Free Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) by Debra Gaskill

whatever it took.
    Waving goodbye to Mrs. Jepson, I jumped in my car and headed the sedan toward Main Street. In a few minutes, I had a room at the Holiday Inn, got settled in and was back out in search of toiletries.
    Slowing for the light at the center of town, I saw Charisma again. She was jiggling her keys in a door that apparently led to an apartment above some lawyer’s office. A fat cat looked down at her from the window above, whipping its tail. The key was apparently not working well: she stomped her foot in frustration, then turned the key again. She lowered her shoulder and pushed hard against the door. As the light turned green, the door popped opened and she stumbled through the entryway. I slowed my car as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
    I took a quick turn around the next block and came back to park across the street where I could watch unobserved. She’d pulled the curtain closed by the time I’d returned; I could see her silhouette pace slowly back and forth in the flickering blue light of a television. She had a bowl of something in one hand and was spooning the contents into her mouth with the other.
    Cereal? Soup? Ice cream? If she was like a lot of other driven, single professionals I knew, it was likely high on calories and low on sustenance. She probably fared better nutritionally while she was embedded with troops, eating the military’s MREs—Meals Ready to Eat—that were issued to troops as they slogged through the mountains of Afghanistan’s tribal regions.
    The image of the hard-charging reporter came back to me. While she was a pro at the fire scene, there was hysteria in her voice on the phone. She had changed—a lot. But why hide? She had tremendous support from the entire country. She could have come back as the poster girl for TBI, started a foundation, something to make a difference. Certainly the Syrian story could be explained as a result of her torn and damaged thought processes. Or was there more?
    Should I knock on her door? I wondered. Or had I scared her back into her shell? I leaned back in the driver’s seat and caught a whiff of smoke mixed with my own body odor. Probably best that I don’t make contact until I’ve at least bathed, I reasoned.
    I put the car in drive and pulled into traffic.
    *****
    Wrapped in a plush hotel bathrobe, I flopped on the queen-sized bed after my shower.
    Charisma was still on my mind.
    Used to be, when you read her byline on a story, it meant something: troop movements through the deserts of the Middle East or Afghanistan, interviews with generals and presidents, movers and shakers on the world stage.
    When she flamed out, she flamed out spectacularly.
    It was a single story, asserting the Syrian president was preparing to launch missiles into a Jordanian refugee camp reportedly housing anti-government rebels among the displaced women and children. The story was meant to be the one that could finally convince the western world of the administration’s evil. It could turn the tide for the rebels, justify their cause and show the world the true tyranny of the Syrian government.
    According to her story, it took Charisma two days to connect with that source, and then through another winding series of connections, down dusty Aleppo back alleys of ancient stone, where she finally met with the man who assured her the story was true.
    Instead of seeking out a second source, she filed the story. Whether that was her own ego or pressure from above, no one knew. The world’s wire services ran with it—and then her editors fired her in the presence of a US State Department employee when the story, now more than just incorrect, but patently false, became the center of a diplomatic crisis. Her source, variously reported to be a CIA plant, a government sympathizer or any number of other devils, disappeared into the night.
    Her fall from grace was news itself: Prentiss fired after flaws found in Syrian story was one headline. Another