Deadline

“I’ve got a month of vacation time and sick leave due. I’d like to take it.”

“A month!” Ronnie whipped off her tortoiseshell glasses, pitched them to the table. “You’ve got to be kidding! You can’t honestly expect me to approve a month’s vacation for you. Not even the anchors get that much time off all at once.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Ronnie stood up and began pacing about the room. “It’s out of the question. You’re my best reporter. I can’t have you taking off for a month.”

“It’s not impossible,” Tess argued. “You said yourself that David’s on board now and Angela’s back from maternity leave. So you’re fully staffed again.”

“We won’t be fully staffed if you’re out.”

“You’ve also got Kip,” Tess pointed out.

Ronnie glared at her and sat down again. “You’re not helping your case here, kiddo.” She shook her head. “No. There’s no way I can spare you for a month. A week maybe, but not a month.”

“Then I quit.”

“You can’t quit. You have a contract.”

“My contract’s up for renewal at the end of next month. I’ll ask the GM to release me early,” Tess told her, hating that it had come to this. She liked her job, liked Ronnie and the people she worked with, but she had to find out the truth. And to do that she was going to need time to go back to Mississippi. She stood. “I’m sorry, Ronnie.”

“Oh, stop with the dramatics and sit down.” Once Tess had done so, Ronnie said, “Now tell me what in the hell is going on and why you’re threatening to quit on me.”

“I don’t want to quit,” Tess told her. “But there’s something I have to do, something personal, and I need the time off to do it.”

“That’s it? That’s all the explanation you’re going to give me?”

“I told you. It’s personal.”

Ronnie leveled a “give me a break” look at her.

Tess sighed. “It has to do with my mother, about when she died. And about my father’s suicide,” Tess said finally.

“So that’s what’s been bothering you,” Ronnie said, and Tess suspected the remark was more to Ronnie herself. “Which I suppose is understandable. I mean, it hasn’t been all that long since that stuff happened with your father. I’m sure that whole suicide thing brought up some bad memories for you.”

“Yes.”

“But, kiddo, instead of taking off you should be keeping busy, and trying to put all that stuff out of your mind.”

“I can’t,” Tess told her.

Ronnie narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Have those dirtbags from the tabloids been hounding you again? Because if they have—”

“No. You know how this business is, everyone’s moved on to the next scandal and forgotten all about me and my family.”

“I would hope so,” Ronnie told her. “You poor kid. All that mess, then breaking up with Johnny and me loading you down with work. No wonder you’ve been having trouble sleeping. It’s a miracle that you haven’t been having nightmares.”

But there had been no nightmares. At least not in a very long time. That hadn’t always been the case. For months after her mother had been murdered, she did wake up screaming, unable to get the image of her father kneeling over her mother’s body, blood on his hands and shirt, the bloody bookend in his hand, out of her mind. But with time, the nightmares had grown fewer, the memories less sharp. Thanks in large measure to the psychologists her grandparents had insisted she see when she first came to live with them in D.C. Also, it had helped that she’d been so close to her grandmother, a bond that had only strengthened when she had feared she might lose the older woman to cancer. Thank heavens Grams had beaten the disease. But in those months and the years that followed they had clung to each other.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Then they talked about it. Tess began by telling Ronnie about the phone call she’d received claiming that Jody Burns’s death hadn’t been a suicide. She told her about her own inquiries at the prison, about the questions that had been running through her mind since then. Questions that she found she could no longer ignore.

“I don’t know, Tess. It all sounds pretty far-fetched to me, you getting a call out of the blue like that. I’d be willing to bet that woman was a reporter working for one of those supermarket rags. She probably told you that garbage hoping to get a story out of you,” Ronnie reasoned.

“I thought so, too, at first. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more convinced I am that she was on the level. I can tell you for certain that her accent was real.”

“A lot of people can fake a Southern accent,” Ronnie pointed out.

Tess shook her head. “My grandparents are from Mississippi and I’ve met enough people from there over the years to recognize a Mississippi drawl when I hear one. Hers was genuine.”

