Front Page Love

by Paige Lee Elliston

  “This will be a great story too,” Julie said. “My point is that—”

  Nancy waved away whatever Julie’s point was. “I need your word that you’ll stay in that room in the warehouse with the cop until everything is over. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “And get the copy to me as soon as you’ve written it. I’ll be right here in my office waiting for you.” She laughed. “I haven’t used the word scoop in years—but that’s exactly what this story will be.”

  “I feel like Lois Lane at the Daily Planet,” Julie admitted.

  Nancy raised an eyebrow. “Does that make Ken Townsend Superman?”

  In her truck in the parking lot that morning, Julie started her engine, turned the air-conditioning on full blast, and concentrated on breathing and exhaling deeply and slowly. Strangely, the exhilaration she’d experienced in Nancy’s office—the heady taste of accomplishment—seemed to diminish in the short walk through the steaming lot. She felt down, almost sad, for some reason she didn’t understand.

  What is this? she demanded of herself. It’s a great story, and I can tell Nancy is as excited about bringing down that crooked cop as I am. What then . . .

  Ken.

  It’s Ken. Last night was good, kissing him was good. He respects me and he cares for me, probably deeply. And he’s as much as a woman could want in a man.

  Then why am I feeling like this?

  The answer didn’t come to Julie as she plodded through her day. She was two pieces ahead on her drought series. That didn’t mean she couldn’t work on another of the articles—but it did mean she was under no time obligation to do so. She tidied her home and loaded her washing machine. She paid a few bills, rearranged her sock and underwear drawer, and ran her vacuum cleaner.

  In her office Julie had a running list of telephone calls she needed to place to verify or repudiate information she’d developed, to clarify points she planned to make in articles, and to interview people who were peripheral to her stories but could, perhaps, provide fresh insight into her topic. She sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy speaking to people or accomplishing interviews; rather, it was the interminable time she spent on hold, listening to sappy music—or, worse, canned advertising—that irritated her like fingernails screeching across a blackboard.

  She settled herself at her desk with a fresh mug of coffee and tapped in the first number on her list—a professor of ecological studies at Montana State University. A perky secretary asked her to hold for the professor. There was a click, and then a string section began destroying the old sixties rock anthem “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” After several minutes a headline appeared in her mind:

  Telephone Receiver Fuses to Ear of Reporter—

  Medical Insurance Refuses to Pay for Surgery

  The song ended and the strings section launched into “The Age of Aquarius.” Mercifully, the professor came on. He was pleased to speak with Julie, wanted to know if he’d be quoted in the article, and spelled his name twice. He didn’t tell Julie anything she didn’t already know, but she took down a good quote line from him on her legal pad.

  She encountered answering machines on her next two calls, and she left a message each time.

  A dust bowl/westward migration authority in Oklahoma who’d recently had a nonfiction work titled The Sweet Promise of California—And the Bitter Reality made Julie’s telephone time and frustration more than worthwhile. The woman was knowledgeable, articulate—and genuinely fascinating. Julie felt a bit guilty when she glanced at her clock and saw that she’d kept the historian on the line for fifty minutes. But she’d filled three pages on her pad with notes.

  She refilled her coffee mug and attacked her list once again.

  At 8:30 Julie was in her lawn chair outside her kitchen, watching the end of another spectacular sunset. The flagrantly beautiful colors across the western sky calmed her a bit, at least partially put things in perspective. She sipped a Diet Pepsi. Her thoughts were more ordered, more logical—and more painful.

  There’s only one thing wrong with Ken, but it’s a monumental problem, she admitted to herself. If I’d met him four years ago I’d probably be his wife right now. But I didn’t meet him then.

  The problem with Ken is that he’s not Danny Pulver.

  The muted clang of steel horseshoes on the road rang into Julie’s thoughts. It was full dark, and she wondered who would be riding at that time of night. There was a horse-crazy teen a few miles away who’d just bought a nice mare from Maggie, Julie recalled. That’s probably her. But riding at night on a road . . .

