Money To Burn (36 page)

There had to be a connection between Jake and Tom Nash’s lives somewhere. A place where six degrees of separation turned into one.

I pulled out from my file on Nash and reviewed all of the photographs and newspapers clippings carefully, in the hopes of finding a place or event where their lives had crossed, courtesy of one of my suspects. So far, only Lydia fit the bill and I could not believe that she’d had anything to do with her fiancé’s death since all she had gained was a broken heart. There was always Franklin Cosgrove, of course. He was drug buddies with Jake Talbot and partners with Tom Nash. But he had lost tens of millions when Nash died. Although, I realized, he had lost millions only in the long run. Technically, he had gained a big fat salary and new job from Randolph Talbot almost overnight. It wasn’t much of ksn’chain ofa motive, though. There was nothing to stop him from jumping ship when Nash was alive.

Or was there? I made a note to find out if there had been any agreements preventing the two partners from splitting. I wasn’t sure who had handled business affairs for King Buffalo, but Harry Ingram might know who had.

In the meantime, I had to find a connection. Maybe Harry Ingram could help with that, too. I hadn’t asked him any questions about Jake Talbot and he did move in their social circle. He might know of a friend in common that I’d missed.

Desperate, I pulled out the papers that Ingram had given me a few days ago and reviewed the list of the farmers participating in King Buffalo’s pilot tobacco-growing program. I scanned it carefully, looking for a familiar name, but did not find a single one I recognized. No connection there.

I put the list aside and tried Ingram’s office. His secretary told me he was in a meeting and said he would call me back. I asked if the meeting was with Mr. and Mrs. Nash and she said he would call me back. I then asked if they were going to accept the settlement with Talbot and, you guessed it, she said he would call me back. I gave up and said good-bye, asking if by any chance he could call me back.

God, but a good secretary is annoying.

I started going through the newspaper articles on the Talbots again, found nothing, then logged on the Internet and searched the archives of local newspapers one more time, paying special attention to social events that might have brought Jake Talbot and Tom Nash into the same orbit. But Nash hadn’t been much of a social butterfly and about all I gleaned for my efforts was that Jake Talbot and Franklin Cosgrove had plenty of opportunity to snort coke together. Maybe they thought wearing a tuxedo while you did it made it okay.

I expanded my search to include all online North and South Carolina newspapers, and ran a request for any articles including the name Talbot or Nash. The most interesting hit was a two-column article from the archives of the Morehead City newspaper, the Carteret County Crier, that detailed the death of Lydia’s mother over ten years before.

I printed it out and read it carefully, growing increasingly ashamed of my hatred for Lydia’s brother as I did so. Jake had been twelve years old and driving the family’s speedboat in Bogue Sound when he’d veered too close to a bridge and hit a sandbar that had shifted during a recent storm. His mother was thrown from the boat and smashed her head on a piling, losing consciousness and never recovering until she died ten hours later at Carteret County Hospital.

There was a photo of the family leaving the hospital. Jake Talbot was a gangly twelve-year-old adolescent, huddled in on himself with arms crossed and wrapped tightly toward his back. He was bent at the middle, as if his stomach ached, and his h ked,for myead was turned away from the photographer’s flash. Lydia stood at his side, dressed in a striped T-shirt and shorts, her face so puffy from crying that she looked much older than she did even now. She held a bewildered-looking toddler in her arms. It was her little brother Haydon. He was sucking on a chubby fist jammed in his mouth and staring at his sister with solemn, puzzled eyes. An unknown man with thinning hair and wearing an expensive suit was guiding Lydia down the hospital steps by her elbow. He held a briefcase in his free hand. I did not recognize him. Another lawyer, no doubt. The Talbot lives were filled with lawyers.

Randolph Talbot was nowhere to be seen.

