The Heir (24 page)

“Forrester,” it said.

I still tried to get a glimpse of the sun-swept panorama, but the obstacle was too great.

“It’s his turn,” I said. “I initiated last time.”

“I did.”

“But you’re on my team. Aren’t you?”

“I suppose. As much as you will both dislike it, the two of you need to meet. He knows that. He may even initiate it himself. He understands what you’re doing to Bright, and that he may have underestimated you.”

“Most people overestimate me.”

“Either can be dangerous. And the two of you must come to some agreement on a plan of action for the governor’s mansion.”

“Putting new furniture in or something?”

“Putting a new occupant in it.”

“Fred, I don’t like the senator, and I don’t just mean personally, although that’s included. There were no fireworks last time because there wasn’t time. I don’t like being looked down on unless I’m doing it, and I’m getting to enjoy putting mutinous politicians in their place.”

“Don’t underestimate him.”

“I won’t. But he hates the deal he made with Melvin, and I’m getting kind of tired of it, too.”

Fred’s glower was not approving. “It took your father many years to build his political structure. The conflict with the governor may, perhaps, have been unavoidable—not that you tried to avoid it. But don’t destroy powerful men for recreation.”

“It’s not for recreation. It’s because I like throwing tantrums.”

“That’s recreation. You might also find Forrester a harder nut to crack. He has a lot of money of his own. As I said, don’t underestimate him.”

“I am not underestimating his arrogance and hostility to Boyer control. Estimate this: would he hate Melvin enough to kill him?”

“If so, he would have done it long ago.”

“Would he hate Harry Bright enough to kill Clinton Grainger?”

“My answer is the same. And he had no reason to kill Angela.”

“Did he know her?” I asked.

“Of course he’d met her.”

“For some people, that’s all it would take.”

Fred stood. I’d finally made him mad enough to leave. “Then suggest to Mr. Wilcox that he add the senator to his list. But before the police clap him in irons, you still need to meet with him to discuss your next steps.”

“I will. Next week. I’ll invite you to join us.”

Forrester wasn’t the murderer. It had to be Fred. I watched the door close behind him. Who else?

I went through motives. It couldn’t be my wife or my brother. They had no connection with Clinton Grainger, assuming he’d been killed by the same person as Melvin and Angela, and assuming that either Eric or Katie could kill anyone anyway. But I could see Fred pulling a trigger.

Fred and Melvin. Maybe Melvin was going to fire him? Melvin was getting too hard to control? Melvin was going to make some big decision that Fred wanted to prevent—like changing his will?

But could Fred figure out how to drain brake lines? It didn’t seem likely.

Fred and Angela. She’d found something incriminating? Or Fred thought she might? No problem for him to drop in on business that Saturday night.

Fred and Clinton Grainger? What had Grainger meant,
You may
be surprised, it’s not over yet
? Did Fred know? Only time would tell. And, if it was Fred, that was a problem. He was smart enough to keep Wilcox from catching him, and that meant that Wilcox would have to pin it on me instead, which was what he’d been instructed to do anyway.

And there was another problem. If I didn’t know what Melvin had done to irk Fred, I might do the same thing, and Fred would kill me, too.

I still couldn’t really believe that Fred was the killer. It was absurd, really—as much as Eric or Katie might be the killer. Or Nathan Kern. Or George Elias or Harry Bright or Stan Morton or Pamela or Wilcox or Rosita or Francine or Angela’s sister, Celeste, or Harriet the Realtor. Or anybody. But there was a killer.

26

“Jason?” Pamela was so good at reality. My imaginations crumbled before her smiling face. “Honey, you should sit down for this one. I was talking with Bob Forrester’s secretary in Washington.”

My imaginations recovered. “Is this a joke?” Suspicion jumped up beside imagination. “Did Fred tell you to call her?”

“Jason. Of course not. She called me.”

“Because if Fred—”

“Just listen, dear. The senator will be in town this weekend and wishes to meet with you.”

“This must be a joke.”

“Oh no. His secretary asks if you and your wife could be invited to dinner tomorrow night.”

“At his home?!”

“Yes, dear.”

“I don’t believe it. Fred must be behind this somehow. I’m sorry, Pamela. It’s just that five minutes ago, Fred was telling me I had to speak with the senator, and that the senator might even call first.”

“Then Fred was right. But I really don’t think he was involved. Now, the dinner will be very formal. Did all your fancy schools teach you which fork to use?”

“I failed those classes. Did he ever invite Melvin?”

“If your father ever walked through that door, I didn’t know about it.”

It had been a long week. Two murders, one funeral, one governor demolished, one motorcycle ride to New Hampshire, one move to a new house, four firings. But this was going to be the worst. “Sure, we’re available. But I want Fred to be there.”

“That’ll be tricky. He’s inviting you to his house, which is stooping pretty low. He’s only giving one day’s notice, which also makes him look eager, and that’s even worse. He won’t like us to make requests.”

“See what you can do.”

“I’ll try. You must have really gotten his attention.”

It was time to go through the rest of Melvin’s office. I’d be fourth in line, after Grainger’s break-in, then the police, and now the FBI. No, fifth. The murderer had been in there after Grainger’s people. But there still might be something.

If Angela had pawed through it all weeks ago, that would make me sixth.

I called Katie while I was driving.

“Heads up,” I said. “We might have dinner at Bob Forrester’s tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

I didn’t feel like explaining at the moment. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it does. I have to plan what to wear. Who else will be there?”

“Just us.”

“Jason! Just us? I don’t believe it.”

“Well, and probably Fred.”

“He’ll be odd.”

I’d never heard her real opinion of him. Then I realized she meant he would be unpaired at the table.

“Pamela’s still negotiating. They’ll find someone if they have to.”

