“Are you kidding? If he thinks it would mean a jump in ratings, he’d defy the pope.”
“So it’s okay? I can have the time off?”
“Let’s get a few specials in the can and then you’re officially away on special assignment.”
Tess jumped up, hugged her friend. “Thanks, Ronnie. I won’t let you down.”
“Don’t worry about letting me down, kiddo. Just take care of business and get your rear end back to D.C.”
“I will,” Tess promised and started for the door.
“Tess?”
She paused, glanced back at Ronnie, noted the worry was back in her hazel eyes. “Yes?”
“Be careful.”
“You got that column finished yet, Reed?”
Spencer Reed glanced up from his computer screen at his desk at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, and stared at the scowling face of his editor, Hank Weston. “If you and everyone else would quit yammering at me, I’d have it finished by now.”
“I must have been out of my mind to have agreed to let you do a special series in addition to your regular column,” Hank complained.
“You agreed because you knew a series on ‘The Road to the Governor’s Mansion’ would be a ratings winner for the newspaper.”
“Yeah, but I forgot how damn close you always cut your deadlines. It’s a wonder the pressmen don’t have bleeding ulcers like me.”
“They don’t get paid enough bucks to get ulcers,” Spencer pointed out as he continued typing.
“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