Broken Bonds (3 page)

“Too bad you lost the stuff you’d bought for the McKitricks,” Jace was saying. “Bet they could have used it. Gabe, didn’t you say that they were on Char’s list of families to visit over a truant student?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Gabe said, distracted as he wrote in a little notebook.

So, Matt thought, maybe he and Char could go together to visit the McKitricks when he replaced the food and clothes he was going to give them. Not that he wanted to go back up the mountain, but he wasn’t going to let this impact his freedom or his duty.

“Hey,” Gabe shouted, from across the wreck. “Someone’s been here gawking already. Footprints in the ash. I didn’t see any on the side where you’re standing.”

Matt and Jace watched as he approached the truck and glanced inside. “And there’s an unburned piece of paper in here with something written on it.”

Jace went over to the wreck. Though the burned, acrid smell was seeping into the pit of Matt’s stomach, making him feel sick, curiosity got him. Walking in Jace’s footprints, he went over to the wreck and peered in the front passenger-side window, too.

A piece of white paper was lying on the blackened front seat. He could see a drawing of a skull and crossbones, like on an old pirate flag. Under that were big, black printed letters.

YOUR FIRED!

4

“W
ell, I admit it is kind of quaint looking—in a pioneer way,” Tess said as she drove into the narrow, short driveway of the hunting cabin.

For some reason, Char’s mind flashed back to driving up to a big, modern hogan on a washboard road for the meeting where the elders and her boss had asked her to leave. But that had been set among yucca, sagebrush and pinyon pines instead of maples, oaks and tall white pines. Even the bedrock here was different; the rocks were gray, beige or black, not the yellow, brown and red rocks she’d grown used to out West.

“And, Ms. Worrywart, the logs have good chinking—insulation,” Char assured her as they got out of the day care van. “And, see—there’s a carport so I won’t have to scrape frost off car windows in the morning.”

The sun was setting, gilding the clouds with colors from lavender to pink to fiery orange, which made the view even more beautiful. They peered in all the windows, walking around the small log building.

“I like the stone fireplace and all the wood inside,” Tess said. “And there’s a leather couch and two upholstered chairs. The front room’s a pretty good size, but that bedroom and bath are small.”

“Which suits me just fine. It’s got a stand-up shower, so I’ll miss soaking in the tub, but that’s a small price to pay.”

“Did they say you could use that pile of firewood?”

“Yes, and they’re not charging me for water. The water heater takes up part of the closet space, but does a guy hunting or drinking with his buddies need room for clothes?”

“Did you get the idea his wife ever comes up here?”

“It’s a man’s world—until now. I did get the idea, though, that his marriage isn’t that happy. I feel sorry for her.”

“Oh, Char, you can’t solve all the world’s problems, you know.”

“I can try. I’ll bet it’s great to sit out here on this covered porch on pretty days to see the sun rise or set. Let me show you the view of the valley and lake below. If we could just erase those luxury condos and homes and that big party house down in the valley, it would look really pristine.”

“They call it a lodge. It makes the one at the state park where Gabe and I got married seem like a doll’s house. It does blend in with the area,” she said, pointing, “like the Lake Azure houses do. Wonder which one is Matt Rowan’s. What a great view here!”

Char remembered Elinor Hanson saying the same earlier today. It seemed so long ago she’d been up on the mountain, but only moments ago she’d seen Matt sitting scared to move in his truck and then it going over....

“You okay?” Tess asked. “You kind of flinched. Did you see something below?”

“No. Just the breeze is cold. Winter’s coming.”

“So then spring can’t be far behind, right?” Tess said, throwing her arm over Char’s shoulders. They stood leaning together for a moment, looking below at the long lake that gave the area its name. As the clouds passed overhead, the water seemed to change color, one minute azure, the next almost like jade or amethyst. Smoke trailed from chimneys on a few of the shingle or slate roofs of the houses below, though some were hidden under pines. The large Y-shaped lodge with its green velvet grass golf course carved out of the hills looked lonely this late.

Funny, but Char had one of those rare moments when she wished she had a man she loved to share something with and not only a friend or a sister.

“I just thought of something sad,” Tess whispered, pulling away and hugging herself.

“About that woman who lives down there? The one who’s still trying to get her daughter back from her estranged husband in South America?”

“No. Just that it must have been near here, down that next ridge maybe, where that groundskeeper fell to his death, because they found his body on the golf course a couple of weeks ago—remember?”

Char gasped. “That’s the man whose family Matt was going to visit up on Pinecrest. At least, if he ended up on the golf course, he didn’t fall from right here. He must have been over there a little ways to fall straight down, though that doesn’t look like a place someone would trip.” Again she fought to banish the memory of Matt’s truck pitching over the side into nothing but air.

