White Hot (37 page)
Authors: Sandra Brown
Tags: #Contemporary, #Crime, #Suspense, #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Mystery & Detective, #Family Life
“I have no doubt that’s what happened, Chris. He just arrived earlier than you expected. He wanted to get the jump on you because he didn’t trust you. Justifiably. Even Watkins was smart enough to realize that you weren’t about to hand over money and let him walk away from that last meeting. He signed his own death warrant the minute he agreed to kill Danny.”
“Please, Beck. Let’s not get sentimental over Slap. A double cross was his plan from the very beginning. Why do you think he left that matchbook in the cabin?”
Beck mentally stepped back from himself and considered his options. He could leave now. Simply turn around and walk out. Go to Sayre. Live out the rest of his days loving her, and to hell with Chris and Huff, their treachery and corruption, to hell with their stinking, maiming, life-taking foundry.
He was so damn weary of the struggle and the pretense. He longed to throw off this mantle of responsibility, to forget he ever knew the Hoyles and let the devil take them—if he would have them. That was what he
wanted
to do.
Or he could stay and do what he had
committed
to do.
As appealing as the former option was, the latter was preordained.
“Slap Watkins didn’t plant the matchbook in the cabin, Chris.” He held Chris’s stare for several seconds, before adding, “I did.”
George Robson’s eyes stung from unmanly tears. He wanted to weep with a mix of frustration and fear. When he left the building, the heat slammed into him, making him feel even weaker and more dizzy. Shaken to the core, he stumbled to the exterior wall and vomited bile into the dry weeds growing there. Spasms racked him while the sun beat down on his sweating back.
When he realized how close he’d come to committing a deadly sin, when he recognized how disappointed he was that he’d failed, he was assailed with another bout of nausea.
His stomach finally emptied, and the dry spasms stopped. He wiped his mouth with a damp handkerchief that he took from his rear pants pocket. He blotted his perspiring palms and mopped his neck.
He had planned to kill Chris. He had figured it out in his mind, how he would make it look like an accident. He had weakened that belt so it might break as soon as the machine was restarted, causing it to fly off, which might have resulted in a terrible death to whoever was inspecting it while it was running. But the belt had held.
In hindsight, he thanked God it had. He thanked God that even in that he’d been inept.
Had he succeeded, had he been found out and sent to death row, he would have lost Lila anyway. At least now he had another chance to make her happy. He had more time with her. If she left him for Chris, or someone equally charming, next month, or a year from now, well, at least she would be his in the meantime.
Yes, he thanked God for averting a disaster.
“Mr. Robson?”
He pushed away from where he’d been leaning against the wall and blinked at Sayre Hoyle, who looked out of breath and shaken. “Have you seen Beck Merchant?”
“Uh, yes. He’s…he’s here.”
“In his office?”
“On the shop floor with Chris.”
She didn’t even thank him but pulled open the door and disappeared inside.
George hurried to his car. He was anxious to get home, where Lila was waiting for him.
“I planted the matchbook in the cabin,” Beck repeated.
Chris looked at him like he was waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, his expression changed. His features hardened like setting concrete. “My, my. That’s quite a bombshell. Why would you do that, Beck?”
“Because I knew you did it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Stop splitting hairs. If not for you, Danny would be alive. I was afraid you’d get away with it unless I pointed the sheriff in the right direction. The moment Deputy Scott questioned how Danny had pulled the trigger, I was ninety-nine percent sure you had killed him. Add another half of a percent to that when you suggested a frame-up and named Slap Watkins.
“The only nagging question was your motive. You didn’t seem to hate Danny. If anything you were indifferent toward him. As for Huff’s affections, there was no contest as to who was the favored son, who would assume control of the foundry when he died. So what threat did Danny represent to you? Why did he have to die?
“I didn’t know the answer until I learned about his engagement. His fiancée had told Sayre that Danny was wrestling with a moral issue. Then I had it. Your motive was the Iverson case. Danny knew where the body was buried—literally. And he was going to tell.”
Chris took a deep breath and released it slowly. “It was the single time in his life that Danny wouldn’t back down. He insisted on making a public confession. Huff and I couldn’t let that happen. He told me to take care of it.”
“So you took care of it.”
Chris spread his arms as though Beck’s statement summed it up. “If Iverson’s body had been disinterred, it would have raised all sorts of pesky questions and added to the charges, namely obstruction of justice. Nasty stuff all the way around.”
