by Sandra Brown
Muttering a stream of profanity, Huff turned toward the windows and looked out over his property. Beck let him have this time to mull over what they’d discussed.
Eventually, Huff wandered over to the piano and struck several of the keys. “You ever play the piano, Beck?”
“No. My mother went through a Pete Fountain craze and enrolled me in clarinet lessons. I went three times before refusing to go again.”
“Laurel played.” Huff smiled down at the keyboard, as though seeing her hands moving over it. “Bach. Mozart. Dixieland jazz. She could just sit down and look at the sheet music and play like a maestro.”
“She must have had quite a talent.”
“You bet your ass she did.”
“Sayre told me she didn’t inherit it.”
“Sayre,” Huff said around a snuffle. “Know what she’s been doing today?”
Beck shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about Sayre. He didn’t want to think about Sayre.
“Well, let’s just say she’s kept herself occupied.”
Beck wasn’t sure how he was expected to respond, or even if he was expected to. Apparently not. Because Huff returned to the chaise and picked up their discussion.
“Here’s what I think, Beck. I think this Nielson character is all talk. Why did he give us advance warning that he’s sending people in? Why not spring them on us?”
“Like a surprise attack?”
Huff’s finger jabbed the air as though Beck had hit the nail on the head. “That would be my tactic. Why did he give us time to prepare? He’s let us know he’s gunning for us. That indicates to me either that he’s a lousy strategist and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”
“Or?”
“Or that he’s raising a ruckus to drum up publicity for himself but doesn’t really intend to follow through on his threats. I don’t think he wants a fight. I think he’s scared of us.”
Beck thought it over for a moment. “He doesn’t seem anxious to confront us. I placed several calls to his New Orleans office today after I received the fax. I was told he was out. I left word for him to call me back. He hasn’t so far.”
Huff smiled expansively. “See what I mean? He’s avoiding us. That says coward to me. Call his bluff.”
“Keep trying to contact him?”
“Pester the snot out of him. Let’s see how he likes being the one who gets pushed and pushed again. Make a nuisance of yourself.”
“That’s actually a good idea, Huff.”
“Don’t let up until he’s agreed to have a face-to-face meeting. That’s the only way we’ll get an accurate read on him. These faxes and FedExed letters are bullshit. I’m tired of littering my trash can with them.”
“I’ll get on it first thing in the morning.”
“In the meantime, I want you to talk to some of our most loyal men. Fred Decluette for one. Men whose loyalty we can count on. We need to know who the rabble-rousers among our employees are.”
“I talked to Fred this afternoon. He and some others will be keeping their eyes and ears open and reporting back who the troublemakers are.”
Huff winked at him. “Should have known you’d already be on top of the situation.”
“Another drink?” Beck got up and took Huff’s glass. In the den, he poured each of them a refill, then returned to the conservatory.
As he handed Huff’s drink to him, Huff said, “Now let’s talk about something else.”
Beck looked at him grimly. “I’m afraid there is something else. Red Harper called just as I was coming in and—”
“That can wait. Let’s talk about Sayre.”
“What about her?”
“Why don’t you marry her?”
Beck stopped short of the rattan chair and turned quickly to look back at Huff, who was placidly sipping his fresh bourbon. He laughed at Beck’s astonishment.
Beck collected himself and resumed his seat. “You must be feeling the effects of mind-altering drugs. What did Doc Caroe give you, and should you be mixing it with alcohol?”
“I’m neither drugged nor drunk. Hear me out.”
Beck pretended to relax against the chair’s back cushion. “This ought to be good. I’m all ears, Huff.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m serious.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Do you like her looks?”
Beck merely stared at him, schooling his features to remain impassive.
“I thought so,” Huff said around a belly laugh. “I saw the two of you together down by the bayou after the wake. Even from that distance, I sensed some heat.”
“Heat? Right. She was telling me in so many words that I’m the lowest life-form on the planet.”