“Gabe said the death was accidental but weird because he was a mountain man, sure-footed, knew the area, all of that. But up on these paths and ridges, anything can happen, so you’ve got to be really careful. And if this is a hunting cabin, there may be shooters in these woods and—”

“And I’ll be careful,” Char said, cutting off any more dire warnings. She had to always be on guard to stay the optimist to Tess’s worries and levelheaded to their sister Kate’s brilliant but scary what-if theorizing. “I’ll be away during the day anyway, and people would be crazy to try to hunt anywhere around here at night.”

But, Char had to admit, some folks were crazy around here. Starting with someone who would kidnap kids like Tess or push someone’s truck over the side with them in it. And maybe, live out alone in a cabin, almost on the edge of a cliff.

* * *

“You didn’t need to fly in early,” Matt told Royce Flemming when he arrived at Matt’s door just after dark. He’d just taken a shower and was considering going over to the lodge to get some hot food and try to relax in the spa and sauna.

“I was coming late tomorrow, anyway,” Royce said as he stepped in.

Royce and his assistant, Orlando—his jack-of-all-trades including chauffeur and bodyguard—flew in a company plane to Columbus from wherever he was working. Royce kept a car there. Orlando drove while Royce did paperwork in the backseat—always busy. Now he turned to wave to Orlando, who backed the black sedan out of the driveway.

“He wanted to come in to tell you he’s glad you’re all right, but I told him I’d let you know and he could see you later. He’ll be at the lodge in a guest room down the hall from my suite if I need him.” When Matt closed the door behind them, Royce gripped his shoulders. “At least you’re in one piece.” He hugged Matt stiffly, set him back and headed into the living room.

As ever, the seventy-year-old was elegantly put together in his Italian leather jacket over a striped shirt and jeans which actually looked pressed. Royce’s silver hair seemed sculpted, and his perpetual tan set off his green eyes. Married and divorced three times—and paying triple alimony—Royce had not always been a successful entrepreneur. He’d made his ever-expanding fortune in upscale housing projects, including Lake Azure and another in the Poconos, and also headed up the Environmental Expansion Company, the EEC, which oversaw the majority of fracking for gas and oil in this area. Though he was a trim, fairly short man, Royce Flemming left huge footprints wherever he went.

As the sun set, they sat at the bar in the living area with its views of hills and the lake. Matt’s three-bedroom house was the medium size for the development and blended beautifully into the natural setting, one of the prerequisites for a Lake Azure home. It was perched on a cul-de-sac that overlooked the lodge and lake with its man-made sand beach, boathouse and dock.

“The usual?” Matt asked. “I could use a stiff one myself after today.”

Royce nodded. “Can you believe I’m dating a woman who likes bourbon and branch? But yeah, thanks. Make it my usual—a double.”

“Bourbon and branch? Isn’t that what evil oilman J. R. Ewing used to drink on
Dallas?
”

“Yeah, that’s right. So, Jennifer called from the office and said it was my truck that went over.”

Matt heaved a huge sigh and handed Royce his Jim Beam on the rocks. “Yeah, the Azure Lake truck Orlando usually drives when the black car seems a bit too much or you’re headed to rough ground.”

“I hear you, partner. That’s why I liked that truck around here. Believe me, I don’t always need Orlando hanging on—or maybe I do now.”

They clinked glasses and sat facing each other across the mahogany bar. Moments like this made Matt really miss his father. As close as he felt personally and professionally to this man who had been his dad’s best friend and who did not have children of his own, it was never quite the same. He admired Royce tremendously, but there was always an edge to the man that couldn’t be smoothed away.

“Okay, I’ll just say it,” Royce said. “The hillbilly jerk who tried to shove you off might have been after me.” It was a statement, not a question, but then Royce always seemed to have all the answers.

“Possibly. But why you, the moneyman, the salvation of this area in people’s eyes?”

“In
some
people’s eyes. If he was after Brad Mason, my right-hand guy in charge of the fracking contracts, the would-be killer is nearsighted as hell. Brad’s always in that fire-engine red, look-at-me truck, which is good advertising, though I know he’s got fans and haters out there.”

“Woody drove the white truck once in a while but he’s dead, and you’re always driven by Orlando, so that leaves me as the target. But if the guy in that truck wanted me to die, why?”

“Yeah. Matt, you know Woody was a loose cannon. I’m sorry he had that freak accident, but it kept me from firing him for printing up those homemade signs and picketing this place. It shook up the residents here. He should have picketed one of the drilling sites, not here.”

“
I
hire and fire here, and I would not have fired him.”

