by Terri Reid
“We all thought it was a shame that such a bright young girl had died,” Susan said.
Mary watched her start to say something else and then stop.
“Did you know her very well?” Mary asked.
Susan shook her head.
“No. Although I was an active campaign wife, I was also a mother of small children,” she explained. “So, my husband spent most of the time on the campaign – I made whatever trips I could.”
“And, as his assistant, did she travel with him?”
Susan took a deep breath.
“Are you asking me if my husband was involved in an affair with her?” she asked.
Mary nodded. “Yes, I am.”
Susan pressed her lips into a firm line.
“Yes, I believe he was having an affair with her,” she said, “And, quite frankly, I think he was seriously considering leaving me for her. Of course, if you repeat that to anyone, I’ll deny it.”
Mary nodded.
“Our marriage was not going well in those days,” she admitted. “I was deeply involved with our children, trying to be mother and father. Joseph was involved in his career. We didn’t always see eye to eye on things.”
“So, had he mentioned divorce to you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But I could tell there was something going on. And then when they found her body, he was completely devastated. I could tell how deeply he must have loved her.”
“Didn’t that make you angry?”
Susan sighed.
“I was hurt, betrayed, and yes, angry. But I also knew my place had to be at Joseph’s side. It was right after he had won the senate seat,” she explained. “We both had to put on appropriate faces for the public.”
She picked up her cup and stopped before she sipped.
“I really hated it,” she said, placing her cup down with enough force that the saucer rattled on the table. “Hated smiling when inside I was dying. I hated the man that stood next to me. I hated that he thought he could replace me for a younger model.”
“So, what happened? Why are you still with him?”
“Renee’s death changed Joseph,” she said, “He started taking the time to be with the children and me. He started to turn back into the man I fell in love with. It took a long time, but we were both able to put some things behind us and move on.”
Mary nodded. Was the murder of a young woman one of those things? she wondered.
“I’ll need a list of all the people who were at your house that night, including the names of any staff,” she said.
“It’s already in the folder,” Susan almost smiled at Mary’s look of surprise, “I was a devoted fan of detective novels; I understand that you need a list of possible suspects.”
“That’s helpful, thanks,” Mary said and slipped the envelope under her arm. “I’ll begin working on this right away and give you regular reports.”
Susan stood. “And if you should find…”
“If I find that your husband is involved with the murder, I’ll notify the police,” Mary said, “And then I’ll call you.”
Susan nodded. “He’s not, you know, he’s not involved. I would have known.”
Mary thought about all of the other women who had said that to her during her time on the police force. She shook Susan’s hand and smiled.
“I can see myself out.”
* * * * *
Chapter Five
Mary decided to forgo her early morning run and headed to the office first thing the next morning. She liked driving through the town when most of its occupants were still sleeping. The streetlights shone dimly in the hazy morning sky. Paper carriers were still walking down the oak-lined streets, tossing the Freeport Republic onto the front steps of residences. A couple of early morning runners jogged down one of the side streets. And one slightly disgruntled terry-robed gentleman stood on his lawn, urging his little dog to finish its business and get back into the house. The dog, on the other hand, seemed quite content to enjoy its early morning constitution.
With Harry Connick, Jr. crooning at her from her radio, Mary was in a fairly mellow mood when she pulled her car up in front of her office. She grabbed her purse, briefcase and a bag containing her lunch and got out of the car.
She stepped up on the curb and recoiled quickly, peripherally seeing a figure lurking behind the light pole out of the corner of her eye. “Crap,” she reminded herself, “Those damn scarecrows.”
The plywood scarecrow attached to the light pole, one of many that decorated the downtown in the fall, had done a darn good job of scaring her once again. When would she ever remember they were there?
She unlocked her door, flipped on the light and put her bags on her desk. The light on her answering machine was not blinking, so she knew there were no urgent matters to attend to and she could concentrate on the Ryerson case.
About an hour later she had confirmed her initial feelings: there would be no easy Internet search in her investigation into the murder of Renee Peterson. She stretched her blue jeans clad legs and glanced over at the vintage schoolhouse clock on the wall – it was nearly seven. She was sure someone would be at the offices of the Freeport Republic. Although Susan Ryerson had copied the article, Mary wanted to see if there was any more information about the drowning victim.
She walked the two blocks over to the newspaper office and tried the front door. Locked. Mary shrugged and went around the back to the loading dock. She greeted the crew from the circulation department as she hoisted herself up on the dock.
“Hi guys, anyone inside yet?”
Dutch, the forty-year veteran of the crew, smiled and nodded towards the door. “Yeah, I already heard Wiley screaming about something this morning.”
“Hmmm, well, maybe I ought to wait until later,” Mary mused, “I needed to ask him a favor.”
