White Hot

by Sandra Brown

  She shook the contents of her handbag into the passenger seat and rifled through it in search of her cell phone, before remembering that she had left it charging after placing a call to her office to alert her assistant of her return.

  Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator. She almost spun out in loose gravel when she took a corner too fast, nearly ran over a flock of buzzards that were picking at the carcass of an opossum on the road, and jarred her teeth when she crossed a railroad track doing eighty-five.

  Still, it seemed to take forever to get there, and when she did, she moaned as she saw no car parked out front. She stopped the car so suddenly, she smelled the scorched rubber of the skidding tires. She alighted at a run, without bothering to cut the engine or close the car door.

  As she raced up the steps to the gallery, the toe of her shoe caught on one and she tripped, catching herself on her hands, painfully scraping her palms. She stumbled up the last couple of steps and lunged across the deep porch. The screened door was un-latched and the front door unlocked. She barreled through them. Selma was coming downstairs with a laundry basket under her arm.

  “Have you seen Beck? Where’s Huff?”

  “Last I knew, Huff was on his way to the fishing camp. Haven’t seen Beck at’all. What’s happened?”

  “Do you think they’re at the plant?”

  “I—”

  “Call Beck on his cell phone,” Sayre shouted over her shoulder as she raced back to the door. “Tell him Huff knows about Charles Nielson. Have you got that, Selma? Huff knows about Charles Nielson.”

  “Got it, but—”

  “Tell him, Selma.”

  Then she was off again, driving like hell toward the dormant smokestacks.

  • • •

  Beck ignored his ringing cell phone as he clambered down the stairs to the shop floor.

  It had taken him only a few moments to put all the fragments together. When he did, the whole picture became stunningly clear.

  Chris’s earnest claims that he hadn’t murdered his brother were true. He wasn’t guilty of loading the shotgun, sticking it into Danny’s mouth, and pulling the trigger.

  That didn’t mean he was innocent.

  When Beck reached the conveyor, George Robson was standing close behind Chris, who was leaning into the machine, inspecting the faulty drive belt in operation. Neither had on a hard hat or safety glasses. Neither had learned a damn thing. But then Chris believed himself invincible—with reason.

  Beck had to speak loudly to make himself heard. “Chris!”

  George jumped as though he’d been shot and spun around. His pink jowls were flabby with shock. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  Chris straightened up and dusted off his hands. His eyes were on Beck, but he spoke to George. “We can always blame the maintenance man for a lousy repair job, George. In any case, there’s not much we can do about it today. Go on home.”

  George seemed to be gulping for oxygen like a fish out of water. He was sweating copiously and wringing his pudgy hands. Without a word, he turned quickly and left them. Beck watched him climb the metal staircase to the Center and disappear through the door.

  “Poor George.” Chris hit the machine’s kill switch, and it stopped. “He’s more nervous than I’ve ever seen him. He sees the handwriting on the wall.”

  “You had Slap Watkins kill Danny for you,” Beck said without preamble. “While you were with Lila, creating an alibi, Watkins went to the fishing camp, where you had told him Danny would be, and he killed him. You weren’t lying when you said you hadn’t done it. You had somebody else do it for you.”

  • • •

  Huff checked Beck’s office first. Always conscientious Beck. Always working overtime Beck. Always looking out for the interests of Hoyle Enterprises Beck.

  Fucking Beck. Cheating Beck. Lying Beck.

  Beck’s office was empty. So was Chris’s. But hearing machinery running in the otherwise silent plant, Huff went to the windows above the shop floor. He looked down and saw the two of them in conversation, his son and the Judas who had betrayed them. Huff didn’t think about the irony of using a biblical metaphor. His single thought was of destroying the person who had tried his damnedest to destroy him.

  Hefting the pistol, he left the office and headed for the back stairs, but when he reached the shop floor, he cautioned himself not to lose his head, not to go out there with pistol blazing.

  As he had told Beck the week before, Nielson was a lousy strategist. The best attack was a surprise attack.

