by Karen Harper
“Then just don’t think or talk right now,” he added and turned her more to face him. “Or at least think and talk about how much you love me.”
“I do. And trust you too.”
She felt him draw back a bit at that. “Nick?” she said.
“We’ve been through a lot and aren’t done yet, that’s all,” he said, rather gruffly. “Not done yet here either, my love.”
* * *
Instead of Nick reading to Lexi on Sunday morning, the three of them watched the old Disney animated Alice in Wonderland. They were all in the child’s bed, though the two adults were dressed, and Lexi, between them, was the only one under the covers. Claire thought it was so sweet that Lexi had tilted her head against Nick’s shoulder instead of her own for once as they watched. Surely, Nick was bored to death, but, even if he was thinking and planning, he kept his eyes open. She knew something was bothering him, but why not? Everything was on the line for them, which made moments like this seem so precious.
Afterward, Lexi, pox marks and all, told them, “I don’t know why Alice had to follow that rabbit in the first place. But Daddy said dogs that race on tracks in Florida follow some kind of rabbit. At least the dogs think that’s what it is. He said someday we will adopt one of those racing dogs, ’cause people aren’t nice to them after they can’t race anymore.”
Nick’s eyes met Claire’s over the child’s tousled head.
Claire spoke first. “That sounds like a nice thing to do. But if Daddy gets one of those greyhound dogs, you would have to visit him to see it.”
“Oh, right. You know the scariest part of that Alice movie?”
Nick said, “I’ll bet I know, but tell us.”
“When that bad queen said, ‘Off with her head!’ I know it’s just pretend, but that is not right, is it, Nick?”
“Nope. Not good at all, but you know it’s all pretend.”
“Right. So did you ever be a lawyer to help someone when a bad person wanted to cut off their head?”
“Well, not exactly that. But I do try to help people if a bad person has hurt them, or if people believe someone already hurt a person, but they really didn’t. See, the Queen of Hearts thought Alice was bad, but she really wasn’t.”
“Even if she kept her head, Alice could have used you,” Lexi declared. “And I hope you can help that old school friend of yours and Mommy does too, right?”
“Right!” Claire said. “Nick, have you ever heard or given a better explanation of what you do for a living?”
“Never so clearly or succinctly.”
“Well, what does a sink have to do with it?” Lexi asked.
“I think I just fell down a rabbit hole,” Nick said. He hugged his stepdaughter and got up. “I’ll leave you two for a while. I’m going to—ah, clear my head and take a little walk, Claire. Be back soon.”
“I wish, like in Alice, this case was all just a bad dream,” Claire called after him.
“Love you both, and that’s real,” he said and closed the door behind him.
* * *
Actually, Nick thought as he glanced at his watch and hurried off the yacht and down the dock, he’d almost rather fall down a rabbit hole than go with Claire to face Maggie in—he glanced at his watch again—an hour. He just had to clear his head. It was not only having to accuse Maggie of deception and maybe worse that was riling him, but dealing with his own deception. He and Claire had vowed to come clean with everything, but he just couldn’t tell her about his latest plan yet. For Jace. For her and Lexi. But it might be the only way to keep her and the child safe.
He walked a ways along the concrete breakwater, then sat down on it, dangling his legs toward the water. He could see the Sylph from here. Bronco was on deck, and Nita came out to stand beside him. They didn’t even touch, so he hoped he hadn’t put the fear of God into them about a relationship. But in broad daylight, when they were both technically working, good for them. He remembered how hard it had been to keep his hands off Claire when they first worked together. Now here they were legal and together, and he was thinking of giving all that up. At least for a while until he survived Ames and stopped him for good.
He jumped when his cell rang. He dug it out of his back jeans pocket. Heck was calling. Good. He hoped he had some info he needed.
“Hey, amigo,” he answered the phone.
“Got what you need, Boss. Haze didn’t blink an eye that you’d asked about their wills, dug them right out for me. They’re pretty recent.”
