seven

Home was still quiet, bereft of children. Neither of them would be back until the afternoon, so after a quick shower and a change into still-comfortable but more professional clothes, Nell headed to the office.

There was always stuff to do at the paper. She usually had about five or so letters on her desk from people listing the reasons that they should take over as the film reviewer. One of the current ones offered to cover the art films in New Orleans and Atlanta. All he needed was his expenses—hotel, food, transportation, and ticket prices—covered.

One of the benefits to Stanley, the present film reviewer, was that he did it on his own time and with his own money. He was also, as he said, “just a guy that likes movies,” and his reviews paid attention to the things that Pelican Bay readers were interested in: was it a good time and could you bring the kids?

Four of the five would get the polite rejection letter, including Mr. All Expenses Paid. One had possibilities; it was from a retired film professor. She and her husband had just moved to the area, and she was offering to do a few pieces on films for “the fame of seeing my name in print.” She enclosed several clippings, and they indicated that she might be a good counterpart to Stanley. She had a subtly feminist viewpoint, something Nell was always trying to sneak in, and a breezy, unpretentious writing style, something Nell was beginning to think was rarer than … pelican’s teeth. The professor wouldn’t get the form letter, which meant that Nell had to write an un-form letter.

Then she had to edit Ina Claire’s cooking column.

Ina managed the classified section, with a style that was a cross between a fifth grade teacher and a pit bull. Sometimes Nell suspected that people took out ads because Ina tapped into that primal fear that they would flunk geography if they didn’t. Ina wasn’t above suggesting classifieds. “Now, Miz Adams, I hear you’re moving to Hawaii, and a garage sale in the classifieds always does a brisk business.” Ina also never met a Past Due that she wouldn’t call again, often to sell another ad as well as to collect payment. “Now if you use that language with me, young man, I will have to pray for your immortal soul this Sunday” was as flustered as she ever got.

The trade-off for having a little old lady Machiavelli keeping the classified profits up was the cooking column.

Ina Claire could cook, but she couldn’t write. Fortunately, she either never noticed how extensively Nell rewrote her or was savvy enough to know that her “Soup is a liquid food that can be cooked even when it’s hot or cold out” was improved when Nell changed it to “Soup is a versatile dish, as appropriate in the summer as in the winter.”

The real problem with Ina’s columns was that she belonged to the “a dash,” “a smidgen,” “just enough” school of cooking. So Nell’s Herculean task was to transform those into useful measurements. Nell had become fairly fluent in Ina-speak, but she still had to gather the sets of measuring spoons and cups she kept in a desk drawer and make a trek to Ina’s desk before she actually ran the column. “Now is this”—showing the ½ teaspoon—“or this”—the ⅓—“what you mean by a dollop?” was part of the editing process.

Nell had finished rewriting the text and was in the midst of roughing in the measurements when she heard footsteps in the outer office.

Both she and Thom, and Thom’s father before him, had always left the office open when someone was there. “Sometimes it’s a bother, but sometimes a story walks in,” Thom had quoted his father.

Nell was suddenly aware that she was alone in the building and that there was little traffic in this secular part of town on a weekend morning.

“Jacko?” she called out loudly, trying to keep the mounting fear from her voice. She stood up as if ready to run.

Suddenly Police Chief Shaun stood in her doorway.

Without even thinking, Nell grabbed a letter opener, as if it could be a weapon against this tall man and his gun.

“Nell? Did I scare you?” the chief asked.

Nell glanced from him to the useless letter opener. She quickly dropped it, feeling silly at her overreaction. “I’m sorry,” she fumbled. “I guess I wasn’t expecting anyone …”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you. I saw your car in the parking lot and that the door was open.”

“I know. It’s usually not a problem. It’s just … that phone call in the middle of the night … and finding Rayburn’s body … has me on edge.”

“I can understand. That’s actually what I came to talk to you about. May I come in?”

He was, Nell realized, still standing in the doorway, and she was barricaded behind the desk, ready to run one way or the other.

“Yes, please, have a seat,” she said, letting herself relax into hers. She made a point of putting the letter opener into a drawer. She couldn’t be much safer than with the chief of police and his big gun between her and the door.

“What can I do for you?” she continued as he sat down. Ask the first question, control the interview. Nell was amused at how quickly her reporter’s instincts replaced the fear.

