“I’ve always got time for you, Moira.” He smiled gently at her and rested a hip on the edge of her desk. Holding out a hand, he asked, “May I?”
She shrugged and offered him one of the spreadsheets. He’d minored in finance and while she hadn’t seen anything pop out other than what Gideon and she had discovered, it wouldn’t hurt to have a fresh set of eyes on it.
Charles just grimaced. “He was rather free with McKay money, wasn’t he?”
She’d noticed that, too. Some of the business expenses should have been flagged. She wasn’t sure why anybody needed to spend four hundred dollars of company funds at a mini-golf and entertainment park.
“What exactly is it you’re looking for?” he asked after dabbing at his nose again.
“I’m not sure yet, other than discrepancies. I’ve got an appointment later this week with a man from a group that specializes in this sort of thing—finding paperwork trails, discrepancies, all that. Towers is dead and … what?”
Charles was gaping at her. “Towers is what? Kevin, you mean?”
“You knew him?”
“The sod had a thing for you, darling. Yes, I knew him. How did he die?”
“He…” Blood rushed to her face and she looked away. Gideon had seen it, Charles had seen it. She felt foolish for not really realizing it, not that she ever would have done anything about it. Kevin hadn’t been her type and now, knowing what type he had been, he was even less her type. “It’s complicated, Charles. There’s an investigation going on. I’m sure you’ll hear more about it soon. Anyway, I’m having some people look into it. It’s just a mess.”
Leaning back, she rubbed at her eyes for a moment while her head pounded. “He bought a damn house, you know that?” She looked back at her ex-husband, glad that they’d been able to stay friends, glad he was such a good listener. “He used the company as a front—that’s all it was. A front. The house is useless to McKay. What I can’t figure out is why…”
She trailed off as the phone rang.
It was her personal phone and she reached for it, smiling as she saw who it was.
Charles pushed off the desk. “I’ll be going. Need to get that medication.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” But her mind was already on the other man.
The one who’d owned her heart for so long.
* * *
There was no guessing as to who’d been calling Moira.
Charles leaned back against the wall for a moment, recalling the smile that had lit her face.
He wondered if he would have married her had he realized just how desperately she still loved Gideon Marshall.
Of course, he hadn’t known about Gideon when he proposed. Well, he’d known vaguely, but she’d said the relationship had ended some time earlier and he’d taken her at her word.
She’d never smiled at him like that.
She’d never cried over him either.
There had been a few times, even during their brief marriage, when she had cried over Marshall.
It had been a blow to understand that the woman he’d asked to be his wife wasn’t his.
It was awful, but he was rather aggravated to realize that she just might find whatever it was she’d been looking for with that arrogant prick.
There was no reason he couldn’t have made her happy when they were together.
Her voice drifted to him and he sighed quietly.
What a pity.
Other than the fact that she hadn’t wanted to be happy.
Some people, it seemed, didn’t know how to be happy.
* * *
“Wait, Gideon … I’m confused.” Palm pressed to her head, Moira closed her eyes. Frost made a low, whining sound and nosed her thigh. Absently, Moira stroked the dog’s head and murmured, “I’m okay, girl.”
But she wasn’t. Her head had already been pounding from the numbers. Eying the door Charles had left open, she walked over and closed it. Frost got up and watched her closely. The dog seemed to think the floor or the door might attack her.
“Explain this thing to me … Whitehall had kids over here? Everybody knows he had a couple of illegitimate kids—there was some girl across the river that he kept on the side…”
“I know. Did your side ever keep track of what happened to her?”
“Hell, no. Gideon, you’re talking about Southerners and Scots—two groups that hold a grudge like nothing you’ve ever seen. I’ve seen people spit on the ground when you even mention Whitehall.” She couldn’t stop from wrinkling her nose as she said it.
“Your face pinches up like I shoved a lemon in your mouth.”
Moira couldn’t stop from laughing. He had her there. “True. But that’s the whole point—we didn’t give a damn about anything that had to do with Whitehall. Why should we? He’d killed Paddy. If it wasn’t for Jonathan Steele, he might have forced Madeleine into marriage. What’s this about?”
“That house,” Gideon said, his voice low and intent. “It’s built right in the middle of the property that Whitehall owned. And that girl he had on the side? She somehow came up with a phony marriage certificate that looked real enough to fool people into thinking she was his wife and she took over that house, lived there. She called herself Tilly Whitehall. Her granddaughter married herself a man by the name Elias Bittner.”
Moira froze. “Bittner. Son of a bitch.”
“Yeah.” His voice was low and angry. “I know you say that Towers didn’t have a mean bone in him—lazy and greedy, but not mean. Are you sure he couldn’t have been more deeply involved in this?”
“I’m almost positive, baby,” she said. “I’m bringing in an independent party to go over the records, but I’d just about swear that he had to have … Wait. The cousin.”
