Slow Heat in Heaven

by Sandra Brown

  "I tried to love you. You won't let anybody love you. You're too busy being defensive about not coming out of Macy's womb. It never mattered to me that I didn't spawn you, but it sure as hell mattered to you."

  Tricia came out of her chair slowly. Her eyes glowed with evil fire. "I'm glad I'm not your real daughter," she hissed. "You're coarse and crude, just like Mama always said you were. No wonder she wouldn't let you darken the door of her bedroom. You strut around like God almighty, but you're little better than white trash. That's exactly what you'd be if you hadn't married a Laurent."

  She turned to Schyler. "And I'm glad I'm not your blood sister. You weren't content to come back and upset the household that I'd kept together even though I despise this place. You made my husband look like a fool for not seiz­ing control of the business. Now you're accusing him of being a thief."

  "He is a thief," Cotton barked.

  It was easy for Schyler to disregard Tricia's vindictiveness. She was concerned for Cotton. This stress was what he needed least. "Daddy, we can talk about all this later."

  "We'll talk about it now," he shouted, banging the arm of his chair. At the risk of upsetting him more, Schyler held her peace. Cotton focused his attention on Ken again. "You've bled my business for years. I should have put a stop to it when I first figured it out. I guess I hoped you'd grow some balls and stop before someone caught you at it."

  "I wouldn't have had to dip into the company till if you'd paid me a decent salary."

  "A decent salary?" Cotton repeated in a raised voice. "Goddamn you. What I pay you is more than three times what an average logger gets. And he sweats and strains and ruins his back and risks his life for every friggin' dollar." Cotton leaned forward in his chair. "What did you ever do to earn your handsome salary? I'll tell you. Play golf three afternoons a week and keep your butt folded over a padded pink leather stool at the country club bar."

  "I've given six good years to Crandall Logging."

  "With nothing to show for it," Cotton yelled back. "Nothing, that is, except a criminal record."

  "If you had treated me like a man—"

  "You never acted like a man."

  "If you had given me more responsibility like you did Boudreaux, I'd've—"

  "You'd've fucked up even worse," Cotton finished curtly.

  That was like the final blast of steam out of a factory whistle. It was followed by a profound silence. Schyler spoke first. "We're all tired and short-tempered tonight. Maybe airing our differences has been good for us." She glanced down at her father. It hadn't been good for Cotton. He was leaning against the back of his chair, looking ut­terly exhausted. "Let's not talk anymore tonight. I think once this Endicott order is filled, we'll all feel a lot better."

  "Is that all you ever think about?" Tricia asked.

  "Right now that's all there is," Schyler replied shortly. "If we don't get the last shipment there in time, we don't get paid. If we don't get paid—"

  "Belle Terre will be foreclosed upon. Well that would suit me just fine." Tricia's statement roused Cotton from his brief respite. He raised his head and looked at her as though he hadn't heard correctly. "In fact I hope that's ex­actly what happens."

  "Tricia, shut up."

  "Daddy may just as well know now how Ken and I feel, Schyler."

  "Not now."

  "Why not? We might not get another chance at a family discussion like this." She looked at Cotton. "Ken and I want to sell Belle Terre. We want our portion of the money and then we want to leave here and never come back."

  Schyler knelt down in front of her father's chair. She grasped his hands. "Don't worry about it, Daddy. It'll never happen. I swear that to you."

  "Careful, Schyler," Tricia taunted. "With all the things that have been going wrong, I'm not so sure you can get that order filled in time."

  Schyler surged to her feet and confronted Tricia. "I can and I will. We've got several more days before the note at the bank comes due."

  "Not much time."

  "But enough."

  "Not if something else causes a delay."

  "I'll make sure nothing does. In fact, I'm not going to wait until the last minute. Today I ran a quick inventory of the timber we've got at the landing. I think I can ship enough to fill the order by Wednesday. No need to wait until next week."

  That was the plan she had wanted to discuss with Cash. Now, even without his advice, she had decided to act on it. She would get the jump on anyone who had notions of seeing her fail.