But even as he dismissed Huff’s matchmaking as lunacy, Beck wondered if Huff had been talking to Chris. Had he told Huff about the scene he’d interrupted in Beck’s kitchen? And just how long had Chris been standing there? How much of their conversation had he overheard?
With as much nonchalance as he could muster, he asked, “Where did you get this harebrained notion?”
“You’re practically a member of the family already. Marrying Sayre would make it official.”
“There’s a major hitch to your plan, Huff. Even if I were dying to marry Sayre—and I’m only playing devil’s advocate here—she despises this family.”
“You could bring her around.”
Beck smiled crookedly. “She doesn’t strike me as being that pliant. In fact, she’s about as flexible as one of our iron pipes.”
“You don’t think you’re man enough to handle her?”
“Not even close.” Beck laughed. “Anyway, I wouldn’t want a woman I could ‘handle.’ ” Too late he realized he’d talked his way into a trap.
Huff’s eyebrows shot up. “Then it sounds like a perfect match, doesn’t it? Chemistry, sizzle, all that. Sayre’s a handful, and you don’t want a doormat.”
Beck finished his drink and set the empty glass on the dainty end table, nearly knocking over a lamp. “It’s not going to happen. Let’s forget you ever mentioned it.”
“If you’re worried about the nepotism angle, don’t. I married the boss’s daughter. Look how well it turned out.”
“This is different.”
“Damn right it is. You bring a hell of a lot more to the table than I did. I was a penniless, uncouth nobody without a pot to piss in. You’ve got a lot to offer Sayre.”
“She wouldn’t even let me pay for her cheeseburger the other night at the diner.”
“What about out at the fish shack? Did she let you pay then?”
Beck felt his ears turn hot with embarrassment. Just how much did the cagey old bastard know? He tried to maintain an inscrutable expression. “For a thin girl, she sure can pack it away. Cost me fifteen bucks to feed her that night, counting the change I left in the tip jar.”
Huff chuckled, but he didn’t let Beck’s joking divert him. “I’ve worked all my life for one thing, Beck,” he stated seriously. “You might think money. No. I like having money, but only because it buys you power. I’d rather have power than any material possession money can buy. Respect? Shit no. I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me. Whether they like me or despise me, it’s not my problem.”
Holding up his index finger, he said, “I’ve worked for this and this alone—for my name to outlive me. That’s it. Does that surprise you?” He waved his hand as though clearing away a pest. “You can keep your money and fancy thingamajigs, your honorary plaques for doing good deeds, your polite society bullshit. None of that matters to me. No, sir.
“All I want for my time and trouble is for the name Huff Hoyle to be remembered and repeated for a long time, even after I’m dead and buried. That means grandchildren, Beck. So far, I don’t have any, and I mean to remedy that.”
All joking aside now, Beck said, “You’ll have to rely on Chris.”
Huff frowned with annoyance and reached for the pack of cigarettes in his s
hirt pocket before he remembered they were forbidden in this room. “Chris isn’t going to be a father anytime soon.” He then told Beck about Mary Beth’s tubal ligation.
“I didn’t know. Chris hadn’t said anything to me.”
“Well, that’s the sad state of affairs in that camp. So you see the problem? Chris has got to get that divorce by fair means or foul. But even if Mary Beth granted it to him tomorrow, he hasn’t got a future bride waiting in the wings. But you,” he said, fixing his gaze on Beck. “If you got down to business, I could have a grandson in ten months.”
Beck shook his head with incredulity. “This conversation gets more bizarre by the moment. First you have me married to a woman who can barely tolerate the sight of me, and now you have me fathering her child?
“Speaking for myself, I’m flabbergasted. But can you even imagine Sayre’s reaction to this idea? She’d either laugh the house down or scream it down. Either way, even to have a discussion with her about it, you’d have to approach her with a chair, whip, and muzzle. Now, can we drop this? It’s out of the question.”
