Money To Burn (38 page)

“They’re accepting the settlement?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “And donating their share of the proceeds to a foundation.”

“Don’t be so sure,” I told him.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, his voice taking on an edge of uncertainty for the first time.

“I don’t think Nash’s surviving brother wants them to accept the settlement,” I explained.

“But they could easily lose if it went to court,” Ingram warned. “Talbot is a powerful man and juries are tricky. It’s too risky.”

“You don’t understand,” I explained. “His brother doesn’t want them to take any money at all. He thinks Talbot was set up for the fall. And that he isn’t responsible for either the harassment or his brother’s murder.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ingram said. “I have a file cabinet full of proof.”

“So you say,” I pointed out. “But I haven’t seen it, so what am I supposed to tell the brother?”

thr=“windowtext”>It worked. What I had wanted for a long time finally came. There was a long silence while he considered my words and then he took the bait. He was going to show me his before I showed him mine.

“Okay,” he conceded. “I can show you the evidence if you come over tonight. It has to be strictly hush hush, though. This breaks all the rules.”

“I can’t tonight,” I told him. “I have a—”

“Casey?” Lydia interrupted. She was standing at my elbow, her blue purse in hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“Hold on,” I told Ingram, placing a hand over the receiver. “No problem. I’m just taking to Tom’s lawyer.”

She didn’t want to hear about the past. “I’m going to go home and change,” she said timidly. “And then, when Jack gets off work, we’re going to drive to Grandfather Mountain and wait for the sun to rise. It’s crazy, I know, but I need to do something crazy right now. Know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean,” I assured her. She was right. She deserved a break. Telling her about Jake would have to wait. “Go. Have fun. Call me the second you get back. We’ll talk then. You’re in good hands. Believe me.” To my great credit, there was absolutely no double-entendre lurking in my recommendation.

She waved a good-bye and gave Jack a long look that elicited a goofy smile in reply. I rolled my eyes and returned to the phone.

“What’s going on?” Ingram asked impatiently. “I haven’t got all night. I’ve been working late just so I wouldn’t miss your call.”

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I’m out with Lydia Talbot.” That ought to cool his heels. “She was just saying goodbye.”

“Lydia Talbot.” He sounded alarmed. “Does she know you were talking to me?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “So what?”

“The settlement. Miss Jones,” he explained patiently. “You can’t let anyone know I’m showing you the evidence involved. I could lose my license over this. The bar would yank it in a heartbeat. And she, of all people, must not be told. It could endanger everything. I thought you said you were working alone on this?”

“I am,” I assured him. “Cool your jets. Randolph Talbot is not going to be the one to change his mind about the settlement. If I were you, I’d worry more about the parents.”

“This is highly irregular,” he said. “Maybe it’s not a good idea after all.”

“Look,” I soothed him. “I can’t come tonight, but what about tomorrow?”

“No one must see you,” he said. “Meet me there at eight in the morning.”

“Okay,” I promised. “I’ll wear a cloak and carry a dagger.” Sheesh, but people could get paranoid when money was involved.

We hung up, but Harry Ingram’s paranoia lingered. Maybe it was contagious. That was the trouble when so much money was involved. It was impossible not to care about it one way or the other.

When Burly arrived just after ten, my landlady had already locked the front door to the lobby, a security measure she follows sporadically depending on whether or not she’d been watching reruns of slasher films again. Since the bell hasn’t worked since 1953, Burly had to bang on the reinforced wire mesh window until I came to his rescue. He was holding a sorry-looking bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and a take-out sack of food in the other.

As I wheeled him through the foyer, we attracted a small crowd of nosy neighbors anxious to see what the commotion was about. Talk about spoiling a romantic moment.

“I hope you remembered the condoms,” I said loudly as I wheeled him inside my apartment and slammed the door shut with my foot.

“Are they always like that?” Burly asked as he handed me the flowers and the sack of food. Exotic smells wafted up from the bag. Indian. All right. One step closer to the Kama Sutra.

“Most of my boyfriends slip in under the cover of darkness,” I explained.

“I’ll try to remember that next time,” he promised.

“Thanks for the flowers.” I examined a wilting rose. “It was nice of you to spare me the trouble of killing them myself.”

“I picked them from the front beds along my parents’ walkway,” he explained. “They were all I could reach. I think it’s too hot for them there.”

“I love them,” I explained quickly, sticking the ragged bouquet in a juice glass. “They go with the apartment.”

We smiled at each other and I was suddenly conscious that I was still wearing my blue dress.

“For a tough cookie, you sure wear a lot of dresses,” he said. “Lucky for me.”

“It’s a long story,” I admitted. “I was trying to cheer myself up.”

“That bad?” he asked.

“That bad.” I pulled out a chair and flopped into it, reaching for my beer and sliding a cold one across the table toward him. “There’s something about this case. It makes me feel dumber than a goat with its head in a bucket.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Usually when I take on a case, it’s simple. I go full speed ahead. If I hit a brick wall, I bounce off. Eventually, I either solve the case or I don’t. But I never spend a lot of time worrying about if I’m doing the right thing or if I’ll be able to solve it. This one has me wondering if I can do anything right at all.”

He thought about it I realized that not one in a hundred people would have really listened to what I had just said. Most people would have made automatic attempts to soothe my ego. This guy wanted to do more.

“You grew up poor, right?” he finally asked. “You’ve made a few cracks about it.”

I shrugged. “You might say that. I consider the four food groups to be grits, possum, syrup, and bacon grease. Why, does it show?”

