Moondust Lake

by Davis Bunn

  The woman walked straight past them, saying, “This way.”

  She led them across the hall, where she knocked on a door, checked inside, then held it open while Winters and Kimberly entered the empty conference room. “Everything I say here is off the record, are we clear on that?”

  “Absolutely,” Kimberly replied. “I am simply after background information.”

  The woman was so large she had to force herself between the arms of the chair. Her muscular bulk made her voice odd indeed, for she spoke with a high, breathless quality, like wind passing through a broken reed. “What’s this all about?”

  “I am counseling the wife and daughter of Jack Helms. My cousin, who works as a therapist at the same clinic, has the Helms’ son as his patient.”

  “Where is all this happening?”

  “San Luis Obispo.”

  She turned to the county mental-health agent and asked, “You check her out?”

  “First thing, Doris. I told you that. And I know the clinic where she’s working.”

  Doris Hicks still needed to glance over to ensure the door was shut before saying, “It’s no surprise to me they’re seeing you. What does shock me silly is that Jack Helms is allowing it.”

  “He’s tried to have us fired. The people in charge vetoed his motion. Barely.”

  “He won’t let this go.” She scoped the window, then asked, “How is Jack Helms occupying himself these days?”

  “He runs a local printing, advertising, and marketing company. You knew Mr. Helms?”

  “Not directly. But I knew of him. Jack Helms was best buddies with the Keller boys. You ever heard of Keller Canneries?”

  “I’ve seen the name, sure.”

  “The Keller clan is still the biggest landowner in this region. They hold claim to almost all the county’s water rights. My daddy worked for one of the Keller rivals, a good group, paid their people a square wage and didn’t shirk on benefits. That’s what the unions were brought in on. Keller and their ilk were dead set against offering health insurance and retirement benefits and the like. So the unions started organizing, and the Kellers came down hard.”

  “I’d heard Jack Helms was used as a strikebreaker.”

  “You heard right. That man loved to fight. So did the Keller twins. I was thirteen years younger, so I missed most of the action. But I was the last of seven. My two older brothers learned early on to stay out of their way.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Don’t know anything for certain. If I did, the Keller boys would have spent their life behind bars, instead of lording it over this town.”

  Winters spoke for the first time since sitting down. “Tell her about the riot.”

  “Them union boys knew sooner or later they’d have to come to this town. By then, Hamlin had gone into real estate, and built themselves the Valley Mall. Then the union started picketing. All the local movers and shakers took a giant step back. They pretended they didn’t notice when Keller’s strikebreakers waded in. Three men died that day. One of them was my father’s best friend. Three good men.”

  “Jack Helms was involved?”

  “I didn’t say that. And don’t you quote me.”

  “I’m not—”

  Winters said, “Show her the diploma.”

  Doris Hicks opened the file and slid a photocopied document across the table. “Like I said, completely off the record. The Keller twins run their daddy’s firm now. They basically control this town. I’m too old to go looking for another job.”

  Across the top of the document ran the words HAMLIN HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA. Beneath that was the name Jack Helms. Kimberly breathed a quiet “Wow.”

  “School records show that Jack Helms was a student there for all four of his high-school years.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s more than impossible,” Doris Hicks said. “It’s a lie. All my brothers and sisters were students at Hamlin High. I spoke with three of them. Jack Helms never set foot in that place. My oldest brother still remembers the day those Keller boys showed Jack Helms around town. Like they were all part of some great game, instead of getting ready to commit murder.”

  Winters said, “Now tell her the best part.”

  Kimberly gaped at them. “There’s more?”

  “Down at the bottom. Where it reads, ‘School Commissioner. ’ That is old man Keller’s signature.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She slid another page from her file across the table. “This is his signature on a notarized document.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “How dare that man keep us waiting!”

  “It’s his favorite tactic,” Buddy replied. He knew Jack Helms’s assistant was making note of their every word, and he did not care. “Pop relishes the chance to rattle his opponents.”

  “Try my patience, will he? I’ll take double pleasure flaying him alive.” But Stanton Parrish did not look angry. In fact, he looked positively delighted. Stanton had brought backup in the form of a court recorder and a second attorney named Melanie Evans. She was a precise, slender woman of perhaps thirty-five, who had been on the phone since entering Jack’s outer office.

  Stanton noticed the direction of Buddy’s gaze and said, “My associate here is the finest trial attorney in the central coast. As Grady White knows, to his regret. He has gone up against Melanie twice, and both times walked away bloodied and bowed.”

  Buddy was coming to like Stanton Parrish immensely. But the fact did not erase his unease. Buddy knew his father. These two lawyers did not. They expected a straight fight. They expected rules. But Jack Helms was a brawler. He fought by the street code. The man who walked away breathing was the winner.

  Grady White opened the door to the inner sanctum. “Buddy, who’s this I see here with you, man?”

  “My legal counsel.”

  “Don’t you think you should have informed us?”

  “You are so informed.” But Buddy could see Grady was not surprised. Nor was he unduly concerned. Stanton Parrish took note of the same thing. And for the first time Stanton’s gaze tightened in something akin to uncertainty. Which Buddy decided was not altogether a bad thing.

