“I see your point. He’d be a good target for some unscrupulous reporter.”
“It’s happened before,” I said. “Every few years, some reporter will get a bug up his butt to do an in-depth story on the Fellowship. They rehash old newspaper articles and conflate us with other so-called spiritual groups that have been in trouble with the law. They attack his character and refer to Dharma as a cult.” I glared at Derek. “You must know how ridiculous that is.”
“Of course I do.”
I sighed. “Of course you do.”
He pulled me up out of my chair and wrapped his arms around me. “We can’t worry about things that might not happen. As long as we’re prepared to tell the truth about what we saw, how we found the body, and then direct any other questions to the sheriff’s office, we’ll get through this with little or no fuss.”
“No fuss, no worries.”
“That is to be our mantra,” he said, planting a soft kiss on my forehead. “I’m hopeful we can handle most of these phone inquiries within the next few days, but some of the reporters are going to want to come up here for interviews. Let’s try to put them off until next weekend.”
“They’ll want to come sooner,” I said, sitting back at the table.
“We have a perfectly legitimate reason to hold them off. This is a spiritual community, and the members aren’t available at the spur of the moment.”
“True enough. We should arrange to have them all come here at the same time and do a press conference. Say, at two o’clock next Saturday afternoon.”
“It might be better to do it the following Tuesday or Wednesday instead. It’s so busy here on the weekends. We don’t want to draw more of a crowd than we can handle.”
“Good thinking. I’d hate to draw a huge crowd of bystanders while we’re talking about the caves and the body and all that.”
“Exactly. Now, how do you feel about telling the reporters a small white lie? We can be vague about it, but we’ll let them know that, say, a week from Wednesday, at two o’clock is the first time the commune members will be available to talk.”
“That’s a long time from now.”
“I think we’ll need the time to prepare for this.”
“You’re probably right. It’s not like I’ve ever given a press conference before.” I wrote down the time and date, but then stopped. “There’s nothing to keep them from coming up to the winery anytime they want to.”
“They’re welcome to do so, but they won’t get the information they need for their stories until Wednesday at two o’clock.”
“Okay. And just in case, I’ll have Mom spread the word that nobody should talk to reporters until the official press conference a week from Wednesday.” I stared across the table at him. “Are you okay with spending more time up here than you thought you would?”
“That’s the best thing about being the boss,” he said, grinning. “I can do what I want most of the time. The office won’t be overly busy this week, so I should be able to handle things by phone. I’ll work a few hours each morning and check in every afternoon.”
“I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“Darling.” He reached across and squeezed my hand. “This is important to me, too.”
“Thank you.”
“And if something comes up that I can’t handle by phone, I’ll simply drive into the city for a few hours.”
“Okay, then I won’t worry about you, either.”
“Please don’t,” he said. “I promise I won’t let myself fire me.”
I smiled at that. He picked up his list of names and went off to the office while I sat back down at the table to make the calls.
Forty minutes later, I was just finishing up my last call when he came back and joined me at the table.
“How did you do?” I asked after disconnecting the call.
“I spoke with eight of the people on my list. A few of them weren’t happy about waiting so long, but they’ll all be here a week from Wednesday. I left messages with the other four to call me back. How about you?”
“I’m waiting on two callbacks. Everyone else was willing to go along with our time frame, especially when I suggested that they could contact the sheriff’s department for more information in the meantime. It was almost too easy.”
“That can’t be good,” he said, looking amused.
“I know. Something’s bound to go wrong.”
I had followed Derek’s advice, explaining to each reporter that Dharma was a private spiritual community and that nobody would be available to talk to them until the agreed time. It may have been a white lie, but I didn’t care. It would give us some bit of control over the proceedings.