Cemetery Road Page 20

  “How long has Josh worked for you?”

  “Five months. I hired him in January.”

  “Okay.” I think about this.

  “It gets worse. Paul associates you with me being natural down there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s the one who likes it bare. And at some point back in the mists of time, I admitted to him that you liked it the other way.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know, it was stupid. But he was always asking me about us, so I told him to get him off my back. I couldn’t possibly have foreseen that a day like this would come.”

  I’m trying to get my mind around Paul spending hours obsessing about this. “So he thinks you might have grown your bush back for me.”

  She shrugs. “I did. So, sure, he’s thinking that. He’s in paranoid mode.”

  “We’re so screwed.”

  The tension in Jet’s face is plain. “It’s not ideal.”

  “Far from it.”

  “Hey, the coffee’s ready.” She takes a painted mug from the Keurig and tries a scalding sip. “There’s something else,” she says, sucking air across her lips.

  “What?”

  “My mother-in-law’s acting weird.”

  “Sally?”

  “She is my only mother-in-law.”

  Sally Matheson is a Bienville native and archetypal Southern belle. One of the town’s great mysteries is how a saint like Sally ever stayed married to Max. “What did Sally do?”

  “She asked to talk to me today, in private. I’d gone by her house to drop Kevin off. He was supposed to do some batting practice with Max on the machine. After he got out of the car, Sally asked if I had time to come in. I saw something in her eyes—something off, I don’t know what. But she gets that look when there’s some serious family matter that needs dealing with. Anyway, I was worried she might have heard something about you and me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went in, of course.” Jet takes another careful sip of coffee. “Sally fixed some tea. We were trying to find an excuse to get Kevin out of the kitchen when Max called and said some famous baseball player had shown up down at College Sports. He asked if I could run Kevin down there to meet him. Kev got all excited, but I told Sally we could wait ten minutes. I wanted to know what was worrying her. But she waved me off and said to take Kevin right down to the store. We could talk another time.”

  “That’s it?”

  Jet arches her eyebrows. “It may not sound like much, but I know Sally. She doesn’t ask for tête-à-têtes unless it’s important.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  Jet takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. “I’m worried someone busted us without our knowing, then went to her about it.”

  My heart kicks again. “How careful were you coming out here today? You said you had issues.”

  “Just logistical complications. Nothing to do with Paul.” She takes the K-Cup out of the Keurig and drops it in the trash can under the sink. “I know for sure he’s out at the baseball field right now with Kevin and the team.”

  I sigh with relief. “Okay. But I’d better not go to that party tonight.”

  “The Aurora party? Were you invited?”

  “No. But Nadine Sullivan asked me to be her plus-one.”

  Jet’s eyes flicker with interest. “Really. You told her you’d go with her?”

  “I did, actually. Are you okay with that?”

  “Well . . . sure. I’m just surprised.”

  “Why? I thought it was good cover. I want to look over the Poker Club guys, see how they’re acting after Buck’s death. Maybe question them a little bit.”

  Jet is giving me a sidelong look. After a few seconds, she clucks her tongue and says, “You’re right. You showing up with Nadine could be the best possible move. She’s a credible love interest for you.”

  This makes me laugh. “What does that mean? One who can compete with you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Are you jealous? Seriously?”

  She looks back at me for a while without speaking. In the dim light of the kitchen, her dark eyes appear luminous. Against her brown skin, her sapphire earrings look like stones taken from the eyes of some idol in a distant land. Just as I feel the impulse to reach under her T-shirt, I wonder whether she bought the earrings herself or if Paul dropped ten grand on them one night while surfing the web.

  “What are you thinking?” she asks, reaching for the button of my jeans.

  “Maybe you should head on home. Just to be safe.”

  Her unblinking gaze deepens. “You say that like I won’t be coming back for a while.”

  I’d like to argue with her, but the idea that Paul might know about us has profoundly altered my view of our situation.

  “If Paul knows,” she says, “I’ll know it tonight. I’ll feel it.”

  “When he throws you off the roof of the Aurora?”

  “Let’s hope not.” She drinks a big swallow of coffee, then looks toward the back door. “I bought new burner phones at Walmart. They’re in my pants, out in the yard.”

  Now I remember her clothes strewn across the grass. “You paid cash?”

  Her eyes say, Do you think I’m an idiot? But her mouth says, “Of course.”

  “Jet . . . we can’t keep doing this. Not with Paul acting paranoid. If he’s looking for clues, he’s going to find them. Just you peeling away from your normal life every day is dangerous.”

  “Not while they’re at baseball practice.”

  “Paul could get someone else to follow you easily. He’s got dozens of employees.”

  “I know. Are you really saying we need to stay separate for a while? Because that will suck.”

  “I’m saying more than that.”

  Fear flashes in her eyes, but she waits for me to go on.

  “Our whole plan—me going back to D.C. first, then you working toward divorce—that’s just not realistic anymore. No matter how much we try to delay or ease the pain, there’s never going to be a good time to tell Paul. Whether I’m in Bienville or D.C. doesn’t make much difference.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that. Plus, the issue isn’t simply divorce.”

