“I’ve had worse. And I have no interest in pressing any sort of charges.”
So it was going to be like pulling teeth. That’s okay. Will was used to wielding pliers. A lot of the folks he arrested had that right to remain silent part down pat – and some people got nervous and clammed up for no good reason around cops.
Tucker, he suspected, was simply the kind of man who wasn’t given to chitchat. If he had something to say, he said it. If you had something to say, then say it, and stop wasting his time.
Though he considered it a particularly Yankee characteristic, Will decided he could respect that. So instead of discussing the heat, town politics, or how the hurricane season was shaping up, he cut to the chase.
“Tell me how you came by your renters.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your residence. Up until a couple months ago, you were renting the place out. What’s that been, twenty years now?”
“Close enough.” He hesitated, and Will could see him debating whether to leave it at that. But something – curiosity, maybe – prompted him to continue. “The public schools where I grew up weren’t the greatest. When it came time for high school, my mom was pretty adamant about sending me to a private one. Even with a scholarship and financial aid, we needed money.”
Will nodded. He’d already deduced, through both observation and inquiry, that Tucker had been raised without the benefit of his grandfather’s help. It was one of the reasons he’d sought him out. “How did your mom go about renting the place?”
“What’s this about?”
The cool tone warned Will that Tucker’s cooperation was approaching an end. “Heaven,” he said as he chewed his last bite of muffin, dusted his hands. “That woman should be canonized. This is about the fact that not once, in the past two decades, has your property been listed in the classified section of the Sweetwater Register. Or, more recently, their online rental forum. Or Craigslist. Or anywhere that I could find.”
The other man sipped his coffee. The gray eyes that studied him over the rim were both irritated and considering. “I assume you have a reason for that time sink.”
“Police work is just full of new and mind-numbing ways to kill a few hours.” He leaned back in his chair, and a casual glance told him that both Allie and Sarah were busy with a couple other Saturday morning customers. “The reason I ask,” he propped his forearms on the table “is because of something Sarah said to me the other night. That Jonas Linville had told her he and his brother had been ‘promised’ your house. It’s an odd turn of phrase, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. That kind of situation, it’s easy to misunderstand, maybe not tune in to words because you’re more focused on the physical threat. But when I talked to Rufus again – that’s the proprietor of the hardware store – well, he gave a pretty similar account. Mind you, that’s not much to go on. People say all kinds of things that don’t mean a damn. But my nature being what it is, added to the fact that I haven’t been able to locate Jonas, I considered it might be a straw worth grasping.”
“You mean to tell me that little yellow-bellied bastard skipped town?”
Will found it telling that Tucker’s first reaction was frustration. “He’s gone to ground again, anyway. But I suspect he’ll turn up eventually. Chickens usually do come home to roost. My question is why did he feel, let’s say entitled, to roost on your property?”
“Like I know?”
“I don’t know if you know. That’s why I’m asking.”
After another beat of hesitation, Tucker mimicked Will’s pose. “Look, my mom contacted a lawyer when we decided to do the rental thing. The property is held in trust, so there were some legal issues to work out. The lawyer set things up through some kind of management company – Sunrise something. To be honest, I don’t know much about it. As long as the checks were coming in, I didn’t really care. When I contacted the attorney, told him I was considering coming south and wanted a report of the state of the property, that’s when I found out about the trouble. I expressed my desire to have them evicted. I didn’t want them doing any more damage before I got here. I don’t know how the rental company found those idiots, or what terms may have been discussed.”
“The checks you received. Did they come directly from the renters, or were they cut through the management company?”
“Through the attorney. It cost me an additional fee, but my mother – and then I – wanted to make sure everything followed the law to the letter.”
Will mentally drew a line to another dot. Being that far removed, it would be easy to keep the left hand from knowing whom the right was screwing.
“Why is that important?”
“Sunrise Rentals?” Will said. “The property management company you used. You know that’s owned by River Holdings.”
The man looked blank.
It could have been an act. But logic, and the digging Will’d done, suggested that Tucker Pettigrew wasn’t in collusion with Carlton.
“Your grandfather’s corporation?” he added.
Tucker opened his mouth. Closed it. Sat back in his seat and shook his head. “Right.” He muttered an invective under his breath. “Why am I not surprised?”
Will considered leaving it alone. He’d found out, at least partially, what he wanted to know. Being a cautious man, he usually liked to have all his dots connected before he filled in the picture.
But he was also a man who went with his gut. And on this count, at least, his gut told him Tucker Pettigrew might make an… ally, of sorts. And what he was telling him wasn’t anything he couldn’t find out anyway if he were so inclined.
“River Holdings,” he said “recently acquired a piece of riverfront property from the Linville family.”
