“Ransom!” Jumbo stood at the front of the diner. “Sarah told me you were in here. Slacker. Let’s go.”
“Look who’s talking.” Caleb shoved in another mouthful of pancake. “Jumbo, Emery. Emery, Jumbo.” He tilted his head toward Jumbo with an “I told ya” smirk. Jumbo was six-four, two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle.
“Now, Ransom.” Jumbo and Kidwell yanked him out of the booth.
“See ya, Quinn,” he said with his best flirty wink as his teammates dragged him toward the door.
“Wait, you can’t go yet. Caleb, your breakfast ... who’s going to pay?”
EMERY
Now . . .
“I’ll handle the town council meeting tonight,” Emery said, checking off the items on her assignment board—which was a single document on her laptop screen. At theFree Voice, Lou had a large whiteboard on the wall outside his office. He assigned stories using color-coded magnets. Checking that board was imperative for every reporter in Lou’s world.
Despite all the hats she wore as editor-in-chief, the small staff and simple production of theGazettemade it easy to feel like she was doing her job adequately. She didn’t have much to do with her first edition on Sunday, but she had a hand in Wednesday’s edition.
Elliot checked in Monday afternoon with a corporate-like pep talk, then confessed his sister Henrietta still made the case for selling. Dad called in the evening for a professor-like pep talk and update on the wedding planning.
“TheGlidden House became available on May tenth.”
“May tenth. They’re getting married May tenth?”
“Mark your calendar. And,Em,rock Sea Blue Beach with your editor skills.”Rock Sea Blue Beach? Dad was so cute when he tried to be hip.
“Jane, what are you working on?” Emery glanced at the woman across from her. A graduate of the University of Florida, she was bound for a major news outlet until she met a fisherman during spring break. Now she lived in one of the small cottages on Rein Boulevard, just north of the Original Homestead.
“My husband heard a developer is looking at the Org. Homestead. Since our neighborhood is adjacent, we could be impacted. I want to look into it. Besides, that’s the oldest partof town,” she said. “We’d lose a big chunk of history if those houses are destroyed.”
Emery liked it. Jane’s story had hard-news vibes. Lou always paced, clicking his pen, when a reporter dropped a hint of something nefarious going on in Cleveland. “See what you can dig up. Maybe I’ll hear something at the town council meeting. Rex, anything more with the new sports facility at West End High?”
Rex Smithfield covered sports and hospitality for theGazette—or any other beat not covered by their very lean staff. “Nothing, other than it looks like a small college campus.”
“Where’d they get the money?”
“Town budget. It’s all above board. I checked.” Rex was a thirty-something surfer-looking dude with blond curls and an in-depth knowledge of theGazette’sinner workings and small-town Florida. Rachel Kirby hired him five years ago, right before she got sick. Emery loved that Rex, Junie, and Gayle were connected to Rachel, thus the paper’s past, present, and future. “The West End rules the roost. Simon tries to fight them, but town council members who live on the East End are spineless.”
“There’s more to that story,” Emery said. “So what are you working on now?”
“There’s an amateur surfing competition in Melbourne Beach coming up. We’ve got a couple of surfers from Sea Blue Beach and Fort Walton entered. I think I’ll write a piece on it.”
Jane laughed. “You just want to surf with them.”
“Never claimed otherwise, Jane.”
Rex deserved a surfing break. He’d run this place until Emery was hired. He still ran the place as she was learning.
“Okay, we have some wire stories, a couple of fluff pieces banked from you two. I feel like I need another microlocal story to fill out the paper.” So far, there wasn’t much hard news in SeaBlue Beach. The police blotter looked like Mayberry, save for a few West End break-ins.
“You should look through the digital morgue,” Rex said. “Go over the old editions. Rachel kept everything.” He leaned forward. “Let me see your laptop.”
“Did he tell you he’s part-time IT when Ambrose isn’t available?” Jane said. Ambrose worked for the city and moonlighted for theGazette. “Emery, if you don’t need me, I’ve got some research to do.”
“Yeah, go. Thanks Jane.”
When Rex turned Emery’s laptop around, he’d connected her to a server containing all of Rachel’s archives. “There’s a physical morgue in the back of this place.” He pointed at the wall behind him. “But Rachel had the foresight to store it all digitally. You have sixty years’ worth ofGazettesin the database as well as her own personal correspondence. There’s some pretty cool stuff.” Rex clicked on the drive, then on a folder labeledRoyals. “In the late eighties, she became friendly with the future queen of Lauchtenland. You know the story of saving the Starlight rink from demolition, right?”
“I heard the story a long time ago.”
