He looked over the sprawling valley below. Kingsboro’s western end consisted of flat and low buildings. The hospital rose above the urban skyline to the east, along with the Holiday Inn that Jacob thought of as his own creation. A new strip mall was being built along the main thoroughfare, the work of some outfit from Texas. Jacob wasn’t threatened by it, though. Four thousand square feet of floor space, four storefronts, nothing major. Probably end up as a craft shop, a Christian bookstore, a laundromat, and an investment agency. Besides, they were building out, not up, and Jacob knew his real mark would be made by adjusting the skyline. Right now, the First Baptist Church was the highest structure in Kingsboro, eighty feet if you counted the steeple. Warren Wells had won the contract by becoming a member of the congregation the instant he’d heard the church was collecting tithes for a building fund.
“What do you think, Jacob?” Donald asked. Donald rarely visited the field sites, preferring the controlled environment of his office. He’d been pleased to have his partner back, because they both knew that Donald would never survive if he had to deal with real people, those who had to work with their hands and lived from paycheck to paycheck. He enjoyed the suit crowd, the financiers and bankers and attorneys. But lately he’d taken a much greater interest in the company’s enterprises on the ground level.
“We should get this subdivision wrapped up by October,” Jacob said.
“I’ve already got some people lined up to buy.”
“Good, because we can use that capital to get some other things rolling. I feel a hot streak coming on.”
“Hope it lasts the winter, but I’m ready to get back to the air-conditioned office.” Donald wiped at his brow. The sun was glaring, though the seasonal humidity had yet to settle in the Southern Appalachians. Donald’s jacket and tie were out of place on the scarred stretch of earth.
“There,” Jacob said, pointing to a mixed stand of evergreens and hardwoods across the valley. A two-lane ribbon of asphalt wound up the slope and few roofs were visible through the canopy, but most of the mountain was undeveloped.
Donald put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. “Yeah? What about it?”
“Another subdivision. And in a couple of years, Kingsboro will be ready for a business park.”
“I don’t know, Jake. We’ve done pretty well with this safe residential stuff. We tend to lose our asses when we gamble on commercial projects.”
Jacob’s lips tightened. The Comfort Suites deal had lost a quarter million due to rain. The bad weather had delayed the pouring of the foundation and slab, and that set all the other contractors back. Some of those who had committed went on to other jobs and Jacob had to use all his muscle to get them lined up again. Meanwhile, the interest on the borrowed money had compounded and Donald had to get rid of a few rental properties to cover the difference. But Donald didn’t seem to appreciate the accomplishment of a shiny new lodging establishment, of what it meant to the community and other businesses. All Donald could see was the bottom line.
“We’ll be okay,” Jacob said. He reached out and swatted Donald on the shoulder. The collective sounds of hammers, drills and chain saws blended into a symphony of progress. It was the music of money, yes, but it was also the song of a better town.
“I don’t know. Jeffrey’s been looking over the receipts and believes he’s spotted some holes. Probably some math mistakes, but it seems like enough that we might want to have our annual audit a little early this year.”
“How early?”
“November, maybe. I’m sure it’s nothing, but mistakes can eat away our asset base if we don’t catch them fast. And if we’ve overpaid some people, we need to recoup before the money’s all spent.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put too much faith in Jeffrey. He’s a receptionist, not an accountant.”
“He’s good on the phone,” Donald said. “And he annoys the tenants if they call up and make maintenance requests.”
“He’s too expensive, though. And I think he’s bad for business.”
“What do you mean?”
“What you said. Sure, he rubs tenants the wrong way, and that’s fine when it’s just apartments, but if we move into office and professional rentals—”
“Wait a second, Jake. Don’t be rushing into anything. I know you’ve got a hole in your life, but some wild plans aren’t going to fill it.”
“I think we should get rid of Jeffrey and hire Renee. We’d save on insurance because she’s already covered under my policy. She’d work for a lower salary, too.” Jacob looked past Donald to a man who was installing and squaring a door on one of the houses. “She needs something to keep her busy. I don’t want her dwelling on the past.”
