White Hot

by Sandra Brown

The ever-present smoke hovered above the horizon undisturbed because there was no wind. It was like an entity unto itself, a continuous reminder of the Hoyles’ dominance and a perpetual threat to anyone who dared to question their right to dominate.

  Beck said, “You’ve really got it in for them, don’t you?”

  “Do you honestly think I enjoy accusing my brother of murder?”

  He straightened up and turned around, propping his hips against the railing and folding his arms across his bare chest. “I think you might.”

  “I don’t. I don’t even want to think that Chris is capable of it. But, tragically, I do. Killing runs in our family.”

  “Like a physical trait?”

  “Huff killed a man and got away with it.”

  “Oh, first Chris. Now Huff.” He shook his head with incredulity. “You just don’t stop, do you? Well, leave me out of your petty vendettas against your family, all right?”

  He went to his front door, opened it, and motioned Frito inside. The screened door slammed shut behind him. Sayre hesitated only a second before going after him.

  She followed the clatter of pots and pans and found him in the kitchen lighting a burner on the range. Frito was excitedly dancing around his feet.

  “His name was Sonnie Hallser,” she said. “He was a foreman at the plant in the mid-seventies. An advocate for unionizing. He and Huff had locked horns over the working conditions and—”

  “Look,” he said, coming around and facing her, “I know all about it. I don’t need any details because I read them for myself. Huff offered me a—Shit!”

  The empty skillet on the burner had begun to smoke. He pulled it off the stove and took two eggs from the refrigerator. He cracked them into the skillet, cooked them quickly, then mixed them with kibbles in Frito’s bowl. Frito attacked it as soon as Beck set the bowl on the floor.

  “Huff offered me a sweet deal,” he continued. “It was a lawyer’s wet dream. Beyond the challenging job, there was the house, the car allowance, benefits, great salary. You think I’m a whore for accepting his offer? Fine. Think that. But like any good whore, I work my ass off. I earn what I’m paid.

  “Also like any smart whore, I checked out my client before I took his money. I checked him out thoroughly. You think I was oblivious or naïve? No, Sayre. I did my homework. One of the more negative write-ups about Chris’s trial hearkened back to all the other Hoyle employees who had died in job-related accidents.

  “Sonnie Hallser was named. I did extensive research, learned everything there was to know about the fatal incident. Granted, the circumstances surrounding it were murky, but—”

  “Huff is clever enough to make them murky.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I lived through it! I was five years old, but it made an indelible impression. My mother stayed locked in her bedroom, crying all the time. Huff was in a constant state of agitation. Red Harper and other men came to our house in the middle of the night and gathered secretively in Huff’s den. Tension inside the house was so hot and thick you could cut it with a knife.

  “Even as a child, I sensed all this, and it frightened me. I asked Selma what was going on. She told me that some people thought Huff had killed a man and had made it look like an accident. She told me it was a big fat lie and to pay it no mind.

  “But I did, Beck. I thought about it a lot and wondered if it was a lie. I’d seen Huff when he was angry enough to kill someone. Long after things had settled down and returned to normal, I continued to think about it. Years later, I did my own research into the matter.”

  “Then you know there was no basis for an indictment.”

  “Maybe not from a legal standpoint, but I’m convinced that Huff did precisely what was alleged. The machine with the white cross painted on it, the one I saw yesterday, that’s where Sonnie Hallser died, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “It’s a behemoth, capable of crushing a man. Huff pushed Hallser into it and watched him die.”

  Propping his hands on his hips, Beck bent slightly at the waist and took several deep breaths. When he straightened up, he said, “The authorities conducted a thorough investigation, Sayre.”

  “The authorities were bribed.”

  “No criminal charges were ever filed.”

  “Which doesn’t mean a crime wasn’t committed.”

  “Huff was cleared of all suspicion.”

  “The case was swept under the rug.”

  “Because no one could prove any wrongdoing,” he shouted. “And whether I like it, or you like it, that’s the way the legal system works.”

