“Just like Oswald, right?”
“Don’t get me started on Oswald,” Buzz said.
Quinn tried to contain his laugh, but let it out anyway.
“I know, I know,” Quinn said. “It was the CIA in it with the Mob…”
“You listen to me,” Buzz said, and jabbed his finger in Quinn’s chest. “You should pay attention when I say Lord Halloween has returned. He’s here. I can feel it.”
“Then where are the dead bodies, Buzz?” Quinn replied, and pushed Buzz’s hand out of his way. “We should have seen at least one by now, right?”
“You wait,” Buzz said. “You wait.”
Quinn knew there was no use arguing with Buzz. There was no point in even trying to reason with a man so buried in his own conspiracy theories.
“Okay,” Quinn said.
It appeared to suffice.
“He’s out there,” Buzz said again, almost to himself. “In the jungle, you have a sense for these things.”
Quinn felt an urge to ask if that was where Buzz left his sanity-back in the jungle. He put his hand to his head.
“Sorry to doubt you, Buzz,” he said. “But it’s been a long morning.”
Buzz leaned back and eyed him for a minute.
“I only tell you because the rest of these guys would think I’m crazy,” he said.
Now why would they think that? Quinn thought.
“Laurence only wants an excuse to fire me,” Buzz said. “He’d say I was trying to panic the staff.”
“Laurence does not want to fire you,” Quinn said.
Buzz snorted in patent disbelief.
“You wait,” he said. “He’s just biding his time.”
“He just wants you to come to staff meetings again.”
“Right,” Buzz said. “So they can mock me to my face? So they can tell me how to do my job better? So Rebecca can start complaining again?”
“It isn’t like that,” Quinn said.
“Maybe not to you,” Buzz said, pointing again, this time thankfully away from Quinn’s personal space. “But you don’t remember. No, I won’t go to them. He can fire me for not attending staff meetings if he wants. But I won’t go.”
Quinn looked at Buzz and it was hard not to be taken in with his earnestness. There was no doubt he believed it all. Why he trusted Quinn was beyond his understanding.
“That girl is here to replace me, did you know that?” Buzz asked.
“Why do you say that?” Quinn asked, glad at least to be thinking of Kate again.
“She told me yesterday she wrote some business stories,” he said.
“She’s written a lot of things, Buzz,” Quinn replied. “Including business. I think that was her way of volunteering, that’s all.”
Buzz paused to consider this.
“Well, she doesn’t have my experience, that’s true,” he said, obviously carrying on some type of internal conversation as well.
“Relax,” Quinn said, as calmly as he could. “They are not trying to take your job.”
“You wait,” Buzz said again, but he didn’t continue. Instead, there was a significant pause. “Can you do another business profile for me?” he finally asked.
“But I’m already doing the coin-sorting place,” Quinn said. “I was just working on that.”
“I know, I know,” Buzz said. “I wouldn’t ask, my boy, but I…”
He turned up his hands in a shrug.
“I won’t ask you for one next week. I promise.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Quinn said.
“This time I mean it.”
“I’ve heard that too,” he said.
“I know, I know,” Buzz said.
“Why not ask Kate?” Quinn asked, and when Buzz gave him a blank stare added, “The new girl?”
“Laurence told me he had her working on other things,” Buzz said.
“How about Alexis?” he asked. “Or Helen?”
“They both refused,” he said. “I need it for my pages. I swear this is the last time I’ll have you do double duty. Please. They’ll fire me if I don’t get in enough stories. They are just waiting…”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Quinn said. “What’s the story?”
And that was how Quinn found himself two hours later driving out to Middleburg.
Kate stood before her mother’s grave, reading the inscription for the hundredth time.
“Sarah Blakely,” it said simply. “Beloved wife and mother.”
That was it. Somehow she thought there should be more. Something that made this grave stand out from the hundreds of others.
Carefully, she leaned down and put the pot of flowers by the memorial. This at least gave the impression that someone cared about her mom. When she arrived, it had looked deserted. She looked at the grave and felt guilty.
“I’m sorry I haven’t come in a while, Mom,” she offered. “It’s just…”
Her dad made the trip at least once a year. Even after he remarried, he still came down. He invited Kate, of course. But she never wanted to come and he wasn’t the type to force an issue.
“Dad’s doing well,” she said. “He likes Anne well enough but I don’t think he ever got over you. I guess you are just that great.”
She smiled. She thought that she should feel more, but instead she just felt numb. She tried to picture her mom and couldn’t call up an image.
“I’m sorry,” she offered. “I don’t know what else to say.”
She stood there staring at the inscription. She felt like there was something more she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t think of what. She had spent so long feeling the anger from the day her mother died, she was unsure she wanted to think too much about it anymore. But unfortunately, that had meant not thinking much about her mother anymore either. Not a day went by when she didn’t think about it at some time or another. It had hung over her life like a dark cloud and she didn’t think it would ever go away.
Since she had arrived in town, she had been forced to think about it. The memories and the dreams made it feel like it had occurred just a few days ago, not more than a decade before.
“Wherever I go, some part of me will always be here, Mom,” she said. “I can never leave it.”
She hadn’t visited the grave in years, but it was easy to remember where it was. It was always there in the dreams. She shouldn’t have come back. She had thought it might make it better, but now that seemed laughable. Instead, she was either waking up screaming or seeing things near the printing press. That vision had seemed so real…
She fought it off. Some part of her felt like pulling her hair out. She could never talk about this. Her mother’s death was an untreated wound she kept hidden from the world. It kept her weak and bleeding, but she would never let anyone see it. Sometimes she wished she had died too. She flexed her hand and stared at her mother’s grave. This was it. This was the way it would be. She would move on, but… this will always be here.
She jumped as she heard the gate swing open behind her. Reacting on instinct, she moved herself behind a tree for cover.
She saw a man walking down the path. It took a minute as he came closer to realize she knew him-it was Quinn from the paper. She watched him walk around the bend and made a move to follow. She wondered just what the hell he was doing here.
Kate watched as he walked down the hill and through the inner gate at the back. He paused, looking out at the pond below the cemetery. Then he walked forward and sat on a bench on the hillside.
Kate moved slowly and with great uncertainty. She felt like she was intruding somehow and forgot that it was he who had disturbed her moment at her mom’s grave. But he appeared to be merely sitting on the bench and made no move to do anything else.
Part of her thought she should leave. She should turn around and leave him in peace. But another side wanted desperately to know what he was doing. She also felt some kind of pull towards him, as if she couldn’t quite walk away even if she had wanted to.
Instead, she moved carefully. As she came closer, she could tell the bench was made out of marble. It appeared to be a memorial to someone, but obviously placed there so people could sit on it. She paused and wondered how to approach him.