Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (43 page)

Noah snorted.

“As entertaining as that sounds, I have to confess that it was Tucker’s idea.  Noah knows a guy in the business, so he got a deal, and since he’s done it before, he offered to put it in.”

“A lifesaver, you are,” Mason
leaned up on his elbow to tell Noah.  “First the bull sharks, now this.”

“Bull sharks?” Sarah inquired as Mason settled back against the pillow.

“Your brother told me about the tourist who lost his arm when the shark attacked his kayak in the river.”

“Did he now?
”  Sarah shot a look at Noah, whose shoulders were shaking, just slightly.

“Forewarned is forearmed.  Or, as the case may be,” Mason considered “simply armed.”

As subtly as possible, Sarah kicked Noah in the shin.

When he’d gone, and the window unit was humming and blowing cool air, Sarah
sat a fresh glass of water on the nightstand so that it would be within Mason’s reach.  “All set?”

“Mmm.” He opened eyes that had gone just a little heavy as the medicine kicked in.  “Thank you.  I know you’re doing this for Tucker’s sake, but thank you, all the same.”

“Tucker’s part of it,” she agreed.  “The other part’s for me.  You’re easy to like, Mason, even if I have to question your motivation in a couple areas.”

He fiddled with the sheet.  “You think I abused Allison’s trust.”

“I think you were less forthcoming than you could have been.  Of course, never having been a celebrity of any sort – particularly of the sex symbol variety – I can only guess that it might get annoying to have people clamoring after you for that alone.  Sort of like the women here in town that targeted Tucker because of his name before they were even introduced.  I would think it has to make you wonder if, under it all, anyone really values you for yourself.”

He stared into middle distance.  “That’s a very astute observation.”

“The funny thing is, I think Allie understands that better than you think.  Her ex-fiancé?  He really liked the idea of marrying a Hawbaker.  He’s a lawyer, Allie’s dad was a federal judge with lots of important connections, and – while it may not be quite the scale of wealth you might find in parts of London or New York – her family had money.  With the money pretty well gone, and Allie’s dad suffering from Alzheimer’s – can’t introduce your future son-in-law to those important connections if you can’t even remember who they are – Allie suddenly became just another woman.  A woman with a whole slew of problems that Wesley didn’t want to take on.”

“He’s a fool.”

“Indeed he is.”  Sarah sat on the edge of the bed.  The quick leap to Allie’s defense answered the question she hadn’t bothered asking.  “You know, she was worried enough about you that if you called her up right now, she’d forgive you in a heartbeat.”

Mason studied Sarah’s face.  “If I did that,” he said slowly “if I used her… decency to m
y advantage, I wouldn’t be worthy of her forgiveness.”

Feeling oddly maternal
toward him, Sarah patted his leg beneath the sheet.  She not only liked him, but he’d just earned her respect.  “Why don’t you try to rest now?  If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs until Tucker gets back.”

“Sarah?” Mason called just before she walked out the door.  “You
… brighten him.  I’m glad for it.”

“That’s a
nice thing to say.  I’m glad for it, too.”

“WHY,”
Carlton said with what Tucker could only term amused condescension “would I have anything to do with someone breaking into your house.”

Tucker pulled the news clipping out of his pocket.  Hawbaker had taken the article with the thumbprint
in as evidence, but Tucker tossed another regarding the floundering arson investigation onto the table.  

“It seems like you have
a history of paying
lowlifes to do your dirty work for you.”

Without bothering to set aside his snifter, Carlton picked
up the clipping.  “Ah yes.  The library arson.  Have you decided to abandon fiction in favor of – what do they call it – true crime?”

Smug bastard.  “If I did, you can bet this would be the one I started with.  It’d be an interesting twist, don’t you think?  The grandson
exposing his grandfather’s guilt in print.”

Carlton smiled.  “I have no idea where you get your ideas.  Must be that imaginative bent you inherited from your mother.”

“Don’t go there.”

“Yet you come here and accuse me of… what?”  He
waved the newspaper around.  “Burning down one of the most historic – and sadly ill-constructed – buildings in Sweetwater?  To what end?  So that I could donate a new structure that was more to my taste?  I have my own library right here.  And there are many other ways to shelter one’s income from taxation.”

“There aren’t too many ways to get a view like this,” Tucker nodded toward the river, the
pink expanse of sky “when most of the riverfront property is already occupied.  Particularly when it’s occupied by a public building that’s made the National Register of Historic Places.”

Carlton sat the clipping on the table, smoothed it out on the glass.  “If that was the case, then why haven’t I done anything to take advantage of that view, now that I own the property?”

That was the part Tucker hadn’t been able to figure out.  “You tell me.”

“I’ll tell you this.”  Carlton sipped his brandy.  “I had nothing to do
with the unfortunate break-in at the Boundary Street property, or the injury to the…
actor
with whom you’re living.”

“His name is Mason.”

Carlton made a dismissive gesture.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if anything was taken?”

“Why should I?  And if you’re expecting me to furnish replacements, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time.”

“That’s okay, because the only thing that seems to be missing is something that can’t be replaced anyway.
  A note.  From my father.”

Carlton’s gaze remained steady, but the hand holding the snifter trembled.  “Oh?”

