White Hot (8 page)

“I got lucky,” she said. “I finally found the wherewithal to defy Huff and leave. But Danny didn’t.”

Beck hesitated, then said, “Maybe he took his leave in another way, Sayre.”

“Maybe.”

“But when you left here ten years ago, you didn’t think too well of him for being such a pushover.”

“No, I didn’t.”

In fact she had left hating them all. But after years of therapy her feelings toward Danny had softened—just not enough to take a phone call from him that had come out of the blue.

Thoughtfully she sipped her coffee, but when she replaced the cup in the saucer, she realized that Beck Merchant was looking at her with disconcerting interest. She berated herself for talking to him about issues so personal that until now she had confided them only to her therapist.

“We were talking about the Gene Iverson case.”

“Right.” He sat up straighter and cleared his throat. “What do you want to know?”

“Did Chris kill him?”

His left eyebrow shot up. “You don’t mince words.”

“Did he?”

“The evidence against Chris was purely circumstantial.”

“That’s not an answer,” she said. “No, allow me to rephrase. That’s a
lawyer’s
answer.”

“The prosecution’s case was weak enough to deadlock a jury.”

“And it was never retried.”

“It shouldn’t have been tried in the first place.”

“No body, no murder?” That had been at the crux of the articles she had read. Gene Iverson’s body had never been found. He had disappeared without a trace.

“If I were a prosecuting attorney,” he said, “I would never go into a murder trial without a dead body, no matter how compelling the circumstantial evidence was.”

“How did you become involved?”

“I’d read about the trial. Thought it was a bum rap for reasons I’ve expressed. I came down here to lend support to my fraternity brother, assist him any way I could. But by the time I got here, the trial was over. I found Chris and Danny celebrating in that old honky-tonk out on the highway. You know the place?”

“The Razorback?”

“That’s the one. Chris was buying drinks for everybody to celebrate the outcome of his trial. Slap Watkins was there. He started spouting off about money buying justice, and rich people never serving time, and so forth. Didn’t set well with Chris. Or Danny. In fact, he threw the first punch in defense of his older brother. All hell broke loose. I plunged in and, despite Watkins’s claim of victory, tilted the odds in the brothers’ favor. We mopped the floor with him.”

“So you’ve rescued all three of us from the ugly clutches of Slap Watkins.”

“So it would seem,” he said, smiling. “I’m a handy man to have around.”

“Huff and Chris certainly think so.”

He propped his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Right now I’m interested in what you think.”

The statement was deceptively simple. She sensed an underlying meaning that was more complex. “I think it’s time I said good-bye.”

When she opened her handbag, he said, “I’ll cover your dinner. I have a tab here.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Afraid of being indebted to me?”

She tucked a twenty-dollar bill beneath the sugar dispenser, then looked straight into his teasing eyes. “I’m not afraid of anything, Mr. Merchant.”

He left the booth when she did and followed her to the door. “Dogs?”

“What?”

He whistled sharply. “Are you afraid of dogs?”

He barely had time to complete the question before Frito shot through the swinging double doors. He was a beautiful animal—golden fur with white feathering on his underside. He wagged his tail so exuberantly that Sayre was forced to dodge it or risk being knocked down.

He greeted his owner with such enthusiasm it could have been months rather than minutes since he had last seen him. Then he turned his unbridled affection onto Sayre. He danced around her feet and bathed her hands with happy licks, only settling down when told to “be nice!” He obeyed and squatted on his haunches but quivered with uncontrollable energy and implored Sayre with large brown eyes to pet him.

Which she did. “He’s wonderful. How long have you had him?”

“Couple of years. Since he was seven weeks old. One of the workers brought a litter to the foundry. I took one look inside the box and was suckered into taking him home.” He scrubbed his knuckles across the top of the dog’s head. “We had several clashes when it came to housebreaking, but now I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

As she watched him shower affection on his dog, Sayre conceded that Beck Merchant had sexy eyes, an engaging grin, and a cute pet. One could easily be taken in. But she rejected the notion that he was a nice guy. At the end of the day, he was still Huff Hoyle’s chief legal adviser, capable of corporate treachery and God only knew what else. She would put nothing past him, not even faking this love for his dog in an effort to disarm her.

