Skid shifted uncomfortably in his chair, winced from the pain in his legs. ‘She and Miss Vale were real close. At least, Miss Vale thought so. Zoë was more interested in her money. She was always dropping hints to her about this thing or that thing she wanted to do, hoping Miss Vale would pull out her chequebook. It’s not every day you have a friend with a two-billion-dollar estate, who calls you the child they always wanted but never had. And one thing about Zoë, she loves money.’
‘I don’t know her that well,’ Ben said. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was a child.’
Skid took another swig of bourbon. ‘And she thought she was in with a chance to get a piece of the action. Until Clayton Cleaver came on the scene.’ The way Skid said the name, he seemed to think Ben would recognise it. ‘You never heard of Clayton Cleaver?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Should I have?’
‘Bestselling author. Televangelist. Wannabe State Governor. And now, best friend of Miss Augusta Vale who thinks the sun shines out of his ass. Miss Vale is a good Christian lady, extremely devout, patron of a whole bunch of charities. But she’s being fooled. That fucker has her convinced he’s a saint. When Zoë came to stay with her six months ago, Augusta told her all about her latest plan, to give Cleaver money for his foundation. I’m talking a lot of money. A fuck of a lot.’
‘How much?’
‘Nine figures.’
‘A hundred million,’ Ben said.
Skid nodded. ‘Just loose cash, as far as Miss Vale is concerned. She had some investments and bonds waiting to mature, a whole bunch of lawyers working on it and billing five hundred an hour while the money was still tied up. Clayton’s due to get it sometime soon, this month or next.’
‘I take it Zoë wasn’t very happy when she heard about this.’
‘Damn right she wasn’t,’ Skid answered. ‘She’d met Cleaver at one of the old lady’s dinners. Said he was a sleazebag and a con artist. She couldn’t believe that Miss Vale was so taken with this guy who was so obviously stringing her along. She was convinced that he was turning the old lady against her.’
Ben leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
‘You getting this?’ Skid said. ‘So, anyway, Zoë couldn’t stand it any more. She left and went back to England. We didn’t keep in touch for a while. I had my own problems this end. Molly probably told you. But then, a few weeks ago, I get this call from her. She’s excited. Just came back from some dig in Turkey and has thought of a way to get a whole lot of money out of Clayton Cleaver. It was perfect, she said. Foolproof. Nothing could go wrong.’ Skid stared down the length of his plastered legs and grunted.
‘She’s been blackmailing him,’ Ben said. ‘But with what?’
Skid toyed with the whiskey bottle. ‘Truth is, I don’t know. She never told me details. Something dirty, maybe. Sex. Who knows? But whatever it was, it was working. She called him from Greece and made some kind of a proposal to him. Asked for money. She knew he didn’t have the hundred million yet, so she said she’d be easy on him. For now. She wanted a down payment of twenty-five grand. Five of that was my cut. All I had to do was deliver a box to Clayton’s offices.’
‘A box.’
‘A box. Just a plain old cardboard box, about this big.’ Skid angled his hands out to make a six-inch cube. ‘It felt light. Don’t ask me what was in it. I have no idea. All I know is that when you shook it, it rattled.’
So it wasn’t photographs, Ben was thinking. So much for a sex sting.
‘Cleaver took the box into a room while I waited outside,’ Skid went on. ‘I heard cardboard ripping, like he was digging in real fast. Whatever was in there, it persuaded him. He came back out with a case containing twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. Handed it right over. I took out my cut, the rest was hers.’
That explained Zoë’s sudden wealth, the expensive hotel, the villa, the parties.
‘But she wanted more, didn’t she?’ Ben said.
‘She told Cleaver that as soon as the big money rolled in, she wanted ten million dollars from him in exchange for whatever she had. My cut was ten per cent. I didn’t even have to do anything, it was just a handling fee. It looked as if Cleaver was agreeing to the deal. I couldn’t believe it. A lawyer’s dream. I had it all planned. I was going to get out of that rat hole office and move the practice uptown, clean up my whole act.’ Skid sighed. ‘But evidently he changed his mind.’