“You won’t escape justice this time.”
“But, you see, Beck,” he said, smiling pleasantly, “I have.”
“Not yet.”
“Are you out to get me? Why? Because of Iverson?”
Beck laughed. “Ah, Chris, here’s the zinger. You Hoyles are so damn arrogant it makes you gullible. You never once questioned my showing up the night your trial ended in a hung jury. You took me in, set me up with a sweet position in your company, made me one of the family. And that was right where I wanted to be, ensconced in the bosom of the family, a trusted ally and confidant.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed to slits as he asked softly, “Who are you?”
“You know who I am. You knew me from college.” Beck flashed a grin. “That wasn’t happenstance, either. I attended LSU because that’s where you attended. I pledged the fraternity because it was your fraternity. I put myself in your path, brought myself to your attention, so that when the time came for me to join Hoyle Enterprises, I’d be a shoo-in. And it worked. Better than I anticipated. I had instant credibility. You accepted me without a blink, and so did Huff.”
“You’re union, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“A state prosecutor? FBI maybe.”
“Nothing that grandiose.”
“Then who the fuck—”
“I’m Beck Merchant. But Merchant was my stepfather’s name. He adopted me when he married my widowed mother. I took his name because, even as a boy ten or twelve years old, I was plotting your downfall, and I knew that my real name would be a tip-off.”
“I can hardly wait,” Chris said caustically. “What’s your real name?”
“Hallser.”
Chris gave a start, then nodded as though commending Beck for his cleverness. “That’s certainly enlightening.”
“Sonnie Hallser was my father.”
“Then it’s really Huff you want revenge on, not me.”
“It goes deeper than revenge, Chris. I want you and everything you represent destroyed.”
Chris shook his head, and in a tone that bespoke pity, he said, “It’ll never happen.”
“It’s already begun. Hoyle Enterprises has been shut down.”
“Are you in cahoots with Charles Nielson?”
“I
am
Charles Nielson. Or rather, there is no Charles Nielson. He’s just a name on a letterhead, the subject of a few press releases that I wrote and distributed myself. His name is an anagram of my dad’s name with his middle initial, C.”
“Clever boy.”
“I’ve waited years for this day, Chris. My father’s life was cut short by decades. And why? Because he stood in Huff’s way, so Huff eliminated him. Everyone knew it. But Huff got away with it. The same as you did with Iverson. Well, guess what, Chris?” he said, lowering his voice to a menacing whisper. “It’s over.”
“What are you going to do, Beck? Tattle on me? You’re our lawyer. You can’t tell a thing I’ve said to you or you’ll be disbarred.”
“Good try, but the fact is, I don’t care if I’m disbarred. I never wanted to practice law and only did so in order to get close to you and be privy to your dirty secrets. I’ll be bad-mouthed, called a traitor and worse, but I can live with that. Representing you and Huff, I’ve grown used to people thinking I’m shit. It’ll be nothing new.”
“You’ve covered all the bases.”
“Yes.”
“Is this where I’m supposed to faint or something?”
Beck knew Chris well enough to recognize his flippancy as a bluff. He was sweating, and not just figuratively. “Huff will atone for my father. You learned from him, and he coached you well because you even exceed his depravity. You killed your own brother. And for that you’re going down, Chris.”
Chris’s gaze moved beyond him. “It’s about time you joined us, Huff.”
Beck slowly turned around to confront the man who had been his adversary for almost as long as he could remember. If ever, during all those years, his resolve had weakened, he needed only to remind himself that he never got to tell his father good-bye. Neither he nor his mother even got to see him in his casket. It would be too gruesome a sight, the funeral director had told her.
Because of this man’s greed, his mother had been widowed, he had been orphaned, and his dad had been dissected. As Beck faced him now, animosity coiled inside him as sharp and deadly as razor wire.
“Beck and I have been having the most interesting conversation,” Chris said.
“I heard.”
Apparently he had. His face was flushed. His eyes were burning like coals. In the hand held stiffly at his side he was clutching the pistol. His voice sounded like steel against a whetstone.
“I heard,” he repeated as he raised his arm and extended the pistol straight out in front of him.
Defensively Beck put up his hands. “Huff, no!”
But Huff pulled the trigger anyway.
In the vastness the .357 sounded like a cannon. The reverberation lasted several seconds, and Beck realized that it was followed by another noise, a terrible racket, really—the conveyor restarting.