  • • •

  Chris laughed softly. “Slap was very upset with Danny for not hiring him, you know. He took it up with me one night in the parking lot of the Razorback.”

  “Where you told him you had a job for him.”

  Chris regarded him impassively.

  “You told Slap to make it look like a suicide. It might have been convincing, except that Watkins forgot to remove Danny’s shoe. That one mistake made Deputy Scott question that it was a suicide. Never thinking that you would be implicated, you were desperate to do something, so you advanced the idea that Slap Watkins was the culprit and was trying to frame you.”

  Beck’s mind was skipping across the events of the past two weeks like a stone over water. “What I can’t figure is why Watkins didn’t hightail it out of town the moment the deed was done. Why did he stick around? Why would he force that encounter with you on the road, and that night at the diner . . .”

  He looked at Chris as though willing him to fill in the blanks, but Chris’s implacable eyes gave away nothing.

  “Wait,” Beck said, “I just remembered something. When Watkins came into the diner, I remember him looking surprised to see us there. But it was only me he was surprised to see, wasn’t it? He said he was there for a business . . . Ah,” he said with sudden enlightenment. “The payoff. He was meeting you there to get his money.

  “That was the night of Billy’s accident. I’d just come from the hospital. Our unscheduled meeting in the diner prevented you from conducting your transaction with Watkins. No wonder he was so angry that night on the road. He still hadn’t been paid. He was getting antsy. The heat was shifting from you onto him. In desperation, he went to Sayre and got Scott focused on the fratricide angle. That brought things to a head, so you arranged for a meeting with Watkins at the camp this morning.”

  Chris grinned. “I bet you aced law school, didn’t you? You’re actually very sharp. But, Beck, the only thing I would swear to under oath is that Slap Watkins came crashing through the door of the cabin, waving a knife and telling me he was going to kill his second Hoyle and how giddy he was at the prospect.”

  “I have no doubt that’s what happened, Chris. He just arrived earlier than you expected. He wanted to get the jump on you because he didn’t trust you. Justifiably. Even Watkins was smart enough to realize that you weren’t about to hand over money and let him walk away from that last meeting. He signed his own death warrant the minute he agreed to kill Danny.”

  “Please, Beck. Let’s not get sentimental over Slap. A double cross was his plan from the very beginning. Why do you think he left that matchbook in the cabin?”

  Beck mentally stepped back from himself and considered his options. He could leave now. Simply turn around and walk out. Go to Sayre. Live out the rest of his days loving her, and to hell with Chris and Huff, their treachery and corruption, to hell with their stinking, maiming, life-taking foundry.

  He was so damn weary of the struggle and the pretense. He longed to throw off this mantle of responsibility, to forget he ever knew the Hoyles and let the devil take them—if he would have them. That was what he wanted to do.

  Or he could stay and do what he had committed to do.

  As appealing as the former option was, the latter was preordained.

  “Slap Watkins didn’t plant the matchbook in the cabin, Chris.” He held Chris’s stare for several seconds, before adding, “I did.”

  • • •r />
  George Robson’s eyes stung from unmanly tears. He wanted to weep with a mix of frustration and fear. When he left the building, the heat slammed into him, making him feel even weaker and more dizzy. Shaken to the core, he stumbled to the exterior wall and vomited bile into the dry weeds growing there. Spasms racked him while the sun beat down on his sweating back.

  When he realized how close he’d come to committing a deadly sin, when he recognized how disappointed he was that he’d failed, he was assailed with another bout of nausea.

  His stomach finally emptied, and the dry spasms stopped. He wiped his mouth with a damp handkerchief that he took from his rear pants pocket. He blotted his perspiring palms and mopped his neck.

  He had planned to kill Chris. He had figured it out in his mind, how he would make it look like an accident. He had weakened that belt so it might break as soon as the machine was restarted, causing it to fly off, which might have resulted in a terrible death to whoever was inspecting it while it was running. But the belt had held.

  In hindsight, he thanked God it had. He thanked God that even in that he’d been inept.

