will be let go from the 86 team.”
“Thanks to you.”
Melodie took a deep breath and looked as if she wanted to dispute the point, but then she shrugged. “Oh, it’s no great loss,” she said. “There are other ways to make money. And lots of other rides out there.”
Tuggle narrowed her eyes. “Well, no, there aren’t. This is a non-union sport, with maybe a dozen or so team owners, barring the little independents. If you play fast and loose with one of them, the others will know about it before the end of the week. Just how much experience do you have managing drivers, anyhow?”
“Don’t let her in there!” A woman’s shrill voice echoed down the corridor of the hospital, and they turned to see Melanie Sark running toward them. She had clapped her hand over her mouth in a belated attempt to be more quiet. She had changed out of the power suit she’d worn as team publicist at the All-Star race. Now she wore Nikes, jeans, and a Team Vagenya sweatshirt, but she was still carrying her laptop case, and her labored breathing suggested that she had run all the way from the parking lot and up three flights of stairs with it.
Seeing the astonishment on their faces, she said, “Badger. How is he?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Tuggle.
“He’s no longer your concern,” said Melodie. “Badger has been released from the 86 team.”
“I know,” said Sark. “They want me to change the Web site tomorrow: put up a picture of Judith Burks and say she’ll be the relief driver next week. But I still care what happens to him.” She glanced pleadingly at Laraine. “I need to tell him something.”
Melodie said, “You can tell me privately. I’m in charge of his business affairs.”
“I think you’d better tell us,” said Tuggle. “Laraine is family, and Badger is in no shape to make decisions right now.”
Sark hesitated. “But here in the hall? I have papers to show you.”
“Lounge,” said Tuggle. “I think Laraine could use some coffee, anyhow.”
Laraine shook her head. “I shouldn’t leave Badger.”
“Ten minutes,” said Sark.
They walked down the corridor to the waiting room. Sark sat down in a chair next to the coffee table and pushed aside ancient copies of
“First,” she said, “I have a confession to make. I’m a journalist.”
“Publicists generally are,” sniffed Melodie.
“Yes, but I didn’t switch to being a publicist. I considered myself working undercover. I was planning to do an expose of the 86 team for some national publication like
Tuggle glared at her. “An expose about what?”
“Whatever I could find,” said Sark. “Badger’s sex life. The team’s incompetence. Drugs. Financial irregularities. Whatever was going.”
“How very unethical,” said Melodie. She had thought better of sitting on the sofa beside Tuggle and Laraine; instead, she was pacing in front of the snack machines, trying not altogether successfully to look bored.
Sark stared at her for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “Yes, well, I decided not to write that article.”
Tuggle’s scowl had not lessened. “Why not?”
“I became a convert. Badger is pretty amazing. I was an expecting an arrogant jerk, and he’s not one. And the team-everybody was trying so hard. Julie and Roz and the pit crew. It would have been like drowning kittens to make fun of them in a national article. I couldn’t do it.”
Tuggle grunted. “You’re still fired.”
“I can’t afford to keep the job, anyhow,” said Sark. “Doesn’t pay enough, and it’s rather a waste of a good journalist. Ed just got a book deal-Memphis jazz musicians-and he’s asked me to go along as his research assistant. But there is another bit of research I wanted you to have before I go.” She opened her laptop case and took out a stack of papers. “One thing about being a journalist is that you have friends who are good at finding things out. My friend Ed is one of the best.”
“You had him investigate us?” said Tuggle.
“No. Not you.
“Why?”
Sark shrugged. “Mostly because she annoyed me so much. The way she orders people around. How rude she is to Badger. So Ed and I went on a fishing expedition.”
Melodie stopped pacing. “You had no right!” She rushed to the table as if she meant to grab the papers, but one look from Tuggle made her think better of it.
With a grim smile, Tuggle said, “What’d you catch?”
“Barracuda,” said Sark. “For starters, she isn’t a sports manager. Oh, she works for Miller O’Neill, all right, but not as a manager. She’s a clerk! They had stored all their old paper files in boxes from the past twenty years in a storage facility in Charlotte, and they hired her to go there and sort through the boxes to see which folders they needed to keep and which could be discarded. That’s what Eugene Miller thought she has been doing all this time. Imagine his surprise to learn that she landed herself a client.”
They turned to look at Melodie whose mulish expression did not indicate repentance. “I would have been a great manager,” she said. “All I needed was a chance! It’s not like you have to have a degree or anything to do it.”
Laraine sighed. “Poor Badger. He always takes everybody’s word for everything. Never checks.”
“I did a good job,” said Melodie.
“No,” said Tuggle, “you didn’t. This business runs on goodwill, and you cost him a ton of it. Badger may need somebody to ride herd on him, but the one thing in his favor is that he is kind and sweet-tempered, and people love him. But when they had to deal with a bitch like you, it cost him that advantage. Was she stealing his money?”
“Maybe,” said Sark. “We had to put all this together in a hurry, so we can’t really prove that. Besides, there’s worse,” said Sark. “She really was trying to drum up business deals for Badger.” She handed a printout to Laraine. “I think this would interest you.”
Melodie blanched. “Where did you get that?”
“Ed hacked into your computer,” said Sark, grinning. “We’re hoping you’ll sue him. It would make a great story.”
“What is it?” asked Tuggle, seeing the stricken expression on Laraine’s face as she read.
Sark saved her the trouble of answering. “Melodie has been negotiating the sale of Badger’s land at the Georgia lake to a development company specializing in golf resorts.”
Tuggle stared. “Badger agreed to that?”
“Of course, he didn’t,” said Laraine. “He’d die first. It says here that she has his power of attorney, and she’s using it to broker the deal.”
Sark nodded. “That’s why I have to get in to talk to Badger. So that he can stop it.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Laraine. “I can stop it.”
“You? How?”
Laraine sighed. “I’ve had Badger’s power of attorney for years. I got my uncle the judge to draw it up for me, and Badger signed the form one time when he was down at the diner autographing posters.”
“Did he know what it was?”
“Sure. He was all for it. He said if he ever got hurt real bad, he wanted somebody he could trust looking after him. And I mean to.” She nodded toward Melanie. “What I’m wondering is how
Melodie smirked. “Badger never reads what you give him to sign. Have you ever noticed that?”
Laraine nodded. “You can generally trust people where we come from. Not like here.”
“So can you stop the sale of the land?” asked Sark.
“Oh, I already have,” said Laraine. “I was afraid that some day some crook would try to screw Badger out of the land. I sorta thought it might be Dessy, but even she wasn’t that cruel. So I talked it over with my uncle…”
“The judge?”
