Page 24 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

On the way to the Haber House Hotel for lunch, I placed a call to an author I know.

I met Kit the year before I moved to Wyoming.

She and her great-niece lived in Manhattan, as did I at the time. But we met at a London hotel and had an adventure there together.

I’d been sent to London on an assignment and added time to enjoy the city.

In retrospect, adding those days probably also reflected an unconscious decision to be away from my then-husband. My encounter with Kit and her great-niece, as well as the time away contributed to my recognition that divorce was the only future Wes and I had.

Kit called her great-niece Sheila. Perhaps to shield her, because that great-niece’s name is one you’d probably recognize, especially if you’re a reader.

She is the author of Abandon All, which I know you’ll have heard of from either the book or the movie.

Though its fame has become an ever-decreasing presence.

For various reasons, I hit it off better with Kit than Sheila, though we were much closer in age and by the end far more in sync than at the beginning.

Still, Kit was the one I’d stayed in sporadic touch with for the next several months, even as she decided to retire to North Carolina’s Outer Banks and Sheila went off on her own . . . somewhere.

Kit hadn’t been forthcoming and I hadn’t pushed. Or, perhaps I hadn’t paid close enough attention.

Over a period of several months, my marriage, career, and professional family disintegrated.

Saying I failed to keep up the communication with Kit would be letting myself way, way off the hook. I cut it off by not responding.

To give her the choice now to say no thanks, I planned to go through the public channel of her publisher’s marketing department. But when I looked at her web site, I saw she was publishing her own books. That made total sense. I’ve never met anyone more suited to independence of all kinds.

I still had her North Carolina contact information.

I messaged Kit, leaving my phone number.

And hoped she’d do better than I had at returning messages.

I put my phone into my bag and it immediately rang.

Tom.

“I’ve got a meeting tonight—” He didn’t bother to tell me what it was for, because he was involved in so many civic efforts that it usually didn’t matter unless there was something newsworthy cooking.

In which case he wouldn’t tell me, to protect what was cooking being on the news.

“—and Tamantha’s sleepover’s been canceled because her friend has a sore throat. If you can’t—”

“I can. Have her stay here or be with her at the ranch?”

“Your call. She’s at that program at the library again until late afternoon. And returns in the morning.”

“Here makes sense then.”

“Good. Heard you talked with Connie this morning.”

“Hah. Just happened to hear, huh?”

“Yep. What’ve you got going now?”

“Lunch with Mike, Needham, and a friend of his. Then I’m going to Hiram Poppinger’s place.”

“I’m going with you.”

The speed of his reaction had me narrowing my eyes at the phone. He’d known that was coming. Connie, no doubt. He’d had two purposes for this call.

Two that I knew of so far.

“Why? No. That’s not necessary.”

“Back to front, might not be necessary but I’ll like it better, yes, and because he’s prone to pulling out a shotgun, as he did the first time you met him.”

I didn’t recall telling him about that first meeting, so how . . .? On second thought, did it matter how he knew? Could have heard it from Mike, Diana, Shelton, or Hiram himself.

And those were the primary sources. Secondary and tertiary sources covered the entire county and plenty of people beyond.

“Tom—”

“You’ll hardly notice I’m there.”

Right. When did I ever not notice he was in my vicinity?

* * * *

I walked into the Haber House Hotel precisely on time, to spot Mike and Needham already at a prime table by the front windows.

Prime because it was buffered by architectural oddities from the building’s early Twentieth Century origins. It was some distance from the ornate bar that drew a lot of attention. The placement of columns kept it separate from other tables. The drapes — what else? red velvet — absorbed sound.

The third occupant at the table made me blink hard to fight a momentary disconnect.

I knew his identity, I just couldn’t make it fit this location.

Orson Jardine.

Not a prepossessing figure by nature — he’d said of himself that he had a body built for overalls, not suits — but certainly one by repute.

