Chapter 22

Susan spent most of the next weekend in the Record-Herald office. Even though the office was technically closed, she fielded several phone calls in reaction to the Gingrich story, and picked up a few tidbits of information for the follow-up story on how he got hired.

Of course, having been in school all day and into the evening on Thursday meant that Susan missed the brunt of the phone calls, some of which her father reported had been worth the effort, especially one from Ed Rickenbaugh. That one pretty much made the story, and Susan was a little sorry she'd missed it, for he'd confirmed several of the points that Battle had made, especially the fact that Aho had made no formal, written investigative report to the rest of the search committee. That was enough to make much of the story fall into place, although there were still plenty of questions about why Aho had covered up the results he'd found on the investigation, if any. Laziness and stupidity seemed like logical answers, but Susan couldn't help but wonder if there was more to it than that. There was no way of finding out without talking to Aho, if he'd even tell her when she asked.

So far she hadn't tried to ask him. Susan and her father had agreed to put off asking until the last minute, probably Monday evening, so they could be as sure as possible of the facts they had in hand, hopefully from several people corroborating each other, before they started throwing tough questions at the school board president. If for some reason he couldn't be tracked down on Monday, at least her father had all day Tuesday to try to talk to him. Susan knew that her father was working on a follow-up story on Gingrich, mostly reiterating the charges, including his denial and disputing it, along with a few more facts that Henry had turned up.

Whatever the other lawsuit, the one that had been quietly settled out of court, was all about wasn't among those facts. Henry had told them in a phone call on Friday that he thought it could involve molestation, but he couldn't be sure of it, and therefore it couldn't be printed. It might even be related to the current topic, and there was no way to be sure since Henry couldn't get anyone to talk, even off the record. Even so, the mere fact that there clearly was something there, whatever it was, made them resolve to keep the heat on.

While Susan worked on the story a little over the course of the weekend, mostly what she was doing was using the Record-Herald's high-speed Internet connection to research colleges. There were several possibilities, and Susan was able to trim some of them off the list early on. Leaving Albburg as a separate issue, when she finally shut the junior reporter's computer down she was able to say that Michigan State remained at the top of her most desirable list, although finances were still an issue and the question remained if she could be accepted. Realistically, her high school record was a little thin, since she'd only really attended an American high school for two years; her third year had been spent in Germany and the final one at Riverside. Abitur or not, it worried her a little bit since her record wasn't going to have many actual grades on it. Some of those she'd done to work ahead were pass/fail, which she knew might not exactly impress a college admissions officer, especially at a place like State.

It was probably going to come down to submitting an application and seeing what happened, and she figured she might as well go ahead with it, if for no more reason than to not have the question hanging over her. If it got turned down, it got turned down, and she could think about alternatives; if it was accepted, she could worry about financing.

One by one the list of alternates got whittled down for one reason or another. Over the course of the searching, she became aware that Grand Valley State in Grand Rapids seemed to float to the top of the list, so she gave some extra attention to the place. It was a good school in a town with a good reputation, without some of the big-city ills that hung around other schools, including State to a degree. She could wrangle a minor in journalism out of the course schedule there and the school seemed to have a good international studies program. That was a vague-sounding sort of thing that seemed to allow quite a bit of latitude and would take advantage of her language skills and time in Germany.

She was quite interested in the Chinese studies program, although her primary interest remained Europe. From what she could see China was going to be a major player in the future, so that needed some consideration, and there were some interesting things happening there with more likely to come. Her talent for languages made it seemed like she ought to be able to pick up the language, at least the spoken part – the written part looked like a major headache and would be a real challenge. It probably wasn't something she would want to major in, but it had the potential to be a strong minor, especially if her major was in international studies.

After Grand Valley, the list thinned out. Central stayed on it mostly because of the solid journalism program and the family knowledge of the school. She knew she'd be able to afford it, mostly because Henry had been able to on a similar budget, although Cindy had shared some of the living expenses when he had been there. Southern stayed on it as well, mostly as a nod to Mizuki, although the financial part seemed difficult. Finally, Weatherford stayed on her list, but mostly as an backup if everything else failed. Albburg? Well, Michigan State clearly was above it on the list, and maybe Grand Valley, depending on what Hans found out about the German school, but it was definitely a factor in comparison to the others.