Oh, man. Casey Jones, hard ass detective, suffers a crisis of conscience. My hatred for Jake Talbot had taken on a black, malevolent life of its own and I was suddenly ashamed of it. I knew what it was like to lose your mother in the space of a few cruel seconds, to have your world changed in a single unalterable instant, to feel as if the sun had darkened forever in a big part of your heart. And I’d had nothing to do with my mother’s death, while Jake Talbot had caused his.

No wonder he ran around, hating the world, hurting as many people as he could. And no wonder Lydia tiptoed around life’s edges, afraid to take a chance, able to love someone fully only after he was gone. Only little Haydon had been spared—and that was only thanks to Lydia’s need to live for someone else instead of herself.

All their money hadn’t been able to do a thing for them.

But pitying Jake Talbot was a dangerous mind game. I forced myself to think of the young woman huddled beneath a sheet in Durham Regional Hospital, fearing that her parents might found out what had happened and stop loving her for something that wasn’t her fault. Jake Talbot had done that to who knows how many other girls, and he had to pay. I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for him.

I surfed the Internet for a while, hoping to find a connection between Jake and Nash, but found nothing to help. There was something wrong nagging in a deep corner of my mind but it would not come out into the light. Maybe there was no connection after all. Maybe Lydia was right. Maybe the Talbots were cursed, and that was all there was to it.

I finally switched off the computer and called it an afternoon. I phoned Harry Ingram again, but he was still in a conference. Dollars to doughnuts, he was sitting across from Burly’s parents. I left my home number and headed back to Durham, feeling achingly tired and absolutely discouraged. Maybe a little sleep would help. I knew that forgetting the Talbots for a few hours would.

I dreamed of my mother. She was trapped beneath the murky waters of the Florida bayou, her face pressed up against the surface, staring at me in terror, as if she were trapped beneath glass and drowning. I was in a row boat, grappling hook in hand, fishing the waters for her but unable to control my arms. The hook flung wildly in the air bu kin ll tt I could not let it go, it was grafted to my arm like a clawed hand. There was a gospel choir singing in the background, and I knew the singers were lining the shore but I could not move my body to see them.

I heard a deep voice in my ear, a voice I had heard before. It was resonant, full of love. “She’s really something,” the voice said.

I woke, confused, groggy from afternoon sleep, still on the edges of the Florida swamp with the sounds of peepers and distant air boats ringing in my ears. The ringing grew louder and I reached out, fumbling for the telephone.

“Hello,” I croaked. My eyes were blurred from deep sleep. I squinted at the clock. It was nearly six o’clock.

“Casey?” Lydia said, her voice sounding far away. “I guess you heard about my brother?”

She didn’t know I’d had anything to do with his arrest.

“Yes,” was all I said.

“He’s gone,” Lydia whispered. “My father sent him out of the country.”

“What?” I asked, suddenly awake.

“This afternoon,” Lydia explained. “Jake drove up to D.C. early this morning. I thought he was seeing a lawyer. But when I woke up half an hour ago, Winslow told me the news he had heard from the big house—Jake flew to Vienna late this afternoon. I don’t think he’s ever coming back.”

She burst into tears. I didn’t blame her. Maybe Jake had been a bastard, but he was her brother and she’d just lost him as surely as she’d lost Tom Nash.

“Who knew about him leaving the country?” I demanded, my mind racing as I contemplated who to call and what I would say when I did.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think it was my grandmother’s idea. My father would have tried to buy his way out of it. My grandmother is smart enough to know that Jake went too far this time. But I can’t be sure who suggested it. They didn’t tell me anything until it was over.”

No, and they made damn sure you were sedated until the deed was done, I thought. “I have to talk to you,” I told her. “I’m coming over.”

I needed to tell her how I had been involved with Jake’s arrest, before she heard it from someone else. It was important to me.

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“No,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “I can’t stand to be here any longer. I have to get out of here. I have to get away from them. This place is like a prison. There are reporters at the gates.”

“Where’s Haydon?” I asked.

“Upstairs playing video games. He doesn’t know anything, just that our father is in a bad mood.”

“Take him to the airport,” I ordered her. “Can you send him to relatives in Savannah?”

