Jace: The Pride of the Double Deuce (8 page)

“The police are saying that whoever it was knew just what he was doing. The mail had been stopped and forwarded to a post office box in another state. The power had been shut off two weeks ago, and so had the phones. Who knows how much longer they would have been undiscovered had you not gone to Palmer and had it purchased for back taxes through his firm?” Jace nodded at Mason. All true, but it didn’t make it any better. “Palmer has brought in a crew of vets. You were right about the cattle. They need to be put down.”

Jace stared out at the fields and noticed that some of the cattle had already died. The flies were swarming around their bloated bodies like they had the Carters’. Jace turned his back to the morbid scene. Mason didn’t say anything for several minutes, and Jace, for once, didn’t feel the need to fill out the silence.

“Burn it.” Jace nodded when Mason finally spoke. “Not just the barns and the outbuildings, but the house as well. Burn it all and start fresh. Don’t build the house in the same place, but closer to ours. Put the barn closer to the road. Do it all differently.”

“I don’t have the money for that.” Mason nodded but didn’t say anything. “This is not what I had planned when I wanted this place. I…Holly and I talked a lot last night about how we were going to make it our home. Fuck.”

“You’ll get it.” Palmer came out with Ed and asked to speak to them both. “I’m not sure what you need me for, but I got nowhere to be so long as Jace needs me.”

“The insurance is going to pay for everything.” Jace asked Palmer what insurance. “When I purchased this place, I put a bond and a policy in place, as I do with everything I buy. The house and the grounds, all of it, is covered. You’ll be fine once we get this business with the police taken care of.”

It was five hours before the bodies were removed from the house. Tape was put up around it for now, the police told him and Holly, but the rest of the farm they could take care of. Jace nodded and held onto Holly as she sobbed. Jace had no idea where to even begin. Twenty minutes later there were forty trucks and cars on their lawn, and men with rifles.

It took them nearly two hours to take care of the herd. Most of them were starved, and had fallen and were no longer able to get up due to weakness or injury. A few of them, quite a few in fact, were dead by the time they’d come to help. Jace stared at the five calves that had never stood a chance.

“Jace?” He didn’t turn to look at his brother Darin, but kept staring at the little guys that had been dead for a few days. “Jace, there’s a man here to see you. He said that it’s about the barns.”

Jace came out into the bright light and had to shield his face for a few seconds. He hadn’t realized he’d been inside for so long. When the man took a step toward him, Jace took one back. The fucker was huge.

“I’m here to see what you plan to do with the farm.” Jace asked him what he meant. “The barns, the house. What do you plan to do with it all?”

“Why?” Ed came to stand next to him and the guy nodded in his direction but looked at him. Jace was good at waiting people out and didn’t have any problem with this man.

“Would you consider selling me the wood? I heard that you were burning it. I was wondering if you’d sell me the wood.” Jace looked around at the buildings, then back at the man. “I have a business that uses old barn siding. I know that what happened here is bad, but no one will ever know that when I repurpose it. I use it in houses and sell it to frame shops to use. There’s a big business for this sort of thing.” He handed him a card.

“Arcades Lumbers?” The man nodded and smiled. “You’re telling me that you’re Paul Arcades? And you want my old barn siding?”

“I am and I do. I’ll pay you prime for it. There’s a lot here and I can have it gone in…less than two weeks. All you have to take care of after that is the joist and roof. I will take the slate roof off the big barn, but the rest I have no use for.” Paul put out his hand. “I’m as good as my word if you tell me I can buy it off you.”

“This is my lawyer.” He pointed to Ed, who nodded. Jace actually had no idea whether or not Ed would be his attorney, but he stepped in when he needed it. “You talk to him, and if you two can come up with a good deal, then I’ll talk to my…my wife.”

After he stepped away, he went to find Holly. Zach told him that she’d gone home with Aunt Georgie. Jace moved along the pits that were being dug for the cattle and found Palmer.

“I need a house. I have no idea how long this will take to get completed, but they said I can have the rest of the farm. Does your deal still stand?” Palmer said it did and put out his hand. Jace took it. “I need to buy a diamond for Holly. I don’t suppose you could lend me the money for that?”

