Cotton

by Paul Heald

  How could she not understand what she meant to him? Despite her mood swings, Sondra held everything together. Meeting her had changed his life as much as coming down to Clarkeston from the mountains. She was an integral part of what he loved about the place. He was certain that if she understood, she wouldn’t leave. But she was not returning his calls, and her sister would not tell him where she was staying.

  Thank God his week was full of attention-diverting tasks. The zoning commission was meeting to discuss a site that Walmart wanted to develop, and a Clarkeston college student had brought sexual-harassment charges against one of her professors. The police blotter was especially lively, with a string of burglaries in an affluent neighborhood, and a Peeping Tom, naked and covered in Vaseline, caught peering in the windows of an assisted-living center. Between the stories that needed covering and existing prose that needed editing, James had little time during the day to dwell on the cold and sterile communication his wife had sent through her attorney. But when he got home to the empty house, the full measure of his failure as a human being was set before him on a platter of self-pity and Budweiser.

  On Friday morning, James was out at a local elementary school covering the dedication of an organic-gardening project, when the phone buzzed in his pocket and he ended a tedious interview by waving the device importantly at a young student teacher. To his surprise, the caller was Melanie Wilkerson in Atlanta, wondering if he still wanted her to help look through Jacob Granville’s old stuff at the newspaper office. They arranged to meet at the newspaper mid-morning Saturday, and James went back to his computer to write a mixed review of the organic initiative at an elementary school that still offered Coke and Mountain Dew to its students at lunch.

  * * *

  Melanie was beginning to appreciate the benefits of leaving Atlanta every Saturday morning and driving out into the country. The air was cleaner, the traffic less chaotic, and the number of young professionals roller-skating with their designer dogs dramatically reduced. When had the population of Southern California beach towns displaced true southerners in midtown Atlanta? Elton John even had a condo in Buckhead, for chrissakes. Melanie was no cheerleader for the old South, but there was no reason to banish good thick accents and greasy fried chicken along with segregation and cross burning. In any event, her tolerance level for her new-old hometown was significantly higher after a bit of decompression in the countryside, tilting at windmills with the increasingly intriguing James Murphy.

  She found the newspaper office with little problem. The Clarkeston Chronicle occupied a surprisingly large red-brick building along the river on the northern end of the downtown business district. The front door was locked, so she called James, who soon appeared to let her in.

  “Sorry!” he apologized through the glass, as he pulled his keys out of his blue jeans. She felt a warm hand on her back as he ushered her into the building. “We used to keep the front entrance unlocked on the weekends, but a couple of computers walked off and now we’ve got a key-card system.” He tugged the door behind her until the lock caught with a soft click. “Let’s head down to the basement and see if we can find Granville’s boxes. Do you need a coffee first?”

  She declined his offer and walked beside him down the central hallway of the building, heels tapping loudly against the cold marble floors. She wished he had kept his strong hand on her back, but he looked tired and preoccupied.

  “Are you okay?”

  He looked surprised, as if she had guessed some sort of secret.

  “I’m fine. Just a long night, that’s all.”

  When they reached the far side of the building, he took a plastic card out of his pocket and ran it through an electronic reader along the side of an unmarked metal door.

  “This is the back way into the archives. The last time I checked, Granville’s stuff was just jammed in the back of a closet. The cops told my boss to hold on to his things for a while and nobody’s ever gotten around to tossing ’em out.” He led her down a concrete stairwell into the bright fluorescent basement light and stopped in front of another metal door. He tossed her a weary smile. “At least I hope they haven’t thrown ’em out yet.”

  If that were the case, he was going to be taking her out for a very nice lunch to repay her for a wasted trip.

  “They’re still here. Let’s take them over to a reading area.” He picked up the bigger of the two boxes and she, the other. “There’s a big oak table we can use—my office is a disaster area right now.”

  The newspaper archive room was a few steps farther down the hall and contained a row of battered metal file cabinets labeled “Photographs” and an old-fashioned microfilm reader placed next to a case containing reduced versions of the Chronicle going back over a hundred years. In the middle of the room sat two wooden conference tables, pushed together to form a large work space.

  James set his box down on the table. “We usually put our summer interns down here, but they won’t arrive for another week or so.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” She put her box down and flipped open the top. “You said you already went through this stuff right after Diana disappeared.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and sat down next to her. “I’m not sure. Five years ago, I was looking for stuff directly related to Granville’s relationship with Diana or some sign that he was planning something. Nothing jumped out at me at the time.” He opened his container and pulled out a folder full of photographs. “That’s why you’re here. Fresh eyes and all that.”

  She turned to her box while James flipped through the glossy images, occasionally muttering to himself when he recognized a picture. Only a couple of blocks—and twenty years—away she had sat around a similar table with her co-clerks as they worked on their bench memos for the Judge. Sitting with James felt much the same, a quiet camaraderie, a shared purpose, and a hint of magnetic attraction.