Famed Executive Editor of the Washington Standard.

Former Executive Editor.

It was a tough time in the news business.

Perhaps especially for newspapers. Many had folded. All trimmed. Some bought.

It might look like a benefit to be bought by a billionaire. But here was a shock — most billionaires chose to pad their billions, not to serve their communities or country.

The billionaire owner of Orson Jardine’s former newspaper was arguably the worst, including meddling in and hamstringing the newsroom, resulting in a flood of departures, some notable names, many professionals unknown to the public but respected by peers.

My connections said Jardine stemmed the owner’s depredations longer than anyone expected.

In the end, he had not gone gently — or quietly — into that good night.

His resignation statement was short, pointed, and much quoted. Not quite U.S. General Anthony McAuliffe’s “Nuts” response to a German officer demanding his surrender at Bastogne during World War II, but close.

Orson Jardine spotted me and stood. Mike and Needham followed suit.

“Elizabeth Margaret Danniher,” he said. “Good to see you.”

We’d crossed paths throughout my time in Washington. The sort of occasional intersections that start you talking to someone as if you knew them because you’d heard so much about them.

Sometimes those intersections deepened over time. Ours had remained professionally pleasant.

“Hello, Orson. It’s good to see you, too.”

Also astonishing, but I kept that to myself.

Shouldn’t have bothered with that exercise of restraint, because as we sat, he gave me a quick look from deceptively mild blue eyes and said, “Needham never told you we’re friends.”

I avoided the cliché of giving Needham a dirty look. “He did not.”

“Never came up,” the culprit claimed. “Not until Orson told me he was coming through town during a cross-country drive and I figured you all should talk. He’s not working and you folks have openings—”

“TV,” Orson inserted. He prevented himself from saying something else. Barely.

Good thing, because I might have said something that included newspapers and moribund.

Or, maybe not, since all traditional media had issues, hampered by the pesky professional need for facts and multiple reliable sources to attest to them, unlike entertainment outlets or the people they bowed to.

Also subject to campaigns of disparagement, which a segment of the population gobbled up, because it was more fun to them than being called on to think.

“Your skills apply to TV news.”

Mike said it in a way that indicated they’d already talked about this while I’d been talking to firefighters, then visiting the Nineteenth Century.

“Especially for what we’re building. Further shaping the skills of young journalists, with a level of independence that will make your mouth water.”

Orson shook his head. “You’ve got intriguing ideas, but, as I said, I’m considering a few things, including traveling the country. It’s something my wife and I planned to do. She’s gone, but . . .”

He didn’t need to finish — if he would have — because a waitress named Stella arrived.

Needham spoke up. “Stella, would you take a picture of us?”

He handed over his phone and she took multiple shots of the four of us, before getting our orders.

After she’d left, Needham led the conversation into anecdotes that braided journalism, Wyoming, and their long friendship.

It took us through the meal.

“. . . This guy who’s headquartered in Colorado came to Wyoming,” Needham was saying, “and speechified about how the gravest danger was from out-of-towners shipped in to cause trouble. You know, the old dodge that it’s always paid agitators recruited by them, never local people unhappy with what’s happening.

“Anyway, this guy from Colorado said he’d not only encountered paid agitators, but members of his group infiltrated them. Then, he said, the paid agitators showed him their backpacks loaded with bottles of frozen water and big rocks.”

Orson huffed. “Must be very fit agitators to haul that load around a protest.”

“Yup, and one he mentioned was a two-mile march in Seattle or Portland, somewhere like that.” Needham raised his index finger and tipped it toward Orson, saying he’d spotted a point.

“He said members of his group infiltrated, but the paid agitators showed him what they had in their backpacks? Isn’t he the public face of the group? Wouldn’t they have known who he was? Or did he, uh, take license with the accuracy of his account?” Mike asked.