“I can do you one better.” He pulled a small box from his jacket pocket and handed it to him. “It was her mother’s. I meant to give it to you this morning when we talked. It’s yours to use should you wish, or you can go in town and buy her a new one. But I’d be really pleased if you gave her that one.”

The ring was wide and made of platinum. The diamond wasn’t clear as he’d had in mind, but a beautiful shade of blue. The surrounding diamonds were in varying colors of ice white and blues. It would have been the ring he’d have picked out for her had he the funds. He looked at Palmer.

“I couldn’t afford a real ring when we were first married. Later when I made my first foray into my own businesses, I was able to get her that. She wore the first one on her other hand and had asked to be buried with it. She said to give this one to Holly.”

Nodding, he put it in his pocket. He was going to propose to Holly as soon as he saw her again. Then they were going to decide where to put their new home and find out whether or not they’d have a pot to piss in when this was all done. Jace had never been so terrified in his entire life. Not even the bear incident had scared him this much.

Chapter 8

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nigel sat at the long table with his lawyer on the other side of him. He wasn’t telling him the truth, that was what was going on. “You need to just tell me what I have to pay to get back to work. The bank is not going to be run correctly with me gone.”

“You’re not listening to me. I’m trying to tell you that you’re broke. As in you have nothing at all. The Internal Revenue Service took your home, your cars, and even your boat. There is no account in the Caymans. Why on earth did you leave all your passwords on your computer with the icon
passwords
?” Jamison handed him a sheet of paper that appeared to be a print out of his accounts and passwords. “You literally gave them full access to everything you took.”

“How the hell else was I supposed to remember them all? I had the file password protected. How the hell did they get past my security on that? And what are they doing with my personal computer anyway?” Jamison just leaned back and shook his head. “You never said what it was going to cost to get me out of here either.”

“You’re not getting out of here. You are being investigated for tax fraud, grand theft, and too many other things for me to list them for you since you can no longer afford to pay me.” Jamison stood up, and he nearly did too, but he was locked to the chair like an animal. “I’m going to recommend you get a court-appointed attorney. My firm has decided that you are no longer a viable customer for us.”

“Sit down and tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do.” But the man left him there, and when the officer who had ushered him in there came to get him, Nigel threw a fit. “Get that man back here right now. I have things we need to discuss. You heard me, get him now!”

The officer, Benson his name badge said, only told him to stand up. When the cuffs were taken from the table, Nigel was jerked from the table and pulled down the hall. This was the most ridiculous thing that he’d ever had happen to him, he told the man. Wait until the attorneys heard about this. He told the man who was pulling him along that everyone was going to hear about what kind of treatment he’d been receiving, as well as the food he’d been served.

Nigel waited until he was alone before he leaned back on his bed. Smiling, he thought about everything they’d found as well as what else they’d find before he was finished with them all. The passwords and the money—very little of it when he thought of how much he really had hidden away—were all going according to his plan. The plan for them to think he was really insane.

Nigel had known that eventually he’d be caught. He’d have been really stupid if he thought that no one would notice how he was running the bank, taking properties that had no other reason for being controlled by him other than the fact that he wanted them. And when that Snow woman started to snoop around, Nigel knew it was time to get out of the banking business and on to greener pastures, so to speak.

“Stupid cunt.” He hated the Snows almost as much as he did the Douglas family. They were a nosey group, and he had wanted them out since the first day their parents had stepped into his bank and bought the land that he’d coveted for so long. After that, he’d made it his business to make them fail. The crash of the plane should have been the end of it, but then Georgina had stepped in and taken over.

Nigel had even tried to date the woman to get what he’d wanted. But that had been a disaster right from the start. Those boys had taken one look at him and had made his life a living hell every time he went there. That was probably the deciding factor in taking the ranch from them his style.

He smiled when he thought of the passwords he’d crafted, and the accounts he’d set up that were filled with money. What he really had, what no one would ever find, was something that he was going to live very nicely on for a good long time. There were also the small notes he’d left for himself that he had laughed over daily when he hung them around the house, just on the off chance that he would be taken out in cuffs. Take out the trash and dispose of the bodies was one such note. One that he had saved said he was to shoot his foot so he could take an extra few days off with pay. Like he’d ever do something like that. Then there were the things he’d set in his refrigerator.