Donald straightened his tie and grimaced. After a moment, he said, “Well, as long as my wife understands this was your idea and not mine. Any female in the office can spell trouble for me.”
“Only if you can’t keep it in your pants, Donald.”
“Jake, I swear I’ve never even looked at your wife—”
Jacob grinned. “Just kidding. Damn, you’re really jumpy.”
“Yeah. This accounting thing scares me, I guess. I’m at the age where I want to play it safe.”
“Play it safe when you’re dead.” Jacob spread his arms toward Kingsboro. “We’ve got the whole world to conquer.”
Donald pursed his lips then nodded. “Okay. We’ll give Jeffrey two weeks’ notice and two weeks’ severance pay.”
“Renee will be good for business. She has an eye for detail.”
“Fine.” Donald waved his hand. “I’ll go tell Jeffrey the news. I’ll tell him we had too many tenants complaining about him and we both need to move in a new direction. The usual.”
Donald climbed into his Lexus and eased down the gravel road toward Kingsboro. Jacob went to his truck to get his bagged lunch out of the cab. Renee had been feeding him lots of carrots and celery, along with high-protein foods like peanut butter sandwiches and those granola energy bars. He’d regained most of the weight he’d lost while in the hospital, and working outdoors had driven the pallor from his skin. Jacob settled behind the seat, turned on the radio to hear the weather forecast, and opened the bag.
Inside was a bundle of wax paper. He lifted it out and unwrapped the package, wondering what surprise Renee had left for him this time. The chicken head rolled out, bounced off his knee, and settled onto the floor board with a meaty plop. The wax paper was smeared with dried blood. Written on one corner in black marker were the words, “Don’t chicken out.”
Beneath that, the initial “J.” Leaning to the left.
Jacob knelt and examined the chicken head. It was a guinea, the same breed that used to run wild on the Wells farm. A ring of congealed blood circled the hatchet wound. The dull onyx of one eye showed through the crescent slit of the eyelids. The beak was parted as if in a gasp or scream.
The cell phone on the seat beside him emitted its electronic bleat. Renee had given him a new one when he’d purchased the truck, a tacit acknowledgment that Jacob was back to normal. The children’s spirits had been laid to rest in their hearts and they would move on. Happily ever after wasn’t an option anymore, but neither was mutual suicide.
Jacob flipped open the phone, looking through the windshield at the house under construction. “Hello?”
“How was your lunch?”
“I told you not to call me anymore. You’re out of my life now. You and Carlita can head back to your Tennessee trailer park, or hang around Daddy’s house until your damned skeletons collect cobwebs. But we’re through.”
“Dear brother,” Joshua said. “We’re not even halfway through. Because you still owe me a million. And brothers always keep their promises, don’t they?”
“I’m not scared anymore. Nobody would believe you if you went to the police.”
“I don’t have to go to the police. I just need to talk to your wife.”
The cords in Jacob’s neck grew taut and heat rushed to hi
s face. “Damn it. You leave her out of this.”
“No way, bro’. We’re all in it together. Like one big, happy family. Ain’t that right, Carlita?”
Jacob heard a whisper of air on the phone’s speaker as Carlita took the phone. “My buena, Jake,” she said in her sultry, smoke-scarred voice. “Like the good old days, si?”
Jacob hated the automatic response she aroused in him, that same blend of guilt and dread and excitement. Like something forbidden, overripe fruit that smelled sweet but was utterly corrupt inside. “I’m not playing your games anymore,” he said, his chest aching.
“Oh, but you invented this game, silly chiquito. Wish me, remember?”
“But it’s over. You’ve got your million.”
“And you have your life back, yes? Just the way it was.”
“It will never be like it was.” Jacob wiped the sweat from his face. Even with the cab door open, the late-summer heat stifled him.