“That still doesn’t mean she was legit. You and I both know it wouldn’t be the first time a tabloid has used an out-of-state stringer to pull a fast one in order to nail a story.”

“I know. But my gut tells me she was telling the truth.” Tess recalled the fear she’d heard in the woman’s voice when she’d mentioned calling the police. “She wasn’t acting, Ronnie. She was genuinely afraid.”

“Of what? You said the report from the prison ruled your father’s death a suicide.”

“I know what it said. But after talking to that official at the prison and reading the report, I don’t know, something just doesn’t feel right.”

“Is that the reporter in you talking, or the child who’s lost her father?”

“Probably a little of both,” Tess admitted. “All I know is that if the woman was telling the truth and Jody Burns was murdered, then I have to ask myself why. And why try to make it look like a suicide?”

“You’re making some pretty big leaps on the basis of one anonymous phone call, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. But what if she was telling the truth? What if he didn’t hang himself in that cell? What if someone else did it for him? Think about it, Ronnie. He was coming up for parole in a few weeks and he stood a good chance of being released. So why, after all these years, would he decide to kill himself? Why now, when he was so close to gaining his freedom? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does murder,” Ronnie pointed out. “Yet people keep on committing it.”

“There’s also the woman’s claim that Jody Burns wasn’t the one who murdered my mother,” Tess reminded her.

“Tess, I’m sorry. But you seem to be forgetting one very important fact.”

“What?”

Ronnie stared into her eyes. “You were the one who told the police that he killed your mother.”

What Ronnie said was true. And her accounts of finding her father over her mother’s dead body had been recounted in the press again when the report of her father’s suicide had hit the airwaves. “I was four years old at the time,” Tess defended. She dragged a hand through her hair. “I was a child. A child who woke up because I heard loud voices and a woman’s scream, then stumbled out of bed and found my father kneeling over her body. But I never saw him actually hit her with the bookend. I just assumed that he did it because he was the only one there,” Tess argued. “Suppose I was wrong? What if he didn’t kill her? What if he came in and found her dead, just the way he claimed?”

“I don’t know, Tess.”

Tess read the pity in Ronnie’s face. “You think I’m wrong, don’t you? That this is all some Freudian thing that’s going on inside my head where I’m having to deal with my mother’s murder again because my father is dead now.”

“You know me better than that. I don’t buy into all that psychobabble stuff. So don’t go putting words in my mouth.”

It was true. When she had done a story on how up-bringing factored into the problems of today’s young adults, Ronnie had been the first to scoff at the notion of blaming the parents for everything that went wrong in a person’s life. “Then what do you think?”

“Exactly what I said. That you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions based on a single phone conversation with a stranger.” Ronnie sighed. “Look. You said yourself you had no contact with the man, not even a letter or a phone call from him for over twenty-five years. How could you possibly know what his state of mind was—whether he was suicidal or not?”

“You’re right. I don’t know. And that’s why I want to go to Mississippi, so I can find out the truth.”

“As your friend, I’m telling you I think your going there is a mistake.

“But, as your producer, I say if you need to, take a few days off, go see the people at the prison and satisfy yourself that your father’s death was a suicide. Then put it behind you and come back to work.”

“It’s not just the people at the prison I want to see. That’s why I need more time off.” She wasn’t sure how much more she would be able to learn from the prison staff. “I want to talk to the people who were involved in my father’s case—the prosecutor, the witnesses who testified against him at his trial and the attorney who handled his defense. If my father did find some evidence that could prove he was innocent the way the woman claimed, the chances are he contacted his attorney.”

“Tess, I don’t know what you hope to accomplish, but I can tell you right now no judge is going to reopen a twenty-five-year-old murder case based on an anonymous phone call.”

Ronnie was right. The claims made in an anonymous phone call and her own gut feelings weren’t evidence. “I’m an investigative reporter, remember? I know how to look through things, dig up information. I can find the truth.”

“And suppose what you find out is that your father really did kill your mother and that he really did commit suicide? Will you be able to accept that?”

