Page 11 of Over the Flames
Bright yellow contrast walls and floor to ceiling windows gave off a calming, inviting feel to the openness of the home, but the pit in Arden’s stomach had yet to release. The woman sweeping crumbs from the cushions had accused Arden’s mentor and best friend of the worst crime a journalist could commit.
“Please excuse the mess.” Rose Hindley’s open, white button-down shirt and low tank top revealed a maze of blue veins across her chest as she pressed the power button for a baby monitor on the side table. “I hope you don’t mind. My son is taking a nap, and I need to be able to hear him when he wakes up.”
“Your biography didn’t mention you had a son. How old is he?” Lawson took a seat the same moment Arden settled into one of the chairs angled toward the dark wood coffee table.
“Four. He’s at that stage where he doesn’t think he needs to nap, but he’ll fall asleep right before dinner if he doesn’t.” Her laugh hit the high notes as she settled into another chair in the small sitting area. Rose crossed one knee over other and intertwined her fingers over her shin. Elegant flats accentuated the light color of her jeans and fed into her overall casualness in the face of an FBI agent and an investigative journalist. “Do you have children?”
“No,” Lawson said. “I don’t.”
An invisible knife cut through Arden’s heart, crushing the air from her lungs.
“Ms. Hindley, I’m sure you realize we’re not here about your son.” Lawson pulled a notepad from his suit jacket pocket and clicked the end of his pen.
“Call me Rose, please, and yes, I know why you’re here. Sheriff Sanders said this has something to do with the accusation I made against Baldwin Webb.” Rose’s attention slid to Arden, her thin pointed nose accentuating the severeness of her features, and a hint of familiarity slid into Arden’s focus. “My editor told me what happened last night. I’m sorry for your loss. I understand you and Baldwin were close.”
Arden swallowed past the lump building in her throat and straightened her spine a bit more. She hadn’t met this woman before, she was sure of it, but a tendril of connection pulsed in the back of her mind. “You emailed Baldwin three days ago with a dozen samples taken from an article published in The Seattle Times six weeks ago and compared it to similar samples in yours published a week prior.”
“I did.” Rose redirected her gaze to Lawson, and her face relaxed slightly. “I’ll be honest, I was as shocked as you were when I read Baldwin’s article last week. I’ve admired his work for years, but I couldn’t ignore the fact there were so many similarities between not just that single piece but nearly a dozen. He’d been pulling sections from my articles for months. Investigative writing makes it possible for me to put a roof over my son’s head on a single income, so when I saw Baldwin had blatantly taken credit for my work, I emailed him.”
A short series of coughs registered from the baby monitor on the side table. The yellow of the walls suddenly darker with evidence of the storm that had trapped them on the island the past twelve hours.
“A threat to your financial security, especially when it effects a loved one, can certainly be enough to make you lash out.” Lawson scribbled something illegible in his notebook. “Do you mind telling us where you were last night between six and eight?”
A humorless smile pulled at Rose’s mouth then vanished as the realization an FBI agent had asked for her alibi registered. “Wait. You can’t possible believe Baldwin plagiarizing my article was enough motive for me to kill him?”
“You said he’d taken credit for your work.” Arden sat forward in her chair. “Given The Seattle Times out subscribes the Beachcomber by more than twenty times, it’s not hard to believe you blamed him for poaching your work, maybe even keeping you from moving onto a bigger paper.”
“I sent that email to Baldwin three days ago. You’re right about that, but I didn’t kill him.” Rose uncrossed her legs and mirrored Arden on the edge of the couch, those brilliant green eyes harder than a few moments ago. She pressed her palms together, enunciating each word with a drop of her wrists in front of her knees. Her voice wavered, the light-hearted façade she’d greeted them with at the door draining. “After I found proof he’d been stealing pieces of my work for months, I was angry. Journalists aren’t supposed to do that to each other, and to have it come from someone I respected my entire career didn’t help. So, yes, I sent that email. I wasn’t only angry, I was hurt. I was worried if I let it go on any longer I would lose my job, but I also wasn’t sure a small island journalist was going to be able to do anything about it, so I handed everything I’d found over to my editor. She sent all the proof to The Seattle Times. They were taking care of it for me.”
Arden pressed her fingernails into her palms. How hadn’t she heard any of this? From the paper, from Baldwin?