  He was breathing hard, his eyes alight with the ferocity of his argument. Frito’s whine finally penetrated his anger. He dropped the combative posture and walked to the back door to let the dog out. “Don’t go too far. Remember the skunk.” Turning back into the room, he said, “Sure you wouldn’t like something to drink?”

  She declined with a small shake of her head.

  His anger had abated. Now he was merely frustrated, and frustration looked good on him. She tried but failed to keep her eyes away from him as he took a canned Coke from the refrigerator and popped the top, tossing the tab onto the tabletop with typical male negligence.

  He drank deeply from the can, then placed it on the kitchen table. “Where were we?”

  She pulled her gaze away from his bare torso. “Nowhere. We’re going around in circles. This was a mistake. I never should have come here.”

  She made it only as far as the interior door before he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Why did you come, Sayre? Truthfully.”

  With him standing that close, turning around was a bad idea. She knew that before she did it. But she turned anyway, bringing her eyes on a level with the V of his throat. “Truthfully? To see if you knew what had been bothering Danny.”

  “I don’t know. And I regret that I don’t, because if I did, maybe we’d have an explanation for what happened to him. Now, is that the only reason you came?”

  “Yes.”

  “No other?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.” When she raised her head and looked up at him, he added, “I think you came here because you wanted to see me. I’m glad you did. I wanted to see you, too. I’m not nearly the villain you think I am.”

  “But you are, Beck. The tragedy is that you don’t even realize it. You may not have started out that way. I don’t know. But now you’re so steeped in their corruption that you might as well have been born evil like they were.

  “They seduced you three years ago, and the seduction was so complete that now you can’t distinguish what is right from what is merely expedient. Mrs. Paulik knew it. I know it, too. Your soul belongs to them.”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right. I’m an opportunist. Rotten to the core. If that’s so, why would you let me come within ten feet of you?” He took a step closer. “There must be something about me you like.”

  She tried to move away, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “Let’s talk about last night.”

  “No, Beck.”

  “Why not? We’re grown-ups.”

  She gave a low laugh of self-deprecation. “Is that the way grown-ups behave?”

  “Sometimes. If they’re lucky.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Although you got luckier than I did.”

  To shut out his smile, she closed her eyes.

  “What’s the worst thing you did, Sayre?” he asked softly. “You surrendered to your natural impulses. Is that so terrible?”

  “For me? Yes.”

  “Forgive yourself for being human. You had been riding an emotional roller coaster all day. Through it all, you didn’t scream, you didn’t cry, God knows you didn’t laugh. You’d had no release. You had kept your cool, maintained rigid self-control, so all those emotions were pent up inside you. They had reached a fever pitch. Sex provided an outlet.”

  She opened her eyes. “What happened l
ast night was anger driven. It had nothing to do with sex.”

  He frowned with mild reproach. “I was there, Sayre, remember? It had everything to do with sex.”

  “I was livid. You only wanted to insult and humiliate me.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Yes I do.”

  He shook his head. “If you believed that, you wouldn’t be standing here now.”

  He was right. If this wasn’t about sex, it was a damn good imitation. All the sensations she experienced each time she saw him were sexual. The awareness of him, sexual. The hormonal rush, sexual. The sudden need to hold and to be held, sexual. The desire to be taken to a level of arousal and release that disallowed thoughts of anything else, purely sexual.

  God, it would be fabulous to give herself over to it, to take advantage of this very attractive man, to lose herself in physical sensation, to use him. But he was Beck Merchant, Chris’s best friend, Huff’s yes-man.

  She whispered, “I can’t do this, Beck.”

  “Neither can I. This is all kinds of wrong.” He placed his hands on her waist and drew her lower body against his. “But I still want to be all over you.”

  Then he kissed her. His lips were warm and his tongue was nimble and she surrendered her mouth to both. She actually whimpered a small protest when he pulled back. He touched the split on her lower lip with the knuckle of his index finger.