‘The night you got beaten up.’
Skid nodded. ‘I’d been pretty sure for a couple of days that I was being followed. Never saw anyone. It was just a feeling. I was spooked enough to keep the revolver around me. Then one night I was working late at my desk. I didn’t even hear these guys come in. Next thing I’m being dragged out of my chair with a gun in my face. They threw me down on the floor, started asking me where it was. “Where is it? Where is it?” I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Then they started asking me where Zoë was.’
‘And you told them.’
‘Not at first,’ Skid said. ‘I’ve taken beatings before. I’m no chicken. But then they opened up this bag and took out a couple of fucking hammers. Started going to work on my legs while the third one held the gun to my head. You’d have to be pretty damn tough to keep your mouth shut when two big guys are smashing your knees to shit. Of course I told them. You’d have done the same.’
‘Did Zoë ever say anything to you about some kind of prophecy?’ Ben asked.
Skid looked blank. ‘As in reading your star signs kind of prophecy?’
‘She’s a biblical archaeologist,’ Ben said. ‘So, as in Bible prophecy. She told someone that the money was somehow tied up with it.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Skid replied. ‘How could a Bible prophecy make her rich? Like I said, she had some angle on Cleaver.’
‘Forget it,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not important.’
The door opened, without warning. Skid jumped and made a grab for the shotgun. The pump action was racked halfway back on its rails when he relaxed and laid it down again. He slumped back in the chair.
Molly locked the door behind her and walked into the room carrying a six-pack of beer. She dumped it on the bed. ‘Time for your pills, honey,’ she told Skid.
The lawyer nodded sadly. ‘And that’s all I have to tell you,’ he said to Ben. ‘If it wasn’t for Molly here, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.’
Molly walked over to his chair and laid a hand softly on his shoulder. With the other hand she wiped away a tear. Skid stroked her arm. There was tension between them, but there was tenderness too.
‘I didn’t want her to go to meet you,’ Skid said. ‘It was her idea. She’s a brave lady.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ Ben asked.
‘What else is there for a broke-down, penniless drunken cripple to do? I’m stuck here.’
‘You can’t stay here for ever.’
‘I’ll stay here till Cleaver forgets about me. Or till I die, whichever happens first. I can’t go home, can’t go anywhere. They find me, they’ll kill me. Might as well drink myself to death right here in this chair.’ Skid glanced up at Molly, who was smiling down at him through her tears. ‘What can I say?’ he said. ‘The day I ran into Zoë Bradbury was the day I just screwed my life up into a little ball and threw it in the fire. I’ve lost everything. And I lost the best woman a man could wish for.’
‘You didn’t lose me,’ she whispered. She leaned down and kissed his clammy forehead.
Skid turned and stared at Ben. ‘What about you? What happens next?’
‘I think I should pay a visit to Miss Augusta Vale,’ Ben said.
‘I have the number,’ Skid said.
‘Good. And then I want to talk to Clayton Cleaver.’ Ben reached for his wallet. ‘But first there’s one more thing you can do for me.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You can sell me that big revolver of yours. I have a feeling I might need it.’
&nbs
p; Chapter Twenty-Five
It was late by the time Molly drove Ben back to Hinesville. She squeezed his hand and wished him good luck. He smiled and watched her take off into the rainy night, then climbed into the Chrysler and headed for Savannah. In his canvas bag on the seat behind him was Skid’s Freedom Arms .475 Linebaugh hunting revolver and a box of hollowpoint shells.
Ben drove into Savannah and checked into a hotel. For a long time that night, he sat in his room pondering and staring out of the open window across the Savannah river. He was dead tired but sleep was impossible with a thousand thoughts swirling in his mind.
If things had seemed unclear when he was in Greece, the picture was fuller now. And uglier. Working through the pieces, he could see that the chances of finding Zoë Bradbury alive had just slipped further away.
So now he knew the name of the rich, powerful figure who’d felt threatened enough by her to take some kind of drastic action. A hundred million dollars and aspirations to the Governorship of Georgia – you couldn’t get much richer and more powerful than that, without going all the way to the top.
