Lake News

by Barbara Delinsky

  She tried to call, but Poppy picked up and didn’t know where he was. So she rushed in and out of the shower, tried the office again—then realized that she didn’t dare say anything on the phone. Cell phones were far from secure, and hadn’t her supposedly secure line in Boston been tapped into not so long ago? Lord knew whether John’s was or not.

  She hurried with her makeup and hair, pulled on that lone pantsuit of hers, and drove the old Ford wagon as fast as she dared around the lake to the center of town.

  There were cars there. Cars and vans. Vans with satellite dishes on top, the names of local stations and national affiliates in large letters on the sides, and reporters flanking them testing cameras and mikes.

  Lily’s stomach began to churn.

  Doing her best to look like a nobody, she turned in at the post office, but she had to pull up on the grass beside the yellow Victorian, because there were cars there, too—and reporters. She was barely out of the wagon when they spotted her, and suddenly the feeling of being hunted was back, as strong as it had been in Boston.

  She ran toward the side door. They fell into step.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Have you talked with the Cardinal?”

  “Would you comment on the lawsuit?”

  John opened the door when she reached it and closed it the instant she was inside. She was shaking badly. He held her, but the shaking didn’t stop.

  “It’s starting again,” she whispered, panicky.

  But John’s voice was calm. “Only because they have no one else to chase. Wait fifteen minutes. It’ll be a different ball game then.”

  She looked up at him. “Where’s the paper?”

  “Across the street in the church. Willie Jake’s guarding it.”

  “Is there anything in it about Maida?” she asked, searching his face for signs of betrayal, but he looked more puzzled than anything.

  “No. I talk about what you went through in Boston. Mostly it’s about Terry.”

  She was weak with relief.

  “Did you and she talk?” he asked.

  Lily nodded. She wanted to tell him. Wanted to tell him. Wanted to, but couldn’t. The trust she felt was still too new.

  He held her back. His eyes were the deep brown that she loved, but stripped bare now, naked and honest. “I traced Maida back to Linsworth, but I couldn’t get myself to poke around. If something happened there, it’s her business. If she chose to tell you, I’m glad, but you don’t have to tell me. There’s nothing I need to know that I don’t already.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. “There are things I begrudge about Maida, like how she treated you when you were growing up, even how she looks at me now, but she’s a good person, Lily. A decent person. She gave your father many happy years, and she’s kept the business going. Whatever may have happened in Linsworth doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, she is who she is today. Period.”

  In the final minute that his eyes held hers, Lily loved him as much for respecting Maida as for not making Lily betray her.

  He checked his watch. “Are you ready for this?” he asked softly.

  It was a minute before she shifted gears, but the answer to his question came quickly. Was she ready? She was not. She had visions of John presenting his case and the press rallying around Terry as one of their own, in which case the entire effort would backfire.

  Then again, it might not.

  Was she ready? She nodded.

  “Want to go?”

  She did not. She wanted to go home and hide in the safe little cocoon she had made for herself. More than that, though, she wanted vindication.

  She nodded again.

  John straightened and took a deep breath. Lily was thinking that as he stood there wearing a blazer, shirt, and tie with his jeans, he had to be the most beautiful man in the world. Then he opened the door.

  CHAPTER 29

  The meeting hall was full. Lily saw it the instant John led her in from a side door. Every pew was taken, many with people holding equipment. Floodlights, mounted on high poles, glared down on television reporters who stood in the aisles adjusting earpieces and feeding preliminaries to their stations. Townsfolk filled the back of the hall and the small balcony. The low drone of talk was joined by the click and whirr of cameras, evoking memory enough to make Lily’s heart pound.

  A long table had been set up at the front. A gaggle of microphones, held together with duct tape, was already mounted there, with a snakepit of wires spilling out across the floor.

  Lily took the seat John indicated. He had barely taken the one on her right when Cassie slipped into the one on her left, leaned in close, and explained her presence in a whisper, “Just in case someone tries to trip you up.”

