by Lis Wiehl
“Possibly, but I may be flying. I haven’t told you that I’m not in Boston.”
“Where are you?” he asked in a worried tone.
“I’m in Dallas. I’ve been helping my father with an old case of his.”
“Really? That’s cool. So did he tell you—”
Lisa came through the back door and stopped. “Tell me what?”
Her son hesitated. “About coming to see me.”
She dropped the file box onto the counter. “Who? My father? Your granddad came to see you? In England?”
“Uh-oh, yeah. He asked me not to tell you. He wanted to reconnect with you first.”
“When was this?”
“Um, February, I think?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, then regretted the accusation in her voice. She knew why. He wanted to respect his grandfather’s request. But Lisa just couldn’t believe she’d known nothing about this.
“I wanted to tell you and felt bad keeping it from you, but I didn’t know what to do. Grandpa was here for a few days. He said he was sorry for not being part of our lives and that he wanted to change that. All this stuff. He said he’d been a bad father and he wanted to fix that too. It was good, except for the part about not telling you. Sorry, Mom. Really I am.”
“It’s not your fault. Don’t feel bad. It’ll all be fine.”
“But, Mom. Still help Granddad, okay? I get it if you’re mad at him, and at me. But he’s old, and this means a lot to him. I’ve been thinking this over, and I think he really needs to right this wrong as much as possible.”
“I’ll think about it,” Lisa said.
They made plans for their next video chat and hung up. Lisa’s hands were shaking as she leaned over the counter. Why hadn’t her father told her this? And why had he gone behind her back in the first place to contact John?
If she couldn’t trust her father about this, how could she trust him at all?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Before flying back to Florida, Stanley stopped by to see Martha, his old nanny. He couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to the one woman who had loved him more than any other, even his own mother.
Her daughter and son-in-law had moved into her small cottage to care for her. Stanley had never liked Martha’s daughter, and the son-in-law was worse.
Loretta’s cold greeting infuriated him, but she admitted that her mother hoped he’d come by. She pointed to the living room where a hospital bed had replaced the sofa. The curtains rose and fell softly, displaying Martha’s flower garden outside.
“Stanley,” Martha said, clasping her hands together when she saw him.
The woman in the bed only vaguely resembled the woman he’d known. He felt a shiver run through him at the scent of sickness and imminent death. But it was her deep black eyes that were all Martha.
Stanley went to her bedside and took her hands. They felt like bone covered in tissue paper.
“I’m so grateful you came to see me. I couldn’t call and tell you about all this nonsense. Silly cancer.”
“You should have. I didn’t like learning about it from Hollis.”
“Let me look at you.” She sighed contentedly. “You were the sweetest baby. Did you know I was only a child myself when your daddy hired me to take care of you? Your mama wasn’t too good with children. Just not her gift, I guess.”
Stanley had heard these stories a hundred times, but he took in every word as she told the story of first seeing him and how she’d make his bottles and rock him through nights of colic.
“You know, I almost let you die one time.”
“No you did not,” Stanley said with a laugh. Martha was always full of sass.
“I did, oh yes I did, even though I loved you like my firstborn,” she said with a smile that cracked her dry lips.
“How did you almost let me die?”
“You probably don’t remember when you fell out of that rowboat in Middle Pond.”
Stanley studied Martha, unsure if she was joking. Perhaps her failing health had affected her memory. “Of course I remember. I got tangled up in the weeds at the bottom. I was sure there were dead bodies in there, and I panicked, got tangled worse. You pulled me out.”
Martha nodded as if this was an intriguing story. “There were dead bodies in there, that’s for sure.”
“How do you know?”
“Those ponds have lots of secrets from the past, and much as I love you, your family has evil running right through it. You were only six or seven, but already I saw the evil fighting against the sweetness in you. I thought maybe if you died, the world would be a safer place.”
“Lena would say you should have let me die. The world would’ve been a safer place.”
Her eyes perked up. “You haven’t spoken my niece’s name to me in a very long time.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Been awhile. She called when Etta told her about this cancer nonsense. But she don’t like coming up here. Too many memories she don’t want to remember.”
Stanley nodded, but he hid the surprising sting of hurt. Those moments she didn’t want to remember had been the happiest of his life.
“It never would’ve worked with you two,” Martha said, squeezing his hands as she’d done a thousand times to console him.
Stanley cringed and pulled away his hands.
“It weren’t your fault, not really. Your family raised you in the old ways. But I can’t help but love you, no matter what you’ve done. Maybe God will judge me for it, but that’s why I saved you from the pond that day.”
Stanley didn’t remain with Martha much longer. He kissed her forehead, and she clung to his shoulders with tears in her eyes as he said good-bye.
Loretta and her loser husband were sitting on the front porch smoking cigarettes.
“I’ll pay for a nurse to check on her every day,” Stanley told Loretta as he walked toward the stairs.
“That would be great. Her retirement doesn’t cover a lot.”
Stanley turned and faced the woman’s snide expression. “You don’t seem to have a problem living off it,” he said.
“Now wait a minute.” Her husband stood up.