Huff dropped the pistol. It fell heavily from his hand and landed on the concrete floor. Then he shoved Beck aside and, releasing a feral wail, rushed past him. Beck turned in time to see Chris sliding to the floor in front of the conveyor. A chunk of metal was stuck in his neck. The wound was gushing blood.
Huff’s knees hit the floor directly in front of Chris, and he pressed his hands against the wound. As the color rapidly drained from Chris’s face, he stared at Huff with profound bewilderment.
Beck peeled his shirt over his head and wadded it into a ball, then pried Huff’s frantic hands away from the wound and tried in vain to staunch the fountain of blood.
Sayre materialized beside him. “Oh my God!”
“Call nine-one-one,” Beck told her tersely, and felt her yank his phone off his belt.
Huff clasped Chris’s head between his hands and shook it hard. “Why’d you do it? You had Danny murdered? Son, why?
Why?
”
“You shot at me?” A horrible gurgling sound issued from Chris’s throat and along with it a geyser of blood that showered his father’s face. “You said Danny had to be stopped, Huff. You said…take care of it.”
Huff threw back his head and howled like a wounded animal. He yanked Chris forward and held his head against his chest, wrapping his arms around him tightly, protectively. “Danny was your brother. Your
brother.
” He was sobbing, keening, rocking back and forth, making Chris’s arms flop against the gritty shop floor, as lifeless as a rag doll’s. “How could you do it, Son? How?”
Chris wheezed wetly. “You told me to take care of it.” His words were barely audible now, mere filaments of sound, but they conveyed his confusion and incredulity over Huff’s disapproval.
Huff bent his head down and placed his lips against Chris’s temple. On Huff’s face, Chris’s blood mingled with the tears. “I loved you best. You know that. But Danny was my son, too.” He moaned in anguish. “He was my flesh and blood. He was my daddy’s flesh and blood. And you killed him. Why, Chris? Why?”
Beck looked up at Sayre, who had made the emergency call and was standing by helplessly just as he was. When their eyes met, he saw his own thoughts mirrored in hers. Chris had only done what he had learned to do by Huff’s example.
Huff continued that heartrending lament for what seemed to Beck like hours while Chris’s blood drained from his body to form a lake around them. Huff held his favored son against his chest and rocked him like an infant. He stroked his hair and kissed his cheeks, unmindful of smearing blood and tears and mucus over Chris’s still face. He told him again and again that he loved him more than life and repeated a thousand times that chastising refrain, “But, Son, how could you kill your own brother?”
Eventually an ambulance arrived. When the EMTs tried to separate Huff from Chris, he fought them like a madman. Covered with Chris’s gore and the sweat of his own torment, he screamed until he was hoarse that no one would take away his firstborn…who was long past hearing.
“Y
ou look exhausted.”
“Then looks aren’t deceiving,” Beck replied as he came up the steps of his gallery, where Sayre and Frito had been waiting on him. “It was a grueling six hours.”
That was how long it had been since Chris had been pronounced DOA at the parish hospital and Huff had been taken into custody. He was being held for manslaughter, since his firing the pistol at Chris had caused the accident.
Huff was incapable of making a decision, so Beck, acting on his behalf, immediately called the reputable defense attorney previously retained by Chris. He’d agreed to represent Huff instead and had arrived in Destiny as soon as his jazzed-up Lexus could get him there.
An assistant prosecutor from the DA’s office had been summoned by Wayne Scott to question Sayre and Beck. They had told their stories several times. Beck’s was by far the most revealing. He’d omitted nothing, explaining in detail how their overheard conversation had led to Chris’s demise.
“I’ve no doubt Huff was coming to shoot me for my deception,” he’d told the ADA. “I knew that in order to beat them, I had to think like them, act like them. I had to become one of them.”
Sayre had listened with mounting dismay. Out of love for his father and his sense of duty toward him, Beck had become the reviled advocate for the Hoyles.
“But when he heard Chris admit to conspiring to have Danny killed, I guess he just lost it. He fired the pistol out of rage. His shot missed. But as Chris recoiled from disbelief, his arms windmilled. He hit the unguarded start switch on the conveyor. The faulty drive belt flew apart. It scattered pieces of metal like shrapnel. One of them found Chris.”
Eventually Sayre had been excused from the proceedings, but Beck was asked to stay and give his account one more time. He was reminded that he was violating attorney-client privilege and what that would mean to his legal career. He talked anyway.