“Sure,” she said. “Midway has a flight every night at eight o’clock.”

“Explain what happened on the way to the airport,” I said. “Make sure he knows everything and that he knows it isn’t his fault. He won’t be surprised, Lydia, believe me. I think he knows your brother better than anyone. And make sure he understands that you’ll be joining him soon.” I didn’t want her to go to Savannah; the killer knew she had a connection to the town, but I had to get her out of Durham and it was a start. She could leave tomorrow, stay there for a couple of days and then we could take it from there.

“Okay,” she said obediently. “I’ll get Winslow to drive me.”

“Good. I think you better do it without telling your grandmother or father.” I wouldn’t put it past the two of them to trot out poor Haydon for the cameras as a symbol of the family’s respectability. The kid deserved better.

“What do I do after that?” she asked.

I thought about it. “You could stay over here,” I finally offered. I looked at my bra hanging off a doorknob and the pile of dishes in the sink. “Though I don’t exactly think it’s your speed.”

“I need a drink,” she insisted suddenly. “Please, Casey. Meet me for a drink. I need to sit in a normal bar alongside of normal people, enjoying a drink like I have a normal life.”

It was a good idea. If we met for drinks at MacLaine’s, my friend Jack would take good care of us and, in the unlikely event reporters followed Lydia there, he’d probably take care of them, too. Plus, she could book a room at the nearby Europa Hotel and stay as long as she needed.

Lydia agreed to the plan. After we hung up, I phoned Detective Morrow and explained that I’d heard a rumor about Jake Talbot flying out of Dulles. Anne thanked me, asked no questions, promised to notify Durham and hung up. I’d never known her to waste her time asking useless questions.

I stripped and sto kipp/spod in the shower until my hot water ran out, hoping to rinse away the unhappiness that the Talbot family seemed steeped in. The cooler water lifted the fog from my brain that sleeping in the day brings and I began to think ahead, trying to figure out what Jake Talbot fleeing the country could mean. I knew I was overlooking something. That missing piece still nagged at my brain. It was maddening, but I could not work it out.

I rubbed myself dry carefully. The cuts and bruises from the fire were starting to heal and my bones had lost their deep ache. But I still hurt all over.

I had a sudden urge to bring order into my life and dressed in a cobalt blue silk sheath dress with matching slippers, pinned up my still-red hair, and decided to wear

my rhinestone earrings in the shape of spirals. It seemed like a long time since I had looked good, even longer since I’d felt good.

Hell, I needed a drink worse than Lydia. 

I arrived at MacLaine’s early. Jack was working at one end of an empty bar.

“What night is it?” I asked, claiming a stool. “This place is dead.”

“Are things that bad?” Jack asked, inspecting my outfit. “You don’t even know what day it is?”

I plopped my elbows on the bar. “You have no idea,” I told him. “No idea at all. This case is a killer.”

He stared at a bad bruise on my forearm without comment. “For your information, it’s Tuesday. And your first gin and tonic is on me.”

“Make it a Jack,” I told him. “Neat.”

He stared. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?” he asked sympathetically, pouring a huge dollop of Jack Daniels into a highball glass and setting it in front of me. “You look like a million bucks in that dress, you know. And that hair, well, what can I say? Maybe you don’t deserve someone better than me, after all.”

He leered cheerfully and I smiled in spite of my mood.

“Thanks,” I told him weakly. “I figure this color of blue matches my bruises.”

“Okay,” he ordered me, pulling a stool over from the drainage sink and taking a seat. “Tell me all about it. That’s my job, you know. The doctor is in.”

I let it all k>I /span>

Never drink Jack Daniels on an empty stomach. The whiskey burned a line of fire right to my gut then took a U-turn and went straight to my head. Before I knew it, I was not only relating my tale of woe about the case, I was heaping on the self-pity as well. “Every time I turn around, someone else has fallen in love and is getting all sloppy about it. I feel like a leper and I was perfectly happy being alone before.”