“I’m not looking for redemption for my father or myself, Ronnie. I just need to know if I’ve spent the better part of my life hating and blaming the wrong person for my mother’s death.”

“And if you did?”

“Then I want to see the person who was responsible pay for stealing both of my parents from me.” She met Ronnie’s gaze. “Will you help me? Will you give me the time off?”

“I can’t approve a month’s leave for you,” Ronnie told her. “But I may be able to explain your absence if you’re on special assignment. Of course, that means you’re going to have to come up with something damn good when you get back or it’s going to be both of our butts on the line.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Tess told her, touched by the woman’s gesture.

Ronnie waved the comment aside. “I’ve been in trouble before.”

“Suppose I actually make my investigation the special assignment?” Tess offered as an idea began to form in her mind. “What if I do a piece on prisons and suicides, one man’s road down that path?”

“It’s a good idea, but you could do that right here. Just pick a prison close to home. No trips to Mississippi. No extended time away from the station.”

“What if I were to give them a story with a personal angle? What if I give them Jody Burns’s story?”

“I’ll admit that story would be an easier sell because of who you are, and who your grandfather is. There’s been a lot of viewer interest since the senator’s press conference following the man’s suicide and his push for tougher penalties on criminals. It could certainly be a ratings winner for the station. But what about you, kiddo? Do you want to open yourself up to that?”

“No. But it would be an easy way for me to explain my interest in my mother’s murder and the trial. And it might even open a few doors.”

“What about the senator? What will he say?”

“I’ve already told him.”

“And?”

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’s having a new will drawn up as we speak.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse,” Tess admitted, recalling how furious her grandfather had been when she’d left yesterday. To have his granddaughter turn the cameras on the man responsible for killing his only child and possibly even garnering sympathy for Jody Burns infuriated her grandfather even more. “I wouldn’t put it past him to try to stop me by going to the board of directors,” Tess admitted. She didn’t doubt for a moment her grandfather would seek out the station’s board members to prevent her from working on the story. “That’s why I’ll need the station to hold firm on me doing the report. Do you think Stefanovich will go along with that?”

“Are you kidding? If he thinks it would mean a jump in ratings, he’d defy the pope.”

“So it’s okay? I can have the time off?”

“Let’s get a few specials in the can and then you’re officially away on special assignment.”

Tess jumped up, hugged her friend. “Thanks, Ronnie. I won’t let you down.”

“Don’t worry about letting me down, kiddo. Just take care of business and get your rear end back to D.C.”

“I will,” Tess promised and started for the door.

“Tess?”

She paused, glanced back at Ronnie, noted the worry was back in her hazel eyes. “Yes?”

“Be careful.”

“You got that column finished yet, Reed?”

Spencer Reed glanced up from his computer screen at his desk at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, and stared at the scowling face of his editor, Hank Weston. “If you and everyone else would quit yammering at me, I’d have it finished by now.”

“I must have been out of my mind to have agreed to let you do a special series in addition to your regular column,” Hank complained.

“You agreed because you knew a series on ‘The Road to the Governor’s Mansion’ would be a ratings winner for the newspaper.”

“Yeah, but I forgot how damn close you always cut your deadlines. It’s a wonder the pressmen don’t have bleeding ulcers like me.”

“They don’t get paid enough bucks to get ulcers,” Spencer pointed out as he continued typing.

“I don’t get paid enough to have ulcers either,” Hank said. “But thanks to you, I’ve got ’em.”

“You’re a born worrywart, Hank. You know that?”

“Can you blame me?” the editor countered. “Do you realize that if you don’t turn that thing in within the hour we’re going to have an empty spot in the newspaper?”

“Hank, have I ever missed a deadline?”

“No,” Hank admitted. “But you’ve come damn close.”

“But I’ve never missed one. And I’m not going to miss this one either. Not unless you keep standing there and bellyaching at me. Now, shut the door and let me work.”

“I should have listened to my mother and become a doctor,” Hank muttered as he turned away, yanking the door closed behind him.

