Money To Burn (17 page)

“So he didn’t hate them,” I said. “He just wanted to make sure his brother was taken care of more.”

“It might be a Medicaid planning thing,” Bobby offered. “Who knows?”

“Were you able to find out anything about the brother?” I asked.

“Not much. One of my gals thinks he throws pots for a living.”

“Throws pots?” I repeated. “He has an anger problem?”

“No, he’s a ceramics person. Squishes clay into shapes. Makes bowls and vases and shit.”

“Here in America, we call that a potter,” I told him.

“Whatever. You need his address?”

“You bet.” I wrote the address down. “So the brother is a potter who is either irresponsible, stupid or hooked on something other than phonics?”

“Sounds like it. Maybe you oughta go talk to him.”

“Actually, I’m on my way to see him now,” I told him. “Don’t wait up.”

“I’m always up,” he said.

“Bobby,” I explained patiently, “I am now going to call back for my phone messages. So don’t pick up the phone, understand?” Bobby had a great deal of trouble understanding how answering machines worked and I had once been forced to call six times in a row before he grasped the concept of remote electronic retrieval.

This time I hit pay dirt on my first retry. There was a message from the redheaded guy I’d picked up at the bar a couple of nights before, which confirmed we’d been on different wavelengths all along. I didn’t plan to return the call. And there was a message from Harry Ingram, the lawyer who had represented Nash before his death. He sounded overworked and in a hurry.

“Sorry I haven’t been able to get together with you,” he said in a voice so professionally sincere that I wondered if maybe they didn’t teach it in third year law school. “I’ve been snowed under, but I just filed a huge suit today and have a couple of hours breather. I’d be happy to see you tomorrow if you can make it to my office in the morning. I’ll be in after ten. No need for an appointment. You’ll have my absolute attention. I’m making you my priority.”

I felt like a Fed Ex package. I was a priority and could show up around ten-thirty. But, hey, I’d take the invite at face value and be there with balls on.

For decades, Youngsville had hummed along as a sleepy hamlet about twenty miles north of Raleigh. But several years ago, the lure of cheap Victorian houses within commuting distance to Raleigh had proved too much and an influx of doctors, professionals and families had changed the face of the town. Now it was another discovered haven soon-to-be homogenized. A Starbucks and Blockbuster Video couldn’t be far behind.

I discovered Magnolia Drive behind an abandoned feed factory and followed the dirt road along an ugly hurricane fence bordering some cheap brick houses. Just as I was about to give up and turn around, I spotted a hand-painted sign promising that SUNFLOWER POTTERY was ahead. I kept going.

The lane took a wide turn into a patch of overgrown forest that led me deep into a shaded, still wild patch of land. Sunlight filtered through the limbs forming a canopy over the road, and birds flitted from branch to branch as my Porsche crawled past. After several minutes of bumpy travel, I began to suspect that my shocks would never recover from two lousy dirt roads in one day. The lane wasn’t as bad as Sanford Hale’s, but it was close—and a lot narrower.

I finally reached a dead-end blocked by a metal gate with an automatic locking device, video camera and speaker for live communications. An awful lot of security for a small town like Youngsville, I thought. I pressed a black button below a mounted speaker and waited.

“Who is it?” someone asked after a minute. He had a pleasant voice with a deep Southern accent.

I flashed my PI license at the video screen and explained who I was and what I wanted. He buzzed me in, no questions asked.

Sunflower Pottery consisted of a maze of abandoned wooden hen houses surrounding three sides of a small one-story home. The yard was a round patch of red clay with only a few bedraggled hydrangeas for color. A pond glistened in the distance behind some trees and an old blue tick hound snoozed under a far apple tree. It didn’t even twitch when I climbed out of my car, so maybe the state-of-the- art security system was a good idea after all. There was a late model, blue Ford van parked close to the small house. Nice wheels. Expensive, too. And useful for hauling around pots and vases and shit, as Bobby D. would say.

Another hand-lettered placard was nailed to the front door of the small house and I knocked firmly in the center of the sign.

“Come on in,” the same pleasant voice instructed me.

I entered an interior that smelled of wet earth and well water. The air was at least ten degrees cooler than outside, and the lighting so dim it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to what I was seeing: hundreds and hundreds of clay vessels in various stages of readiness. Large round bowls lined a shelf in the small entrance area, and vases crowded a wooden table. Plates were stacked from floor to waist height along the walls, while smaller butter dishes, cups and saucers, platters and pitchers toppled here and there in untidy rows. A long table stretched the length of the far wall and its surface was cluttered with even more pottery as well as jars of glaze paints, brushes, sponges, orange sticks, splotched rags and other supplies.

A man sat behind the table among a forest of tall vases, steadying one of the vessels on the countertop as he carved what looked like a cross-hatched pattern into the soft clay. He was too absorbed in his work to notice me.

“Don’t bother to get up on my account,” I said wryly.

He ignored me and continued to carve.

Okay, I could play along. I removed a stack of dishes from a small rattan chair and sat, waiting patiently until he was done.

After a minute of silence, he looked up and flashed me a smile that made up for the wait. “Sorry, I was in the middle of something. Didn’t mean to be rude.”

I started to say something smart ass, but the words died on my lips. He had the darkest eyes I had ever seen. We stared at each other from across the room and something profound stirred in my gut. My nerve endings started to hum, the air seemed to shimmy and my stomach did a flip-flop that rated an eight on the Richter Scale. It had been decades since a man had provoked such an immediate response in me.

I stared at the stranger. He looked like a sinister version of his brother Tom Nash, and sinister is my specialty. He had black hair cut very short around a lean, angular face. His dark eyes burned brightly against pale skin. He wasn’t an outdoor man. His nose was narrow and straight above a long, thin mouth. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, which made him all the more attractive in my book. Have him stripped and brought to my tent, please. Washing is optional.

