Ellen Byerrum, continued back
There was something different about Sagebrush. For instance, the town was full of people missing fingers and teeth, from the mayor, missing his wedding ring finger, to the tubercular waitress at the local coffee shop, missing many of her teeth. The paper's advertising saleswoman, missing a finger, could be very, very friendly if you bought a full-page ad. The alcoholic photographer, missing most of his teeth, started refusing to take photographs for reporters stories. Later he refused to develop film for reporters who took their own photos. Then he refused to even let reporters use his darkroom to develop their own film. Finally Sweeney fired him (but he didnt mean it). The printer, a paroled armed bank robber, was hired because convicts cant quit until their parole is up. (Or so Sweeney said.) He was a nice guy with all of his fingers and many teeth, who once accidentally drove through the wall of the Daily Press while parking out back with a girlfriend with the engine running to stay warm. In a moment of passion he'd hit the accelerator with both feet. Sweeney fired him. (No, not really.)
The Daily Press gave me golden memories. Climbing through a massage parlor window to interview the girls inside. (I got offered a job, and it would have paid more. A lot more.) Going on wild goose chases, excuse me, wild horse huntswith the Bureau of Land Management. Observing the FBI SWAT team training the local police. Hunting for stolen dynamite with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who made me sit in the back of his car with the unhappy suspect, who was very anxious to learn what I was going to write about him in the Daily Press. I told him we'd write about his dog being loose and at large, and he'd be pleased with the story. (Only kidding.) Those halcyon young reporter days of sleep deprivation, hunger, and lunacy were destined to end one winter when the water in my toilet froze solid. It was 40 degrees below zero, and in a flash of clarity I knew I could be that broke in a better and warmer place.
Eventually I moved to
the Washington, D.C., area, got better and better reporting jobs,
where my toilet was never in danger of freezing. And I started writing
plays, and later, mystery novels. I will swear in court that everything
I write is fiction, but the woman in pink at the country club did
inspire a scene in my play Remedial Surveillance, and Sagebrush, Sweeney,
and his Daily Press figure heavily in another, Boom Town Blues, and
also in my heroine Lacey Smithsonian's reporting background before
her series begins. Lacey was a character in my imagination long before
she appeared in the Crime of Fashion mystery series. For
years I carried around in my head the first few lines of Killer Hair and
the image of Lacey Smithsonian looking down at a beautiful young woman
in a coffin with the worst haircut she'd ever seen. Lacey was amusing
and persistent, and luckily she and I got along, because now shes
striding stylishly through her first mysteries in her high heels and
her knockout vintage suits, and more of her adventures are on the
horizon. Besides, she had a car and she had a camera, so of course
I said, "You're hired!"
