Spring.
“Yep?”
“You’re always so polite.” She laughed.
“What do you want, Dixon?” Even as I asked the question, a sense of rightness permeated. She was down-to-earth and also easy to talk to. She didn’t put on airs or ask me questions I didn’t want to answer. Of course she’d done her research before I arrived as her new boss. She made a comment abouttwo sides to every storyandwelcome to the team. That’d been it.
“Did you attend the fire?”
“Nope. Seth wouldn’t let me near.”
“You too, eh? I tried that as well and got turned away. He said he’d sent you on your way, but I thought maybe you’d snuck back—or gone in the other side.”
“I considered it. Then Finn invited me to lunch, and I figured that stood me more likely to get answers.”
“Did you get any?”
“Not a one.”
“Did you do anything interesting?”
She’s fishing. She knows nothing. “Yeah, a bill for a steak and—” I considered. “I’ll try again.”
“Right, because there’s something fishy.”
“Yep. How’d the interview go?” Because I did not want to talk about Finn and how I planned to convince him to talk to me in the future. Too much information for my cub reporter.
“The interview went well. I want to do a feature. I even got some good photos. Would be nice if we had a photographer…”
“You find me fifty new regular ad sponsors and we can talk about it. We’re barely breaking even.”
She huffed.
Right. That’s how I feel.We were a dying business in some ways. Lots of storied community papers across Canada were shuttering. The Mission City Gazette held on—for now. Some of that success was from pivoting to more online content. But we still wanted an actual physical paper to come out once a week.
“Well, whatever.” She sighed.
“What?”
“I heard something about a local business.”
“Oh?” This wasn’t a tone I’d heard from her before. Although, admittedly, three months wasn’t a long acquaintance. “What’s up?”
“Dog fighting.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to repeat that. Did you say dog fighting? Like with, you know, dogs…fighting?” I wasn’t naïve. Shit like that went on in big cities and small towns. But to envision people gathered in a circle and betting money on which dog would come out on top? That was unfathomable cruelty to me.
“Yep. Rumors.”
“But often there’s a kernel of truth behind the rumors.”
“Yep.”
“Okay…what are we going to do about it?”
“But I can’t do anything.”
“Huh?” I sat up, nearly dislodging the laptop.
