Perdition

by R. Jean Reid

  “It was the sloppy editing that gave it away. At the bottom of the flyer, in 4-point type, is something obviously meant to be a document marker. WJenkins.doc. It just looks like a smudge unless you’re paying attention.”

  The silence at the other end of the line was satisfying.

  “I guess you didn’t notice it when you read things over,” Nell added.

  “Goddamn it!” Jenkins finally let out. “I can’t believe that son of a …” Then he remembered who he was speaking with. “Nice talking to you, Miz McGraw,” he said in a tone that told her it wasn’t. He slammed down the phone.

  Don’t mess with Nell McGraw, Nell thought as she gently replaced the receiver.

  After several hours of wading through the less exciting tasks of running a newspaper, Nell finally decided she needed to stretch her legs. The two overdue library books she’d discovered in Josh’s room last night gave her an excuse and a destination.

  She found herself walking hurriedly across the square, a tension in her shoulders. She realized she was bracing for the attack that had happened the last time she’d crossed it. Boyce must be gone by now, she told herself. Or at least not foolish enough to risk both going to jail and losing Daddy’s money. All that confronted her was a perfect spring day, bright sunshine, and a gentle breeze that brought the smell of the gulf.

  She left behind the sunshine for the cool fluorescent of the library. Clearly she wasn’t the only one with overdue books, as there were several people at the counter. The woman at the front of the line, well dressed with a piece of jewelry in every place that jewelry could be tastefully placed, was explaining why she didn’t think she really owed the six dollars and fifty cents in fines she had incurred. “My husband was out of town, and these are his books, and he put them in the trunk for me to return them, then he forgot to remind me they were in the trunk.”

  Be sure you make him pay you back in the divorce settlement, Nell thought to herself as the woman continued her sad story of life with a husband who couldn’t be bothered to remind her of books to return to the library. Finally realizing that standing there arguing could make her late for her hair appointment, she asked, “Do you take credit cards?”

  She seemed shocked when Marion told her that no, they couldn’t take a credit card for a fine of six dollars and fifty cents. A little more wrangling produced a check, and the woman who believed that she should be exempt from library fines left. Finally, the two older women behind her were able to rest their books on the counter. They were friends who’d come to the library together.

  A teenage girl joined the line behind Nell. She had a stack of books, and on the top Nell recognized the picture book she’d seen Rayburn Gautier check out. Realizing she must be one of Rayburn’s sisters, Nell stole another glance at her. Her face was pale, with sleepless smudges under the eyes. Her eyes had a confused, almost glassy look, as if the world had become too brutal to comprehend. She seemed both afraid of and defiant toward the eyes she knew would stare at her.

  It was Nell’s turn, but she stepped aside to let the girl go in front. Rayburn’s sister gave her a bare nod as she placed the books on the counter.

  “I’m returning these,” she mumbled.

  “Oh, Dolly,” one of the older women said. “How’s your mama?”

  “She’s okay,” Dolly mumbled in the same monotone.

  “We were so sorry to hear about Rayburn. He was such a lively boy,” the other woman said.

  But the girl’s grief was too barely held in check to be able to withstand even these slight condolences. Tears started streaming down her face as she stood, returning the books that her brother would never read.

  “Oh, honey, we’re sorry,” the first old woman said, patting Dolly’s arm, unsure how to comfort the girl.

  Nell watched for a moment more, the tears falling and the wordless anguish of a teenage girl facing a sorrow that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Placing her books on the counter to free her arms, she pulled the girl to her, letting her cry on her shoulder. Nell didn’t even attempt words, just held Dolly and let her cry.

  It was a long time before the girl finally lifted her head, then murmured, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, you needed to cry,” Nell said, keeping one arm around Dolly as she fumbled in her purse for a tissue.

