“My preference,” she said slowly, “would be to get in the car and head north. No pausing for loose ends, breakfast, even a shower. Just go. That would be my preference.”
He waited.
“But if you need the day, take the day,” she said. “We’ll leave tonight, though?”
“Yes. We will leave tonight.”
She stared into his eyes for a long time before nodding. “All right. In that case, I guess I’ll go ahead and take the shower.”
She slipped out of the bed naked and walked into the bathroom, beautiful and elegant as she moved through the dim light, always comfortable in her own skin. He watched her go, thought, my wife, savoring the sound of it.
She’d just closed the door when the phone rang.
He rolled onto his side and lifted the phone, said, “Yeah?”
“Eric. How you holding up, son?”
“Hello, Paul,” Eric said, voice flat, and the bathroom door opened and Claire peered out.
“I’ve heard that you ran into some trouble down there.”
Ran into some trouble, yes. Just like I did in California, just like you’re sure I’ll do again, and you want to play the role of the protector for your daughter now, prove to her yet again that I was a mistake, you passive-aggressive prick. He wanted to shout it all, but Claire was standing there at the bathroom door, watching him as if he were taking a test, and he said only, “It hasn’t been a real good week.”
“So I’ve gathered. Claire is with you?”
“Yes.” And she’s going to stay with me, Paul, and I will stay with her, your influence be damned.
“Good. Listen, I’ve been trying to help. I’ve been trying to find out who hired this man Murray, the one who was killed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The investigations firm has been hiding behind attorney-client privilege so far, but when I called them, I said I’d be representing you—”
“You did what? I haven’t asked you to—” Claire stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her now, and Eric stuttered for just a moment, interrupted by her return. It was all the gap Paul needed to plunge ahead.
“I thought it was imperative that you know who hired this man before you made any decisions on how to act, so I pointed out that their client might be protected by his attorneys but that they had to disclose said attorneys, if nothing else. If anyone was going to stonewall, it had to be the law firm. They didn’t like that but I mentioned a district attorney friend who’d be happy to call them and clarify the issue and possible repercussions, and they gave me the name of the firm: Clemens and Cooper.”
“Terrific,” Eric said. “But if all they’re going to do is keep up the secrecy—”
“Well, the thing is, I have a few friends at Clemens and Cooper. I put in a call to one and said, without any explanation, that I understood they represented a man named Campbell Bradford and I needed to know which partner handled his interests. He just called me back this morning to tell me I was wrong—they don’t represent Campbell, but they do represent his son.”
His son. Alyssa’s husband.
“His full name,” Paul said, “is Lucas Granger Bradford. Does that mean anything to you?”
Claire was at Eric’s side now, her hand on his arm. Her touch seemed hot on his skin, a cold shiver rippling through him.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it does.”
“He’s married to the woman who hired you, correct?”
“Yeah,” Eric said, but that wasn’t the point of interest—the first and middle names were far, far more fascinating.
“Okay. Well, I called Lucas this morning. He told me you had called him last night and threatened him?”
“What? Paul, that’s insane. I’ve never spoken to the man. And Claire was with me, she was here the whole—”
“I believe you, son. Of course, I believe you. I told Lucas he had some issues he was going to need to respond to, explained the criminal charges that could be brought his way if any withholdings put you or my daughter in jeopardy or sent undue police pressure your way. He was resistant. I was persistent.”
Eric almost grinned despite himself. About damn time Paul’s abrasive personality worked for him instead of against him.
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Not much. But he did say that the reason he hired a detective involved a letter written by his father, who is now deceased. The letter made some unusual claims, and he wanted to have it checked out before it hit the legal system. Evidently, the old man wanted this letter attached to his will, part of his estate order.”
“What did it say?”
“He won’t disclose that. He just said that he was sure the letter was the ravings of senility and that’s what he intended to prove with the detective. He told me that he had not informed his wife of the situation, and he was unaware of her hiring you. When he found out she had, he asked his investigator to call you off.”
“There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that,” Eric said. “He didn’t try to call me off, he tried to pay me off. It’s not so innocent, Paul.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. This is all that I’ve got so far, though. I’m trying to help.”
“You have helped,” Eric said. “Paul, you absolutely have helped.”
Lucas Granger Bradford.
Yes, this was help, indeed. Paul was still talking, but Eric could no longer focus on his words. He was carrying on about the need for an attorney and people he could recommend, and Eric cut him off.
“Look, Claire really would like to talk to you. I’m going to pass the phone over to her. But Paul… I appreciate this. Okay? I want you to know that I appreciate this.”
“Of course,” Paul said, and there was a sense of genuine surprise in his voice, like he didn’t understand why he’d be thanked, like he’d forgotten the conflict that had existed between the two of them for years. He and Claire were good at that sort of thing.
Eric passed the phone over to his wife and then got to his feet and went into the bathroom, closing the door to mute the sound of her voice. The headache was nudging around again, and enough nausea that he had no appetite, but right now those things didn’t matter. He’d been given a gift, a piece of understanding. He used his cell phone to call Kellen.
