“Where have you been?” Lillian demanded when Conley walked into the Beacon office. She snatched up a handful of pink message slips. “People have been calling you all morning long. You can’t answer your own damn phone? You think I’m your secretary or something?”
Conley took the message slips. “I’ve been working. Following leads. Doing interviews. I couldn’t answer my phone because it got smashed yesterday.”
“Nobody ever tells me anything,” Lillian grumbled. “How’s your face?”
“Beat to hell,” Conley said. “Thanks for asking.”
“Go buy yourself a new phone, okay?” Lillian said. “And your sister wants to see you in her office.”
“Is this like a trip to the woodshed?” she asked, slumping into the chair in Grayson’s office.
“Why do you always assume the worst with me?” Grayson asked.
“Maybe because we don’t have a long history of pleasant interactions in this office?”
Conley was leafing through the message slips and stopped when she saw one from Roger Sistrunk, her old boss at the AJC. Lillian had misspelled his name as SISSTUNK and written in all caps: “WILL YOU PLEASE CALL THIS ASSHOLE? HE’S CALLED HERE FOUR TIMES LOOKING FOR YOU.”
“Not today,” Grayson assured her. “I read your piece about Buddy Bright this morning, and I honest to God cried.”
“You cried?”
Grayson was a notorious non-crier. When she was ten, she’d accidentally gotten her finger slammed in a car door and had been so stoic about the pain that it wasn’t until her fifth-grade teacher sent a note home from school that the family discovered she had a broken finger.
“I did. It was poignant and sad and surprising. And I usually hate first-person in a newspaper story because I find it treacly and self-indulgent. But not this time. Conley, it was just so…”
“Non-sucky?”
“Definitely non-sucky. I had Michael upload it to the website this morning. We’ve had over six thousand likes already.”
“How? We don’t have anywhere near that many followers.”
“I know. But Michael, our boy genius, has been working his magic on social media, tagging The Detroit News and everybody else he can think of. The story’s gotten picked up by a ton of newspapers around the country.”
“Maybe that accounts for all the phone messages Lillian just handed me,” Conley said.
“I know your hotshot NBC producer called and left word that her flight landed and she and her camera crew would be here after lunch,” Grayson said.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No. Why do you always assume I’m going to yell at you?”
“Because you usually do?”
“Not this time. As awful and traumatic as yesterday was for you, it’s great publicity for the Beacon. It turns out that Buddy Bright had a huge, loyal local following. People are really responding to your story. Lillian signed up a couple of dozen new subscribers this morning.”
“Then it’s all good,” Conley said, turning to leave.
Grayson put a restraining hand on her arm. “Not all of it. G’mama’s insurance agent called me a little while ago because we’re in Rotary together.”
“I was surprised G’mama wasn’t more upset last night, but she said the house is insured so she wasn’t too worried about it,” Conley said.
Grayson’s face had a pained expression. “We heard from a contractor this morning. When the porch ceiling collapsed, it pulled away part of the siding on the front of the house. Conley, he says the house is absolutely ridden with termites.”
“But they can, like, spray or tent it or something, right?” Conley asked.
“It’s too late to spray. We’ve got three different kinds of infestation—subterranean, flying, and Formosan termites. He went all around the house. He says the foundation is like swiss cheese, the rafters up in the attic are crumbling, the window frames, everything.”
Conley collapsed back onto her chair. “Does G’mama know? What are we gonna do?”
“She knows,” Grayson said. “I had to be straight with her. And I don’t know what we’ll do. This contractor said it’d be cheaper to pull the whole house down and start from scratch.”
“Can we get another opinion?”
“We can, but I met the contractor over there after he called. You can take a stick and poke it right into the foundation beams. Same with the windowsills. I think it’s true. It’s just a matter of time before the whole damn house crumbles.”
“Will the insurance cover that?”
“I doubt it. G’mama says she used to have a termite bond, but she let it lapse after Pops died because she thought it was just another unnecessary expense.”
“Is she devastated?” Conley asked. “I mean, her grandfather built that house. She’s lived there her whole life. Our whole lives.”
“I was more upset than she was,” Grayson said. “G’mama seems to roll with the punches.”
“I guess if the house can’t be saved, she’ll rebuild?”
“She says not,” Grayson reported. “She says she’s been thinking for a while now that having two houses doesn’t make sense at her age. She loved Felicity Street, but the stairs were getting harder and harder for her and Winnie to manage, especially with the laundry room down in the basement. At least at the Dunes she has the elevator, and the laundry room is on the same floor as the bunk rooms.”
“You said the Dunes was a firetrap,” Conley pointed out. “The wiring, the roof…”
“I know. But if she sells Felicity Street, that’s a double lot on the best street in town. The contractor this morning told me flat out he’d buy it to build a spec mansion.”
“Conley!” Lillian poked her head in the doorway. “There’s a whole TV crew out front looking for you. If you and your sister aren’t too busy jib-jabbing in here maybe you could come out and talk to them.”
“Coming,” Conley said.
Selena explained her idea in the car on the way to Felicity Street. “I basically want you to humanize your newspaper story. I mean, it was great, but you distanced yourself from the subject matter. In your story, you were an observer, not a participant. I want you to stand in the living room and talk about how it felt, the moment the deputy kicked in the door—that’s okay, right? I mean, it’s your family house, right?”
“Whoa,” Conley said. “I don’t know that my grandmother wants to invite the whole world into her living room. That seems icky. And invasive.”