  "Tomorrow morning, I intend to step up operations. Start an hour earlier, work an hour later. With the bonuses I'm offering as incentive, I think everyone will be more than willing to put in the overtime."

  "Leave organizing the loggers to Cash." Cotton was ab­sently rubbing his chest.

  Schyler noticed. She mentally flipped a coin on whether or not to tell him she had fired Cash. She decided that it would relieve Cotton to know that she was no longer in­volved with him. "Cash won't be acting as foreman any longer. I fired him today."

  The three were stunned by her announcement, Cotton most of all. "You fired Cash?"

  "That's right. I ordered him off Belle Terre. He'll be gone within a week."

  "Cash is leaving Belle Terre?" Cotton parroted in a thready voice.

  "Isn't that what you wanted?"

  "Of course, of course," he said. "It's just that I'm shocked to hear that he agreed."

  Her announcement hadn't been met with the reaction she had expected. She wanted to pursue it with Cotton, but Tricia distracted her.

  "You're going to bring this about all by yourself?"

  "That's right."

  Tricia snickered. "If nothing else, it's been hightly en­tertaining to watch the rise and fall of Schyler Crandall. And about that sale of Belle Terre, Daddy, I don't think the choice will be left up to us. Not even to you. Coming, Ken?" She glided out of the room.

  Schyler rushed to the doorway and called for Mrs. Dunne. "Help Daddy get to his room and into bed," she said the moment the housekeeper appeared. "He's upset, so give him his medication even if it is an hour early. He needs to go to sleep."

  "Don't fuss, Schyler," he said cantankerously as he la­bored to get out of his chair. "I'm still standing. It'll take more that Tricia, Ken, and their hush-hush plans for Belle Terre to kill me."

  "You knew they'd been talking about it?"

  He smiled at her, tapping his temple, and winked. "I'm a mean son of a bitch. I learned to take care of myself on the docks of New Orleans. Not much gets past me."

  "You own Belle Terre. Nobody is going to take it away from you."

  He shook his head, his expression reflective. "No one can own Belle Terre, Schyler. It owns us."

  He let himself be led away by Mrs. Dunne. Schyler watched him go. He looked frail as he shuffled down the hall. She wasn't ready for him to be aged and feeble. Her daddy was strong. Nothing could bring him down.

  More than ever she regretted the years they'd been sepa­rated by the misunderstanding based on Tricia's lie. She echoed the sentiment Tricia had voiced earlier. She was very glad the same blood didn't flow through their veins.

  Her shoulders stooped with fatigue, she turned into the room again. She had almost forgotten that Ken was still there. "I thought you went upstairs with your wife."

  He was pulling his lower lip through his teeth. "No, uh, we left a matter up in the air."

  "What matter?"

  "That." He nodded down at the file. Schyler had forgot­ten about it.

  "I'll cover for you, just as Cotton has."

  "Don't do me any favors," he said sarcastically.

  "Then you'd rather go to jail?" Schyler's nerves were shot. Ken should have known better than to press her when he was ahead.

  Apparently her tone of voice brought him to that same conclusion. "No, of course not. But I want you to know, Schyler, that I'm not a thief."

  "You stole something that didn't belong to you. That's the generally accepted definitio
n of a thief."

  "I only took what I felt I had coming."

  "You only took what you needed to keep the loan sharks from breaking your legs."

  "And to keep Tricia off my back about money. That woman thinks she's a Vanderbilt and has to live like one. Cotton's a stingy bastard. He never paid me according to my ability."

  Schyler looked away, not wanting to point up the obvi­ous, but Ken saw her expression and took issue with it. "I guess you're going to say that my contribution wasn't worth even what I got."

  "I'm not going to say anything except good night. I'm exhausted."

  He barred her way to the door. "I know what you're thinking."

  "What?"

  "That I've been putting moves on you just for the money."

  "Haven't you?"

  "No."

  "You're right. That's what I was thinking. Not very flattering to either of us, is it?" She looked him in the eye. "Not that it matters. I would have rejected you any­way."