  John leaned in from his side. “The elderly couple in the front row are Armand and Liddie. You know them, don’t you?”

  Lily did, but she hadn’t seen them in years. Armand looked frighteningly frail, though there was a spot of high color on his cheeks and a definite gleam in his eye.

  “Armand rarely leaves the house,” John went on. “The group to his right is from New York; to his left, Washington. The pair behind him are from Springfield. I see Chicago, Kansas City, Philly, Hartford, and Albany, and that’s just the first few pews. The New England media are behind them—Concord, Manchester, Burlington, Portland, Providence.”

  Lily spotted baby-faced Paul Rizzo several rows from the front. “Did you invite Rizzo?”

  John shook his head, but his eyes twinkled. He was clearly delighted that Rizzo had come.

  She spotted other faces she remembered from the pack that had followed her in Boston, and familiar faces that were more friendly—Charlie and Annette Owens, Leila Higgins, Alice Bayburr and her family. Poppy’s friends filled one pew, with Poppy in her chair at the end of a row. When their eyes caught, she gave Lily a thumbs-up and a grin. It calmed her a bit.

  “See the homely guy about halfway back on the left?” Cassie whispered.

  Lily searched, found, nodded.

  “Justin Barr.”

  “Omigod.”

  John’s voice came again, still soft but filled now with barely bridled excitement. “Check the guy at two o’clock, way over there on the end.”

  Lily caught her breath this time. There was no mistaking that mustache. She felt revulsion, then absolute glee. Looking at John, she whispered, “What’s he doing here?”

  “Must think he’s getting stuff for his piece.”

  “Doesn’t he know?”

  John smiled. “I didn’t say.” The smile faded. “Ready?”

  John couldn’t have been happier with the turnout. He had expected the New England contingent, plus a handful of other stalwarts, and had assumed that the hall would be comfortably filled. Packed was a treat. The fact of Sullivan, Rizzo, and Barr being there was a triple treat. Though he hadn’t invited any of the three, he wasn’t surprised they had come. They would be there to defy him. Arrogant people were predictable.

  Clearing his throat, he leaned toward the microphones, and in a voice that would have carried even without amplification, began by thanking everyone for coming. He gave a short history of Lake News—a little self-promo, but what the hell—and credited Armand with its success. Then he drew up the paper’s new issue.

  Having gone through the speech dozens of times in his mind, he spoke without notes. “Last month I followed the story about the alleged relationship between Cardinal Rossetti and Lily Blake with interest, in part because Ms. Blake was from Lake Henry, in part because I used to work with the reporter who broke the story, Terry Sullivan. I had doubts about the story’s validity from the start, so I wasn’t surprised when the Vatican cleared Cardinal Rossetti and the Boston Post had to issue him an apology. But then I had to stand by, as did Ms. Blake and her family, and watch the papers blame her for the scandal.”

  He felt Lily’s leg shake and pressed his thigh to hers to steady it. He didn’t blame her for being unsettled. T
he faces out there were hungry. Add to that the hum of video cameras, the snap of cameras, and the rustle of notepaper, and the setting was far different from her usual gigs. Likewise the stakes.

  Feeling the responsibility of that, he spoke clearly. “Everyone who knew her here vouched for Ms. Blake’s reasonableness, her competence, and her stability. Not a single person voiced anything remotely consistent with the kind of unbalanced condition the papers reported. To us, it sounded suspiciously like the Post trying to justify publishing a bad story. The question is why that bad story was written in the first place.” He held up Lake News. “This new issue addresses that question. You’ll all get copies, so you’ll be able to read the details. I’d just like to summarize them.”

  That was all he wanted—to summarize his findings before a captive audience. Calling a press conference—making reporters and journalists travel—created an event. That maximized the odds that the story would be covered well. Looking out at the audience, which was captive indeed, he felt good. Glancing at Terry, he felt even better.

