LITMIR.BIZ

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the news director’s rolling eyes.

      “It’s news,” Bailey Ripken said with illdisguised contempt. “That’s what we do, Jason. Cover news.”

      “Are we a tabloid scandal sheet now?” Jason Lyon looked around the table at the assignment editors and reporters who had managed to get the news on the air for years without his assistance or input. “Is that what we’re stooping to? Airing people’s dirty linen? I don’t think so. Lyon Broadcasting stands for more than that. Next story.”

      Scott slipped out the door and closed it behind him as the words “journalistic integrity” and “muckraking” filled the air in the tense little conference room.

      He stood in the corridor for a minute, working his jaw muscles and battling the urge to walk straight out the front door. He could dig ditches, for God’s sake. Drive a cab. He didn’t have to put up with this.

      When he was calm enough to face the world without spitting out some kind of venom he would later regret, Scott made his way to the break room. He inserted quarters into the vending machine and treated himself to a breakfast of hot sweet coffee and two somewhat stale sweet rolls. He wolfed them down, barely noticing the taste.

      His coffee had just gotten cool enough to drink when his cousin André walked into the break room. The hum of conversation quieted with the presence of the station’s embattled general manager.

      André Lyon looked embattled, all right. At fifty-eight, he had always been tall and square-shouldered. But Scott thought his cousin’s shoulders had begun to sag with the weight of all that had happened since the station’s fiftieth anniversary this past summer. First, André’s father and co-founder of WDIX-TV, Paul Lyon, had died. Then, the day of the funeral, André’s mother had vanished. Most everyone had assumed that Margaret Lyon simply needed to get away from the glare of publicity, find a quiet spot to grieve and let go of the man with whom she’d shared her life and founded a broadcasting dynasty.

      Then signs began to point to the possibility of foul play.

      And in the midst of absorbing that emotional blow, the family had received another: Jason, Raymond and Alain were challenging Paul Lyon’s will in court. André wasn’t the rightful heir, they claimed. He wasn’t a Lyon and they swore they had the documentation to prove it.

      Scott was incredulous, and ashamed that his own brothers would pull such a disgusting stunt. The rest of the family was equally stunned. And Andre, it appeared to Scott, had been nearly broken by the series of events.

      Breathing out a heavy sigh, Scott took his litter to the trash bin beside the machines. André looked up as he passed. His once decisive and calm face looked distracted.

      “Oh, Scott. How goes it? News conference already over?”

      Rising to the occasion, trying to sound normal. Scott had to respect that in his cousin. It was one of the things he’d always admired in Aunt Margaret, too. His own side of the Lyon family should take a lesson.

      “I slipped out,” he said, hoping André wouldn’t ask why.

      André nodded, reached out and punched a button on the coffee machine. A cup dropped into the slot, and coffee began to trickle.

      “Any word?” Scott asked, knowing no further explanation was necessary.

      André shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Unless...” Retrieving the cup from the machine, he shook his head again.

      They walked out of the break room together.

      “Unless what?”

      André took a deep swallow of his coffee and grimaced. “Unless you count the crackpots. A lot of crackpots. Gaby and I have waded through more crank calls and useless leads since the story broke.” He paused and gave his cousin a poor imitation of an encouraging smile. “We’re tired, that’s all.”

      “If I can help...” Scott almost hated to make the perfunctory offer. He doubted that help from his branch of the family tree would be welcome.

      André put a hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate that, Scott. I know you’re in an awkward position here.”

      “No. I stay out of it. And I mean what I say. If I can help, I want to. Aunt Margaret...” His throat grew unexpectedly tight at the mention of her name. He could almost see the grande dame of the Lyon family marching purposefully down a corridor at Lyon Broadcasting in one of her severe navy dresses, head high, shoulders back. Being seventy-seven hadn’t slowed her down a bit. “I think a lot of her.”

      That was an understatement. Scott wondered if André knew that. The truth was, he loved Margaret Hollander Lyon; she’d been more of a mother to him than his own mother, and more of a role model for him than his own weak-willed father. As the youngest child in the family, almost a tagalong, born as his parents’ marriage was disintegrating into cold silence and emotional withdrawal, if not divorce, Scott had found little stability or warmth in his life. Until he got to know Aunt Margaret.

      “I appreciate that, Scott. But the truth is, I don’t know that there’s much any of us can do. Except wait and pray.”

      “I’m not much good at either of those,” Scott admitted.

      “Me, neither. And I hate like the devil having to learn it under these circumstances.”

      As André went his way, Scott turned in the direction of the newsroom—in time to see Raymond and Jason lurking in the door outside Raymond’s office in the accounting department. The morning news conference obviously over, they apparently had been watching Scott’s conversation with André. Feeling the building closing in around him, Scott wheeled into the newsroom without acknowledging his brothers.

      In the newsroom a handful of reporters and camera technicians were beginning to gather. Early mornings were the slowest time of the day at WDIX-TV. Reporters and crew members straggled in and milled around waiting for their coffee to kick in. Sometime before noon, the activity cranked up. Phones rang, voices called out across the room, and chaos ruled. By late afternoon the chaos was organized and transformed into the evening news.

      Scott could remember a time when he’d been excited by the process. When the desire to be the first to crack a story had been in his blood. But it didn’t seem to be there now.

      All he felt these days, after years of watching competition and greed consume his family, was the desire to be someplace else.

      He wondered, sometimes, if that was what had happened to Aunt Margaret.

      “Hey, Scott,” said the sweet, beguiling voice of the newsroom clerk behind him, “what’s shaken’?”

      He turned to give her a smile. Tiffany Marie Dalcour was young, just out of college, and ambitious. She seemed to think that cultivating the only single male Lyon in the building might somehow further her goal of making it on-camera herself.

      “Not much, Tiffany.”

      She was sorting mail for the newsroom. Piles and piles of mail. She didn’t miss a beat even as she intensified her smile at Scott. “So there’ll be no broadcast tonight, then?”

      He laughed, and she looked pleased. At thirty-four, he had no interest whatsoever in the twenty-four-year-old, but he returned her teasing, anyway. “We’ll make it up if we have to.”

      “Oops,” she said, tossing an envelope aside. “That one should have gone to the executive offices, I guess.”

      Scott glanced down at the envelope. It was addressed to “The Lyon Family.” He started to walk away when the name on the return address registered.

      Nicolette Bechet.

      He went back and picked up the envelope. Nicolette Bechet, with an address out of the city, in one of the rural districts.

      He fingered the envelope. He was curious. A little excited, even.

      The Lyon Family.

      He had as much right to open it

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