“Yeah.”  Scenting blood, Tucker pulled out one of the other chairs and sat, uninvited.  “A while back, I got this bank statement of my mother’s.  Local bank, saying that the fee for her safety deposit box had come due.  Now me – because I was the executor of her estate and was privy to her financial situation – I’m thinking: what box?  What could she possibly have kept there?  And in one of those accidents of serendipity, it just so happened that I’d stumbled on a key ring in the attic a week or two before.  So I go to this bank – it’s a really nice bank, a lot friendlier than that icebox of yours here in town.  Imagine my surprise when the box turned out to hold newspaper clippings about an old arson, and the dedication of a new town library in my grandmother’s name.  Interesting, don’t you think, that you named that library for her, and I grew up – to your disappointment – to write books?”

When Carlton said nothing, Tucker pressed on.

“The other curious item in that safety deposit box of my mother’s was a note written to her from my dad.  It seems he was on his way to confront someone over something that had caused him distress, something that made him feel guilty.  That someone he was confronting – he didn’t name any names – but that someone was a person who apparently wielded a lot of power.  A man with a
chief in his pocket,
I believe Dad said.  I’m wondering – and here I’m hoping you might be able to clear this up for me – what it was you said to my father, your
son
– that made him so angry, so upset, that he drove way too fast for the conditions in his hurry to get home, to get away.  Because that was his intention, you know.  At least that’s what he said in the note.  That if the confrontation didn’t go well, he would pack up the family and get the hell out of here. To New York.  To the city I grew up in anyway, without him.”

The color that had suffused Carlton’s lined face drained away to nothing.  And Tucker felt a tiny stir of alarm, because it was like looking at a corpse.

“Grandpa?”

Carlton stared blindly at the river.  “No one was supposed to be hurt.”

The words were so weak, so thready, that Tucker wasn’t sure he’d heard them correctly.  “You mean my father?  Or the man who died in the fire?”

“They lived so… embarrassingly.  First in that ridiculous studio apartment
.  Over someone’s garage, for God’s sake.  I tried to get him to come here, set up a proper nursery.  But he said they wanted
their own space.
  Boundary Street, it was the most suitable rental I had at the time.  But he needed a… a real place.  Something
significant. 
Something befitting the way he’d been brought up.  He was my only child, my heir.  Bad enough that he’d conceived a child out of wedlock, then was foolish enough to run off and bind himself to the girl legally. But he had to stop living like some… bohemian. Selling rickety little wooden chests at the farmer’s market.  It was humiliating.”

Tucker absorbed each of those separate shocks.  Then sat them aside
as something to be dealt with later.  “So let me get this straight.  You had the library burned down… because you wanted to build another estate on the land.  Something
significant
for my parents to live in.”

“I…” the color rushed back into his face as Carlton seemed to regain his senses.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Oh yes he did.  Tucker leaned forward, hands dangling between his knees.  “We were talking about the fact that you conspired to commit arson.  About the fact that your own son died, because he was so distraught about you committing a heinous crime just so that you could plug him into some big house with a nice view of the river – and I’ve got that right, don’t I?  Tell me, did you at least wait until the man who died in that fire was buried before you informed my father about your big plans?  And how long did it take Dad to put things together?”

“I want you to leave.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute.  Must be tough to have your complicity exposed to the light.  Because you worked hard to keep it buried, huh?  Paying off officials, donating fancy new public buildings to make the investigation go away.  The thing I don’t get, though, is why – after such a fiasco – you fell back on the same game plan again.  Burning down a medical facility just to give your construction company a boost.”

The snifter hit the table so hard that the delicate stem snapped.  “Is that what that little Hawbaker whelp told you?”

“Which whelp would you be referring to?  The one whose development project you helped drive into the ground?  Or maybe the acting Chief of Police?”

Carlton snorted. “Harbin must have been delirious when he made that appointment.  As for the other fool, he hardly needs any assistance driving anything into the ground, considering he spends most of his time lying around on it in a drunken stupor.”

“You put Jonas Linville in my place.”

Steadier now, Carlton dabbed a linen napkin at the brandy which had splashed onto his neat broadcloth shirt.  Behind him, lights flickered on along the garden path, chasing away the shadows of the gathering twilight.

“I bought their land.  If the rental company placed them in the Boundary Street property afterward, that has nothing to do with me.”

“You own the rental
company.”

“So I do.”

“I thought maybe you’d arranged that as an incentive to get them to sell.  But now I wonder if there wasn’t more to it.  Were they working for you, just like their dad?  Causing problems for Coastal Construction?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. 
“As I said, you’ve quite an imagination.”

“Yes, I do. 
Which is why it isn’t hard for me to imagine you putting someone up to breaking into my house.  I think my mother must have told you she had something implicating you in that fire.  It’s the only reason I can think that you stayed away all those years.  The thing I can’t figure is how you knew I’d been in her safety deposit box, how you knew I’d brought the contents home.  Unless you’ve had me under some sort of surveillance.”

“
I never realized you were so paranoid.”  But behind his icy eyes, something flickered.  Guilt? Tucker wondered.  Or was it fear?  “And anyway, you said yourself that there was no name mentioned, no crime detailed in this note.  That’s hardly a smoking gun, or worth the bother of breaking and entering.”

“Was it worth Mason spending the night in the hospital with a dent in his head?”

“I’m sure you’d have to ask whoever might be responsible.”

“You can bet I will.  And you can bet, if I find out that you somehow abetted
that person, that I will find a way to take you down.”

“Threats, Tucker?”

“Just telling you how it is.” 

“You know, you may want to consider
– based on recent events I’ve noted in the police blotter – that your trouble is simply an unfortunate byproduct of the company you’ve chosen to keep.  I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying about dogs and fleas.”

It took Tucker a moment to catch the drift.  “You’re saying that
someone broke into my house… because I’m involved with Sarah.”