free hit counters
Chapter 51
Mike was still all smiles when he walked into the office Thursday morning. He was late; after he'd taken the kids out to the club for the day, he'd come back and spent some time at the hospital with Kirsten and Susan. It looked like Kirsten would be there another day,
but Thursday and Friday weren't exactly real busy around the Record-Herald, anyway.
It took Mike a while to work his way around the staff. It was, after all, his third kid and almost certainly his last, but there was still some obligatory backslapping and bullshooting that had to take place. Finally, he settled in behind his desk, and started in on the stack of
mail that Webb had left there.
Gradually, he became aware of someone standing in the doorway. He looked up and said, "Jennifer! Sorry I didn't get to say much more than `hi' yesterday, but you know how it was. Thanks for helping."
"Thanks for letting me stay," Jennifer said quietly. "I know it wasn't as exciting for me as it was for you, but congratulations."
"I didn't mind," he said. "How've you been, anyway?"
"Mike," she replied, "Can we talk?"
Mike could see that Jennifer had something on her mind. "Sure," he said.
She came in, closed the door, and sat down. "Look, Mike," she said. "I've got a problem, and I hate to come to you with it, but I don't want my family to hear about this. I had a heck of a time acting through yesterday afternoon and last night, before I realized I could
talk to you."
"What's the problem, Jennifer?"
"Mike, if you were to walk out in the front office and look across the street, you'd see a green Dodge and two guys with a videocamera. They're a field team from `Inside Hollywood', and I told them weeks ago that not only that I wasn't going to give them an
interview in Spearfish Lake, I didn't want them here."
"They came anyway, huh?"
"I don't know what they want, Mike. An interview, maybe, but if I give them one to make them go away, it'll be like paying blackmail. If I just let them hang around town, and they find out about my parents, I'll never be able to come home again without filling all the
local motels with paparazzi." She seemed near tears.
"They might not find out," Mike said.
Jennifer shook her head. "They're bound to be asking around about me, and sooner or later someone's going to give them the connection."
"Yeah," Mike conceded. "It wouldn't take more than a dirty smile on the right person to set them on the right track." He laughed. "Take them out there and give them an interview. It won't get on the air."
"It wouldn't work, Mike. I mean, what do I do when I want to come home again? I live in a goddamn media circus as it is. I come home to get away from all of that shit, and as soon as anybody from that nuthouse finds out about it, if I come home, you would't be able
to see the trees on the far side of the lake for all the camera lenses, trying to get a nude shot of me. That's why I quit going out there." She shook her head and dropped her voice, seeming very vulnerable now. "Mike, I have to get away from that sometime. Being able to
come back to Spearfish Lake is the only thing that keeps me going. I can't have the only refuge I have taken away like that."
Back when Webb had sat in Mike's chair, he'd kept a pack of cigarettes in the desk drawer for when it came time to think things out. "Greatest aid to concentration ever invented," he'd said; it was the only time he smoked. Mike didn't smoke at all; mostly he'd given
away chocolate cigars this morning, except to people that he knew actually did smoke cigars, but right now, he ached for one of Webb's cigarettes. "Look, Jennifer," he said. "I know the last three or four years, every time we've talked, I've gotten hints that things could be going
better for you," he said. "Is it that bad?"
"The career is going great," she sighed. "I could be working forty-eight hours a day if I wanted to, and stacking it up like the IRS. But when I get home at night, I'm so lonely and bummed out that there's been times that I've been surprised that I haven't tried to kill
myself. Without being able to come home, and without Blake, I don't know what I'd do."
"Blake is a little more than just your housekeeper, then?"
"I love Blake, I respect Blake, I adore Blake, I depend on Blake for my life sometimes," Jennifer admitted. "I couldn't make it without him. But Blake and I aren't in love, mostly because he's gay."
Mike let the last word reverberate around in his skull for a second before he managed to say something. "I can see how that would put a different slant on things," he said finally.
"He's a great big guy, kind of like Daddy," Jennifer said. "It got to the point where I needed a bodyguard, and I'd be lying to you if I told you that there aren't women in that town that have been raped by their bodyguards, so I thought it was a neat way around the
problem. I got more than I bargained for. God, he's been so good to me. But, Mike, you see that's even part of the problem, why I can't take any of this to my parents. It would upset them too much. I could fake it last night. Since Brandy and Phil are home, they've been staying
home out of courtesy to Phil, rather than out at the club, and Brandy and Phil are leaving tomorrow."
Mike knew that for Brandy's sake, Phil had once been out to the cottage, but it had been enough for him. Brandy and Phil had a very tight, but unofficial relationship, like he and Kirsten did. Brandy had reached the point where she could take the club or leave it, and Gil
and Carrie had come to the point of accepting and accommodating the inevitable. "Yeah," he replied. "It'd even be difficult to just pick up and leave."
"They'd know something was wrong," Jennifer agreed. "Mike, what the hell do I do?"
"Just ignore them," Mike said.
"I suppose," she sighed. It wasn't the right answer, and she knew it, but if Mike couldn't think of anything better, it was the only thing to do. "But it's not going to be much of a vacation if I can't see my folks, and have to be hiding out from those jokers all the time."
"Maybe the answer is to go out to the cottage," Mike suggested. "It might work, anyway. There are enough long-haired blondes running around out there that they're not likely to be able to single you out from across the lake, even with a bigger telescope than they can
carry in their car. Your folks cottage is pretty well back in the trees. But, your parents are going to have to learn sooner or later that everything isn't sweetness and light."
"No point in just leading them out there," she said, resigned to the inevitable loss of her home. She'd never be able to come home again, and she knew it. "Is there anything we can do to make them work for it?"
"Any number of things," Mike said. "I think LeRoy is on days this week. You could lead those two up Main Street, and we could have LeRoy set up to stop them for speeding or no turn signal or something. While he's running the file, you're losing them."
"That would work," she agreed.
Mike picked up the phone, and started to dial it. At this hour of the morning, the odds were just about perfect that LeRoy would be having his morning coffee break at the Donut Shop; that's how Mike often got his police report. He got halfway through the number
before he stopped and laughed. "Or, we could solve the problem, this time anyway, without wasting a perfectly good idea just to break contact."
There was a mischevious sparkle in Mike's eye, and an evil grin on his face. "What have you got in mind?" she asked.
"Let's see," Mike said, ignoring her as he dialed the phone furiously. "Mark'll be out and around somewhere, but Jackie ought to be at the shop."