They stepped outside, where it felt like a steam room compared to the air-conditioned diner. The sultry air engulfed her, for a moment robbing her of breath. She grew dizzy. Her ears began to buzz.

He touched her elbow. “Are you all right?”

She pressed her hand against her struggling lungs and inhaled deeply through her nose, exhaled through her mouth. The dizziness subsided. The buzzing in her ears, she realized with chagrin, was one of the neon tubes in the window spelling out the fare of the diner. “I’m not quite acclimatized.”

“It takes a while.” Looking down at her, he said, “But you won’t be here long enough for that, will you?”

“No. Not that long.”

He nodded, but he didn’t move away from her and his gaze remained on her face.

“Before I go,” she said, “I wanted to ask—Ouch!”

“What?”

“Frito stepped on my foot.”

The dog had been trying to nudge his way between them when one of his paws landed hard on her instep.

“I’m sorry.” He opened the cab of his pickup and motioned Frito inside. The retriever leapt in as though he’d done it a thousand times, then poked his head through the open passenger window, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, looking adorably guileless.

Sayre hobbled to the bed of the pickup and supported herself there while she checked her foot.

“Any permanent damage?”

“No. It’s all right.”

“I’m terribly sorry. He thinks he’s a lapdog.”

Although her foot was throbbing, she said, “It startled me more than hurt.”

“What were you about to ask?”

It took her a second to remember. “How you got from assisting my brothers in a brawl to becoming chief counsel for Hoyle Enterprises. After the night at the Razorback, how long before Huff hired you?”

“As soon as I recovered from my hangover.” He chuckled. “Actually, Chris invited me to stay for a few days, go fishing, hang out. Over the course of the visit, it became clear to him that I was unhappy with the law firm I was in. By the end of my stay, Huff had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Relocation was no problem for me. I hadn’t come to Destiny intending to stay, but ultimately the decision was a no-brainer.”

He had sunk his fingers into Frito’s dense pelt and was idling rubbing the back of his neck. The dog’s eyes were closed. He looked drunk with pleasure.

Snapping her attention back to the subject, Sayre asked him what had happened to Calvin McGraw. He had been Huff’s lawyer for as far back as Sayre could remember. Beck Merchant had replaced him.

“Mr. McGraw retired.”

“Or Huff retired him,” she countered.

“I don’t know what their arrangement was. I’m sure Huff offered him an attractive retirement package.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that, too. Ensuring McGraw’s silence would have been expensive.”

“His silence?”

“About bribing the jury during Chris’s murder trial.”

Beck’s fingers stopped their mindless movement, and gradually he withdrew his hand from the nape of Frito’s neck. The dog whined a complaint, but his owner seemed not to notice. His attention was focused on Sayre. Purposefully he walked toward her and didn’t stop until he was standing directly in front of her, effectively trapping her between him and the truck.

She recoiled. “Back up.”

“Not yet.”

“What are you doing?”

“Confessing. I lied to you.”

“I would expect that. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The mosquito.”

She stared up at him with incomprehension.

“This afternoon, down at the bayou, when I brushed the mosquito off your cheek? There was no mosquito, Sayre. I just wanted to touch your face.”

He wasn’t touching her now, except with his eyes, and their touch was almost as effective as fingertips. He shouldn’t have been standing this close to her. It was an inappropriate distance between strangers. Furthermore it was physically uncomfortable. It was too sultry for two people to be standing this close, close enough to feel each other’s body heat, forced to share the inadequate air.

“I don’t remember that,” she lied. Pushing him aside, she headed for her car, which was parked a short distance away. By the time she reached it, he had caught up with her. Hooking her elbow, he brought her around.

“First of all, the hell you don’t remember. Second, you’ve been tossing out some mighty bold allegations tonight. You intimated that Chris got away with murder, then accused your father of jury tampering. Those are serious crimes.”

“So is tampering with evidence.”

He raised his shoulders. “You’ve lost me.”

“Yellow mud.” She pointed toward the pickup truck. “Your tires are caked with it. So are your boots.” Simultaneously, they looked down at the muddy boots poking out from beneath the stringy hems of his worn jeans. Looking into his face again, she said, “There’s only one place in the parish where the soil is that ocher color. On Bayou Bosquet. Where the fishing camp is.”

His jaw bunched. “Your point?”

“You went out there tonight, didn’t you? Don’t bother lying. I know you did. I just wonder what you did while you were there.”