  “Well, I guess we better move this over to the conference room, give us all a chance to take a load off. How you doing, Stanton? Melanie, nice to see you again.”

  But as Buddy entered the boardroom, his phone rang. He checked the readout and decided, “I need to take this.”

  “Buddy, man, we don’t have all that much time—”

  “You kept us waiting forty-five minutes,” Stanton snapped. “See how you like a dose of your own medicine.”

  Buddy stepped into the alcove leading back to the main bull pen. “Kimberly, now isn’t a good—”

  “I’ve found it, Buddy. The smoking gun.”

  He stood where he was, and he listened to her rapid-fire speech, and he felt as though a filter was gradually peeled off his vision. He saw the same room he had walked through and worked in for eight long years. Only now there was a crystal clarity to the view, a vivid force that rimmed each of the worried faces looking his way. His team. “You’re sure?”

  “I held the document, Buddy. Mr. Keller, chief executive of Keller Canneries, personally signed a high-school diploma for a man who was never officially enrolled in their county’s school system.”

  Melanie emerged from the conference room and waved in Buddy’s direction. “I have to go, Kimberly. I wish I could thank you. And I will. Soon.”

  “I did good, didn’t I?”

  “You did better than that. Are you safe?”

  “Of course, Buddy. I’m sitting in my car outside the sheriff’s office.”

  “Take care. Come home. I’ll call when I can.” Buddy shut his phone and entered the boardroom and clamped down on everything he felt and thought. It was his common practice when entering his father’s presence. Wearing the bland mask of safety. Only today he looked over and met his father’s gray
hurricane gaze, and thought, Showtime.

  CHAPTER 34

  Jack Helms watched his son enter with an unreadable expression. “Consorting with the enemy already. Shame on you.”

  Buddy settled into his seat and replied, “There are no enemies in this room.”

  Jack Helms merely snorted and shook his head. Stanton, on the other hand, inspected Buddy in the cautious manner of approaching a major decision. The attorney nodded once, then turned back to the room at large.

  Jack Helms gave the four seated on the table’s opposite side a heavy-lidded look, then demanded, “What’s all this about?”

  “You were the one who has brought suit against my client,” Stanton responded.

  “Your client happens to be under contract to my firm.”

  “That is simply not true, as you have already been informed.”

  Jack flicked his hand in dismissal. “Show them.”

  Grady opened a leather portfolio and withdrew a file embossed with his firm’s logo. “I am sorry to inform you, sir, that you have been misled. Your client has been playing fast and loose with the truth.”

  Stanton cast Buddy another glance. “Is that so.”

  “Indeed it is.” Grady’s voice was overloud for the room, as though he was speaking for the courtroom he had no intention of entering. “As you will soon see.”

  Jack’s voice carried his barely contained rage. “Won’t he, Buddy. Won’t he just see.”

  Buddy did not respond.

  Grady cleared his throat and handed over the first document. “Here is a notarized copy of his original contract, dated the first of August, eight years ago. The clause regarding his noncompetition agreement is on page three. I have circled it for your convenience.” He passed a second copy to Melanie, then smirked at Buddy. “I assume you don’t need a copy of what you must now remember signing.”

  Buddy did not reply.

  “Item two is an amended contract, dated four years ago. This one was also duly notarized, as you will see on the last page. Again you will find the noncompetition clause encircled on page three.” He passed over two copies of a third document. “Last, but not least, we have the new contract, signed by both father and son, dated June first of last year, and again duly notarized.”

  Jack Helms rose to his feet and walked to the rear window. “Ring any bells, boy?”

  Buddy saw no need to speak.

  Grady should have looked far more satisfied than he did. “I believe that covers everything from our end. Wouldn’t you agree, Jack?”

  Jack Helms addressed his words to the wooded expanse bordering his grounds. “That should clarify matters for everyone concerned.”

  Stanton looked at his notes. The senior attorney for Hazzard Communications was clearly flummoxed. He had come prepared to move from the absence of a contract to the proposal Buddy had worked out. Buddy’s idea was to forge a merger between the Helms Group and Hazzard’s much larger company. A genteel acquisition—with Jack Helms offered a position on the board as a means of smoothing his transition to retirement. Two old foes working in tandem. Facing a new business climate in the best possible manner. United. Strong enough to overcome whatever uncertainty tomorrow might bring. Instead, Jack Helms had blindsided them.

  Buddy could almost watch the attorney’s mind at work. Stanton Parrish had to decide whether his new client was lying. If he was, Stanton’s position on the Hazzard board meant disavowing himself of everything to do with Buddy Helms.

  Regardless of whether the documents were valid, either way Stanton could not in good faith broach the possibility of a merger. Either the father or the son was lying. Both options negated Buddy’s concept. Buddy could not blame the attorney for hunting down the nearest exit.

  But he could hope.

  Buddy had long suspected his father intended something like this. Jack Helms was infamous for plying havoc with a blade his opponents did not notice until it was sticking between their ribs. Buddy was not surprised. Saddened, yes. Filled with bitter regret, most definitely. And also a bit ashamed.

