Nighttime Guardian

“Close the door.” Virgil leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head as Nathan took a seat across from his desk.

At sixty, his uncle was still an impressive-looking man. Tall and muscular, with keen eyes and a thoughtful, if sometimes mulish, disposition, he had the same world-weary air Nathan had seen on editors and publishers of much larger publications. His hair was completely gray and his face heavily lined by a lifetime of deadlines, pressure and—Nathan suspected—hard drinking. He wouldn’t be the first Dallas to succumb to the temptation of the bottle.

“I heard about Danny Weathers at the diner this morning,” Virgil said grimly.

Nathan nodded. “I was with the Buford boys last night when they found the body.”

His uncle unfolded his hands and placed them on the desk, leaning toward Nathan intently. “I heard that, too. What were you thinking, son? What in the holy hell were you doing out on the river with that pair of lowlifes?”

As always, Nathan grew a little defensive. “I had my reasons. Besides, I’m a grown man. You don’t have to worry about bad influences anymore.”

“Hell, it’s too late to worry about that,” Virgil blurted.

“Yeah, I’m a lost cause,” Nathan agreed.

As if regretting his harsh words, Virgil’s expression softened. “If I thought you were a lost cause, you wouldn’t be here, son.”

“I appreciate that.” Nathan paused, then prompted, “So, is that what you wanted to see me about?”

“Partly. I wanted to find out what you knew about the accident.”

“Not much. Only that I seem to be the only one who isn’t convinced it was an accident. I hope Sheriff McCaid has the good sense to treat this case as a homicide.”

“Homicide?” Virgil looked as if the word were almost foreign to him. “Why would he do that?”

“It’s standard procedure. Evidence could be destroyed or lost if he waits for the autopsy results.” Nathan glanced at his uncle. “Of course, maybe that’s the whole point.”

Virgil gave him a long, worried appraisal. “This isn’t Washington, D.C., son. There’s not some ‘vast conspiracy’ behind every accident.” He put quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “You’ve got to learn to think like a small-town newspaperman, not like some hotshot city reporter. If you don’t, you’re apt to make yourself some real enemies around here.”

“Isn’t that the purpose of the fourth estate?” Nathan argued. “To be cynical? To question motives? We’re supposed to be the public’s watchdog, not some cuddly pet who rolls over and plays dead.” He leaned forward in his chair, as if to stress his point. “You can bet I’m going to be all over this story, no matter who I tick off. If Danny Weathers was murdered, I won’t rest until his killer is exposed.”

Virgil sighed, running a hand through his gray hair. “Look, son, you’re the editor now, and far be it for me to tell you how to do your job. But if you ask me, there’s another story right in your own backyard you ought to be focusing on.”

Nathan lifted a brow. “Which is?”

“Shelby Westmoreland. I hear she’s back.”

That tingle again at the very mention of her name. Nathan said carefully, “Yeah, she’s back. I saw her last night. But her name’s August now. She’s married.”

“No, she’s widowed.”

“She is?” Nathan tried to keep his tone neutral, but the truth was he still hadn’t gotten over the shock of seeing her last night. She’d been sixteen when she’d left Arcadia for the last time. Her parents had come for her after yet another reconciliation, but Nathan had consoled himself with a certainty that she’d soon return. Her parents would split up again, as they always did, and Shelby would be shipped back to her grandmother.

But months had passed, and then a year. Eventually, even her letters had stopped. Nathan had finally become convinced that he would never see her again.

But there she’d stood last night, looking a little too much like the girl he’d never been able to forget.

And now his uncle had informed him that she was a widow. What kind of person would feel happy about that?

“How long has her husband been dead?” he heard himself ask.

“Just over a year. He was murdered.”

A shock wave rolled through Nathan. “My God, what happened?”

Virgil shrugged. “Best I recollect, he owned some kind of restoration business. Antiques, I think. He was working alone in his office when a gunman walked in, made him open the safe and then shot him dead. Shelby was the one who found the body.”

“Damn.” No wonder she’d seemed so fragile last night. So frightened.

Virgil nodded, his expression sober. “That was bad enough, but it got worse. Turned out she’d seen the killer driving away when she pulled into the parking lot. She was able to give the police a description. Even remembered part of the license plate under hypnosis. There was an all-out manhunt for a man named Albert Lunt, but he managed to elude the police for weeks. Then Lunt started making threats toward Shelby.”