  She sorted through a pile of office supplies that seemed irrelevant and pulled out the manila file folders at the bottom of the box. She set to the side a broken stapler, a pair of scissors, an old-fashioned rolodex with no names or addresses on any of the cards, a box of Kleenex, and a phone book, making a mental note to flip through the directory to search for marginal scribblings.

  The first folder contained information related to Granville’s employment with the newspaper: a memo about the newspaper’s copyright policy, several blank expense-reimbursement forms, and a thin handbook describing insurance and retirement options for new employees. She tried to imagine some way any of the documents might be relevant to the disappearance of Diana Cavendish.

  “I thought you said Granville was part-time.” She passed the handbook to James. “Why would he have retirement decisions to make?”

  James looked at it briefly and then turned his attention back to his photos. “Part-timers can contribute to a supplemental retirement account if they want. The paper doesn’t make any contributions for them, so anyone can participate.” He smiled. “Good thinking, though.”

  Turning her attention to the next file folder, she found two dozen pages of printed text, bits and pieces of prose that looked like partially completed stories for the newspaper. She read the first piece, an almost finished narrative about the proposed demolition of a local historic building. Granville had interviewed several local preservationists and the developer, who wanted to put in a new block of apartments. She slid closer to James and showed him the draft.

  “Was Granville a reporter too? It looks like he was writing stories for the paper.”

  “He wanted to be. He said he was going to be a famous photojournalist.” James did not sound overly impressed by Granville’s career goals. “He talked with me a couple times about how to break into the print side of things, but he wasn’t very good at taking advice.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and leaned closer to show him the text. He smelled nice, and she could feel his muscle flex as he turned. “You didn’t like him much, did you?”

  �
��Not really.” He shook his head but did not elaborate.

  “Did he write about anything controversial?” She flicked the corner of the demolition story with her finger. “He’s taking on a developer in this one.”

  James looked at the headline. “Oh, I remember this … yeah … the story never ran. The developer won, and down came the old Tate Mansion.”

  “Did he ever get anything published?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, “a couple of fluff pieces here and there.”

  “Could we find them and see if he ever said anything interesting in a published piece?”

  James frowned and leaned back. Melanie’s hand slipped from his shoulder but he didn’t seem to notice. “Not if they were credited as having been written by ‘staff,’ but the online archive goes back almost ten years, so you could run a search for his name and see if anything comes up.”

  She nodded and promised to take a look at the corpus of Granville’s published work when she was through with the box. The rest of the stories in the file all seemed innocuous. He seemed to have taken an interest in business-related stories, an odd choice, given the lack of opportunities for exciting action photos. She read about the opening of a new Italian restaurant in downtown Clarkeston, the dim prospects for a light-rail line between the college town and Atlanta, a scandal with the kitchen sanitation rating at a local nursing home, and violent protests by demonstrators at the latest World Trade Organization ministerial meeting. There seemed to be a consistent skepticism about corporations in his work, but nothing seemed connected to Diana Cavendish or any other incendiary topics. As unpublished works, they seemed especially unrelated to any potential friend or foe of Jacob Granville.

  “Here’s something …” James pushed a photo across the table to her. He had already gone through everything in his box except a slim folder of photos. “Look at the back, too.”

  She held in her hand a large photograph of a striking woman with thick dark hair, rosy cheeks, and a captivating smile, standing with her arm around a subdued and pensive friend with thin pale hair and blue eyes. “Neither is Diana Cavendish.”

  “Turn it over.”

  On the back were written two names, Brenda and Elisa, and a date, March 15, 2009. If the order of the names matched the picture, then the brunet was Brenda, and the other woman, Elisa. They both dressed formally, in dark wool skirts and blazers, each with a satchel draped over her shoulder. The image captured something intrinsically interesting about the personalities of both girls. Whatever he was, Granville had talent with a camera. Looking at the photo was like meeting the two women, not merely looking at them.

  “Nice,” she said. “Now, tell me why it’s interesting.”

  “Two reasons,” the reporter replied as he took the picture and flipped it over. For the first time that day he seemed energized. “First, the date is less than ten days before Diana Cavendish disappeared.” He paused a moment and looked at her briefly over his glasses. “Second is the location.” He put his finger on a sign visible in the background of the photo. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland?”

  She took back the picture and studied it more closely. He was right about the sign, and the architecture of the building looked vaguely European. “What the hell was he doing in Geneva just before Diana disappeared?”

  “Good question.” He took off his glasses and polished them with a white handkerchief. For a moment he was as animated and flirtatious as he had been during their visit to North Carolina. “Hold that thought and let’s keep looking.”

  It took them another thirty minutes to finish with the remaining items in the boxes. Nothing appeared worth taking, except for the picture of the two girls, which James slid into a folder and tucked under his arm as they returned the containers to the closet.

  The reporter looked at his watch and suggested bringing back some food from a nearby sub shop for lunch. He slipped out to pick up their order before Melanie remembered to ask for the access password to the newspaper’s Wi-Fi system. Sure enough, when she tried to log on, even the “guest” option required a password. While she waited for Murphy’s return, she retrieved the phone directory from the closet, took it back to the archive room, and leafed through it. As she feared, she found no scrawled notations next to any interesting numbers, although one partially torn page contained an underlined name: Miriam Rodgers.