  The whirlwind at her feet told her who the rider was. Sunday licked at her hands, her face, any part he could reach. His tail slapped her legs as he spun and patted at her knees with his forepaws.

  Julie hugged the big, ecstatic dog. “Whatta great boy! Whatta gooooood dog! I’m so happy to see you!”

  The collie’s whining, deep from within his chest, was somehow mournful yet joyful at the same time.

  Danny, on Dakota, rode around the corner of Julie’s home and drew rein in front of her. “I was kind of hoping you’d be as happy to see me as you are to see Sunday,” he said. He stepped down from his horse’s back and stood next to Dakota, his hand on the animal’s neck.

  “This is . . . a surprise,” Julie said, rising from her lawn chair.

  “Yeah. I’m sure it is. A good surprise?”

  Julie could smell the light sweat of Dakota and—almost imperceptibly—the good cologne Danny wore. He was in jeans and his western boots and a short-sleeved work shirt that had been washed many times.

  “May I put this guy in an empty stall? I’ll leave him saddled—just loosen the cinch a bit,” Danny said.

  “Sure. Give him some water and a flake of hay. You know where everything is.” It’s not Dakota who broke my heart, after all.

  Danny led his horse through the darkness to the barn. In a moment, the outside light came on. Julie heard the smooth sliding sound of the big front door being opened, and then the central aisle fluorescents flickered and came to life. Drifter huffed at the disturbance, and Dakota snorted back.

  Julie swallowed hard several times. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do—leap up and run away from Danny’s mind games or stay where she was and be duped into another few years of frustration.

  He deserves a chance to say what he wants to say.

  “It’s been a while, Dan,” Julie said carefully, controlling her voice so that there was no perceptible emotion in it, as if she were asking a grocer where the canned peas were located.

  “Yeah. It has been. Too long.”

  Julie sat down. “Grab the other lawn chair if you like.”

  Danny unfolded the chair that had been leaning against the house and placed it a few feet from Julie. He settled into the chair, but even in the murky darkness he gave the impression of tension, as if he were a tightly coiled spring. “I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said.

  “So have I, Danny.”

  “You’re still angry with me.”

  Julie didn’t respond.

  “What happened wasn’t about my birthday,” he said.

  “No.”

  “You’ve been seeing a lot of Ken Townsend, haven’t you?”

  “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t spend time with Ken? Whatever it was that was going on between us seems to have ended, hasn’t it?”

  Danny nodded. “Seems that way.”

  The silence was as thick and uncomfortable as the heat—heavy, tense, pervasive.

  Danny sighed. “Suppose you let me talk for a bit, Julie, and you just listen. I need to say what I’ve got to say, and I’ve given it so much thought I just about have my speech memorized. Would that be OK?”

  Julie nodded.

  Danny began to stand but thought better of it and remained in his chair. His eyes found Julie’s. “A few years ago,” he began, “you might recall that I was courting Maggie quite seriously. I was in love with her. Maybe I’m a
late bloomer or just slow or whatever, but Maggie was the first woman I was genuinely in love with. I guess I was too busy in high school with my car and working and in college with my pre-vet and veterinary studies. So, anyway, Maggie was my first serious romance.”

  He was silent for several moments. “Of course, Maggie chose Ian. I couldn’t be happier for both of them now. That’s what I said at the time too.” He cleared his throat needlessly before going on. “I was flat-out lying about that. A man doesn’t stop loving a woman simply because she marries someone else. It doesn’t work that way. I was angry and hurt and heartsick, Julie, and it didn’t go away.” He shook his head, and his smile was a sad one. “Even at their wedding I half believed that Maggie was going to turn away from Ian and run to me like what’s-her-name in The Graduate.”

  “Danny—I’m really sorry. I had no idea that—”

  “Please, Julie. Just listen.”

  Julie swallowed. “OK.”

