by Violet North
Penny laughed. “You won’t be old in ten or fifteen years.” She carried her drink into the living room, and Carly followed her. They were on their second round, and Carly had to move carefully to keep the green liquid from sloshing over onto her mom’s beige carpet.
Penny set her drink down on an end table next to the brown leather couch, pushed her glass up further on her nose, and plopped down. “So, do you think he’s going to fire you?”
Carly sat in the brown rocking chair across from her friend. “It sure seems like it. Ugh. Then what am I going to do?”
“You’ll find another job, that’s what. But maybe you can keep him from firing you.”
“How? It seems like he doesn’t want me to work on any stories. Plus, he doesn’t want to have me around. So what can I even do? Maybe I should just quit while I’m ahead. It’s my first job out of college, and I’ve only been there for a week, so I could just leave it off my resume.”
“Find a story yourself.” Penny picked up her margarita and took a long swig.
Carly cocked her head at her friend. “That’s not a terrible idea,” she said slowly. Then she shook her head and took a sip of her own drink. “But how? I have, like, zero connections in Newton.” She dropped her head back onto the chair. “Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a reporter after all. Fired from my first job. Really?”
“You haven’t been fired yet. Hey, you said that Jessica lady from your office seemed to know about something the other day when you talked to her. Maybe it’s a scoop. Think you can find a way to get her to spill the beans to you?”
Carly shook her head. “She didn’t seem like she was going to say anything. Maybe I read her wrong.”
“I highly doubt that. Girl, talking to you is like taking truth serum. People are going to tell you what they know whether they want to or not. Maybe you just need to talk to her again and turn on some of your reporter magic. Think of her as a hostile witness or whatever.”
Carly rolled her eyes. “I’m not a lawyer, Pen. I’m a reporter.”
“Right! And who do you think gets the dirt when the lawyers can’t? Reporters! Don’t forget about Bernstein.”
Carly raised an eyebrow and nodded thoughtfully. Then she jumped up and turned on some music, and they had a dance party like teenagers.
The rest of the weekend went by fast. Carly had a great time with Penny, and she couldn’t help wondering how different things would be if her friend had shown up for their beach vacation. Carly wouldn’t have had the fling with Donovan. Would her job be going easier now? Would she and the editor have still found each other attractive if they hadn’t had the affair but had just met on Carly’s first day at the paper?
On Monday morning, Carly dressed carefully and got to work early. She was on a mission, and she wanted to give herself plenty of time. Jessica wasn’t at the front desk when Carly arrived, so she went and got settled in at her cubicle and then headed back up to the lobby.
The receptionist looked up and smiled when she saw Carly. “Good morning!”
“Morning. Hey, I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”
“Sure!”
“I’m still looking for a story. Donovan doesn’t seem ready to give me one, and I’m kind of worried that, if I don’t have an opportunity to prove myself soon, I’ll be out on my ear.”
Jessica’s forehead wrinkled as she narrowed her eyes. “That’s terrible. Everyone really likes you here. The top reporters are saying you do a good job wrangling their notes into great stories.”
Carly flashed her best smile. “That’s good to hear.” She put on a sad look. “But I really want something of my own. You know, so I get the byline.” She moved closer to Jessica and leaned in, speaking in what she hoped was a conspiratorial voice. “Are you sure you don’t have a scoop you could give me to chase down?”
Jessica’s eyes darted back and forth. Aha! She did know something. Carly held her breath and tried to keep a puppy dog look on her face. Finally, the receptionist leaned even closer and spoke. “Okay, I really don’t know if this is even a story or not, but some people have called in saying that Monroe Manufacturing over on the east side of town is dumping chemicals illegally into the Cross River.” She glanced around again. “I told Donovan about the calls, but he hasn’t assigned it to anyone yet. He must not think it’s a real story.” She wrung her hands. “Please don’t tell him I told you about this.”
Carly pretended to use a zipper to close her lips. “If anything comes of it, I’ll tell him I heard it from a friend or stumbled on it myself. Thanks, Jessica. You’re a life saver!”
Carly almost danced back to her cubicle. She grabbed her notebook and coffee and went to the story meeting in the conference room. Donovan was already there, and he looked irritated. Carly sat as far away from him as she could. She’d abandoned the practice of sitting right next to him when aloofness had become her new plan. And now it seemed like the prudent thing to do was to stay away from him and hope he didn’t fire her.
Donovan was grumpy and terse with everyone. He only spoke when he had to, and he assigned stories quickly and kept the meeting short.
Carly got a story.
She stared at the typed paragraph on the sheet of paper he’d passed around the table to her. What in the world? It was a total fluff piece. He wanted her to go to the Newton Bakery and report on their new cupcake flavor. Did he think so little of her?
She wandered slowly back to her cubicle, staring at the paper. She could get this done in about two hours. But going to the cupcake shop could be a cover for her. She’d pretend to be there longer and head out to Monroe’s to see what she could dig up.
Once she made the decision, Carly quickened her pace. She had to extricate herself from a conversation with Jackson, who had been waiting at her cubicle, but she got out of the building and into the Kia fast.
