Death Threads (17 page)

She slowed her pace as she approached Debbie’s Bakery, the constant foot traffic to and from its front door a not too distant memory that tugged at her heart. While there was a part of her that agreed with Debbie’s mom in insisting she close down for a few weeks, there was another side that felt it would do her friend good to keep busy. At least until Colby’s body was found and they could give him a proper burial.

But, then again, she could only imagine what Debbie and the kids were going through. Losing a loved one in such a sudden and violent manner was horrific enough; being robbed of a final good-bye was nothing short of unfathomable.

Glancing down at the documents she’d pulled together the night before, Tori inhaled deeply. She might be going about the notion of helping Debbie in the wrong way, but at least it was something. How the people in this supposedly unified town could continue to sit idly by, while one of their own suffered, was something she’d never understand. Where were the search parties through the woods? Where were the flyers on the telephone poles? Where were the door-to-door searches? Weren’t they the kinds of things that friends did at times like these? Or were scenes like those simply part of big-budget movies?

She knew Chief Dallas was investigating the crime as she’d seen him around town talking to the likes of Carter Johnson and Dirk Rogers. Yet no arrest had taken place and no body had been found.

Which meant one thing. He needed more help in the investigation—help she intended to give whether he liked it or not. Talking with Gabe Jameson had been step one. Her meeting in five minutes was step two.

The creamy white shingle swayed back and forth above the door with a rare noontime breeze, the name it sported tough to make out around the motion. But that was okay because she knew what it said. She just hadn’t realized—until three days earlier—that the name had been altered in an attempt to gain respect.

Tucking the stack of documents under one arm, Tori tugged the hem of her summer jacket down around her hips, took a deep breath, and then pushed her way through the front door, a sudden surge of adrenaline and determination guiding her forward.

“Can I help you?” A woman in her early twenties peeked her head around a computer monitor and smiled brightly.

“Yes, hi. I’m Tori Sinclair, I have an appointment with Mr. James at eleven thirty.”

As the woman swiveled away from her computer to consult a calendar on her desk, Tori took a moment to study the room. The waiting area was cozy enough with khaki and navy upholstered armchairs grouped around a mahogany coffee table covered with a variety of reading material. The secretary’s adjacent office space was small but ample with a number of filing cabinets lining the wall to the side of the woman’s desk. A hallway to the left led to a closed door with a narrow yet prominent nameplate—a shiny gold sign that bore the same moniker as the various diplomas and recognitions proudly framed and scattered throughout the office.

“You can go on back, Mr. James is expecting you.” The woman raised her long slender hand into the air and pointed down the very hallway Tori had just been eyeing. “Would you like a cup of coffee or a glass of water?”

“No, I’m fine. But thank you.” She tugged her jacket down one last time and then headed in the direction the secretary indicated, the door at the end of the hallway swinging open as she approached.

She’d seen Harrison James a handful of times over the past six months, but other than engaging in occasional short-lived chitchat over his latest round of donated law books, she hadn’t paid much attention beyond the basics—late fifties, thinning salt-and-pepper hair, wire-rimmed glasses. But today was different. Harrison James was no longer some nice man who supported his local library. He was Harrison James, formerly known as Hank Jameson—a man who just had his carefully spit-shined life turned upside down by Debbie’s husband.

“Victoria, it’s so nice to see you again. How are things at the library?” The man extended his hand outward, his grip surprisingly firm for a man who projected intelligence but not necessarily physical strength. “Did Tina offer you something to drink before she left for lunch?”

“Tina?”

“My secretary.” He released her hand and gestured toward the chair in front of his desk.

“Oh, yes. Yes she did. But I’m fine.” Tori perched on the chair the attorney indicated and crossed her legs at the knees. “Thank you for seeing me today, Mr. James.”

With a shove of his hand, Harrison James closed his office door and strode around the desk, dropping into the high-backed muted red leather chair that looked as if it had been purchased fairly recently. “Call me Harrison, please.” He placed his elbows on the leather armrests and tented his fingers beneath his chin. “So what brings you to my office, Victoria?”

“U-uh, well, I think I’d like to write up a will.” Forcing her words to remain calm and steady, Tori pulled the stack of documents from beneath her arm and set them on the man’s desk. “I don’t have very much . . . just a car . . . and about ten thousand dollars in a savings account . . . but I was thinking that perhaps I should make sure it goes where I want it to go in the event something happens to me.”

He nodded then rolled his chair back just enough to open a drawer on the right-hand side of his desk from which he extracted a yellow legal pad and silver pen. “That’s very forward thinking on your part, Victoria. So many people shy away from drafting a will out of fear, superstition, and even a strange sense of immortality.”

“Trust me, Mr. James—I mean, Harrison—I’ve been guilty of those same things. It’s why I didn’t come in sooner.” She shrugged, her gaze playing across his face. “But now . . . after what’s happened . . . I can’t help but think that way, you know?”

His chin bobbed ever so slightly atop his fingertips as his left eyebrow lowered with concern. “Are you sick?”

“Sick?” she repeated, the word sounding foreign to her lips as much as her ears. “No, no nothing like that. I’m fine. Fit as a fiddle as my great-grandmother used to say.”

Lowering his hands to his armrests, he rolled forward in his chair then spun to the left, drawing the ankle of his right leg across his left knee as his hands knitted together to cup the back of his head. “Then I’m not sure what you mean, Victoria. What’s happened?”

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Tori shrugged, her gaze still resting on his. “Midthirties isn’t much older than I am. And while society tends to equate death with the elderly, it does happen at a younger age.”