“Well, you can’t blame a girl for wishing,” she said. She lowered her voice to a whisper that curled into his soul like fingers beneath his waistband. “And two Wells give twice as much water. Gets me twice as wet.”
Jacob couldn’t think of a reply. That had been one of Carlita’s favorite lines when they were sixteen. Joshua had probably come up with it. Carlita’s creativity was never revealed in language. Hers was the cunning of the viper, one that sought out warm, camouflaged crevices and patiently waited to dispense venom.
Joshua came back on the phone. “I never was no good at math, but the way I figure it, we always shared everything fifty-fifty, all the way back to Daddy’s sick little sperm. And now you got everything back and I still got nothing. Another million ain’t so much to ask, when you look at it that way.”
“No. You’ve got your million. I’ll be lucky if I get away with it this time. My partner’s already sniffing around like he smells shit on his shoes.”
“Hey, Jake, I thought you was big time now. Tall in the saddle and all that. I mean, you got this new housing development going up. Got to be some bucks coming in.”
Up at the construction site, two Mexicans were dropping shingle scraps over the side of the roof, hollering out warnings in Spanish in case any workers were on the ground below. It was the kind of careless action that made Jacob glad the safety inspectors only came around at the first of each month. He’d have to talk to the contractor. Even though he wasn’t responsible for any worker’s compensation claims, a few accidents would push up his liability insurance rates. “How did you know I was working again?”
“I got wheels, remember? And I got eyes.”
“Where are you?” Jacob had assumed Joshua was staying out at the estate, waking up at noon and working up to a good drunk by four o’clock. Half the day spent in bed with Carlita, with the occasional time off for runs to the convenience store for Budweiser and Marlboro Lights. A million dollars was plenty of money for that kind of life. Even working in tandem, Joshua and Carlita would never be able to spend it all before either their livers or their lungs gave out.
“Been keeping an eye on my investment,” Joshua said.
Jacob’s stomach clenched. He rose in his seat and scooted out of the cab, kicking the chicken’s head to the dirt. What if Joshua were outside Renee’s apartment right now, or watching her in the laundry? Maybe they had followed her to the grocery store or post office, and were lying in wait to pop up and introduce themselves.
“Where, damn it?” Jacob said.
“See, there’s this funny thing about twins. No matter how far apart they are, or what gets in between them, they somehow get tugged together. Like God meant it to be.”
“Don’t you dare talk about God. If God were real, my daughters would be alive and we never would have been born.”
“That don’t make no sense.”
“You’re watching me, aren’t you?” Jacob paced around the truck, scanning the woods behind the construction site. The property above M & W’s planned subdivision belonged to a Texas corporation. A few logging roads crisscrossed the mountaintop, but their entrances were gated. Joshua’s behemoth Chevy would never manage those rutted roads.
“It was Carlita’s idea. She’s got a thing for you, you know.”
“No. That was a long time ago. A different lifetime.”
“That same life where you killed your mom?”
Jacob had to restrain himself from hurling the cell phone across the field. “Where are you?”
“You’ll see us when the time is right. Now, about that money you owe me.”
“Why can’t you be happy with what you have? You got the property and the house, and whatever you left across the state line. That’s more than you ever deserved.”
“Except Dad left you about eight million, if I remember right. Daddy didn’t believe in share and share alike, and I reckon you didn’t, neither.”
“Go away. Please. I’ve paid you back enough.”
“Damn it, Jake. You still ain’t figured it out. It ain’t about the money. It’s about the fun.”
“Screw you.”
Carlita was back on the phone. “Hey, what’s this about fun? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, gringo? Is your wife taking caring of you?”
“You don’t have any business here, Carlita.” Jacob was helpless against her. He felt as if he was over a bottomless pit, clinging to a thin rope with slick hands. Unbidden, that feeling from the hospital swept over him, the one of being submerged in dark, suffocating water. Down in the silent cold where they couldn’t get him.