“I’m just curious about why you called the sheriff’s office instead of the police station about that phone call. I thought that you and I had a better relationship than you and Sheriff Hickson.”

“I called the police station first,” Nell replied.

“You did?” He seemed both surprised at her answer and relieved that his rival hadn’t been her first choice. “There was no record of that call in the evening’s log.”

“I’m not surprised. The officer that I spoke to didn’t take it very seriously.”

“He still should have logged it.”

“And leave proof that I did call and that he took down no information and didn’t ask a single question?”

A hard and distant look came into Chief Shaun’s eyes, as if reconciling himself to the idea that his men would not only disobey him and flaunt the rules, but be nefarious enough to deliberately cover their tracks. “Who took the call?”

“Boyce Jenkins.” From the look in Chief Shaun’s eyes, Nell knew that Jenkins was going to pay for pawning her off to the sheriff.

“How did he handle it? Can you give me details?”

“Offhandedly, like it couldn’t be important.” Nell stopped at that, wondering if it would do any good to bring up the sexual angle. She didn’t know the chief well enough to know whether he would give it a “boys will be boys” shrug or not.

“So, he sort of blew it off and hung up on you?”

“Does it really matter?”

“Yes, it does. That phone call was important, and we let it slip away. I don’t ever want that to happen again. You’re a strong, intelligent woman and you know your way around and it mattered enough to you that you went ahead and called the sheriff’s office.” He fixed her with an intent, earnest look and Nell began to understand why so many women found him attractive.

Flattery is a useful interview technique, she reminded herself, but she didn’t like him less because he’d called her strong and intelligent. “He seemed more interested in flirting than getting any information about the call.”

“Flirting? How?”

“Tone. A lazy drawl. Nothing really damning I can quote him on. He did make a comment about lots of lonely women calling him in the middle of the night. When I mentioned that the caller had said ‘in the woods,’ he cut in and suggested we take a ‘moonlit walk in the woods.’”

“And then what did he say?”

“That’s when I gave up and said I’d call back in the morning.”

“So, to sum up, Jenkins didn’t think there was any substance to your complaint, used it as an excuse to play macho hunk, and so alienated you that you felt you had to end the call?”

“That sums it up from my end, Chief Shaun.” More than his earlier compliments, Nell appreciated that he seemed to be taking the matter with the seriousness that she felt it deserved.

“Hey, that chief stuff is just when I want to impress people. Why don’t you call me Doug?”

“Okay, Doug. Thanks for looking into this.”

“I wish you’d come to me about it. I take it seriously when my men don’t do their jobs.”

“I was afraid that you’d dismiss it as ‘boys will be boys’ and any complaints as some feminist reaction.”

“Naw, that’s Sheriff Hickson. In my town, the boys better be police officers first. They forget that, then maybe they need to be working at the casinos in Biloxi.”

“Is the sheriff cooperating with you on the case?” Nell had her problem solved; now it was time to get in a few moments of reporting.

“I suppose he is. By the time his deputies finished tromping around in the woods, anything resembling forensic evidence was gone. He doesn’t like the idea that young boys can be murdered in his part of the world, so he’s still touting his theory that maybe Rayburn tripped and fell into the well and that phone call to you was just a bizarre coincidence—that’s his theory, not mine,” he said in response to the clear look of disbelief on Nell’s face. “Or that some sicko chanced on the body and made the phone call to get his jollies off.”

“The first would be a hell of a coincidence. The second, highly unlikely, although I guess we can’t rule it out entirely.”

“Or that maybe you just made up the phone call as a female attention-getting device—”

“And somehow knew about the body,” Nell interjected angrily.

“Pretty soon, he’ll claim you planted the body there just to be able to sell a few papers.”

“That’s beyond ridiculous.”

“I know. I’ll do my best to find the real murderer before the sheriff arrests you,” he said with a boyish grin.

“That would be most kind of you.”

Doug Shaun took a pen off her desk, then pulled a business card out of his chest pocket. As he wrote, he said, “Home, cell phone, direct work line. If anything else happens, call me. Call me first, if you want to.”

Nell took the card. “Thanks. I hope I never have to use it.”

The chief stood up to go. “Me, too. Unless it’s something like the speckled trout are biting right now.” With that, he was gone.

He can move very quietly for a big man, Nell noted. Then she turned her attention to Ina’s measurements, his card on her desk as protection.