“You know,” he said, “if your design business ever tanks, maybe you could sign on with the FBI.”

“Deputy Scott told us that until further notice the cabin at the camp was considered a crime scene. He said it had been cordoned off.”

“With bright yellow tape.”

“Which you ignored.”

“Did you know that dogs are color-blind? Frito didn’t realize it was crime scene tape. He charged right past it. I had to go get him.”

“Even though he immediately responds to hand gestures, verbal commands, and whistles?”

A weighty silence yawned between them. He knew he’d been caught.

H
e was pudgy and pink.

No two ways about it, George Robson thought.

The full-length, well-lighted three-way mirror in his bathroom unmercifully revealed all his physical flaws. He didn’t like what he saw. Each day it seemed there was less hair growing on his head and more on his back. His breasts sagged, his stomach was flabby. Beneath it, his penis looked no bigger than a thumb.

Less time on the golf course and more time in a gym would help the pecs and abs. There wasn’t much he could do about the other. That was what had him worried. He had a beautiful, young wife to satisfy, and unfortunately, this was the equipment he had to do it with.

Modestly, he put on a pair of undershorts before joining Lila in the bedroom. She was propped up in bed looking through one of her fashion magazines. He crawled in beside her. “You’re prettier than any of the models in that magazine.” He wasn’t just saying so. In his estimation it was true. Lila was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“Hm.”

“No, really. I mean it.” She was wearing one of the slip-type nightgowns he liked. Short. Skinny straps. One had slid off her shoulder. He reached over and pushed it down farther, then stroked her breast.

She brushed his hand aside. “It’s too hot tonight.”

“Not in here, honey. I set the AC down to sixty-eight, just where you like it.”

“Feels hotter.”

He lay beside her quiescently and let her peruse her magazine without further interruption. He gazed at her face, her lovely hair, that incredible body, and tried to fend off his fear. Was it warranted? He didn’t want to know, but he
had
to know because not knowing was driving him crazy.

“Nice funeral today,” he remarked, as casually as possible.

Her expression didn’t change. “I almost fell asleep in the church.
Bor
-ing.”

“Huff threw quite a wake.”

“It was okay.”

“Where’d you disappear to?”

“Disappear to?” She thumbed to another page. “When?”

“There for a while, in the house, I couldn’t find you.”

She looked over at him. “I went to pee.”

“I checked the powder room.”

“There was a line. I went upstairs. Is that all right with you? Or should I have held it until I got home?”

“Don’t get mad, honey. I just—”

“Oh, forget it.” She tossed the magazine to the floor. “It’s too hot to argue over something as stupid as my going to the bathroom.”

She began to fluff the pillows behind her head. She had bought the embroidered silk pillowcases at a specialty shop in New Orleans. They’d cost a freaking fortune. He had hit the ceiling when he discovered the charge on their credit card statement.

“You spent this on pillowcases?” he’d said, incredulously.

She’d told him she would return them, but she had been so unhappy for the next several days, he’d relented and said she could keep the damn things. She had tearfully thanked him and said he was the best husband ever. He had basked in her affection.

“Thank you for going with me today,” he said, laying a hand on the curve of her hip. “It was important that we go.”

“Of course we had to go. You work for them.”

“Safety director is a very important job, you know. I have lots of responsibility, Lila. Without me, the Hoyles—”

“Did you feed the cat?”

“I mixed dry food with canned just like you asked me to. Anyway, my work at the plant is just as vital as what Chris does. Maybe more so.”

She stopped fiddling with the lace-trimmed pillowcases and looked at him. “No one doubts that you’re a top man at that foundry, George. I’m the first to know all the long hours you give that place.” Pouting, she said, “I know, because every hour you’re there, you’re not here with me.”

Smiling, she pulled her nightgown over her head, then teasingly dragged it across his chest. His small penis stretched with excitement. “Got something for Lila tonight, George? Hm?” she purred.

Sliding her hand into the fly of his shorts, she applied herself to pleasing him, and she knew how. When he caressed her in turn, she moaned as though deriving as much pleasure from their foreplay as he.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just being paranoid and imagining things, picking up clues and catching vibes that weren’t really there. He was short, pudgy, and pink; Chris Hoyle was tall, dark, and handsome. He had a reputation for taking whatever woman he wanted.