Working that much out seemed like a major accomplishment to Susan, along with the decision to at least strongly consider journalism as a minor. She knew that she'd been very indecisive about the whole process, but at least a few things had become clear, and maybe they would open the door to other things. As she walked out the door, she decided that she'd start on an application to Grand Valley as well as Michigan State, just to see what happened.

On Monday the decision still seemed to set well with her, even though she was too busy to think about it very much. It was the normal Monday for a junior reporter, with the usual calls around the various offices and writing the reports up afterward. However, in the afternoon she had a long discussion with her father about the draft her lead story on the school board's hiring Gingrich, and he picked at her about several issues until they were both satisfied. Then, turning the tables a little, he had her go over the follow-up story on Gingrich's troubles and the planned editorial, looking for the same kind of things, and to her surprise she found a few things her father was vague about. Maybe she was better at this journalism stuff than she'd thought.

That afternoon and that evening she tried to get hold of Aho, and even went to his house once, but there was no sign of him. That was a disappointment; her father would have to take a swing at it the next day. But, she couldn't really blame Aho for ducking out, either – after the story the previous week he'd already probably caught more crap from the community than he'd wanted to, and her calling him would just be the icing on the cake.

Like the previous week, on Tuesday she had mixed feelings about spending any time at Riverside at all. Even though there wasn't much more she could do to the story except let it go, she would still have liked to have been at the office through the final stages. She decided to shy away from talking to Mizuki and Bianca about her conclusions about colleges, mostly because she really wasn't interested in hearing another pitch for Southern Michigan from Mizuki. Once her last class let out she hurried home, anxious to hear if her father had been able to get hold of the school board president, but once there she was disappointed to hear that he hadn't. The story would have to go with the line, "Aho was not available for comment," which took some of the sting out of it in her mind, and wouldn't be as good as a clear statement.

Having been gone on Tuesday she hadn't seen what the paper was going to look like. When she saw the papers after they'd been brought back from the Camden Press she was very satisfied, especially with the headline Board was unaware of charges against Gingrich, and with her byline on the story. That would be a good one for a clip file if she ever decided to go into real journalism, as she thought of it.

She'd been aware that there had been some letters to the editor about the Gingrich story, but hadn't known how many. She'd expected one or two, most likely from the chronic malcontents who had to sound off on every issue, but was surprised to see seventeen, spread across two pages! She didn't have time to read them all, but in glancing over them it seemed as if most of them called for Gingrich's resignation, or Aho's, or both, and there was plenty of righteous anger for all. There were also several complaints of actions taken by one or the other that seemed to call for more serious investigation, too.

"Wow," she commented around the addressing table as they started getting the papers addressed and out. "People are even more upset than I thought they'd be."

"You haven't caught the full force of it," her father told her. "It's died down a little since the weekend, but I'll bet this fires things right back up again, maybe even more. If it's not going to get in the way of your homework, you might like to go with me to the board meeting on Monday. You might catch something I'd miss. It might be a pretty good show, anyway."

"Sure, I wouldn't miss it," she said. "Aho ducking comments from us is one thing, but I sure want to see what he has to say to the board."

"That could be a pretty good song and dance," her father agreed. "And I'd be willing to bet a nickel against a dollar that Battle doesn't let him get away with a word of it."

There was always a little bit of a rush getting the papers out, since the post office liked to have the them by the time the carriers came off their routes and began to set up their boxes for the next day. However, work slowed toward the end as once again the calls were coming in to the paper by the time they wrapped up the addressing and the papers were hauled to the post office. Since Susan's name was on the article, she got more than her fair share of them, but mostly she just took notes on anything that seemed interesting, since there was no point in trying to write anything until the board meeting on the following Monday. Still, it was one afternoon that was good to have over with.

Susan turned her attention back toward school on Thursday. It was, as always, a long day, and it was hard to get her mind off of what was happening in Spearfish Lake, and what might happen on Monday. As usual, the morning break and lunch breaks were spent with Bianca and Mizuki, and once again Susan stayed away from the topic of where she was now thinking about going to college. That bothered her a little, and she decided that when she and Mizuki got together for dinner that she'd talk it over with her.