Before he could answer, Martin rocked back on his heels and studied the books in one of the tall bookcases on either side of the fireplace. “You’ve got some good reading matter to keep you company.”
“You’re welcome to read any of it. Much of it was Steve’s, and he left it here. I brought some of it from my place in L.A.”
“You still own the apartment in Marina Del Rey?”
“I kept it, sure.” It was an expensive place to allow to sit vacant, and eventually he’d have to figure out what to do with it.
“Good. Glad to hear you kept it.” There was no mistaking Martin’s meaning, that since Conn still had a place to live on the coast, his return to the tabloid would be that much simpler.
“Apparently you haven’t checked your telephone messages at work,” Conn said.
Martin snorted. “In case you didn’t notice, there’s no phone in this house, so I could hardly call the office when I arrived. I refuse to carry one of those chirping wireless phones the size of a matchbox, it would drive me nuts. I suppose I should have stopped in town and called from someplace, but I was in a hurry to get here.” He looked around at the sparse furnishings and added, “God only knows why.”
So Martin didn’t know that Conn had called and told him that he wouldn’t return to work at the Probe. What had his message said? Oh yes. He had told Martin, “Not now, not next week, not ever.”
But he had made that statement before he knew how much it was going to cost to install his mother at Catalina-Pacific.
THE NEXT MORNING when Dana woke up it was raining. Not a major storm like the one on the night she had spent at Conn’s, but a slow drizzle. Although Dana had no access to weather reports, she thought the rain might herald a cold front moving through the area. She was sure Conn wouldn’t fly the hawks in this weather.
He stopped by her cabin at the agreed-upon time, dodging between the drops and stomping the mud off his feet on the porch. She opened the door to him, expecting him to come in, but he shook his head.
“No, I can’t stay. I wanted to let you know that we won’t be going to Shale Flats today.”
“What about tomorrow?”
To her surprise Conn shook his head again. “Not tomorrow.”
This stunned her so much that she didn’t know what to say. Disappointment rushed in when his face took on a forbidding expression that brooked no protest, allowed no questions.
He took in her crestfallen face, and an emotion flickered behind his eyes for a moment. But he didn’t say anything to soften the blow of her disappointment.
He lifted a shoulder and let it fall, almost carelessly. She didn’t know what to make of that.
He tightened his lips but offered no further explanation. “See you,” he said, and with that he was backing away, then running through the raindrops to his truck.
Bewildered, Dana watched as Conn’s truck traversed the ruts toward the road, its exhaust plume trailing behind.
Before he rounded the curve, she thought she made out another person in the truck sitting next to Conn.
Another person? What was that all about? She’d thought Conn had canceled because of the rain, but maybe there was more to it than that.
Her spirits tumbling, she went back inside, facing another long day of counted cross-stitch.
“SO,” MARTIN SAID cheerfully as he propped his feet on a crate he’d dragged in from the mews and pressed into use as an ottoman. “You given any thought to coming back to the Probe?”
Conn let out an impatient huff of breath and stared at the rain steadily drumming against the windowpane. “Not much,” he said. It wasn’t true. He’d thought about it much too much, ever since two days before when Martin had shown up at his house.
“So what are you doing to make a living? Freelancing?”
Conn thought guiltily about his laptop and how he hadn’t even booted it up once in the months since he’d arrived. “Some,” he said.
“Jim Menoch asked me if you were writing. He’s still over at Nation’s Green,” Martin said, naming a prominent nature magazine. “You might try sending him a piece or two.”
“I might,” Conn said noncommittally.
“I read some of those extracurricular things you used to write years ago when we were both working at Newsweek,” Martin said.
Conn scoffed at this. “I hardly remember them at all.” Conn vaguely recalled hammering out a few nature articles and some essays that had eventually been published in a couple of journals, one of them edited by Jim Menoch. “Most of them are still unpublished,” he added.
Martin pursed his lips judiciously. “No reason why you couldn’t polish them up.”
