She had a bob of dyed red hair that didn’t suit her coloring or the shape of her face. She was hitting middle age badly, was short and the last couple of years had put on a little pudge mostly due to regular flybys at Mimi’s and a summertime habit of stopping at Fulsham’s Frozen Custard Stand.
Her position as top reporter for the Gazette gave her importance in town, people wanted her attention, wanted their name or event in print. Monica had elevated that importance on her own and the last five years or so, her self-conceived power had led to her getting nosier than she should, even given her profession. Her decades of consistent but thwarted attempts to get on staff at the Indianapolis Star saw her writing turn gossipy and sometimes nasty, something which was not only unnecessary for a small town weekly but also not popular. The real power she held, the power of the printed word, meant she could get away with it and people still showed her respect. They might have done it but behind her back she was widely disliked and, by some, even hated.
She’d never married, likely because she carried the triple curse of being unattractive, unlikeable and giving up the status of being a woman to be known only as a reporter.
“Colt,” she said with a false ingratiating smile when he approached her.
He stopped well away and greeted, “Monica.” And as he knew she would, she moved into his space so he quickly asked, “What can I do for you?”
She tipped her head to the side and said, “Figure Sully talked to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Feds are here,” she went on.
“Yeah,” Colt agreed.
“Somethin’ goin’ on that the people should know about?” she asked.
She didn’t want to do a service to the citizens of the town. She wanted a juicy story she could break and show the editors of The Star.
“Figure they know already what they should know,” Colt told her.
“What I hear, there’s more to it,” Monica returned.
“Yeah? What’d you hear?” Colt asked and she grinned again and put her hand on his arm, touching him briefly then pulling away before he could.
“Now wouldn’t be good for me to tell you that, would it?” she asked.
Colt played dumb. “Why not?”
She just grinned again.
Colt wanted to be at the bar, not talking to Monica, so he got down to it. “My advice, Monica? You should leave this alone.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“At this point, it’s far less interesting than you think,” Colt lied, she got closer and it took everything Colt had not to step back.
“What I hear, it’s very interesting,” she whispered.
Colt played a card. “You tell me what that is, maybe I could confirm or deny it. You don’t, and you run with it now, you’d be all kinds of fool.”
He gave her confidence a hit, she was unsure. She knew talk was talk and things could get embellished along the way. She moved too soon, no matter how miniscule, any dreams she had left of being at The Star would be lost. She tried to hide it but he saw it in her face.
Colt kept going, dangling the carrot. “You work with us on this we give you an exclusive after it plays out.”
“An exclusive to a weekly?” she asked, eyebrows up, disbelief in her tone.
“Town’s paper, who else?” Colt returned but she knew what he was saying. He wasn’t offering the Gazette an exclusive; he was offering it to Monica.
She studied him before wheedling, “Worth my while to wait?”
Colt wasn’t giving her that. “Sorry, Monica, you’ll have to wait and see, just like us.”
Her hand came back to his arm but this time she kept it there and again Colt fought the urge to pull away. “Colt, the Feds are here. There are four dead bodies in three states. Same MO.”
“Not the same.” That, at least, was the truth, or it was in Marie’s case.
“Close enough,” she returned.
“Monica, trust me, I’m givin’ you good advice on this one.”
“You’re tryin’ to gag the press.”
That pissed Colt off. Sure, that’s exactly what he was doing but he hadn’t put up with her shit and played her game for years to have her call him on something she had to know was important.
His voice dipped lower when he said, “You pay attention, you’ll see I’m tryin’ to give you somethin’. You don’t play, this ends, you got nothin’.” Her interest was even more piqued, he saw that too.
“You want this, you gotta give me more,” she pushed him, the greedy bitch.
“More than exclusive?” he asked.
“You gotta give me Cal Johnson.”
“Old news, Monica, you reported on that this week.”
“Not with an interview with the cop who got him to roll over.”
Colt couldn’t see it as news, just her way of taking his time, something she liked to do.
“No one’s interested in that shit.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said agreeably. “So, instead, I’ll take you and Feb.”
Colt swallowed a growl. She had that all along. She knew the murders were linked with him and Feb and she wanted it all.
She squeezed his arm, getting excited. “High school sweethearts, brought back together by murder and mayhem,” she leaned in, “hell, this could be a book.”
“It’s not gonna happen,” Colt told her.
She squeezed his arm again. “That’s my offer. I lay low until this busts and then you give me the real exclusive.”
“You don’t lay low, you don’t get jack shit,” he returned.
She dropped his arm, leaned back and grinned again, thinking she was calling his bluff. “I could live with that.”
Colt shook his head but smiled, leaning back himself, calling hers. “Nope, Monica, run it and for the next forty years you’ll kick yourself.”