He also knew now why the name Cleaver had been in her address book. How and why Zoë had been blackmailing him was still a mystery. But one thing was clear: she’d named too high a price. Ten million was easily enough to get him thinking about ways to avoid paying her. From his point of view, he had no way of knowing that he could trust her not to keep coming back again and again. He’d pay her the ten, then a year or two later, if what she had on him was really such a threat to him, she could pop up wanting another ten. And on and on, until she’d bled him dry. Once she’d tasted the money, she might never go away.
There was only one way to eliminate the threat properly and permanently. The logic was chilling, but Ben saw that it was the only answer to Cleaver’s dilemma. Zoë’s life was worth a lot less than ten million dollars.
That left Skid McClusky. From Cleaver’s point of view, the lawyer was just another loose end needing to be tied up. The first attempt had failed, but sooner or later Cleaver would get him, and McClusky knew it. He wasn’t going to stop until he’d silenced anyone who might know anything about this. First Nikos Karapiperis, then Charlie.
Now him. It all suddenly made very clear sense. If Ben didn’t go after Cleaver and put an end to this, Cleaver might very well put an end to him. A hundred million buys a lot of hitmen, and there would be no way to anticipate when and where one might turn up.
As he sat and worked his way through the mini-bar and his cigarettes, his thoughts turned to Tom and Jane Bradbury. How was he going to tell them that their daughter was almost certainly dead?
Then he shoved that thought behind him. He could worry about it later. For now, there was just one objective. Get Clayton Cleaver.
The next day dawned in a blaze of sunshine. Ben waited until just after nine, then called the number Skid McClusky had given him for Augusta Vale. A grave, solemn man’s voice answered with, ‘The Vale residence.’ Ben explained that he was a close friend of the Bradbury family, just happened to be passing through Savannah, and was hoping to pay Miss Vale a visit. In an even graver voice the man told him to hold on.
When Miss Vale came on the phone, Ben liked her immediately. She sounded like a strong, confident old lady. Her tone was formal, but there was a glowing warmth to it. She told him how delighted she was to hear from a friend of the Bradburys. Why didn’t he come over for coffee? She had some affairs to attend to, but she’d be free after eleven.
Ben used the spare time to explore the old town and buy some clothes. He went for smart, casual and simple – crisp black jeans, white shirt, black jacket. Then he went back to the hotel, and drove the Chrysler to the Vale residence in the Squares.
It was more than a house. The towering white colonial-style mansion stood away from the street, surrounded by verdant gardens filled with flowers and trees. He walked up to the front door and was met by the solemn, deep-voiced man he’d spoken to on the phone. The butler ushered him inside the house, into a wide entrance hall with chequered marble floor and gilt-framed paintings on the walls.
‘May I take your bag, sir?’ the butler asked.
‘I’ll hold on to it, if that’s OK,’ Ben said.
A grandfather clock chimed eleven as the butler led the way to the drawing-room. He knocked, pushed open a set of polished walnut doors and announced, ‘Mr Hope to see you, ma’am.’
Miss Augusta Vale stood up and walked across the room towards Ben, smiling. She was tall, upright and very elegant, maybe seventy-five years old but radiantly beautiful. Her skin and teeth were perfect and her hair was more platinum than grey. She was wearing a string of pearls over a silk blouse and a black tailored skirt. She offered her hand, and a diamond glittered in the sunlight that streamed through the bay windows.
‘So pleased to meet you, Mr Hope.’
‘Please call me Ben.’
‘Ben. Is that short for Benjamin?’
‘Benedict,’ he said. ‘But everyone calls me Ben.’
‘But Benedict is such a very fine name,’ she replied firmly, as though deciding that that was what she was going to call him.
She invited him to sit down, and asked the butler to bring coffee and cake. She lowered herself daintily into what looked like a Louis XIV settee. Underneath it, a small Pekingese dog eyed him suspiciously and growled quietly.
‘You have a beautiful home,’ Ben said.
