“Oh, I know!” Tiffany said, her hand shooting up into the air like she was answering a question in class. “Murder suspects must be transported in official vehicles, alone, so as not to allow them the opportunity to collude with another suspect or suspects.”
“Suspects?” Tabitha lost any control she had had over her anger, and her sharp tone reverberated against all the stone in the large foyer. “Are you freaking kidding me with this, Carl?”
Carl tried without success to interrupt Tabitha’s rant. Tiffany stepped outside to call the Richmond medical examiner. Thad stared at the floor, looking shell-shocked from the events of the past few minutes. And Butter reached into his back pocket, pulled out an Oats ’n Honey granola bar, and ate it while the whole scene unfolded.
As for me, three thoughts flashed into my mind simultaneously: Tabitha is hiding something. Thad doesn’t look like someone who just killed his father. And, ready or not, I have some work to do . . .
CHAPTER 3
I raced back to the Times, hoping to catch Kay Jackson before she left for the day. On my way back I practiced my pitch, listing all the reasons why she should assign me this story. But as it turned out, I didn’t even have to plead my case. She agreed as soon as I asked.
“This would normally go to Holman,” she said. “But before he left he said you were ready to fly solo, so that’s good enough for me.”
All it took was that tiny measure of success, that small vote of confidence to convince me to push my luck. “Can I have the obit too?”
Kay arched her eyebrows. “You’ll still have to keep up with your other responsibilities, like covering the community and education pages. Think you can handle it all?”
“I do. And actually, I think the obit and crime story go hand-in-hand.”
She looked skeptical.
Now was my chance to use what I’d rehearsed. “No, really. Think about it: since I’ll be covering the developing story about how Arthur died, I’ll be in a good position to learn about his life, too. Most of the time the way someone dies has very little to do with the way they lived—but a murder turns that whole concept on its ear, right? Because unless Arthur was killed by a random act, which seems highly unlikely, something in his life led to his death—and our readers are going to want to know what that something was. I think I’ll be in the best position to write about it, given the reporting I’ll already be doing about the investigation.”
She thought about it for at least five seconds, which was a long time for her. Kay Jackson was not an indecisive woman. “All right,” she said. “File your stories electronically to the central database. We’ll run updates online as quickly as they occur, and do two separate print stories in Sunday’s edition.” She paused and then added, “If you get in over your head, I’m here.”
I felt like doing a victory dance. I’d done it! I’d asked for what I wanted and gotten it! This was a big moment. The old me would have been too scared to ask for this sort of opportunity, but I was no longer that girl. Overcome with gratitude and emotion, I started to gush, “Kay, thank you so much for believing—”
“This isn’t charity,” she cut me off. “I’m giving it to you because I see talent and, quite honestly, I like the idea of having another female reporter around here. We’ve got something of a testosterone imbalance in case you haven’t noticed. But the guys aren’t going to be happy about it. So my advice to you is: don’t screw this up.”
Kay’s “pep talk” didn’t dampen my enthusiasm (even though I knew she was right about the guys not liking it) and I still felt excited as I gathered my things and headed over to the sheriff’s office to see if I could get any updates before heading home for the day.
Tuttle Corner was built on a square like so many of the colonial towns settled in the late 1700s. This meant that nearly all of our municipal buildings and most of our local businesses occupied a four-square-block area around the green space in the center, Memorial Park. Years earlier, my mother had been on the committee to spruce up the park, which included resurfacing the walkways that snaked corner to corner, installing black wrought-iron lamps along the paths, and offering residents the opportunity to sponsor a bench. I remember Janet Gradin and Charlotte Van Stone going nine rounds over whether the plaques on the benches would be black plastic or engraved metal. In the end, Mrs. Van Stone won out (as if there’d been any doubt), and as I wound my way from the Tuttle Times office on the northeast side of the park over toward the sheriff’s office on the southwest, I passed the bench my family had dedicated to my granddad. The golden plaque read, “In Loving Memory of Albert Christopher Ellison, beloved father, grandfather, and obituarist.” I probably passed this bench ten times a week, and never without feeling his loss deep down inside my soul. But as I walked past it that day, I couldn’t help but think Granddaddy would have been proud of me. He always encouraged me to consider a career in reporting, but I’d lost all interest in journalism, among other things, after he died under what I still considered suspicious circumstances.
The official cause of death had been suicide, according to the former Tuttle County sheriff, Joe Tackett—a man who thanks to Holman and me now stood on trial for fraud, corruption, and attempted murder. Despite Granddaddy’s supposed-best-friend Hal Flick’s refusal to consider alternative theories, I felt it in my bones that Granddaddy hadn’t left this world by his own hand. And I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit a part of me hoped that
