Blue Willow (37 page)

“Then why suspect my motives now?”

“Don’t you realize what it would do to his pride if he thought he and Frank hadn’t earned the Colebrook project on their own merits?”

“Do you think I’d have chosen them if they weren’t deserving?”

“No, I learned a long time ago that you do what’s best for the Colebrook name, regardless.”

“Then there’s no need for you to tell him about our history.”

“He’s my husband, and I love him. I don’t like to keep secrets from him.”

“Then tell him.”

“You know I won’t. You
know
it, and you don’t care if that makes me feel like a traitor.”

“Consider me a friend who has his best interests at heart, as well as yours. That should soothe your overworked conscience. I’m trying to help you and your husband, Lily. All I want in return is to hear you say the past is forgotten.”

That had forced her into a corner. He was certain she couldn’t honestly say it. The look in her eyes told him so. Finally she answered, “It may not be forgotten, but I stopped letting it control my life a long time ago.”

“Then we’ve reached a truce. Good.”

“You mean you’ve settled some kind of debt you think you had.”

“However you want to interpret it. May I ask one favor of you, to cement our new understanding?”

“You can ask, and I’ll let you know what I think.”

“Will you design gardens for the Colebrook Building? Exterior and interior. With a blue willow as the centerpiece.”

Her speechless, almost painful regard had made him fear she’d say no. He wanted her touch on the building. He wanted to be surrounded by it. Eventually, looking defeated, she had agreed. “I’ll have to ask Joe Estes if I can buy a willow from the grove at the farm,” she said wearily. “I haven’t been back since … Aunt Maude says he’s let the place get run-down. I didn’t want to see it.” Then she’d squared her shoulders and studied him proudly. “But you’ll get your blue willow.”

He nodded, afraid if he tried to say anything else, it would sound too relieved. She gave him one last look as she walked to the door of his office. “After all, it’s only a damned tree.”

Only a tree
. And they were only friends. The past had no power. He could live with those lies if she could.

Artemas stirred, breaking the memory’s spell. He dropped the pages about her to the floor. No one but he cared about the absent details, the heart and soul behind the facts. The irony of it was that those details would only complicate matters now. To his siblings and business associates they would set off alarms, make them wonder if he could be objective about her and take whatever action the situation demanded. He could.

The dossier did not reveal how many times he’d contacted Hopewell Estes over the years, trying to buy the farm back for her, and how diligently she’d tried, also, according to what Tamberlaine had heard from her. Hopewell had never budged. His wife was dead, his son was all he had left.
Joe loves that place
, he always said.

Two years ago Artemas had sent people to do routine maintenance on the mansion at Blue Willow—with instructions
to discreetly check on the farm’s upkeep. He’d been furious when they found the farm overgrown, the house empty, and well-tended plots of marijuana hidden in the mountain hollows—not only on the old MacKenzie land, but on the estate as well. Joe Estes had moved to a quarter-million-dollar condo in Atlanta and drove a Ferrari.

Small wonder that he’d wanted access to so much empty, privately owned forest. Small wonder that his despondent, defensive father could not risk selling the MacKenzie place.

Ending Joe Estes’s career had been a simple, discreet matter of placing a few calls to the right people. Drug agents had descended on him. He had gone to prison. Somehow, the rumor of Artemas’s involvement in his downfall had gotten out. Hopewell had sworn to keep the farm, out of spite. A dead end, after so many years. Lily knew what had happened. Artemas had explained. If anything, she’d seemed relieved. It was finally over, she’d said.

But it was not over. It was just beginning.

Artemas got up and paced, his chest tight with helpless rage.

Everything she owned was mortgaged to the hilt. The house she and Richard had built so lovingly, the acreage around it, the sailboat, the cars and trucks. Richard and Frank, apparently flush with visions of the grand future that had come their way since taking on the Colebrook project, had built themselves a $2 million office last year, using their personal assets to acquire the loans. Porter and Stockman had risked everything, and for that their possessions would belong to the banks, the courts, the victims. A complete and brutal taking, in which Colebrook International would be the chief litigant.

Artemas threw the glass against a wall. The force sprayed shattered pieces. The sharp sting on his cheekbone and the dampness of blood were distant concerns. His head bent, his hands hanging limply by his sides, he thought,
She lost her husband and son because of me. Now she’ll lose her home too. Because of me
.

