Diana Palmer - Fire Brand

He was thinking now, his lips pursed. “Statewide, huh?”

“That’s right.”

His small eyes narrowed. “Is anybody we know involved in this, Cane?” he probed.

She laughed. “Bowie. He’s going to fight it tooth and nail.”

“In that case, pack your bags. I still remember when he took on that cut-rate construction company project that cost two lives. Anything he does makes news these days. He’s a troublesome...” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“He isn’t family,” she said, and was suddenly glad that he wasn’t. A picture of his hard, handsome features floated unwanted into her mind and she found herself feeling much too eager to go back to Casa Río.

“Yes. I keep forgetting that,” he murmured, watching her warm color. “Well, Cane, you have a nice vacation. Don’t forget to finish up your assignments today. You can leave first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, sir!” She grinned. “Thanks, boss.”

“Don’t thank me.” He held up a hand and smiled modestly. “I am but a poor, humble editor, doing his best to save democracy for future generations. Four score and seven...”

“You might write down that speech on the back of an envelope,” she suggested as she went out the door of his office. “Who knows? You could go down in history.”

He sighed. “Only if I changed my last name to Lincoln. Go to work!”

“You bet!”

The political interview was one she’d been angling toward for weeks. An older state representative—one of sixty representatives in the State House—had been accused of taking kickbacks on a highway project he’d supported. The charge didn’t quite ring true to Gaby, who knew the politician. He had a reputation for honesty that was nothing short of fanaticism.

What made the interview so special was that Gaby was the only member of the press that Representative Guerano would talk to.

“Where’s Wilson?” the white-haired legislator asked, darting quick glances around as they sat in the comparative security of his office in the state capitol building. “Is he disguised as a lamp?”

Gaby laughed. Her wild journalistic colleague had that kind of reputation, and it was really a pity that he worked for a rival paper. “Despite Wilson’s knack for turning up in odd places, he could only know about this meeting from me, and I don’t consort with the opposition.”

Representative Guerano chuckled deeply. “Good for you. Okay. What do you want to know, young lady?”

“Who’s after you and why, of course,” she replied with a twinkle in her olive eyes. “I don’t believe for a minute that you’ve taken money from anybody.”

He smiled gently. “God bless you for that blind trust. As it happens, you’re right. But I only have suspicions, no hard evidence. And I’m hardly in a position to start throwing stones.”

“Tell you what,” she said, leaning forward. “You tell me who, when, and why, and I’ll tell Johnny Blake. We’ve got an investigative reporter on our staff who can dig blood out of turnips.”

His tired blue eyes brightened. “Think so?”

“I do, indeed. Meanwhile, you give me a nice interview and I’ll print both sides of the controversy, just the way a good journalist should.”

“Isn’t this sticking your neck out?” he asked curiously.

She shook her head. “It’s good journalism. We like to print the whole truth. Sometimes we can only print half. But we never give up until we get to the bottom of scandals. That’s the only way to do it, to be fair to everyone involved.”

He nodded. “I can understand that. But meanwhile, a lot of damage has been done to my reputation.” He leaned back, looking every day of his sixty years. “You don’t know what a living hell it is to be at the center of a scandal, young lady. My family’s suffered much more than I have, but even if I’m cleared, the implication is still there. My career is finished, either way.”

Gaby was getting cold chills, because she had a pretty good idea of what a scandal could do to even ordinary people, much less people in the public eye. Her background, if it were ever revealed, could do untold damage to the McCaydes.

She snapped herself back to the present. “All I can promise you is that I’ll do a good story and that Johnny will put it in a prominent place. If you deny the charges and we can print your side of it, some people may listen.”

“If you mean that, about an investigation, I’ll give you all the help I can, and so will my staff.”

She nodded. “I can promise you that we’ll give it our best shot.”

“Then, let’s get to it. Ask whatever you like.”

It was a good piece—one of the best Gaby had ever done. And once it was in print, it would be a good time to leave the area for a while, until the heat died down. She never ran from trouble, but sometimes it was advantageous to walk around it.

Johnny Blake was delighted. He took the few unverifiable bits of information he’d been given and handed them over to Lang, the paper’s investigative reporter. Like a bulldog with a bone to chew, the veteran journalist went straight to work. Lang had contacts that none of the other reporters did. His stock of sources read like a Who’s Who of organized crime, but he always got what he needed, with enough printable sources to support the story. Other papers had tried to lure him away with everything from company cars to incredible salaries, and one of the television networks had even dangled an anchor spot at him. Lang just plugged away at his desk, amused at his notoriety, and never gave it a second thought. Gaby liked him. He was an old renegade, with a shady past and plenty of grit and style. He might not be society, but he was a reporter’s reporter. He’d clear Guerano, and Johnny Blake would have his big story for the month. The only casualty might be Guerano himself, because it was hard to undo a public accusation. With the best will in the world, the dirt stuck.

That night as Gaby packed she worried about encroaching on Aggie’s privacy, about interfering. She really was concerned, and knew she was just going to have to risk irritating her. The next morning she put two suitcases in her little white VW convertible, left her plants with a neighbor to water, and set out for Casa Río.

The ranch was over twenty thousand acres in size, as many southeastern Arizona ranches were. The sheer immensity of open space was staggering to Eastern tourists. Even to Gaby, who’d lived here for years, the scope of it was almost unbelievable. One mountain was crossed, ending in an endless valley. That reached to another mountain, and beyond it was another endless valley, and so on. Cattle and horses grazed lazily beyond the highway, because open range was the law in Arizona. Considering the size of the ranches, it was understandable. Fencing thousands of acres would cost a fortune, and with the depressed cattle market, ranchers would certainly be hard-pressed to come up with the kind of money Gaby imagined it would cost.

The thought piqued her curiosity. She and Bowie had never talked about the cattle operation at Casa Río. Her dark olive eyes narrowed as she drove down the endless highway toward Tucson. She wondered about the impact of an agricultural operation on Bowie’s cattle. Not only would the enormous project use great volumes of water—which was still scarce in this part of Arizona—but it would use pesticides that would leach into the soil and add pollutants to the precious water remaining. Arizona rivers, with the notable exception of the Colorado, mostly ran only during the rainy months, when there was flash flooding. Wells provided the majority of the water in southeastern Arizona. There had already been one television special which had alleged that there were toxins in the drinking water around Tucson. Perhaps some conversations with the local U.S. Soil Conservation Service office in Lassiter might be of benefit. Gaby could see that if she wanted to do a proper job on this story, she was going to be involved in a lot of research.