Her eyelids flutter. A voice from long ago whispers softly in her heart. You’re my airy-fairy girl, Jancee. Her muscles relax. Her fear is gone. She’s a little girl, sitting on her mother’s lap, looking up at the stars. That’s your sign, her mother says, pointing to a constellation high overhead. Jancee’s eyes open to the night sky. It’s there now. Aquarius. Her eyes close, and life leaves her body with one last breath, as soft and light as a cloud passing over the moon.
1
The afternoon was perfect for a drive in the country—blue sky, bright sun, crisp fall air, gorgeous colors on the trees, little roadside stands selling pumpkins for Halloween. It was the quintessential Wisconsin October day. Which is why I’d offered to drive Miguel Santos to his interview with a local farmer. Miguel is both my friend and my favorite reporter at the Himmel Times Weekly. I co-own the paper in our small town with my business partner, Miller Caldwell.
I waited by the car while Miguel got some pictures in the farmer’s field to run with his story. As soon as he finished, we would be headed to the Eldorado Grill in Madison for dinner.
I shivered a little as a breeze raised goosebumps on my arms, and my stomach began to growl.
“Good grief, Miguel, how long does it take to get a picture of corn? I’m starving!”
“Chill, chica,” he called back, breaking through a row of cornstalks with the slow-mo walk of an action movie hero. But instead of a gun, his hands held something red that sparkled in the sun.
Miguel is a mother’s dream match for her child, if said child happens to be an adult gay male. He’s tall and lean, with dark brown eyes that look out on the world with joyful anticipation. His hair is dark and shiny, expertly cut and styled, and his clothes are always on point. At the moment he looked like the cover of a men’s fashion magazine in olive green chinos, an oat-colored Henley T-shirt, and well-polished brown lace-up boots. Just FYI, I was wearing jeans, trainers, and a red Badgers T-shirt. But it was a new one.
“Look what I found in Mr. Pearson’s cornfield!”
As he approached he thrust his right hand out toward me. Dangling from his fingers by the straps was a pair of glittery red high-heeled shoes.
I shook my head.
“If you’re an envoy from Prince Charming, let me save you some time. I’m not Cinderella. Don’t even bother to ask me to try them on. I can tell just by looking that those are not going to fit on my size nine feet. How did you find them?”
“I wanted to frame a ‘harvest end’ shot to go with the story. I backed up to get the right angle, and then, boom! I tripped right over one shoe. Then I saw the other one just a little way off. What do you think they were doing in the middle of a cornfield?”
“They don’t look like they’ve been there that long.” I took them from his hand and turned them over for a close-up examination. “They’re dry and they’re not all that dirty. Maybe King Harvest was dancing in the moonlight, and things got a little crazy.”
His look told me that my reference to King Harvest had missed its mark. I wouldn’t know it either, if my mother hadn’t indoctrinated me with her 70s music immersion program when I was a kid.
“Be nice to me, or I’ll tell my mother that you don’t know who King Harvest is, and that you never heard of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight.’ Then, watch out. She’ll probably make a mix tape for you.”
“I would love that.”
I laughed, because that was no doubt true.
“Yes, I’m sure you would. But now, can we please move on from the Queen of the Cornfield mystery? There’s a plate of grilled enchiladas stuffed with lobster and crab waiting for me at the Eldorado.”
I got into the driver’s seat and tossed the shoes in the back.
“What are you going to do with them?” he asked, buckling his seatbelt.
“I’ll run them over to St. Vinny’s. They’re not Manolo Blahnik, but I’m sure someone would like them. They’re basically new.” I had tossed off the designer shoe name casually, as though I were an expert on fine footwear.
Miguel gave me some side-eye. “I would like to think that you are learning, but I know you don’t listen when I talk fashion shoes to you. Don’t toy with me.”
“I do so listen. I remembered the name, didn’t I? You know, you could get a few fashion shopping tips from me, too. Tell me this, are you a DSW VIP member?” I asked, referring to the ubiquitous discount shoe store. “Do you get those sweet, sweet perks? Do you get a five-dollar reward on your birthday? I think not. We just move in different fashion worlds, that’s all, but you have to admit, mine has its own rewards.”
“Someday, chica, someday I’ll lure you to mine. Meanwhile, it’s good for you to take the shoes to St. Vinny’s. Everybody should be able to get some sparkle in their life.”
It was Miguel’s turn to choose the playlist as we drove to Madison. Lady Gaga, Daddy Yankee, Dolly Parton, and Prince accompanied us on this trip.
“So, how are you doing with Maggie out for a couple weeks?” I asked after a while.
No answer. I glanced over and saw that he was lost in his car dance moves to the insistent beat of “Shaky Shaky.”
“Hey! Can you turn that music down?” I raised my voice to be heard, feeling a little like somebody’s grandma. Miguel is twenty-three, only about ten years younger than me, but sometimes it feels like ten long years.
“Sorry. I just got to move, move, move when Daddy Yankee’s on.” He grinned and did a quick demonstration.
“Okay, okay, never mind. You dance, I’ll think, and we’ll talk over dinner. Just put in your ear thingies, please,” I added.
As he did, I turned my mind back to the question I’d just asked him. Maggie McConnell is the managing editor at the Himmel Times. Neither I nor my business partner Miller is supposed to have much to do with day-to-day operations. Miller is a lawyer, not a journalist, and he has no problem staying out of things. But it’s harder for me. I spent years as a reporter, and even now I’m still a journalist. However, my focus is writing true crime books, not daily copy.
At the moment, it was legit for me to mix in newsroom business, because Maggie was out of the office, recovering from minor surgery. Miguel had to take care of her work, plus cover his regular beats. He hadn’t complained. He never does. But he only had Troy Patterson, a pretty inexperienced reporter, and a handful of not-always-available stringers to put out the paper. It worried me a little. As always, GO News, our digital-only competition, was breathing down our necks.
Wait. I probably should back up just a bit. My name is Leah Nash, and why I own a struggling newspaper is a long story. I’ll make it short.
The Himmel Times Weekly, in my hometown of Himmel, Wisconsin, is where I started as a reporter more than a decade ago. It’s also where I landed after my career with a paper in Miami took a nosedive. Although I’d expected my stopgap gig in Himmel to be pretty routine, it turned out to be anything but. I uncovered a story that went national and wrote a book about it. The book did pretty well, and I left the paper to write more books. Then, when the Himmel Times was on the verge of closing last year, I took all the money I had in the bank, and convinced Miller Caldwell, a local attorney with a lot more cash than me, that he should invest with me in saving the paper. Lots of things had happened in the intervening months—my second book tanked, my publisher ditched me, the paper began losing ground to GO News, my book agent found me a new publisher, things began looking up, my best friend Coop quit his job, then decided to run for sheriff. You know, life stuff.