George knew several men at the plant whose marriages had either suffered or ended over the wives’ infidelity with Chris. Naturally a man would feel a little insecure whenever his wife was around such a notorious womanizer.

He had worked for the Hoyles over twenty years. He’d given them so much of himself—time, integrity, pride. But the more you gave them, the more they took. They fed on people, on lives, on a man’s soul. George had accepted that a long time ago. He was willing to be a yes-man.

But, by God, the line had to be drawn somewhere. And with George Robson, it was his wife.

Wearing only his boxer shorts and an old-fashioned, ribbed cotton undershirt, Huff descended the wide staircase. He tried to tread lightly, but several of the stairs squeaked anyway, and sure enough, by the time he reached the ground floor, Selma was already there wrapped in a robe that was too thick and fuzzy for the season.

“Do you need something, Mr. Hoyle?”

“Some privacy in my own goddamn house would be nice. Do you keep your ear to the floor?”

“Well excuse me for being worried about you.”

“I told you a thousand times today that I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, you just don’t let on.”

“Can we save this conversation for some other time? I’m in my drawers.”

“I have to pick up and wash those drawers. You think seeing you in them is going to put me in a swoon? Besides that, it ain’t a’tall a pretty sight.”

“Go back to bed before I fire you.”

With the hauteur of a prima ballerina, she did a pirouette on her terry-cloth scuffs and retreated into the darkness at the back of the house.

For a while Huff had lain in bed, wakeful and alert. Although, even when he was asleep, his brain didn’t shut down entirely. Like the furnaces in his foundry, his mind burned just as hotly through the night as it did by day. Some of his knottiest problems had unraveled while he was asleep. He would go to bed with a dilemma and wake up the following morning with a solution worked out for him by his active subconscious.

But tonight’s problems were particularly disturbing, and sleep had eluded him completely. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see an image of Danny’s fresh grave. Even dressed up with flowers, a grave was a hole in the ground, and there was nothing dignified about that.

The walls of his bedroom had seemed to be closing in on him, like the walls of earth inside Danny’s grave, like the satin lining of his casket. Huff had never been claustrophobic before, especially not in his own house. Even though the air-conditioning vents were directed toward his bed, the linens were damp with his sweat, so clingy that even though he’d thrashed his legs he couldn’t kick off the sheets.

He had a bad case of heartburn to boot. So rather than lie there and nurse these miseries until dawn, he’d decided to get up and go outside. Perhaps the tranquillity of the countryside at night would calm him enough to bring on sleepiness.

He pulled open the front door. There was no alarm system in his house, and the doors were rarely locked. Who would dream of stealing from Huff Hoyle? The thief would have to be either extraordinarily courageous or downright crazy.

Huff despised Arabs—just as he did Jews, Latinos, blacks, Asians, and any ethnicity other than his own—but he admired the swift justice that was meted out in Islamic nations. If he caught somebody stealing from him, he’d cut off the culprit’s hand and only then turn him over to the sluggish legal system, which these days was less concerned about punishing the wrongdoer than it was about safeguarding his goddamn civil rights.

Just thinking about that sad state of affairs fanned his heartburn. He belched sourly.

Huff eased himself into his favorite rocking chair and lit a cigarette. He puffed in contentment as he gazed at the portion of the horizon that was aglow with the lights of the foundry. The smokestacks had created a thin layer of cloud above the town. He might be momentarily at rest, but his work never was.

In the summertime, the gallery ceiling fans were kept on around the clock, because often, like tonight, they provided the only breeze to be had. Huff leaned back and enjoyed the caress of the soft air against his clammy skin. Closing his eyes, he thought back to the first time he’d ever seen a ceiling fan. He remembered it like it was yesterday.

He’d gone into a drugstore with his daddy, who’d been looking for work. The Drugstore Man wore a bow tie and wide suspenders. Hat in hand, head lowered, Huff’s daddy meekly offered to push the oiled dust mop around the hardwood floors of the store, or burn trash in the big barrels out back, or do any other menial tasks the proprietor might want to delegate to someone not afraid of hard labor. For instance, he’d noticed a few dirt dauber nests up under the eaves as he was coming in. Wouldn’t Drugstore Man like those knocked down?