Once the door closed, Spencer went back to work. As a freelancer for the newspaper, he didn’t keep regular office hours and more often than not he just e-mailed in his biweekly column, “The Political Beat,” which was now being circulated in forty-three newspapers across the country. But the Clarion-Ledger remained his home base. So he tried to show his face around the place every week or so. Doing so this afternoon had proven to be a mistake he decided as the phone at his desk rang. Spencer snatched up the receiver. “Spencer Reed,” he barked out.

“You disappoint me, Mr. Reed. I had expected some mention of Everett Caine’s misdeeds to be in your last column.” The voice was soft with a marked Southern accent.

Spencer sat back in his chair and focused his attention on the anonymous female caller who had contacted him before, claiming to have information about shady dealings by gubernatorial candidate and current lieutenant governor Everett Caine. “Since you won’t tell me who you are, I can’t very well report your claims as fact and open myself and the newspaper up to a libel suit.”

“Did you check out the information I gave you? About that murder case Caine worked on as an A.D.A. in Grady, Mississippi?”

“I checked it out. The Burns murder trial was twenty-five years ago. He prosecuted the man responsible for killing Senator Abbott’s daughter. The case made him a real hero and launched his political career.”

“I’m aware of the facts, Mr. Reed,” she told him.

“Then you’ll also know there was nothing in any of the accounts that I read that even remotely suggested that the trial was fixed.”

“It was,” the woman insisted. “If you’d bothered to talk to the people involved, you would know that.”

“Were you involved? Is that how you know?” Spencer asked her.

“I know because I know Everett Caine. He went to great lengths to make sure the evidence suited his needs.”

“How do you know?” he pressed her.

“Because leopards don’t change their spots. He was a liar and a cheat back then. And he’s still a liar and a cheat.”

“Hey, I agree with you,” Spencer admitted. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to prove it. For my own personal reasons I’d like nothing better than to see Caine lose the election next month. But my hands are tied unless you can give me something concrete to go on. Can you?”

There was a pause. “I can’t. But there is someone who might be able to help you.”

“Who?”

“Tess Abbott. She’s the daughter of Jody Burns.”

“I know who she is,” he said, remembering that after the first call from the mystery woman, he had dug up what he could find on the old murder case. Tess Abbott, née Tess Burns, had been a child at the time of her mother’s death and it had been the girl’s testimony that had helped to convict her father. Her grandparents, Senator Theodore Abbott, and his wife, had become her guardians following the trial. From what he had been able to find out, Tess Abbott was now a TV investigative reporter in D.C. “What makes you think she can help?”

“It’s my understanding that she’s here in Mississippi asking questions about her father’s suicide and her mother’s murder. Talk to her, Mr. Reed. She knows who really killed Melanie Burns.”

“How could she know? She was only a kid—”

But suddenly the line went dead.

Frustrated, Spencer slammed down the receiver and glanced at the clock, turning his attention back to his column. Fifteen minutes later he’d finished the piece, e-mailed it to his boss and printed himself a hard copy. He then picked up the phone and dialed a number in Grady.

“Hello,” a sultry Southern female voice answered.

“Mary Lee, darling, it’s Spencer Reed. How’s the most beautiful girl in Grady doing these days?”

“Why, I’m just fine, sugar,” she told him, and he chuckled because he could easily imagine the little sexpot preening.

“Glad to hear that. You still dating that quarterback at Ole Miss?”

“Donny graduated two years ago. He’s an accountant at his daddy’s CPA firm now,” she told him.

“And he still hasn’t married you yet?” he teased.

“Oh, he’s asked. I just haven’t accepted yet.”

“Poor fellow. You ought to put him out of his misery, Mary Lee.”

“Maybe I will,” she told him.

“Listen, darling, you still working at that bed-and-breakfast, aren’t you?”

“Three days a week,” she told him.

“So if anyone new were to show up in Grady, you’d pretty much know it. Wouldn’t you?”

“Sugar, things in this town are so boring that a visit from the FedEx man is big news.”

“I guess that means there aren’t any strangers in town then?”

