She turned, planning to say something about how pretty the lights must look, but the words vanished. He'd followed her to the window and had been standing right behind her. She'd turned into his embrace. Their lips touched, and she realized that she'd been waiting for his kiss, wanting it. Still, the intensity of her response astonished her. She pulled back, hoping he hadn't felt her heart pounding. She knew better than to fall for Tony Burke. He was a womanizer, not to mention a client. She wasn't his type. He was just playing with her.
"I talked to Kyle last night," she said.
"Should I be worried about Kyle?"
"No. He didn't steal the horse. Geneviève traded him Fast Eddie for his help hiding the skeleton. But he got there too late. You'd already found it."
"Kyle told you that?" Surprise loosened his embrace, but he didn't release her.
"He called her every day. I knew that but I'd forgotten. When he reported in Saturday afternoon, she told him your house was hers and asked him to fetch an old trunk from an outbuilding."
"Has anyone told the police?"
"Kyle did."
"They'll have to believe me now," he said. "But I was asking about you and Kyle."
"There is no me and Kyle."
"That's good." He brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her again.
Her brain knew better, but her body didn't care. She'd felt his touch before, on her arm, her shoulders, an occasional quick hug, but now his hands caressed and lingered. Something deep inside her melted. She held him close.
"Do you want me to stop?" he said.
"No."
CHAPTER 25
Heavy clouds sat low over the highway, trees bent in the wind, and an occasional raindrop splattered against the windshield, but Tony's car was an island of warmth and comfort. Claire shifted in her seat. Yesterday afternoon, she had fallen—no, admit it, she'd jumped—into bed with this man. Even now when she glanced over at him, her breath quickened. She couldn't look at his hands on the wheel without remembering them on her body, couldn't see his lips without hers parting.
Tony caught her eye. "A penny for your thoughts."
She felt the color rising in her cheeks.
"Me, too, sweetheart." He winked. "It's all I can do to keep my hands on the wheel."
"I've never ridden in a Ferrari before."
"I ride in them all the time, but racers. This one's a street car. It's still fast, and there's not much traffic. We'll be in Greensburg before you know it."
"Tell me about the farm," she said. "Did you go up there when you were a little boy?"
"A tenant family lived there. We went to see them two or three times a year, collecting rent and checking on the property. After dad died, they moved on or Geneviève threw them out. I don't know which. We started going up weekends, holidays, longer during the summer."
"I bet it was fun."
"It was when Meemaw lived with us. She taught me how to find bait and where to fish, how to grow vegetables and build a tree fort. After she died, things changed. First Dad and then Meemaw." He shrugged. "Losing Meemaw was probably hard on Geneviève, too, but all I knew was that I was twelve years old and on my own. Geneviève had no time for me. I became a very angry kid."
"I was angry after my husband died. I think it's a normal reaction."
"Did you set small buildings on fire?"
"No." Her anger, directed inward and unacknowledged, had manifested itself in panic attacks. "I noticed the charred corner of the studio."
"That stunt earned me a ticket to military school." He reached over and ran his finger across her lips. "I'm telling you all my dark secrets."
She rested her cheek against his hand. If Tony had succeeded in burning the studio, the firefighters probably would have found the skeleton. At that point, his father had only been dead two or three years; people would have made the connection.
"Funny how things work out isn't it?" He took his hand away.
She wanted to reach over and touch him, but he'd pulled back into himself. She looked out the windows. On either side, fields were giving way to forests, stands of pine trees. The sky had darkened, but the rain remained only a promise. "Perfect weather for a Monday," she said.
"Uh huh." He turned on the car radio. "Find something you like."
She fiddled with the dial and settled on a country music station, better than talk radio or preaching, the only other choices. The music reminded her of Kyle. "Have you talked to Kyle? He'll be relieved to hear you're happy to let him keep the horse."
"We can stop by the farm on the way back. I'll tell him then."
Thirty miles later a sign welcomed them to Greensburg. Claire had envisioned a charming old town built around a square with benches in the shade of tall magnolias and a statue of a confederate soldier, side streets lined with cottages and an occasional old plantation home. The reality was half a dozen newish brick ranches, interspersed with decrepit old barns and sheds.
"This is it?" she said. "A wide spot in the road?"
"In two roads—there's an intersection. And this is the courthouse." He pulled into an unpaved parking area in front of a tan brick building, the only structure taller than one story. Decorative openings highlighted the building's central section and suggested art deco, but the basic structure was garden variety Edwardian.
"I'll bet it was a WPA project," she said. The small white-columned building tucked in the front yard would be the old courthouse.
"You can ask them." He unfastened their seat belts and pulled her into an embrace. "I've been wanting to do this for miles."
She removed the hand that had slipped under her blouse and kissed the palm.
"If I've got the directions right, the lawyer's office is over there." He pointed to a rectangular building, which, if it were longer, might be considered a strip mall. "Next to the sandwich shop. Meet back at the car in an hour?"
"Okay." Checking the deeds wouldn't take an hour, but she could hang out in the sandwich shop. The only other commercial building, an old filling station converted into an auto parts store, held no interest.