  “Too much pressure?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Not enough?”

  He touched the delicate spot with the tip of his tongue, kissed it tenderly, then took bold and intimate possession of her mouth. His hand moved from her face to her breast. His palm ground lightly against her nipple, and she felt a responsive tug, like a hunger pang, deep within her.

  Oh God, it felt good. Call it desire, or lust, or whatever, it was wonderful and tempting and terrifying, because if she didn’t stop this now, she would make another mistake, more disastrous than the one last night.

  “I can’t do this with you,” she said breathlessly. Before he could react, she pushed him aside and rushed through the doorway, only to be brought up short the instant she entered the living room.

  Chris was leaning against the back of the sofa, ankles and arms crossed, smiling his most insolent smile. “I would have cleared my throat, but I hated to interrupt.” He gave Sayre a smirking once-over, then looked at Beck. “Go take a cold shower. It seems I’m in dire need of my attorney.”

  chapter 18

  Red Harper was pacing along the sidewalk outside the sheriff’s office when they arrived. He was smoking a cigarette, but Beck got the impression that the smoke break was only an excuse for him to be outside, waiting to intercept them before they went in.

  Red’s first statement confirmed his guess. “I just want y’all to know that I had nothing to do with this.”

  “With what?” Beck asked.

  “Scott acted alone. I knew nothing about it beforehand. Chris, you’d better look sharp in there.”

  Chris thrust his face to within an inch of the sheriff’s. “And if you can’t manage this asshole, you’d better start looking for another job.”

  It wasn’t an empty threat, and Red knew it. If he didn’t protect the Hoyles, he wouldn’t have protection against anyone investigating his ethics. He took a final drag on his cigarette. “We’d better go inside.”

  Spit-and-polish ready, Deputy Wayne Scott was waiting for them inside Red’s private office. He acknowledged their arrival with a grave nod and thanked them for coming on such short notice. “I thought it would be best to clear this up right away.”

  “Exactly what is it that needs clearing up?” Chris asked.

  “Let me do the talking, Chris,” Beck said.

  They sat in the same chairs as before, facing Red across his battered and littered desk, with Deputy Scott practically standing at attention beside him.

  Red began by clearing his throat. “This, uh, this needs some explanation, I’m afraid.”

  He extended to Beck a sheet of paper on which was printed computer gobbledygook.

  “I subpoenaed your telephone records, Mr. Hoyle,” Scott said. “This is a record of the calls you made from your cell phone the day your brother died. I’ve highlighted the call that we’d like explained.”

  Beck saw that a line of data had been marked with a yellow highlighter pen. “This is A.M.?” he asked, noting the time of the call.

  “Yes, sir. At seven-oh-four that Sunday morning, Mr. Hoyle placed a call to the victim’s cell phone.”

  It didn’t escape Beck’s notice that Danny was now being referred to as “the victim.”

  “Well, you caught me red-handed, Deputy. I called my brother on the telephone. You’d better handcuff me quick before I’m unleashed on an un-suspecting public.”

  Beck shot Chris a look that warned him to shut up. Then, putting on his game face, Beck addressed Scott. “Like my client, I fail to see the problem.”

  “The problem is that Mr. Hoyle told us he’d slept late that morning, till about eleven o’clock. He didn’t mention waking up a little after seven to call his brother. And it seems a strange thing to do anyway. Hadn’t Danny Hoyle been sleeping in his room down the hall just a little while before that?”

  Red, speaking for the first time, said, “We’ve established that Danny got home shortly before midnight on Saturday. He slept in his bed that night because Selma made it up on Sunday morning. He had a cup of coffee with her in the kitchen between six-thirty and seven, when he left for a men’s prayer breakfast the church has every Sunday morning. He’d been away from the house approximately four minutes when you called him on his cell phone,” he said to Chris.

  Before Chris could respond, Beck said, “Someone else could have used Chris’s cell phone. Selma. Huff. Me. We all had access to it.”