“You have them?”
“No, but I read them and took notes. Here’s what you want to know. You sitting down?”
“Just tell me.”
“Of course, if he dies, most of it goes to her. They both or she passes, some of it goes to Mrs. Hazelton’s Burrowing Owl Protection Fund. Ah, 20 percent, if I recall, but that would be a lot of money. No surprise there.”
“Go on,” Nick prompted, thinking of the young man she’d already given some money to, a guy she’d told Claire was working with owl protection. He sure hoped Maggie hadn’t been cheating on Haze the way it looked like Colleen Taylor had on Fin. But he was really starting to question Maggie’s part in all this.
“Don’t mean to make a joke of this, but that’s going to be a bunch of rich owls,” Heck said. “Okay, so another 20 percent goes into a trust fund for Maggie’s great-niece and great-nephew, but they and their parents can’t touch the money ’cept for college. The kids are only ages two and four right now. So that means their parents, her niece and nephew, won’t inherit directly, so they wouldn’t have a motive to make Haze and Maggie look guilty. Besides they live in Indiana, so they don’t know diddly ’bout people here to kill anybody.”
“Tell me the bottom line, Heck. I can tell there’s a bottom line.”
“Sí, always. The control of their property, including the water, goes to someone you might know.”
Nick almost shouted, “Ames inherits the youth fountain if Haze and Maggie die?”
“Not directly and not only if they die, but if they are incapacitated or unable to protect it. Small print, but pretty big news, right?”
“Then I’ll bet Ames really wants me to lose this case! Did he use his real name or Paul Kilcorse? Or the corporation’s name?”
“No, the property goes to someone works for Ames. Someone you know and just told me about, a guy from California named Dr. Seth Shaw who’s a water expert and—”
“And is on Ames’s payroll, as is half of this country at least, damn him!”
Nick covered his eyes with his free hand and hunched over as if he was going to be sick. He clenched his teeth.
“You there, Boss?”
“Unfortunately, though I’d rather be somewhere else.”
“Sí, a big spider’s web, huh? But at least we know who’s the spider.”
29
About an hour later, Claire and Nick headed out to talk to Maggie. Nick had tried to calm down about the new link to Ames in Haze’s and Maggie’s wills. He didn’t want to upset Claire more than she already was. He would use this new info for ammunition when he told her of his plan, because she wasn’t going to like it, and he’d need everything he had to convince her.
They met Maggie on a stretch of mangrove beach near the entrance to the island. She’d agreed to the site readily as Nick thought she would. She’d been telling Claire she was really worried about Haze’s state of mind and probably thought they were going to talk about that without a chance for him to overhear. So at first, Nick did talk about that.
“He’s not so depressed he might be a flight risk or worse?” he asked Maggie as the three of them sat on a tree trunk turned to driftwood. The high tide waves washed nearly at their feet.
“Suicidal, you mean?” she asked. “No, because he has faith in you. And
in the youth water and our business associate’s strength.”
Claire said, “By the way, I saw a photo of Clayton Ames here on Goodland with you two. You hadn’t mentioned that.”
“It’s no secret we’re working with him,” Maggie said, with a shrug. She sounded so suddenly defensive that Nick frowned at Claire to go slower. “The waters are so important and unique that he flew in to see the spring cistern himself last year, that’s all.”
Well, what the heck, Nick thought. He’d told Claire she should bring up the young mystery man with the WaveRunner, not Clayton Ames. But Claire had good sense about when to back off and when to pursue. It was what he’d hired her for.
“Actually,” Claire was saying, “while I was looking at that photo of the three of you, I glanced out the Florida room window and saw you in the distance with your Save Our Owls volunteer, the one who left on the WaveRunner.”
Maggie’s head snapped around toward Claire and her fists tightened. “Meaning what? I told you exactly what I was paying him for.”