  Terry appeared complacent. Without quite staring, John kept tabs on his expression. He wanted to see the minute it changed. And it would. Oh, it would.

  “From the start, this story was Terry Sullivan’s. Once it hit the air, others jumped on the bandwagon, but he was the one who thought it up and pushed it through. He lobbied for it even when his editors at the Post were wary. They resisted printing it until he produced a tape in which Ms. Blake’s own voice confirmed an affair with Cardinal Rossetti.”

  Worried that Lily would be uneasy with those words, he pressed his thigh to hers again. Wait, it told her. Just wait.

  “That tape was illegal,” he said. “Ms. Blake didn’t know it was being made. Last week, that tape was also proved to be bogus.” A murmur slipped through the crowd.

  Terry’s features tightened, but he remained composed. John marveled at the conceit that kept him from squirming, marveled at the cockiness that made him so blind he couldn’t see—couldn’t guess, couldn’t dream—where John was headed.

  John went on. “Those of us who know how Mr. Sullivan works urged the Post to examine the tape for authenticity, but they refused. It was only after evidence emerged pointing to malice on his part that they acted. Their own experts found that the tape had been cut and spliced, which is consistent with Ms. Blake’s story. All along she has said that Mr. Sullivan led her into a hypothetical dialogue and then rearranged her words for his quotes.”

  Terry was slowly shaking his head, suggesting something pathetic about John’s attempt to discredit him.

  “Last Friday,” John said, “the Post fired Mr. Sullivan.”

  Terry actually rolled his eyes. But John saw surprise on a face or two.

  “It was done quickly and quietly,” he went on, “the whole thing swept right under the rug, with Ms. Blake left as the villain of the piece. The real villain is what this week’s Lake News is about. Mr. Sullivan was the force behind this scandal. He pushed for the story even when his superiors discouraged it. He went to the extreme of falsifying evidence to make it happen. Common sense said he had a reason for doing that. Lake News discloses that reason.”

  Lily watched and waited. It was the moment. Terry had gone still.

  But something drew her eye farther back in the hall—something, someone. Maida was there. She seemed lost in a large black jacket, but it was definitely her. Lily tried to catch her eye, but it was riveted on John as he went on.

  “Mr. Sullivan grew up in Meadville, Pennsylvania. An essay of his that was published in the local paper when he was a teenager suggests that even then he held a grudge against the Catholic Church, and no wonder. Sources in Meadville confirm that his father used to beat his mother and him. Why? Jealousy. His mother came to that marriage loving someone else, someone she had been with through high school and college, but who had left her to enter the seminary. That man was Fran Rossetti.”

  A murmur rose. Terry slid from his pew and snaked toward the rear, but the wall of townsfolk tightened and wouldn’t let him through. The audience turned, searching him out as he tried to escape. Cameramen focused in. Strobes flashed.

  An eye for an eye, Lily thought in a moment’s perverse rage. People in glass houses. Do unto others.

  Unable to get through, Terry turned and drew himself up. Looking straight at Lily, he said in a loud voice, “This is a classic case of shooting the messenger when you don’t like the message.”

  John was on his feet so fast that Lily didn’t even feel it coming. His voice boomed. “Wrong. It’s a classic case of the misuse of power.”

  “Exactly,” Terry shouted back. “You’re trying to turn this story around for the sake of a book. Let’s talk about that hefty contract you have.”

  “There’s no contract,” John said. “There’s no book. Anything that might have been in it”—he held up Lake News—“is here.”

  “That paper is filled with slander,” Terry charged. “I hope you’re prepared for a lawsuit, because that’s what you’re getting.” Indignant, he swung his arms around and forced an opening in the crowd.

  Lily remembered doing much the same thing in Boston when she’d had to fight her way through the streets. She hoped Terry was feeling even a tad of the same humiliation, the same helplessness, frustration, and fear. She wanted him to think twice before inflicting it on others again. She wanted his colleagues to learn from his example.

