Page 11 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

It felt like I’d deposited more irritation tokens in the Bank of Shelton than appreciation points.

Still, I’d covered our civic duty for both Diana and me.

No greater gift hath any TV journalist than handing over footage. I’d definitely earned those appreciation points, even if I had to wrest them out of him at some future date.

The phone rang while I was backing out of the parking spot. I hit the answer button without looking at it.

“Hey, Elizabeth.”

Michael Paycik. Ordinarily, I welcomed his calls.

But between my desire for a shower and the less than chipper tone of his greeting, I was not thrilled.

He was my boss in that he owned the station.

He was my colleague in that we’d worked together when he was the sports anchor for KWMT. That not only was before he bought the station, but before he moved on and up to a spot at the sports desk of a network affiliate in Chicago.

He also was my good friend and collaborator in pursuing investigations.

But I wasn’t ready to tell him about Colonel Crawford’s request. I needed to sort out my own thinking about it first.

Besides, I knew him well enough to read his mood from those two words.

“What’s wrong, Mike? More dropouts?”

For some reason top TV news people weren’t clamoring to come to the smallest market in the country — no kidding, the absolute last on the list. Somebody has to be and Sherman, Wyoming, was it.

But we had a few candidates lined up for Mike to interview, then, if they were still possibles, come here to visit.

“No. In fact, we might have an addition. Needham has someone he wants us to talk to.”

“Needham?” Needham Bender, publisher and editor of the Sherman Independence, was another friend and a journalist I respected. Also a professional rival. “But he’s a newspaperman. Granted he’s well-connected in print, but not in TV.”

“Yeah, but out of respect for him, I said sure. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

“Of course not. When?” And would I need to get Mom and Tamantha to check their schedule spreadsheet?

“Tomorrow lunch.”

“Tomorrow?” Pretty sure there was nothing on the spreadsheet for then.

“Yeah, I’m making a one-day trip to Sherman for some business things. Have to get back here to fill in for the sports anchor.”

Here was Chicago, for the network affiliate job.

“Okay, tomorrow.” Better than closer to the wedding, anyway. “But that’s not what’s bothering you.”

“It’s not bothering me, exactly. It’s just our ad guy has a lead on a series of ads.”

I knew names of business-side people at the station. But Mike seldom used their names, keeping as thick a wall as possible between the news department and the business side.

“And that bothers you?”

He chuckled slightly. “I guess not. I’m being a contrarian because he’s so enthusiastic. I should be, too. More income, you know.”

“The station needs more income?” To my surprise, I’d learned a while back that the station’s ads did quite well, what with no other TV outlets around.

“No. Thank heavens. Though the business guys always want more.” His next words sounded more cheerful. “Guess that’s why he’s good at his job. So, yeah, before you say it, I’m being unreasonable. You want me to get with Needham about the time—?”

“Message me when you’ll get to town and I’ll check with Needham.”

“Good. Also . . . probably can’t do it this trip, because I’ll be there such a short time, but I hope we can sit down before the wedding and go over how to speed up these hires.”

I breathed out through my nose. “That will mean conferring with Mom and Tamantha.”

“And their spreadsheet.” And then he laughed.

He used to be my friend.

* * * *

Shadow greeted me at the door. Took a sniff, then sneezed, and slipped past me to get outside and go visit our next-door neighbors.

Couldn’t blame him choosing to get away from the smoke smell. Besides, Iris and Zeb Undlin would give him treats.

I showered, washed my hair, put on fresh clothes, and tossed the smoky ones in the washing machine. When I knocked on the Undlins’ door, I found Zeb and Shadow sitting in twin chairs in front of the TV, catching a baseball game.

I pretended to be blind to the breaking of the not-on-the-furniture rule — for Shadow, not Zeb — and called out, “Want me to take Shadow home?”

“No,” came in stereo from Iris in the kitchen and Zeb in the chair. Shadow added a yip without looking away from the screen.

“It’s only the fifth inning,” Zeb added.

“We’ll send him home before you get back,” Iris said from the kitchen.

“Shouldn’t be late.” As I left, I said to Zeb, “I am not keeping track of baseball standings for him.”

“No need,” he called after me. “I fill him in.”

My commute to the station still stirred my wonder at its ease after years in Washington and New York, even Dayton and St. Louis before that.

This time, though, the commute made me follow Shadow’s example with a sneeze from lingering smoke.

As I turned onto Cottonwood Avenue, I remembered the bag Hannah had given me, the one with the manuscript Frank Jardos’ wife had been working on before she died. That had to be the source of the enduring smoke smell.

I should have left the SUV’s windows open while I was at the house. If I did that in the gravel parking lot at KWMT, I’d have a coating of dust inside.

After I parked, I carefully drew the pages from the bag.

Edges were charred on one side. Dark streaks showed across pages. All the paper felt sucked dry of moisture, like they’d shatter.

I hit speed dial on my phone.

“Jennifer?” I heard birds in the background. “Where are you?”

She’d been a news aide at KWMT, though that title failed to convey the computer skills that made her so important to the station and essential to our ad hoc investigations.

Now, she was in a special program at Northwestern. Initially, she’d said for a year, but I had the sense it was stretching.

Not because she was taking longer to reach progress markers, but because she and her mentors kept stretching what she would do.

“Walking across campus. Have a presentation in twenty minutes. What’s up?”

I explained about the manuscript without getting deeply into how the colonel’s request and Sergeant Frank Jardos’ probable fate led to my having it.

I’d save that for after her presentation.

“Think you might be able to do anything with it, so the pages with streaks are readable and to keep from destroying the pages?”

“Sure. Give it to Mike and he’ll bring it to me, far safer than shipping.

You know he’s making a day trip to Sherman tomorrow?

” I confirmed I did. Like Northwestern’s main campus, Mike’s apartment was in Evanston, the first suburb north of Chicago, so the handoff should be easy.

“But just in case, you need to make a copy first.”

“In case what?” I asked morbidly.

“He loses it, the plane crashes, someone steals it from him—”

“Okay, okay.” She’d sated my taste for morbid.

“I’ll make a copy here before I start on it, but you need to have one there to guard against mishaps in transit.”

Like pirates stealing smelly half-burnt first manuscripts by an unknown writer. She hadn’t included that in her list of possible catastrophes.

That wasn’t the objection I raised to her, though.

“This paper wouldn’t make it through the copier.”

She clicked her tongue. “Not the one at KWMT — unless Mike’s gotten a new one?”

“Nope.”

“Then absolutely not. That monster could chew up a block of granite. Take a photo of each page. Send me the files so I can do preliminary assessment.”

Tedious, thy name is clicking a photo page by page of — I checked the number in the last page’s upper right corner — eighty-one.

“Gotta go,” Jennifer informed me cheerily.

Me, too. I entered the KWMT newsroom in search of a news aide to take careful photos of all the pages.