Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) (15 page)

“What can I do for you?” Charlie’s tone was neutral, neither friendly nor hostile.

“I just thought we should have a little talk.”

“About what?”

“I’d like to make you an offer.”

“You’re wasting your breath. I’m not interested.”

Barnes’ shoulders rose and fell. He spread his feet a little, squared his shoulders. Charlie smiled to herself. He was taking on the posture of a gunfighter. A very short gunfighter.
 

“My father had five hundred acres of land. Some of it, a lot of it, is worthless. But the timbers is worth some money. I’m prepared to offer you three hundred thousand to sign a release and a deed. There’s no need for us to fight over it, no need for a long court battle. We can settle this right here, right now.”

“Like I said, not interested.”
 

“Make a counter offer.”

Charlie thought about the bar of gold in the trunk in the barn, about the fortune in the cave. Zane probably wasn’t certain that Roscoe had told her, but he had to suspect it. She decided to have a little fun. “Why do you want it so badly? Roscoe said you didn’t really care about him or the land.”
   

“That isn’t true at all. I cared deeply about my father, and I care deeply about my heritage. That land is part of my heritage; it’s part of me.”

“Not anymore.”

“I don’t intend to let you take it.”

“I’m not taking anything. Roscoe gave it to me.”

Barnes snorted. “That will is a joke. My lawyer will tear it apart, piece by piece. You’ll be left with nothing.”

“Then I won’t be any worse off than I am right now, will I? You, on the other hand, will be paying Mitchell four hundred dollars an hour plus expenses. How much did he stick you for on the conservatorship? Twenty thousand? Thirty? Whatever it was, this will cost you a lot more.”

“Do you think I care about how much it will cost? I’ll keep you locked up in court for twenty years if that’s what it takes.”

“I’m young. I have time.”

The lines in Barnes’ face were tight and deep. Behind him, Charlie saw Jasper walk out the door of his shop with Biscuit at his heels. He secured the padlock and started walking toward them. Barnes didn’t notice.
 

“I want you to listen to me, young lady, and I want you to listen closely,” Barnes said. His voice was growing harder, edgier with each word. His lips barely moved when he spoke. “I’m willing to make it worth your while to walk away from what rightfully belongs to me. You’ve gotten lucky. You’re looking at a three-hundred thousand dollar windfall you don’t deserve. But I’m warning you, it would
not
be wise to push me. You need to think about how much it really means to you to own that land. Because if you insist on acting in an unreasonable manner, the cost is going to be much, much higher than you can imagine.”

Charlie didn’t respond. She watched as Jasper passed close behind Barnes, who was so startled that he jerked visibly.

“You remember Zane Barnes, don’t you, uncle?” Charlie said as Jasper climbed the concrete steps onto the porch.
 

Jasper squinted at Barnes and spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground a few feet from Barnes’ shoes. Biscuit let out a low growl.

“Sure do,” Jasper said. “Went to school with him. Never did care much for him, though.”

“Zane was just threatening me.”

Jasper straightened and his eyes hardened. “Threatening you? How do you mean?”

“Roscoe had a will that left all his land and property to me. Zane isn’t happy about it. He was just saying something about the cost is going to be higher than I can imagine. Isn’t that what you said, Zane? Higher than I can imagine?”

Barnes’ chin dropped slightly. He suddenly looked like a child caught in a lie.
 

“That right, Zane Barnes?” Jasper said. “You threatening my niece?”

“No,” Barnes said, “of course not. I was just talking to her, trying to reason with her, that’s all.” The edge was gone; his voice had taken on a higher pitch.
 

“So you’re saying she’s lying? You’re calling her a liar, right here to her face?”

“I’m not calling her a liar. There’s just been a misunderstanding. It’s a complicated situation.”

Jasper moved back down the steps, his dog beside him. He stopped a few feet from Barnes, pointed a spindly finger at him. Charlie had never thought of Jasper as an intimidating figure. The overalls, the cap, the sneakers. It didn’t really fit. But his posture was one of aggression. The atmosphere was almost electric. There was an aura of danger in the air.
 

