Mary Anne Wilson - Montana Miracle

“I’m not looking at some starlet bimbo,” she said, meeting his gaze with a frown. “No makeup, no false lashes, no implants.” She’d never thought of herself as beautiful. Rather, growing up as the only child of two selfish, self-centered people, had helped foster her strengths. She’d developed a fertile imagination to keep her occupied when she’d been alone, a desperate need to write so she could connect to something when she was by herself, and an insatiable curiosity about the outside world. Those were her credentials as a writer, what made her good at what she did, not any physical attributes. “I’m too thin, too tall and too pale, and I’ve got freckles.”

James frowned at her over her shoulder. “Boy, your self-image is miserable,” he said. “If you’d stop scowling like that and put on a bit of makeup, maybe let your hair loose, with those green eyes you’d stop traffic on Sunset Boulevard.”

She twisted around to face him and he drew back. “If you want me to go after this story, give it to me.” That familiar tingle of excitement was starting to grow in her at the challenge of getting to a subject and getting him or her to talk when no one else could. “The thrill of the hunt,” James had called it. “If it’s possible, I’ll get it. But let me figure out what tack to use.”

“Hey, sure, absolutely.” His pale eyes flicked suggestively over her, then he met her gaze again. “You’re a hell of a writer. I’ve always said that, and that’s why you’re here. So it’s yours. Go for it.”

Even his compliments sounded compromising to her, but she wasn’t going to take the bait that easily. “Okay, give me details.”

He went back to his desk, reached for the folder and held it out to her. “Here’s everything we have.”

She crossed to take it from him, a thick manila folder with “Dr. MacKenzie Parish” in bold type on the right edge, then a list of names and dates on the cover, others who had checked it out of Research and the dates it had been in use. Lots of interest in the man. She opened the cover and shuffled through several glossies, magazine tear sheets and newspaper clippings.

Two of their own articles were mixed in with an impressive group of stories on the man. The headlines ran the gamut from Sexy Doc Nips & Tucks His Way To Fame, Partying Is A Science For This Doctor, to Merry-Go-Round Stops For Famous Surgeon and The Doctor Has Left The Building.

And in every picture that wasn’t a head-and-shoulders shot, he was with a woman. A star, a wanna-be star, a nobody. But always a beautiful woman. He definitely liked tall blondes. “He partied hard,” she murmured, not bothering to hide her distaste for his lifestyle. She sank into the chair facing the desk, closing the folder and resting it in her lap. “So where is this place he ran off to?”

“Montana, a ranch outside the tiny town of Bliss, and from all accounts, he seldom leaves it.”

“No favorite haunts, no daily schedule in here?” she asked, tapping the folder.

“Sorry, if it were that easy, someone would have done the story by now.”

“Okay, there has to be a way to make him stick his head out of the bunker. Then the trick is to get him to talk.”

He sat forward. “Getting him to talk is the easy part for you. You could get a monk to break a vow of silence. Look what you did with the Blanchard story.” He smiled at her. “She wouldn’t talk to anyone, and you got her to do an exclusive for us.”

“That’s different. I went to the same deli she did and saw her there all the time, and she recognized me.”

“See what I mean? You use what you have to get what you want. Only you could turn a trip to the deli into a great interview with a woman who had just been acquitted of murdering her husband. You had an ‘in’ with her, and like it or not, you’ve got an ‘in’ with Parish.”

She hated it when he was right. But he was. If the man’s weakness was blondes, she’d have to factor that into the equation, whatever she did. “Bliss?” she asked.

“Bliss as in a podunk town out in the middle of nowhere. Bliss for the gophers and cows, I guess.”

“Maybe for the doctor, too,” she said.

“That’s what you’ll find out, won’t you?” he asked, stretching his arms over his head.

“I hope so.”

“Also, the bonus for an exclusive kicks in, and that can’t hurt, either.”

She could use the money, but more than that, she loved this part of the job. The hunt, the discovery. She pressed her hand on the closed folder. “What’s the deadline?”

“I can give you a week, maybe a bit longer if it looks really good after you get there, but that’s about all the budget will bear. Also, it’ll give us time to make the semiannual special issue, too, if you come in around then.” He took a thick envelope out of a side drawer. “Here’s your packet.”

She took it, and said, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

“Just be prepared. From what’s in the research, Bliss is a tight little community where the townspeople don’t talk and won’t even give directions to Parish’s place.” He tapped the envelope. “That’s what county assessors are for. There’s a map in there of his place.” He studied her. “So, any ideas how to get to him?”

She didn’t think, despite James’s optimism about her looks, that putting on a skimpy silver dress and walking the streets would work. “Something will come to me. By the way, is there anyone living with him?” The man never seemed to be alone in L.A., so there was no reason to think he suddenly became a monk in Montana.

“No ranch hands this time of year, but there’s a housekeeper, or a friend of some sort who keeps the house, and a little boy. Word is it’s his dead brother’s child, but there isn’t a birth certificate on him in that county. Maybe the kid’s his?” He glanced at the envelope. “You’ve got an air ticket for tomorrow out of LAX in there, car rental and your per diem. Sign off for the folder and read it on the plane.” He scrounged around and passed her a pen.

As she signed the folder front and dated it, she asked, “What about a place to stay?”

“There’re no hotels or motels listed in Bliss, but there’s a bed-and-breakfast called Joanine’s Inn. You’re expected tomorrow evening by seven, under your own name. I wasn’t sure about getting you a place to stay because of the holiday.”

“Holiday?”

“Thanksgiving, Kate, remember?”

“I remember,” she muttered.

“You come from a strange family, Kate. I’ve never heard of a family who ignores holidays the way yours do.”

“They’re a waste of time,” she said, echoing her mother’s words from years ago when she’d asked why they didn’t do anything for Christmas. She’d stopped caring about holidays around the same time she stopped asking about them. “We never noticed them very much.”

“By the way, how are Frank and Irene?”

“I haven’t heard from them since…” She had to think about that one. Contact with her parents was rare. They left, and when they thought about it, they called. Kate was used to it. She’d been on her own since she was a teenager. “I guess it was in July sometime. They were in Borneo working on some irrigation project.”

He sat back in the chair. “Fascinating people,” he said. “Lousy parents.”

She didn’t argue with that. “They are what they are, and it’s not important,” she said, cutting off that discussion as she stood holding the folder and envelope.

“Kate?” he said when she would have left.

She turned to look at him. “Something else?”

“I’m not expecting miracles on this, but anything you can find I’ll use.”

She nodded and as she crossed to the door, she glanced at the still-frozen image on the monitor, the man and that smile. A real challenge. She tossed over her shoulder, “Keep that spot in the special open.” She looked back at James before she went out the door. “Maybe the cover.”