Stanley smirked at the man lumbering toward him, acting like some big tough guy. In a surprisingly simple move, Stanley grabbed the man’s shoulders and shoved his face down onto the wooden railing. Loretta screamed as her husband rose up with his nose already squirting blood down his face and all over his shirt. Stanley hammered a hard uppercut to the man’s throat and a left to his stomach. The man folded in half, groaning in pain as Loretta tried to help him while crying and shouting at Stanley.
Stanley pulled out five hundred-dollar bills from his money clip and set them on the porch railing. He clenched his throbbing fist. He wasn’t as strong or as vicious as he’d once been, but Loretta’s husband didn’t know he should be grateful for that.
“I want updates on her,” Stanley said to Loretta, who was helping her husband to a chair.
Loretta stared at the money. She glared at Stanley, then picked it up.
As he drove away, heading for the private airport in Alexandria, he knew he’d never see Martha alive again.
Late that afternoon Stanley sat outside his Florida mansion smoking a cigar and watching the steady roll of ocean waves. Marcus came up the back walk carrying his briefcase.
“Hello, Uncle. I hope your flight was good.” Two sweat marks circled his underarms, and he carried his sport coat in one hand.
“Yes. Clear skies. What do you have for me?” Stanley said. The evening was warm with a light breeze off the water, cooling Stanley’s face.
“Some developments,” Marcus said, wiping a line of sweat from his brow. “That Detective Martin came by again about Arroyo’s disappearance. Mentioned an ATM camera at the corner by the marina where the boat is docked. He’s coming back in the morning.”
Stanley nodded and stared at the end of his cigar. He was getting quite tired
of Detective Martin.
“Also, Waldren flew to New York and met with a TV news guy, William O’Ryan. I can show you everything on the computer. Waldren’s daughter is still in Dallas. She’s been digging up old police files. Gaining a lot of information.”
A melancholy had attached itself to Stanley since he’d left Louisiana that morning. Perhaps it was seeing Martha or thinking about Lena after so many years, but he didn’t want to deal with his nephew right now. He didn’t want to do what needed to be done.
“Let’s get this over with,” Stanley said, putting out his cigar.
Marcus followed him into the home office. He stopped suddenly when he saw two other men waiting there.
“Hey there, Frank and Billy. What are you guys doing here?” Marcus looked like a caged rabbit, his eyes darting for an exit as Stanley closed the patio door.
“Frank and Billy are sitting in on this conversation. I’ve had some developments as well, but go on with what you were telling me. Have a seat.”
Marcus sat on the edge of a chair. “Uncle, what’s going on? I don’t know what you think, but you have it wrong. You’re my uncle, my only flesh and blood.”
“You were at Red Wolf a few months ago.” Stanley sat on the edge of the desk in front of Marcus.
Marcus nodded. “Yes, I was. I didn’t tell you because we didn’t stay overnight. Leslie didn’t like the plantation. I didn’t want to tell you that.”
“How could documents that I store at the plantation become available on the Internet? It seems that someone wants to get attention pointed our way.”
“What would I have to gain? This company and family are my life. And I don’t even know the combination to the vault.”
“These documents weren’t in the plantation vault. They were in another location,” Stanley said, inspecting every twitch and shift in Marcus’s reactions. Either his nephew was smarter than he appeared or he was telling the truth. Stanley knew a few fingernails would get to the bottom of this once and for all.
He rubbed his eyes, weary of all of this. “I get very impatient about these things. My time can’t be spent figuring out who is loyal and who isn’t. There’s enough to worry about without questioning my own people.”
“I know that, Uncle Stanley. I’ve always been loyal.” Marcus turned to where Billy and Frank sat like bored statues.
The phone on Stanley’s desk rang. He looked at it, trying to keep his anger at bay. He hit the speaker and heard his assistant’s voice.
“Jill, I told you to hold every interruption for the evening.”
“Yes, sir, but I wanted to be sure this wasn’t important. I took a message from a man who says he’s retired from the FBI.”
Stanley picked up the phone. “What’s the message?”
“His name is James Waldren. He said he’s a retired special agent, and he wanted to ask you about some old events in Texas, back in the sixties. I have his phone number.”
Stanley thanked Jill and hung up the phone. There were too many pieces closing in: Gwen’s political run, the upcoming Dubois execution, the past coming back to haunt him, Arroyo’s death disrupting his progress.
The three men in the room watched him, waiting for his next move. Stanley never worked long in the defense; he’d always been an offensive player.
“No more observing. It’s time to turn the tables.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
James moved along the airport security line, hoping he wasn’t leaving New York too soon. He’d gone through Peter’s belongings, but he’d had little time to fully dissect everything. Messing with his usual meticulous process left him uneasy, but he was torn, ready to get back home.
His phone rang, and as he pulled it from his jacket pocket, he saw Lisa’s name. Every time she called, a sense of panic assaulted him. He forced out a calm, “Hi.”
“I just got off the phone with John,” Lisa said.
“John?” His mind raced through the names in this multilayered case as he stepped a few feet forward in line.
