The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [32]
Even the church stood against the Masons at their founding, The Three explained.
It was a fair point, but Nico wasn’t stupid. In the Middle Ages, there was much the church opposed.
The Three still didn’t waver. Instead, they hit him with the hardest truth of all: what really happened to his mother the night she died.
16
But you can’t tell anyone I told you,” the woman whispered through the receiver.
Brushing a stray strand of red hair behind her ear, Lisbeth reached for the tiny tape recorder on her desk, double-checked it was plugged into the phone, and hit Record. “You have my word,” Lisbeth promised. “Our secret.”
As a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, Lisbeth was well aware that Florida law made it illegal to record private conversations unless the person recording first asked the other party. But as the gossip columnist for Below the Fold—the Post’s most popular section of the paper—Lisbeth also knew that the moment she asked permission, her source would freeze and fall silent. Plus she had to get the quote right. Plus she had to have proof for when the paper’s lawyers gave her their usual libel thumbwrestle. It’s the same reason why she had a mini-refrigerator stocked with wine and beer in the corner of her tiny beige cubicle, and a fresh bowl of peanuts on the corner of her desk. Whether it was her fellow reporters coming by to chat or a stranger calling on the phone, it was the sacred rule she learned when she took over the column six years ago: Always keep ’em talking.
“So about your story, Mrs. . . . ?”
“I’m just passing this along,” the woman insisted. “Free of charge.”
Making a note to herself, Lisbeth wrote the word Pro? in her spiral notepad. Most people fall for the name trap.
“Again, you didn’t hear it from me . . .” the woman continued.
“I promise, Mrs. . . .”
“. . . and I’m not falling for your little trick the second time either,” the woman said.
Lisbeth crossed out the question mark, leaving only Pro.
Excited by the challenge, Lisbeth started spinning her phone cord like a mini-jump rope. As the cord picked up speed, the sheets of paper thumbtacked to the right-hand wall of her cubicle began to flutter. When Lisbeth was seventeen, her dad’s clothing store had shut down, forcing her family into bankruptcy. But when her local newspaper in Battle Creek, Michigan, reported the story, the smart-ass reporter who wrote it up threw in the words alleged poor sales, implying a certain disingenuousness to her dad’s account. In response, Lisbeth wrote an op-ed about it for her school newspaper. The local paper picked it up and ran it with an apology. Then the Detroit News picked it up from there. By the time it was done, she got seventy-two responses from readers all across Michigan. Those seventy-two letters were the ones that lined every inch of her cubicle walls, a daily reminder of the power of the pen—and a current reminder that the best stories are the ones you never see coming.
“Regardless,” the woman said, “I just thought you’d want to know that although it won’t officially be announced until later this afternoon, Alexander John—eldest son of the Philadelphia Main Line Johns, of course—will be awarded a Gold Key in the National Scholastic Art Awards.”
Lisbeth was writing the words National Schola- when she lifted her pen from the page. “How old is Alexander again?”
“Of course—seventeen—seventeen on September ninth.”
“So . . . this is a high school award?”
“And national—not just statewide. Gold Key.”
Lisbeth scratched at her freckled neck. She was slightly overweight, which