Harold navigated his boat as close to shore as he dared. Jimmy Ray jumped out into the knee-deep water. He swore as water ran over the top of his snake skin cowboy boots.
“Get her, Jimmy Ray!” hollered Harold.
Aurora crouched in a thicket of mountain laurel. She heard Jimmy Ray running through the underbrush, then silence. She strained to hear any sound. Where is he? A twig snapped nearby. Jimmy Ray was close. Come on, come on! Don’t stop now! For her plan to work, she’d need to attack before he could get off a shot. Another twig snapped and Jimmy Ray stopped four feet away from her. Now’s my chance! She readied her weapon and started to rise.
From the speedboat, Harold saw the police cruiser bearing down on them. “Get back here, Jimmy Ray! Now! The cops are coming! Hurry!” he screamed. Aurora eased back down in her hiding place. Jimmy Ray turned and ran toward the water. He tumbled back into the boat and Harold gunned the engine.
Aurora ran out of the trees and onto the shore. Waving wildly to the police, she signaled them to come ashore.
“Aurora looks like she could use some help! Let’s go!” shouted Captain Vincent.
“But the speedboat’s getting away!” yelled a crewman.
“We’ll radio another cruiser to pick them up. They won’t get far,” Vincent answered.
“No cavalry, no army artillery, no green berets could look as good to me as you guys do this minute!” cried Aurora before Vincent even beached his boat. “I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life!”
“Me too, Aurora,” replied Conner. “Me too.”
“Hey, there, I’m your friendly neighborhood game warden. Vincent’s my name.” He extended his hand.
“It’s really, really nice to meet you,” Aurora said as she shook his hand. “I’m Aurora Harris. My husband is hurt. Please follow me. Hurry!”
“You go, Conner,” said Vincent. “I’ll radio the other boats and headquarters. Also need to let the judge know Aurora’s safe. Join y’all in just a minute.”
Aurora led Lieutenant Conner and a crewman through the woods. Reaching Sam, she leaned over him and said, “Darling, help is here. Won’t be long before you’ll be safe in the hospital.”
“Yeah, we’ll get you to a doctor right away, Sam. You’ll be good as new.” But Conner wasn’t so sure. Sam didn’t look so good.
“I’ve radioed for help. Won’t take ‘em long to arrive,” said Vincent as he joined them. “Also sent a description and the registration number of that other boat to all the cruisers on the lake. They won’t get far.”
Aurora helped the men spread blankets from the game warden’s boat over Sam’s shaking body. Suddenly she was bowled over by a dripping, whining King. He stood over her and licked her face. “King, old boy, I was afraid I’d never see you again.” She wrapped her arms around him and buried her head in his wet neck.
“He led us to you; he’s a true hero,” said Conner. “If not for King….”
“If not for King, Sam and I would probably be dead by now,” interrupted Aurora. “But I guarantee they would’ve been sorry they’d ever tangled with me. I would not have gone down easily, I can assure you.” She pointed to her jack-legged stick with the knife still attached.
Conner and Vincent both laughed. “I do believe you’re right. They’re damn lucky you didn’t get to them before we did,” Vincent said as he examined her weapon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Jill Hathaway, wearing a battle-black knit suit and a rage-red silk blouse, stormed into the police station, marched up to the desk, and demanded to see the officer in charge of the Reeves case. Louis Beale followed at a distance.
“Sorry, ma’am, he’s out.”
“Then I want to see Robert Reeves. Now. His lawyer will arrive later today, but I must see Mr. Reeves right this minute. I have information that will prove him innocent.”
“Wait here,” said the desk sergeant as he pushed his brawny frame up from the chair. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Louis Beale sat down on a long, high-backed bench. As best he could, he balanced his briefcase and the two boxes of official papers on his lap.
Beside him, Jill glared at the No Smoking sign on the wall, lit up, and inhaled deeply. She and Louis had left D.C. at 9:00 p.m. yesterday in the midst of a dreadful thunderstorm, and didn’t arrive at Robert’s house until 3:00 a.m. Jill had tumbled into bed just before four, but couldn’t fall asleep. Now she was exhausted, irritable. And, she admitted to herself, worried sick.