“Other than a few tourists and some folks who are in for Miss Opal’s ninetieth birthday, no one worth mentioning. Who is it you’re interested in?”

“A woman by the name of Abbott. Tess Abbott.”

“Never heard of her,” Mary Lee informed him.

“Do me a favor then. If she shows up, give me a call, will you?”

“You got it, sugar.”

Chapter Three

Tess continued driving along the Mississippi interstate in the fog toward Grady. Lord, but she was tired, she thought. That last week at work had been a killer. She’d not only had her normal workload, but she’d taped a slew of segments to be aired during her absence. The only good thing about being so busy was that she hadn’t had time to dwell on the fact that her grandfather was no longer speaking to her, and that her grandmother was seriously distressed. The strain had been there on her grandmother’s face when Tess had left the town house the previous Saturday, and she’d heard it again in her voice when she’d called her from the D.C. airport yesterday morning.

She groaned as she thought of yesterday. Things had gone downhill beginning with that call. Then her flight from D.C. to New Orleans had been delayed because of equipment problems. After being forced to take a later flight to the Big Easy, she’d also had to reschedule her flight from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, only to find that the car she had originally reserved was no longer available. As a result she’d had to settle for a Ford Mustang when what she had wanted was a larger, more comfortable car.

Then, because of her late arrival, she ended up spending the night at a hotel in Jackson and driving out to the state prison that morning. She’d spent the better part of the day wading through the red tape at the prison in her efforts to get information about Jody Burns. Granted, she hadn’t exactly been up front with the prison personnel about who she was, or why she wanted the information. But she’d stuck as closely to the truth as she could, explaining that she was doing a story about prison suicides and that she wanted to follow the history of Jody Burns and his journey from citizen to criminal, his life behind bars and how it led to his own suicide. But other than a few facts, figures and standard statements, she’d come away with very little. Her attempts to contact both the former prosecutor, Everett Caine, and her father’s defense attorney, Beau Clayton, had also proved futile. She’d even wondered if the roadblocks she’d encountered were courtesy of her grandfather, then decided that she might be just a little bit paranoid. As an investigative reporter she knew that she seldom got what she wanted on the first try.

If she were superstitious and believed in omens, she’d be on her way back to the airport now instead of traveling on the interstate after nine o’clock on a Saturday evening feeling exhausted and hungry. She couldn’t help wondering, yet again, if her decision to come to Mississippi and dig up the past had been a mistake.

At the sound of her cell phone ringing, Tess reached for her bag and retrieved the instrument. “Hello.”

“Hi, kiddo. How’s Mississippi?”

“Hi, Ronnie,” Tess said, pleased to hear the sound of her producer’s voice. “At the moment I’m on the interstate heading to Grady, so Mississippi consists of a stretch of concrete and glimpses of pine trees. How are things up there?”

“They’ve been better.”

Tess tensed. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. But I thought you should know the senator gave me an earful this afternoon. He is one unhappy man, and my guess is he’s going to put a call in to Stefanovich.”

“I’m sorry, Ronnie.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing I can’t handle. How’s it going on your end?”

“Not exactly the way I’d hoped. I hit a brick wall at the prison and I haven’t had any luck reaching the prosecutor or defense attorney yet. But you know me, the more obstacles I hit, the harder I go at it.”

“That’s the mark of a good reporter.”

“Or at least a stubborn one,” Tess replied. “Either way, I’m not giving up yet. I’m going to Grady now to do some digging there, and then I’ll try the prison and lawyers again.”

“You sure it’s worth all this effort?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, once I got past the senator’s angry bark and him ordering me to call you off this assignment, I listened to all his reasons for not wanting you to go nosing around in the past. And the truth is, a lot of it made sense. Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

“No.” Which was the truth. She wasn’t sure. And more than once during the past week remembering how much she’d upset not only her grandfather, but her grandmother, she had wondered the same thing. “But whether it’s the right thing to do or not, it’s something I have to do, Ronnie. I need to find out the truth and whether Jody Burns really did kill my mother.”