“Taking care of it how?” Lawson asked, like the impartial special agent he was supposed to be.
“Baldwin was fired.” Rose turned that piercing gaze back to Arden. Shoving to her feet, she crossed to the dining room table where she’d left her laptop and phone, collected the smaller device, and returned. She turned the screen toward Lawson. “I got the notice from my editor this morning. With the side-by-side comparisons from my work alone, The Seattle Times had more than enough proof to warrant the termination.”
“You still haven’t answered his question.” Arden licked her dry lips. “Where were you yesterday evening between six and eight?”
“Here,” Rose said. “My nanny had the day off.”
“We’re going to need her contact information to verify.” Lawson studied the screen then handed the phone off the Arden. There, in plain text, was an email from Baldwin’s editor notifying Rose Hindley and her Beachcomber editor of Baldwin’s termination from the paper. Arden’s lungs collapsed, her heart rate spiking into dangerous territory. Rose Hindley was telling the truth. Baldwin had plagiarized another journalist, had stolen the work of a hardworking, small-time writer and tried to pass if off as his own. Why? “What did you mean by your work alone? Were there other plagiarism accusations against Baldwin?”
Blood rushed to Arden’s head and muffled the next words out of Rose’s mouth. Her grip strengthened around the phone in her hand to the point she feared she might crack the screen. A heavy weight settled in her legs, making it impossible for her to stand. Instead, she slid the phone onto the coffee table between her and the woman who’d destroyed her mentor’s career.
“When I was gathering proof Baldwin had stolen my work, I had the feeling he’d done it before. How else would he have been able to hide it so easily without anyone noticing?” Rose’s eyes ping ponged between Lawson and Arden. “I started looking into investigative journalists from smaller, citywide papers in the state like me. Journalists who might not have the means or resources to defend themselves against his caliber of writer or The Times. The Everett Herald, The Olympian. I found one other journalist who Baldwin had blatantly plagiarized before he’d set his sights on my work.” Collecting her phone from the coffee table, Rose swiped her thumb across the screen then faced the screen toward Lawson. “Phil Anderson. He worked for The Daily Herald until last year. I reached out to his former editor so I could contact him about our mutual situation, but he hadn’t heard from Phil for months. Said he’d stopped submitting stories, that Phil’s marriage dissolved, that he’d been depressed. According to public records, his parents died a while ago, and his editor didn’t know of any siblings I could contact. No one has heard from him since. The editor gave me a phone number to try, but the number’s been disconnected. I drove by the address listed in the phonebook under his name, but it hadn’t looked like anyone had lived there in a long time.”
The tendons in Lawson’s neck bunched with an obvious burst of suspicion, and Arden’s body couldn’t help but absorb its own healthy dose. “Do you have that address on you?”
Another set of coughing lit up the green lights on the baby monitor a few feet away, drawing Arden’s attention.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on my son. I saved the address in my phone, but I don’t think it will do you any good. When you have what you need, you’re welcome to show yourselves out.” Rose handed him the phone a second time and got to her feet as Lawson wrote the address in his notebook. She headed for a long stretch of hallway on the other side of the kitchen, then stopped, turning. “A source informed me about how Baldwin died. That someone covered him in gasoline and set him on fire. Seems like such a hateful way to kill someone. Makes me wonder if Phil Anderson and I weren’t the only ones Baldwin Webb plagiarized. I went through Baldwin’s editor at The Seattle Times and got him fired. I’ve dealt with what happened, but when your entire livelihood is threatened from someone’s bitter selfishness like that… It makes me think another victim might’ve taken Baldwin’s punishment into their own hands.”
Chapter Ten
“I’ll have Sheriff Sanders follow up with the nanny to shore up Rose Hindley’s alibi.” Lawson descended the steps leading up to the yellow-painted cottage that’d looked brighter when they’d arrived. Phone in hand, he sent a quick message to Sanders then slid his phone into his pocket. Sprinkling rain pricked against his scalp and the back of his neck as he and Arden wound down the long path toward his SUV. The phones were back online. It stood to reason the ferries were, too. “From the sound of it, she wasn’t the only one who might have a reason to kill Baldwin.”
Only he wasn’t sure how the plagiarism accusations related to Jacqueline Day or if they connected both deaths at all.
“You think she was telling the truth.” Not a question.