by Avery Flynn
“Look, I'm trying to help you get out of this mess. It's gone too far.” His gaze darted around the room. A light sheen of sweat appeared on his bald forehead. “I can't do it here, but come with me and I'll tell you everything.”
No way should she go anywhere with Phil. Was he insane? Was she for even considering it? Because she couldn't deny the offer of the answers she desperately wanted was tempting. Anyway, it was Phil—dumpy, lumpy, chain-smoking Phil. If they talked somewhere public, he couldn't pull anything on her. Even if he did, she could knee him in the balls before he even blinked his eyes. Right?
“Please, Beth. I need to get this off my chest and you need to know what's going on.” Sincerity poured from his gaze. So did fear.
“Why are you scared, Phil?”
“Not here.” Like a trapped animal, he scanned the room as if looking for predators about to swoop down on him. He let go of her elbow, patted down his suit jacket, slid a hand into the left pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Please.” He tapped a cigarette out of the soft pack and slipped it back into his pocket.
Going with him was stupid. No doubt about it. But she couldn't not do it. Phil may be the weak link in the chains of secrecy wrapped tight around Haverstan. She hadn't found anything but dead-ends and corporate lies in her research and couldn't afford to miss an opportunity to uncover more. Last night proved events were spiraling out of control.
“Okay, but we're going somewhere with lots of people.” Hank was going to kill her, but at least she’d text him. “Let me get my cell phone and briefcase. They’re still on the dais.”
Phil's face went white and he dropped his cigarette. “Sarah Jane's there.” He tugged her toward the hall, leaving his cigarette on the floor. “She…she'll watch over them.”
As she passed through the lecture room's door, Beth glanced over her shoulder and made eye contact with Sarah Jane. The older woman's penciled-in eyebrows were drawn together, disapproval radiating from her like a harsh wind that blew against Beth's skin and left her wondering what the hell was going on.
Ten minutes later she sat down at a bistro table tucked away into an alcove of a mock Parisian cafe on the other side of the casino from the convention area. The cafe was crowded with tourists grabbing a bite to eat between shopping expeditions and rounds of poker. Lucky for her, Phil couldn't light up in here. Unlucky for her, she'd had to stand with him outside the cafe while he’d sucked down two cigarettes, one right after the other.
The beefy estate attorney fiddled with his green plastic lighter and fidgeted in his seat. He'd loosened his blue-and-red striped tie as they’d rushed away from the lecture hall. Now it barely formed a knot, he'd tugged it so far away from his thick neck.
She'd been in enough staff meetings with Phil to know he wasn't one for comfortable silences. He was either freaked out, had no idea what to say or wanted her to be the first one to speak.
Too bad, Phil. You're out of luck today, you're going first.
Keeping her gaze locked on him, she brought the ceramic cup of coffee to her mouth. The heat touched her lips before the dark liquid. As soon as she swallowed, the warmth emanated outward, relaxing her tight shoulders.
“Alright, fine.”
Hiding the smile behind her cup, Beth leaned back into her seat, hoping her nonchalant pose would hide her eagerness for Phil's story.
“So you know the casino that's getting built on the Lakota Reservation?”
She nodded. “Sure, it's big talk.”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Well, your land butts right up against the reservation. Tribal leaders have decided to build it right off of Highway 28, half a mile from your grandparents' front door.”
“You’re behind the times, Phil. They announced the casino would be off Highway 5.” At least that was what she’d thought until this morning.
“It’s a smokescreen so their partner can buy up the land on the other side of the reservation cheap.”
“What makes you think this conspiracy theory is real?”
He dropped his gaze to his lighter. “I have my sources.”
Phil was a junior partner, not a CIA operative. The guy didn't have sources, he had golf buddies.
“Look, I came here hoping to get some answers, not a bunch of speculation.” She started to stand, but his hand shot out and grabbed hers.
