Money To Burn (29 page)

I stared at the blinking light, then reluctantly turned up the volume on the answering machine and played the messages back. Time to get back to real life. Bobby D. had checked in to make sure I was okay and Lydia had called three times, first wanting to know if Burly was safe, then demanding to know what the hell was going on and finally asking if I could meet with her and her father at noon. We had been summoned.

I had less than an hour to dress and shake the fog from my brain. I called Lydia and arranged to meet her at her father’s office a few minutes before noon, then chugged a cup of coffee. Thank God I had showered the night before, savoring the water against my skin, the washing away of soot and grime.

“Wonder why Talbot wants a meeting?” I said as I sat in a chair and tugged on a pair of black stretch jeans that had fit perfectly three trips to Biscuitville ago.

“Something to do with money?” Burly guessed.

“Now what would make you say a thing like that?” Of course it had to do with money. Randolph Talbot didn’t think about anything else.

“Do you really think someone is setting him up?” Burly asked.

“I do,” I admitted. “Too neat for me. Life is messy.”

“Then I’m going to tell my parents to drop the case against him,” Burly said suddenly. “Besides, suing Talbot won’t bring Tom back. My parents have been talked into it by some lawyer. I don’t think their hearts are in it. Once they find out Tom was engaged to Lydia, they’ll drop the suit against her father. That’s the kind of people they are. You’d understand if you’d ever met them. Want to?”

“Don’t go there,” I warned him. But then I thought over what he had said. “You’re sure they would drop the lawsuit?”

He nodded. “If Tom loved Lydia Talbot and she loved him, they’re not going to cause her any more pain than what she’s already gone through.”

I thought about it. The attacks against both Lydia and Burly had escalated after the new lawsuit was announced. Maybe they were connected. “Where are your parents now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I talked to them yesterday at my aunt’s, but they were leaving there early this morning.” Burly watched me slide a knit top over my sports bra. “You are built like a brick shithouse,” he said appreciatively.

“That’s very romantic,” I conceded. “Next you’ll be telling me that I don’t sweat much for a fat girl.”

He grinned. “Stick around and I’ll show you my idea of sweet nothings. Hey, it’s Sunday morning. Let’s stay in bed and eat doughnuts and read the newspaper together.”

I threw a pillow at him. “Get up. Or whatever it is that you do. And get dressed. I rinsed your shirt and jeans out and hung them over the shower rod to dry. You’re welcome, by the way, but that’s the extent of my domestication. I have an appointment with Randolph Talbot at noon. Do you have anywhere to stay? Someplace to go? A nurse to wow, perhaps?”

“I’m going to head out to my parents’ house and call around for them from there, see if I can track them down and talk to them about the lawsuit. Then I think I’ll start looking for an apartment, while I decide what to do next.”

“Look near Durham,” I told him, pulling on my boots. “It’s cheaper to me.”

“Nearer to you, too,” he [ou,nt>

“Burly,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re carrying your gun around like that. It’s dangerous. Any crackhead could take it from you.”

“I have a permit,” he said. “What’s the big deal? It helped save your ass last night. Besides, you think people here are too nice to rob a cripple? Think again. I’m easy pickin’s. At least I am without old Jesse by my side.” He admired his Colt .45 and checked the chamber to make sure it was loaded, then stowed it back inside the storage box.

“You could stop a buffalo with that thing,” I said, somewhat jealous.

He smiled. “Get out your Colt. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

I ignored the invitation. “Don’t go blaming me when you shoot your foot off.”

“At least it won’t hurt if I do,” he countered.

I guess he had to make jokes like that before someone else did. But I didn’t think they were funny. “Aren’t you worried about your parents?” I asked, changing the subject. “Hasn’t it been a couple of days since they’ve been home?”

He shrugged. “They’re just hiding out from the press. They hate attention. I’m going to call their lawyer today. He’ll know where they are.”

“Who’s their lawyer?” I asked curiously.

