Dial M for Meat Loaf by Ellen Hart

Hill Gazette appeared twice weekly—on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Clearly, organizing this sort of rag wasn’t rocket science. It was about time Plato got his hands dirty, learned the ropes firsthand. Byron Jenny was just one more person who treated Plato as if he existed only marginally—like a bug, or a fungus, more a nuisance than a necessary part of life. That was about to change.
    “Who’s covering the funding for the new library?” asked Jenny, puffing away on his pipe, his manner entirely too urbane for the likes of Rose Hill.
    “I am,” said a woman with a face like a slab of concrete.
    Jenny nodded, then wrote something down. “Do we have any new information on the Runbeck homicide?” When no one responded, Jenny looked up. “Where’s Viv?”
    “She got a phone call right before the meeting,” said the woman with the concrete face.
    “From whom?”
    “She didn’t say, but she raced out of here.”
    Plato raised a finger. “I’ll be covering that story from now on.”
    With glacial deliberation, Jenny turned his gaze to Plato. “Excuse me?” he said, removing the pipe from his mouth.
    “I said , I’ll be covering that story from here on out. Inform Viv of the change.”
    Jenny looked as if he’d been slapped. “You can’t cover that story. Your father’s just admitted to the murder.”
    “My father,” said Plato, folding his hands patiently on the tabletop, “has just suffered a stroke. He’s confused.”
    “But, it’s a conflict of interest.”
    “I’m not a lawyer or a doctor. I publish a small-town paper. Newspapers take stands on issues all the time.”
    “In the opinion pages.”
    “Oh, come on, Byron, you know better than that. Newspapers can elect government officials, or get them fired. They shape opinion all the time simply by the way they report the news.”
    “The news is based on facts. Journalists deal in fact, not opinion.”
    “Fine. The facts are, my father is innocent. The Runbeck homicide will no longer be fodder for the bored and brutish among us.”
    Before Jenny could offer more objections, the door opened. Viv, dressed in bleached blue jeans, her ubiquitous silver-tipped cowboy boots, and a tight pink tank top, ambled into the room. “Boy, have I got a story for you.” Seeing Plato, she stopped chewing her gum. “What’s he doing here?”
    “I’ve decided to start sitting in on the editorial meetings,” Plato said casually. He could tell Jenny was about to rupture a vital internal organ. This was far better than kicking him.
    “You mean,” said Jenny, his voice dialed up to full dour, “this is going to be a biweekly event?”
    Plato gave a curt nod. “Now, Viv, why don’t you sit down and give us your news flash.” He could see she was just bursting to tell.
    “Sure thing,” she said, looking a little hesitant. “It’s just . . . with you here, Mr. Washburn . . . I mean . . . I feel a little funny. It’s about your father.”
    Plato stiffened. “What about him?”
    Viv glanced at Jenny again, then pulled out a chair. Instead of sitting down, she rested a knee on top of it. “Well, see, I was just talking to Doug Elderberg. It seems that before Kirby Runbeck’s death, he made two deposits into a newly established savings account at the First Bank of Rose Hill. Fifty thousand dollars each time. That’s one hundred thousand dollars,” she said eagerly. “Where would a man like him get that kind of money?”
    “Maybe he played the stock market,” said the cement-faced woman.
    Viv’s eyes took on a fiery glow. “He closed the account the day before he died. Doug also told me that a month or so before his stroke, John Washburn withdrew fifty thousand dollars in cash from one of his accounts at Wells Fargo. Then, a week before the stroke, he closed out a bank CD for the same amount and took the money in cash. They can’t prove it yet, but they figure Washburn was paying Runbeck some kind of hush money.”
    “Blackmail,” said Jenny, a