Once excused, Sayre wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Unwilling to return to the house, which was no longer her home, or to the dreary motel, she had followed her instinct and come here to wait for Beck’s return.
Now he sat down in the glider and scratched a happy Frito behind both ears. “We should all have his life,” Beck remarked. “Each day is a new day. Whatever happened yesterday is forgotten, and he doesn’t worry about tomorrow.”
“What will happen tomorrow?”
“Huff will be arraigned. You and I will probably be deposed. We’ll be witnesses for the prosecution at his trial.”
“I gathered that.”
“Unless he pleads guilty.”
“Do you think he will?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. He told them where they could find Iverson’s remains. Red Harper admitted his complicity. He’s got a lot to answer for, too. If he lives long enough.”
Beck leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees, tiredly massaging his eye sockets with his fingers. “Huff’s a broken man, Sayre. Before I left, I went back to the jail cell to check on him.”
“How did he react to seeing you?”
“He didn’t. He was lying on the cot in the fetal position, crying his heart out. Huff Hoyle, reduced to that.” He spoke softly and sadly. “I think he would have forgiven Chris anything except killing one of his own. If Chris had shot the president, Huff would have covered for him, protected him with his last breath. But to kill his own brother? Huff couldn’t allow that. It was incomprehensible to him. It violated his intense sense of family.”
“I wonder where that came from,” Sayre said. “It’s not like he grew up surrounded by a slew of kinfolk. He never mentioned his parents other than to say that both had died when he was young.”
Beck reflected on it for several moments, then said, “Late one night, Chris was out, Huff and I were alone, and he’d consumed a lot of bourbon. He was rambling drunkenly, but he said something about when his daddy died. And he didn’t call him Father, he called him Daddy. He said, ‘The bastards got his name wrong.’ ”
“Who was he talking about?”
“He didn’t elaborate. That’s all he said. It could have been a random, meaningless statement. Or very profound.”
She gazed out across the lawn and sighed. “When I think what it cost him to pull that trigger…. He was trying to destroy what he loved most.”
“Chris was also his last hope of a grandchild to carry on his name. He destroyed all chance of that, too. But I don’t pity him, Sayre. He made Chris into what he was. He cultivated him.”
“And he killed my baby. I guess he didn’t think of it as one of his own.”
Beck reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
They went inside. She had picked up an order of fried chicken on her way there. Together they began to put food and place settings on the table, dodging Frito, who tracked their footsteps as though afraid they soon would leave him alone again.
“I spoke to Luce Daly,” she said. “Clark will be released from the hospital tomorrow or the next day. His coworkers have asked him to represent them to the OSHA inspectors. He won’t be able to do much until he makes a full recovery, but this vote of confidence should speed that. His spirits are also raised by knowing that the men who attacked him are in jail. Luce thanks you for keeping your word to her about that.”
“Reporting them to Wayne Scott was the least I could do.”
“I also called Jessica De Blance and told her what had happened today. I beat the newscasts by only a half hour, and she thanked me for letting her know before she learned about it through the media. She’s very kind, Beck. When I owned up to Danny’s telephone calls to me, she urged me not to dwell on it. She said Danny wouldn’t want me to bear any guilt over that. She also said her prayers were with all of us, including Chris. I’m glad Danny knew that kind of forgiving love, even for a little while.”
“Me, too.”
“I think you would enjoy meeting Jessica.”
“She may not enjoy meeting me,” he said. “I’m still the enemy to most of the people around here.”
“You could identify yourself as Charles Nielson.”
“No, he needs to fade back into the woodwork from which he came. Public attention is fleeting. In a few months, no one will remember him.”
“What about the men and women who picketed? And the Pauliks.”
“Nielson will refer them to another labor lawyer. A better one.”
“What will you do?”
“What’s in my future, you mean? That’s up to you, Sayre. For all practical purposes, Hoyle Enterprises is yours now. I work for you. What do you want me to do?”
“Can you grant me power of attorney?”
“With Huff in the condition he’s in, that won’t be a problem.”
“Once that’s done and I’m making all the decisions, I want you to put Hoyle Enterprises on the market. I don’t want it, but I can’t just shut it down and leave this town without an economy. Once OSHA’s demands are met, sell it to a responsible company. Top-notch in terms of safety and labor relations, or it’s no sale.”
