“Are we, Uncle? Are we in trouble?”
His face reddened. “You’ve seen the numbers.”
“And what caused those numbers? You blame sabotage. Is that all? Why has productivity been down?”
He shifted in his chair. “Sabotage. And suppliers. And… there’s a lot that goes into it. I can explain it to you. It’s all very complicated.”
She doubted it would be above her intellectual capability.
Her guess was, Frank didn’t want to get into the details because he’d been responsible for them.
Again, she was presented with the uncomfortable truth that Uncle Frank hadn’t done his job well, and if she wanted to save HCI, she might have to lose him.
Except he’d been great at sales. That was his sweet spot.
“You’re right. I don’t have all the details. I am still convinced that the steps I took today were vital in restoring confidence among the employees, but if you feel those steps will hurt us within the industry and with our customers, then I’d appreciate it if you’d reach out to them, smooth things over.”
“That job should fall to sales.”
She smiled at him. “You know nobody can connect with customers as well as you can.”
He shrugged, an acknowledgment.
“I need your help, Uncle. I’m sure operations can do without you for a week or two while you try to clean up my mess in the industry.”
He tipped his head to the side. “Not a mess.” The placating tone told her he felt just the opposite.
She kept her smile in place, though she doubted it looked natural. “Whatever you want to call it. I trust you to fix it.”
A moment passed, and then he returned her smile and stood. “I’ll do what I can.”
She came around the desk and hugged him. Frustrated as she might be, he was her only living relative. And he was truly trying to help.
He took her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I’m so glad you’re okay. Are they any closer to finding out who’s trying to kill you?”
“We’re hoping that, once people are convinced the company isn’t relocating, the attempts will stop.”
“Good point.” Gone was the irritated manager, back was the uncle she’d always loved. “If that’s all you accomplished today, then it’ll have been worth it. We can deal with the rest.”
When he left, Mrs. Strauss stepped in. “It’s still not clear what happened on the mountain. The shots came from deep in the woods. So far, there are no reports of anybody injured, but the search—for the shooter and the injured—is ongoing.”
“Do me a favor?”
Mrs. Strauss’s lips pinched. “It’s my job, Miss Hamilton. Not a favor.”
Right. “Call Lynn Brewster and make sure her son, Dougie, is safe.”
After Mrs. Strauss closed the office door, Chelsea stared out the small window at the town of Coventry and the mountain beyond. She’d feel better when she knew Dougie hadn’t been the target.
She’d deceived her uncle, but it had felt like a better plan to ask him to step into sales than to confront him on his failures in operations. And while he was busy hobnobbing with customers, she could dig into what had been going on in the factory that had resulted in the drop in productivity.
Because, until she diagnosed the problem, rumors or no rumors, the company her parents built, the legacy she’d inherited, was in trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
On his way back to Coventry, Dylan called Cote to get an update on the conversation with Dougie, but the call went to voicemail. With time to spare before he picked up Chelsea at five, he headed to the state park, thinking he could catch the detective and the teacher and find out what they’d learned.
He arrived to find tourists hurrying from the trailhead across the gravel parking area. Cars were streaming out. A family rushed his direction. The father was carrying a small boy. About ten yards behind, the mother was holding the hand of a girl of maybe nine or ten. Neither parents nor children wore the tired but satisfied expressions of people who’d just hiked a beautiful trail. The way the man kept glancing behind him, the way the woman was pulling her daughter, brought a single word to mind—fear.
Dylan parked on the side of the road and stepped out as the man neared him. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s shooting.” He turned back to his wife. “Hurry!”
The woman was already pulling the poor girl, who had tears streaming down her face.
Dylan scooped the child into his arms. “Go. I’ll follow.”
The woman continued to hold her child’s hand and ran beside Dylan to her husband. They reached a sedan that was parked in the overflow parking area across the street, and he deposited the girl next to the car. “I’m a cop.” Former cop, but nobody was splitting hairs. “Any idea what direction the shots came from?”
The man glanced toward the mountain. “Higher up, but…”
The woman was buckling the little boy in his booster. “Joey, let’s go!”
“One sec.” The man focused on Dylan. “People started running, screaming.” Emotion thickened the man’s voice, and his lips pressed together to hold it in. “We were way up. With the kids…”
Dylan stepped away from the car. “You got ’em down safely. Go.”
As the man climbed in his car, Dylan hurried across the street, dodging cars, jogging toward the trailhead.
A police cruiser whipped into the lot, barely missing a car driving out.
Dylan trotted toward the uniformed officer as he stepped out of his cruiser. “I’m a PI, used to be a cop. How can I help?”
Dylan joined the search for injured, gleaning as much information as he could in the process, but there wasn’t much to learn. He found only hikers who, like the little family from the parking lot, had heard the shots and were hurrying off the mountain. He didn’t run across anybody who’d been injured nor get any useful information as to the shooter’s location.
He stopped at the cliff where Chelsea had nearly lost her life and gazed up at the forested mountainside. Whoever had taken those shots was likely long gone by now. He’d mentioned the shack where Dougie worked to one of the uniformed officers, who’d thanked him and promised to ensure it was searched.