She knew she was leading him on, drawing out her answer as long as possible, but she had to know. She had to see if there was a reaction—a twitch, a movement to his jaw, a fisting of his hand . . . anything.

“Yes,” he prompted in what was becoming a bored voice.

“Not that it’s normal for someone in their midthirties to die”—she shot her hands out, palms down—“because I know it’s not. But illnesses happen, accidents happen, and . . . well . . . apparently bad things happen as well.”

“I’m not following.” He unclasped his hands and brought them to his lap as his right leg returned to the floor with a thump. “Did something happen to a friend of yours?”

She nodded. “To one of yours, too. At least I imagine so. I can’t imagine anyone not being friends with someone as kind and gentle and giving as . . . as Colby Calhoun.”

Like clockwork, the man’s relaxed—albeit bored—demeanor disappeared as a storm cloud rolled across his face tightening his lips and jawline. Pushing his chair back, Harrison James jumped to his feet and paced across the room, whirling around as he reached the window that stood open to the day’s breeze. “You can’t imagine anyone not being friends with Colby Calhoun?” he thundered.

“No, I-I can’t.” She watched as his hands fisted at his sides and his face reddened with anger. She’d pressed his buttons and he’d reacted exactly as she’d hoped. Only now that he had, she couldn’t help but feel a little nervous, a little vulnerable.

Then again, the man’s secretary was just down the—

Scratch that. Perky Tina was at lunch . . .

She swallowed. And waited.

“Do you know what your kind and gentle and giving Colby Calhoun has done to m-my town?”

Inhaling deeply, Tori forged ahead. She was, after all, already in a closed office in the middle of an empty building with this man. “Don’t you mean what he’s done to you, Mr. James?”

He stared at her, his teeth obviously clenching behind his closed lips.

“Or . . . should I say, Mr. Jameson?”

His jaw slacked open. “You know?”

“I didn’t. Until Tuesday. But really, what difference does it make?” She pulled the stack of documents back onto her lap and straightened her shoulders.

“What difference does it make? What difference does it make?” His voice grew hoarse as he continued, his left eye developing a slight tic. “It’s the difference between being taken seriously and being a laughingstock . . . it’s the difference between living well and living like my brother . . . it’s the difference between making something of myself and settling for status quo.”

“So you alter your name, go off to college and then law school, only to come back to the same town you grew up in? That doesn’t make any sense to me, Mr. James.”

He leaned his head against the wall, his body slumping wearily at his shoulders. “I know it doesn’t. You’re not the first one to make that point and you most certainly won’t be the last. But Sweet Briar is my home. It was the one consistently normal part of my childhood.”

“But people knew who you were when you came back, didn’t they?” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her seat, wished she could pull the answers she sought right out of his mouth. “So why change your name and pretend you were someone other than who you are?”

“I wanted a fresh start in a place that meant something to me. And the people who’d known me since I was a little boy seemed willing to give me that chance. They knew my family and the way things were and they understood. There’s not a person in this town who would have willingly traded their family for mine. I came from a pack of losers . . . moonshine guzzling losers who thought life was one big drunken night. They didn’t have any aspirations. They didn’t have any dreams. They didn’t care if the house fell down around their heads so long as the moonshine was okay. But I did. I had aspirations. I had dreams. And the folks around here were willing to let me be my own person with my own present and future.” He raked a hand through his thinning hair, his eyes darkening once again. “And they did. Until that damn Colby Calhoun started nosing around in something that wasn’t any of his concern.”

“The truth is everyone’s concern, Mr. James.”

“Not when that truth threatens to destroy everything I’ve built. Not when that truth makes everyone around here remember who I am and where I came from.” Harrison James pushed off the wall with a firm foot and strode over to the door. Yanking it open, he turned back to Tori, his eyes narrowing as he addressed her with venom in his voice. “I think it’s time for you to leave. If you’re truly inclined to create a will I suggest you find someone else to do it.”

She rose to her feet, her legs firmly planted in front of her chair. “It’s quite obvious you’re angry, Mr. James. Furious, even.”

“Very astute observation, Miss Sinclair,” he hissed as his knuckles whitened around the door.

Gathering her purse and papers, Tori walked past the man and into the hallway, her hands trembling as she spun around to face him once again. “Colby Calhoun’s death doesn’t make the truth go away. You have to know that, especially in your profession.”

“In my profession, Miss Sinclair, all that matters is getting justice for the little guy.”

“And that isn’t Colby Calhoun?” she asked as he readied his hand to slam the door.

“Hell no. That justice was mine. All mine.”

One by one, each member of the Sweet Briar Ladies Society Sewing Circle descended on Tori’s cottage, armed and ready to stitch away the hours on a project that would benefit the town’s nursing home residents.

Rose Winters was the first to arrive in her drab colored housecoat and trademark cotton button-down sweater. Gone was the tension and hostility the retired schoolteacher had worn like a badge of honor just four nights earlier, in its place a weariness that sagged her frail and bony shoulders with an invisible weight.

Next, was Georgina Hayes, the tall and lanky mayor who looked as if she’d aged ten years over and above the ten she’d added when her husband was tried and convicted of the town’s first murder just six months earlier. Slowly but surely her perfectly honed handshake had grown less enthusiastic, her loosened grip symbolic of her hold on life.

British nanny Beatrice Tharrington, the youngest of the group, was quieter than usual, her gaze skirting direct eye contact with everyone and anyone in favor of a spool of thread and a needle.