“Not surprising. He likes to acquire property, particularly if it’s valuable. ”
“Well, that’s the thing.” This next dot was the one that really stuck in Will’s craw. “Up until recently their place was zoned residential and not much good to anyone except for them and the mosquitoes. The council did some rezoning, and that property became mixed use, but still not something that people were going to be beating down the door to buy. Interestingly, the property also backs up to Little John Creek. Now – bear with me, here – on the other side of Little John Creek sits a pretty sizeable tract of land that was slated for development. About two hundred new homes, some light commercial. Infrastructure started going in, everything was looking good until a sudden problem crops up with the location of the main access road. There were a whole bunch of legal details that I won’t bore you with, but suffice it to say, progress was pretty well shut down. The investors suffered, and then when the economy started to tank, they suffered further. Loans came due, and they mostly lost their shirts.”
“Okay.”
“My brother was one of the principal investors.”
Will watched the other man put it together. “That’s what he meant when he said my family had what rightfully belonged to yours.” Tucker laughed mirthlessly, held up a hand. “No. Don’t tell me. And now my grandfather holds the only piece of property that can provide access to this development.”
“Pretty much.”
“A piece of property he probably bribed the town council into rezoning.”
“I’m sure they were just campaign contributions.”
“A piece of property he probably swindled from these Linville assholes by using my property as some kind of incentive.”
“That’s just speculation.”
“Right.” He scrubbed a hand over his heavily stubbled face. “I’m not sure what you want me to say here. Gee, I’m sorry my asshole of a grandfather took your brother for a ride? That’ll help. Can’t you get him for fraud or something?”
“At this point, even if I could find Jonas Linville, it’s unlikely he’d be willing to talk. And if he did, I’m sure it would be a matter of he said, he said. Your grandfather is too smart to have anything like that in writing. In any case, I’ve got no cause to look at
the contract.”
“But I do.”
Will simply raised his brows.
“You want me to turn over my copies of the paperwork.”
“Well. Since you offered.”
Tucker huffed out a laugh. “I’m telling you that what I have is a pretty standard rental contract. But you’re welcome to see if there’s anything I missed.”
“Much obliged.”
“One question: How do you know I’m not a part of it?”
“How’d that lawsuit your grandfather brought for breach of trust turn out?”
The other man stared. “I’m not even going to ask.”
“My information network is pervasive and far-reaching.”
“You know,” Tucker said after he’d drained the last of his coffee. “If my grandfather did promise my place to these Linvilles, and here I had them evicted, you have to wonder why they aren’t crying foul.”
Will had considered that. “My guess? They were aware there was something shady about the deal. And even if they weren’t, they aren’t the type to exactly take things up through legal channels.”
“So in other words, I may want to start watching my back.” He glanced toward the counter.
“In addition to Sarah’s?” Will let his mouth slide into a grin when Tucker frowned at him. “What? I don’t have eyes? I knew you’d work your way around to that sooner or later. But Tucker?” The grin turned lethal. “Sarah’s the next thing to my sister. You hurt her? Jonas Linville won’t be the only one you need to watch out for.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TUCKER stared at the malevolent, blinking cursor on his screen, which seemed to throb in time with his headache.
Cursing under his breath, he snagged the water bottle sitting on his desk and drank deeply before probing around his cheekbone.
Hawbaker had called it. His eye hurt like a bitch.
As to the rest of his conversation with the cop, Tucker couldn’t say he was surprised. By the fact that the man had approached him with it, maybe, but not the idea that his grandfather had screwed people over. After all, that seemed to be his stock in trade.
And what Will hadn’t pointed out – but which Tucker had arrived at himself easily enough – was that his grandfather had basically been deciding who went into this house since they’d started renting it.
Bastard.
He just hadn’t been able to relinquish that final bit of control. Tucker thought of the pride he’d felt because he’d made it through without the Pettigrew money. But if Carlton had used the place as part of whatever scheme he had cooking, there was every chance that at least some of the rent money Tucker’d received over the years had come not from the actual tenants, but from his grandfather.
It was just exactly the kind of thing that would give the old man his jollies.
Furious, Tucker picked up the rental contract he’d dug out of his files. He’d made a copy for Hawbaker, but just like he’d told the man, it read like a standard agreement. Nothing about deferrals or caretaking or whatever other arrangements he might have made with those idiots.
If he even had. A simple word choice on Linville’s part and the fact that this property hadn’t been advertised in any of the usual outlets wasn’t exactly a smoking gun.
But Tucker was inclined to suspect that if it waddled, it swam and it quacked, it was probably a duck. Inductive reasoning, be damned.
Shoving the paper into a drawer – and the distraction aside – Tucker concentrated on the screen. He had a deadline looming. Just because he had another book coming out soon, didn’t mean he could slack off on this one.
It was a pivotal scene, a flashback of the car accident that had ended his main character’s chance for a pro football career, and taken his girlfriend’s life. His editor hadn’t been happy with the initial draft, saying that he’d only skimmed the protagonist’s emotions. That he needed to dig deeper, make the man’s pain – both past and present – more visceral.
But every time he began to describe the agony the young man experienced, trapped in the wreckage with legs that wouldn’t work, while his long-term girlfriend’s lifeblood slowly drained away, the girlfriend’s mouth kept popping open, saying “Women in Refrigerators Syndrome.”