The bakery owner was a delightful young woman with a bubbly personality. Carly felt a sinking feeling as they talked about the new cupcake flavor, red velvet mint. The woman sure could talk about cupcakes. After fifteen minutes, Carly was desperate for a way to end the conversation and get going. She forced herself to take a deep breath and stay in the moment. Monroe Manufacturing wasn’t going anywhere.
After an hour and a half, two cupcakes devoured, and a full tour of the bakery, Carly was back in her car. She scribbled a few more notes on things she wanted to remember when she wrote the bakery piece and then started driving east.
Carly felt her pulse quicken as she got closer. This could be her big break. She was determined to get the scoop, finally have a story with her byline on it, and maybe . . . just maybe . . . turn Donovan’s opinion about her around.
Chapter 15
Carly pulled into the parking lot at the manufacturing plant and sat looking around for a minute. It was a huge, gray steel building with different levels and additions that made the place look cobbled together. Dark smoke billowed out of several chimneys, and if the day hadn’t been sunny and warm, Carly thought it would be a pretty foreboding place.
She got out of the car with her briefcase and headed for the shop’s front door. She caught a glimpse of the Cross River, which meandered behind the building and then jutted off to the south. At this section, it looked pretty narrow but was moving along at a good clip.
The front door was locked, but there was an intercom button that invited her to push it to gain entrance. She told the person belonging to the voice that emanated from it that she was Carly Roberts, a reporter with the Newton Weekly. There was a silent pause, and then a buzzer sounded, indicating Carly could pull the door open.
A receptionist sat behind a large desk ignoring Carly as she entered. The woman had dark hair in a high ponytail, straight bangs, and rimless glasses. After shuffling papers around for several moments, she finally glanced up. “What can I do for you?”
Carly smiled brightly and held her press badge out to the woman. “I’m Carly Roberts from the Newton Weekly,” she said. “I’d lik
e to talk to someone about allegations of illegal chemical dumping by Monroe Manufacturing into the Cross River.”
The woman, whose nametag identified her as Lydia, blinked and pursed her lips. She reached for a phone on her desk and punched a couple buttons. Lydia waited a moment and then repeated Carly’s identity and request for an interview into the receiver. She hung up after listening for a minute and rose from her chair. She motioned Carly to follow her and took off at a fast clip across the lobby’s gray marble floor.
Carly hustled to catch up, the briefcase falling off her shoulder into the crook of her elbow. As she walked, she stuffed her press badge into her suitcoat’s pocket.
Lydia led Carly to a conference room, motioned for her to go in, and then left without a word. Carly looked around. “Okay,” she mumbled to herself. “I guess I’ll make myself at home.” She sat at the end of the table and pulled her notebook and a pen out of her briefcase. She flipped past the pages about cupcakes to a clean sheet and wrote Monroe across the top. Then she sat drumming her pen on the paper for five minutes.
A man of about fifty years, with a gray ring of hair around his head and a matching mustache, finally appeared in the doorway of the conference room. He looked hurried and waved Carly back down when she started to get up to greet him. He didn’t attempt to shake her hand by way of introduction. “I’m Stuart Monroe,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“Mr. Monroe. It’s nice to meet you. Are you the owner of Monroe Manufacturing?”
“I’m one of three partners. My father and brother are the other two.”
“Well, thanks for taking the time to meet with me on such short notice today. I hope you understand my urgency. I received an anonymous tip at the paper that your company is illegally dumping harmful chemicals into the Cross River. Is that true?”
Stuart sat in a chair on the side of the conference table, leaving one chair between them. “No.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t, so she plowed on. “Do you use harmful chemicals here?”
Stuart’s facial expression was blank. His lips barely moved when he spoke. “We’re an upholstery manufacturer. There are all kinds of chemicals in this building. The government thinks most of them are harmful, and we follow their strict guidelines on dealing with and disposing of them.”
“How do you dispose of them?”
His face didn’t change at all, though Carly watched closely for anything that might tell her he was lying. “In different ways. Some need to be mixed in barrels with other chemicals to make them neutral. Others have to be run through some other type of treatment facility, so we send them off on freight trains. Seems like, if they really are harmful, that would be more dangerous than keeping them on the grounds here, but we aren’t in charge of such regulations, and we don’t argue.”
Carly nodded and smiled. “Well, that’s great,” she said. “It seems like you totally have a handle on the right way to do things here.” She made a few notes while Stuart sat stone-faced and silent. Then she glanced up. “Could I have a tour of your facility? Maybe you could just show me the points in your process during which you use harmful chemicals and their exit points from the system?” She batted her eyelashes a little and tried to look harmless.
“Sorry. We don’t do tours.” Stuart finally smiled, showing a line of small, white teeth. It looked more like a snarl. “Too many harmful chemicals on the premises. Our workers go through a month of intense training on how to stay safe before they’re allowed on the floor. We can’t take the risk of having a lay person injured. I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh, I’m not a lay person, per se.” Carly dug her press badge out of her pocket and held it up. “I’m press. And I’ll sign a waiver if need be.” She leaned closer to the mustachioed man. “Mr. Monroe, if I can write a piece showing that your facility handles waste in a safe and legal manner, the people of this town will be reassured. They’ll no longer feel the need to bring any type of legal action against your company for perceived misdoings.”
