I must have sounded desperate, because she nodded her head.
“Don’t let me interrupt your busy day, Kelly!” John bellowed.
I straightened up and said, “I appreciate your understanding, John.”
He turned on his heel and I made haste to follow.
I closed the door and sat down. He glowered at me.
“You know what, Kelly?” He held up a copy of the Montgomery flyer and waved it back and forth. “I’ve got an itch somewhere that tells me you knew something about this hit piece of Montgomery’s yesterday.”
“Almost right, John. Jacob Henderson met me yesterday morning, asking to talk to me off the record. He told me he had heard from someone in the Montgomery campaign that this was going out. He tried to explain why he was at this gathering in the photo. I spent yesterday morning trying to find out if there was going to be a hit, but although it was pretty clear some kind of mudslinging was going on, I couldn’t get anyone to confirm the nature of the piece. I spent the afternoon trying to confirm Jacob’s version of the story. He claims that he was there to talk a friend into leaving, and that he’s not part of the coven. I talked to the friend, and she backs him up.”
John stewed for a minute or two, then apparently decided that I had done my job. “You believe the kid?”
“Yes. I’d like to talk to other kids in the coven, but it’s going to be hard. My connection to them — -Jacob’s friend — has run away. She left a message on my machine saying she’d call me again. I don’t know if she will, but I asked Lydia to come in here and get me if she calls.”
He scowled. “This is all a bad business. I suppose you know our esteemed editor’s ideas on tagging the Fremont murder ‘Satanist.’ I don’t like the idea of playing right into Montgomery’s hands.”
“Wrigley’s just thinking of how many newspapers he can sell. It will help him sell them all right — at the expense of the Henderson campaign.”
“You’re going to write something up about the Henderson kid’s version of the story?”
“As much as I can. It will probably be pretty thin unless I can find somebody else who was there.”
He grew pensive again. He was watching me in a way that made me uneasy.
“Irene, what was wrong this morning?”
I looked away from him. “It’s a list of things, John.”
He waited.
“Mrs. Fremont was Frank’s next-door neighbor. He found the body. I was right behind him.”
“Jesus.”
“Frank really liked her, and it was pretty rough on him. It wasn’t too much easier for me. I had talked to her a couple of times yesterday. I didn’t sleep at all last night, I walk in here and Wrigley sneers at me, then Stacee runs past me in tears. I just wasn’t in the mood to take any crap about Frank from the laughing boys in the newsroom.”
“You okay now?”
“Not really, but I’ll survive.”
“You say you saw the body?”
I could see the wheels turning in John’s mind. I nodded.
“Cops wouldn’t let anyone past the door last night. But you were inside the house?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking of the pool of blood.
“Tell me what you saw.”
I could feel my hackles rise.
“Go to hell, John. If I can’t cover crime stories, fine. But don’t turn around and try to get me to be a spy for you or to compromise Frank. One way or the other — not both.”
“Goddammit, Irene, I’d ask any witness the same thing.”
“I’m not any witness.”
He was back up to the boiling point. “You’re biting the hand that feeds you, Kelly! You’d better give some thought to who signs your paycheck.”
“I’m not ready to make a whore out of myself for the lousy sum on that check.”
“Get out of here!”
“Gladly.”
I stormed out, only to be met by Lydia frantically waving me over to the phone. Would there be no relief?
“Kelly,” I snapped into the phone.
“Irene Kelly?” It was a young woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“My name is Julie Montgomery. I’m Monty Montgomery’s daughter. I need to talk to you. Can I meet you somewhere?”
9
THIS WAS GOING TO BE difficult. If I met her away from the paper, I might miss Sammy or Jacob. If I stayed, it was going to be hard to find privacy. I decided to try the storage room in the basement again. Even then, I wondered how I was going to sneak her into the building without anyone seeing us meet.