An hour or more passed before he returned to his pickup, having learned nothing of value, and headed to HCI to pick up Chelsea. He called Cote on the way, but again, the call went straight to voicemail.
When he arrived, he nodded to the bodyguards and found Mrs. Strauss in Chelsea’s office. “Douglas Brewster’s mother wouldn’t tell me anything,” the assistant said.
Chelsea saw Dylan as he walked in but hardly acknowledged him before focusing on Mrs. Strauss. “Could you try to get Detective Cote on the line for me?”
“Already did. He’s on line two.”
Chelsea’s eyebrows lifted. “Thank you.” She reached for the receiver while she added, “You’re a godsend.”
The woman swiveled and stepped out, brushing past Dylan on her way, while Chelsea put the phone on speaker. “Detective, it’s Chelsea Hamilton. Dylan is here, too.”
“I don’t appreciate being put on hold. I’ve got a developing situation here.”
And yet he’d ignored Dylan’s call but waited for Chelsea to come on the line. That said a lot about Chelsea’s position in Coventry. Dylan closed the office door.
“Is Dougie all right?” Chelsea asked.
“We got him out of there. Bullet hit him in the leg. Fortunately, he knows the woods better ’n anybody and found a hole to hide in until we got to him. If that teacher hadn’t been with me, he’d still be in that hole.”
“Where’s Dougie now?”
“At the hospital. We’ve got him guarded.”
Dylan stepped closer to the desk. “Has he given you any useful information?”
“He’s too traumatized to talk. We’re gonna give him some space and then try again tomorrow. Did you learn anything new today?”
“I swung by Gr
anger’s apartment.”
Dylan figured Cote knew what he meant. He waited for the lecture about taking the law into his own hands, breaking the law to bring someone to justice, all that. But Cote just said, “What’d you learn?”
He met Chelsea’s eyes as he spoke. “The SUV in the garage has a pretty sizable dent on the front passenger side.”
She sat heavily and lowered her head.
“So maybe…” Cote paused. “He hit Mrs. Hamilton’s car with his own, forced her off the road.”
Dylan walked around the desk and ran his hand over Chelsea’s hair. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“I’ll have my guys look at Mrs. Hamilton’s car again, see if they can corroborate that story. When they do, I’ll take this to the judge and get a warrant.”
“I’m going to send you a photograph.” Dylan pulled out his phone. “Maybe you’ll recognize the people in the picture. I think it was taken at a golf course called The Greens. I’m wondering if Zeke has a membership there.”
“Never heard of it,” Cote said. “I’ll look into it.”
When the call disconnected, Dylan sent the photo, then leaned down and kissed Chelsea’s head. “How was your first day? Did you make any new friends? Play nice with the other kids?”
She laughed, but it died fast. “I was so worried about Dougie. Thank God he wasn’t hurt worse.”
“Yeah.” He sat in the chair across from her. “The mountain was a mess.”
“You went?”
He gave her a quick update. “Last I heard, nobody was injured… Well, except Dougie, but they’re keeping that under wraps.”
“Thank God,” she said. “I can’t believe… Whoever did this put a lot of lives in danger today.”
People would do desperate things to stay out of prison.
“Tell me about the picture you sent Cote.”
He pulled it up on his cell and showed her. “Recognize anyone?”
She tapped the screen. “That’s Zeke Granger. The other men… None of them look familiar.”
He pointed to the woman’s hand. “Any chance you recognize the watch?”
She looked closely. “It’s just a gold band. If I could see the watch’s face, maybe.”
“Maybe Cote’ll turn something up.” He gazed around the room. The darkly stained credenza against the wall was open, a pile of papers on top. “You want to tell me about your day?”
She ran through what she’d done. By the time she finished recounting the events, he understood why she looked so tired.
“What did Frank think about all you did?” Dylan asked.
“He was less than pleased.” Her smirk said more than her words.
“But you did it anyway, even though he wasn’t on board?” That surprised him.
“I’d have talked to him about it, but he wasn’t here. Apparently, he was over at the factory all day. Just as well, though. I did what I thought was right.” And then she pulled a shoebox covered in photographs from a drawer in her desk and handed it to him, along with the note she’d found. “This was the big news of the day.”
He read the note, then looked at her for permission to open the box. When she gave him a go-ahead nod, he looked inside. The box was empty.
“I’ve been looking for whatever Mum had stored in there, but…”
“No luck?”
“Nothing. I took a photo of the note and sent it to Cote.”
“Any guesses?” he asked.
“No. There’s no more information. Right now, it’s just a useless empty box.”
“Not useless. It tells us we’re on the right track. That she knew she was in danger, and that, most likely, someone else knew she was getting close to the truth and took her out.”
Chelsea’s bottom lip trembled. “I just don’t understand why she didn’t tell me. All this time, she’s believed Daddy’s murder wasn’t random, and she didn’t say a word.”
“You were a child,” Dylan said.