  She tried to go around him. Again he blocked her way. "Are you going to fire me? Is that your next duty as CEO of Crandall Logging?"

  "I haven't really thought about it, Ken. I can't think about anything until I get a check from Endicott and en­dorse it over to Gilbreath."

  "But firing me would be just your style, wouldn't it? You like throwing your weight around. You must have what the shrinks call penis envy. You want to be the son your daddy never had, don't you? That's probably what went wrong between you and Boudreaux. There can't be two studs in one bed."

  "Good night, Ken." When she tried pushing him aside, he caught her arm roughly.

  "Tricia was right. Everything turned to shit when you came back. Why didn't you stay with your gay friend? That relationship was more suited to you. You could be the man. Why'd you have to come back here and screw every­thing up?"

  Schyler wrenched her arm free. "I came back to find everything already screwed up, thanks to you and Tricia. I'm going to put things back the way they should have been all along. And nothing is going to stop me."

  Chapter Fifty-two

  From where she stood out on the veranda, Gayla heard Schyler's exit line. Through the windows, she watched her enter the hall and head toward her father's bedroom. Gayla saw Ken Howell in the parlor, working free the knot of his necktie with one hand and pouring himself a stiff bourbon with the other. He muttered deprecations to Schyler, to Cotton, to his wife.

  Gayla considered Ken a dangerous man. He was like a wounded beast. He would lash out at anything or anyone, even someone who tried to help him. Weak men were often the most dangerous. They felt threatened from every direc­tion. They had something to prove.

  Gayla hadn't been eavesdropping intentionally. She and Mrs. Dunne had been drinking coffee together in the kitchen when the hue and cry went up in the back parlor. They'd glanced at each other, then took up their conversa­tion, trying to ignore the raised voices and what they might signify. After Mrs. Dunne had been summoned to take Mr. Crandall to bed, Gayla had slipped out the back door.

  It had become her nightly ritual to walk the entire ve­randa several times before going to bed. It was a maso­chistic exercise. Nothing scary had happened since the appearance of the doll on her pillow. She never saw any­thing unduly alarming on these nightly excursions.

  But she knew that someone, something, some presence that bore malice toward the people of Belle Terre was out there in the darkness, lurking, watching, biding his time.

  Schyler, she knew, passed off her skittishness to ethnic superstition at best and to her remnant fear of Jigger at worst. Gayla was sure that in the latter respect, Schyler was right She was terrified that one day he would seek retribution for her desertion.

  She had ridden into town with Mrs. Dunne for the first time only the day before. When they arrived at the super­market, however, she had refused to go inside with her. Instead she had sat in the car, sweltering in the noon heat, with all the windows rolled up, anxiously glancing around.

  Her fears were childish. But one glance at her scarred naked body was sufficient to remind her that they were justified. The worst of her scars didn't show. They were on her mind and in her heart. Jigger had marred her soul. She prayed for his death each night. She would burn in hell for that, and for being his whore, and for betraying Jimmy Don's sweet, pure love.

  The only comfort she could derive was that Jigger would burn in hell, too. Hopefully there were stratas of hell, where those who sinned because they had no choice were dealt with more kindly than those who sinned out of mean­ness.

  She only hoped that before she was consigned to hell, she would know that Jimmy Don was out of that awful place. Gayla felt guiltily responsible for Jimmy Don's im­prisonment.

  She had just about come full circle. She rounded the comer of the veranda, but immediately she ducked back, clamping her hand over her mouth to keep from uttering a squeal of fright. A tall shadow had made a dent in the rhododendrons the instant she'd stepped around the comer.

  Her instinct was to run as fast as she could for the near­est door, but she forced herself to stay where she was. After several seconds, she peered around the comer again. Every leaf on the shrub had fallen back into place. The blossoms were motionless. There was no shadow, no evi­dence that anybody had been on the veranda.

  Maybe she had imagined it. She crept forward, inching along the wall. At the parlor window, she glanced inside. Ken was pacing the floor, drinking and bad-mouthing his misfortunes beneath his breath.