“I’ve known you all your life, and there ain’t a bit of good in you,” Jasper said in a tone that frightened even Charlie. “There ain’t an ounce of truth in you, either. What you need to do right now is haul your sorry carcass back to that fancy car of yours and get on out of here. If I catch you here again, I’ll skin you and mount you on a mannequin.”

Barnes needed no further prodding. He turned without saying a word and hurried toward the Mercedes. Ten seconds later, he was gone.
 

Charlie stood silently as Jasper climbed the steps again. She didn’t know what to say.
 

“Ain’t nobody gonna mess with my Peanut,” Jasper said as walked past her. “Not while I’m breathing.”

Chapter 25

ABOUT
half an hour after Zane Barnes left, Charlie heard another vehicle. Her stomach fluttered because she knew it would be him. She looked out the kitchen window and saw Jack Dillard’s red Jeep. She had texted him earlier and asked him to come visit her on the mountain. He’d said he would, so she had texted him the address and he’d found the place.
 

In her mind, Charlie likened her history of dealing with men to the history of the lost colony of Roanoke Island – brief and uncertain. She could count the number of men (both of them were boys, really) she’d slept with on two fingers. As a teen, she’d been tall and bony and awkward and flat-chested and smart, a combination that didn’t exactly attract the attention of boys. She was a classic ugly duckling, didn’t fill out until she was a junior in high school at the age of seventeen. When she returned to school after the summer, she noticed a distinct change in the boys’ attitudes toward her, but by that time she found them silly and boring. She’d dated a boy named Dustin Hanks during her freshman year in college and lost her virginity to him, but as soon as she slept with him he became possessive and abusive and she ended it shortly thereafter. She kept her distance from boys after that, although she sometimes fantasized and often dreamed about them. The only other time she’d slept with a man was two nights before she graduated from law school. She’d gone to a party at a bar in the Old City in Knoxville and wound up taking her first shots of tequila. A blurry night followed, memories of flirting and dancing with a second-year law student, awakening in his apartment the next morning naked with him lying next to her and no memory of anything that occurred after midnight.

Jack Dillard was unlike any man she’d ever met. He was beautiful – tall and muscular and dark haired and dark eyed with a chiseled face, deep dimples and an easy, honest smile – but more than that, much more than that, he was funny and intelligent and unassuming and had a gentleness about him that made her feel safe and comfortable in his company. She knew the romance, if it really was a romance, was in its early stages and that they had much more to learn about each other, but even with everything else that had happened to her recently, she’d found herself thinking about him constantly. They’d been to dinner, they’d been to a movie, and they had texted back and forth hundreds of times already, and she had yet to find a single thing about him that she didn’t like. He was a perfect gentleman, almost chivalrous, and Charlie found that endearing.

Charlie went out the back door onto the porch and down the steps while she watched Jack get out of the Jeep and start walking. He was wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt with “Vanderbilt Baseball” written in gold across the front.
 

“Hey,” Charlie said as Jack approached.

“Hey yourself,” he said.

She wanted to drape her arms around his neck and hug him, but she restrained herself. Jack reached out with both hands and she took them in hers.
 

“Nice place,” he said.

“I told you I lived in the boonies.”

“I like it. It’s beautiful up here. It smells fantastic. And so do you.”

Charlie felt herself blushing.

“You look nice,” she said.

“Really? Thanks. You look… you look… like you always do. Incredible.”

Charlie held onto Jack’s right hand and started pulling him toward the back porch.

“I want you to meet my uncle,” she said. “He’s a little different, okay? Don’t freak out.”

“Different how?”

“You’ll see. I’d invite you into the house but I’m a little ashamed of how it looks in there right now. My uncle is a bit of a hoarder.”

“I think you mentioned that.”
 

“Hang on, stay right here.”

Charlie walked up the steps to the door, opened it, and yelled, “Uncle? Uncle! Will you come out here for a minute?” She walked back down the steps and a few seconds later Jasper stepped onto the porch followed by his massive wolfhound. The dog came down off the porch and sniffed Jack’s pants for a few seconds, then wandered off toward the barn.

“I’d like you to meet someone,” Charlie said. “This is my friend Jack Dillard. Jack, this is my uncle, Jasper Story.”