“Hey, one look at you and he’ll forget what he was grumbling about,” Dutch said with a wink.
Mary grinned. “So, when are you going to run away with me?”
“Soon as the wife says I can go,” he replied.
Mary sighed loudly. “Well, she knows she’s got a good thing. I don’t see her letting you go anytime soon.”
“You’re young, you’ll get over it.”
Mary laughed.
“So, you think I’m fickle. That hurts Dutch, that really hurts.”
She pushed through the “Employees Only” door into the newspaper.
The smell of ink and the deep rumbling of machinery radiated from the labyrinth of large presses and rollers, inhabiting the press room. The bare light bulb suspended from the ceiling cast shadows over the hulking monsters as huge rolls of paper were consumed, stamped, cut and collated into newsprint, advertising and special sections.
She circumvented the massive printing presses to reach the door leading into the newsroom. She pushed it open and entered yet another dimly lit room. Because the Republic was a morning paper, most of the staff worked late into the evening to offer the residents the latest breaking news. So at 7:15 a.m. the newsroom was usually deserted.
Row upon row of ancient metal desks with high tech computers sat empty, an occasional glow from a screen saver illuminating the area around it. She didn’t look too closely at the dark corners in the room. She understood more than most, that dedicated reporters never give up on a good story.
Across the room, the light from the editor’s office glimmered in the corner. Glass walls allowed Jerry Wiley, editor-in-chief, to keep an eye on his employees, but they also offered those outside the office a bird’s eye view of everything Jerry did.
Mary took a moment to observe Jerry. He was a fixture in that office – he’d worked his way up from political reporter to editor in the nearly thirty years that he had worked for the paper. He was scowling into his computer screen; she could tell something was not pleasing him. And Jerry felt quite comfortable in sharing his displeasure with all those around him.
Out of the corner of her
eye, Mary saw a shadow gliding through the newsroom. She immediately recognized the woman, Anna Paxton, a society columnist who had lived and breathed for her column in the paper. She was a powerful force to be reckoned with in Freeport’s High Society and she knew it. But she also knew her power was directly related to her column. If she had ever been forced to give up her column, she would be immediately forgotten by those who had wooed her favor for years.
She died at her desk while typing the most malicious comments about a society ingénue’s first attempt at a dinner party. That column was replaced by her obituary – which she had kindly penned years before, just in case. She had been quickly replaced, ironically by the same young woman whose societal obituary she had been typing when she died.
Mary didn’t know if she remained because that last column was never published, or if she preferred the smell of ink and the clicking of keyboards to the choirs of heavenly angels.
Mary looked at Anna again, recalling some of her unkind columns, and shrugged. Or perhaps, Mary speculated, she was like the Dickens’ ghost Marley and in death needed to work off some of the misdeeds performed while she was alive.
The ghost slid across the room, paused next to the editor’s office. Mary could feel the enmity vibrating from the specter. As much as Mary would enjoy watching Jerry get spooked, she doubted it would put him in the mood for granting her a favor. She coughed purposefully from her corner. The ghost turned, saw Mary and glowered before she faded into the air.
Jerry, who perhaps was more sensitive than he realized, lifted his head from the computer and looked around.
Here’s my chance, Mary thought, and walked across the room to his office.
“Hi, Jerry,” she greeted, and was slightly amused to see him jump. “Sorry to disturb you so early in the morning. I was just wondering if I could do some research in the morgue?”
She leaned against the door jamb and smiled. The morgue was actually a large room that housed not only copies of old newspapers, but a computer that held the scanned archives of the paper since the first day it was printed.
Jerry glanced around once more.
“Did…did you see anyone else when you came in?” he asked.
Mary shrugged, “I would venture to say that you and I are the only living creatures in the building right now.”
Mary bit back a smile as Jerry’s eyes widened at her comment.
“You see any ghosts in here?” he asked, knowing her reputation.
Mary smiled innocently.
“Come on, Jerry,” she answered. “You don’t believe in ghosts, right?”
Jerry took a deep breath.
“Yeah, right, ghosts – hogwash, a bunch of crap if you ask me.”
Mary nodded, “Absolutely. And you sure wouldn’t want to be thinking about them when you were sitting all alone in this old dark building. I mean, if you did believe, it could be really creepy in here.”
Jerry glared at her.
“You know where the morgue is, don’t you?”
Mary nodded.
“Then go and do whatever you have to do and stop wasting my time.”
Mary grinned.
“Thanks Jerry, I appreciate it.”
As she turned, Jerry stopped her.
“Hey, O’Reilly, you working on anything interesting?”
Oh, he’d love an unsolved murder case, Mary thought. But there was no way he was getting any information from her.
She turned back and shook her head.
“Just some boring research,” she said with a shrug. “But if I turn up any skeletons in the morgue, I’ll let you know.”
