Metsy Hingle - Deadline

“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.”

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.