Annoyed, Tucker shoved back from his desk.
What did Sarah know, anyway? Just because she owned a bookstore, just because she was obviously well-read, just because he was attracted as hell to her and they seemed to have something going, that didn’t mean he had to listen to her opinions.
Death was a part of life, and when it ripped someone you loved away, it was a pretty damn big catalyst for change. As Tucker could very well attest.
Was it any wonder so many authors used it as a plot device?
Shoving a hand through his hair, Tucker stepped over the new floorboards he’d set into place to stare out the window. Through the trees, the sky was so flawlessly blue that it almost hurt the eyes.
Was he being clichéd? Predictable? A typical male?
He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was the kind of thing he’d always run by his mom. She’d been his beta reader, his cheerleader, his friend. And a damn good critic when he’d needed it.
Jesus, he missed her.
Recognizing that he’d taken the first step down the slippery slope into melancholy, Tucker forced his head back into the game.
Okay. He’d just play his own devil’s advocate for a minute.
What if the girlfriend didn’t die, he wondered. What if both characters survived, but feeling emasculated by his paralysis, by his loss of identity – another kind of death – his protagonist shoves her away? What if years later, he’s finally able to re-open his heart not to some new flame, but to a never-quite-extinguished ember?
“And what, now I’m writing for Harlequin?”
Irritated, Tucker dropped back into his chair. He stared at the screen. Tapped his fingers on his thigh. His mind drifted back to that morning. His body recalled with interest the sound Sarah made in her throat when he’d kissed her.
Before telling him she hadn’t stocked his book because she’d found it depressing.
“Shit.” Tucker dragged a hand down his face. Thrillers and romance novels might be easier sells, but he hadn’t yet compromised his creative vision simply to appeal to the masses. So he poised his fingers above the keyboard, and spent the next thirty minutes describing the girlfriend’s – maybe he should give her red hair – slow, wrenching death.
He sat back, satisfied.
Until her hand twitched.
“Aw, come on.”
Disgusted with his inability to put what he – the author – wanted on the page, Tucker stared at the ratty wallpaper border which still circled the room.
From cradle to grave, he mused, recalling his thoughts when he’d decided to make this his office. He’d started off life in this room and now he was fictitiously ending someone else’s.
Or trying to, anyway.
He’d hoped that by getting out of New York, coming to this small, sleepy town, he’d be able to clear his head. To escape some of the psychological mess that had been cluttering it up since his mother’s death.
But instead he’d ended up next to a bookstore. A bookstore operated by a woman who not only drove him nuts and seriously turned him on, but who – just today – made him question if he knew what the hell he was doing.
Feeling edgy, Tucker decided he needed to take a break, think about something else.
His gaze shifted, landing on the paper on the corner of his desk. Mason. The weasel. He’d avoided Tucker all morning, then left a note saying he’d be out most of the afternoon.
And Allison Hawbaker’s car had mysteriously disappeared from the parking lot.
Tucker guessed you could keep a horse away from water, but if the damn thing was determined to drink, there wasn’t much you could do.
And then there was this business with his grandfather.
He glanced at the new wood he’d cut for
the floor. It was his place, dammit. Maybe before it had been his in name only, but now he was putting himself into it. Sweat and blood. And he wasn’t going to let whatever crap Carlton pulled taint that.
“Meow.”
Tucker looked up. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere directly outside his window.
“Meow.”
Pushing back from the desk, he went over to peer out. The moss-draped limb of an oak twisted across his view. It was empty. He followed the line of the tree to the ground, but couldn’t see the cat.
“Meow. Meow. Meow, meow.”
Wherever it was, it sounded frantic. Tucker stuck his head out and glanced up. An obese gray blob clung to a scrawny branch over his head.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Tucker frowned at Sarah’s cat. He glanced toward her cottage, but he doubted she was home yet. There were still a couple of cars crowded into the bookstore’s lot.
So he’d call over there, tell her to come get the dumb thing. But as he pulled his head in, Tucker heard a soft crack.
Looking back up, he saw the branch hanging at a lower angle.
“Jump,” he told the animal, which appeared too frozen with fear now to make a sound. There was a much more solid branch almost directly beneath it. “In case no one’s ever told you,” he added blandly “your kind tends to land on your feet.”
But it simply stared at him, eyes like yellow saucers.
“Of all the…” Shaking his head, Tucker jumped over the loose boards to cross the room. The attic window was within arm’s reach of the broken branch. He guessed he’d have to go up there and pull the damn cat through.
Tucker found the creaky old door and climbed the narrow stairs. He’d only given the attic a cursory glance when he’d done his initial exploration of the house. It was filled with decades of junk that he’d have to get around to sorting through eventually.
Dust raised in small clouds as his bare feet hit the scuffed floorboards, and Tucker nearly choked on the hot, lifeless air. He wound his way around an ugly table and a broken mirror, following tattered ribbons of sunlight toward the window.
The cat’s muffled cry echoed through the glass.
Mr. Write (Sweetwater) Page 16
