White Hot

by Sandra Brown

  What was Sayre doing? Was she at The Lodge now, packing, making travel arrangements to California? Would he ever see her again?

  Chris carried his drink with him to the sofa. Sinking into the cushions, he tilted his face toward the ceiling and closed his eyes. “Some two weeks, huh?”

  “Some two weeks. Sort of symmetric that it started and ended at the fishing camp, on a Sunday.”

  “Maybe that’s what Watkins had in mind.”

  “I don’t think he had in mind to get a knife in his belly.”

  “No, but he wanted to put one in mine.” After a short silence, Chris said, “Did Sayre spend the night at your place?”

  “Yes.”

  “No contraceptives necessary.”

  Beck turned and looked at him sharply.

  “Huff told me. He said Sayre had a female problem that had made her sterile. That put an end to his scheme for you to marry her and beget offspring.”

  “She wouldn’t have me anyway.” Beck crossed the room and leaned against the edge of Huff’s desk, too restless to sit down.

  “Too bad it didn’t pan out. It would have been convenient to have a lawyer in the family. On the other hand, I’m glad Huff’s plan went awry. Want to hear a confession, Beck?”

  Chris finished his whiskey in one swallow and set the empty glass on the end table. “Of late, I was becoming jealous of you. True,” he said, sensing Beck’s surprise. “When Huff won’t listen to anybody else, he’ll listen to you. He’s vested you with authority he hasn’t given to anyone outside the family. Now if, on top of all that, you had sired his first grandchild out of my sister, I would not have liked it.”

  Chris’s engaging smile was still in place, but Beck heard the echo of Sayre’s warning: I’ll tell you about Chris. He isn’t your friend.

  “Nobody could replace you in Huff’s affection, Chris. In any case, I wouldn’t even want to.”

  “Glad to hear it, Beck. Glad to hear it.” Sighing, Chris leaned back and stacked his hands on the crown of his head. “But you know what this means, don’t you? The responsibility of giving Huff an heir falls to me after all. I’ve got to father a child in order to keep Huff’s dynasty alive. Actually, I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s how it should be.

  “Sayre abandoned the family. It would have been unfair if no sooner than she reappeared she gets pregnant with Huff’s desired grandchild. Danny couldn’t stop praying long enough to have a baby with that titmouse he was about to marry. That leaves me. Huff will be on me to—”

  “What?” Beck’s lungs and heart seized up. He could barely breathe. “What did you say?”

  Chris looked at him blankly. “What?”

  “About Danny. About the woman he was going to marry.”

  Chris’s expression remained impassive for several seconds, then gradually a sly smile appeared, and finally he laughed. “Son of a bitch. I’d come close to slipping so many times, but until now I always caught myself.”

  “You knew Danny was engaged?”

  He gave Beck a derisive look. “No matter how clever Danny thought he was being by sneaking around to see her, he should have known Huff would find out.”

  “Huff knew, too?”

  “And evidently so did you. When did Danny tell you?”

  “He didn’t. Sayre did.”

  “How did she know?” Chris asked.

  “She met his fiancée at his grave site.”

  “Was she singing?”

  “Singing?”

  “That’s what she does, sings at that Holy Roller church. She’s the one who influenced Danny to join the congregation. Convert. Confess. Get baptized. The whole nine yards.

  “Huff and I let it go for a while, thinking it was an infatuation that would soon wear itself out. But when we realized how serious it had become, the engagement ring and all, we pinned him down about it.

  “We said we were glad he’d finally shown some inclinations toward romance, even marriage, but we disapproved of his choice. Huff ordered him to break the engagement, never see her again, and never return to that church.”

  “The fiancée didn’t know you and Huff were aware of their engagement.”

  “I guess Danny didn’t want to tell her. He hoped to win our approval. Beck, the guy was completely brainwashed. He started praying for us. Can you believe that? Dropped to his knees right there by Huff’s recliner and started praying out loud for our salvation. He went on for ten minutes about how we needed to be washed clean of our sin and iniquity. I thought Huff was going to have a stroke.”