  Dolly took it, wiping first her eyes, then her nose. “I was supposed to be looking after Rayburn. I just turned my back for a minute …”

  Haunted by guilt and sorrow, Nell thought. What a burden for a child to bear. It should have been minor—a young boy sneaking out to play in the woods where generations of other boys had played with no worse consequences than scraped knees.

  At her confession, the tears threatened Dolly again, but she angrily wiped them away with the soggy tissue as if she didn’t deserve to cry. “Thank you, Mrs. McGraw,” she said trying to live in a grown-up world and play the part.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Nell said. “Yesterday, my son Josh was supposed to wait for me at school, but he decided to take off and ride a friend’s bike to the bike shop. He disobeyed me and I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. He made it to the shop okay. But none of us are perfect enough to watch them every moment of every day.”

  The look of relief on her face was palpable. “I think they blame it on me,” Dolly said very softly. “Like I wanted him to get killed.”

  “Of course you didn’t. And they do know it’s not your fault, but grief and loss also carry anger within them. Sometimes in the initial shock, anger comes out in ways it shouldn’t.”

  Dolly nodded, then gave Nell a wan smile.

  At least I can be a good parent to children not my own, Nell thought.

  “I think some of these are late,” Dolly said, attending to the business at hand. “And I think that … that some of them might have crayon marks in them.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Marion reassured her, taking the books. “I appreciate your returning these. I know you and your family are going through a hard time.”

  Dolly again gave a bare nod in acknowledgment.

  It’s too new and it’s too hard for her, Nell thought. It still blots out the rest of the world.

  “I gotta go,” the girl said. “Mama’s not expecting me to take too long.” She turned and hurried away, briefly turning back to say, “Sorry. Hope I didn’t mess up your blouse.” Then she was out the door.

  “And finally, my overdue books,” Nell said. Her fine was a dollar and a quarter, but she gave Marion a five dollar bill and told her to keep the change. It would help to pay to replace the crayon-marked books. They started to chat, but more overdue books demanded Marion’s attention. Nell managed to ask to schedule coffee and they left it at they’d text each other.

  No shouted curses met her on her walk back across the square, although she still found herself paying attention in a way she had hoped she would not have to in the town of Pelican Bay. Can we ever be safe here again? Nell wondered as she reached the sanctity of the Crier building.

  Alessandra was in her office waiting for her.

  “Okay, what did you do?” was how she greeted Nell.

  “Do?”

  “Do, do, do,” Alessandra sang. “What might possess Wendell Jenkins to send his sales boys, still in their shiny new sales uniforms, scurrying around town grabbing up every flyer they can find? I asked one of them and he only mumbled something about civic duty and making the town clean. Which I find hard to believe.”

  “I seem to have misread a smudge on the bottom of the flyer. I thought it said, in a very small font, WJenkins.doc.”

  “And you called Wendell and told him.”

  “I merely suggested that he needed a more competent editor.”

  “Girl, you have balls to take on the son of a bitch.” Then Alessandra let out a hoot and added, “I bet he doubles his blood press
ure medication for the next month.”

  “Just as long as he doesn’t drop dead and let little sonny boy Boyce come back to claim his inheritance.”

  “Those are two slimewads. That prick certainly didn’t fall far from his porcupine papa. Mr. Boyce spent too much time flirting with the junior high girls.”

  “I thought he would flirt with anything female,” Nell said.

  “He’d try, but most women over eighteen are too mature to fall for his little boy macho stuff. Rumor is that he got a fourteen-year-old pregnant last year.”

  “Rumor? Good one or shaky?”

  “The girl’s aunt. She and I have our nails done on the same day.”

  “What happened?”

  “The girl went to New Orleans and got un-pregnant. Daddy Wendell gave away a few new cars.”

  “What about the girl? Is she okay?”

  “Okay? She flunked ninth grade and is repeating it. Was a B student before then.”

  “What a bastard,” Nell said.

  “Suppose he learned it somewhere. Some other rumors—shaky —about Daddy Wendell and the girls he likes to take to the casinos over in Biloxi.”