Nigel had been setting up this fail for a long time. The only thing that he’d not counted on was the Carter family. Frowning, he closed his eyes and thought about how badly that had gone.

He’d gone there to talk to Connie and his wife Sue about the foreclosure that was imminent. But as soon as he walked in, he knew that they’d been talking to someone else. The files on the table waiting for him had told him that he was in deep shit.

“We’ve been going over our records and the signatures on some of the billings that you said we owed. It’s not us. And we have an attorney that is going to look deeper into this.” Connie asked him to have a seat as he continued. “We’ve sold out too. The farm and all the land, we’ve sold it to another company that gave us a good deal. And the Douglases are going to buy our cattle. We’re done with you.”

“You should have come to me about this.” He picked up the first sheet of paper and saw the name scrawled across the bottom. It was his signature but signed off as Connie Carter. He’d studied the man’s writing for days before he’d had the bills forged. “Had you come to me, things would have gone a good deal better for you.”

He shot Connie first, right between the eyes, and nearly smiled when he realized how good a shot he’d been. Then Sue came into the room screaming, and he’d shot her too. Nigel was wrapping the bodies up in sheets he’d found in the laundry room when the oldest boy came in.

He’d been a little more difficult to get a clean shot on. The kid was trying to kill him, and Nigel had to fire three times before he got him to die. The stupid cock sucker had hit him several times with his big beefy fists before Nigel had finally gotten one in the boy’s chest. The last kid, no more than about sixteen, had come in the room and just stood there until he’d tried to take him out too. After emptying the gun in the kid, finally injuring him so badly that Nigel knew he wasn’t long for this world, he tossed him in the basement with the rest of them. Fuck it, he’d thought, this was more work than he wanted to mess with.

Having the power shut off and the mail transferred to a post office a few hundred miles away finished the job. He was all set to go ahead with the foreclosure when he realized that he had no idea who he had to get in touch with to reclaim his property. He’d stormed home, pissed off and covered in mud and mire, when he decided that he’d just wait it out.

Nigel wondered how much longer it would be before anyone decided to check up on the family. Laughing to himself, he knew that by now things were going to be pretty nasty in the house. And worse yet, the cattle, those nasty four-legged creatures that were only good for shoes and steaks, would be dead about now too.

But the best part of this whole thing was that he was going to get out of this with just a slap on the wrist, no jail time, and all his beautiful money stashed away on his own little island. Nigel was thrilled beyond words that he’d watched the special on the criminally insane a few years ago. It had been the greatest source of information he’d ever seen.

He heard someone coming down the hall toward his cell and pulled his blanket of insanity around him. Smiling to himself, he waited for whoever it was to come and look in and he’d be ready. What he didn’t expect or know how to react to was seeing Ed Clarke there.

“Hello, Nigel. Are you enjoying your lovely stay?” He didn’t have an answer ready for him…Nigel was that shocked. “No matter. You’ll be trading up soon enough. I came by to tell you that the bodies of the Carters were found yesterday. The police were called in and the property is being taken care of. Too bad about the herd. That was most unkind of you to leave them to die like that.”

“What are you talking about? The Carter family left town when I was ready to take their farm for nonpayment. And if the cattle starved, it certainly had nothing to do with me.” He realized his mistake the moment that Ed laughed. “What are you doing here? Get away before I tell my attorney.”

“You don’t have one as of an hour ago. We in the lawyer business make it our priority to find these sorts of things out. As for starving the cattle, I’m sure you’re aware that I never told you how they’d died, but that they were dead.”

Nigel didn’t say a word, but his mind was working overtime. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Who the hell would Ed tell just to get him into trouble? When Ed laughed again, Nigel asked him what was so funny.

“You are. When you shot young Seth and tossed him in that hole, you should have made sure that he wasn’t able to write anything down. Shame that we had to find him too late, but he left the police enough information to hang your ass.” Nigel looked down the hall when he heard a group of people coming. He started to stand up but realized that his legs wouldn’t hold him.

