Page 1 of Head Room
DAY ONE
SATURDAY
CHAPTER ONE
My phone rangat the same time the news aide pointed the stranger toward my desk in the KWMT-TV newsroom in Sherman, Wyoming.
Both those events occupied only a portion of my attention.Another circumstance snagged most of it.
My backup supply of Pepperidge Farm Double Dark Chocolate Milano cookies at the office was empty.I’d checked because the first hideaway spot was also empty.
Walk-ins weren’t unusual in KWMT’s newsroom.Strangers like this were.
He was tall, male, African-American, with an erect bearing, wearing jeans and a crisp, white shirt.
What really made him stand out, however, was he wore neither a cowboy hat nor a ball cap.His gleaming, bald head was uncovered.
He had a bony jaw made for clenching and a vein angling up his forehead made for throbbing.Clenching and throbbing were in evidence, though I suspected not at maximum throttle.
All in all, he was impressive in an intimidating way and the news aide had pointed him toward my desk.Gee, thanks.
Other times, I might have been the pointee because I was the only one in the newsroom.But at the moment there were two other candidates — yes, on a Saturday, because newscasts are daily.Yet I was the one pointed at.
He strode toward me.
My phone rang again.I looked at the screen.
My mother.
Calling about my wedding to Tom Burrell next weekend.
How could I be so sure?Because she basically hadn’t talked to me about anything except the wedding since Tom and I were engaged in December.I’d voted for an elopement.Tom wanted a real wedding.
We compromised.With a real wedding.
This played out as letting my mother and Tom’s daughter, Tamantha, run the circus within the confines of a modest tent I fought hard to keep from bulging out at the seams, while Tom mostly looked on in benign amusement.
“Elizabeth Margaret Danniher?”Scary stranger stood in front of my desk, looming over me.
I had a choice.
Scary stranger?
Wedding-planning mother?
Have I mentioned Mom and Tamantha have a spreadsheet?
Tamantha, who would enter sixth grade after this summer break, finding a template for such a spreadsheet on a wedding planning website didn’t bring me joy, but Mom using one...?
I clicked off the phone — for now — and looked up at the imposing arrival.“Yes.”
Don’t judge.She’d call back.She always did.
“One of my men is missing.”
“One of your men?”
“Yes, ma’am.He has a cabin in the north central section of your county.”