“But it puts the viewer right there, with you, in the moment,” Selena said. “I get chills thinking about it.”
“Maybe so, but my grandmother is a proper Southern lady, so no.”
Selena brushed back her fringe of dark shining bangs in frustration. “Well, that puts a crimp in my plans.”
“You’re welcome to shoot outside the house,” Conley said. “After all, I’m sure most of Silver Bay has driven past it today to take a look for themselves.”
She pulled the Subaru to the curb, and the network van pulled up behind them, outside G’mama’s house. The carnage looked even worse a day later. The velvety green expanse of lawn looked like a stock car dirt track with countless crisscross tire marks. The carefully tended borders of azaleas, camellias, and boxwoods had been knocked down by all the police cars and rescue vehicles. Worst of all, Conley thought, was the pair of deep trenches that ended in the collapsed front porch.
Selena clapped her hands in excitement. “You’re right. This is way better. My God, it looks like a tornado hit.”
They got out of the car.
“When were you thinking of doing your hair and makeup?” Selena asked.
“It’s done,” Conley said. “I’ve showered. My hair is clean, I’m wearing eyebrow pencil and lipstick, and my clothes all match. I’d call myself a fashion triumph.”
“Hang on a sec.” Selena went back to the van, where the camera operator was unloading his equipment, and came back with what looked like an airline-approved carry-on suitcase on wheels.
“Let’s go inside the house and, uh, freshen you up a little,” she said.
Conley took a final look at herself in the bedroom mirror. Her hair had been hot-rollered, back-combed, and sprayed. Selena had used an actual airbrush to apply a thick coating of foundation to her face, followed by face powder, blush, bronzer, and contouring. She was wearing four shades of eye shadow, eyeliner, eye pencil, lip liner, lipstick, and multiple coats of mascara.
“I didn’t wear this much makeup when I was my sister’s maid of honor,” she told the producer. “But I notice you didn’t cover up the bruises on my cheek.”
“We want viewers to really see your injuries,” Selena explained. “But I only brought the basics because I know you print gals are into minimalism. You’ll have to get used to it if you’re going to do this for a living.”
“Who said I’m doing this for a living?” Conley asked.
“Let’s talk after we’ve finished the shoot,” Selena said.
They positioned her in front of the collapsed porch, and Selena ran through her directions.
“Just relax and look directly into the camera. Give us a summary of what happened and how you felt. I’ll ask you a few questions, but the camera will be focused on you.”
Conley had done a few television interviews over the years, so she wasn’t unused to the glare of a camera, but being interviewed as a victim was a new and unwelcome experience.
“Tell us how you felt when you realized that the man who’d stalked and terrorized you after you’d spurned his advances was dead,” Selena prompted.
“I wasn’t happy. It was a horrible experience, but I never wanted him dead. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I guess I was mostly relieved.”
“Now, your newspaper has reported that the man who attacked you, Deputy Walter Poppell, had a juvenile record for sexual assault, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Conley said. “My colleague Michael Torpy talked to a law enforcement source who confirmed that after being charged with beating and assaulting a girl as a young teen, Poppell was sentenced to some kind of public service in a juvenile intervention center, and afterward, his record was expunged.”
“And yet he was hired by the Bronson County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy. Do you think the sheriff’s office should be held accountable for the actions of Deputy Poppell?”
It was a question Selena hadn’t asked her during her brief run-through.
Conley thought back to Merle Goggins’s concern for her well-being and his final words to her earlier that morning, when he’d clasped her hand and told her to take care of herself.
“No,” she said slowly. “Juvenile records are sealed in this state, and the sheriff assured me he had no knowledge of Poppell’s history. But I do think every person who ever looked the other way when a ‘boy’ like Poppell made a lewd comment or sexted pictures of a classmate should be accountable. Every coach who let an athlete play despite knowing he was a violent bully is accountable. And every parent who refused to acknowledge or discipline a child for those kinds of behaviors is accountable. I don’t think men like Walter Poppell are born like that. I think they mutate.”
Selena Kwan was hopping up and down in her excitement. “That was perfect! I knew it! I knew you’d be a natural in front of the camera.”
Conley thought she’d never felt as unnatural in her entire life. She’d been nervous and sweaty and felt like a stranger in her own skin.
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Believe me. That was great. Part of the reason I came down here today was to see for myself, but now I have. Here’s the situation. One of my reporters is going out on maternity leave. The slot is yours if you want it. Great timing, right? And you’d be back in Atlanta.”
“I don’t know. Can I think about it?”
“What’s to think about?” Selena asked. “I have half a dozen other candidates right now—seasoned, on-camera talent who’d give their left boob for this slot. We’d give you a three-month trial, reporting, producing, lots of enterprise stuff, which I can see is right in your wheelhouse.”
“I’m flattered, really,” Conley said, “but I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now.”
“Somebody else made you an offer already?” Selena asked. “I can pretty much guarantee that our offer will be much more than you’d ever make at any print outlet in the country.”
“I did get a lot of phone messages this morning, after the story was picked up,” Conley said, “but it’s not really about the money.”
The producer shook her head. “People always say it’s not about the money, but it actually is about the money. Every time.”
“Maybe I’m the exception,” Conley said.
The camera operator was waiting in the van.
“Well, give it some thought, then,” Selena said. “But I’ll need to know in the next week or so.”