by Nene Adams
Oh. Me and Dearborn, not me and Kelly. Mackenzie’s anger abruptly dissipated, leaving her deflated. “Yes, of course I trust you. Sorry. I’ll tell you about my conversation with him, but I don’t want to be late for my appointment. Mind if I talk to Jack first?”
“Fine by me,” Veronica said. “I’ll drop you off at the Bee, since I guess you’d rather have your meeting with Larkin in private.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“What would you like for dinner? I can cook, if you want.”
“Ronnie, the only thing you know how to cook is spaghetti,” Mackenzie said, shuddering at the memory. “I hate to tell you this, but the jury’s still out on that claim. The last time, you burnt the pasta to a cinder and the sauce was made of ketchup.”
A flush crept up Veronica’s neck to stain her cheeks. “You said the crunchy bits added texture. And you told me you liked the sauce.”
“Mama raised me to be polite. Know what? How about you pick us up a couple of ‘to go’ dinners from Pontefract’s boarding house on St. Mary Street?” Mackenzie suggested. “Just get me anything off the daily menu. And double corn bread.”
“Will do. I’ll meet you back at your place. Or would you like to eat at my house?” Veronica paused and glanced at her shyly. “If you’re feeling up to it, that is.”
Mackenzie pretended to think about the invitation while she and Veronica continued walking to the newspaper. “I don’t know,” she said when they reached the door of the Antioch Bee. She joked, “I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m one of those ‘fast’ girls.”
Veronica chuckled, leaned over and kissed her cheek. “See you later.”
The brush of soft lips against her cheek made her long to turn her head and take Veronica’s kiss on her mouth. For the first time since the rattlesnake bite, she found her desire rising—a welcome surprise. She reached out, her hand faltering in the air when Veronica continued walking away.
“Your house, Ronnie,” Mackenzie said loudly, willing herself not to grab Veronica and wallow in her touch. “I’ll meet you there, all right?”
On the corner, Veronica stopped and called to her, “Bring an overnight bag,” before disappearing around the corner.
Oh, my God. Mackenzie felt as though her insides had melted like ice cream on a hot day. “Take that, Dilaudid,” she murmured.
If her leg behaved, she was pretty sure she and Veronica would do more than kissing tonight. She bit her lip hard to distract herself from the sudden flush of warmth between her legs and pushed through the door into the air-conditioned atmosphere of the Antioch Bee.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Seated in a chair at the side of Larkin’s desk in the busy newsroom, Mackenzie laid out the facts she’d found in the county’s public records. “My question is: when did the city council vote to incorporate Sweetwater Hill?” she asked at last. “Was it before or after Jacob Dearborn started buying parcels left and right?”
He shook his head, eyeing her over his steepled fingers. “I see where you’re going and that’s interesting, Kenzie, but to be honest, it’s not so much corruption on the city council as much as blatant self-interest, which is not against the law.”
Disappointed, Mackenzie slumped in her chair. “Okay.”
“Sure, the city council voted to annex Sweetwater Hill into the Antioch city limits after Jacob Dearborn started acquiring parcels of land up there,” Larkin explained, giving her a sympathetic pat on the arm. “Dearborn has supporters on the council who made a tidy profit selling their land on the hill to him. I’m sure they’ll also get favors in return. None of this is illegal, Kenzie. Political quid pro quo is just business as usual.”
“Crap. I thought I was onto something.”
“Don’t despair, my friend. There’s one thing you said that piques my curiosity.”
“Oh?”
Instead of answering her immediately, Larkin nodded a greeting at Marilyn Hayes, the young, brown-haired junior journalist and “copy boy.” She dropped papers and envelopes into his in-box before wheeling the mail cart away.
“The two parcels you mentioned that are owned by Wilson Wyland,” he said to Mackenzie when Marilyn was out of earshot. “Those pieces of land are probably the reason Dearborn’s trying to push through his snake handling ordinance. He wants those parcels. No, I take that back. He needs those parcels. I’ll bet Wyland has refused to sell. Or maybe he’s holding out for a better price and Dearborn’s using the threat of the ordinance as leverage.”