  “Almost makes me wish we could do a tabloid edition of the Crier. It’d be fun to run a good ‘gotcha’ picture of Wendell on the front page.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely? Mr. Wendell with a blond young enough to be his daughter on his arm, her Jungle Red lipstick on his cheek?”

  “We’d never buy a car in this town again,” Nell replied, laughing. She didn’t think she and Alessandra would ever be close friends, but at least they could be allies in certain matters.

  “Hey, you really ought to consider that idea. Might boost circulation.” With that, Alessandra gave a wave and headed off to sell a few more ads and flirt with anyone she’d missed before.

  Nell wasn’t sure if Alessandra was kidding or serious. She decided not to ask.

  fourteen

  The kids had been picked up, Lizzie deposited to practice flute with her friend Janet (and to practice her rudimentary flirting skills with Janet’s older brother, Nell suspected), and Josh was at bike maintenance class. Nell returned to the Crier offices to finish up a few things.

  Sheriff Hickson caught her just as she was entering the door.

  “Miz McGraw, can I have a word with you?”

  Nell wondered what he would do if she said no, he couldn’t have a word with her.

  But he didn’t wait for any kind of answer from her. “Can you tell me what your boyfriend is up to?”

  “My … what?”

  “Chief Shaun. Your knight in shining armor.”

  “None of the above. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “He’s making noises about making an arrest very soon. Thought for sure a publicity hog like him would make sure the newspaper cameras were at his heels.”

  “Perhaps television cameras, but he’s told us nothing. Nor am I privy to his plans in the way you’re insinuating.”

  “Well, he’s sure not sharing things with the sheriff’s department. Don’t suppose that you’d want to do an editorial about cooperation between law enforcement agencies.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Nell answered anyway. “Now that’s a thought. I could drag out that quote of yours from when Doug Shaun took over as police chief. Didn’t you say something like ‘he’s young and he’s pretty, but he’s got to prove his worth’? And then there’s that roadblock you put up at the yacht club, without any noticeable cooperation on your part. Plus that time—”

  Sheriff Hickson interrupted her. “This is murder, little lady. A whole different ball park than that minor stuff. Shaun’s still new enough ’round here he ought to step a little more lightly.”

  Nell straightened her back, standing as tall as she could; she wanted to make sure the sheriff knew the “little lady” he was talking to was tall enough to see his bald spot. “I don’t have much respect for lack of cooperation among law enforcement, but if you want to get cooperation, it helps if you give a little. You want a truce with Chief Shaun? You have to be a big enough boy to ask for it.”

  “Glad to know you have the citizens of Pelican Bay at the front of your thoughts, Miz McGraw,” the sheriff answered.

  “But I do, Sheriff Hickson,” Nell retorted as he was turning his back to her. “That’s why I think you and the chief should find a front-door way to work together instead of prowling around looking for a back door. Which I’m not, by the way.”

  “Not what?” the sheriff demanded.

  “Not your back door to communicating with Chief Shaun. He tells me what he chooses to tell me, just as he does you. He just finds me more useful than you do.”

  “You get any more late-night phone calls, you call me first, you hear?” And with that, the sheriff spun on his heels and walked away. Unlike Chief Shaun, he didn’t give her any additional phone numbers.

  Nell resisted staring at his back as he stalked away and instead entered the Crier offices. She had work to do, a paper to get out. This was crunch time, gathering all the stories, the editing, getting the paper ready to go to press tomorrow.

  On her desk was a note from Carrie. “Almost done with the story, have some more fact-checking to do. Will have it by tomorrow.” Nell snatched up the note, tore it into pieces, and threw it into the trash. I’m not going to hold the front page until the last minute, she fumed.

  She knew she was blending angers here, but she didn’t really care. There was no one around to see her pique and its expression in tiny pieces of torn paper. And she was aware that the end result—a decision to run a different story—would be the same. It was too much stress and worry to have to wait until the last minute for something that wasn’t breaking news. There were other things she could run on the front page.

