Читать книгу Family Reunion - Peg Sutherland - Страница 6

PROLOGUE

March 31, 1997

THE PACK OF about fifty reporters and cameracrew members outside the New Orleans courthouse were hungry. That was how Scott Lyon would have described it. Hungry and circling for the kill.

Scott shifted the Minicam on his left shoulder. He glanced around, uncomfortable with the atmosphere. This felt personal and he knew why—Judge Nicolette Bechet.

Judge Bechet had handed down a controversial decision today in a child abuse case. The unsubstantiated allegations against a popular local politician had gripped the city’s attention. Following as it did so closely on the judge’s personal problems, which had also raised eyebrows and set tongues wagging, Judge Bechet’s handling of the case—and the subsequent jail sentence she’d imposed—had drawn considerable scrutiny.

Now, the judge would be grilled, then roasted on tonight’s late news and on the pages of the morning paper. Standard operating procedure. Nothing to get in an uproar over. Scott knew the drill.

But today, he had some qualms. Today, he kept remembering the haunted look in Judge Nicolette Bechet’s eyes the last time he’d turned his camera on her.

Scott looked up at a second-story window in the sturdy old courthouse. The judge’s office. He remembered its location from the first ambush interview, when he and WDIX-TV’s ace, R. Bailey Ripken, had stormed the judge’s chambers—just two days after her father had died of a drug overdose—and demanded answers to questions they’d had no business asking. The judge had been under siege ever since WDIX broke that story.

Scott regretted his part in exposing her family’s secrets.

The horde of reporters was growing. Growing noisier and restless and more convinced of its right to know with every minute that passed.

Scott eased the camera off his shoulder. It was heavier than usual.

“What?”

That was R. Bailey Ripken. First name Ramona, a closely-guarded secret in journalistic circles; she’d confessed it to him her first week on the job. Scott inspired that kind of trust, especially from women.

“I need a pit stop,” he said. It wasn’t true. He didn’t need to use a washroom. But something was driving him to get out of this mob, something he couldn’t explain to himself, much less to the Crescent City’s exposé queen.

“Now? You’ve got to be kidding? She’s bound to come out any minute!”

“I won’t be long.”

“Scott!”

He was already elbowing his way through the crowd, and was tempted to ditch the pricey camera. He’d heard the disbelief in Bailey’s voice. But what could she do? Have him fired? He smiled grimly to himself. Okay, so sometimes family connections gave a guy the edge.

He’d been around long enough to know better than to march right up to the front door. He’d have the entire gang of reporters right behind him. He went to a side door. He was familiar with the building layout. As he mounted the broad stairs to the second floor, his sneakers squeaking on the well-worn marble, his heart was thumping a little harder than usual. He knew the rules and what he had in mind broke most of them.

Maybe even having the name Lyon on his media credentials wouldn’t save his rear end if this got out.

To hell with it.

He made his way through the little maze of hallways to the judges’ offices. Room 201. A dark oak door, seven-feet high and imposing. Scott realized his fingers were cramping around his camera, he was gripping it that tightly.

What was going on with him, that he was reacting this way, sabotaging his own work? Was this the first sign of burnout? Boredom? Just plain disgust? Or was it, after all, as simple as one man’s instinctive urge to come to the rescue of a woman he wanted to impress?

He opened the door without knocking, slipped in and closed it behind him.

Judge Nicolette Bechet didn’t even seem startled. From her desk, her keen blue eyes zeroed in on his camera and froze. “Leave. Now.”

She was known for her clipped, no-frills style in court. She intimidated a lot of people that way. Scott wasn’t intimidated—he knew the technique. His Aunt Margaret used it well.

“Look out your window.”

She took a breath, her nostrils flaring almost imperceptibly. “You’ve overstepped your bounds, Mr. Lyon.”

She knew his name. He doubted if his family connections bought him much with her.

“I know. Now look out the window, Judge Bechet.”

She remained rigid, her gaze unflinching. A distinctive cleft marked her pointed chin, adding an aura of strength to her face. Her hair was the color of honey, streaked by the sun and pulled back loosely from her narrow face.

Nicolette Bechet wasn’t beautiful, but Scott hadn’t been able to get her off his mind since he’d videotaped her interview with Bailey. Despite her cool, she hadn’t been able to completely hide the haunted look in her wide blue eyes. It wasn’t just the look of a grieving daughter, he’d decided. It went deeper than that.

The probing questions she’d refused to answer during the interview—or in the ten days since, when every reporter in New Orleans had quizzed her over and over—had confirmed Scott’s guess. Judge Bechet had unfinished business in her family. Old business.

“I could very easily have you removed,” she said now with steely control. She spoke precisely, with no hint of her Cajun roots.

“But who’ll remove them?” he asked.

For the first time she seemed to see him as a human being and not merely a video camera on two legs. Her eyes met his, first challenging, then showing just a little uncertainty. Scott again registered the thud of his heartbeat and knew better than to attribute it solely to the fact that he was betraying his colleagues by warning Nicolette Bechet about the media attack awaiting her. No, it was more than that. The judge got under his skin.

“Them?”

He nodded at the window.

She stood slowly. She still wore her robe, open over a dove-gray silk blouse buttoned securely to a little stand-up collar. Gray cuffs showed. Her skirt was black and as she moved from behind her desk in the direction of the window, he saw that it fell a very proper two inches below her knees. Her calves were shapely, even in her nononsense flat-heeled shoes. Trim ankles.

But it was her eyes that made his mouth go dry.

A startling shade of blue and completely unrelenting, they weren’t the windows to any soul he could see, except in those brief moments when she was caught unaware.

She looked out the window, then stiffened. “I see.” She looked back at him. “And you’re here because...?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to be ambushed.”

She made a cynical smile. “And in return...”

He didn’t blame her. He was a television-news cameraman, after all.

“The back exit is clear,” he said. “You can make it to your car that way without running into trouble.”

She studied him. Then very carefully she took off her robe, folded it and draped it over the back of her leather chair. She replaced it with a suit jacket, picked up a briefcase and started for the door. He stood to one side.

“This doesn’t get you anything,” she said. “Not the inside scoop. Not an exclusive. Nothing.”

Her upper lip was delicate and perfectly formed. Her lower lip was full and soft. She didn’t have the look of a woman who wasted time being kissed.

“I don’t expect anything,” he said gruffly.

She didn’t challenge his claim, but her eyes remained filled with skepticism.

She marched down the hall. He wanted to follow her, but couldn’t justify doing so. She didn’t want his protection, and he had no business offering it.

He returned to the pack of reporters and waited with them until someone got word that Judge Nicolette Bechet had given them all the slip. Scott tried not to smile as R. Bailey Ripken contributed to the rash of frustrated profanities that rippled through the throng of reporters. There would be no story tonight.

The next day, however, was a different matter. At a late-afternoon press conference, it was announced that Judge Nicolette Bechet had resigned her post. She wasn’t available for questioning.

Her apartment had been vacated.