  “I let what I was feeling turn into bitterness. I was sure I’d never be happy and never find a woman who could be trusted. The thing is, it—my bitterness—happened slowly, and I guess I wasn’t completely aware of it.

  “Then there was you, Julie. I . . . fell in love with you. I mean that completely and totally. But I was still carrying my past and my bitterness, and I couldn’t—didn’t—tell you what was going on with me. That’s over now.”

  “What’s over?”

  Danny’s voice became slightly louder and more forceful. “The hiding of my feelings, my building of walls—that’s over. That’s what I mean. I promise you that—if you can consider letting me into your life again.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Danny,” Julie said, her voice trembling.

  Danny stood and took a step closer to Julie. “I understand. I didn’t expect an immediate answer. Just let me say one more thing, and I’ll get my horse and leave. I love you, Julie. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’ll prove to you that being away from you has changed me, made me realize how precious you are. All I ask is that you give me some time with you to prove everything I’ve said. I’m here, Julie. All you need to do is to let me know that you’ll give me a chance.” He turned away and walked toward the barn.

  Julie didn’t follow him. She just sat there with her thoughts whirling in her mind, trying to believe what she’d just heard.

  Within a few minutes Danny led Dakota out of the barn, slid the door shut, and swung into his saddle. Julie could see the patches of white on the horse’s coat and Sunday’s white chest in the dark, but Danny’s face was unclear. He put Dakota into a quick walk, and Julie listened until she could no longer hear the hoofbeats.

  “Like the inside of a pizza oven in here,” Julie mumbled to herself as she made her way through the main floor of the warehouse. Even in the full midday power of the sun, the lighting in the building was dismal. The few windows in the steel fabricated structure were thickly coated with dust and dead insects. The place was huge and as silent as a funeral parlor at midnight. Much of the first floor was taken up by pallets of various appliances in cardboard cartons, piled pallet upon pallet to within inches of the twenty-foot ceiling. The paths between the pallets didn’t seem wide enough to allow room to maneuver the forklifts that stacked the appliances, but obviously they were.

  The occasional forklift, still and silent, hulked in the murky darkness like some sort of sleeping prehistoric beast. Julie walked in the center of an aisle of seemingly endless stacks of washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, and ranges. She could barely see the penciled map Ken had prepared for her, but she knew she was looking for a stairway at the far end of the warehouse that led to the second floor of the building.

  Abruptly, the appliance area ended. Now the pallets held machine parts—what sort of machines, Julie had no idea. The silence and the heat were both oppressive and a little bit frightening. She found it disquieting to be alone in a place where there was almost a total absence of sound, except for the soles of her boots slapping the concrete floor.

  It wasn’t quite noon, but nobody knew exactly when Craig would be making his delivery. Ken had learned that the chief was scheduled to meet with the city council from 9:00 a.m. until noon and then to have lunch with them, so a morning drop-off wasn’t likely. Outlaw bikers weren’t known for keeping early morning hours, anyway. But the police were taking no chances. The video man had been in place since 9:00, and the unmarked state trooper vehicles had been in position on the side streets around the Bulldogger—with two pickups in the bar’s parking lot—since 10:00.

  The steel steps of the stairway to the second floor were almost ladder steep. Julie climbed carefully, the palm of her hand sweating against the stair rail. Skylights in the ceiling provided more light than what existed downstairs. There were a few offices on the second floor. A series of desks, credenzas, and filing cabinets clustered in front of the offices.

  Julie tapped lightly on the closed door of an office with the name Rich Novack stenciled on it.

  “Come in,” a masculine voice sounded from inside.

  Julie had anticipated TV-broadcast-sized video equipment and was surprised to see a unit about the size of a brick mounted on a tripod at the dingy window that faced the rear of the Bulldogger. A small, closed-circuit TV monitor sat on the desk, along with a control pad that allowed the technician to adjust the view of the camera without himself appearing in the window.

  “I’m assuming you’re Julie Downs,” the tech said with a smile. “If you’re not, I’ve got a problem here.”

