Low Pressure (28 page)

“I wanted to interview him for my book but couldn’t find him,” she said. “I was as accurate as I could be, based on the impressions of a preteen girl. It wasn’t my intention to cast aspersions on Detective Moody. Why would I? He captured and helped convict the man who killed my sister.”

“So there you have it,” Haymaker said, slapping the padded arms of his chair. “The end.”

“No, not the end,” she said. “Not if you think I ‘did a number on him.’ Is that how he perceives it, too?”

“I don’t know what he perceives.”

“You’re lying,” Dent said.

Bellamy placed a cautionary hand on his knee. In a gentler, less combative voice, she asked, “Does Moody see it that way, too, Mr. Haymaker? If so, wouldn’t he welcome the chance to set me straight?”

“Uh-uh. No way. He won’t talk to you.” Haymaker gave a decisive shake of his head.

“How do you know?”

“Because he won’t even talk to me about it, and I’m his best . . . only . . . friend. As wiseass here has pointed out.” He cast a sour glance at Dent. Dent didn’t respond. Bellamy was making headway where he hadn’t, so he yielded the floor to her.

She asked Haymaker, “Have you tried to get him to talk about it?”

“For eighteen friggin’ years. I don’t know what-all went on. But what I do know, Dale wasn’t ever the same after that boy got killed in prison. After it happened, he stayed drunk for a month, then just up and announced to me that he was leaving the department, leaving his family, leaving Austin, and that was that.”

“But you’re still in contact?”

He shifted his weight, scratched his head, and seemed to consider how much he should impart. When he looked at Dent, it was with hostility, but he responded to Bellamy’s calm gaze.

Releasing a long sigh, he mumbled, “We talk by phone. Off and on. Not regular. Half the time, he doesn’t answer or call me back if I leave a message. I worry about him. He’s not a well man. Chest wheezes like a bagpipe.”

“That’s too bad,” Dent deadpanned. “Where does he live?”

“I don’t know.”

Dent looked around the room. “Got a Phillips screwdriver handy?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where he lives!” Haymaker exclaimed. “Swear to God I don’t. You could put my eye out and I still couldn’t tell you.” Then he raised his pointed chin defiantly. “Even if I could, even if he lived next door to me here, I wouldn’t tell y’all, ’cause Dale would want nothing to do with talking to you. You’ve wasted your time coming here.”

Dent and Bellamy exchanged a look, each conceding that they believed him but were at a loss as to where to go from there.

Then, moving suddenly, Dent reached across the space separating him from the small table at their host’s elbow and picked up a cell phone.

Haymaker’s recliner sprang upright. “Hey!” He tried to snatch the phone from Dent’s hand.

He held it just out of the other man’s reach. “Moody’s number is in here, right? Call him. Tell him we want to talk to him. Tell him you think it would be a good idea. It would give him a chance to validate the outcome of his investigation.”

“He doesn’t have to validate shit.”

“Then that’s what he can make clear to us.” Acting on a hunch, Dent added, “At the very least, he can explain how he and Rupe Collier built their case against Allen Strickland.”

Haymaker’s elfin eyes darted back and forth between them. “You’ve got nothing on them.”

“So there were some machinations?” Bellamy said.

“That’s not what I said,” he sputtered. “Don’t put words in my mouth, missy.”

“We’re not really interested in what you have to say, Haymaker. We want to talk to Moody.” Dent grinned with malice. “If he bent some rules, we’ll be giving him a chance to cleanse his soul. When he dies, he’ll go to heaven instead of hell. Good for everybody.”

“Call him, Mr. Haymaker,” Bellamy softly urged.

He silently debated it for several moments, then held up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Fine. I’ll think about it.”

Dent said, “You’ve got five seconds.”

“Look, come back tomorrow—”

Dent made a honking sound like a quiz-show buzzer. “Can’t wait till tomorrow.”

“How come?” Haymaker looked at Bellamy. “What’s your all-fired hurry?”

“I have my reasons for needing to see him as soon as possible. Call him.”

The former cop continued to fidget, continued to stew.

“Time’s up.” Dent slid his thumb across the bottom of the screen, engaging the phone. “If you call him, you’re his concerned friend offering advice. If I call him, you’re the buddy who betrayed him. You choose.”

When Steven saw the name on his phone’s caller ID, he signaled William to take over for him at the hostess stand and quickly made his way into the relative quiet of the office behind Maxey’s busy kitchen. His phone had stopped vibrating by the time he closed himself in, so he redialed. Olivia answered on the first ring.

“Sorry I couldn’t answer in time, Mother. Is it Howard?”

“He’s holding on by a thread.”

Steven could tell by the hoarseness in her voice that she’d been crying.

“So am I,” she added shakily. “A very slender thread. He’ll have minutes of perfect clarity, and then periods when he lapses into a semiconscious state that terrifies me. I’m afraid he’ll never come out of it. He looks so old and feeble I can barely believe it’s my Howard.”

“Jesus. I know how hard this must be for you.” If William were dying, he would feel like his world was collapsing and he was powerless to stop it. “I’m sorry you’re there dealing with this alone.”

“Bellamy was here last night.” When he didn’t say anything, she softly added, “I know she came to see you, Steven. She told me. I was surprised she went all that way, given Howard’s condition. He was desperate to talk to her last night.”

“I’m sure he fears that each time he sees her will be the last.”

“Exactly. Which makes me wonder why he sent her away.”

“He did?”

“She was here barely an hour. She saw Howard alone for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, then she and Dent left.”

“Dent was still with her?”

“He flew her down.”

“They seem to be fairly chummy.”

“Much to our dismay. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.”

“She probably thinking he’s a superstud. Just like Susan did.”