“Mr. Reeves is in the conference room. I need to check your briefcase and those boxes before you can join him, then a deputy will escort you,” said the sergeant when he returned to the room. He thoroughly searched the boxes and rifled through the black leather briefcase. Frowning, he looked at Jill, and said, “You can see Mr. Reeves, but not until you put out that cigarette.” Jill almost told him to go to hell, but instead she crushed the cigarette in the stained metal ashtray the sergeant pulled from a desk drawer. She and Louis followed the deputy out of the room.
“Jill, I can’t believe you’re here. So relieved to see you,” said Robert as he wrapped her in his arms. Spending a night in a cell had given him time to think. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with this woman, and the only way he could do that was to forget his pride and tell her how much he still loved her. He hoped she still loved him, too, that she would agree to be his wife. He wanted to kiss her passionately, to tell her he couldn’t live without her, that he couldn’t continue pretending they meant nothing to each other. But the deputy cleared his throat, and Robert was jerked back to the present. He gently pushed Jill away and reached over to shake Louis Beale’s hand.
When Jill got a good look at Robert, she fought to hold back her tears. He looked tired, pale, even defeated. He’d been in jail only one day and night. How would he fare if he had to spend weeks, months, or, heaven forbid, years locked up? She shuffled the papers Louis handed her until she gained control of herself. Then she said, “Louis, please explain to Robert what we’ve found and what explanations we need from him.”
“Okay,” said Beale. “To begin, Mr. Reeves, I believe that what you told Miss Hathaway is the truth. Can’t honestly understand why you did it. You’ve risked losing all your savings, investments, reputation and your freedom just to keep a widow from learning what a jerk her husband was and to keep her out of the poor house. Didn’t know there were people like you.”
“There aren’t many,” said Jill. “He’s an exceptional man in many ways.” Then she added, “Your lawyer will be here later, Robert. When we’re through with this legal battle, people all over the country will be astonished at what you’ve done. You’ll see.”
“I want this kept as quiet as possible, Jill. Don’t want to expose all of Tinsley’s dirty secrets to the world. In fact, I didn’t want you to tell Beale here. You know that.”
“But you could go to prison if Louis isn’t allowed to use all the information he’s obtained.” She looked at Beale. “Isn’t that right, Louis?”
“Well….”
“Tell you what,” said Robert, “Let’s release only a little information at a time, just enough to keep me from being locked up. We can see how that goes. If you have to—if everything else fails—then I’ll agree to let you use what you’ve put together. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison.” He looked into Jill’s eyes. “I’ve got too much to live for.”
Harold Johns pulled a remote control from the boat’s cockpit and punched in a code as he pulled back on the throttle. A smile spread across his face as one of the two wide doors to a boathouse rolled up. He steered the speedboat inside, pushed the remote, and watched the door roll down. The only sign that they’d even entered the boathouse was the boat’s slight wake. Even that would vanish soon. The cops would never catch him now. He was safe.
“No one will outsmart Harold Frederick Johns,” Harold declared to Jimmy Ray. “No one. I spent months planning before moving my operation here. Took every precautio
n. Cruised the entire five hundred miles of shoreline for days before I settled on this spot. The owner didn’t want to sell, but he changed his tune fast when I shoved stacks of hundred dollar bills in his face. Money, Jimmy Ray. Money gets you power, everything you want. Remember that.”
To Harold, this location on the lake that best suited his needs was especially sweet. This plot of land was the only property left from his family’s holdings not covered by water. Only Sheila had any idea what this land meant to Harold. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel the same about it. They’d both grown up here in an old log cabin built over 150 years ago. His great-great-grandfather had felled the mighty chestnut trees himself, cut, trimmed, built his two-room cabin, then chinked the logs. Later generations added electricity, indoor plumbing, a small bathroom, a kitchen, and three more bedrooms.