  Beck’s heart was thudding. “Danny wanted to come clean about Iverson, didn’t he?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “That was the obstacle, the cause of his emotional turmoil. Danny couldn’t marry this woman he loved until he had purged his conscience and confessed his sin against Gene Iverson. Except he couldn’t do that without fingering you and Huff. Danny knew that Huff had killed Iverson and—”

  “Huff did no such thing.” Chris got up and poured himself another drink. “If I keep this up, I’ll be drunk by lunchtime. Can’t see that it matters, though.” He motioned toward the windows. “It’s not a workday.”

  He sat back down and looked at Beck. Beck stared back at him. Finally, Chris broke a slow smile. “You’re just itching to know, aren’t you? Okay, I’ll tell you. It was an ac-ci-dent,” he said, emphasizing the syllables.

  “You?”

  Chris made an offhand gesture. “I followed Iverson out of the meeting that night. I confronted him in the employee parking lot. I had taken a hammer with me, just to give some punch to my warning that he keep his mouth shut about the union and stop making trouble.

  “The fool charged me like a bull, forcing me to fight back. I was only trying to protect myself. I don’t remember hitting him that hard, but next thing I know, I’m holding a bloody ball-peen and he’s got a hole in his head the size of a half-dollar.

  “Shit, I’m thinking. Shit! I panicked. I ran back into the plant and got Huff. I was scared somebody was going to come along and see Iverson lying there, but it was between shift changes, so no one was in the parking lot.

  “Huff calmly assessed the situation. He believed me when I told him that it had been self-defense, but who needed an inquest, he asked. No, he said, the fastest solution to the problem would be to make the body disappear. Which was a smart decision. If the DA had seen that hole in Iverson’s skull, he might have been able to make a more convincing case against me.

  “Anyhow, Huff told me where to bury the body, and how to do it, and recruited Danny to help me. Meanwhile he and Red Harper cleaned up the mess in the parking lot and took care of Iverson’s car. You know, now that I think on it, I never asked what happened to it. Hm.”

  “Where did you bury him?”

  Chris chuckled. “You’re my lawyer, Beck. You can’t divulge anything I confide in you. But some things I’m not completely comfortable telling you.” He gazed at Beck with a mix of amusement and vexation. “Stop looking at me like that. It’s not like I meant to kill him. He was dead and nothing was going to change that. I got on with the rest of my life. Of course I had to go through the trial, which was a pain, but it worked out all right.”

  “You never really feared any consequences, did you, Chris? Because you’d seen Huff get away with killing Sonnie Hallser.”

  “Hallser?” He frowned as though trying to place the name. “I was just a kid. I barely remember that.”

  “You’re lying, Chris. You were there. You saw what happened, and it made a lasting impression on you.”

  He leaned back and placed his arms along the top of the sofa as though inviting Beck to talk.

  Beck got up and began to pace. “Those days, employees worked two ten-hour shifts, with a four-hour break in between for maintenance and so forth. Huff was about to change that. Go to three eight-hour shifts, eliminating that important time for inspections and repairs. That was the substance of his quarrel with Sonnie Hallser.”
/>   “He was the workers’ appointed spokesperson,” Chris said. “He was a stand-up kind of guy. Everybody liked him, even Huff. The problem with Mr. Hallser was, he took his role of employee representative too seriously. He was close to sounding pro-union. I think he might have been working as a spy for the union all along.”

  “Huff had made up his mind about changing the shifts and nobody was going to talk him out of it,” Beck said, thinking out loud. “The shop floor was deserted except for Hallser, who was working on that machine above the sandpit. Huff confronted him. They quarreled. Huff pushed him into that machine and started it up, and you saw it. That man got crushed so severely he was cut almost in half. You saw that, didn’t you, Chris?”

  “How could I have seen that, when I wasn’t even there?”

  “Huff told me you were.”