While the two men negotiated the terms of his daddy’s temporary employment, young Huff stood staring at the circulating blades of the overhead fan, marveling over the fabulous machine that stirred his hair with cool air and dried the sweat off his sunburned face.

All that day his daddy stocked shelves and swept floors and washed windows. He burned trash in the blazing sun and told Huff to help him be on the lookout for flyaway sparks. Huff became entranced by the licking flames and the heat waves that shimmied up out of the barrels.

His daddy hauled and fetched and carried for Drugstore Man until his back was bent and his face was lined with exhaustion. Huff got to eat that night, though. A pimento cheese sandwich, a leftover from Drugstore Man’s soda fountain. Nothing had ever tasted so good, although he felt guilty for eating it in front of his daddy, who’d said he wasn’t hungry.

Huff wished that Drugstore Man would offer to make him an ice cream cone, like he’d been watching him make for folks all day, piling the scoops so high that Huff didn’t know how they stayed on the cone.

But Drugstore Man didn’t offer to make him one, and as soon as Huff had eaten his sandwich, making it last as long as he could, the man said it was time for him and his daddy to “move along now,” which was something they heard often.

Headlights swept a bright arc across the front lawn. Huff, roused from his reverie, rubbed his hands over his face as though to wash away the memory and the embarrassment it would cause him if anyone knew of it.

Chris’s shiny Porsche Carrera came to a stop, and he climbed out. He jogged up the walkway and was almost to the gallery before he noticed Huff.

“What are you doing out here this time of night?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Nice outfit,” Chris remarked with amusement as he dropped into the other rocking chair and stretched his arms high above his head. “I’m so tired, I might sleep straight through tomorrow.”

“You’ve got work tomorrow.”

“I’ll call in sick. Who’s gonna fire me?”

Huff harrumphed. “What kept you out so late?”

“George’s mom came down with a stomach virus. She called at a most inopportune time. Poor George had just got it up when he had to go see about Mama, leaving Lila alone and lonely.”

“That girl is trouble.”

“Granted. That’s what makes it stimulating.”

Huff expelled a gust of smoke. “Are you going to waste your best years diddling frustrated housewives? Or are you going to get your wife back into your bed and make her pregnant?”

Chris pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as though they suddenly pained him. “I’m not going to talk about this tonight.”

“We’ll talk about this when I say we talk about this,” Huff said. “You’ve been dodging the subject of Mary Beth for weeks. I want to know what’s going on.”

“All right.” Chris rested his head on the back of his chair and took a deep breath. “She refuses to sign the divorce document. Beck consulted the best divorce lawyer in New Orleans. This one favors the men, not their money-grabbing, whining exes. He’s as tough as they come.

“He drew up the document, and Beck went over every word of it. In his opinion, it was the best possible deal for me and still very generous to Mary Beth.” He stopped rocking his chair and leaned across the distance separating them, bringing his face close to Huff’s. “She won’t sign.”

“Then there’s hope for a reconciliation.”

Chris gave a short laugh and returned to his original position. “Mary Beth isn’t refusing the divorce because she wants to stay with me. She’s refusing out of spite. She hates me, hates you, hates this town, the foundry. She despises everything about us.”

“Hell, boy, she’s only a woman. A
woman.
Stop screwing Lila and get yourself down to Mexico. Woo your wife. Do what you have to do—flowers, jewelry, a new automobile, new tits if she wants them.

“Win her back with gifts and romance. Eat some crow if you have to. It won’t kill you. Hose her enough times to get her pregnant, then lock her up until the kid is born. Once we’ve got the kid, we’ll claim her an unfit mother, send her packing without a penny.”

Chris shook his head. “It’s not going to happen, Huff.” He held up his hand to stave off Huff’s arguments. “Even if I was inclined to seduce the bitch into my bed again, which I’m not, and even if I hosed her, as you so romantically put it, a thousand times, it wouldn’t take.”

“Wouldn’t take? What the hell are you talking about?”

“She had her tubes tied.”

Huff felt his blood pressure skyrocket. In a matter of seconds, his heartburn had grown from a low ember to a wildfire that was searing its way through his diaphragm and up into his esophagus.

Chris said, “The last time I made a pitch for reconciliation, she laughed at me. She said she knew I only wanted to patch things up so I could provide you and myself with an heir. Did I think she was stupid?” He looked across at Huff. “She’s a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.