“Same guy that was representing Tom before,” Burly said. “Which makes sense. He already has the evidence and everything.”

“Harry Ingram?” I asked, gulping down my second cup of coffee. No wonder he was so fucking jolly. “Since when?”

Burly shrugged. “I don’t know. Mom told me yesterday.”

“Who hired who?” I asked.

Burly shrugged. “I’m pretty sure he contacted my parents first. Or maybe he was at Tom’s funeral, I can’t remember. But looking up a lawyer is not something my parents would do on their own. They live their fives scared of making waves. They’d be too frightened of what Talbot might do in retaliation to think of suing him on their own. I suspect they were talked into it.”

That explained why Ingram had leaked information to me. He wanted me to strengthen his case for him without having to pay me for it. What a guy.

“In that case, I think I saw your parents in Ingram’s office,” I said, checking the clip on my .25 before making sure my mascara wasn’t running down my face. If you’re forced to kick ass, why not look good doing it? “I interviewed him yesterday and saw two older people in the lobby. They had white hair, clothes from Sears, sensible glasses, no signs of overeating, matching Hush Puppies.”

“That sounds like them,” Burly said, interested. “Did they look like they had never even committed so much as a misdemeanor in their lives? That they sat in the front row of church every Sunday, tight-lipped and pissed that the world around them was full of sinners?”

“Yup. That was them.”

“They’re good people,” he said after a moment of shared silence. “They’re just a little inflexible.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” I said. “They seemed like good country people. My kind of people. I wasn’t making fun of them.”

Burly was quiet, probably lost in thought about all the ways he had disappointed his well-meaning but perpetually disapproving parents over the years.

I brought him his clothes and made myself scarce in the kitchen while he dressed, then wheeled him out to his van. I was glad I lived on the ground floor so we could avoid an argument about helping him up or down the stairs.

“Nice car,” he said, admiring my Porsche. “A classic. You ever work on it yourself?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Little things. Mostly I take it into my friend Jimbo down at Faircloth’s.”

I stood beside the van as Burly activated the mini-lift and pulled himself behind the wheel. I was willing to settle for a handshake, even, but he just shut the door in my face. “Thanks for the save, Casey,” he said, cheerful once again.

“That’s it?” I complained. “I ruin my best evening dress saving your ass and that’s it? Not even a high five?”

“That wasn’t your dress,” he pointed out. “Not your style. And I’ve been thinking about us. I decided that if you want anything else from me, you’ll have to come right out and ask for it. Sorry. But I know you better than you think, and whether or not to get involved with me is one hurdle you’re going to have to get over on your own.”

“What’s t [xt”color=“blahat mean?” I asked, outraged. He was outflanking me again.

“It means I’m not in the business of convincing people to care for me. You know who and what I am. Take it or leave it. Let me know when you decide.”

I wanted to get mad at him, but Burly followed this pronouncement with a smile that made my stomach flip-flop and then took off down the road.

I had a feeling that I had just been played as smoothly as a trout being brought to shore by a master fisherman. I hopped in my Porsche and zipped past Burly at a light— just to let him know that he could eat my dust—and cut him off at the next turn. He didn’t react exactly as I hoped. He started honking his horn and waving an arm out his window, then chased me down at the next light.

“What?” I asked him. “Change your mind?”

“Something’s the matter with your alignment,” he said. “You’ve got a shimmy in the front and something shiny flew out into the street when you accelerated at that last turn. You better take a look.”

“Yeah, right,” I said skeptically.

“Casey.” He shook his head, exasperated. “Someone tried to kill us last night. And now I think your car is driving funny. If you don’t think there might be a connection, then you’re not as smart as I give you credit for. For all you know, there’s a bomb under the chassis. Use your head and quit acting so macho.”

He roared off without a backward glance, leaving me to deal with it on my own. I wanted to deck him, but I couldn’t exactly figure out why.