“Why would Dearborn want to buy up Sweetwater Hill anyway?” Mackenzie couldn’t think of a single motive. “There’s damned little up there but scrub pines, a few wild fruit trees and hardscrabble.” And venomous snakes, she added silently.
“At a recent city council meeting, there was a vote to change the zoning of Sweetwater Hill from unincorporated agricultural to residential,” Larkin said.
Mackenzie snorted. “Agricultural? You can’t even grow weeds up there. As for residential, there’s no power, water, or city sewage lines.”
“Not yet. The change in zoning presents Dearborn with an excellent opportunity to add to his fortune,” Larkin said, rubbing his thumb in circles over the tips of his index and middle fingers in the classic “money” sign. “Probably millions.”
“How so? No, wait, let me guess,” Mackenzie said, not bothering to conceal her disgust. “The day after the proposal passed, Dearborn filed plans to develop Sweetwater Hill.”
“Actually, he filed with the city planner’s office the same day for permission to build an exclusive ‘wilderness’ community of vacation homes.”
“What the hell’s a ‘wilderness community?’”
“The outdoors carefully sterilized and packaged for rich people who enjoy the pretense of roughing it in the great outdoors. Faux log cabins with satellite hookups, all the modern luxuries and conveniences, perched on Sweetwater Hill so the owners can look down at us little people in Antioch. And of course, armed security patrolling twenty-four/seven to ensure none of us little people pester those rich folks with our proletariat ways.”
“Bastard.” Mackenzie hated the idea of Sweetwater Hill being ruined. As long as she’d been alive, the hill had squatted unsullied on the skyline. Generations of Antioch’s citizens had gone there berry picking, hunting deer and the occasional wild boar, digging for arrowheads, camping and other fun activities unpowered by electricity or batteries.
“Since Dearborn’s very good friends with more than half of the city planning commission, I suspect he’ll get approval of his plans as soon as he can persuade Wyland to sell those parcels to him,” Larkin concluded.
“If Wyland won’t sell, what will Dearborn do?”
“Dearborn has to have those parcels, Kenzie. His property development scheme won’t go through without them. And if the scheme doesn’t go through, he’s ruined. He needed a lot of money to finance his real estate purchases. Right now he’s in debt up to his eyeballs. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that Dearborn is in talks with Wyland right now, promising him the ordinance won’t go through at the next city council meeting if he agrees to sell.”
Fat chance, Mackenzie thought. I wonder if Wyland demanded that Dearborn resign from the church because of the whole Sweetwater Hill and ordinance thing, or because he really saw something hinky going on between Dearborn and Kelly.
“I thought a pastor would be above all this…this…” She waved a hand.
Larkin answered her with a fondly amused look underscored by a knowing cynicism. “Underhanded deal making? Kenzie, pastors are mortal, fallible and subject to greed like everybody else. Dearborn saw an opportunity to make a killing and seized it. As a businessman, using his influence wherever he can is a smart move.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not too wild about rattlesnakes,” Mackenzie said, “especially after what happened to me, but Dearborn shouldn’t mess with another man’s religion in the name of profit. That doesn’t sit right with me. Not at all.”
“You’re a better person than Dearborn,” Larkin said, “which is why I find it so surprising he tried to make a complaint against you to the police, claiming you were harassing a cheerleader over at the high school.”
Horror stiffened Mackenzie’s limbs, froze her mouth and stopped her heart. How had he found out? A wave of rage exploded in her chest, stealing her breath. Several moments later, she was able to respond, though she kept her fury to herself.
“That is slander and a vicious lie,” she painstakingly enunciated, mindful to choose her words with care. Larkin was a friend and she trusted him to a large extent, but he was also a reporter. She never forgot that fact. “If you print any such thing, it’s libel.”
“Kenzie, slow down,” Larkin said with a shocked expression. “I wasn’t implying anything. I have a source at the sheriff’s office who told me about Dearborn’s bullshit accusation. My source also told me Dearborn withdrew the complaint without actually filing anything. I just wondered why he was attacking you. Did you bust his dolly?”
