Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (28 page)

“If you say so.”

She snatched the paper back off of the table and thrust it in his direction.  It appeared to be a flyer of some sort. 

“There’s an annual arts festival in October.  Well, this is only the second year, but the town council’s hoping to make it a yearly
event.  Boundary Street is closed to traffic, vendors sell local cuisine, there are painting and pottery demonstrations, quilting, woodworking, etcetera, etcetera.”  She took a breath as she wound down.  “We’re going to set up a couple local authors in the store for a signing and discussion sort of thing.  It’s only a month or so after your next novel comes out, so I wanted to see if you might be interested.”

No.
  It trembled on the tip of his tongue.  He hated talking to groups of people, hated the expectation that he’d be erudite or clever or charming.  He rarely knew what to say.  He just wanted to write the books, damn it. 

But he sighed, knowing what was expected of him in this day and age of relentless self-promotion.
  “Okay.”

“Okay?”

He shot her a frown.  “That’s what I said.”

“Well.  Great.”  She looked nonplussed.  “I just wasn’t expecting you to agree so easily.”

“Trust me.  There was nothing easy about it.  Now come here and let me fluster you again.”

“Wait.”  She avoided his reaching hands.  “Don’t you have any questions, reservations?”

“I already agreed to do it, Red.  No point in talking it to death.”

“But I had a whole list of answers and arguments ready in my head.”

“So save them for some other poor unsuspecting sap.”

Her gaze turned suspicious.  “Are you being so amenable because
we’re sleeping together?”

“No.”  Jesus.  “Why do women have to psychoanalyze every damn thing.  I’m being amenable because if I want to eat, I need to sell books.”

Her brow smoothed.  “Okay.  I…”  She trailed off, looking at the table, and Tucker realized she’d been distracted by the letter from the bank.

Tucker laid the flyer she’d given him on top
of it.

Her cheeks bloomed pink
and she opened her mouth to say something just as Mason banged through the screened door.  “Found them.  Did… oh. Hello, Sarah.  How lovely to see you.”

“Hi Mason.”  She looked at the ring of keys dangling from his finger.  Furrowed her brow at the mix of
brightly-hued plastic and metal.  “It’s nice to see you, too.  We’ve missed you the past few days.”

“Ah…”

Tucker shifted to study his friend.  His enormously charming and glib friend, who was currently gaping like a fish.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen any plates of cookies or scones – or rather their crumbs – lying about the house.   

Mason pulled out an engaging smile.   “I’ve been quite busy, I’m afraid.  Always something to do around here.  Tucker’s a veritable slave driver.”  Mason slipped the key ring discreetly into his pocket.

Because the gesture was meant to protect Tucker’s privacy, Tucker decided not to roll his eyes.

He patted the flyer, looked at Sarah.  “Thanks for dropping this by.” 

“Oh.  Sure.  Thanks for… being amenable.
   I have to get back to work.  Nice to see you, Mason.”

Tucker watched her walk away
.

A
nd wondered how many nights with a woman constituted a regular basis.

THE
First Bank of Lawton was small in size, and big on charm.  Unlike the imposing brick mausoleum his grandfather had erected to serve the banking needs of Sweetwater, it looked like a cracker box that had been dipped in lime sherbet before being set out to dry.

Flowers
abounded, and he liked the artlessness, the way they tumbled over each other in their beds like playful puppies. And – about this, Sarah was right – the yellow stuff spilling out of pots on either side of the door did look pretty damn cheerful. 

The pale blue shutters with pineapple cutouts had Tucker pausing to consider.  Three vertical boards, with
one running horizontally at either end to hold them together.  Most of the shutters on his house had either fallen off before he moved in or were in serious need of replacement.  He could easily replicate these, minus the pineapple cutout.  He might be getting the hang of southern living, but that traditional symbol of hospitality just seemed hypocritical.

“You’re stalling,” Mason said from beside him.

“I’m looking at the shutters.”

“If you’re going to be looking at the shutters much longer, I’m going to go wait beneath that tree.
”  He pointed to a moss-draped live oak, the spreading branches of which curved toward the ground like a graceful, hooped skirt.  “It’s bloody hot.”

“Wimp.”

“Yes, but I will be a wimp who’s in the
shade
.
”

Shaking his head, Tucker climbed
the shallow step onto the porch which wrapped around three sides of the little building.  When he opened the door, the blast of cool air had Mason releasing a ragged sigh.  

“Good afternoon.  May I help you?” said the older woman who stood behind the counter.  With her curling gray hair
, twinkling eyes and the kind of face that he thought of as lived-in, she was Tucker’s image of the grandmother he’d never had. 

“Uh, yeah.  Could I speak with Beatrice?”

She beamed a smile.  “You are.”

“
Oh.  I’m Tucker Pettigrew.  I called yesterday about my mother’s safe deposit box.”

“I remember.  Did you bring the paperwork I asked for?”

“Right here.”  He pulled out an envelope containing his mother’s death certificate and a notarized letter naming him the executor of her estate.

“Looks to be in order,” she said as she peered through the
round glasses perched on her nose.  “You have the key?”

“I do.”

“Well then.  If you gentleman will just follow me.”

She led them past an office where a man was speaking earnestly
with a young couple about mortgage interest rates, through a door into a room lined with metal boxes.  Pushing up her glasses, she located the right number.  And following her lead, Tucker inserted his key.