The land office occupied one corner on the second floor of the courthouse. A heavyset man sat at a desk, reading a newspaper. His nameplate identified him as Simms Purcell, clerk of deeds. He looked up when Claire walked in.
"What can I do for you young lady?"
Claire introduced herself and told him what she wanted to look through the deeds for the property including and abutting the highway interchange.
The clerk heaved himself to his feet—he was a couple inches shorter than she was but as wide as he was tall—and led her to a single shelf of tall dark ledgers. She must have looked surprised because he explained that there wasn't a lot of buying and selling in the Parish. Nor did they have a bunch of little plats. He picked out a volume and set it down on a table by the window. "You'll find what you're looking for in here."
Claire opened the cover, and dust motes flew out and hung sparkling in the air. She pressed a finger against her upper lip to suppress a sneeze and turned the pages slowly to avoid stirring up any more dust. The deed book smelled of age and decay, just like Jim Burke's studio. She suppressed a shiver.
Saint Helena was one of the Florida Parishes, and these records went back two hundred years. She skimmed some of the earliest deeds, marveling at the history behind them.
"Those deeds tell the story of the Parish." Simms was looking over her shoulder.
Claire started. He had had come up behind her so quietly she hadn't heard him. "The people and the land," she said.
"This bunch of parishes up here have been part of England, Spain, and France. Now we're part of Louisiana, The Republic of West Florida."
Claire nodded but didn't speak, and the conversation died there. She waited for him to go back to his desk before turning to deeds from the 1960s.
The property she'd always think of as Geneviève's farm had been part of a much larger tract until February 28, 1960. On that date, Pineland Corporat
ion transferred four hundred acres of land to Geneviève Layton Devereux Burke. An attached affidavit said the price was one dollar, not a dollar per acre but four hundred acres for one dollar. This was a gift, not an arm's length transaction. Roger Devereux had signed for Pineland.
This couldn't be part of their divorce settlement. They divorced years before. Geneviève was already married to Tony's father.
The next deed, dated July 1968, documented the sale of 250 acres from Geneviève to the Louisiana Department of Transportation. Claire added up the tax stamps and calculated the price at five hundred dollars per acre, which seemed reasonable. The plat showed a wide strip of land that followed the path of the current highway. She turned the page and found a July 1969 deed that conveyed 50 acres from Geneviève to Meridian Development Corporation. This land, which surrounded the highway exit, went for four thousand dollars per acre, a higher price, but still reasonable given the commercial value of a highway intersection.
Claire checked the pages before and after but found no other land transfers involving Geneviève's property. The remaining one hundred acres comprised the farm Tony had just inherited, and Judy Harmon's story of crooked land dealings looked like nonsense. The wild card was the very first sale. Claire carried the book up to the front desk where the clerk was reading a newspaper.
"Excuse me Mr. Purcell, can I get copies made?"
"Call me Simms, honey, everyone else does. It'll cost you a dollar a page because they're outsized. A certified copy is eight dollars."
"I don't need certified." She showed him the relevant pages and handed him a twenty-dollar bill. "Do you have change?"
"The secretary does. She makes all the copies." He picked up the telephone and told someone named Jennifer to come on up, leaving Claire to wonder if Simms did anything other than read the paper.
While they waited for Jennifer to return, Simms said he'd noticed that she was interested in deeds relating to the Burke farm. "I guess it going to be up for sale," he said. "Are you thinking about buying it?"
"No. You've heard that Geneviève Burke died."
"I heard she was murdered." He shook his head and his chins wobbled in sorrow. "A terrible thing. I didn't know her except to say hello, but my cousin used to graze his cattle on her land, before the highway went through and he couldn't get across. He said she was a fair and reasonable person."
"I saw that she sold land for the highway and then for the restaurant and gas station."
"You can bet that land sold for a pretty penny." This thought seemed to cheer Simms. He smacked his lips with satisfaction.
"I wonder why they put the intersection there?"
"It's where the old state road crosses the highway," he said. "Don't know where else they'd put it."
"I bet Pineland wished they still owned that land." She kept probing. "It went for a good price, lots more than they sold it for." It would have to. Pineland had given it away.
"Why are you here asking all these questions if you're not thinking about buying the land?" His eyes narrowed. "What did you say your name was?"
"Claire. I'm a friend of the family."
Simms' frown said he was dissatisfied with her explanation, but before he could ask another question, Jennifer returned with copies of the deeds. Claire thanked her and Simms for their help then walked down the hall to the tax office to see what she could learn about Pineland Corporation.
Once again she identified herself as a friend of the Burke family. This time, she added that Geneviève's son had inherited the land and might try to sell it back to Pineland. She asked if they had a representative in town.
"Nope. Their offices are down in New Orleans. We never see them. Pineland's in the timber business. Used to have three or four tenant farms, this being one of them, but there's more money in timber."
"It's a horse farm now, with a nice stable and paddocks, fenced fields. It would probably be worth more to someone who wants to breed horses, but it can't hurt to talk to Pineland."