“Maggie,” Nick said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, “Claire and I are really paranoid about WaveRunners, ones that silver color especially. We didn’t want to alarm you and Haze, but when we were out looking at the murder site, a young guy on a personal watercraft just like that one nearly ran us over. He threw a life ring at us that said we should get out and stay out. In other words, someone doesn’t want us digging into who might have killed Stirling if it wasn’t Haze. At least that’s how we read the message.”
“Oh, that’s terrible. And—and you think my friend was that man?”
“It would help,” Nick went on, “if you could give us his name, address and phone number. You see, we figure the WaveRunner rider is the same man who shot at us out in the Glades.”
“Whoa!” she said, jumping up and facing them with her back to the water. “You’re going too fast for me. What exactly are—I mean, you think he’s trying to make you believe it was someone else who killed Mark? You don’t think Haze hired him? Or the man on the WaveRunner was Haze?”
Claire said, “That not what we’re saying. The man’s build wasn’t right for Haze, even though he hid his face with a hoodie and the water spray was big between us. Since you were paying such a man—and acted really nervous about it the day I was with you—we’re wondering if you were paying your friend to make us think the murderer was someone else besides Haze. Or do you know for sure it wasn’t Haze because it was someone else?”
Maggie gasped for air, speechless, so Nick jumped in. “Let’s face it, you had a motive or two for getting rid of Mark Stirling too.”
“You think I hired someone to scare you off? And—I can see it on your faces—because I’m the one who got rid of Mark Stirling? That’s absurd!”
“Great,” Nick said, his voice absolutely calm. “So let us have the name and address of your friend, the WaveRunner rider. We’ll check it out and that’s that, before the sheriff or county prosecutor gets a clue and comes after you too. Then we won’t have to worry about it. All three of us need to keep working together to support Haze—and the miraculous water.”
He’d tried to keep the sarcasm from his voice. But he was angry too, at Ames, at this entire spider’s web as Heck had put it. All he wanted was to protect Claire and Lexi, build the three of them into a family and now, at best, his client’s wife was taking things into her own hands. All he needed was to have to defend her, or both of them, in court while praising the youth water.
To his surprise, when he thought Maggie would remain defiant, she burst into tears and covered her face with both hands just as the incoming tide sloshed around her ankles. Claire jumped up and brought her back to sit between them. She had her arm around Maggie’s waist, and Nick put his hand on her shoulder as Maggie bent over her knees and sobbed.
Finally, she quieted enough to talk, wiping her nose and face with her shirttail, until Claire handed her a tissue from her backpack. “It isn’t what you think,” she gasped out. “I was only trying to help Haze.”
“Maggie!” Nick shouted. “How damn noble, but you could have gotten us killed! And screwed up everything! What if your errand boy testifies that you hired him to nearly drown us, shoot at us! You could go to jail for attempted murder and make Haze look not innocent but damn guilty. What a dangerous way to supposedly protect him—and us!”
“I told my friend to be careful, and he obviously was,” she gasped out, exploding into sobs again and talking through them. “I was thinking of...of helping Haze—and that that would...would help your case too.”
Nick saw Claire fight back tears and anger. It wasn’t going to help to shout at each other. It was only going to help to get to the bottom of this, keep Haze out of court, keep Ames away for good and forever.
“Tell us your thinking,” Claire encouraged her. Nick was grateful again for her presence because he still wanted to shake more out of the distraught woman. “Does Haze know you hired this guy?”
“No. But I—I did hire him. But just so you’d keep looking at others, because, I swear, Haze did not kill that man, and I thought it might help you take the blame off him. He doesn’t have an alibi beyond the fact I knew he was at the house the day Mark died. B-but I was just hoping if you told the sheriff about the things happening to you, he would think someone else was involved then. But you didn’t even report it to the sheriff, did you?”
“No,” Nick said. “We wanted to find who was behind it first, not make it public record or have the sheriff think we were trying to divert him. Nor did we need it in The Burrowing Owl.”
“Or, I’ll bet,” Maggie said as she blew her nose again, “have Mr. Ames find out you weren’t handling things, weren’t full steam ahead on just defending Haze and promoting the water.”