Conn tried to remember if those pieces he’d written were actually any good. They had been so far off the hard news track that they hadn’t seemed important at the time. He’d virtually blown off a couple of magazine editors who had called him at Newsweek saying they wanted to see more, so maybe the articles had been better than he thought. One of the published pieces had been about an endangered species of fish in North Carolina, and it had drawn raves from environmentalists. He’d been surprised, considering how difficult it had been to make the subject interesting, when it was, well, boring to most people including himself. He’d enjoyed the challenge, though.
“I’d never win a Pulitzer writing stuff about the environment,” Conn said. It had been his goal once—a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. If he hadn’t quit the Newsweek staff in a snit over story credits, he could have been a contender. But he’d been younger then, and he had been half-crazed with loss. Add to that the problem that during the Newsweek years, he’d waxed arrogant and cynical. He’d thought he had the world by the tail in those days, and it had been a rude awakening to find out that he hadn’t.
Martin studied him seriously. “Listen, Conn, a Pulitzer isn’t everything. You don’t have to beat yourself up over the road not taken.”
Conn laughed ruefully. “Is that what I’m doing?”
“Damn right. I can see it in your eyes. There isn’t one of us in this business who didn’t have his eyes on the high road, but let’s face it, there aren’t enough golden rings out there to go around, and I’ve learned not to look back. Most days it’s enough to get paid for typing one word in front of another and coming up with the kind of stuff people like to read.”
“I got burned out, Martin.”
Martin eyed Conn meaningfully. “There’s no such thing as burnout, my friend.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me,” Conn shot back.
“You’re a good writer.”
“Was a good writer.”
“You’ve still got what it takes.”
“You need ambition and incentive and the fire in your gut. You need passion. I don’t have that anymore.” Conn watched Martin for his reaction, which was instantaneous.
“You don’t lose talent, man!”
“That’s what you said when you rescued me after the Newsweek debacle,” Conn retorted.
“I didn’t rescue you after you left Newsweek. You rescued yourself.”
Conn recalled the sleepless nights, the consuming regrets about quitting a job that any reporter would covet. “I would have been out pounding the pavement looking for another job if you hadn’t snapped me up and hauled me kicking and screaming to the Probe.”
Martin thought this over. “And because you’ve worked there, because you know the ropes, I’m sure you understand that the Probe’s not a bad place to work, especially now. That’s what I told you then, and I’m telling you again. A regular paycheck, a great retirement plan, stock options—”
“I know, Martin.” Conn waved the words away.
“I need you at the Probe as much as I ever did.”
“Ahh, Martin, I doubt that I’d fit in anymore. If I ever did.”
“You were the best investigative guy I ever had on my team. But that’s not the kind of job I have in mind for you this time around.”
This was a surprise. “So what
else is there?”
“Bentley Howser is retiring.”
“Bentley Howser! The celebrity circuit?” Conn was astounded that Martin would even suggest that particular job to him. Bentley wrote straight gossip laced with a dash of syrupy and mostly phony goodwill. In Conn’s opinion, the celebrity column was about as low as you could go at the Probe, and that was really saying something.
“You’d be a fantastic celeb reporter,” Martin said defensively. “Get you out of the rat race.”
Conn took a slow swig of beer, let it slide down his throat. “Wrong. It would only be a different kind of rat.”
“The job has its perks. Expense account, the stars you’d meet.”
The celebrity circuit! Hobnobbing with insufferable Hollywood types! Eating at the restaurants where he’d be most likely to run into movie and television stars! Escorting the trendiest blond bimbos to all the “in” nightspots in hopes of gathering news nuggets for next week’s Probe!
“When is Bentley retiring?” Conn asked. Bentley Howser was in her late fifties and had long been promising to write a tell-all book about the celebrities she’d been chasing for the past twenty-five years.
“She’s got a nibble from a publisher. More power to her. She knows more about Demi and Madonna and Bruce and Mel than anyone else in the world. If she can brew that into a bestseller, if she can cop a megabuck contract from some publisher, she has my blessings.”