  After twenty minutes, James returned, and although the food was aimed at the unsophisticated palate of the college students just across the river, the sandwich was surprisingly tasty. He let out a deep sigh as he took a bite out of his Reuben.

  “You seem really preoccupied,” she said as she caught his eye and gave him her most winning smile. “Out partying all night?”

  “Hardly.” He paused as if he were considering whether to elaborate. “I got legal-separation papers served on me yesterday. Not very conducive to a good’s night sleep, I’m afraid.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” That explained the glum mood, she thought. His wife must be a real piece of work. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.” He gave her a sad smile. “Just hanging out down here and working through this stuff with you helps as much as anything.”

  Nice.

  They finished their food in silence, and she turned her attention back to her computer. Her first search on the newspaper website returned dozens of hits mentioning Granville in connection with the disappearance of Diana Cavendish. She then limited her search to the time period before the disappearance and found two articles authored by the young photographer. One, entitled “Bars Protest Smoking Ban,” was a short piece filled with predictions about the dire effect Clarkeston’s new antismoking ordinance would have on local drinking establishments. The other headline read, “Congress Carefully Watches WTO Case.” She remembered the unpublished fragment in her file and the picture that James had found, and read the story carefully.

  Granville’s article reported that Brazil had filed a case before the dispute-settlement body of the World Trade Organization complaining about Washington’s support for US cotton growers. India, Pakistan, Chad, and other major cotton-growing countries had joined the complaint, which alleged an astounding and undisputed fact: Congress subsidized US cotton growers over $18 billion per year to produce a crop that was worth only around $11 billion. Although American taxpayers were apparently unaware of or untroubled by the huge subsidy, other cotton-growing countries around the world were incensed. As the largest exporter of cotton in the world, the US, with its subsidized low price, shrank cotton profits worldwide. The massive influx of artificially cheap cotton from the US suppressed prices and cost some of the poorest farmers in the world billions of dollars per year. Since several of the top cotton producers in the world were in sub-Saharan Africa, the story emphasized the potential human-rights dimension of the case. Wealthy corporate farmers raked in piles of cash from Congress while impoverished growers in Mali starved. The case had been briefed, but the WTO decision had not been rendered, at the time Granville wrote the article.

  She reread the story and tapped her thumb impatiently just below the space bar on her laptop. “Read this.” She handed the computer to him over the remnants of his sandwich.

  He read the article quickly and then scrolled back to the top of the screen. “This came out about four weeks before that picture was taken in Geneva.”

  She caught his eye and saw a familiar intensity. “A photo of two girls posing right in front of the WTO.” She took back her laptop and bookmarked the page. “At least we can guess what he was doing in Geneva right before Diana disappeared: researching the cotton case.”

  James looked puzzled. “Trust me, the newspaper did not spring for a trip to Europe for him to work on this story.”

  “So he paid his own way.” She shrugged and offered a quick theory. “You said he was ambitious.”

  “Yeah, ambitious but not rich.”

  “Maybe his parents paid for
the trip.” Melanie tried to come up with a reason why Granville might travel to Geneva for the story. Surely, the details of the case were public, and expert commentary could be solicited by phone.

  “His parents didn’t mention any foreign travel when we talked to them.”

  “Why would they?” she argued. “Why would they think it was relevant?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know that it is relevant.” He took a sip from his Coke. “I mean, it’s super unusual. Photographers squeezing by on a part-time salary do not self-finance trips to Switzerland to cover international trade stories for small-town Georgia newspapers. It’s definite weirdness.”

  “Agreed.” She clicked her computer shut and slipped it into her shoulder bag. She hated coincidences, and the timing of this “weirdness” with Diana Cavendish’s disappearance was as unlikely as the timing of her own phone call to Arkansas with the theft at Murphy’s house.

  “Oh, shit,” she said suddenly. She took her computer back out, moved around the table next to him and reconnected to the Internet. “You remember the farmer in the YouTube video?”

  She found j-gville on the website and clicked Play on the first upload. Once again, the stoic face of the Malian farmer who had lost his wife and two daughters appeared on the screen. Thankfully, Melanie’s question was answered before they were forced to see the twisted legs of his son once again. She turned and grabbed his shoulder. “That’s what I thought! He was a cotton farmer.”

  James looked up at her with piercing blue eyes. Why didn’t he just lean over and kiss her, anyway? He was separated now, after all.

  “I’m going to talk with my editor tomorrow and see if he knows anything about this. After all, he approved the first little story on the cotton case, and he might have talked with Jacob about a follow-up. Maybe he even saw the video.”

  “And I’m going to track down Diana Cavendish’s mother.” Melanie shut the laptop and put it back in her carryall. “If she was as close to her daughter as her ex-husband says, then she might know something about Diana’s boyfriend.”