Unfazed, Huff said, “Sure, there are some obstacles, but I can find a way around every one of them.”
“Not every one, Huff.”
“Name one.”
“Conflict of interest. I’m Chris’s lawyer.”
Huff furrowed his brow. “So? What’s that got to do with it?”
“So . . . Sayre thinks Deputy Wayne Scott may be on to something.”
He watched Huff’s face gradually evolve into a mask of rage. “She thinks Chris killed Danny? How could she? Why would she? Because of Iverson?”
“There’s the specter of that, certainly.”
“And?”
Beck looked down at his clasped hands. “She mentioned Sonnie Hallser.” Huff took so long to respond that eventually Beck raised his head and looked over at him. “She said that killing runs in the family.”
Huff’s face had turned so red that Beck had a fleeting fear he was about to go into cardiac arrest again. “Should I get you some water?”
Huff ignored the offer. “The Hallser incident happened a long time ago.”
“Not long enough apparently. Sayre has vivid recollections of it.”
“Does she recollect that I was never charged?”
“She does. But she wonders if maybe you didn’t . . .” He shook his head, unable to finish. “It doesn’t bear repeating.”
“She wonders if maybe I didn’t leave the shop floor until after Hallser stepped into that sandpit and was pulled into the machine? That maybe I even pushed him into it and left him there to bleed to death?”
Beck merely looked at him, offering no comment. Those had been the allegations leveled against Huff. They were never proven, were never even presented in a court of law. They’d been only marginally investigated.
“Sayre has always thought the worst of me,” Huff said. “When all I ever wanted was to make damn certain that I provided the best of everything for my family.” He came off the chaise and began to pace again. “When I was just a skinny little kid with Mississippi mud between my toes, I determined that nobody was ever going to walk over me, that I was never going to duck my head or grovel to anybody. I haven’t and I won’t, goddammit. If somebody questions my methods, that’s their problem, and that includes Miss Sayre Lynch Hoyle!”
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Huff. But you asked.”
Huff waved off the apology. “She’s going to think what she wants. Why she’d want to dredge up something that happened when she was just a mite, I can’t even begin to guess. She had run out of reasons to hate me, I suppose, and had to go scraping the bottom of the barrel to find another. Who the hell knows why she does anything? But she doesn’t have to feel kindly toward me to marry you.”
Then he drew himself up short, looked at Beck shrewdly, and gave a low chuckle. “You got me going, didn’t you? You thought, ‘I’ll raise the old man’s hackles, sidetrack him.’ You’re putting up smoke screens, boy. What’s really bothering you? Is it that Sayre’s been married twice before?”
“I’m in no position to judge her.”
“She was young,” Huff said, as though Beck hadn’t spoken. “Rash and impulsive and head-strong. She made bad choices.”
“That’s not quite accurate, is it, Huff? Weren’t her bridegrooms your choices?”
His eyes narrowed. “She tell you that?”
“No. Chris did.”
Huff moved his lips around an imaginary cigarette, as he was wont to do when he wasn’t actually smoking one. “The girl was out of control. Her life was a shambles and she seemed bent on making it worse. I was her only parent and saw it as my duty to step in and try to avoid total disaster. I’ll admit, it may have been a bit drastic to lay down an ultimatum that either she get married or else, but the situation called for me to be tough.
“I’ll tell you, Beck, you may be thinking ‘Poor Sayre,’ but don’t. She made the lives of those two men sheer misery. Oh, they asked for it. They wanted her. The second husband just as much as the first, even knowing the first marriage had gone south before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate. But they considered her worth the hell she put them through. She was a beauty, a firebrand. Wild and . . . well, you know.”
Yeah, he knew, all right. She was all of that. His hands had felt it. His lips had tasted it. But better not to linger on thoughts of it. “When the first marriage ended, why did you insist on the second?”
“She wasn’t straightened out yet.”
“Was she still in love with Clark Daly?”