  Had he succeeded, had he been found out and sent to death row, he would have lost Lila anyway. At least now he had another chance to make her happy. He had more time with her. If she left him for Chris, or someone equally charming, next month, or a year from now, well, at least she would be his in the meantime.

  Yes, he thanked God for averting a disaster.

  “Mr. Robson?”

  He pushed away from where he’d been leaning against the wall and blinked at Sayre Hoyle, who looked out of breath and shaken. “Have you seen Beck Merchant?”

  “Uh, yes. He’s . . . he’s here.”

  “In his office?”

  “On the shop floor with Chris.”

  She didn’t even thank him but pulled open the door and disappeared inside.

  George hurried to his car. He was anxious to get home, where Lila was waiting for him.

  • • •

  “I planted the matchbook in the cabin,” Beck repeated.

  Chris looked at him like he was waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, his expression changed. His features hardened like setting concrete. “My, my. That’s quite a bombshell. Why would you do that, Beck?”

  “Because I knew you did it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Stop splitting hairs. If not for you, Danny would be alive. I was afraid you’d get away with it unless I pointed the sheriff in the right direction. The moment Deputy Scott questioned how Danny had pulled the trigger, I was ninety-nine percent sure you had killed him. Add another half of a percent to that when you suggested a frame-up and named Slap Watkins.

  “The only nagging question was your motive. You didn’t seem to hate Danny. If anything you were indifferent toward him. As for Huff’s affections, there was no contest as to who was the favored son, who would assume control of the foundry when he died. So what threat did Danny represent to you? Why did he have to die?

  “I didn’t know the answer until I learned about his engagement. His fiancée had told Sayre that Danny was wrestling with a moral issue. Then I had it. Your motive was the Iverson case. Danny knew where the body was buried—literally. And he was going to tell.”

  Chris took a deep breath and released it slowly. “It was the single time in his life that Danny wouldn’t back down. He insisted on making a public confession. Huff and I couldn’t let that happen. He told me to take care of it.”

  “So you took care of it.”

  Chris spread his arms as though Beck’s statement summed it up. “If Iverson’s body had been disinterred, it would have raised all sorts of pesky questions and added to the charges, namely obstruction of justice. Nasty stuff all the way around.”

  “You won’t escape justice this time.”

  “But, you see, Beck,” he said, smiling pleasantly, “I have.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are you out to get me? Why? Because of Iverson?”

  Beck laughed. “Ah, Chris, here’s the zinger. You Hoyles are so damn arrogant it makes you gullible. You never once questioned my showing up the night your trial ended in a hung jury. You took me in, set me up with a sweet position in your company, made me one of the family. And that was right where I wanted to be, ensconced in the bosom of the family, a trusted ally and confidant.”

  Chris’s eyes narrowed to slits as he asked softly, “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am. You knew me from college.” Beck flashed a grin. “That wasn’t happen-stance, either. I attended LSU because that’s where you attended. I pledged the fraternity because it was your fraternity. I put myself in your path, brought myself to your attention, so that when the time came for me to join Hoyle Enterprises, I’d be a shoo-in. And it worked. Better than I anticipated. I had instant credibility. You accepted me without a blink, and so did Huff.”

  “You’re union, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “A state prosecutor? FBI maybe.”

  “Nothing that grandiose.”

  “Then who the fuck—”

  “I’m Beck Merchant. But Merchant was my stepfather’s name. He adopted me when he married my widowed mother. I took his name because, even as a boy ten or twelve years old, I was plotting your downfall, and I knew that my real name would be a tip-off.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Chris said caustically. “What’s your real name?”

  “Hallser.”

  Chris gave a start, then nodded as though commending Beck for his cleverness. “That’s certainly enlightening.”

  “Sonnie Hallser was my father.”

  “Then it’s really Huff you want revenge on, not me.”

  “It goes deeper than revenge, Chris. I want you and everything you represent destroyed.”

  Chris shook his head, and in a tone that bespoke pity, he said, “It’ll never happen.”

  “It’s already begun. Hoyle Enterprises has been shut down.”