“Mr. Nigel Phillip Rogers, you’re under arrest for the murder of Conrad and Susan Carter, and their children Patrick and Seth Carter. You have the right to an—”

“This is just ludicrous. I have done nothing wrong. I demand that you let me out of here this minute.” He realized that he was afraid. Murder was a good deal harder to get away with than robbing a bank. “What do you mean, the murder of those lovely people? I never saw them until they left.”

The cell was opened and two men came in. They told him to stand up and Nigel shook his head. There was no way he was going to help them. When the man outside the cell told him he’d better cooperate, that he was being transferred out, Nigel looked at Ed.

“You have to help me. I need a good lawyer and you’re the best I know.” Ed laughed harder. “I have money. Lots of it. I’ll give you what you need to keep me out of prison.”

“You mean the account that was in Italy?” Nigel nearly collapsed when Ed asked him. “I’m sorry, that was found just after the bodies of the Carter family were found. That Holly Snow, she can sniff out something better than anyone I know.”

“I’m going to kill her. Do you hear me? Fucking kill her.” He was being dragged down the hall when he finally managed to get away. He was nearly to Ed again when he was thrown to the floor and held there. “You have to help me. Please, you are the only one I can trust.”

“Okay.” Ed nodded, and Nigel felt his relief all the way to his toes. Then Ed turned to the men holding Nigel. “He told me that he knew that the cattle would starve to death.”

Nigel was still cursing everyone he knew when he was put in the back of the van just outside the jailhouse. There were perhaps a hundred people there to see him off, and not one of them looked like he wanted to be near them without the cops. Most of them were holding up signs telling him to rot in hell, and a couple called him a murderer. Nigel was thinking about how fucked he was when the man sitting across from him growled low.

“Fuck off, buddy. I’m not going to put up with your shit any more than anyone else would.” The man growled again, and Nigel kicked out at him. When the man pushed his hoodie back from his face, Nigel stared at him. “No,” was all he said before the man became the biggest wolf he’d ever seen and tore into him.

~~~

Jace hung up the phone and sat down at the table. He’d called in a favor. Not a big one, considering what he’d asked Monty to do, but the man had told him it would be his pleasure. And now Nigel was dead. He looked up at Holly when she entered the kitchen where he’d just taken the call telling him that Nigel was dead.

“Did you sell the siding of the barns to someone?” Jace had to think, then nodded that he had. “Mr. Clarke said that the man was pleased as punch about the deal he’d made. Do you have any idea how much he sold it for?”

“No. I was…whatever it was, we can use it to put furniture in a couple of rooms in the house. Unless you wanted it for something else.” She sat down on his lap and he held her. “I should have asked you first. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. The builders started on the foundation today. Dad said they’d have the house shell finished in a few weeks. There’s a bonus for them if they get it done in two months.” She snuggled up under his chin and nipped at his throat. “I’ll be glad to have our own place. Not that staying with Dad is all that hard, but I still want to live with you.”

He’d forgotten to give her the ring and pulled it from his pocket now. “Your dad said that he loved your mom very much. I never knew her. I asked Mason, and he said he hardly remembered her either.”

“I don’t remember much about her. She had the most incredible hair, blonde and full of the most beautiful curls. And she’d read to me.” She turned on his lap and straddled him. “Why don’t we go out into the woods and you can tie me up again?”

“I was wondering something first.” He pulled the ring from the little box and handed it out to her. “I know that I should be down on one knee, begging you to make me a better man by being my wife, but I don’t think…I’m not really that kind of man. And just being with you makes me want to be the best I can be. But I will ask you this…will you be my wife? To love me for the rest of my days? Tolerate me when I fuck up? Love me when I forget something important? Will you have children with me? Grow really old with me and make me sandwiches when I’m too feeble to have a steak?”

She stared at the ring for a long time before she looked at him. “It’s my mom’s. She wore it all time she was alive. Dad gave it to her.”

“He told me that she wanted you to have it. And when I asked him to borrow enough money to buy you a ring to propose, he said I could use this one. If you’d like something of your own, I can do that too.”