A thrill traveled through her body. She felt like a real, hard-hitting reporter. Carly was sure Stuart would be won over by her stunning logic. Instead, his face grew red and his mustache twitched. “I don’t take kindly to threats, Miss Roberts,” he sputtered. “You’ll need to leave now.”
Carly closed her notebook and tried to look nonplussed. She held her back straight and her head high as she walked ahead of Stuart Monroe back through the lobby and out into the parking lot. Neither Monroe nor Lydia said another word to Carly as she exited the plant. The heavy steel door latched behind her with finality.
When she raised her hand to push her hair off her face, it was shaking a tiny bit. She made a fist out of it. How dare that man treat her so badly? She was a journalist—a truth-seeker. She deserved respect.
As Carly marched to her car, frustrated, she turned to look at the river again. If the people in that building were dumping chemicals into it, they should be visible from the rolling hills to the south. She got in the car and grabbed her phone, pulling up a GPS map. She zoomed in on her current location and examined the area directly to the south. There was a subdivision close by. Carly wondered if she could see the plant from the north end of that neighborhood, which was listed on the GPS as Pine Hills.
She tapped the steering wheel for a minute. Binoculars and a high-powered camera would be necessary to get what she needed. Her dad had both at home because he was an avid bird watcher. Carly fought the urge to head straight to Pine Hills. She’d go back to the paper and write her cupcake article and then stake out Monroe Manufacturing from the subdivision the next day.
For the first time since she’d started her new job, Carly hoped Donovan didn’t give her a story at the next morning’s meeting.
Chapter 16
The cupcake story was finished, but Carly didn’t email it to Donovan first thing in the morning. Instead, she waited until two minutes before the story meeting was scheduled to start to send it, hoping the editor would think she wasn’t finished and fail to assign her a new story.
She had important stuff to do and didn’t want to be sent off on another fluff piece.
Butterflies danced in her stomach as she thought about going back out to the east side of town and spying on Monroe Manufacturing. She had a box of supplies in the Kia’s trunk and had lain awake much of the night plotting.
Donovan didn’t disappoint Carly at the story meeting—he didn’t assign her anything new. She grabbed her notebook and jumped up from the chair as soon as he said, “All right, folks, have a good day.” Carly’s eyes slid over toward Donovan as she crossed the floor to leave the room. She was surprised to find him staring back. It almost seemed like he wanted to talk to her. Something about the look on his face reminded her of their fling by the ocean.
Well, she didn’t want to talk to him. Not until she was ready to hand him the story of the year on Monroe Manufacturing’s dirty deeds.
But as she hurried down the hallway toward the lobby, Donovan’s face remained in her mind. She imagined him smiling, pulling her close to him with an arm around her waist, and kissing her passionately.
Carly shoved the image out of her head and walked straight out to the parking lot, having brought her purse and coffee to the meeting with her. Though she tried telling herself she wanted to break the Monroe Manufacturing scoop to get ahead in her job, she knew deep down that wasn’t her only motive. She also wanted Donovan to see that she wasn’t like the other women he’d been with. She wasn’t interested in him just for his money or status—she could get both of those on her own. If Carly could show Donovan that she only wanted him for him, maybe he’d change his mind about waiting until thirty to find someone.
She made it to Pine Hills subdivision in twenty minutes because she broke a few road rules along the way. There was no real hurry, but Carly was too excited to dilly dally.
There was a small playground in the center of the subdivision. Carly parked there and opened the tr
unk. She had a duffle bag full of stuff, and she dug around to pull out the camera, tripod, and binoculars. Then she closed the trunk and started heading the direction in which Monroe Manufacturing should be.
Carly walked on sidewalks that passed nice houses, each one different and most of them large. The neighborhood was pretty quiet—she guessed most people were probably at work. She did see a few kids playing in yards, and a woman passed her on the sidewalk going the opposite direction, ear buds in while she power walked.
When she got to what she figured was the northernmost edge of the subdivision, Carly stopped and looked around. She peered along the side of the big, two-story colonial in front of her. It had a big back yard with a fence around it. On the other side of the fence, the ground sloped downward.
Back there was where she needed to be. It was probably the top of one of the hills she’d seen when she was at the plant the day before.
Carly spun in a circle to see if she could spot anyone who might see her trespass. No one was around, so she sprinted along the side of the house to the fence and then ran along it. She didn’t know if she was on the colonial’s property or the neighbor’s, but Carly didn’t stop to think other than to send up a quick prayer that neither homeowner had a dog.
When she got to the fence’s back corner, Carly had to slow down and be careful about her footing or risk sliding down the steep hill dotted with tall trees. If that happened, she’d be lucky not to break something or hit a tree with her head and knock herself unconscious. She slowly picked her way down the ridge a short way until she found a little spot between two trees to wedge herself. Carly glanced back over her shoulder to verify she was out of eyesight of the colonial and then turned to look down the ridge, bracing herself between the two trees.