She sounded weary and, well, nose-clogged, as though she’d been crying. Never one for subtlety, or being the patient type, I got right to it.
“I had a look at the photo and papers you sent me.”
Silence.
“Mary? Did someone give them to you?”
Sniff.
“Can you talk? Is Clay there?”
“He and Isak went to talk to Dalton.”
“What for?”
Mary then told me that Clay and Isak, troubled by the gallery-opening changes Dalton had hinted at before leaving the brunch, had driven off to meet with him at his home studio.
“Did Isak go with Clay?” I asked. “How did Shasta get home?”
“I drove her in my car. She’s only two minutes away.”
“Okay, so tell me about the stuff you put in my coat pocket.”
“Yes, sorry. Someone put them in my mailbox yesterday. In a large envelope. Luckily, Clay wasn’t at home.”
“Was the envelope addressed to you?”
“It wasn’t addressed. It was blank, and I don’t know who put it in there.”
“Anything else in it?”
“Nothing.”
Now I was thoroughly confused. “So why would someone give those things to you?”
Another sniff.
“It doesn’t make sense, Mary.”
“They know me now. They know how weak I am, and they want the Post to print stories. Three stories. I think the mortgage paper is a reminder. They can dig up any information they want on me and Clay, so I’d better do as I’m told.”
“But they didn’t actually tell you what to do with the information, right? How do you know they want you to print stories on Isak and the rest?”
Silence ensued. I waited.
“I know it’s what they want because that’s what they wanted the first time,” she said at last. “And I complied. I gave in, Rachel. I did it. Did you read the article on Connor Morse, the teacher at Juniper Grove High who’d been arrested for dealing heroin when he was seventeen?”
I told her Gilroy and I didn’t get the paper.
“Someone put his arrest record in my mailbox, with a demand that it be published. The guy’s in this thirties now, but his arrest turned out to be true, so Brodie printed the story in mid-December, without a byline. He loved it. He called the article a service to the community. Our subscriptions shot up.”
“What happened to the teacher?”
“He was fired.” She let out a strangled laugh. “Well, Brodie’s not going to love the article about Brodie and his car accident.”
“He’d never print that.”
I heard muffled noises and Mary—her hand covering the phone?—yelling something.
“Can you still talk?” I asked.
“Clay’s back. I need your help. Call me at work tomorrow morning.”
The phone clicked off.
Gilroy had heard my end of the conversation, judging by the expression he gave me back in the living room.
“Now we know someone gave those things to Mary,” he said. “What happened to what teacher?”
“Connor Morse. He was arrested as a teenager for dealing heroin. Someone pressured the Post into writing a story about him, using Mary. They printed it and the teacher was fired.”
“If he has an arrest record for dealing, why did the high school hire him?”
“Either the school didn’t perform its due diligence or Morse’s record was expunged because he was under eighteen.”
“Someone had it in for Morse? And now for Isak Karlsen and Brodie Keegan?”
“It sounds like we have an avenging angel on our hands. We’re going to need more caffeine. And sugar.”