“What is it all about?”

“Power and money, what else?”

“Jason, I don’t have the right things to wear for occasions like this.”

“I’m sure you will find something.”

I was at the gate. A policeman let me in, but he was apparently the only officer of the law on the premises. No one else was home. There was yellow tape across the door to Angela’s parlor.

I went directly to the office. It had been more than three weeks since I’d last been in that room, and I could tell others had been there. It wasn’t a mess. Angela had probably never seen a mess in her life. Well . . . a physical mess, anyway. Most of her life had been a mess.

I didn’t even know what had been in the office originally so I had no idea what had been taken, or by whom. There wasn’t much. The main file left was his foundation notes. I leaned back in the old wood desk chair and read them for an hour.

They went back for years, and there were gaps. Apparently he’d only kept the interesting stuff in his desk. There were board meeting minutes and reports on specific projects, and a few of the few had handwritten notes. Those opened no windows into his soul. I read them all.

Add $200K
was written next to one line about a grant to a library.
NK to continue review
at the top of a page about a food program somewhere.

NK would be Nathan Kern. I couldn’t think of anything else Melvin had written that I had read. There was no need to take any of the papers.

It was getting eerie again reading them. The whole place was eerie—the thick carpet, the dark paneling, the books that had never been read. I had to conquer this place, somehow, before I sold it. The Washington townhouse hadn’t been hard, but the ghosts here were more recent. I started wandering.

It was different than the last time I searched the office, when Angela had been in residence. I thought about Angela’s last night. She’d invited someone over. They’d sat together in the midst of her pinkness and puffery. Had she found something incriminating? Did she know it was Melvin’s killer with her? If it had been his killer, of course. How many murderers were on the loose, anyway?

Maybe she didn’t realize what the evidence meant, and she asked the person to come explain it to her. As loopy as she normally was, she was completely off the deep end that last conversation I’d had with her. She must have known something was wrong.

The murderer was someone she knew, obviously. She didn’t know too many people. Was it connected to Clinton Grainger? Who in the world would know both Angela and Grainger?

Well, Fred. But would any chair in that room have supported him? That was a crucial piece of evidence—no crushed furniture.

In Melvin’s bedroom I had a surprise—his closet and drawers were still filled with his clothes. Of course they would be, but it was strange, and what was I supposed to do with it all? Give it to the poor? I’d call Nathan. Most homeless people don’t have a decent business suit.

There was a small table by the bed. I pulled open the drawer. It was nearly empty, just some aspirin, reading glasses, tissues, paper and pen, and a book. What would he have been reading?

It wasn’t a book. It was a bulky brown leather picture frame that opened like a book. I opened it, and then I had to sit down.

There were two pictures. One of a man and woman, one of two young children. I’d never seen these photos. Probably no one else had, either, except Melvin, in more than twenty years.

Melvin and Ann, Jason and Eric.

I didn’t know what to think. They’d been here by his bed, maybe for that long. Suddenly, new doors into his heart were opening for me. I didn’t want to go through them, but I still sat on the bed as minutes went by, staring at the pictures. In the end I didn’t know if it was better or worse that I’d seen them.

And they’d been by his bed. All this time.

I took the frame with me.

It wasn’t as far a drive to our new residence. The road turned and I saw my own house through the trees. I stopped on the roadside to look at it.

“Pamela?”

“Yes, Jason?”

“Find someone real good to put in a security system for my house. There’s one here already, but I want something industrial strength.”

“Yes, sir. Do you want it in a hurry?”

“Well, yes. It’s a dangerous world.”

“I understand. I can call the people who maintained your father’s system.”

“Maybe you should ask around.”

“All right, I will. And there’s no word yet from the senator’s office.”

“Let me know when there is.” I put my phone away and sat there awhile before I went in. The picture frame was in my briefcase, and I didn’t show it to Katie. When I got to my office, I put it in my desk drawer.

I dialed Nathan Kern’s number. It was after five, but that hardworking, dedicated man was still there, burning the midnight dollars.

“Yes, Jason? This is Nathan Kern.”

“Hello, Nathan. I was calling to ask you about last week. I want to get this straight. You talked to Angela on Wednesday?”

“Yes, Wednesday evening. We discussed her joining the board. As I told you before, she was very excited.”

“And on Thursday, I told you she had changed her mind. That was a surprise?”

“Absolutely. I was quite surprised.”

“Did you talk to her at all after that? I’m trying to figure why she got spooked.”

“No. I had meant to. You called in the evening on Thursday, and on Friday morning I flew to Washington for a weekend conference. When I returned Sunday afternoon, I heard the news.”

“Okay. I just wondered. Something happened sometime Wednesday night or Thursday.” One other thought came to me. “Nathan, be careful, okay?”

“What?” He paused. “Oh. I see. Yes, Jason, and you, too. Be careful.”

Time to go down to the dining room. I was hungry, and Katie had said supper would be special.

That night we had our first real dinner in the new house. The theme was Traditional New England Farm. The dining room was inundated with wildflowers of the autumn fields and forests, nature blasting right through the walls in its exuberance. Much of the flora had landed on the Rustic Farm Table—dark, polished wood, mottled with more knots and burls than a person could shake a hand-carved walking stick at. Fortunately, there were still several uncovered square yards of the table for our hand-thrown and fired pottery plates and serving bowls, cut crystal water and wine glasses, pewter cutlery, silver candlesticks, and linen napkins in carved wooden napkin rings. Every sparkle of it was brand-new.

And all was secondary to the meal of roast duck, herbed new potatoes, fresh dark bread, and spinach salad, with maple pecan pie for dessert. The wine was French, a rose
I didn’t recognize. Our conversation was as comfortable as the food, and afterward we lingered over the pie.