  Chris was taken aback by that. “Really? Well, even if I was, I didn’t see anything.” He tilted his head and gave Beck a long look. “Why are we talking about this? And why do you seem upset?”

  “Every attorney wants his client to be innocent.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. If everyone was innocent you’d be out of business. Actually I’m relieved that you finally know about Iverson. We shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. Otherwise, how will there ever be any trust between us?”

  “You didn’t trust me with the secret of Danny’s engagement.”

  “True. I hate that I let that cat out of the bag.”

  “Because your and Huff’s problem wasn’t just the young woman’s piety. It was Danny’s determination to confess.”

  Chris swore beneath his breath. “He was going to blab to Jesus and the whole world what happened to Iverson.”

  “Do you realize what this means to your case?”

  “Case? What case? There’s no longer a case, Beck. Remember Wayne Scott’s humble apology for suspecting me? If I’d been wearing a ring he would have kissed it.”

  “You had a powerful motive for killing your brother.”

  Chris shook his head and laughed softly. “You think I killed Danny?”

  “Did you?”

  “I had an alibi. Sweet Lila, remember.”

  “Did you?” he shouted.

  “No, Beck. I didn’t.”

  Chris was smiling when his cell phone rang. He answered it, his smile turning into a frown. “What is it, George?” He listened. “Right now? How long will it take? All right,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll be right down.”

  Chris disconnected. “He’s nervous about the inspection on Monday and wants me to look at the drive belt on that conveyor while it’s running, see if I think it’ll pass muster. His ass is on the line because he signed off on the repair of it. He’s afraid he’s going to be left holding a bag of shit, and he’s right. But until we fire him I guess I’d better humor him. I’ve got the only key to that machine, so I’m the only one who can restart it. I knew this lock-down-tagout nonsense would be a pain.”

  “We were talking about your motive for murder,” Beck said.

  “No, you were. Slap Watkins was the culprit. It’s a dead subject. Get over it, Beck.”

  And to Beck’s consternation, Chris walked out.

  chapter 35

  Parked at the Dairy Queen, eating a Blizzard with peanut M&M’s, Huff laughed with self-derision as he pulled the .357 pistol from his belt and carefully laid it on the passenger seat.

  He supposed toting the weapon had made him look a bit ridiculous, but he would have had no compunction about shooting Slap Watkins right between the eyes. It was a foregone conclusion that he had to die.

  Now that he was in the morgue, the whole mess was over and done with.

  Huff thought that maybe a visit to Danny’s grave would be appropriate. He hadn’t been to the cemetery since the funeral. Yes, he would go today and take flowers.

  Wouldn’t be too long, he would be attending Red’s funeral, he thought sadly. He was going to miss—

  And that was when he remembered the envelope Red had left with him that morning. He’d stuffed it into his pants pocket when Selma informed him that Chris was at the fishing cabin. In his haste to warn Chris, and with all that had come afterward, he hadn’t thought of it again until now.

  With Slap Watkins no longer a worry, and Chris in the clear, he could confront the issues at Hoyle Enterprises with singular concentration and renewed energy. The OSHA inspection had supplanted Charles Nielson as his main concern, but Nielson had been integral to the shutdown, and by God, he was going to pay for that.

  Huff removed the envelope from his pocket. Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded like a business letter. This morning when he’d asked Red what he’d unearthed about Nielson, he had replied, “It’s all in there.”

  But if this was all the information Red and his contacts in New Orleans had obtained, it was precious little. To Huff’s disappointment, there were only a few typewritten lines on the sheet.

  “Dammit.” Red was old and sick, and his work had become sloppy.

  Huff had hoped for more to work with, a character flaw or bad habit that would leave Nielson vulnerable to attack. Was he a gambler, tax evader, drug user? Did he like kiddie porn? Did he have multiple DUIs? Huff was searching for something in the man’s life that, if exploited or exposed, could destroy his credibility.

  Huff put on a pair of reading glasses, which he used only when no one was around, and read what Sheriff Harper had uncovered about his nemesis.