‘Thank you. It’s been in the family since the Declaration of Independence.’ She smiled. ‘So you’re a friend of the Bradbury family,’ she said, watching him closely.
He nodded. ‘Tom and Jane send their regards.’
‘Lovely people,’ she said. ‘And Oxford is a fine city. I mean to visit there again in August, for the summer school.’
‘I gather you have a great passion for archaeology.’
‘Indeed I have,’ she said. ‘That’s how I met Zoë. Such a talented young lady. Very intelligent. A little headstrong, perhaps. And rather wild, too.’
‘That’s what people say.’
‘Have you seen her lately?’
‘The last time I saw her, she was about this big.’ Ben held his hand three feet off the floor.
She smiled. ‘So you’re not one of her young bucks, then.’
‘No, I’m not one of her young bucks.’
She didn’t reply to that, but he thought he could see a look of relief and approval in her eye. ‘What do you do, Benedict?’ she asked sweetly.
‘Ben. I’m a student. In fact I’m Tom Bradbury’s student at Oxford.’
‘My, that’s wonderful. You’re a theologian.’
‘I was planning to be.’
‘Then you should really be using that beautiful name of yours. You know what it means, don’t you?’
He said nothing.
‘It means “blessed”,’ she said.
‘I think I’m more cursed than blessed.’
She held his earnest gaze for a second, then laughed. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that. Tell me, Benedict. Where are you staying?’
He told her the name of his hotel, and she shook her head and clicked her tongue. ‘I won’t have it,’ she said. ‘You must come and be my guest here.’
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘You won’t. You can have the old carriage house. It’s a special guest quarters adjoining the house. You’ll be no trouble to me, and I’ll be no trouble to you.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ he said.
‘Not at all. I’ll have one of the staff collect your luggage from the hotel.’
He pointed to his canvas bag. ‘This is it.’
Miss Vale laughed. ‘You certainly like to travel light, Benedict. And of course, you’ll have dinner with us tonight.’
‘Us?’
‘With myself and Clayton. He is a regular visitor to the house.’
‘Would that be Clayton Cleaver?’
‘Why, you’ve heard of him?’
<
br /> ‘Who hasn’t?’ he said.
‘Then you must be familiar with his book,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure of reading it yet.’
‘Then I’ll give you a copy right away.’ She rang a little bell, and a handsome black woman came into the room. Miss Vale smiled at her, and introduced them. ‘Benedict, this is my housekeeper, Mae.’ She turned to Mae. ‘Could you have one of the girls fetch down a copy of Mr Cleaver’s book from the library?’
‘Right away, Miss Vale.’ Mae nodded and left briskly.
Augusta Vale’s eyes sparkled. ‘You must read it,’ she said to Ben. ‘It changed my life. You know, Clayton personally received Divine illumination from the eternal Spirit of St John the Apostle.’
‘It sounds like quite a book,’ Ben said.
After a few moments a maid entered the room with a large hardback book in her hands. She handed it solemnly to Miss Vale. The old lady dismissed her with a kindly smile. She turned the book lovingly in her hands, and then passed it to Ben.
He thanked her and laid it in his lap. The heavily embossed gold script on the cover read, ‘JOHN SPOKE TO ME, by Clayton R. Cleaver’.
‘Clayton distributes it free to all the poor and underprivileged families,’ Miss Vale said, glowing. ‘He is truly a wonderful man.’
Ben opened the cover. Inside was a foreword by the author. He scanned it quickly.
Ten years ago, I completed the manuscript of this book in a moment of Divine revelation and sent copies to every publisher in the USA. Not one of them wanted to publish it. But I already knew they wouldn’t, because that is what John told me. He told me to persist. That this book had to get out there. I sold my car. I sold my house. I sold everything I had. I lived in a trailer and invested every cent to set up my own publishing company and bring this book, dear reader, into your hands.
John was right in every word He said. The book was so successful that within the year I had every major US publisher begging me for the rights. To date, the Word of John has gone out to more than twelve million Americans …
‘So what do you think, Benedict?’ the old lady asked.
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 78