“Okay, he was a good worker. I overanalyze everything.”

“Me, too, now. Even after hashing all this out with the sheriff, his deputy and Charlene Lockwood, I still can’t figure—”

“Lockwood’s the woman who just happened to come along in time?”

“What do you mean ‘just happened to’?”

“I checked into her. A bleeding heart social worker who could, possibly should, profit from helping you get out of that truck in time. Maybe it was pushed just so far so it wouldn’t go over, then here she comes to help. I hear she visits families up in the hills and could no doubt use a hefty reward for her Appalachian project. And, like you said, who has the money around here? I do, you do—and people know that.”

“You mean like she set it up?” Matt’s voice rose in tone and volume. “Royce, now you’re over the edge.”

“Calm down. Anything’s possible, that’s all. You’ve got to look at all angles.”

“She asked for nothing.”

“Good. Great. But I wish you’d called me first, not gone to the sheriff. We don’t need negative PR or people speculating. The Chillicothe newspaper will pick it up from the police report, or worse yet, good old gossip will get going around here. We’ve worked damn hard to get along with the townies who think people don’t belong even if they’ve been here for a hundred years. We could have cleaned this up by donating to Ms. Lockwood’s cause and doing an investigation ourselves—which I plan to do. We don’t need the sheriff breathing down our necks.”

Matt slammed his glass down on the bar, spilling some of his drink. “Last time I checked, attempted murder is a criminal offense. Of course I went to the sheriff. He needs to look into it!”

“Okay, didn’t mean to take it out on you after all you’ve been through today. I suppose he had to know, but let’s try to keep it from getting tied to bad local feelings about this ‘ritzy’ area, as I heard one guy uptown put it. And I don’t want it tied to the fracking. Hopefully, money talks louder than the environmental do-gooders yakking about the quality of life around here from our drilling.” He rolled his eyes. “You know, that crazy Bright Star told his disciples that blasting into the bedrock like that could cause earthquakes, one sign for the end of the world—that is, until I bought out his old property for big bucks. Now he’s on my side, and that’s what we need, people around here on our side, not trying to shove us off cliffs.”

“Royce, we can’t sweep what happened today under the PR rug. It might have been some drunk guy, but I think it meant something, and since it was my life on the line, I’m not letting it go. And I mean to thank Char Lockwood and cooperate with the sheriff, too.”

“Sure. Sure, I understand. Too late not to. Hey, let’s get something to eat at the lodge, then I’ve got my fracking superintendent meeting me there later to report on how the drilling’s going. EEC is helping the down-and-outs here with some very nice drilling rights packages, bringing up the whole area, that’s my goal. The locals already owe us big thanks for the influx of jobs and money and revitalizing the stores downtown. Even newcomer Charlene Lockwood must know we’re doing great and are making good profits.”

Still annoyed that Royce was suspicious of Char’s motives, Matt went upstairs to turn out lights. Darkness had descended. As he glimpsed his own reflected image in the large glass window of his loft bedroom before snapping off the light, a thought hit him. If the man in the truck who tried to shove him off the cliff meant for him to die, why did he cover his face? If he just meant to scare him, warn him—set him up somehow, maybe for Charlene Lockwood to come along—he would have covered his face.

No, Royce, wily as he was, had to be wrong about Char. So what if she probably had ties to hill folk, maybe some who owed her favors? Royce just went wild with things his front man and informant, Brad Mason, found out about locals here, so he knew what contracts to offer for what amount where he wanted to drill, including working with that weird cult leader, Bright Star Monson. Talk about a guy with hidden ulterior motives. Royce had said the cult leader was a mind-control guru even he could learn from—which reminded Matt again that, even working for and with a dynamo like Royce, he still needed to be his own man.

He had another unsettling thought. He closed his vertical blinds. If someone was watching or stalking him, they could see right in, and this house was full of large windows.

“Hey,” Royce said as Matt hurried down the freestanding staircase and went to the front hall closet to get a jacket. “I’m telling you again, you need a good woman in your life, my man. Now Veronica, this new lady I’m seeing, has a younger sister who’s a knockout, and we’d like to fix you up with her.”

“The fixing up I need right now is to figure out who almost killed me and why. And to make sure no one tries it again.”

* * *

“So one thing I haven’t mentioned,” Gabe told Tess and Char after questioning Char about what she’d seen up on the mountain, followed by a late dinner. “In Matt’s burned-out truck, we found a pristine piece of paper that had a crude skull and crossbones on it and read, ‘Your fired.’” He spelled it out for them. “I’m sending it to my friend Vic Reingold at the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to see if we can get prints or DNA off it, but that may take a while.”