“I was right,” he said. “We were right. The old man in Chicago who was calling himself Campbell Bradford was actually named Lucas. And he was the nephew of the moonshiner, Thomas Granger.”
“How’d you determine that?”
“My father-in-law just called. He found out that the PI firm was retained by my client’s husband and gave me his name. It’s Lucas Granger Bradford. He gave his son his own real name, and that middle name was his uncle’s last name. You think we can find the spot where he lived?”
“We’re damn sure going to try,” Kellen said.
48
ANNE McKINNEY WOKE EARLY, as was her custom the last few years. Her body just didn’t tolerate long stretches of sleep anymore. For three seasons of the year that wasn’t such a problem, but the winter mornings, when darkness lingered long after she rose, were a burden on the heart.
She stayed in bed longer than she ordinarily would, let the clock pass seven and carry on till eight and then she sighed and got out of bed and went into the bathroom. She washed and dressed and came out into a living room filled with strange gray light. Not the light of predawn but the light of a cloud-riddled sky. It was long past sunrise but still the house was painted with shadows and silhouettes. Stormy.
There was no rain now, but it had evidently come down hard throughout the night, because her yard was filled with puddles and the tree branches hung heavy. The wind had not fallen off in the way that it typically did after a front passed through, but continued to blow, the porch a choir of chimes as she moved toward the front door. She felt the force of it as soon as she got the door open, an unusually warm wet wind for dawn. Where was all that wind coming from? She put it at just below twenty miles an ho
ur.
She was wrong. According to the wind gauges, it was blowing twenty-two, this after the storm had finished its work. The barometer was still falling, but the temperature had risen overnight. That and the wet, rain-soaked earth would give this new front lots to work with. There’d be storms aplenty today, and some of them might be fierce.
Down at the end of the porch a flash of white caught her eye, and she took a few shuffling steps and leaned over the rail and stared into her own backyard. Way down by the tree line, parked close to the woods but carefully positioned behind her house, was an old pickup truck. Now, who in the world could that belong to? It had come in during the night, clearly, but there was no one behind the wheel.
“Get the license and call the police,” she said softly, but the truck was a long way off across the muddy yard, and suddenly she didn’t feel like being exposed out there, wanted to get back inside with the doors locked and the phone in her hand.
Her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, and the yard was noisy with the wind and the chimes, but still the man must have moved silent as a deer because she was absolutely unaware of his presence until she turned back to face the door. He was standing in front of it with a shotgun hooked over his forearm. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him just yet. She gave a start, as anyone would, took a small step backward. He gave a cold smile, and it was then that she recognized him.
Josiah Bradford.
A local ne’er-do-well, not one she’d have troubled her mind over in the past, but he was more than that to her today. He was Campbell’s last descendant, and something mighty strange was going on with Campbell.
“Josiah,” she said, trying to put a stern touch in her voice even though she was standing with her hand at her heart, “what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“You have a reputation for unrivaled hospitality,” he said, and his voice raised a chill in her because it did not fit the man, did not fit even the time. “For offering housing and help. I’m seeking both.”
“I never opened my door to a man with a gun before. And I won’t start now. So go on your way, Josiah. Please go on your way.”
He shook his head slowly. Then he shifted the gun from one arm to the other. When he did it, the muzzle passed right over her.
“Mrs. McKinney,” he said. “Anne. I’m going to need you to open that door.”
She didn’t speak. He reached out and twisted the knob and opened the door.
“Would you look at that.” He turned back, the artificial smile gone from his face, and pointed the gun at her. “After you, ma’am. After you.”
There wasn’t a neighbor in view of the house, and Anne’s voice would have been lost to that wind. Her car was in the carport on the other side of the porch, and the road stretched beyond that, kind neighbors in either direction, but Anne McKinney’s days of running were many years past. Those much-loathed, sturdy tennis shoes on her feet might help get her up the stairs, but they wouldn’t get her to the road. She took another look at the gun, and then she walked past Josiah Bradford and into her empty house.
He came in behind her and closed the door and locked it. She was walking away from him, toward the living room, but he said, “Slow down there,” and she came to a stop. He walked into the kitchen, took the phone down and put it to his ear and smiled.
“You seem to be having some trouble with your service. Going to need to get a repair crew out for that.”
She said, “What do you want? Why are you in my home?”
He frowned, wandering out of the kitchen and into the living room and settling into her rocking chair. He waved at the couch, and she walked over and sat. There was a phone right beside her hand, but that wouldn’t be any help now.
“It wasn’t my desire to end up here,” he said, “just the unfortunate way of the world. Circumstance, Mrs. McKinney. Circumstance conspired to bring me here, and now I must take some measure to gain control of that circumstance. Understand?”
She could hardly take in his words for the sheer sound of his voice, that unsettling timbre it held, a quality of belonging to another person.
