Free Front Page Fatality by Lyndee Walker Page B

about the victims, including notes Parker emailed me about the pitcher, DeLuca, and his two friends. Describing the scene at the river, I used Aaron’s estimation of how the accident happened. I put the accident history for the unit I’d gotten from Jones toward the end, and finished with Valerie Roberts’ emotional assertion of her husband’s innocence.
    I added Parker’s name to the bottom of the article as a contributor and copied him when I emailed my story to Bob.
    While I waited for a reply from my boss, I skimmed through the twenty-seven emails in my inbox, saving three replies from defense attorneys about other cases I was following, and deleting the rest.
    Bob’s edits arrived as I finished reading the last junk press release. He asked me to clarify a couple of things and said he hadn’t heard about the FBI’s tip-off or the internal investigation. His equivalent of a thumbs-up, which was especially gratifying when a story had actually given me a headache. I fished two Advil out of my purse.
    I was halfway through my second Coke of the afternoon when Parker found me loitering in the break room. Once it was time to leave, I’d discovered I didn’t want to go home.
    “Thanks for the stuff you sent me.” I leaned back in my chair and smiled when he stopped in the doorway. “It was good. Nicely done, scoring an exclusive with the families.”
    “Thanks. And anytime.” He walked into the room with his hands in the pockets of his navy blue slacks. “What are you going to do tonight?”
    “I have no plans,” I said. “After the day I’ve had, I should go home and go to bed. But I’m starving. So I need to eat first.”
    “That sounds suspiciously like a plan. I could eat. Mind if I join you?”
    Really? I opened my mouth to make an excuse, and realized I didn’t have a good one. I eyed him for a second. Oh, what the hell? I’d been to dinner with people from work before, and he’d certainly been a lot of help. 
    “Why not?” I stood up. “Let me grab my purse.”
    “Anyplace in particular you were planning to go?”
    I grinned as my stomach growled. “Do you like barbecue?”
    Pop-Tarts were never intended to provide an entire day’s nutrition, and the hickory-and-meat smell in the air reminded me of that as I climbed out of my car in the restaurant’s postage stamp of a parking lot a few minutes later.
    Parker strapped a shiny red helmet to the seat of a still-dealer-tagged BMW motorcycle in the space next to me and I raised one eyebrow. It was a nice bike for a reporter’s salary. Maybe he had family money or something.
    I followed him through the picnic tables on the covered porch. He held the door as I stepped inside, the fantastic aromas coming from the kitchen momentarily overpowered by a clean, summery cologne when I ducked under his arm.
    “I have an ulterior motive for inviting myself to dinner,” he said as we joined about ten other people waiting in line in the cramped entryway. “Did you read my column today?” His eyes dropped to the floor and I laughed.
    I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to hear, but that wasn’t it.
    “I wasn’t going to ask,” he said. “But I can’t stand it anymore. If it sucked, you can tell me.”
    “I have not,” I said, wondering why he cared what I thought. “Though not because I don’t want to. I will, I promise. And you know, I meant it when I said your stuff was good today. So I’m sure it doesn’t suck.”
    “I hope not. Sometimes I wonder if people are just nice to me because I used to be a decent ballplayer, you know? But you’ve never seemed impressed by my slider.” He cocked his head to one side, and I surmised he wasn’t too used to people who didn’t fall all over him. “You’re the real deal. Syracuse, right? I hear their j-school is the best. How’d you end up here, Texas girl in Virginia by way of New York? There has to be a story there.”
    I stepped up to the counter and ordered a chopped barbecue sandwich and