  “I think we’re all done here.” Stanton slapped his own folder shut. “For the record I am only coming to know my client. But I, for one, am convinced that what my client told me prior to arriving here is the truth. Buddy Helms has never been issued a formal contract with this company. There is no valid noncompete clause. He is free as a bird.”

  Grady White did a fair job of generating indignation. “Are you accusing my client of willfully misleading an officer of the court?”

  “Someone in the room most certainly did. Yes.”

  “Sir, I will have you up on charges of slander.”

  “That is certainly one option.” Stanton shifted in his chair. “Coming, Buddy?”

  “Not just yet.”

  But before he could speak, his father’s cell phone rang. Jack glanced at the readout, then stalked from the room. Buddy knew Stanton wanted to treat this as an affront and depart as well. But Buddy had not yet twisted the dragon’s tail.

  Even so, as he waited for his father to return, Buddy felt his mother’s presence like a physical force. It granted him a distance both from the tension and the people, enabling him to see what his mother would have labeled as the right way forward.

  Jack Helms reentered the conference room and pretended to be surprised. “You’re still here?”

  Stanton started to offer a rejoinder, but Buddy halted him before the words were uttered. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Pop.”

  His father snorted softly and returned to his position by the window.

  Buddy went on, “I grew up thinking you were the finest man on earth. I’m asking you to let that part of you live again. Mom wants—”

  Jack Helms addressed his words to the window. “You leave your mother out of this.”

  Buddy accepted that his words were probably futile. But glad he had said them nonetheless. “I’m leaving the firm. I have an idea that I think would give us a peaceful resolution. But for this to work, I need you to drop this charade and treat me as someone who has your best interests at heart.”

  Jack Helms turned slowly. For the first time in what felt like years, there was a fractured indecision to how Jack looked at him. As though his father was uncertain who he was, or who spoke to him. “You want a peaceful resolution? You stop this nonsense and come back where you belong.”

  Buddy nodded slowly, the motion carrying through his entire body. Knowing that the decision was Jack’s. Not his.

  As his father started for the exit, Buddy asked, “What is your connection to Keller Canneries?”

  His father froze in midstride. “My clients have no place in this room.”

  “For the record, the Keller family’s business empire formed the basis upon which the Helms Group was founded.” Buddy had always loathed those early advertising accounts. They shrieked of staid conservatism. The actors who stood before those perfectly lit stoves smiled like performers on an old Art Linkletter show, all teeth and no spirit. The perfect kitchens filled with perfect people. Year after year his father and the Keller twins met and laughed and ate aged prime rib at the Gold Rush Steakhouse. Buddy had endured too many wasted hours working on projects as confining as coffins. “Don’t make me do this, Pop.”

  His father did not respond.

  “If you force me to take one more step, we’ll be discussing Hamlin. And your actions for the Keller family. Before you went to UC Davis.”

  Jack Helms glided back over to loom above the table. “Don’t go messing where you don’t belong, boy. We’re discussing your job.”

  “There is no job. I’ve left the company.”

  He stabbed the papers in front of Grady. “This says otherwise.”

  “We both know that contract is a total fabrication.”

  “Wrong.” He stabbed them again. “We both know you’ve lost.”

  Buddy turned to Stanton. “For the record there were more than two dozen firms like Keller that formed the Helms Group’s financia
l backbone. Canneries, Central Valley grocery chains, regional department stores. But the stores have mostly been sold out to national groups with in-house marketing teams. These new conglomerates shoot their own catalogue and layouts. The remaining clients aren’t enough to keep the Helms Group afloat.”

  “I’m a busy man,” Jack Helms snapped. “I’ve got a whole company of people to run. And you’re a misguided boy whose wasting a passel of important people’s time.”

  “Either you’ll be put on the stand, or I will. And my attorneys will ask questions you don’t want to hear. About how you got into UC Davis using a high-school certificate from a county where you never resided.” Buddy gave his father a chance to respond, then went on, “But you did go there, didn’t you? To Hamlin. Old man Keller brought you in when the unions came to Hamlin. Didn’t he? And you did something for him. Didn’t you, Pop? Something so great—”

  Jack Helms underwent a subtle transformation. The uncertainty did not so much vanish as become overlaid by a varnish. His gaze grew flat, his voice softly frigid. “You stop right there.”

  “Something so important, Mr. Keller himself signed your graduation certificate. Which he could, since he was the superintendent of schools. Old man Keller falsified county documents, which state you attended all four years of high school there. But you didn’t. You couldn’t have. You were seventeen when you first showed up in Hamlin. It was summer. That autumn you entered UC Davis as a freshman—”

  “This is none of your affair.”

  “You’ve made it my affair, Pop.” Buddy stopped for a moment. Not out of uncertainty. Rather, he was increasingly convinced his father already knew what he was going to say. Jack’s protests were almost a rote declaration, the sort of response that was given only because one was expected. Buddy pressed on, “But it’s not the high-school documents that are important, are they? Or how Keller set you up here in San Luis Obispo when you graduated. It was what you did on the night of the Hamlin riots, isn’t it? When three good men went down. Three good men.”