She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she sought calm. Dearborn had withdrawn the accusation, but she knew how people thought. If a rumor started that she was “bothering” young girls in some way, even folks who had known her since she was a gap-toothed tomboy would put the worst interpretation on it. They’d exchange significant looks and whisper sagely to one another, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” That’s how lynching parties started.
“Jack, I went to talk to Kelly Collier at her school once and only once,” Mackenzie said when she lifted her head. “My visit had to do with business. There’s nothing else to tell you. Is the paper planning a story?” She couldn’t imagine a less newsworthy event, but perhaps George Wyatt, the Antioch Bee’s owner and publisher, had other ideas.
“Consider the matter dropped,” Larkin said, rolling his chair closer so he could put an arm over her shoulders. “There’s no story. I wanted to make sure you weren’t in trouble. But you know, Kenzie, if you need anything, just ask, okay?”
Gazing into his eyes, taking in his concern, Mackenzie was glad he was her friend. “Thanks, Jack. I don’t know what I did to get on Dearborn’s shit list. My people are Episcopalians and as far as I know, I only met the man once.”
“Do you own any land on Sweetwater Hill?” Larkin joked. “No, seriously, if Dearborn keeps on giving you grief, I’ll have a chat with him. He’s a pastor and I’m a journalist with lots of contacts, mad search engine skills and a front page to fill. I’m sure there are skeletons in his closet he’d rather not come out in the newspaper.”
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but is there really anything worth printing?”
“Men of God sometimes have a little more dirt in their pasts than others. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the paper is going to run a series of stories about Sweetwater Hill, Dearborn and the city council. Not an exposé, Wyatt would have a fit, but more in the line of keeping the public informed of new developments in Antioch’s economic growth, yadda, yadda. I had to research Dearborn for the story, of course.”
“You found the skeleton in Dearborn’s closet.”
“Could be. Not many facts I can print with confidence, not unless the paper’s lawyer suddenly lost all her marbles, but let’s say Jacob Dearborn has an interesting past.”
“Really? Do tell.”
After Larkin told her what he’d discovered about Dearborn, Mackenzie left the newspaper in a very thoughtful mood, especially since she’d seen a silver-gray spark hovering just over Larkin’s shoulder while he spoke.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When Mackenzie stepped outside the newspaper building’s air conditioning, the late afternoon heat slammed into her. Sweat instantly beaded her upper lip. She felt her hair frizzing worse in the humidity, beginning to stand out around her head like a halo crafted from black, fuzzy, kinky springs. She tried to smooth the strands down, but her hair stubbornly refused to cooperate.
Just as stubbornly, she refused to let herself be bothered. Her chin lifted in the air. She and Veronica had known each other a long while. Hell, Veronica had seen her in the hospital unwashed, practically naked, stinking and swollen with poison, and had even helped her to and from the bathroom when the nurse finally removed the catheter. She doubted her unruly hair would cause even a nanosecond of consternation.
Mackenzie returned to her apartment, put together an overnight bag and scraped her hair into a ponytail. She hadn’t replaced the mirrors broken by Annabel yet, so she peered at the various bits of her reflection caught in a tiny compact mirror until she was satisfied.
The clock on the bedside table read five twenty-three p.m., which meant Veronica was probably at Pontefract’s boarding house right now ordering their dinner. She took a quick shower and applied some very light makeup, sparing a moment to be thankful her pain had faded to a bearable ache so she didn’t need medication. Falling asleep in the middle of sexy fun times would be a sure-fire mood killer.
White denim pants, a lime-green tank top worn with an unbuttoned white shirt over it, and white sandals completed her outfit. She grabbed her bag and went out the door, only to stop halfway down the steps and hobble back for the bottle of pain pills, just in case her leg flared up.
With everything she needed finally in hand—including a towel to sit on since her car had been parked in the sun all day—she left the building.
