with hers, lit by the lamp in the window behind her. It gave his eyes an excited glow and added warmth to his mouth.

  Sounding triumphant, he said, “Terry Sullivan grew up in Meadville, Pennsylvania. The family moved away before his junior year, but up until then he wrote for his high school literary magazine. His most renowned piece was about life in an Italian neighborhood in Pittsburgh in the late forties.” He paused, clearly waiting for her to react.

  She didn’t follow. “Yes?”

  “Sound familiar? Feel familiar?”

  Bemused, she shook her head.

  He beamed. “Cardinal Rosetti grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Pittsburgh. It was one of those things that was buried in all the material written about the man after his elevation to Cardinal. How many Italian neighborhoods were there in Pittsburgh back then?” He held up a lone finger in answer. “So, is this a coincidence? It could be.”

  Lily could see his excitement. “But you don’t think so.”

  He shook his head. “The same Terry Sullivan who so recently tried to skewer Francis Rossetti, wrote—at the tender age of sixteen—a vividly detailed essay about the Cardinal’s hometown. It wasn’t Terry’s hometown. So how did he know details?”

  “Maybe he visited? Or spent summers there? Maybe someone he knew came from there?” She was getting into it, catching the excitement. “Someone who knew Father Fran?”