“No, but that’s my point. Growing up poor doesn’t show on the outside, but it’s there on the inside. It’s all the money floating around this case that makes you feel inadequate. That’s why I hate money.”

“You have plenty to hate now,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “I’d rather have my brother.”

Oops. “Point well taken,” I said.

“The thing is this, Casey,” he told me, reaching for my hand. “The Talbots make everyone feel inferior. That’s what they do. They’ve been bred to it and no one around them can ever open their mouths without thinking of how much mor s hone feel ine money they have than the rest of us. If you care about the money, it’s paralyzing. Just look at me.” He smiled. “But even if you don’t care about the money, their attitude will get you and you’ll still feel like shit. It’s being around them that’s making you feel that way. You’re still the same person. You’re strong and smart and it looks to me like you still bounce off brick walls.” He touched a bruise softly and it gave me goose bumps.

“You think so?” I took a gulp of beer. “I feel kind of like a bull in a china shop next to Lydia Talbot.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” He made a face. “Tom went for women like that, delicate and sort of helpless. I like more juice in mine.” He smiled. “Lydia’s a nice woman, I’m sure. But she’s not you, Casey, and for all her money she’ll never be you. And I don’t think you’d like being her.”

I thought about it. He was probably right. “But I hate this feeling of doubting myself,” I admitted. “I want to go back to feeling like me.”

“How about if I feel you instead?” he offered and I threw a wadded-up paper napkin at his head.

“Let’s eat,” I suggested. “Maybe if I pig out, I’ll feel more like myself.”

He began unpacking the food while I headed for the pathetic little cabinet that held my entire meager stock of domestic possessions.

“My parents are seriously thinking of dropping the lawsuit,” Burly said. “I talked to them again late this afternoon.”

“Were they at their lawyer’s office?”

“Yeah. I finally found them there. He’d been moving them around to different hotels to keep the press at bay. How did you know?”

“I called there a couple of times and Ingram was always in a meeting. I figured it was with your parents. When will they make a final decision on whether to go ahead or not?”

“After they talk to you.”

“What?” I almost dropped the paper plates and plastic forks I was carrying.

“They want to talk to you first,” he explained. “I told them that you had known Tom, that you thought Randolph Talbot was being set up, that you knew a lot more than anyone else about the case. I also said that you had saved my life and I trusted you. All the basic stuff, except that you were going to be my new girlfriend. I thought I better ask you that first.”

I ignored his last comment. “That explains it,” I said.

“Explains what?”

“Why their lawyer is so willing to let me paw through his evidence drawer. Ingram knows I’m going to meet with your parents and he wants to convince me of Talbot’s guilt before I do.”

“Could be. Is that good or bad?” Burly stared at me, listening intently. I noticed that he was wearing a coarse black cotton shirt that set off his pale coloring and dark eyes. Oh, mama. He had a beautiful mouth. My mind began to wander. What if he actually had played the director’s cut of ‘Coming Home’ backward and forward? I mean, if he couldn’t do the rumba, chances were good he had learned to play the congas pretty well.

“Casey?” he prompted.

I jumped, nearly spilling the rice. “What?”

“Is that good or bad that Ingram’s letting you see the evidence?”

“It’s great,” I explained. “I have been desperately searching for a lead on this thing. Ingram may think his evidence proves Talbot is the killer, but I think it’s more likely that the evidence will point me toward whoever is setting him up.”

“How?” Burly asked.

“Either by the wording used or the method. Who knows? I’ll comb through the files carefully. Just not for the reason Ingram thinks.”

Burly nodded. He liked it. “My parents have asked their whole church to pray for them, to guide them toward the right decision. So, your advice is right up there with God’s.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “I didn’t know multi-million-dollar lawsuits qualified for God’s personal attention. Aren’t people supposed to pray for a cure for cancer or that
their precious son walks again or something?”

He stared at me, silent, and I suddenly realized what I had just said.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I forgot. That was a poor choice of—”

“Forget it,” he said firmly. “Or try to forget it. And remember, we agreed, no more apologies.”

“Okay,” I said, for once in my life willing to acquiesce to anything, so long as my big mouth grew a more sensit sa m

“When do they want to meet me?” I asked, conscious that Burly was watching me eat. I moderated my usual shovelful of food to a dainty bite, then decided what the hell and attacked the chicken kurma with gusto.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “They want to meet you at the lawyer’s office in early afternoon.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll be there anyway. I’ll have just enough time to go through the files, then run and get something respectable to wear before they show up.”

“Just be yourself,” Burly assured me. “That will be enough.”

“Funny,” I told him. “I have another friend who always tells me that.”

“Smart friend,” Burly said.

We ate in silence for a few minutes and I found it surprisingly restful, no desperate babbling to fill in the quiet, no inane questions, no discussions of astrological signs or favorite sports teams.

When we were done, Burly asked me if I had found out anything new about Tom’s death. I explained what had happened with Jake Talbot, but confessed that I wasn’t sure it was related. Burly didn’t even know that a warrant had been issued for Jake’s arrest.

“What happened?” he asked incredulously. “Tell me again,”

I described what had happened the night before, all the way to breaking down the door to get at the girl.

“Shit, Casey,” he said, reaching for me. “That Xena princess-warrior stuff kind of turns me on.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his lap, lifting my feet and draping them over one arm of his wheelchair. He looked around at the five pieces of furniture that filled my three rooms. “You know what else I like about you? Your place doesn’t look much like a girl’s place, but it’s you.”

“Moose shit, but good,” I suggested.

He smiled. “Hey, I know that joke.”