“Do you really think someone would put out a ton of cash to buy land on supposition? On a guess? Hell no. The Haverstan Corporation bought the land cheap and is going to sell it to gas stations, strip malls and hotels for a big profit. We're talking tens of millions of dollars to be made here.”
She sank to her chair with a thunk and tugged her hand out of Phil's grasp. “Go on.”
“The Lakota planning committee is getting a cut of the profits from the land deal in exchange for announcing that the casino will be built off Highway Five. But their agreement came at a price. They didn't want a cut of just some of the land profits. They wanted a cut of all the land profits. Meaning everyone had to sell to Haverstan or the tribe would move the casino's location. Shit, they could cut a deal with another set of developers tomorrow, but they think they'll give a larger share of profits from this deal. Your grandparents’ house is all that sits between Haverstan and a total monopoly.”
“Shit.”
“Damn straight. Now do you understand why you have to sell? Haverstan won't stop. They'll find a way.”
Beth contemplated the dark abyss of her coffee, pushed past the anxiety and gathered her thoughts. Phil's story rang true, but he hadn't told her everything. “Who's behind Haverstan?”
He shrank back in his seat. “I can't tell you that.”
“Why not? Have they threatened you too?”
“No. My cooperation came freely, but I don't like the nasty turn things have taken. She promised me no one would get hurt, but I heard you almost did last night.”
She? “It's not too late, you can stop this. Bring it out into the open and you will.”
Phil looked over her shoulder and his face went pale. “No. I've told you everything I can. You have to sell Beth, there's no other choice.”
Glancing behind her, she spotted Sarah Jane walking through the cafe entrance.
Phil grabbed her hand, pulling her attention back around to him. “You have to sell.”
A shiver ran down her spine. The fear in his eyes made her consider relenting. It was just a house. Her grandparents wouldn't have wanted her risking getting hurt to keep it. Selling was the easy thing to do. A no-brainer really. Except it wasn't her brain that stopped her from cashing in. Some indelible familial tie connected her to the little farmhouse where she'd been raised. Even if she never lived there again, it would always be her home.
“No.”
He deflated in front of her like a child's party balloon and sank back into his seat. Defeat hanging heavy in his sunken eyes and deep worry lines carved into his prematurely bald head combined to make him seem much older than his twenty-eight years.
“So this is where you two snuck off to.” Sarah Jane lowered herself into a spare chair and laid Beth's briefcase on the table. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I didn't want you to lose this.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, you bet.” She patted the yellow-and-blue plaid cloth tote bag at her feet. “I keep scrapbooking materials and my favorite stamps in mine. You never know when inspiration will strike.”
Phil pushed away from the table and stood. “Ladies, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go out in the hall for a smoke. I'll see you later.”
“Darn, I was hoping you could help me carry a box from the business office to the convention hall.” Sarah Jane paused for a moment. “But I'm sure you don't have time for that.”
“I can help.”
“Aren't you the sweetest, Beth, but it's a big box and really I need a man's help. Don't you two worry, I'm sure I can pay a bellboy to haul it for me.”
A strained smile tugged at Ph
il's cheeks. “We can't have that. I'd be happy to help.”
“Wonderful.” She stood. “Let's be off. We'll see you later at the reception, Beth.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Watching the two of them walk off, it struck Beth that she'd known Sarah Jane for most of her life, but the niggling feeling in her gut telling her she had missed something had grown into an ache.
She had to have turned into a paranoid mess to even imagine Sarah Jane as a criminal mastermind. She was a senior citizen scrapbooking fanatic, for God’s sake.
She pulled out a legal pad and the Haverstan file from her briefcase, uncapped a black pen and drew a vertical line down the center of a page from the pad. In an organized fashion, she listed what she knew about Haverstan on one side of the paper. The list was regrettably short. On the other side, she wrote a much longer list of questions she still needed to answer, most notably, who was behind Haverstan and were they the ones who had drugged her last night. At that, her pen stilled. Until she got back home, there wasn't much she could do. Unless…
Digging her phone out of her briefcase, she ignored the unease swirling around in her stomach and punched in the number she'd first memorized in sixth grade. This would not be a comfortable conversation, but there were only a handful of people in Dry Creek, Nebraska, who knew where most, if not all, the bodies were buried.