  “Are you in cahoots with Charles Nielson?”

  “I am Charles Nielson. Or rather, there is no Charles Nielson. He’s just a name on a letterhead, the subject of a few press releases that I wrote and distributed myself. His name is an anagram of my dad’s name with his middle initial, C.”

  “Clever boy.”

  “I’ve waited years for this day, Chris. My father’s life was cut short by decades. And why? Because he stood in Huff’s way, so Huff eliminated him. Everyone knew it. But Huff got away with it. The same as you did with Iverson. Well, guess what, Chris?” he said, lowering his voice to a menacing whisper. “It’s over.”

  “What are you going to do, Beck? Tattle on me? You’re our lawyer. You can’t tell a thing I’ve said to you or you’ll be disbarred.”

  “Good try, but the fact is, I don’t care if I’m disbarred. I never wanted to practice law and only did so in order to get close to you and be privy to your dirty secrets. I’ll be bad-mouthed, called a traitor and worse, but I can live with that. Representing you and Huff, I’ve grown used to people thinking I’m shit. It’ll be nothing new.”

  “You’ve covered all the bases.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this where I’m supposed to faint or something?”

  Beck knew Chris well enough to recognize his flippancy as a bluff. He was sweating, and not just figuratively. “Huff will atone for my father. You learned from him, and he coached you well because you even exceed his depravity. You killed your own brother. And for that you’re going down, Chris.”

  Chris’s gaze moved beyond him. “It’s about time you joined us, Huff.”

  Beck slowly turned around to confront the man who had been his adversary for almost as long as he could remember. If ever, during all those years, his resolve had weakened, he needed only to remind himself that he never got to tell his father good-bye. Neither he nor his mother even got to see him in his casket. It would be too gruesome a sight, the funeral director had told her.

/>   Because of this man’s greed, his mother had been widowed, he had been orphaned, and his dad had been dissected. As Beck faced him now, animosity coiled inside him as sharp and deadly as razor wire.

  “Beck and I have been having the most interesting conversation,” Chris said.

  “I heard.”

  Apparently he had. His face was flushed. His eyes were burning like coals. In the hand held stiffly at his side he was clutching the pistol. His voice sounded like steel against a whetstone.

  “I heard,” he repeated as he raised his arm and extended the pistol straight out in front of him.

  Defensively Beck put up his hands. “Huff, no!”

  But Huff pulled the trigger anyway.

  In the vastness the .357 sounded like a cannon. The reverberation lasted several seconds, and Beck realized that it was followed by another noise, a terrible racket, really—the conveyor restarting.

  Huff dropped the pistol. It fell heavily from his hand and landed on the concrete floor. Then he shoved Beck aside and, releasing a feral wail, rushed past him. Beck turned in time to see Chris sliding to the floor in front of the conveyor. A chunk of metal was stuck in his neck. The wound was gushing blood.

  Huff’s knees hit the floor directly in front of Chris, and he pressed his hands against the wound. As the color rapidly drained from Chris’s face, he stared at Huff with profound bewilderment.

  Beck peeled his shirt over his head and wadded it into a ball, then pried Huff’s frantic hands away from the wound and tried in vain to staunch the fountain of blood.

  Sayre materialized beside him. “Oh my God!”

  “Call nine-one-one,” Beck told her tersely, and felt her yank his phone off his belt.

  Huff clasped Chris’s head between his hands and shook it hard. “Why’d you do it? You had Danny murdered? Son, why? Why?”

  “You shot at me?” A horrible gurgling sound issued from Chris’s throat and along with it a geyser of blood that showered his father’s face. “You said Danny had to be stopped, Huff. You said . . . take care of it.”

  Huff threw back his head and howled like a wounded animal. He yanked Chris forward and held his head against his chest, wrapping his arms around him tightly, protectively. “Danny was your brother. Your brother.” He was sobbing, keening, rocking back and forth, making Chris’s arms flop against the gritty shop floor, as lifeless as a rag doll’s. “How could you do it, Son? How?”