Veronica lived on Carter Crescent in a two-bedroom house at the end of a cul-de-sac, close to a historic Antioch landmark: the oldest continuously operating, family-owned business in Mitford County. The Loveless gristmill on Wahusi Creek had been producing grits, cornmeal, flour and animal feed since a decade before the Revolutionary War. Mackenzie had to drive past the mill on her way to Veronica’s working-class neighborhood.
As a child, she had been fascinated by the great red wheel spinning round and round as the water rushed past. According to local legend, the mill was haunted by the ghost of a worker who’d had his arm crushed and torn off when it got caught in the wooden gears. Pre-Annabel, she’d believed the legend of Arm-Gone Charlie was just a story to frighten kids. Post-Annabel…well, anything was possible, she supposed.
A creeping chill touched her spine. She averted her eyes when the Loveless mill came into sight, keeping her gaze firmly fastened on the road.
Reaching the house, Mackenzie parked on the street rather than behind the patrol car in the driveway, in case Veronica had an emergency callout. The screen door opened when she exited her car. She paused, torn by a sudden, nervous urge to drive away.
“Hey Mac, I just got here. Come on in,” Veronica called from the doorway.
Mackenzie mentally shook herself by the metaphorical scruff of her neck. Don’t be a dumb-ass. This is what you want. She’d been cherishing lustful thoughts about Veronica for months and squashing said thoughts into the deepest, darkest corner of her mind. Now that the moment had come when her desire seemed within reach, she hesitated. What if they weren’t compatible? What if something went wrong? What if their first sexual encounter was as big a disaster as their first date at Swine Dining? She didn’t want to lose her best friend.
Idiot! No matter what happened tonight, she knew Veronica would never reject their friendship. There might be a little awkwardness at first, but they’d manage. Impatient with her dithering and determined not to second-guess herself any longer, she took hold of her bag, slammed the car door shut and marched up the driveway to Veronica’s house.
Inside, the air was stuffy and sultry with heat, seemingly much hotter than outside. She let out a low whistle, hoping her deodorant wouldn’t fail.
“Sorry,” Veronica said, moving from behind her. “The A/C hasn’t had a chance to kick in yet. Would you rather eat in the backyard? It’s still light enough.”
Grateful to Veronica for acting normally, Mackenzie nodded.
Veronica disappeared into the kitchen. Mackenzie went to the l
iving room to drop off her bag and walked through the kitchen to the backyard where she took a seat on a lawn chair positioned to face the rear of the property where vegetables grew in neat rows.
She recognized tomatoes, cucumbers, runner beans, crowder peas and bell peppers. Crookneck squash plants spread broad green leaves over the ground. Other rows held onions, sweet potatoes and cantaloupe vines, and at the very end of the plot, a luxurious growth of rhubarb. She’d helped Veronica work compost into the ground and plant those crops…
Little by little, her stress faded and she began to relax
In a little while, Veronica joined her outside, carrying two plates in her hands, a third balanced on her arm and bottles of Snakehead ale in the crooks of her elbows.
The touch of nerves hadn’t affected Mackenzie’s appetite. Very little ever did. Her metabolism meant her body burned food as fuel at a fast clip. Some people, mainly women, thought she was lucky not to retain fat, but she had her share of health problems like borderline anemia and an immune system that surrendered to the first flu virus every season.
She surveyed the contents of the plates with happiness. The boarding house owned by Cornelius Pontefract and his mother, Belle—ninety-six years old, nearly blind and famously sharp-tongued—had an open buffet dinner six days a week for anyone who wanted to pay eight dollars a plate. Veronica had chosen a meatless menu: macaroni and cheese, black-eyed peas, collard greens, a piece of corn on the cob, and as requested, two of Belle Pontefract’s crispy corn bread sticks made in an ancient cast iron pan. In addition, Veronica had added a plate of sliced ripe tomatoes from her garden.
“We can have a cantaloupe for dessert,” Veronica said, placing the plates and bottles on a table near Mackenzie’s lawn chair. She dragged over another chair. “I picked one this morning. It’s in the fridge.”
“I think I love you.” Mackenzie took her plate and dug in until she realized Veronica wasn’t eating, just sitting in the chair and staring at her. She swallowed. “Um…do I have food on my chin or something?”