  “Where do you keep your cell phone, Mr. Hoyle?”

  Chris glanced at Beck, signaling that he wanted to answer. “I advise you not to say anything until we’ve had a chance to discuss this,” Beck said.

  “It doesn’t matter. This is bullshit.” Ignoring Beck’s warning, he turned to the law officers. “Nobody else used my phone Sunday morning. It was on my dresser, along with my wallet and everything else that came out of my pants pockets the night before. I called Danny that morning. I can’t deny it. There’s the proof,” he said, waving toward the phone record.

  “I didn’t mention it before because I’d actually forgotten about it, and I’d forgotten about it because it was insignificant. I woke up to go to the bathroom. If you say it was around seven o’clock, then I guess it was around seven o’clock. I didn’t know what time it was and didn’t care.

  “I was on my way back to bed when I heard a car engine starting. I looked through my bedroom window and saw Danny’s car driving away. I remembered that Huff wanted Danny at home for dinner that evening, and he didn’t care if Saint Peter himself was going to appear in that Holy Roller tabernacle. That’s a quote.

  “I was hungover and frankly didn’t give a damn where my brother would be having dinner that night. But I knew we’d all bear the brunt of Huff’s foul mood if Danny wasn’t there because I’d forgotten to tell him to be. So while it was fresh on my mind, I called him. If I’d gone back to sleep, I might not have remembered it later. I gave him a heads-up. I told him that unless he wanted Huff on the warpath, he would be at home for dinner that evening.

  “Danny promised he would be. I asked him to toss a five into the collection plate for me, to cover the sins I’d committed the night before. He laughed and said a five probably wouldn’t come close to covering my transgressions, then he told me to go back to bed, that he would see me at dinner, and hung up.”

  His smile was pleasant, but it dripped contempt. “Now, Deputy Scott, if you think you can hang a murder rap on me with that, you’re even more laughable than I originally thought.”

  The insult bounced off Scott’s starched uniform. “Yes, sir, that would be pr
etty flimsy in itself. But then there’s the matter of the time.”

  “Time?” Beck glanced at Red, whose flabby jowl was resting on his fist. He appeared to be miserable and wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “That’s right, Mr. Merchant,” Scott said. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “You can ask. I may not answer.”

  “What time did you join Mr. Hoyle to watch the baseball game?”

  The question seemed harmless enough. “The game started at three. When I got there it was in the second inning, so I would put my arrival at around three-twenty.”

  “And Mr. Hoyle was at home?”

  “In the den.”

  “And you were with him the rest of the afternoon?”

  “Until you and Red came to the house. So what’s the issue, Deputy?”

  “The issue is the two hours between twelve-thirty and two-thirty, when no one can account for Mr. Hoyle’s whereabouts.”

  • • •

  Chris drove to the Sonic, which to Beck seemed an unlikely choice given the gravity of their upcoming conversation. On any summer night, cars packed with teenagers cruised endless circles around the place. The kids honked their horns at each other, the boys shouted innuendos to the girls, and the girls shouted back “kiss off” or equivalents. Some congregated around the metal picnic tables that were bolted down to a concrete pad beneath an aluminum awning. They noshed chili-covered French fries and created small dramas for their small-town entertainment.

  Above the Beach Boys classic blaring through the outdoor speakers, Beck said, “What are we doing here?”

  “I’m thirsty for a slush.” Chris pulled his car into a vacant slot and placed an order through the speaker. Then he turned to Beck.

  “This had better be good, Chris.”

  “Deputy Scott is beginning to annoy me.”

  “You said Selma could vouch that you stayed home all day.”

  “I didn’t know she’d tell them about her afternoon nap.”

  “Which leaves you unaccountable for two hours. Did you leave the house? And you goddamn well better not lie to me.”

  “So what if I did leave?”

  “If you did, that means you had an opportunity to kill Danny, because the time of his death, as established by the coroner, would fall into that period of time when nobody knows for certain where you were.”