Jerry grunted, “You do that.”
As Mary crossed the room and headed toward the morgue, Anna glided past her towards the editor’s office with a grin on her face.
Sometimes you have to wait until you’re dead for a little payback, Mary thought, but I’m sure the reward is just as sweet.
As she stepped into the morgue, all of the lights in the newsroom turned off. Mary heard Jerry’s shout of fear, then she closed the door and laughed out loud.
Since the Freeport Republic was the larger paper at the time of the incident, they had more coverage than the Galena paper. The day after Renee’s death, her story, considered an accidental drowning, had only made the second page. The first page stories were about the election results and the disappearance of an eight year-old girl, Jessica Whittaker, who had gone out bicycle riding late that afternoon in the small town of Elizabeth and had never returned.
On the top of the page was a photo of the Ryersons’ casting their votes. Below the fold was a picture of Jessica’s distraught parents standing in front of their modest home, clutching her school picture. Mary could see the heartache in their eyes and wondered if they ever found their daughter.
She found herself not only searching for information about Renee, but also information about the case of Jessica Whitaker, as she worked through the files that morning. The sun was high in the sky by the time she left the stuffy room that housed the morgue. She had a file filled with information on both cases when she walked back to her office.
Stanley sat outside his store on his bench reading through the paper when Mary approached.
“So, Stanley, what’s going on in the world,” Mary sat next to him and peeked over his shoulder.
“Well, looks like our Police Chief’s gonna have his way with those parking meters,” Stanley said, “No one at the city council meeting opposed his proposal.”
“No one in the city council ever goes downtown,” Mary said, “What happened to good old fashioned investigation? Doesn’t anyone ever look before they leap?”
Stanley grinned.
“Well, I kinda expected you to show up to the meeting and put them all in line.”
Mary sighed.
“You know, I would have been there, but I had an appointment,” she said, “But, you’re right; I should have made the time.”
“Well, there’s still time.” Stanley said, “Police Chief said that he’d wait a couple of weeks before he ordered the parking meters, just in case any downtown businessman wanted to talk to him about it.”
“Business man?” Mary asked.
Stanley’s eyes twinkled.
“Yep, I believe those were his words,” he chuckled. “Know of any business men who might want to talk to the Police Chief?”
Mary stood up and took a deep breath. “Why this city decided to hire Barney Fife is a mystery to me.”
Stanley chuckled. “New Police Chief didn’t look much like Barney Fife to me,” he said with a grin. “Nope, but then again, my eye sight’s been failing for a long time now.”
Mary laughed.
“You have the sharpest eyes of anyone I know,” she said, shaking her head. “But I’ve been a cop and I can spy a Barney Fife a mile away.”
Someone with a deep voice cleared his throat just behind Mary.
Well, crap, Mary thought, I just know this isn’t going to be good.
Stanley peered around Mary and chuckled. “Why hello there, Chief Alden, we were just talking about you.”
Mary glared at Stanley and Stanley looked back at Mary, eyes wide with innocence.
Mary bit her lip and shut her eyes in mortification for just a moment. She exhaled deeply. Okay, time to put on her big girl pants and take it like a woman. “Hi, I’m Mary...”
The words froze on her lips.
“You!” they said in astonished unison.
The Police Chief was the first to recover. He grinned. “You know, I’ve always considered myself as more of an Andy Taylor kind of guy. By the way, I missed our race this morning.”
* * * * *
Chapter Six
So I finally meet my mystery jogger and she ends up being Mary O’Reilly the nut case, Police Chief Bradley Alden thought as he continued down Main Street, Why are the cute ones always psycho?
He thought about the look on her face when she finally turned around. He chuckled. The look w
as priceless. And the Barney Fife line. He had to admit it was funny.
He scanned the street that made up one fifth of downtown Freeport. She was right, though, he hadn’t taken the time to find out more about downtown. The mayor had suggested the parking meters and, thinking the mayor knew the town better than he did, had just agreed. What the hell was the mayor thinking? Parking meters would only drive business away from an already struggling shopping district.
He crossed the street and headed up State Street to Stephenson. There were more businesses on Stephenson and they looked to be thriving, but with the onset of the big box stores at the other side of town, he knew these mom-and-pop retail stores were fighting to keep their heads above water.
Up and down most of the downtown streets he had also noticed a number of empty storefronts, scattered amongst the other shops.
So, how did he go back to the mayor and tell him that he was out of his mind?
Bradley shook his head. He really hated politics.
“Got a lot on your mind?” Stanley asked, walking up alongside him.
“You set her up,” Bradley said, continuing his slow pace down the street.
“Naw, I wouldn’t do that,” Stanley grinned, falling in alongside him. “Course, if I happen to enjoy when a series of ironic coincidences happens right in front of me, you can’t blame a man.