“And mine. But I’m not Bentley. I would never be able to hit the snide gossipy tone that made her famous.” Conn wasn’t sniping at her, far from it. He was obligated to Bentley for vigorously defending him when Martin fired him.
Martin smiled. “I want to put a different spin on our celebrity coverage. Make it more believable, more real, less tattletale. Your reputation as a solid reporter would move the column more toward center.”
“My reputation as a solid reporter didn’t help much when I laid claim to it before.”
“That was different. In my opinion—”
“Which was wrong, Martin, you’ve got to see that.”
“In my opinion you should have dug up the goods on Senator Bridlingame in any way necessary.”
“Including pawing through his garbage at one o’clock in the morning,” Conn said in disgust.
“The guy was aiding and abetting illegal Chinese arms dealers,” snorted Martin.
“There were other ways to prove that.”
“I didn’t think so, not before the election.” Martin leaned forward. “Sometimes you have to get down and dirty to find out what you want to know. In this case, it would have been for the good of the nation.”
“Please, Martin, don’t wax overly patriotic. And you did uncover the truth about Bill Bridlingame before the election.”
“No thanks to you,” Martin tossed back. One of the senator’s junior aides had come forward with the information of the man’s skullduggery on the eve of the election. Afterward, Bridlingame had been trounced at the polls.
Agitated, Conn stood up. He meant to offer Martin another beer, but Martin stood, too.
“Conn, Conn, I like you too much to argue about what happened. It’s water over the dam, under the bridge, whatever. Let’s start over. We want you back as part of the National Probe team.”
“I’ve still got a sour taste in my mouth over the Bridlingame episode. You fired me, remember?”
Martin made a disparaging gesture, then clapped Conn on the back. “I’m ready to hire you back.”
Playing for time, Conn walked to the refrigerator, had second thoughts and dumped his empty beer can in the trash. He wished to hell he were anywhere but here. He wished he were at Dana’s cabin, sitting in front of the fire with her, admiring the paint job they’d done on the walls. He wondered what she was doing now, what she had been doing for the past couple of days while he’d been busy with Martin.
“Tell me you’ll think about it, won’t you, Conn?”
Conn wanted to close the subject once and for all. But then his gaze fell upon the letter from Catalina-Pacific tucked into the pocket of the jacket that hung on a hook beside the back door. Catalina-Pacific, the place he couldn’t afford for his mother.
In hindsight, he supposed that he had been foolish to tie up most of his funds in this cabin in the wilderness, but his friend Steve had needed the money and he’d wanted to help him out. Also, Conn hadn’t been thinking too clearly in the aftermath of the Senator Bridlingame debacle. All he’d wanted was to get out of L.A., and this place had provided the means to do it.
“Conn?” Martin gazed at him expectantly.
“Maybe I’ll think about it,” Conn said against his will.
“A maybe is good enough for now. Bentley says she won’t leave until we find the perfect person to replace her.”
The perfect person to replace Bentley was, in Martin’s eyes, Conn. Otherwise his former boss and mentor wouldn’t have trekked all the way to Arizona to see him. Conn had no doubt that, staunch ally that she was, the well-meaning Bentley had suggested him.
Taking the job at the Probe would solve the problem of how to finance Gladys’s move to Catalina-Pacific. As Conn’s eyes met Martin’s, a bleak feeling settled around his heart.
“MY, YES, BUT THIS LOOKS mighty fine, and you finished it pretty fast, didn’t you? Have you started on your second piece yet?” asked Esther Timms, the Cougar Creek librarian, in the grating voice that drove Dana nuts. She turned Dana’s counted cross-stitch sampler this way and that, admiring it.
“Not yet, but I bought a new supply of embroidery floss today at the dry goods store, so at least I haven’t given up.”
Esther’s chins wobbled in mirthful good humor. “Oh, I don’t figure you for a quitter, Dana. Have a chocolate, why don’t you? They’re real good.”