“My son, John? Your grandson?” Lisa’s voice was laced in anger.
“Oh,” James muttered, instantly aware of where this was going.
“Oh? That’s it?”
James turned around, pushing and bumping through the people behind him, wheeling his carry-on bag back toward the entrance of security.
“I’m at the airport,” James said as if that might calm his daughter.
They didn’t need this right now. They were making real progress. He should have told Lisa about John before she’d come to Dallas. But those were mistakes he couldn’t change.
“You went to England and visited him? Months ago?”
“Yes. I wanted to tell you.”
“When? And you put John in a terrible position, asking him to keep it from me. How could you do that?”
“Because I wanted to tell you myself …” James knew it sounded like a lame excuse, but initially he had planned to talk to her before contacting John. Then he was going to do it before he went to England. He kept putting it off. He wasn’t afraid of bullets or criminals, but his daughter’s anger reduced him to a dog retreating with its tail between its legs.
“So you only contacted me when you wanted help on a case.”
“No. It’s not that.” James lowered his tone as other travelers glanced his way.
“And I should have asked this in the beginning, Dad. Why did you let Leonard Dubois sit in prison for almost five decades when you knew he hadn’t committed the crime?”
James wasn’t prepared for that one. He stumbled to find words, but none sounded right at the moment.
“Can we talk when I’m back? You can stay at the house, or I’ll come to the hotel tonight or in the morning. My flight gets in at ten.”
“I’m going back to Boston. Everything I’m doing now I can do from home.”
“Wait until I’m home.”
“I don’t know. This is a tough one, Dad.”
“Please. One more day.”
James sat at his gate, rehearsing conversations he might have with his daughter. None of them sounded right. He’d already made enough mistakes with her. The past few weeks working together, spending time and becoming acquainted, were more than he’d hoped for. But being together had made it harder to tell her about John.
James didn’t regret the e-mails and days in England with his grandson. John was a great young man, someone to be proud of. Lisa had done an excellent job raising him. He couldn’t wish for a better grandson, and James wanted to tell Lisa those things, but where did he start? He considered writing it out in a letter, but he’d never been good at that either. Yet James knew he’d lost his wife over good intentions that never became real actions.
His flight was called over the speaker, and people began to gather for boarding. His phone rang again, and he was beginning to lament the thing. What happened to the days without constant connection? Then he saw the name on caller ID.
“O’Ryan, aren’t you on a book tour?” James asked, gathering his belongings.
“Arrived in LA a few hours ago. But I have two things for you.”
“That was fast. I just saw you yesterday.” James tugged out a notebook and pen from the front zipper of his carry-on bag.
“News moves fast. I’ve learned to keep up. Anyway, my assistant sent me pages of information on the Blackstone Corporation and the owner, Stanley Blackstone. I’ll forward them to you. Just as I thought, his daughter is Gwendolyn Hubert.”
“The politician?” James asked, writing down her name.
“Yes. She’s an independent, and people thought she had no chance of winning, but she’s holding her own. Doesn’t seem to have any connection with her father. Grew up with her mother and stepfather. Lower-middle-class family as a child, then her stepfather opened a small business that did well. I think he has fifteen stores across Missouri and Illinois now.”
James scribbled notes as O’Ryan spoke, while keeping an eye on the boarding process.
“She’s into small business, working middle class, but numerous social programs are important to her as well. We haven’t found anything controversial about her, except her father. I’m telling you that because Stanley Blackstone is on the other end of the spectrum. He’s big business, old money, and he’s developed Blackstone Corp into a huge company with international assets and construction projects all over. Over the decades the company and the family have been investigated numerous times by the FBI and local police, but they can never prove anything.
“There seems to be criminal history in the bloodline. Blackstone’s father had ties to the Chicago Mafia and was a member of the KKK, as was his grandfather. Stanley Blackstone’s father was very powerful for a time in the fifties and sixties. He bought support in Washington, had many political puppets, and used any means of blackmail to get what he wanted. It looked like he was going to make a run for office himself, then suddenly in the midsixties the family sort of went underground. Did I say that the Blackstones own a plantation outside of Alexandria, Louisiana?”
“No, and that’s interesting,” James said. “Benjamin Gray is from Louisiana. And the sudden disappearance—right around the time of Gray’s killing.”
“In addition to that, Stanley Blackstone went to college in Dallas from 1963 to 1965. He dropped out a month before graduation.”
“That would have been April 1965?”
“It doesn’t specify the exact month, but spring semester. That puts him in the Fort Worth area when Benjamin Gray was killed.”
“This could be our killer,” James said with a surge of excitement in his gut.
“Now all you have to do is prove it,” O’Ryan said.
“This helps a lot.” James rose from the chair and tucked the paper into his jacket pocket. “Did you say there’s something else?”
“Yes, I called Cole Elliot, nephew of our buddy Peter Hughes. He didn’t know his uncle well and was estranged from his mother, Peter’s sister. But as the only heir, he obtained Ann’s house and everything in it when she died. I asked if he’d ever found anything that belonged to his uncle.”