  Two photographers, one reporter, and a cameraman followed him out, but the rest of the audience turned back to John.

  Maida was sitting straighter. Lily didn’t know whether it was anger or pride. She prayed that her mother was understanding more about the situation now, even feeling an iota of satisfaction on her behalf.

  Composed again, John sat down. “That’s all I have. If there are questions, we’d be glad to answer them.”

  Hands shot up, voices rang out.

  “Was the Cardinal involved in your investigation?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have proof of a connection between Mr. Sullivan’s mother and the Cardinal?”

  “Yes. There’s a senior prom picture in the Cardinal’s high school year-book, and numerous people able to verify it.” He wasn’t mentioning Terry’s brother. It wasn’t his intent to sic the press on the priest. Nor did he want to make trouble for the Cardinal. A high school relationship was perfectly acceptable and would be easily explained on Rossetti’s part. John said only what he had to to bolster Lily’s case. Vindicating her was the thing.

  “Does the Cardinal know about the connection to Mr. Sullivan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has the Post issued an apology to Ms. Blake?”

  “No.”

  “Will you demand one?” a reporter asked Lily.

  Cassie leaned toward the microphones. “A lawsuit is pending. Ms. Blake has no comment at this time.”

  The next question came to John. “You’ve tried and convicted Mr. Sullivan. Isn’t that an abuse of your own power?”

  John couldn’t believe the man’s stupidity. “Excuse me,” he said to the reporter who asked. “Would you identify yourself.”

  “Paul Rizzo, Cityside.”

  “Paul Rizzo. Ahhh.” Utter stupidity. John was thrilled. He couldn’t have hoped for better if he had scripted the scene himself. Paul Rizzo had just put himself on the witness stand. He was fair game now. “What qualifications do you have to be in this room?”

  There were a number of confused looks in the audience, not the least of which belonged to Paul. “I’ve been on the Cityside staff for seven years.”

  “Before that?” John asked. Lake News didn’t cover this. It focused on Terry’s malice and the harm done to Lily. But a golden opportunity was looking him in the eye. “What’s your educational background?”

  Rizzo glance uneasily around. Tightly, he said, “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Is it? You pride yourself in saying you have an undergraduate degree from Duke and
a graduate one from NYU. That’s what your Cityside bio says. I assume that’s what you told them when you applied for the job. I’ve heard you refer to those degrees, myself. The thing is, they don’t exist. According to the records at Duke, you flunked out after two years. NYU doesn’t have a record of your being there at all. So that’s misrepresentation. If you lie about those things, can we trust what you write?”

  Lily actually felt sorry for him. Being humiliated publicly wasn’t fun, and two wrongs certainly didn’t make a right. But John wasn’t a cruel man. If there had been another way, he would have taken it.

  Besides, painful as the lesson might be for Paul Rizzo, there was a moral to the story. She held her head higher. She could have sworn Maida gave a small smile.

  “Justice” was the operable word. John told himself that as Rizzo sputtered, “Your information’s wrong. Besides, where I went to school is my business.”

  “That’s right,” John said. “Like where Ms. Blake shops is her business. Like where she eats and vacations is her business.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “Since you aren’t valid, that question isn’t,” John said and pointed at another reporter. “Yes?”

  “Rizzo’s question is fair,” that one said. “You pulled strings to get us up here for a press conference. Isn’t that an abuse of power?”

  John might have been guilty of using people at earlier times in his career, but not now. There wasn’t the slightest pulse of a tic under his eye. He was confident.

  “I didn’t force anyone here. There was no false pretense. I said I had new information. I invited you here, and you came. I’ve now given you that new information.”

  Another reporter asked, “What about the issue of trying and convicting Mr. Sullivan?”

  “This isn’t a trial. It’s investigative journalism. I’ve simply printed the results in my paper.”

  “How does that differ from what he did to Ms. Blake?”