  Seconds later, a family van was nearly driven off the road by Huff Hoyle as he sped out of the Dairy Queen parking lot. He had dropped the paper cup with what was left of his Blizzard onto the floor-board. As it rolled with the erratic motions of the speeding car, it slung a sticky, melting goo onto the floor mats.

  By the time Huff reached Hoyle Enterprises, that goo had turned to milky liquid. Huff didn’t think twice of it. But he remembered to get the pistol from off the passenger seat.

  • • •

  Sayre was latching her overnight bag when someone knocked on the motel room door. She pushed aside the window drape and looked outside. “Red?” Alarmed, she opened the door. “What’s happened now?”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, Sayre. Nothing’s happened, far as I know.” He removed his hat. “Can I come in?”

  She waved him inside and indicated the packed bag. “You just caught me. I’ve booked a flight this afternoon out of New Orleans.”

  “You’re going back to San Francisco?”

  “That’s where I belong now.”

  “I thought maybe you and Beck . . .”

  “No.”

  This morning she had drawn a line in the sand. He had remained on the opposing side of it with Huff and Chris. As she was packing, she had vacillated between tossing the strand of Mardi Gras beads he’d bought her into the nearest trash can or taking it with her. Ultimately she had wrapped it in a T-shirt and placed it in her bag. One memento. She allowed herself that.

  “I won’t be seeing Beck again before I leave.”

  “Huh. Well.” Red looked around the room as though at a loss as to what to say next. When his eyes finally reconnected with hers, she noticed the pinched look of pain at the corners of them. “Have you talked to Huff this morning?” he asked.

  Rather than explaining what he was doing here, his questions were becoming more perplexing. “Only at the fishing camp.” Again, he seemed to zone out. Several moments ticked by. Finally she said, “I haven’t got much time, Red. What did you want to see me about? Is it something to do with Danny? Watkins?”

  “No. That’s pretty much wrapped up.”

  “Which is why I can go home. I vowed to stay in Destiny until I knew what had happened to Danny. I can return to my life now.”

  He nodded, but it was an absentminded motion, as though he really hadn’t heard her and didn’t really care what her plans were. He cleared his throat. “Sayre, I take full responsibility for my own actions and won’t lay blame for them on anybody else’s doorstep. I w
ould never double-cross Huff. I want you to understand that.”

  She indicated that she did, when in fact she didn’t have a clue what he was trying to say.

  “We colluded on lots of things I’m not proud of. At first it seemed harmless enough to bend a few rules, then, I don’t know, I just got caught up in it. Like in a net. I couldn’t find my way out.” He raised his hands helplessly as though asking for her understanding and absolution. “But what’s done is done. I can’t go back and fix things.

  “But the future is something else,” he continued. “I’m telling you this because I want somebody else to know the way things are in case . . . well, in case something bad happens and I’m not around to give the truth of it.”

  “Truth of what? Tell me what?”

  “Beck Merchant is Charles Nielson.”

  The room seemed to tilt. “What?”

  “I had some guys I know in New Orleans—private investigator types—checking Nielson out for Huff. Fact is, there is no Charles Nielson, just somebody made up by Beck.”

  She lowered herself to the arm of the chair, the nearest place to sit down.

  “Now, I don’t know why he worked up such an elaborate charade,” Red said. “Don’t really want to know. But my last official duty to Huff was to give him that information this morning.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Out at the fishing camp, Huff didn’t let on like he knew yet. But anytime now, he could open the envelope I left with him and read what’s inside. When he does, I don’t know how he’ll react.”

  She shot to her feet. “Like hell you don’t, you gutless old bastard.”

  She shoved him out of her way and ran for the door. The tires of the rental convertible smoked on the hot asphalt as she pulled onto the highway. She leaned on her horn if another motorist dared to get in her path as she sped toward her old home, thinking that was where Chris would probably want to go once they left the camp.

  She couldn’t even consider the implications of Beck’s being the elusive Nielson, or his reasons for scamming them all. Her only thought was to prevent Huff from finding out before she could warn Beck.