town.
Before arriving, she’d gotten the lay of the land, or should she say landia? She snickered. Sometimes she cracked herself up.
She’d spent several months getting her hands on everything she could about Heartlandia. Their city website told a lovely, almost storybook history that didn’t ring completely true. Could everything possibly be that ideal? Nope, she’d seen enough of life, how messy it could get, to know otherwise. Or maybe San Francisco had jaded her?
She’d memorized the city council names and faces, noting they’d appointed a new mayor pro tem, one Gerda Rask. She’d also scoured old newspaper stories and dug up pictures of the locals, including police officers, firemen and businesspersons. The Heartlandia Herald used to focus on those kinds of stories, and there were many to choose from. Not anymore.
She knew more about this town than the average resident, she’d bet, which, if it was true, was kind of sad when she thought about it.
Turn and walk, Matsuda. Don’t let on to that taller version of a Tom Hardy look-alike that you’re watching him drive off. A man that size, with all those muscles, a cop, well, the last thing she wanted to do was get on his bad side.
* * *
Once the light changed, Gunnar drove on with one last glance in his rearview mirror. Lilly hadn’t budged. It made him grin. That one was a firecracker, for sure.
He’d heard old man Bjork had hired a new reporter. It was to save his sorry journalistic butt since running the Heartlandia Herald into the ground with bad reporting and far too many opinion pages—all Bjork’s opinion. He’d also heard the new hire was a big-city outsider and a she. Could the she be her?
Maybe the Herald did need a complete overhaul from an outsider since the newspaper he’d grown up reading was failing. Sales were in the Dumpster, and it bothered him. Over the past few years he’d watched his hometown paper slowly spiral into a useless rag. It just didn’t seem right. A newspaper should be the center of a thriving community, but theirs wasn’t.
Truth was old man Bjork needed help. Who cared what other people thought about world politics? Everyone got enough of that on cable news. Keep it local and engaging. That’s what he would have told the geezer if he’d ever bothered to ask for advice since they worked across the hall from each other, but the guy was too busy running the paper into the ground.
What with the new city college journalism department, why couldn’t they save their own paper? Heartlandia had always stood on its own two metaphorical feet. Always would. Fishermen, factory workers, natives and immigrants, neighbors helping neighbors. The town had remained independent even after most of the textile and fishing plants had closed down.
Only once had the city been threatened from outsiders, smugglers posing as legitimate businessmen. His own father had fallen for it. Once the original fish factory had closed, he’d been out of a job. Gunnar had been ten at the time and had watched his mother take on two part-time jobs to help feed the family. His father’s pride led him to take the job as a night watchman for the new outside company, and he’d turned his head rather than be a whistleblower when suspicious events had taken place. The shame he’d brought on the family by going to jail was what made Gunnar go into law enforcement, as if he needed to make up for his father’s mistakes.
It had taken two years before the chief of police at the time, Jon Abels, had taken back the city. Gunnar had been twelve by then, but he remembered it as if it had just happened, how the police had made a huge sweep of the warehouse down by the docks, arresting the whole lot of them and shutting down the operation. That day Chief Abels had saved the city and became Gunnar’s personal hero.
He drove back to the station in time to check out, change clothes and grab a bite at his favorite diner, the Hartalanda Café—he hadn’t lied to Ms. Matsuda about that—before he hit city hall for another hush-hush Thursday-night meeting of the minds. It had been an honor to be asked, and joining this committee was the first step on a journey he hoped one day to take all the way to the mayor’s office.
Sleepy little Heartlandia’s history lessons had recently taken a most interesting plot twist, and he was only one of eight who knew what was going on. The new information could change the face of his hometown forever, and he didn’t want to see that happen. Not on his watch.
* * *
Gunnar held the door to the conference room for Mayor Gerda Rask. She was the next-door neighbor of his best friend, Kent Larson, and a town matriarch figure who’d agreed to step in temporarily when their prior mayor, Lars Larsson, had a massive heart attack. She’d also been the town piano teacher for as far back as Gunnar could remember, until recently when her granddaughter, Desi, came to town and took over her students.
The city council had assured Mayor Rask she’d just be a figurehead. Poor thing hadn’t known what she was stepping into until after she’d agreed. And for that, Mayor Rask had Gunnar’s deepest sympathy, support and respect. When he became mayor, he’d take over the helm and transform the current weak-mayor concept, where the city council really ran things, to a strong-mayor practice where he’d have total administrative authority. At least that’s how he imagined it. Any man worth his salt needed a dream, and that was his.
The older woman nodded her appreciation, then took her seat at the head of the long dark wooden boardroom table. Next to her was Jarl Madsen, the proprietor at the Maritime Museum. Next to him sat Adamine Olsen, a local businesswoman and president of the Heartlandia Small Business Association, and next to her Leif Andersen, the contractor who’d first discovered the trunk that could change the town’s reputation from ideal to tawdry.
Leif had found the ancient chest while his company was building the city college. Though he was the richest man in town, he chose to be a hands-on guy when it came to construction, continuing to run his company rather than rest on his laurels as the best builder in this part of the state of Oregon. He hadn’t turned in the chest right away—instead he’d sat on the discovery for months. Once curiosity had gotten the best of him and he’d opened it, saw the contents, he knew he had to bring it to the mayor’s attention. After that, Mayor Larsson had his heart attack, Gerda stepped up and this handpicked committee was formed.
Gunnar nodded to his sister, who’d beat him to the meeting. She smiled. “Gun,” she said.
“Elke, what’s shakin’?”
She lifted her brows and sighed, cluing him that what was shaking wasn’t all good. He’d signed on to this panel, like he had to his job, to protect and serve his community. Since his family tree extended back to the very beginning of Heartlandia, and his father had slandered the Norling name, doing his part to preserve the city as it should be was Gunnar’s duty.
So far the buried-chest findings had rocked the committee’s sleepy little world. He’d heard how some places rewrote history, but never expected to participate in the process. He lifted his brows and gazed back at his kid sister.
As the resident historical maven and respected professor at the new city college, Elke’s services had been requested. Her job was to help them decipher the journal notations from the ones dug up in the trunk during construction. Apparently, the journals belonged to a captain, a certain Nathaniel Prince, who was also known as The Prince of Doom and who might have been a pirate. Well, probably was a pirate. The notations in the ship captain’s journal held hints at Heartlandia’s real history, but they looked like cat scratches as far as Gunnar was concerned. Good thing Elke knew her stuff when it came to restoring historical documents and deciphering Old English.
Across