“I understand and agree. I have some excellent prospects. Companies that have approached me. I always told them Huff would never sell. They’ll be glad to know otherwise.”
“For as long as the plant is closed for the OSHA inspection, I want the employees to receive full pay.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll stay on until everything’s resolved.”
“And then?”
“Consulting, maybe. I could be a knowledgeable liaison between labor and management for large operations like Hoyle. God knows I’ve had the experience, and I’m well acquainted with both sides of the coin.”
They had believed they were hungry, but when they began to eat, they discovered they had little appetite. Sayre picked at a buttered biscuit. “You told me your mother was alive. Is she?”
“Very much so.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“You did. In Charles Nielson’s office.”
“Brenda?” she exclaimed.
“When I walked in and saw you there, it threw me completely, but Mom didn’t miss a beat.”
“No, she didn’t. I never would have guessed.”
“She thought you were gorgeous. Chic. Smart. Let’s see…I can’t remember all the adjectives, but she gave you a glowing review. Remember when you came out of the building and I was supposedly trying to track down Nielson in Dayton?”
“Cincinnati.”
“Well, I was actually talking to her. She was giving me an earful about how rude I’d been to you.”
“She must have been frantic yesterday after you were beaten. No wonder she called here to inquire about you on Mr. Nielson’s behalf.”
“I talked to her while I was driving home just now. Told her what had happened today. We’ve been preoccupied with toppling the Hoyles for more than two decades. She’s very relieved that it’s finally over. Even more relieved that I survived. She always feared that Chris or Huff was going to discover who I was and that I’d disappear like Gene Iverson or get
accidentally
killed like my father.”
“What about Mr. Merchant?”
“He died several years ago. He was a decent man. A widower with no children. He was crazy about my mother and raised me like his own son. I was fortunate to have two good fathers.”
She stood up and began to clear the table. “Yes, you were. I didn’t have
one.
” She set what she was carrying on the counter and returned to the table to get more.
Beck clasped her around the waist and pulled her between his legs. “When I’m done here, after I’ve tendered my resignation, I’ll be looking for a place to relocate, set up my consulting firm.”
“Any ideas about where?”
“I was hoping you might have a suggestion.” He searched her eyes meaningfully.
“I do know a lovely city,” she said. “Great parks. Good food. The weather can be dicey, but Frito wouldn’t mind a little fog, would he?”
“I think he’d love it. I know I would. As long as I could come back here every so often and have a bowl or two of gumbo.”
“Want to know a secret? I have it shipped to me frozen.”
“No!”
“Yes.” She ran her fingers through his hair, but her affectionate smile faltered. “We’ve only known each other for two weeks, Beck. And it’s been a rather tumultuous two weeks.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Yes. So isn’t it too early for us to be making permanent plans along these lines?”
“Possibly,” he said. “To be fair to ourselves, maybe we should give it more time, see how things go, before making any kind of commitment.”
“I think so.”
“How much time do you need?”
She glanced at the clock. “Till half past?”
He smiled, then laughed softly. “I don’t need nearly that long.” He encircled her waist, buried his face between her breasts, and sighed heavily. “Destroying the Hoyles has been my driving force to the exclusion of everything else. Since my dad was killed, I didn’t make a single decision that didn’t relate to bringing this day about. But now that it’s done…I’m just so tired of it all, Sayre.”
“I’ve grown tired of being angry, too. I don’t even feel much satisfaction over Huff’s being broken. I mean, I’m glad he’s finally having to account for his crimes, but he’s a tragic figure. There’s no joy over it, is there?”
“No. Not joy. Peace perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
He splayed his hand over her abdomen and rubbed it gently. “Of all the things he did, I hate most what he did to you.”
She laid her hand over his, stilling it. “I’m a Hoyle, Beck. We’re not always truthful, and we can be cruelly manipulative.”
He raised his head and looked up at her.
“I lied to Huff. It was a cheap shot, admittedly, but I was irate and wanted to pierce him to his soul.” Lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she said, “Dr. Caroe didn’t do any permanent damage.”
His eyes dropped to her middle, then snapped back to hers. “You can have a child?”
“There’s no physical reason I can’t. And I’m thinking that maybe…maybe I’ll tell Huff.”
He came to his feet slowly and pulled her to him. “That’s what separated you from them, Sayre. They had no mercy. You do. I saw that, and loved you for it.”
“No, Beck,” she said, laying her cheek against his chest. “That’s what I saw in you.”