•     •     •

Artemas pushed the door open and got out before his driver could reach him. “Wait here, George,” he told the stocky older man who snatched at the limousine’s door and held it dutifully, as rigid as a soldier at attention. “I won’t be long.”

George shifted anxiously and touched a hand to the brim of his black cap. “I’ve worked for you a long time, Mr. Colebrook. I hope you don’t mind me saying that you’ve got the balls of an elephant, but I’ve never seen you do anything, well,
reckless
. I’ve figured out who you’re here to see, and, well, sir, it has me worried.”

“I’m not going to kill him, George.” The tone of voice was lethally soft, not reassuring. “I’m just going to make him wish he’d never been born.” Artemas’s attention was riveted to the building in front of him. The bustle of Atlanta’s busy streets and the office workers passing on the sidewalk might have been a thousand miles away. Cold air curled inside his open coat and sank into the dark wool of his suit. He welcomed the sensation against the heated tension in his skin. His bare hands felt hot against the sides of his trousers. Bright sunlight glinted off the tower of glass and steel awaiting him but did not penetrate his narrowed eyes. Violent justice was what he wanted, but no, he wouldn’t lay a hand on Oliver Grant. That would have ended his revenge too quickly. He wanted Grant to suffer.

The lobby was bland and cramped and utilitarian, a stark contrast to the soaring beauty that had been the Colebrook Building. He had come here several times over the years, with Julia, to discuss the project in its planning stage. His skeptical sister had wondered at the artistic skill of a contractor who chose to work in such an uninspiring place.

His business is construction
, Artemas had counseled.
Leave the creative genius to the architects
.

That memory was sour in his throat. He had chosen the architects. Stockman and Porter. They had recommended Grant as the contractor.

My sister would be alive if I hadn’t insisted on Stockman
and Porter. If I hadn’t wanted to move Colebrook International to Atlanta. If I hadn’t wanted to be close to Lily, and prove something to her. If I’d stayed out of her life, her son and husband would be alive too
.

His inner conflict brought fury and frustration. His shoes clicked an efficient, swift tattoo on the lobby’s granite floor. Decisions. Guilt. Sorrow. Revenge. His dream had been noble. Selfish? Yes, that too.
Lily, Lily, I never meant to hurt you. I meant to win you back. God help me
.

His jaws ached from clenching his teeth. On a directory positioned on the wall beside a dull-witted abstract tapestry he found the contractor’s suite number. During the brief elevator ride up he stood in the center of the compartment, staring at the doors.

When he stepped off the elevator at the floor occupied by the building firm, his skin crawled with disgust. A receptionist at the lobby’s desk stood quickly, recognition and alarm flooding her expression. He walked past her without speaking, ignoring her startled “Do you have an appointment, Mr. Colebrook?
Mr. Colebrook
?”

He strode past secretaries in an open area, bathed in their stares and whispers. His destination was one of the doors in the office suites beyond them. The small brass plaque there bore Grant’s name.

He slammed a hand against it. The door groaned; its latch popped. It burst inward.

Oliver Grant, standing near a window with a portable phone against one ear, whirled in shock. When he saw who the invader was, the phone dropped to the carpeted floor. Grant leaped toward a desk littered with paperwork and punched a button on a phone console there. “Call the police,” he ordered, his voice frayed.

Artemas slung the office door shut and advanced on him with long strides, reaching out as he did. He shoved the phone console onto the floor. Grant backed away, holding up both hands, palms outward. “The media will climb all over both of us. We don’t need any more negative publicity.”

Artemas gave him a killing smile. “The truth won’t be
negative to me. It’ll be a goddamned pleasure to see the truth made public.”

Grant had the short-legged, lantern-jawed demeanor of a bulldog, but a muscle twitched near the corner of his mouth. His flat face had a haggard pallor from weeks of intense stress, and his thinning brown hair stood out in wisps from the sides of his head. His thickly sinewed forearms, showing beneath the rolled-up sleeves of a dress shirt, gave evidence of a career that had been bred in the dirt and sweat of a laborer’s dreams. But framed photographs of Grant with the city’s social elite lined the walls, and a Mercedes key ring peeked from amid jumbled papers on the desk.