“But we have so much more to share,” Carlita said, taunting him. “I mean, the boy of fourteen didn’t know what he was doing. I’ll bet your wife has taught you a few tricks since then.”
Jacob heard her cigarette lighter click before she inhaled. The sound triggered flames in his head. Joshua must have whispered something to her because he heard the muted buzzing.
“Josh said to say, ‘Where there’s smoke,’” she said. “I don’t know what it means. You are both muy loco. Made for each other.”
“Let me talk to him.” A sick feeling wended through Jacob’s stomach, a fiery snake of unease.
“Remember under the bridge?” Carlita said. “I know you do. A boy never forgets something like that.”
Jacob stabbed the ‘End’ button and folded the phone. He sat on the truck’s bumper, not trusting his legs. The grinding of the chain saws merged with the buzzing in his ears, and every hammer blow from the roof drove nails into his skull. The phone rang again. And again.
Six times.
They were watching.
He activated the signal and pressed the phone to the side of his head.
It was Joshua. “Ain’t that just like a woman? They won’t let bygones be bygones.”
Then his tone changed, the clumsy rural grammar vanished. “But the past does have a price, brother. Remember that.”
The signal died.
Jacob loosened the top buttons on his flannel shirt and then breathed into his hands, hoping his hyperventilation would fade before he passed out. He worked his way back to the cab, supporting himself using the truck’s frame. He had just settled into the driver’s seat and closed his eyes when shouts arose from the house. The words were in Spanish, and Jacob didn’t immediately grasp their meaning. Then the word “fuego” stood out.
Fire.
Billows of black smoke erupted from the open squares of window frames. The roofers scrambled down the ladder, their tools forgotten, the paper from the bags of shingles fluttering in the breeze. The crew leader, a muscular white man in a gray, mottled tank top, ran out of the structure’s interior. The other carpenters raced to the water drums, filling five-gallon buckets and hurrying back to the house. The crew leader grabbed one of the buckets and started to enter the building, but the heat forced him back. Flames were already visible, licking around the front door that had just been installed.
Jacob tried to move, but it was as if cement had been poured into his vei
ns and solidified there, creating a dense and immovable weight. He finally was able to move his lips, completing the phrase Carlita had suggested.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Renee ran the vacuum cleaner over the rug, lost in the hum of tidiness. The windows were open and the breeze caused the curtains to lift and swell. Renee preferred the fresh air and the scent of the pines that grew along the creek outside. The sunlight gave the room a soft, feathery aspect that she found pleasing.
They wouldn’t be in the apartment much longer. She had enjoyed their time together here. It had reminded her of the days in Jacob’s college apartment, cluttered and crowded and close. Back before Mattie and Christine and—
She would not think of those things. The future mattered, not the past. They were already planning on building a new home. Jacob wanted a larger house than the one that had burned, but Renee wasn’t sure she wanted something so big and empty. However, the nest wouldn’t be empty forever. After all the pain and sacrifice in their lives, they were due some happiness.
She flipped the vacuum cleaner switch then stooped to check the floor. When Jacob came home after visiting a job site, he often tracked mud across the carpet. She had asked him to take off his boots at the door, but the apartment had no foyer and she was just as bothered by the dirty boots sitting out in the open as she was by the footprints. She tucked the vacuum cleaner in the closet. In the new house, she promised herself, the closets would be deep enough to keep everything out of sight.
She checked her watch. Twenty minutes to get to the office by the end of lunch break. She’d been unsure about working for M & W, but Jacob’s enthusiasm had won her over. Now she was glad she’d taken the job, because she saw her husband several times during the day and they often ate lunch together. Twice they’d even sneaked away to the apartment and had daytime sex just like in the early years of their relationship. A suffused glow had been born inside her, a feeling that she was rebuilding him. She now had a noble purpose, one that would help heal the wounds caused by the loss of her children. The saving of one man might make up for her failure to save two children. Maybe that counted in God’s eyes.
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