The fact of the matter was that I was as smart as he gave me credit for. I got the hell out of the car and called my friend Jimbo, who arrived in ten minutes and examined the underside before assuring me that no bombs were present.

While he checked it again, I searched the road for the shiny object Burly had seen flying from underneath the car. It took a couple of minutes of dodging traffic, but I finally found a large bolt in the street about a block behind me and brought it back to show to Jimbo.

He was hooking my Porsche up to his tow truck so he could haul it back to his shop for a better look. I handed him the bolt. He turned it over in his hands.

“This here looks like a bolt from one of your CV joints,” he told me.

“So?”

“So, that’s what connects your transmission to the wheel, Casey. If your CV joints fail, your car’s gonna fall apart and that’s not something you’d want to have happen on the highway at a high speed, know what I mean?”

I knew what he meant. “Find out if that’s what it is,” I told him.

“Sure,” he agreed. “Call me later on this afternoon.”

With my car out of commission, I hoofed it over to T&T Tobacco, but not even a hike calmed me down. I was nervous about the meeting with Randolph Talbot. So was Lydia. I met her outside the elevators in the deserted lobby and we rode up together, exchanging no more than a few muttered words about the night before. I started to tell her what her brother, Jake, had done the night before, but she looked like she had enough problems, so I kept quiet about it. If the grapevine didn’t pick up that half the debs had puked their guts out at the end of the ball, I wasn’t going to spill the beans. Maybe people would chalk it up to an epidemic of bulimia, anyway. I did tell Lydia about the Lamborghini, however, and she took the news about her brother’s car being destroyed calmly. She mostly seemed relieved that Burly was okay.

“I never got a chance to meet him,” she said. “But Tom loved him a lot. He said that Burly was a really brave guy, his hero even. He admired the way he had turned his life around after the accident that paralyzed him.”

This was a side of Burly I had never really considered, what with my being too busy fighting him and all. I guess she had a point.

“What do you think this meeting is about?” I asked as we approached the twelfth floor.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” She was biting her lower lip nervously and her makeup was sloppy. I realized that she had a lot more to lose during this meeting than I did. I hoped to God her father wasn’t about to confess.

There was no sneaking into the inner sanctum for me this time. Randolph Talbot’s secretary practically carried me and Lydia across the threshold in her arms, then fussed around us, taking coffee and soda orders until I wanted to swat her. She finally departed with an obsequious nod. Old Talbot must have paid her pretty well to have her there on a Sunday, kissing ass so religiously.

“This is my lawyer, Robert Klein,” Lydia’s father explained, gesturing toward a thin man who was wearing a four-thousand-dollar suit, two-thousand-dollar shoes and a ten-cent smile. He was sitting in a deep, coffee-colored leather chair. His long legs were crossed and a thin cigarette dangled from one hand.

“I thought your lawyer had a fat red neck and was about two cheeseburgers away from a heart attack,” I said.

Talbot did not smile. “I have retained special counsel in the matter of the civil lawsuits filed against me and my company a few days ago,” he explained evenly.

“So that’s what this meeting is about,” I said, resisting the urge to add “Aha!”

Talbot’s eyes narrowed. “What else would this meeting be about?” he asked.

I shrugged. “You tell me.” I had an inexplicable desire to make this as difficult on him as possible. Maybe it was some misguided attempt to protect Lydia, but I was desperately afraid that he was about to hurt his daughter very deeply.

“Why don’t we make this quick?” Talbot’s lawyer suggested as he smoothly flicked open a gold cigarette case with one hand and extracted a fresh smoke without offering either me or Lydia one. “We’re both very busy men.”

I looked at Lydia and shrugged. “Suits us. We’re both very busy women.”

Lydia stared straight ahead without speaking.

“I have an announcement that I would like the two of you to hear before I release it publicly,” Talbot said to me, avoiding his daughter’s gaze. “But before I go into details, I would like for you to answer some questions, Miss Jones, for the benefit of my daughter.”