“What kind of threats?”

“You name it. He made phone calls. Stalked her. The police even suspected he killed her dog, maybe as a warning, maybe because he was just one sick S.O.B. She was assigned protection, but eventually Lunt made his move. He broke into her house one night and waited for her with a knife. The police officer outside heard her scream and came running, but not before Lunt attacked her. Cut her pretty badly from what I heard, but she must have fought him like a demon, or he would have killed her. The cop shot him, but the wound was superficial. Lunt stood trial a few months later and was convicted of first-degree murder.”

“And Shelby?”

“She was in the hospital for a while. Annabel went out to California to be with her. She told her neighbor, Aline Henley, the girl was a mess, more so emotionally than physically.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Nathan muttered. He didn’t want to think about Shelby in the hospital, fighting for her life. He didn’t want to think of her terrified, at the mercy of a brutal killer. He liked to remember her in that pink dress, sitting on her grandmother’s front porch.

He glanced at his uncle. “As fascinating as all this is, I don’t see what difference it makes. You said it happened over a year ago. It’s not news. Where’s the story?”

“The story is not what happened to Shelby out in L.A.,” Virgil said impatiently. “It’s what happened to her here.”

“You mean the monster sighting? Come on. That isn’t news, either. Besides, James Westmoreland said he concocted the whole thing for profit. You printed his confession yourself.”

Virgil shook his finger at Nathan, a habit he had when he wanted to drive home a point—or browbeat Nathan into doing something he didn’t want to. “Listen to me, son. It doesn’t matter if she saw a monster that night or not. It doesn’t matter if she saw anything. What matters is that she became a celebrity. Her story was carried by major newspapers all over the country. She was even on the ‘Tonight’ show. You don’t think people would be interested in finding out what happened to the little girl who cried monster?”

Something stirred in the pit of Nathan’s stomach. Revulsion mixed with anger. “Are you suggesting we exploit Shelby’s personal tragedy for the sake of some human-interest piece? That isn’t reporting. It’s gossip. Tabloid journalism.”

“With which you aren’t unfamiliar,” Virgil was quick to point out.

Nathan counted to ten, reminding himself that he owed his uncle more than he could ever repay him. If he had to take a little ego-bashing once in a while, so be it.

Virgil eyed him sagely. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re chasing a pipe dream when you go after Takamura. You think you’re going to uncover some big exposé out there on the river that will put you back where you were three years ago, but that’s not going to happen. That part of your life is over.”

“I realize that,” Nathan said through gritted teeth.

Virgil stared at him for a moment. “I’m not sure you do. The Argus is a chance for you to start over, rebuild your life. But you have to realize, things are different down here. Priorities are different. Takamura Industries helps put food on the table for a lot of folks in this town, so they don’t much care what’s going on inside that lab. But Shelby Westmoreland…Why, hell, son. She once claimed she saw the Pearl River Monster.”

Thinking of the Argus as his last chance rather than as a stepping-stone had been a bitter pill for Nathan to swallow. He still had a hard time imagining himself covering weddings and funerals and family reunions for the rest of his life. He couldn’t help wanting back what he’d once had. The excitement, the drama, the accolades from his peers. Everything that he’d so carelessly and shamelessly tossed away three years ago.

But his uncle was right. That part of his life was over, and things were different down here. As editor of the town’s only newspaper, Nathan had a duty and a responsibility to the community that he couldn’t afford to take lightly. He couldn’t just go after the stories that suited his purposes, the ones he deemed newsworthy. Building the Argus into a paper he could be proud of couldn’t come at the expense of his readers. He had to give them what they wanted.

And whether he liked it or not, in Arcadia, Shelby Westmoreland’s return was news.

LIKE FAIRY DUST, the treasures inside the Pearl Cove had always cast a spell on Shelby. Made from the finest gold and silver, her grandmother’s creations were truly breathtaking, but the focal point of each piece, the absolute stars of the shop were the magnificent freshwater pearls that came in shapes and sizes as varied as their delicate colors—cream, peach, pink, lavender, gold, and more rarely, blue.