The land, all one thousand acres of it, passed down through the male heirs. Over the years, 500 acres were sold off. Eventually, only two 250-acre parcels were left, one owned by Harold’s dad Chester. His dad’s brother Garvey, Harold’s uncle, owned the other parcel, but sold off acreage when he needed cash. Harold’s Aunt Lilly despised living in what she called “the boonies with all those gun-toting, tobacco-chewing hillbillies.” Aunt Lilly insisted she needed a fine, two-story brick house with a swimming pool, expensive furniture, nice cars, a maid. “Told Garvey more than once he should never have brought such a high-fallutin’ big city woman to the country,” Chester had said. “But would he listen to me? Naw, and that’s why he’s selling off prime farmland bit by bit to hobby farmers and cattle breeders. Mark my words, he’ll rue the day Lilly came into his life.”
Harold grew up knowing his dad’s 250 acres would one day belong to him. Chester had told him almost from birth, had said, “There weren’t no way in hell Sheila would inherit any of it. After all, she was only a girl, and all girls was good for was to cook, make babies, and kowtow to their men folk.” From the time he could walk, Harold explored the property’s caves, hollows, streams and rocks, and dreamed of what he would do with each acre, even planned to go to VPI and get a degree in agricultural engineering. On the bottomland near the Roanoke River, he would raise tobacco and corn. His beef cattle would be top of the line, his bulls known all over the country for their get, the envy of all cattlemen in the state, the South, the nation. He dreamed splendid ideas for the old place.
Then the Army Corps of Engineers and Appalachian Power Company stepped in, built a dam at the base of Smith Mountain in Pittsylvania County to catch the flow of water from the Roanoke and Blackwater rivers, and created Smith Mountain Lake and the smaller Leesville Lake. Property owners, whose land was covered by the rising water, were paid a pittance of what their land was worth. At least Harold thought so. He saw his future inheritance, except for fifty acres, slowly gobbled up by water. The farmland, log cabin, wild game, and pastures, were wiped out, all gone forever. The only thing Harold got was angry. He vowed to get even. Years later when the new breed of people—transplants and big city folks like his Aunt Lilly—flocked to Smith Mountain Lake, he schemed to take away the valuable possessions they had acquired.
Then, in spite of Harold’s pleading, Chester Johns sold the remaining fifty acres—the last of Harold’s due—and moved to West Virginia with his wife, Harold and Sheila. Sheila left home and moved to the Florida Keys when she was eighteen. Harold entered the University of West Virginia and in five years graduated with a Master’s degree in electrical engineering. He went to work for an engineering design firm in Columbia, South Carolina, where he met and married Melinda, a voluptuous heiress from Aiken, and made a big name for himself in the engineering world. But Harold wasn’t happy. His insatiable desire for vengeance drove him back to Virginia, and seven years ago he started his own electrical engineering firm in Lynchburg.
Even with all his success, Harold never stopped plotting his revenge. Five years ago he discovered this weekend cabin built in the mid-1970s. The cabin, he realized when inspecting the property, stood on three acres originally owned by his family—land he believed was rightfully his.
When Harold first saw the cabin at the lake’s edge, it consisted of a two-bay boathouse built out into the water with a small apartment and a deck on top. Unlike most boathouses on the lake, this one had solid sides and two extra-wide garage-type doors that opened to the water.
Melinda hadn’t approved of the small, old cabin. “If you expect me to live on this stupid lake with you, then you’d damn well better buy me a nice house. And I mean a really nice, big, elegant, expensive house, suitable for entertaining my high society friends.” She stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of the cabin’s tiny kitchen and looked around. “I will not live in this dump!”
Because he needed Melinda and her rich and influential contacts, he acquiesced and purchased an ostentatious mansion across the lake in Franklin County. He told her he’d sold the cabin, but that was a lie. He knew she’d never discover the truth; she was too busy traveling, socializing, having facelifts and tummy tucks, buying more and more cosmetics, working for charitable causes. When she begged for an apartment in Paris, he gave her what she wanted. Harold couldn’t care less about what she did.