Olivia said nothing in response to that, probably because she was offended by the very idea and couldn’t bear to consider the implications.

“They flew back to Austin late last night,” she continued. “I don’t know what her hurry was, why she didn’t stay over until this morning at least.”

“Did you ask her?”

“She told me that Howard had sent her back to do something for him, but when I pressed her on it, she was evasive. When I asked Howard about it, he brushed it off as being unimportant.”

“Well, then—”

“But I think they’re keeping something from me, and I’m afraid.” She began to cry.

“Mother, don’t do this to yourself. You’re reading something into nothing. You’re exhausted and overwrought, and in your present circumstances, who wouldn’t be?”

“Everyone’s dancing around the issue.”

“What issue?”

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed raggedly. “That’s just it. I feel like I’m the only one not in on the joke. I hated that you and Bellamy had drifted apart. I’m thrilled that you got together. But what was so urgent that she left her dying father and went to see you
now
? What did you talk about?”

“We caught up on each other’s lives. She met William. I told her about the restaurants, congratulated her on her book’s success. It was like that.”

“Why are you lying to me, Steven? Bellamy herself told me that she went to see you to talk—as adults—about that Memorial Day.”

He lowered his head and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose until it hurt. “All right, yes. Bellamy wanted to hear my perspective of events because apparently there are things she doesn’t know.”

“I don’t understand her preoccupation. Truly I don’t. It’s ancient history.”

“Not to her it isn’t. It’s very much in the present.”

“Do you think that’s healthy? For any of us?”

“No.”

“So what did you tell her? Did you tell her—”

“That I had pimped for Susan that day?”

“That’s a horrible thing to say! About your stepsister and yourself.”

“How would you put it?”

“Not nearly as crudely.”

“Well, I didn’t tell Bellamy about it in any terms.”

“There’s no reason why you should have. Boys and girls have been using go-betweens since there were boys and girls. Susan wanted to dance with Allen Strickland, and she asked you to deliver the message to him. It had tragic consequences, but, at the time, it was an innocent action, something that any typical teenage girl would have done.”

Except that Susan wasn’t typical and was by no means innocent.

He’d never shared with his mother or Howard the horrible secret of what was happening in his bedroom most nights, but he had admitted to them what had happened at the barbecue.

“If it was all that harmless, Mother, why did you and Howard want me to keep it from the police?”

“All we said was that if Allen Strickland didn’t make a point of it when they questioned him, you shouldn’t volunteer it. It wasn’t germane.”

“Detective Moody might have disagreed.”

Surely he would have wanted to know how manipulative Susan was and that it was she who had initiated the encounter with Strickland.

“Over there, in the blue shirt, standing next to the oaf with the long mustache. I think they’re brothers. Be sure you tell the right one. God forbid that drooling cretin comes over here instead.”

“I’m not going to tell them anything.”

“Steven . . .”

“If you’re so hot to dance with him, go ask him yourself and leave me the fuck alone.”

“Steven sa-id fu-uck. Steven sa-id fu-uck.”

Her taunting singsong had made him feverish with anger. But she knew that, and she used it.

“Of course you only say the word, you don’t do the deed. Because you’re scared.” Leaning close and putting her lips directly to his ear, she whispered, “But I know you want to. I know you want to with me. I know you want to right now.”

When he tried to move away, she blocked his path. “You go tell that guy I want to dance with him, or I’ll tell Olivia and Daddy that you got jealous of Dent and came into my room while I was naked and tried to rape me.”

“Rape you? That’s a laugh.”

“Who do you think they’ll believe?” She gave him a look that said she was capable of finessing it any way she wanted, and he knew she could.

Burning with hatred of her, he had approached Allen Strickland on her behalf.

As though reading his mind, his mother said gently, “That boy had been ogling her all day, Steven. He and that brother of his. Sooner or later Allen would have worked up his courage and asked her to dance without any help from you.”

“Possibly. But the fact remains that he did have my help.”

“Please don’t dwell on it and upset yourself. Although I know it’s difficult to put that day out of your mind when you can’t get away from Bellamy’s book. It’s everywhere. Even here in the hospital’s gift shop.”

“The horse has left the barn, Mother.”

“Yes, but I thought that when she stopped the publicity, things would die down. Instead we’re on the front page of that wretched tabloid again. Dent Carter has insinuated himself back into our lives, Bellamy is like a woman obsessed, and I can’t help but feel that this mysterious mission she’s on for Howard has something to do with it.”

Steven jumped in before she could work herself into another crying jag. “Mother, the only times in your marriage that Howard has done something behind your back was when he was shopping for a fabulous gift or planning an extravagant trip. If he sent Bellamy on a secret mission, it’s to do something that will spare you further heartache.”

“My heart already aches, Steven.”

“Cancer is cruel.”

“So is the irony.”

“Irony?”

“Howard and I have had a near-perfect life together. It was marred by a single tragic event. Yet now, when our time together is about to end and we should be reliving blissful times, it’s Susan’s murder that’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind.” Her voice cracked. “And why?”

Quietly Steven said, “
Low Pressure.
”

T
he state senator’s plane was already on the tarmac when Dent and Bellamy arrived at the airfield.

Gall took one look at Dent’s battered face and scowled. “Who the hell did that?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“Not what I asked.”

“I’m going to call Olivia. Excuse me.” Bellamy went into the hangar and took out her cell phone.

Dent motioned toward the airplane. “Decent of him to make it available to us. Last night and today.”

“I told you, he wants you to get used to it. He called early this morning, wanting to know how you liked her. Says he hopes you’ll become so enamored with flying it you’ll go to work for him.” He clamped down on his cigar. “ ’Course if he could see you now, he might change his mind.”