Nick’s gaze slammed into Claire’s. So Maggie, no doubt Haze too, knew to fear Ames, even though they seemed to be on his side.
“Please don’t tell the sheriff,” Maggie pleaded. “And do we have to tell Haze?” She sat up straight at last, but her face was still ravaged by tears. “He’ll be furious with me. He’ll say I should never have tried to help that way.”
Still trying to rein in his temper, Nick told her, “Then I agree with Haze. We’ll let you explain it to him right away—and the right way, or I’ll tell him myself. But tell us something else.”
“Yes. Anything to help—really.”
“The Dr. Seth Shaw who’s in your and Haze’s wills as an heir to protect the property and the cistern if anything happens to you two—how did you find him?”
Looking hopeless and scared, she shook her head. “He found us. Part of the lucrative deal for the youth water. Ames High, Inc., through a man named Thom Van Cleve, said that was part of the deal. And it was such a good deal—still is.”
“So you didn’t realize that made you two—well, sitting ducks, to be eliminated?” Nick asked.
“As long as we were on their side, we figured we were safe. It wasn’t just the money,” she insisted. “Haze’s family has believed in that water for generations, and we didn’t want to keep it just for ourselves. It belongs to all mankind, though I’m sorry to say Ada didn’t agree,” she said as she started to cry again. “I swear to God, I’m telling you the truth. Go ahead and talk to Jesse Winslow, the ‘WaveRunner guy,’ if you want, but—”
“Maggie,” Nick said, “the WaveRunner scare was bad enough, but he’s been following us when we leave Goodland, as you probably know. And, I repeat, he could have killed us, shooting at us in the Glades.”
“Honestly, I just told him to follow you, especially if you drove out of town, to only shoot around the car, not at you, and then to get away... Just wanted you to be sure someone was after you.”
Nick and Claire exchanged another hard glance behind Maggie’s head. Was she telling the truth now or not?
“Let’s the three of us go talk to Haze,” Nick said, standing and pulling Maggie to her feet. “Now, before something else hits.”
As they walked out past the clawlike mangrove roots that reached into their path, Claire steadied Maggie with her hand on the woman’s arm. However composed Nick was acting, he still felt frustrated and furious. This confession, which he didn’t need later on the stand, was bad enough. But if his plan using Jace worked out, he didn’t know how he was going to get along without Claire.
* * *
“Oh, no!” Maggie cried when the three of them approached her house and saw the sheriff’s car was parked outside it. “Terrible timing, if this is what I think it is! Oh, no.”
“Keep calm,” Nick said, “and let me do the talking. If he’s arrested, I’ll go with him. We’ve got a bail bond plan set to go, and he won’t be gone long.”
“It’s like Ada left us with a curse!” Maggie insisted.
Claire was practically holding her up as Nick stretched his strides to get to the house ahead of them. He called back over his shoulder, “Both of you, hold it together for Haze and appearances’ sake. Claire, get those tears and mascara off her face.”
He went up the steps two at a time, just in time to hear the sheriff’s deputy, while Sheriff Scott stood there too, read Haze his Miranda rights.
“Good timing, Counselor,” the sheriff said. “Heard Mrs. Hazelton went for a walk with you two. Glad you’re back. It took us a while to investigate other people of interest for the murder of Mark Stirling, but timing, motive and proximity points to your client as our probable suspect. Can’t see waiting any longer.”
“I’ll drive my car, but I’ll go in with him for the booking.”
“And spring him right away, I’m sure. You ever watch that old TV show The Apprentice, Attorney Markwood? The theme song was just three words repeated, ‘Money, money, money!’ I’d bet my retirement pension on this trial, when we have it, will be real well-oiled with the same.”
“You sound like you have your mind made up about guilt and innocence already before a jury of this man’s peers is even selected. I’ll make a note of that,” Nick countered as Claire and Maggie came in.