  Nell ran through the pile on her desk. She had already roughed out space for the timely ones, the stories that had, as Thom had said, “a sell-by date” on them—upcoming events, coverage of this week’s football game, news that people were following such as last week’s update on shellfish safety, which had been occasioned by several people becoming ill from eating tainted oysters.

  Then there were the other stories, like Carrie’s tardy animal pound story. Those could be bumped to next week if something came up, or used to fill a skinny paper. Jacko had done a good story on how the casinos on the beach in Biloxi were affecting the seafood industry, which used to be located on that waterfront property. She started to pull that one out of the stack, then stopped. Carrie wasn’t going to like losing the front page slot, and she was going to hate losing it to Jacko. Was it worth the storm that it would create? Nell put Jacko’s piece back. Instead she took out a story that she, with Josh’s help, had done, about places to bike around Pelican Bay. If she ran that story, it would avoid the Carrie blow-up—or at least attenuate it—and it would help her make up with Josh for berating him in front of Kate.

  If only the people who accused her of all sorts of agendas in running stories knew her real reasons for choosing one over the other, Nell thought wryly. To placate an irritable reporter and make up with her son.

  She decided to give Josh a byline, which he deserved, as he’d done most of the leg work—pedal work?—for the story. There were also some good pictures, one of his bike class in front of Kate’s shop and another of a biker riding along a sun-dappled trail. Josh had suggested that place to take the shot.

  So, that was settled. This week’s Pelican Bay Crier would have on its front page the mayor’s latest drone about education and needing more money from the state, and why reading scores weren’t as high as they should be but the football team was doing real well; a story about a rabid dog that was captured outside of town; the bike story; and the small follow-up story from Jacko about Rayburn Gautier’s death.

  The next day was the rush of the final set-up of the
paper, the last minute ads and stories—an alligator seen in the harbor. Nell held off on the front page until the last minute. In the end she deliberately left Tasha Jackson’s death out of the small story about Rayburn. If they weren’t connected, that was the right thing to do. If they were, it might tip the killer off to what they were thinking. Or give him the attention he was so clearly seeking. She wanted to do neither of those.

  fifteen

  Not everyone was as happy with Nell’s front page choices as Josh had been.

  “Wow, Mom! You put it on the front page! With my name!” was how he greeted the paper when he saw it at breakfast. “Oh, wow, and the picture of the bike group, too. Hey, Lizzie, I got my name and my picture in the paper!”

  Lizzie, with typical teenage insouciance, replied, “Your mother is the editor. Makes it easy to get your picture in the paper.”

  Josh was too thrilled to let even Lizzie’s older sister condescension dispel his happiness. “You’re jealous because you’re not in the paper. Maybe you could talk Mom into letting you report the stupid makeup that you and your friends wear. ‘Lizzie’s Made-up Makeup Tips.’”

  When Nell got to the office, she walked in on Sheriff Hickson rumbling at Jacko about using the word “murder” in his story on Rayburn Gautier.

  “Since when are you a police officer, son?” the sheriff was saying as Nell entered. “Murder is kind of a yellow journalism word to be throwing around, don’t you think?”

  “What’s going on here?” Nell cut into his tirade.

  “You may not think that Wendell is a good editor”—the sheriff turned to her—“but y’all got some gaps in that department, too. No solid proof that poor boy was murdered and now it’s on the front page of the paper, so of course everyone’s going to believe it. How many scared parents you got running around here?”

  “Better scared parents than complacent parents if there’s a killer around,” Nell replied. She quickly continued, not wanting Sheriff Hickson to get rolling again. “And what word would you have me use for the suspicious death of a young boy? We have to include the possibility of murder. In fact, I just got off the phone with the coroner. According to her, there were indications of his being strangled. I’ve never heard of an accidental fall into a well accomplishing that.”