“Hello,” I said inanely, unable to take my eyes off of his.

He smiled at me and I swear the air in the room grew hotter by at least ten degrees. He wore a black T-shirt and I could tell, even from across the room, that he had amazing shoulders, narrow but well-muscled.

“And you’re who?” he asked politely, his voice trailing off as he surveyed my outfit and blatantly checked out my legs. He did not have his brother’s shyness.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was staring.”

“Hey, I’m used to it.” He shrugged, which struck me as somewhat conceited. Reluctantly, I posted my first mark against him in my mental little black book.

“I’m Casey Jones,” I explained. “I’m a private investigator and I’ve been hired to look into your brother’s death.”

“Who hired you?” he asked. I got the feeling he wasn’t the kind of guy who went in for small talk. He didn’t wait for my answer, but picked up another vase and began carving thin lines into its base.

“My client is confidential,” I explained lamely.

He raised a dark eyebrow, letting me know he thought my reply had been full of shit. God, was it just me or was Beauregard Temple Nash even more attractive than his brother had been? Where Tom Nash had been unaware of his appeal, this man seemed dangerous around the edges, like he’d be happy to use his good looks to hurt you. I’m ashamed to say, the thought sort of thrilled me.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “It’s confidential for a good reason.”

“Tom liked his secrets,” the man said with a shrug.

“You are his brother?” I confirmed. “Beauregard Temple Nash?”

“Ouch,” he said. “Just call me Burly and leave it at that.”

Burly? He was so chiseled, he made the Red Hot Chili Peppers look dumpy. My eyes wandered to a framed photo jammed between two ceramic jugs on a table. It showed a bigger version of the man before me, taken when he had long flowing black hair and a narrow, nanny-goat beard. He was dressed in six feet of motorcycle regalia, with denim jacket, black boots, chains galore and a Harley hog parked behind him.

“That’s you?” I asked, nodding toward the photo.

“In another lifetime,” he replied, smiling at me over a mountain of pottery.

I remained seated across the room from him, afraid to navigate the tidy path that ran through the hundreds of fired and unfired pieces. Just looking at it all made me dizzy. Yet, despite our distance, I felt as if we were talking face to face. He had an oddly direct quality about him. I caught him staring at my legs again and my hormones kicked into overdrive.

“Could you answe” cld you r some questions for me anyway?” I asked in my sweetest southern belle voice. “There’s no obligation to, of course.”

He gave me a long look that started at my high-top tennis shoes and traveled slowly up my calves to my thighs and black mini-skirt. What a stare. It was almost tangible. I felt like someone had just dribbled hot chocolate sauce up my bare legs. He took in my knit bodysuit and its metallic zipper like he was getting ready to unpeel me with his lips, then scrutinized my face with solemn concentration. I seldom get embarrassed, but the intensity of his gaze made me blush. It was getting hotter and hotter in that little farmhouse. Maybe even hot enough to remove a few items of clothing. I’d let him choose which ones came off first.

“That red’s a nice color,” he finally said.

“If you’d stop staring,” I protested, “I wouldn’t be so red.”

“I meant your hair color,” he explained. “It’s not your real color, is it?”

“No,” I admitted.

“What is your real color?” he asked.

“Hell if I know,” I said, and we both laughed.

I wanted to get an equally thorough full-body look at him, but he was obscured from the chest down by mounds of dishes and a forest of vases. I had to be content with a nice upper body view. What I wouldn’t give to see him without a shirt on. Mmm-mmm. That man could chop my wood any old time.

“So, will you answer a couple of questions?” I asked, forcing myself to concentrate on my work. After all, old what’s-his-name had been killed and I had to find out who had done it to make my client, whoever she was, happy.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? I owe it to my brother. Besides, I don’t get many women my age around here. Mostly, it’s old ladies who wonder in to sniff around my ‘art,’ as they call it, before they buy a two-dollar bud vase and high-tail it home to their maids. I think I scare them. If I answer some of your questions, do you promise to sit there and let me look at you all I want?”

I’d prostituted myself for far worse. “Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll even cross my legs.” I primly adjusted my mini-skirt, aware that his eyes were following every move I made.

“It’s a deal, then.” He put down the vase and crossed his arms, staring at me as he waited patiently for me to begin. His face, when composed, fell into place with a perfect symmetry underscored by his pale skin and dark features.

Wow. What was it I wanted to ask him anyway? My gaskets had been completely blown and I found it hard to think. I was unprepared for the thousand basic instincts flooding my body, some of them more basic than others.

“A question?” he prompted me.

“When was the last time you saw your brother?” I asked, trying not to stutter.

“About a week before he died,” Burly Nash answered. “We met for dinner.”

“How did he seem?”

He paused, as if to compose himself. His eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away quickly. A silence descended on the room while I waited for him to speak. I could hear the clock on the wall ticking loudly, then a dog barking in the woods in back of his house. Finally, he coughed and began again.

“He seemed the same as usual,” he said in a softer voice than before. “He was preoccupied, but that’s no surprise. My brother was obsessed with his work.”

“I noticed that about him,” I admitted.

“You knew him?” Comprehension dawned. “You’re the woman he hired to guard him,” he said. “I thought you had blond hair with black roots. Deborah Harry-like, that’s what Tom said.”

“I did at the time,” I admitted, surprised Tom Nash had even noticed my hair color, much less bothered to provide his brother with so much detail. “So you talked to him right before he died?”

“Sure. He called me that night from his laboratory to say good-night.”

Touching, but a little strange. Since when do forty- something brothers call to tuck their little brothers into bed? Did Burly Nash have a mental illness or something? He seemed fine to me. Mighty fine, in fact.