  “I’m Julie.” She walked to where the tech was sitting in an armed office chair with his elbows on the desk in front of him, looking out the window. He looked more like a disoriented hippie than a cop or police technician. His shoulder-length hair could have used a long and thorough shampoo, and his jeans were threadbare and grease-spotted. He wore a leather vest over his tanned upper body, without a shirt or T-shirt.

  “I’ve been the night watchman here for a couple weeks,” he said. “This place pays next to nothing, and I look like the sort who’ll work for wages like that.” He extended his hand. “Tom Davis, Montana State Police.”

  Julie shook Tom’s hand. “There’s no one else here? No business going on?”

  “Hasn’t been for almost a month,” Tom said. “Most of the stuff here is under receivership from a couple of bankrupt appliance stores, and none of it is going anywhere for a while. I’ve been more or less living here—folks are used to seeing me ride up on my bike and use my key to get in at various times of day.”

  “What about the workers, the office staff?”

  Tom shook his head. “Laid off. Some of the grunts are on call if they’re needed, but that’s about it. Kind of a trickle-down effect from the drought. Businesses are dropping all over the place.” He looked at Julie’s purse. “I hope you brought a book with you. I don’t think anything’s going to happen until the joint closes. This could be a long day for you.”

  “I never thought to bring a book along,” Julie admitted.

  Tom hooked a carton from under the desk with his foot. The carton was overflowing with paperbacks. “Take a look through these if you like. They’re mostly novels—westerns, cops, action-adventure—with a couple of true crime books and a couple of poetry collections. Help yourself to anything you find. Like I said, it could be a long day.”

  Julie started toward the books.

  “Whoa!” Tom held up his hand. “Don’t walk in front of the window,” he said. “That’s about the only rule here—that and no lights after it gets dark. There’s enough light from the security lights to read after dark. It’s not likely that anyone from the Bulldogger will be looking up here, but if they do, we don’t want to tip them off.”

  “Sorry.” Julie smiled. “I should’ve thought of that.” She ducked below the window and looked through the books. She picked out a paperback Ed McBain 87th Precinct mystery and a collection of Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson.

  “I
’ve been following your drought series in the News-Express,” Tom said. “It’s good stuff—great writing.”

  “Thanks, Tom. That’s always good to hear.”

  “When Ken first asked about having you here I vetoed it right away.” He smiled somewhat abashedly. “Actually, what I said was to the effect of, ‘I don’t need some reporter looking for a story in here and getting in my way.’ Then Ken told me who you are and what you’ve been doing.”

  Julie laughed. “I promise not to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  Tom laughed too. “Good,” he said. “You know, Ken pretty much put this whole thing together on his own time, from the suspicions he had about the chief. And he did some good tailing too. I don’t know that I could’ve followed Ross well enough so that he wouldn’t pick up on the tail.”

  “He told me a bit about his PI experience,” Julie said. “He said that’s where he learned to follow a subject on foot or in a car without being observed.”

  “This bust—if it goes down as we think it will—could be really good for him. He’s an excellent cop with lots of skills rookies take years to develop—if they ever do develop. He won’t be in the bag for long. That’s a sure thing.”

  “In the bag?” Julie asked.

  “Uniform. Cop talk.”

  Julie took her books and sat on the floor near the window, her back against the wall. A small reciprocating fan Tom had set up on a chair didn’t do much more than move the super-heated air around, but it was better than nothing. She began reading the mystery novel.

  An hour later Tom passed Julie a bottle of chilled water from a small cooler next to his chair. “I got some sandwiches too, if you want. Oh—Ken left something for you.” He delved back into the cooler and tossed her a giant-sized Snickers bar that was wonderfully cold.

  “What a guy.” She smiled for a moment, but then the smile faded.

  What about Danny? Are his promises good? Is what he said last night about loving me—wanting to spend his life with me—real? Or did he simply get lonely and have a change of heart that won’t last?