  I take hold of her arms. “It’s custody, I know. But this is the flaw we’re ignoring. You were always going to hit the wall of Max’s control over the chancery court. How the hell can you ever really hope to get custody of Kevin?”

  She looks at the floor and sighs heavily, and I worry that I’ve pushed her too far. But then she looks up with a new light in her eyes. “I’ve been working on that,” she says cryptically.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it yet. Let’s just say I’ve focused my not inconsiderable abilities on finding a way to neutralize Max’s power.”

  “The whole Poker Club’s power? Or just Max’s?”

  “Just Max. If I discredited him with the club, they wouldn’t lift a finger to interfere in my divorce.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what this involves?”

  “Because it’s a little dangerous. And it’s not strictly legal. I’m still working on the logistics. I just want you to know that I’m not living in a dream world. I know what the obstacle to our being together is, and I intend to remove it.”

  Pushing her isn’t going to get me the answers I want.

  “I hate to ask this at this moment,” she says, “but how is your father doing?”

  “A little worse, actually. His heart, not his Parkinson’s. But there’s no way to predict how he’s going to do in the short run.”

  “Please don’t get the wrong idea,” she says. “I don’t want Duncan to die at all. And if my little project works out, my divorce won’t depend on you going back to Washington first.”

  “You’re starting to piss me off now. Giving me hope, but not being specific.”

  She pops up on her tiptoes and kisses my mouth. “I like to promise small, then overde
liver.” She bites my bottom lip, then gives my groin a firm squeeze. “You want to go again?” She looks at her watch. “Five minutes or less. I can bend over the counter.”

  As much as I would like to, I want to question her further before she leaves. “We haven’t talked about Buck.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I quickly catch her up on the temp pathologist and rushed autopsy. “I’d say ‘accidental death’ has already been bought and paid for.”

  “Where’d you get that?” she asks.

  “The coroner. Byron Ellis. He also told me he found reddish-orange brick dust in Buck’s skull wound. One of those old Natchez bricks. He’s going on the record in tomorrow’s paper.”

  “Wow. That’ll ring some alarm bells downtown. What’s the significance of the Natchez brick?”

  “There aren’t any at Lafitte’s Den. But there are plenty out at the mill site. The old electroplating factory was built from them. Byron and I think somebody caught Buck out there digging last night and killed him.”

  Jet bites her lip as she races through mental scenarios. “I noticed that earthmoving equipment starting up as I left the site today. Were they destroying evidence?”

  “Probably.”

  “Should we go out there tonight and see what we can find?”

  “How the hell would you do that? Can you get away from the house?”

  She sighs in frustration. “Not tonight. Too late to cook up a business trip.”

  “I’ve got some maps Buck made, also some drone footage that shows where he was probably digging. I’d like to go out there, but there could still be guards. Although Quinn says Buck told her there were none posted last night.”

  “Too dangerous,” she says, squeezing my left hand. “You’re worried about my clothes being outside, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know why, considering we’re locked behind the gate. But yeah, it’s on my mind.”

  She tilts her head toward the door, and we walk outside together. Her clothes lie like little islands in the green sea of grass between the patio and the woods. Any other day I would laugh, but not today.

  “Killing Buck was a big step,” she says, stopping at the edge of the patio. “I think there’s something really dark behind that paper mill deal. Really dirty.”

  “Dirtier than the corruption we already suspect?”

  She nods. “Drop all lesser questions about the mill deal and ask the big one: Why did Azure Dragon come here? If I’d been on their site selection committee, I’d have picked six other cities before Bienville. Maybe ten.”

  “The city and the state sweetened the hell out of their offer.”

  “Not enough to top Arkansas and Alabama.”

  She has a point. “They’re routing I-14 through here, pretty much solely for Azure Dragon. That’s big, Jet.”

  “The public schools are still crap.”

  “Not your charter school.”

  “Which only handles a fraction of the city’s students.” She shakes her head, and I sense her mind churning. “I’m telling you, there’s something rotten at the core of this. Not just garden-variety graft, or even mega-graft. Something so big they couldn’t risk Buck causing delays or bringing in state authorities. And I’m going to find out what it is.” She clicks her tongue three times fast, then looks out over the backyard. “Let’s get those new phones. I need to go.”

  I catch hold of her arm before she can start walking. “Hang on. Say you do that. Say we go out there tonight and find Indian bones, or even evidence that Buck was murdered for threatening the mill. But to use it, we have to blow up the paper mill deal. Do we do that?”

  She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do all along? Get the bastards who rule this town by breaking whatever laws it suits them to break?”

  “Of course. But if the town loses the mill, the dominoes will start to fall. The new interstate, the bridge. A lot of people who’ve done nothing wrong will be hurt badly. Some we know, others we don’t.”

  “Is this you talking, or Nadine?”

  “She did pose the question this morning.”

  Jet gives me a penetrating look before answering. “You’re right about the cost. But we won’t be living here, so it’s not our problem. And if they murdered Buck, then I say, ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.’”