To Charlie’s surprise, Jack walked up the steps and offered his hand to Jasper. “It’s nice to meet you, sir,” Jack said. The two men were about the same height, although Jack was much broader.

Jasper shook Jack’s hand and Charlie was pleased to see just a hint of a smile cross his lips. “Good to meet you, too, young feller,” he said.

There was a brief silence before Jack said, “Charlie has told me a lot about you.”

“Has she, now? She ain’t mentioned you to me.”

“That isn’t true and you know it,” Charlie said.

“Must have slipped my mind,” Jasper said. He turned his gaze back to Jack. “You courtin’ my niece?”
 

“Yes, sir, I am. Well, I’m trying anyway.”

“Say your name is Dillard?” Jasper looked at Charlie. “Ain’t that lawyer you’re working for named Dillard? Is this him?”

“His son,” Charlie said. “Jack is Joe Dillard’s son.”

“You a lawyer?” Jasper said.
 

“Not yet,” Jack said. “I’m in law school. Working on it.”

“I ain’t never had much use for lawyers.”

“Uncle!” Charlie said. “
I’m
a lawyer. Well, almost.”

“Didn’t mean nothing by it, Peanut,” Jasper said. “I’m just sayin’ I ain’t never used a lawyer in my life.”

“Everybody hates lawyers,” Jack said. “Until they need one.”

“You gonna give him a tour of the place?” Jasper said to Charlie.

“I was planning to. Everything but the house.”

“Ain’t much else to see other than the barn and my shop. You ain’t planning on showing him my shop, are you?”

“No, uncle, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good. Nice to meet you, young feller.” With that, Jasper turned and disappeared back inside the house.

“C’mon,” Charlie said. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”

They walked slowly around the edge of the property for the next half hour, holding hands, taking in the beautiful views of the mountains. The cloud cover had started to thin and streaks of light from the setting sun slipped through and bounced off the distant peaks. Eventually they made their way to the barn where Charlie introduced Jack to Sadie.

“Do you ride?” she asked.

“I used to,” Jack said. “My mom and dad bought my sister a horse when she was ten. Quarter horse like Sadie, but he was a black gelding. His name was Tasmanian Devil, but we just called him Taz.”

“Your sister’s name is Lilly?”

“Right. We both rode him every day for a while, but Lilly fell off one day and wound up with a concussion. Talked in circles for hours. We took her to the emergency room at the hospital and one of the doctors started telling my parents horror stories about people he’d treated that had been kicked by horses or thrown off horses. It freaked my dad out so much that he wound up selling the horse. He told Lilly he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if she got hurt seriously or killed.”

“How did she take losing the horse?”

“It broke her heart, but I think she was a little relieved, to tell you the truth. She was young, and Taz was a lot of horse.”

“We’ll have to go for a ride soon,” Charlie said. “We can ride double. Sadie won’t mind.”

“Sounds like a plan. You drive.”

 
Charlie smiled and took Jack’s hand.
 

“I had a meeting with your father yesterday,” she said. “Did he mention it to you?”

“Yesterday? Where did you meet?”

“At his office.”

“He didn’t say anything to me about it. What were you meeting about?”

“I found something. I probably shouldn’t tell you about it, but I already know I can trust you and I just can’t bear this alone. I have to make some difficult decisions and I need someone to talk to. I just… I just… I need
help
, Jack. Will you help me?”

 
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know. I mean, no, I’m not in trouble, but what I found could cause some trouble, I guess. I haven’t done anything wrong, though. Nothing illegal or immoral or anything like that. You remember the other day when the courier came to the office? After Roscoe killed himself? There was a map in the envelope. It was a map of Roscoe’s property and it led to a cave on the mountain and I followed it. I followed the map, Jack, and I found something.”

Charlie studied Jack’s face carefully. He was looking at her steadily. There was no sign of amusement, no sign of alarm, no sign of judgment. He was taking her seriously.
 

“Do you want to know what I found?” Charlie said.
 

“If you want me to.”

Charlie held on to Jack’s hand and started walking toward the trunk where she had stashed the bar of gold. She let go of his hand, bent over and opened the trunk, and pulled out the saddle blanket that contained the bar.