"Worse they can do is say no," he agreed. He located the corporate registration form and asked if she wanted a copy.
"No thanks, I just want to see who to talk to and how to reach them." Claire wrote down the contact information for the firm's legal representative and noted the names of the corporate officers.
"It looks like everyone lives in New Orleans," she said.
"Not everyone. I live just a few miles down the road," the clerk joked. "Since we're talking about that property, I suppose you want to see the trust documents, too."
By the time Claire paid for copies of the trust, she'd spent an hour in the courthouse. On her way out, she saw Simms in the doorway of the deeds office, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.
"I can put you in touch with the right person at Pineland," he said. "They won't pay a lot for that farm, but I don't know who else is going to buy it. This ain't really horse country."
"The grapevine works quickly," Claire said. But it couldn't work that fast. He must have been standing outside the door listening when she was in the tax office.
"If you've got a business card, you can leave it with me, and I'll call you if anyone shows any interest in that property."
"Thank you, but that's a little premature."
"You let me know when they're ready to sell. I can help out." He pressed a piece of paper into her hand. "That's my home number. You call any time before ten at night. If I'm not there, you can leave a message with my wife."
"Thank you." She continued on, walking down the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator.
Tony was nowhere to be seen, so she leaned against a fender of his car and watched nothing happen in Greensburg. An occasional pick-up truck drove past, and in the distance she heard the raspy whine of a chain saw. The breeze carried the scents of manure and pine trees.
She pondered the morning's discovery. Knowing what is not the same thing as knowing why, and she wasn't absolutely sure it was the same family. But who else? And why? That was the real question The breeze picked up, damp and cool. The rain wouldn't hold off much longer. Where was Tony? It had been over an hour..
A few minutes later, Tony emerged from the lawyer's office and walked over to join her. She'd expected him to be happy, at least glad to have this meeting behind him, but his expression was stiffly neutral, his eyes a cloudy gray. "My bitch of a mother managed to have the last word."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not yet."
"Are you hungry? I've seen several people go into the sandwich shop."
"I've had enough of Greensburg."
"Then let's go." Telling him what she'd learned in the courthouse could wait.
"Right. Let's go see my new farm."
Several miles past the city limits, Claire broke the silence. "So, the farm is yours?" Why, she wondered, had inheriting it put Tony in such a funk?
"Right away, no probate because it was in a trust."
She nodded. Copies of the trust documents sat in her purse.
"I don't know why she bothered with a trust. We weren't rich, and it's not as if the land is worth a lot. Look around. This is the middle of nowhere." He accelerated and the car leapt forward. "I was a trust fund kid and I didn't even know it."
The speedometer needle slid past 100. There were other people around, other vehicles on the road. What if they came up on a tractor going fifteen miles an hour or a school bus going thirty? She braced herself. "Tony, you're going too fast for me."
He downshifted and let the engine slow the car. "The lawyer advised me to keep the farm and continue running her horse rescue operation."
"I can't imagine you doing that."
"Neither can I."
"So, are you going to put it on the market?"
"I'm holding off, looking for a loophole." His jaw tightened. "The farm isn't worth much, two or three thousand an acre tops, but there's another trust. Most of all, there is the principle."
"About?" She waited for an explanation.
"Geneviève established a second trust, shortly after Dad died. She bought stock in blue ribbon companies, presumably with the money from the mysterious land deal. This second trust is now worth over a million."
"A lot more than the farm."
"I'm the beneficiary, but only if I operate the horse farm as a shelter for abused Tennessee Walking Horses for at least ten years. Me." He jabbed his chest with his thumb. "I can't hire people to do it; I have to live there and run it myself."
"And if you don't?"
"Then everything in that trust goes to some horse charity." He laughed without amusement. "Geneviève is dead and she's still trying to make me dance to her tune."
"I'm sorry, Tony."
"I'm over it."
She didn't believe him. "Why don't we stop for lunch before visiting the farm?" she said. "There's a restaurant by the highway interchange."
"A little time out?" he said. But when they reached the restaurant, he pulled into the parking lot. "I'll let you off at the door."
"That's okay. It's not raining that hard." She didn't want to leave his side.
He parked at the far end of the lot and insisted on sheltering her under his jacket as they walked back to the restaurant. "This was a good idea," he said, his mood already improving. "I've eaten at Michelin four-star restaurants, but there's nothing like good old southern fried chicken."
Claire finished her second piece of chicken. She wiped her fingers and sat back, her hunger satisfied. Tony was still digging in, and his mood had definitely improved. "Do you want to hear what I learned this morning?" she said.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I was so ticked off about Geneviève and the long arm of her will that I didn't let you get a word in edgewise."
"Geneviève bought four hundred acres of land in 1960 and put it into a trust. She was the sole trustee and the recipient of all the trust's income. After her death, the land went to you. In 1967, she sold two hundred and fifty acres for the highway. The next year she sold the fifty acres around this interchange to a developer. This restaurant is on part of that land. So is the gas station across the street. She received a total of three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars from those two sales."
Secrets, Lies & Homicide Page 17