“One and two,” she said, turning the bank’s key along with his.  When she slid out the drawer, set it on the table, Tucker wanted to tell her to put it back.  He wasn’t one to put much stock in vibes or woo-woo stuff like extrasensory perception, but he had a bad feeling about this.

“Do you need anything else?” Beatrice asked.

“No.  Thank you.”  

“Okay.  I’ll leave you alone, then.  I’ll just be out front if you change your mind.”

She bustled
out the door, closing them in with the box and its contents.

He stood there, staring.

“Would you prefer that I leave as well?”

Tucker glanced up at Mason.  The one person he truly called friend.  “No.” 

They’d weathered a number of ups and downs in each of their personal lives, spent more time an ocean apart than they did together, but since they’d first met on the set of that off-off Broadway play, they’d always had each other’s backs.

Tucker pulled out a chair, gestured Mason into the other.

And with a deep breath for courage, pulled the manila envelope out of the box.

He stared, with utter confusion, at the contents.

“They look like news clippings,” Mason said.

“They are.”  Tucker carefully lifted the top one, an article from the Sweetwater
Gazette, dating just over thirty years ago, regarding a fire which had destroyed the old library.  One man was killed in the blaze– a janitor who’d been working later than usual.  It was his second job, and his car had broken down between there and the library.  Wrong place, wrong time. 

Arson was suspected.

The next clipping was an obituary.  The janitor had left behind a wife and three young sons.

Other articles followed the investigation.  The fire marshal confirm
ed arson.  No suspects at the time.

Yet another
detailed the fact that his grandfather bought the riverfront property on which the library had sat, then donated land as well as construction costs for a new library to be erected more centrally in town.

There was
the groundbreaking ceremony.  And around eight months later, the dedication of the building in memory of Tucker’s grandmother.

“Look at this.”  Mason pointed to the grainy photograph of the event.  Carlton stood next to a grinning woman who held a pair of scissors over a ribbon.  In the backgrou
nd, a tall, dark-haired man – his arm around a petite, pretty blonde holding a young boy – looked on.

“Jesus.”  Tucker brought his hand to his damp brow.
  It was a snapshot into his childhood, a tiny piece of that puzzle he’d been trying to fit together since he’d come back.

“You favor him.”

Tucker looked at the image of his father.  He’d never noticed the resemblance quite so strongly before, probably because every photo his mom had shown him depicted his dad laughing or smiling.  In this picture, his father was watching his own father with a dark frown.

“He looks brassed off.”

Tucker agreed.  “After he eloped with my mom, my grandfather pretty much disowned him.  I thought they’d patched things up fairly well by the time I was born, but maybe not well enough.  Or it could be that he was churned up over the dedication since it involved his mom.  Or hell, maybe he’d just eaten some bad shrimp.  There’s no way to know.”

Beneath the newspaper clippings was a handwritten note.  It was scrawled on a sheet from one of those cutesy notepads that
some women liked to use.  His mom had always had two stuck to their fridge: a running grocery list, and little comments or reminders for him each day.  Seeing it gave him another pang.

Ellie,

So it was a note from his dad.  Tucker’s mother’s name was Elle, and she’d told him that his father was the only person who’d ever called her Ellie and gotten away with it.

Sorry for waiting until you were out to do this, but I knew you’d try to talk me out of it if you were here. 
I know he has the chief in his pocket, but I still have to confront him.  It’s just going to eat at me until I do.   

If it all goes to hell, I promise we’ll take Tucker and get out.

You said you wanted to see New York City, didn’t you?

I love you,

Tuck

Tucker
read the letter three times through.  Then he asked Mason for his take. 

“Well, obviously your father was about to undertake a meeting that your mother deemed either unwise or detrimental.  Particularly if the outcome wou
ld result in them leaving town.  This line.”  He pointed to
he has the chief in his pocket. 
“It seems to hint at… some form of corruption, perhaps.”

“
Likely the Chief of Police.  Or possibly the fire chief, since the bulk of those articles focus on the old library burning down.”  One of Tucker’s inherent skills was outlining a story, and he thought the newspaper clippings were a sort of rough draft for this particular plot.  The letter without the articles wouldn’t mean much.  “My mom didn’t select this stuff at random.”

“
No, I don’t imagine she did.  Do you think your father knew something that could be considered damning?”

“Knew s
omething, suspected something.”  Tucker jerked one shoulder in a shrug.  “Was somehow involved.”  Although that thought wasn’t one he wanted to contemplate.  “The thing is, from what I’ve observed, there are two names in Sweetwater that wield the kind of power that puts public officials in their pocket.  Hawbaker and Pettigrew.  Of those two, I know one of them has a penchant for shady land deals.  I know one of them bought the riverfront property on which the old library sat – and I’m interested to see what he did with it.  And lastly, I can’t imagine a scenario that would involve my twenty-two year old father confronting a federal judge.”

“You believe your father was going to
talk to your grandfather.”

“I do
.”  He picked up the article about the dedication, pointed out the date to Mason.  “In fact, I think my father went to confront his father over something that was weighing on his conscience.  And that on the way back from that meeting, he ran his car off the road and drowned.”  

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SARAH
woke up five minutes before her alarm clock was set to go off.  It was funny how crawling out of bed had been a chore when it was someone else’s time clock she’d been punching.  For as much time and effort as she’d invested in the bookstore she’d managed, at the end of the day it still hadn’t belonged to her.

The Dust Jacket did.  At the end of the day, and at the beginning.