  Gayla slipped past the window unseen. She figured that anyone on the inside couldn't see out onto the veranda because the lights in the parlor were so bright. But anyone on the outside could see inside clearly, as well as hear everything that was said. It would be like watching a pic­ture show.

  But there hadn't been anybody there. A bird had proba­bly disturbed those rhododendron bushes. She had imag­ined the shadow. Her overactive nerves were making her see things that didn't exist.

  Gayla had almost convinced herself of that when she turned and caught, on the still evening air, the unmistak­able fragrance of tobacco smoke.

  At two minutes past nine the following morning, Dale Gilbreath took a telephone call at his desk.

  "What do you mean she's going to ship ahead of time!" He sat bolt upright in his reclining chair.

  "She's sending the timber out on Wednesday."

  "Why?"

  "Why do you think?" his caller asked impatiently. "She's a damn clever bitch. She's trying to avoid exactly what we had planned for that last shipment."

  Dale quickly assimilated the information. "I don't think this will cause any problems. Flynn's agreed to our price. He's willing to do it. More than willing since that Frances girl is at Belle Terre."

  "Are you sure he knows how to use the materials?"

  "Yes. You just see to it that he gets them. I'll notify him about the change in the date. What time Wednesday?"

  "If the train is on schedule, it arrives Wednesday after­noon at five-fifteen. I rechecked this morning."

  "You know," Dale said thoughtfully, "that if anyone on that freight train gets killed, it'll be murder."

  "Yes. Too bad Schyler won't be on it."

  Wednesday dawned hot and still. The hazy sky was the color of saffron. Area bayous seemed to lack the energy to flow at all. Their viscous surfaces were unbro­ken except for an occasional insect skimming them. Thunderheads built up on the horizon in the direction of the Gulf, but at five-ten in the afternoon, the sun was still beating down.

  The explosion occurred a mere quarter of a mile from the Crandall Logging landing. It blew the glass out of the office windows and showered the desk with flying shards that ripped the leather upholstery of Cotton's chair.

  A large column of black smoke rose out of the pile of twisted metal. It could be seen for miles. The boom was loud enough to have heralded the end of the world. The impact of it rattled the beer bottles behind the bar at Red Broussard's cafe.

  One of Red's
frequent customers, sitting alone at a table, smiled with supreme satisfaction. He'd done a damn fine job.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  "Stop looking at me like that, Daddy. I'm fine." Cotton's cheeks were flushed. He was propped up against the pillows on his bed. Schyler was glad he wasn't up and moving about. "You don't look fine. What happened to your knees?" She glanced down, noticing for the first time that her knees were raw and bleeding, as were the heels of her hands. There were particles of gravel embedded in the flesh. She brushed them off, trying not to wince at the stinging pain.

  "I was standing out on the platform, watching the train approach. The blast knocked me off my feet. I landed on my hands and knees beside the tracks."

  "You could have been killed."

  She thought it best not to tell him that she probably would have been if she'd been sitting behind the desk in the office. "Thank God no one was."

  "No one on the train?"

  She shook her head. "It was pushing two empty locomo­tives. They sustained the worst damage. The engineers in the third diesel weren't even bruised. Scared, naturally. It was a costly, uh, accident, but thankfully not in lives or injuries."

  "Accident, my ass. What happened, Schyler?" He frowned at her. "And don't sugareoat it for the heart pa­tient. What the hell really happened?"

  "It was deliberately set," she admitted with a deep sigh. "They used—"

  "They?"

  "Whoever. . . used some kind of plastic explosive. Once the smoke had cleared and we had made sure nobody was hurt, the sheriff conducted a preliminary investigation."

  "Investigation," Cotton scoffed. "Patout doesn't know shit from shinola. He wouldn't recognize a clue if it bit him in the butt."

  "I'm afraid you're right, so I stayed right there with him. That's one reason I'm so grubby." She swept her hand down the front of her dress. "There are a thousand and one unanswered questions. Since the train is interstate, several government agencies will be going over the scene with a fine-tooth comb. It'll take weeks, if not months, to sort through all the debris."

  "And in the meantime, the tracks are unusable."