Gideon was quiet a moment. “We have to figure out who the cousin was.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” she muttered. “He’s kind of not here to ask.”
“We’ll get it figured out. I’m meeting Darby at the station and we’re going to start digging around. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”
“I’m going to meet you there.”
“There’s not much you can do, Moira. Why don’t you—”
“I’m meeting you there,” she said. “I’ll call Neve and Brannon, too. If we’re looking for a needle in a haystack, we might as well get as many eyes on that stack as we can.”
“Mac—”
“I gotta go. Need to finish going through this. I love you.”
She hung up the phone and slumped in her chair, staring at the spreadsheets so hard, the numbers blurred.
Whitehall.
How could this go back to Whitehall?
CHAPTER TWENTY
The crowning jewel of the McKay empire was, without a doubt, the sprawling house and the beautiful grounds that had been dubbed McKay’s Ferry. Once, the entire town had been named that.
He could remember the first time he’d seen it, his father holding his hand as they stood just outside their car.
“See that, boy? It was meant to be ours.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was going to belong to one of your many times–great grandfathers, son. But they stole what he’d worked for, put him on a boat and forced him to return to England a laughing stock. He took ill, never did recover. Over time, our family lost everything. But we’ll find a way to get it back, won’t we?”
He tried to understand what his father could mean, but he didn’t find an answer soon enough. A brutal hand closed around his neck and yanked him forward, squeezing with awful strength. “You heard me, right? Answer me, boy!”
“We’ll find a way.” It never once occurred to him to say anything else.
“Good boy. That’s a good boy. Right, then. Come along. We need to be getting on. Have to get ready for that meeting. If I get this teaching job, then things will get better. You’ll see. You’ll see.”
He followed along in his father’s footsteps, rubbing absently at his neck w
here strong, big fingers had curled in.
In the back of his mind, he heard his father’s voice as he murmured, We’ll find a way …
* * *
Now, decades after that chilly day in January, he stood staring again at the house McKay built. It was a picture this time, a large painting done by a regional artist of some renown. Apparently, the artist had had a good relationship with the deceased Mr. and Mrs. McKay and the former McKays as well. He’d died recently, but this painting had been a Christmas gift to the family some years back.
Now it was the focal point of the lobby of the McKay Regional Riverboat Museum.
He curled his lip, reached up to stroke a hand down the painting, feeling the texture under his palm, the wooden surface of the frame.
He’d thought he’d found his way, but decided over the past few years that he’d rather do more than what his father had previously planned. He didn’t give a shite about that sprawling monolith of a house. He wanted to get back the flat he kept in London. He’d made a right nice life for himself and he missed it, wanted to get back to it.
But until he was finished here, it wasn’t an option.
His father hadn’t raised a quitter.
As he had grown, so had the power of the McKays—the fucking McKays—especially thanks to the financial genius of Devon and the brilliant mind of Sandra Lewis McKay. She’d help pioneer any number of new medical instruments and taken research and development in the medical field in entirely new directions. The money from those patents was still rolling in—he had no doubt of that.
As that power had grown, his father’s rage had exploded.
As his father had lain dying in his bed, his lungs eaten up by a virulent strain of cancer, he’d grabbed his son’s hand.
“Make them … suffer,” he’d said. “You hear me? It’s their … fault. Their fault.”
He’d just nodded.
They’d tried to get him in on a trial for a new cancer therapy, one that might have saved him, or at least given him more time, but he’d been rejected.
The company sponsoring the drug tests was in partnership with McKay Enterprises. They knew it then, both father and son.
The rejection had happened because he was a descendant of George Whitehall—there was no other reason they could fathom.
It wouldn’t have occurred to either of them that the McKay family had no direct contact with the day-to-day runnings of the numerous companies they had connections to, that they couldn’t keep track of everybody who came in contact with those companies—that number would run into the millions.
But a mind fueled by rage and hate sees little beyond that rage and hate.
As the old man grew sicker, he blamed the McKays more and more each day. They know about us, boy. You got to hide yourself. Don’t … don’t let them know. And you … make … them …
He’d started to cough.
A few minutes later, he’d lost consciousness.
He’d never woken back up.
There are few certainties in life.
The sun will rise.
The sun will set.
Everybody dies.
Money speaks.
Friends will abandon you.
Family will always stand beside you.
The McKays will destroy everything that matters.
He’d told himself that at the grave as his father was lowered into the dirt, and he told himself those very words now.
In his hand, he held a gas can, filled with a special accelerant, the kind that just couldn’t be found at the local Pump N Go. He splashed some on the floor in front of the display where the painting was and then left a trail all the way up to Moira’s office, all over the papers she was reviewing. It wouldn’t solve anything, burning them. She would have digital copies of the data, but this would slow her down and more … it would piss her off. He took care to hit other areas of the office, her chair, her desk, and then the large painting hanging on the wall. It was the last one ever done of her with her siblings and her parents. On a whim, he drew the boxcutter from his back pocket and slashed an ugly X through the canvas. His gloves were a strange, surreal blue, making his hands look almost inhuman.
