Read Online Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) by Debra Gaskill - Free Book Online Page B

the police there are watching some suspicious activity, but there’s nothing local yet. He said he’d let me in on anything when it happens.”
    I nodded. “Anything else going on?”
    Graham shuffled through the reports. “Not really. This is mostly blotter stuff—a couple public intox charges and a teenager took his mom’s car without permission. Stupid stuff.”
    “OK. Well, write them up as briefs for the public records page. By the way, did Gary say anything about Jerome Johnson to you? The black guy McMaster hit?”
    “No, why?”
    “Just asking.” I waved him out of my doorway. “No big deal. Go get started. Keep an eye out on that hate crimes thing, though—if McMaster gets nailed on anything out of town, we need to do a story.”
    Graham nodded and headed back to his desk.
    With Graham’s story on the gorge rescue, the front page came together easily that morning. We only had to use a small amount of wire copy, a short story about a tropical depression threatening to turn into a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. After catching what few errors there were, I sent the last page down to prepress nearly twenty minutes early. I ducked back into my office and closed the door: I had a few phone calls to make.
    Whoever Jerome Johnson was, I didn’t trust him. We may have all sat beneath the tree in my front yard yesterday and shared a meal, but that didn’t mean I believed his story about growing up in Virginia, or joining the Marine Corps or living in Ashtabula. Something about that man pegged my bullshit meter and I was going to find out why.
    I punched Gary McGinnis’s number into the phone. He picked it up on the second ring.
    “Hey Penny. How’s it going?” Gary and I had known each other since high school. We were comfortable with each other, the kind of ease that comes from working together for years, building trust, but knowing where the boundaries between a cop and a reporter lay. If he could tell me, he would. If he couldn’t, I knew when and how to push.
    “Not bad. Hey, I need a favor. You know the deal Saturday where Duncan got hit in the eye by Doyle McMaster?”
    “Yup. What do you need?”
    “I need information on the other victim in that mess, Jerome Johnson.”
    “What do you need it for? A story?”
    “No, not really.” Briefly, I explained about seeing Johnson taking photos of Pat and me on Friday afternoon, his odd hostility at our doing a story at Katya Bolodenka’s farm, and his story on Sunday about meeting her in Ashtabula. “I just don’t trust him, Gary, and if Duncan is going to be inviting this guy over to my house on a regular basis, I’d sure as hell like to know who I’m dealing with.”
    “Let me see what I can do. I’ll call you back later this afternoon.”
    ***
    “Hi Penny! Ya’ll come on in!” Earlene had her back to the open door when I knocked. Her elbows were planted on the Queen Anne credenza behind her matching writing table. She recognized me by my reflection in the makeup mirror she held in one hand; the other was carefully outlining her lips with a red pencil.
    She smacked her lips together, blending the liner with her cherry red lipstick, and turned around, clicking her matching nails on the desk surface.
    Following her father’s retirement, before she even knew what the word deadline meant, Earlene’s first project had been to remodel the publisher’s dark masculine office. She pulled down the knotty pine paneling, and had new drywall hung in its place. Baby-chick yellow paint now covered the walls. She’d also replaced her father’s desk with the more feminine Queen Anne writing table and credenza, but kept the towering bookshelves that lined two walls.
    She’d also replaced the two Morris chairs in front of the two desks with more feminine upholstered chairs in matching yellow striped fabric.
    Behind the desk, above the credenza was a six-foot tall self-portrait of Earlene herself in full English equestrian apparel, mounted on a sleek