“Layton residence.”
“Hi, Mrs. Layton, it's Beth.”
“So Hank tells me you're not my daughter-in-law,” Hank's mother said without preamble. “What kind of foolishness have you two been up to? Imagine if the Junior Leaguers got ahold of this information. It would be all of town in an hour flat.”
Yep. This was going as expected, but if she'd learned anything growing up as Claire's best friend, it was the best way to deal with Glenda Layton was to be blunt. “Nothing. It was just a mix-up. No wedding. No divorce. No nothing.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Translation: You're full of it.
“Speaking of gossip—”
“Gossip? I've never gossiped a day in my life.”
Beth shook her head. Glenda could easily operate a clandestine intelligence-gathering operation in her sleep. “You're right, I misspoke. I'm trying to get some information about a company called Haverstan, they've been buying up the land around my grandparents’ place.”
“Interesting. I haven't heard that name in forever and a day.”
“You've heard of them?”
“Sure.” Her strong voice turned wistful. “When I was growing up, there were Haverstans all over Dry Creek County. Cecil Haverstan, he was the cute one, died in Vietnam. Two of the cousins died of fever when we were in grammar school. Most everybody else scattered to the four winds in the seventies.”
“So no one's left?” So much for old-school intel.
“Let me think…Cecil's cousin, Robert Reynolds, died a few years back, so that leaves only Sarah Jane Hunihan.”
Beth straightened and glanced up at the door Sarah Jane had walked out of minutes ago. “What?”
“Oh yeah, she's a Haverstan on her grandmother's side. You'd never know it to look at her now, but that one was a hellion in her younger days. Had boys from six counties mooning after her, but she ignored them all. That girl had her eyes on a bigger prize than a bunch of cowhicks.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, I never really paid attention to the talk. You know what Dry Creek is like now; imagine how bad the gossip was before reality TV and the Internet.”
Beth waited, certain Glenda wouldn't be able to help herself from spilling the beans.
“Well, I can tell you this much. Sarah Jane had her eyes on moving into the big houses in the Big Horn Hills. She had a plan, I don't know what it was but that girl changed herself—from the shoes on her feet to her big blonde hair—into the spitting image of a country club wife, just without the husband. Then one day she chopped off her hair, bought the place near your grandparents and became the scrapbooking fiend she is today.”
“What happened?”
“I have no earthly idea, but I think the question you need to answer is who happened. Not that I would know, because I don't gossip.”
In a knee-jerk reaction to Glenda’s proclamation, Beth rolled her eyes.
“Wow.” Who would have ever thought? Could Sarah Jane be the one behind Haverstan, the threats and the drugging? Improbable didn't even begin to describe her level of doubt, but she couldn't shake a sinking feeling that the monster behind everything carried a plaid tote bag filled with stamps and scrapbooking pages.
“People your age never seem to realize that us old folks had lives before you came along, and continue to even after you're here.”
Mind spinning, Beth took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “Well, thanks for the background, Mrs. Layton. I’d better go now—”
“Oh no you don't. I want to know what's going on with you and Hank.”
Damn. Glenda wasn't about to let her get off easy. The problem was, Beth couldn't even explain to herself the two-steps-forward-and-three-steps-back relationship she had with Hank. “I wish I knew.”
“Well, you'd better figure it out soon. That boy's been making a public spectacle of himself chasing after you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” Her voice softened. “I love you like my own daughter, Beth, but you need to either take him up on his offer or put him out of his misery because I want some grandbabies before I'm too old to spoil them properly.”
Grandbabies. The word socked her straight in the gut. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Beth tried to stop the tears filling her eyes. “I'll do that, Mrs. Layton.”
“You're the first girl to make him forget about Amanda and I'm hoping you'll make that permanent. But even if you don't, you're welcome at our Sunday dinner table anytime.”