Needham added his middle finger to the index, tipping both of them toward Mike in a second acknowledgment.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “He’s using outside agitators as bogeymen when he lived in Colorado, but went to Seattle or Portland, then came to Wyoming?”

Needham raised his ring finger and shook all three slightly toward us. “You all got it right off. Too many in his audience didn’t. Heard outside agitators and never questioned anything.”

“Not surprised you saw the flaws,” Orson said. “Not at Needham, from the years I’ve known him. Not at Elizabeth, from what I know of her work. Now you, Mike, I don’t know, except for your football career and recent clips Needham gave me. Nice work, but—”

“He’s also the best station owner I’ve ever worked for,” I said.

“Owners.” A single word from Orson, half-snorted with derision.

“An unfortunate necessity—”

“With the emphasis on unfortunate,” Orson inserted.

“Hey,” Mike grumbled.

“—unless you’re smart enough to work for yourself,” Needham finished gleefully.

“That bad?” I asked Orson.

“Don’t get him started,” Needham said under his breath.

No sacrifice for him to avoid pursuing this. He already knew the details. I had, of course, heard rumblings. I wanted to hear the inside scoop.

“I know there’s been a talent drain—”

I’d picked the right match to light the fuse.

“Drain? An outright purge, a deliberate flushing of talent, experience, stature. He brought in a bunch of raw — and less expensive — youngsters. Some with promise. And the paper’s producing good work despite everything.

But who’s left to bring along that promise, to be the stone that makes them sharpen their sword of words? ”

“You.”

“Me?” he scoffed. “Not there anymore, am I? At least I had the satisfaction of making the smug, dishonest — and smug about being dishonest — SOB fire me. Wouldn’t fire myself for him and that CEO — hah!

had to call him CEO because he sure as hell’s not deserving of being called a publisher. He’s no newspaperman.”

“That’s not the only place that needs someone like you,” Mike said. “You could be the stone for apprentice journalists to sharpen their skills here.”

Orson Jardine side-eyed him. “TV. I’m an ink-stained wretch. Got it in my veins. You know the quote, Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations. Nothing in there about putting it on-air. Printing.”

Needham jumped in. “Possibly George Orwell. Or—”

“—Possibly a twist on a William Randolph Hearst quote,” Orson finished. “But this one’s Thomas Jefferson for sure: Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

“In a letter to a friend in 1786. I’ve seen a photo of the original,” Needham said, topping him.

“In another letter in 1789, he wrote, Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

Orson immediately responded, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people. John Adams, 1765.”

“Hah. Also John Adams, but 1772. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed. Hannah Arendt.”

“Hannah Arendt.” Mike was tapping on his phone. “She’s the one who wrote the book about—”

“Totalitarianism,” Needham said. “No need to write these down, Mike. I’ll send you the quotes and citations.

We play this game all the time. But we’re getting far afield from journalism.

Back to Jefferson. Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. ”

“That’s a good one since it rules out television or digital,” Orson said with a hint of devilish humor. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s intriguing, the idea of taking on a TV news operation. Something new. Someplace new. You and Thelma. Kids on the staff. And working with E.M. Danniher? That would be—”

He shook his head. I chose to take that as the prospect of working with me was so good it left him without words, rather than the opposite.

Needham cut in, not letting him solidify his answer. “I know you’re disappointed—”

“Disappointed? Disgusted. You remember the guys we came up under? They’d have kicked that weak-assed owner’s unethical—” He broke off, turning the fist his right hand had formed and tapping the edge of it on the table.

“I’m done. I’ve put in my years. Time to let the next ones take over.

See my kids more. They’re all over the country and—”

“You’d be more central here,” Needham said. “Close enough to Yellowstone, they’ll come here—”

“You’re Michael Paycik, aren’t you? You used to play in the NFL.”

The intrusion of a new voice jerked us all around to a thin woman wearing narrow jeans and a cowboy hat so stiff it looked painful. If it wasn’t brand new, I’d eat it. And it would not be a tender meal.