“Your ambition should have been tempered by honesty,” Artemas said, scooping the key ring into his hand then dropping it in a trash can by the desk. “Because now you’re going to lose everything. How will you like prison life? Think about it.”

“Talk to my lawyers. I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then just listen.
Listen
, you sleazy son of a bitch.” Artemas pulled a sheaf of folded papers from inside his jacket and threw them on the desk. “That’s the transcript of a statement Avery Rutgers gave my people this morning. His conscience got the best of him, not to mention the fact that he’s scared shitless.” Artemas leaned forward. The words slid softly, coldly, from his lips. “Your own quality-control inspector says the concrete used in the bridge’s supporting walls wasn’t allowed to cure properly.”

Grant wavered as if caught by a gust of wind. His hands dropped to his sides, then fumbled vaguely. “That’s a lie. Get out. My attorneys—”

“He says he told you as soon as he discovered it. And that you told him to keep his mouth shut or he’d lose his job. When he brought the subject up again, you said the architects had checked the problem out and agreed that it was insignificant. That’s ludicrous.”

Grant collapsed slowly, catching the back of a plush leather chair behind the desk. It swiveled toward him, and
he sank into it. His mouth hung open. His eyes glazed over. “There’s no proof.”

Artemas dropped another folded document on the desk. “Core samples of the concrete have been analyzed. Rutgers was right about it. Look at the report.”

“Oh, God.” Grant moaned and put his head in his hands.

Artemas was dimly aware of straining forward over the desk, of violence rising up blindly in him. He wanted the man’s throat between his hands—he could already feel his fingers crushing flesh and cartilage. He wanted to see all the death and betrayal, all his grief, mirrored in Grant’s dying gaze.

You can’t He still has answers to give
.

His fingers bit into stacks of papers, crushing them in substitution. Contempt and rage were overwhelming him. Restraint made him tremble. “I want to hear you admit that Stockman and Porter never knew you’d screwed the structural safety of their design.”

Grant lifted bleak, groggy eyes to his. Two of the building’s security guards burst into the office. They dragged at Artemas, binding their arms across his chest, cursing. His gaze never left the contractor’s. Grant’s sagging face contorted. The viciousness of a trapped animal replaced defeat. “They
knew
,” he said, spitting it as if in triumph. “They let it pass. They approved it.”

His words landed like fists. Artemas recoiled, stiffened. The guards gripped him tighter, as if their threat was responsible for holding him motionless. A prayer rose in his mind.
Let him be lying. Don’t let Richard Porter be part of this
.

Through the pulse roaring in his ears, he heard Michael’s deep, anxious voice speaking his name. He felt a hand on his shoulder, sensed Michael beside him and the guards. “George called from the car phone when you left the hotel,” Michael was saying. “I followed you.” He jerked furiously at the guards’ arms. “Goddammit, let him
go.
” Michael began to cough but continued fighting. One of the guards twisted and rammed an elbow into Michael’s chest.

Artemas jerked away from them, caught one in the face with his fist, and shoved the other one aside. Michael was bent over, gasping, one hand unzipping the leather aviator jacket he wore with jeans, fumbling inside past a white sweater, searching the inner pockets. “I’m all right,” he said, as Artemas grasped him by one arm. He found his inhaler and straightened, shaking his head. His dignity and self-rebuke were fierce. He jerked his arm away from Artemas. “All right.” Artemas’s chest heaved as deeply as Michael’s. He pivoted toward Grant. “I don’t believe you.”

Grant rose like a drunken boxer, gripping the edges of his desk and swaying, his vindictive gaze boring into Artemas. “You will. I’m not going to hell alone. Ask Lily Porter to tell you what
she
knows. Ask her why Stockman and her husband and I were all so goddamned crazy by the end. Then live with
that
truth!”

Two police officers ran into the room, then halted. “I want these bastards out of here,” Grant yelled, pointing at Artemas and Michael. Artemas raised a hand in warning as the officers stepped toward him. The terrible dread inside him became fierce efficiency, a litany of commands.
Turn away. Take Michael to the hotel Make certain he’s recovered. Go to Lily. Make her talk
.