  This woman was born to be a prosecutor. “You know, we usually talk about the Poker Club like a monolithic entity. I want you to break them down for me. Tell me who’s the most dangerous.”

  “How do you mean? Arthur Pine’s dangerous, but only in a courtroom, not a dark alley.”

  “I’m talking about violence. Like killing Buck. Which members might go that far, or have the connections to have someone else do it for them?”

  Jet looks at her watch again. “Let’s talk while we walk. Prepping for that party might make Paul leave practice early.”

  She starts across the grass, and I have to hurry to catch up.

  “Only nine of the Poker Club’s twelve members are really active,” she explains. “Of those, I’d say Tommy Russo is the most violent. He’s from a Jersey mob family, and I’ve heard some sick stories about him.”

  “Such as?”

  “His brother fed two guys into a wood chipper in Voorhees State Park. While they were alive. Tommy was supposedly there.”

  “That sounds like an urban legend.”

  Jet bends and hooks her panties off the grass with one finger. “Tommy’s brother fled the country before the FBI could arrest him for it. Tommy also told Max that he’d pushed an informant out of a Beechcraft once.”

  “Jesus. Max told you that?”

  Jet shakes her head. “He told Paul. Paul told me one night when he was drunk.”

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a casino owner has murder in his past. Still, when I think of Tommy walking along the Port Road in his expensive suit, it’s hard to picture him shoving a guy out of an airplane. “Who else?”

  Jet stops and picks her pants up off the grass. “Wyatt Cash.”

  “Wyatt? Really?”

  She steps into her panties and pulls them up, then does the same with her slacks, wriggling them over her hips, then zipping them tight. “Wyatt’s not just a hunter, he’s a military groupie. He uses former Special Forces soldiers as paid endorsers for his hunting gear.”

  “Great. Who else?”

  She looks into my eyes. “Max, of course.”

  “No shit. I would have put Max at the top of the list. He did some bad stuff in Vietnam.”

  “I forgot. He used to brag to his players, didn’t he? I don’t even want to think about it. Oh, and there’s Paul, of course.”

  “Paul’s not a member of the club.”

  “He’s the heir apparent to Max’s seat. And he’s tied inextricably into a lot of Max’s investments, not to mention the lumber company.”

  “Paul liked Buck,” I say, even as a disturbing thought rises in my mind.

  “He did,” Jet agrees. “Paul always contributed to his causes, the Indian powwows and stuff. On the other hand, business is business. And Paul has the connections to farm out violence if he wants to.”

  “ShieldCorp?”

  She nods and leads me toward her bra. “He stays in contact with all those guys.”

  “Jet, does it strike you as strange that Paul suddenly tells me he’s suspicious about you having an affair within hours of Buck dying?”

  This question sends her into that state where her mind is working at a speed beyond my capacity. “Because you’re the most likely to dig deep into his death,” she says. “He throws out a shiny object to distract you.”

  “Right.”

  “For him to expect that to work, he’d have to know you and I are in fact having an affair.”

  “What if he does know?”

  She shakes her head, but in her eyes I see a shadow of doubt. Still looking concerned, she bends to pick up her bra, then slips her le
ft arm into the strap. “You want a last look before they’re gone?”

  “Don’t need one. They’ve been imprinted on my mind since I was fourteen.”

  She gives me an appreciative smile. “They’re a little different now. Gravity sucks.”

  I look down at her breasts, at the dark nipples that have captivated me since I was a boy. “Not so different.”

  “White lies.” She fastens the bra, then skips ten feet ahead of me to retrieve her blouse. After she buttons it, she reaches into her pants pocket and takes out a nondescript black cell phone.

  “This one’s yours. The number to mine is already programmed on speed dial.”

  “When did you do that?” I ask, taking the phone from her.

  “Sitting at red lights on my way out. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

  Just like everything else. “About tonight,” I say hesitantly. “The party.”

  “What?”

  “We need to do the best acting of our lives. No secret touches, no freighted glances, no double entendres—not even if we pass each other in an empty hallway.”

  “You think you need to tell me that?”

  My warning obviously irritated her. “I wouldn’t usually. But something changed today. I feel like the world has suddenly spun off track. It isn’t just Buck, or even Paul. This whole day, memories have been flooding over me, things I haven’t thought about for years.”

  Her expression softens. “Me too, a little bit. But all Paul has on his mind right now is Jerry Lee Lewis. So relax. You know I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

  With that, she kisses me lightly on the lips, then walks swiftly across the grass and into the trees.

  Chapter 19

  The Aurora Hotel may be the most unique building in Mississippi. In a city filled with Colonial, French, Spanish, and Greek Revival architecture, this art deco temple rises above all that like a shrine to the early twentieth century. The millionaire who built it was a victim of the Egyptomania that swept the world in the wake of the discoveries in the Valley of the Kings, and the interior of the Aurora reflected his obsession. Only the name of the hotel broke the pattern, and that was no riddle. Aurora was the owner’s daughter, so Bienville got the Aurora Hotel rather than the Isis or the Nefertiti.