Huff’s scowl deepened. “You know about that, too?”
“Not much. Some.”
“I was right to bust up that little romance, wasn’t I? Look how he turned out. Do you think Sayre would be happy with him now? He’s the town drunk. Living hand to mouth. A failure. Now tell me I was wrong to prevent that match.”
Beck withheld further comment. Obviously it was a touchy subject to both Huff and Sayre.
Huff gave Beck a calculating look. “I bet it’s crossed your mind.”
“What?”
“What she’s like between the sheets.”
“For godsake, Huff.” He shot to his feet. “I’m not listening to any more of this.”
He turned toward the door and nearly collided with Chris as he strolled in. “You’re not listening to any more of what?”
“I’m trying to persuade Beck to marry Sayre,” Huff said.
Chris looked at Beck, his dark eyes dancing with amusement over the secret they shared about the interlude he’d interrupted. “Should I be airing out my tux?”
“I told Huff he was delusional. And apparently you’re living in a dreamworld, too.”
His tone caused Chris to take a step back. “What’s got you so steamed?”
“What the hell were you doing out at the fishing camp?”
“What?” Huff exclaimed.
“That’s what Red called me about earlier,” Beck explained. “He was giving us a heads-up. Seems Wayne Scott returned to the sheriff’s office a while ago, barely able to contain his excitement because he’d caught Chris inside the cabin at the fishing camp.”
“So fucking what? I’m going to get a drink.”
As he turned to leave, Beck reached out and caught him by the arm. Chris angrily shook off his grip, but he remained where he was. Beck said, “What were you doing out there?”
“It’s my cabin.”
“It’s a crime scene. Do you know how that makes you look?”
“No. How?”
“Guilty.”
The two glared at one another, each as angry as the other. Chris was the first to back down. “It’s nothing for either Scott or you to get worked up about. I took Lila on a picnic this afternoon, mistakenly thinking it would be romantic. I wanted to soften her up in case I need her as an alibi for Sunday afternoon. I thought if I acted needy, emotionally fragile, her nurturing instincts would kick in.”
&n
bsp; “How’d it go?”
“Turns out Lila doesn’t have any nurturing instincts,” he replied dryly. “But I’m still working on her.”
Beck wasn’t satisfied with the evasive answer, but he didn’t take issue with it now. “You still haven’t explained why you went to the camp.”
“It was on the way as I drove back into town. I saw the turnoff and acted on impulse. I hadn’t been there since . . . it happened, and I wanted to see the cabin for myself.
“I went inside and looked around. It’s been cleaned up, but you can still see bloodstains. I stayed no more than a few minutes. When I came out, there was Scott, leaning against his squad car with this stupid smirk on his face.”
“What did he say?”
“Something clever about criminals always returning to the scene of the crime. I told him to go screw himself. He asked me what I was doing in there and if I’d removed anything.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. You told me not to answer any questions without you present.”
“What happened then?”
“I got in my car and left him standing there.”
“Chris, did you remove anything from the cabin?”
He looked like he might tell Beck to go screw himself, too. But he only gave him a clipped no, then added, “The only thing I touched was the doorknob to let myself in.”
Beck wasn’t sure he believed that, but he asked no more questions. Although it would be helpful if Chris were completely honest with him, he wasn’t required to be. A lawyer didn’t always want to know his client’s guilt or innocence.
“Hopefully no damage was done,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “I just wish you had consulted me before you went out there.”
“You’re my lawyer, not my kindergarten teacher.”
Using that as his parting shot, Chris left the room. A few moments later he reentered the conservatory with a highball glass in hand. As he sat down on a small settee, he looked around as though he’d never been in the room before. “Why are we in here?”
“I’d been in the den all day and needed a change of scenery,” Huff said. “This is where Beck found me when he stopped by to talk over some matters.”
“Like what . . . besides a pending marriage between you and Sayre? Which I find laughable, by the way.”