Touched by this acceptance, Beth blinked back tears. “Thanks, Mrs. Layton.”
“And tell that son of mine to stop being a big fat chicken and call his mother.”
Beth swept her notepad and pen into her briefcase and stood up so fast she knocked her chair to the ground. It clattered against the tile floor, turning everyone's attention her way. She smiled wanly, righted the chair and speed-walked out of the cafe. Discombobulated by the information floating around her head, she was certain of only one thing—she had to find Hank.
Swerving around a slow-moving couple in matching Las Vegas T-shirts, she headed toward the conference rooms. Hank had promised he'd be back for her after her panel. With any luck, he was hanging around, ticked off and wondering where in the hell she'd gone. When she told him that Sarah Jane Hunihan had rocketed to number one on the suspect list, he'd have to pick his jaw off the floor with a shovel.
The name Haverstan could be a coincidence, but she didn't think so. Still, she couldn't right the image of the scrapbooking woman she'd grown up next to with the land-hungry developer who had coerced families out of their homes and had sunk to vandalism and threats to get her to sell. Only two weeks ago she'd found Sarah Jane in the bathroom at work practically hyperventilating because of the stress brought on by the developers. A blast of cold air from a nearby vent brushed across the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine. Of course, what better way to hide your evil intentions than in plain sight?
Hurrying down the hall, she punched in Hank’s number. No answer.
At the turn for the conference rooms, she spotted Sarah Jane and Phil going into the business center.
Fuck. If she went on to the conference room, she would lose them. Beth paused next to the information desk a few yards outside of the business center. She tried Hank again. Voice mail. She texted a quick call-me message.
Half hidden behind a sign for the national estate attorneys’ conference, Beth watched the business center's open door, dreading and anticipating a Sarah Jane sighting. The coffee she'd just downed swirled around her stomach as her nerves sent her entire body on high alert. Half of her wanted to storm into the business office and demand the truth. The rest o
f her wanted to slink back to her hotel room and hide.
She'd eaten wild berry muffins with Sarah Jane at her kitchen table after her grandmother's funeral. Still hot from the oven, the muffins had been delicious and Sarah Jane had proved to be a sympathetic sounding board when Beth needed to talk out what she was going to do next with her grandparents’ land.
Blinking, realization hit her. It had been Sarah Jane who'd brought the conversation around to her grandparents' house. Sarah Jane who'd first brought up the idea of selling. Sarah Jane who'd kept her up to date about all the other families who'd sold their property. Her knees weakened and the world tilted a bit on its axis.
It had been Sarah Jane who'd offered to complete the public records search of Haverstan. The company had hounded her, too, and she'd told Beth that even though she'd sold, she'd like to know more about them. And Beth had fallen for it, all of it, without a second thought. What an idiot she'd been.
Too antsy to wait a moment longer, she whipped around and plowed right into a wall of muscle and stumbled back. “I'm so sorry.”
“All my fault. How about I buy you a drink to make up for being clumsy?”
The man's pale lips formed a smile, but it didn't reach his blue eyes. Everything about him was average, from his height to his bland brown hair, except for the one-inch scar on his chin.
Without meaning to retreat, she took another step back until the information desk counter bit into the small of her back. “Um, thanks but no.”
His fingers clamped around her elbow like a vice. “Oh, come on now. Just a friendly drink.”
This wasn't the first time she'd had to deal with pushy men at these conferences. They assumed that taking off their wedding rings would make women fall at their feet. Jerks. They were the morons who were the butt of every dishonest lawyer joke told since the dawn of time.
Accidentally on purpose, Beth stepped on the toe of his black shoe and leaned all of her weight into it. “I said no thank you.”
The man laughed softly, but his smile disappeared. “I'm afraid you don't understand.”
“Oh, I think I do. Your wife is at home, probably raising your two-point-five kids mainly on her own, while you jet off to conferences where you accost the waitresses and hit on every female attorney under fifty. Look. I'm not interested.”