“I’m twenty-five years old. She should have told me. She should have…” Chelsea plopped her elbows on the desk and pressed her hands to her face. “I just can’t imagine. All these years, she knew. She must have been terrified. And felt so alone. And then…”
He stood, intending to round the desk and comfort her, but her head snapped up. “I’m fine.” She wiped the moisture on her cheeks. “For the first time, I understand why she sent me away. It wasn’t that she didn’t love me and didn’t want me with her. She was trying to protect me.”
Dylan longed to take Chelsea in his arms. “I wish I could say something to make it all better.”
She forced a smile. “How about you? Sounds like you committed a crime.”
“Just a misdemeanor.” He waved off the words, going for relaxed when he felt anything but. “Typical day in the life of a PI.”
Her mouth opened in a little O. “Is that true?”
He chuckled. “Not even close. That’s the first crime I ever committed, unless you count taking two dollars from my mother’s purse without asking when I was about eight.”
“You’re a hardened criminal. Mothers should protect their children from you.”
“Yeah, I’m terrifying. Do you have more work you need to do, or—?”
“I’m quite finished.”
Flanked by Chelsea’s bodyguards, they left the office and made it to Dylan’s pickup.
A few minutes later when they reached the interstate, Chelsea glanced behind her. “Are they going to follow us all the way home?”
“Just to Manchester,” Dylan said. “Nobody knows where we’re staying.”
She turned back around. “Good. They’re a little intense for my taste.”
“It’s their job to be intense.”
“I just need a break. From them, from HCI, from”—she waved as if sweeping troubles away—“from all of it.”
He knew how she felt. “Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight, then.”
She said nothing, just stared out the window at the passing trees.
On the opposite side of the highway, traffic was heavy, stop-and-go in some areas, as tourists flooded toward New Hampshire’s lakes and mountains. They’d hit it as they neared Nutfield, another popular vacation spot.
Maybe they could spend the evening watching a movie or playing games. Except it seemed like Chelsea needed more of a distraction than anything at the house could offer her.
He reached across the armrest and took Chelsea’s hand. “I have an idea.”
She sighed. “If it’s about who’s trying to kill me—”
“It’s not.” He squeezed her hand. “Want to go to a movie?”
He glanced, caught her smile. “Are you asking me on a date?”
He hadn’t thought of it that way, and the idea made his heart rate pick up speed. “Unless you want to go home and catch your interview on TV.”
“I’d prefer not to, if you don’t mind. I truly need a break from the whole thing. Tabby will record it for me.”
“Okay, then. I’m asking you on a date.”
Chapter Thirty
The movie was an excellent distraction. They dodged the crowd as they walked out of the cinema hand-in-hand. The sun was just dimming over the buildings in Manchester, but it was still warm, for which she was grateful. Thanks to the overachieving air conditioner in the theater, Chelsea was freezing.
Dylan led her across the parking lot, frown in place, eyes scanning the people all around them.
“Everything okay?”
He glanced her way and smiled. “Sure. Just…”
Making sure they were safe. Which he seemed to do all the time. Was it because of the threats on her life, or was he always so vigilant? Maybe, as a former cop, he’d learned to keep his attention on the surroundings.
He opened the truck’s door and helped her to her seat. The cab was toasty warm because of the sunshine that day. When Dylan climbed in beside her and cranked the AC, she angled the fan away from her. He reached in the back and
grabbed a sweatshirt. “I should have brought this in with us.”
“Why is it always freezing in public places in America?” She draped the sweatshirt over her lap. “People are dressed in shorts and T’s, and they keep the temperature hovering just north of arctic.”
“No idea. Hungry?”
“Quite.”
After waiting twenty minutes for a table, they were seated on the patio at an Italian restaurant just off Canal Street, a basket of bread between them. Though he hadn’t said so, she was sure he’d chosen this place because of the outdoor seating. She still hadn’t warmed up.
His cell phone rang, and he glanced at her. “Sorry. Lemme just…” He swiped it open and stepped away.
The tables were filled, mostly with people in their twenties and thirties. Conversation and laughter filled the space and almost drowned out the music being piped in overhead. Even the servers were in a good mood, sharing jokes with customers. When one server walked by with a tray piled high with pasta, the scents of garlic and basil and sausage trailing in his wake, Chelsea’s mouth watered.
Dylan returned and sat across from her.
“Who was that?”
“We’re taking tonight off, remember?” He winked. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Something about the case, then. She didn’t want to know, not right now.
After their iced tea and Coke were delivered, he asked, “What did you think of the movie?”
“It was excellent, as expected.”
“You’ve seen all the Marvel movies?”
“Obviously. Haven’t you?”
He sipped his Coke. “Missed a couple when I was on the force. I need to catch up. Who’s your favorite hero?”
“Captain America.”
He chuckled. “Of course.”
“Not just because he’s American, though”—she tipped her head to concede a point he hadn’t made aloud—“that’s a part of it. I like him because he’s not out for fame or glory. He’s not super rich or powerful. He’s just an ordinary guy who has no motive except to do the right thing. Sort of like…” She lowered her gaze. Where was she going with this? When she looked up, she saw Dylan’s eyebrows lifted high as he waited for her to finish. Fine, then. “Like you. Except I wouldn’t describe you as ordinary.”
Legacy Reclaimed Page 20