He moved on throughout the museum, leaving accelerant behind him. Almost like the trail of breadcrumbs in the forest, he mused. But so much more effective.
He only had so much time and he made quick use of it, hitting the areas that would cause the most damage possible before going out the backdoor and leaving it open. There, he withdrew a device from his pocket and knelt, taking care to put it in place before rising and strolling away. He kept his head down and averted from the cameras. Although he had his mask on, he didn’t want anybody to take notice of him until he was well out of view.
Once he was, he pulled out his phone.
He’d heard the idea of dialing it in on a movie once. Some of his best ideas came from movies.
He hadn’t taken the idea seriously at the time, but with the changes in technology, he realized it really was possible. All with the right tools and a bit of research …
He hit send.
A moment later, the building went up in a rush of flames.
He was already halfway through town and talking, sans mask, to Mrs. Mouton.
He feigned surprise when she shrieked and he caught her arm. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
“Oh, mercy. Oh, dear heavens…” She lifted a hand and pointed. “The … oh, my! Look!”
He turned his head and stared.
With everybody around him, he didn’t dare let himself smile.
Mrs. Mouton started to struggle. “What if Moira is in there … or any of the others? We have to get help!”
As they all swarmed closer, he did the same.
* * *
Absently, Moira popped a fry into her mouth before pulling one of the wrapped sandwiches out of the bag.
Ian had met her on the sidewalk, his arms laden with a box full of food and he’d winked at her, asked if he could join her.
Assuming he’d gotten Neve’s call, she grinned at him.
Now, as they unpacked the food, Gideon shot her a disgruntled look over the top edge of his computer. His assistant Darby was digging into the food Ian had brought over.
“This two-person team has grown significantly,” Gideon said as the door opened.
Neve, Brannon, and Hannah came inside, Hannah noticeably less energetic and still wearing her uniform.
“You look tired, Hannah.” Gideon gave Brannon a pointed look. “Take her home.”
“Not happening, Chief,” she said easily. “I’m tired, not fragile. I can look at records or research stuff as well as anybody else.”
“True, but this is a police investigation.”
“As of yet, seems to be a wild goose chase,” Ian said. “You’re just digging up old family records or trying to. How is that a police investigation?”
“Gideon?” Moira set his food down in front of him and bent to kiss him. “You’re arguing with a rock wall trying to dissuade all of us, and you know it. Why bother?”
He grunted out something unintelligible and sighed. Then he took a pointed look around. “Just where is your canine companion, Moira?”
“I took her home. I didn’t know if she was allowed in the station.”
The look he gave her could have frozen the flames of hell. “I get to decide who and what is allowed in my department, Moira. You aren’t supposed to be going places alone.”
“Well … you can always drive me home.” She winked at him, then stole one of his fries.
He caught her wrist before she could grab another. “You’re interfering in a police investigation, Mac. Don’t make it worse by stealing a cop’s fries on top of it.”
She laughed as he bit into the fry she held before letting her go.
A few minutes later, as they all spread out, he reviewed the information he had and pointed them toward the best databases.
Neve pulled out her laptop, and Ia
n cocked up a brow as he saw the now-familiar website pop up. Leaning over, he whispered softly, “Now that’s not very nice. You’re slacking.”
“No, I’m not.” She slanted a look at him from the corner of her eye. “Watch.”
She went to the advanced search and typed in George Whitehall, filling in his country of birth and estimating about when he would have been born, plugging in a few more details.
“Viola.”
“Cheater.” He grunted and used the laptop he’d brought from the pub to go to the government website Gideon had suggested.
After a few minutes of what felt like fruitless searching, he glanced around, then decided to follow Neve’s lead.
Of course, that required he set up a bleeding account.
Neve snickered to herself when she saw what he was doing, but she didn’t blame him.
The ancestry website was mostly for fun as far as she was concerned, but it accessed huge databases, including the ones Gideon had pointed them do, searching through them so they didn’t have to. This seemed like an awfully far-fetched idea, but she’d definitely heard of weirder ones, so she wasn’t going to toss it out altogether.
One of the leaf hints popped up and she clicked on it, but it was a dead end from what she could tell.
Blowing out a breath, she rubbed at her head and refreshed her window. It was easy to get lost in all the searches. There were so many hints up in the box now, she didn’t know which way to go.
A noise from outside caught her attention just as somebody out in the station shouted.
Gideon’s phone rang.
Too much noise … Distracted, she moved the laptop from her lap to the table. Absently, she flicked a finger down the touchscreen watching as a list popped up, full of those little leaves. One name caught her attention and she sneered out of habit, flicking at it.
Her flick really meant go away. But her computer didn’t get that.
It opened the hint, and a picture started to download.
She groaned.
Outside, the noise from the street started to grow louder.
The Right Kind of Trouble Page 21