He hired a contractor to dismantle the cabin’s deck and build in its place what looked like additional living space over the boathouse. He hung curtains in all the small windows and installed window boxes on the side facing the water. During the spring and summer months, the window boxes blossomed with marigolds and petunias. To anyone cruising by in a boat, it looked exactly like a cozy little cottage. But the addition wasn’t living space. The new area had no floor; it was extra headroom with two heavy-duty boatlifts. Harold’s ingenious design made it possible to hoist two thirty-foot long boats, one over the other, so anyone looking at the space between the water and sides of the building would think the boathouse empty.
The second bay concealed his fifty-foot houseboat. That monumental task had cost him a bundle of money. The original boathouse measured only thirty-five feet deep, not large enough for a fifty-foot boat. Per Harold’s order, the contractor excavated twenty feet into the hillside and reinforced the dirt walls, thereby making the bay large enough.
Harold punched another button and the speedboat lifted out of the water. No one could see it from outside. He and Jimmy Ray stepped onto the wooden gangplank. They climbed fifteen steps and entered the small apartment.
Jimmy Ray sank into a brown leather swivel rocker, plopped his feet on the inlaid mahogany coffee table, and flicked a chunk of dried mud off his snakeskin boots onto the antique Persian carpet. A hard fist caught him under his chin, lifted him out of the chair, and sent him crashing to the floor.
“If you ever put your boots on a piece of my furniture again, I’ll slam you through the wall!” Harold said.
Jimmy Ray slowly pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed his throbbing jaw. He knew there would be a big, ugly bruise amidst the swelling. He wondered briefly if that would appeal to the chicks.
“Do you understand me, Jimmy Ray?” Harold tossed him a rag.
“Yeah, I understand. It won’t happen again.” Inside, the rage boiled as he cleaned up the mud. Jimmy Ray fought to stay in control. Now was not the time to get even. Not yet.
Harold mixed himself a gin and tonic and passed a cold beer to Jimmy Ray. “Just don’t set it down on the coffee table without a coaster under it.” He sipped his drink. “Clyde was second in command here, but he’s gone. You want his job?”
“Was wonderin’ when you was gonna ask me. I’m smarter than Clyde.” Jimmy Ray grinned slightly, wincing at the pain in his jaw.
“Speaking of Clyde, you finished him off like I ordered?”
“Yeah. Dumped his body in that fishin’ boat and set it loose.”
“Good thinking. If the boat didn’t sink in the storm, then the cops will blame Luke Stancill for Clyde’s death and arrest him. If Stancill’s still alive, that is. Now let’s get busy. We’ve serious work
to do.”
Harold removed a huge picture from the rear wall, exposing a large rectangular cork bulletin board. Outlined on the board was a big, detailed map of Smith Mountain Lake marked with locations of some houses, docks and businesses. Green, red, orange, white, yellow, and silver thumbtacks dotted the map and corresponded with the colored bar graph at the bottom of the board.
“What’s this blue one? It’s bigger than the others.” Jimmy Ray rubbed the blue tack with his trigger finger.
“That marks our headquarters—the nerve center, so to speak. You’re standing in it.” He watched as bewilderment spread across Jimmy Ray’s face. “You thought this was just a cabin, didn’t you? I could see it in your face. Like all the others who work for me, you believed I was a little dim-witted, didn’t you? Here I have all this money, expensive boats, a big house on the lake, a classy ding-a-ling of a wife, but this little boathouse cabin is the place I prefer. Clyde knew the truth behind this place. He, Sheila, and my niece Red are the only ones who know. Well, not Clyde anymore. Soon you’ll learn the secrets of the boathouse cabin, too.”
Remembering Sheila, Harold frowned. She must die. Pity. I hate to kill my own sister, I’m actually fond of her, but I know she’ll sing her head off if the cops get to her before I do. No need to worry about Red. My niece’s nerves are like mine—all steel. She’s cold, calculating, power and money hungry. And smart.
Jimmy Ray studied the map. Thumbtacks, thick in some areas, were placed on houses and boathouses around most of the shoreline. He read the graph at the bottom. Beside each color was one word: red for “Stop,” green for “Go,” orange for “Caution,” white for “Done,” blue for “Operations.” Yellow meant “Valuables,” and silver meant “Money.” Even though he didn’t understand the codes, he was impressed.
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