“Yesterday,” he said, “a man paid you a visit in the afternoon. Came running in out of a rainstorm. I’m going to need you to tell me what was said. What transpired.”
She told him. Didn’t seem a wise idea not to, with him holding a gun. She started with his first visit, explained what he’d said about making the movie, which Josiah Bradford dismissed with a curt wave of his hand.
“How’d he hear of my family? What lie did he tell you, at least?”
“A woman in Chicago hired him. And she gave him a bottle of Pluto Water. That’s why he came to see me.”
“To ask about it?”
She nodded.
“Then why’d he come back yesterday?”
“For my water. I’ve kept some Pluto bottles over the years. He needed one.”
“Needed one?”
“To drink.”
“To drink?” he said, and the gun sagged in his hand as he leaned forward.
“That’s right.”
“You let him drink that old shit?”
“He said he needed it, and I believed that he did. It gives him some… unusual reactions.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
She liked seeing him confused and unsteady. It dulled the fear a little.
“It takes away his headaches, but it gives him visions.”
“Visions? Are you senile, you old bitch?” His voice sounded closer to normal now, the snapping anger of a young man, none of the eerie formality he’d shown before.
“He sees your great-grandfather,” she said. “He sees Campbell.”
His forehead bunched into wrinkles above those strange eyes he had, eyes like oil.
“That man told you he’s seeing visions of Campbell.”
“Yes.”
“Either you are without your senses, or whatever scam this son of a bitch is running is more interesting that I had imagined. Can’t be a thing about it sorted out without him, though, can there?”
Anne didn’t answer.
“So we’ll need a meeting,” Josiah said. “A powwow, as our red brothers called it. You don’t mind your house being the location, do you? I didn’t expect that you would.”
He looked at the grandfather clock. “Too early for you to call, so we’ll have to enjoy each other’s company for a spell.”
She stayed silent, and he said, “Now, there’s no cause to be unfriendly, Mrs. McKinney. I’m a local, after all. Called this valley home for all my life. You just think of me as a visiting neighbor and we’ll be just fine.”
“If you’re a visiting neighbor,” she said, “you’d be willing to do me a favor.”
“I suspect you’re going to request something unreasonable.”
“I’d just like those curtains pushed back. I like to watch the sky.”
He hesitated but then got to his feet and pulled them back. Outside, the trees continued to sway with the wind, and though it was past sunrise now, the sky was a tapestry of gray clouds. The day had dawned dark.
49
CLAIRE WANTED TO COME along. She said he shouldn’t be alone, and when he told her that he wouldn’t be, she said that Kellen was a stranger and as far as she was concerned, being with a stranger was as good as being alone.
“Look,” he said, “you’re safe here, and you’re also here if I need you.”
“Yes. I’ll be here when you need me there. Wherever there might be.”
“We’re just going to look for a mineral spring. That’s all. Maybe take two hours. It could tell me something. Being there could tell me something.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t, then we go home,” he said, although the idea left him uneasy, this place having wrapped him in its embrace now, made him feel like he belonged here.
She studied him, then echoed, “We go home.”
“Yes. Please, Claire
. Let me leave to do this one thing.”
“Fine,” she said. “It’s not like I’m unused to you leaving.”
He was silent, and she said, softly, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re honest.”
She ran her hands over her face and through her hair and turned from him. “Go, then. And hurry, so we can go home.”
He kissed her. She was stiff, returned it with an uncomfortable formality. Tense with the effort of hiding those things she hid so well—anger, betrayal. She felt them now, and he knew it and still he was heading for the door. What did that make him?
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Quicker than you think, I promise.”
She nodded, and then after an awkward silence, he went to the door and opened it and said, “Good-bye.” She didn’t answer, and then he was in the hallway, the door shutting softly behind him and hiding her from sight.
Kellen was waiting in the parking lot, the Porsche at idle. He had the windows down and his eyes shielded by the sunglasses even though the morning was dark with heavy cloud cover.
“Something tells me that ain’t Dasani,” he said, eying the bottle of water in Eric’s hand. It was only half full now, maybe a little less. The headache was whispering to him, the pain like a soft, malevolent chuckle.
“No,” Eric said, fitting the bottle into a cup holder. “It’s not Dasani.”
Kellen nodded and put the car into drive. “A word of warning, my man—this might be the definition of a goose chase we’re embarking on here.”
“I thought you knew where the spot was?”
“I know where the gulf is. That’s all. There’s a lot of fields and woods around it, and how in the hell we’re supposed to find a spring, I don’t know.”
“We’ll give it a shot, at least,” Eric said. “Think we can beat the rain?” he asked, eyeing the darkening sky.
“I drive fast,” Kellen said.
They were on their way out of town when Eric said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you hanging in the game?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I were you, I’d probably have driven back to Bloomington by now and stopped taking calls from the crazy white guy. Why haven’t you?”
So Cold the River Page 31