Esther nudged the yellow box of candy toward her, but Dana shook her head. “I don’t want to gain too much weight,” she said. It wasn’t easy to refuse, not when she could spot a chocolate-covered cherry nestled so beckoningly amid the empty paper frills of the already eaten.
Esther yanked the box back toward her and scooped up a Jordan almond. “Mmm. Suit yourself.” She picked up her own counted cross-stitch and began stabbing away at it. “You might as well stop off at my nephew’s shop and get him to frame it for you. Billy Wayne Sprockett’s his name. He’ll frame it for you real cheap.”
“Oh, maybe I’ll wait until I finish both pieces.” Esther’s eighteen-year-old nephew was the local jack-of-all-trades. According to her, he could fix tired washing machines, frame any kind of artwork and rid a house of varmints, all with equal aplomb. He also worked part-time as a mechanic at the local Conoco.
“Guess you’ve been busy fixing up Homer’s old place, huh?” Esther asked encouragingly.
“I painted the living room,” Dana offered. She set her books down on Esther’s table and rubbed her arm. The books were heavy.
“Oh, honey, that’s nice. What color did you pick?”
“It’s called whisper blue.”
“Well, I always say, if it’s going to be blue, I’d rather have it whisper than shout.” Esther chuckled at her own humor.
Dana managed a feeble grin.
“You ready to check those out?” Esther inclined her head in the direction of the books.
“I suppose so,” she said. She really didn’t feel like going back to the cabin, though she didn’t have anyplace else to go. “But, um, I was wondering, Esther. Do you have any books on falconry?”
“Falconry? Nope, not a one. Sorry, but we don’t have a lot of nonfiction here. Sounds like you must have met our resident falconer, Mr. McTavish. He’s a mystery, that one.” Esther took pride in knowing everything about everyone in Cougar Creek, but so far she had no clue that there was more to know about Dana, a fact for which Dana was fervently grateful.
“I’m slightly acquainted with Connor McTavish, yes. He’s my only near neighbor.” Dana hadn’t seen Conn for several days, and it seemed like a very long time. S
he figured that he must still have company, and she’d wondered more than once if he had a female friend visiting him.
“Hmm. Seems like everybody’s only slightly acquainted with that man, but hey, that’s okay.” Esther heaved herself up from her chair and, her slippered feet slapping on the tile floor, she made her way over to the desk. Dana followed, depositing the books on the wide green blotter. Esther laboriously checked out each book in turn, which meant stamping each one with a hand stamp. Automated equipment was not yet a feature of the Cougar Creek Library, nor would it be, according to Esther.
“There you go,” Esther said cheerily. She slid the books across the desk to Dana. She added as if in afterthought, “You know, honey, you ought to stop in at Susie’s Powwow Diner and get you some of their taco soup to take home for your dinner. It’s real good, and they’ll pack it up in a nice container so it’ll still be hot when you get it home. That’s what I’m going to do for dinner tonight.” Esther lived above the library and didn’t like to cook for one; she and Dana had discussed it before.
“Thank you, Esther, maybe I’ll do that. Yes, I just might.” She smiled at the librarian, who beamed. Esther might be a busybody, but she meant well.
One thing for sure, if Dana had wanted to get more friendly with the locals, they would have welcomed her with open arms, if Esther was any indication of their interest in strangers. After hanging around show business types, it was good to meet someone who was unfailingly forthright. But Dana didn’t dare become close friends in Cougar Creek with Esther or anyone else. It was too dangerous, and she wouldn’t be around long.
She jaywalked across the street to the diner and placed her order for the soup, waiting while the waitress spooned it into a takeout container. On a portable television set behind the counter, screen credits rolled for one of the shows at Dana’s old network, GBN. She did a quick double take when she saw Erica Soderstrom listed as producer.
Producer? Erica had been an assistant’s assistant when Dana was there. Erica Soderstrom, her rival for Philip’s affections, clearly owed her meteoric rise at the network to something other than talent.
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