Broken Bonds. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ Royce his Jim Beam on the rocks. “Yeah, the Azure Lake truck Orlando usually drives when the black car seems a bit too much or you’re headed to rough ground.”

      “I hear you, partner. That’s why I liked that truck around here. Believe me, I don’t always need Orlando hanging on—or maybe I do now.”

      They clinked glasses and sat facing each other across the mahogany bar. Moments like this made Matt really miss his father. As close as he felt personally and professionally to this man who had been his dad’s best friend and who did not have children of his own, it was never quite the same. He admired Royce tremendously, but there was always an edge to the man that couldn’t be smoothed away.

      “Okay, I’ll just say it,” Royce said. “The hillbilly jerk who tried to shove you off might have been after me.” It was a statement, not a question, but then Royce always seemed to have all the answers.

      “Possibly. But why you, the moneyman, the salvation of this area in people’s eyes?”

      “In some people’s eyes. If he was after Brad Mason, my right-hand guy in charge of the fracking contracts, the would-be killer is nearsighted as hell. Brad’s always in that fire-engine red, look-at-me truck, which is good advertising, though I know he’s got fans and haters out there.”

      “Woody drove the white truck once in a while but he’s dead, and you’re always driven by Orlando, so that leaves me as the target. But if the guy in that truck wanted me to die, why?”

      “Yeah. Matt, you know Woody was a loose cannon. I’m sorry he had that freak accident, but it kept me from firing him for printing up those homemade signs and picketing this place. It shook up the residents here. He should have picketed one of the drilling sites, not here.”

      “I hire and fire here, and I would not have fired him.”

      “Okay, he was a good worker. I overanalyze everything.”

      “Me, too, now. Even after hashing all this out with the sheriff, his deputy and Charlene Lockwood, I still can’t figure—”

      “Lockwood’s the woman who just happened to come along in time?”

      “What do you mean ‘just happened to’?”

      “I checked into her. A bleeding heart social worker who could, possibly should, profit from helping you get out of that truck in time. Maybe it was pushed just so far so it wouldn’t go over, then here she comes to help. I hear she visits families up in the hills and could no doubt use a hefty reward for her Appalachian project. And, like you said, who has the money around here? I do, you do—and people know that.”

      “You mean like she set it up?” Matt’s voice rose in tone and volume. “Royce, now you’re over the edge.”

      “Calm down. Anything’s possible, that’s all. You’ve got to look at all angles.”

      “She asked for nothing.”

      “Good. Great. But I wish you’d called me first, not gone to the sheriff. We don’t need negative PR or people speculating. The Chillicothe newspaper will pick it up from the police report, or worse yet, good old gossip will get going around here. We’ve worked damn hard to get along with the townies who think people don’t belong even if they’ve been here for a hundred years. We could have cleaned this up by donating to Ms. Lockwood’s cause and doing an investigation ourselves—which I plan to do. We don’t need the sheriff breathing down our necks.”

      Matt slammed his glass down on the bar, spilling some of his drink. “Last time I checked, attempted murder is a criminal offense. Of course I went to the sheriff. He needs to look into it!”

      “Okay, didn’t mean to take it out on you after all you’ve been through today. I suppose he had to know, but let’s try to keep it from getting tied to bad local feelings about this ‘ritzy’ area, as I heard one guy uptown put it. And I don’t want it tied to the fracking. Hopefully, money talks louder than the environmental do-gooders yakking about the quality of life around here from our drilling.” He rolled his eyes. “You know, that crazy Bright Star told his disciples that blasting into the bedrock like that could cause earthquakes, one sign for the end of the world—that is, until I bought out his old property for big bucks. Now he’s on my side, and that’s what we need, people around here on our side, not trying to shove us off cliffs.”

      “Royce, we can’t sweep what happened today under the PR rug. It might have been some drunk guy, but I think it meant something, and since it was my life on the line, I’m not letting it go. And I mean to thank Char Lockwood and cooperate with the sheriff, too.”

      “Sure. Sure, I understand. Too late not to. Hey, let’s get something to eat at the lodge, then I’ve got my fracking superintendent meeting me there later to report on how the drilling’s going. EEC is helping the down-and-outs here with some very nice drilling rights packages, bringing up the whole area, that’s my goal. The locals already owe us big thanks for the influx of jobs and money and revitalizing the stores downtown. Even newcomer Charlene Lockwood must know we’re doing great and are making good profits.”

      Still annoyed that Royce was suspicious of Char’s motives, Matt went upstairs to turn out lights. Darkness had descended. As he glimpsed his own reflected image in the large glass window of his loft bedroom before snapping off the light, a thought hit him. If the man in the truck who tried to shove him off the cliff meant for him to die, why did he cover his face? If he just meant to scare him, warn him—set him up somehow, maybe for Charlene Lockwood to come along—he would have covered his face.

      No, Royce, wily as he was, had to be wrong about Char. So what if she probably had ties to hill folk, maybe some who owed her favors? Royce just went wild with things his front man and informant, Brad Mason, found out about locals here, so he knew what contracts to offer for what amount where he wanted to drill, including working with that weird cult leader, Bright Star Monson. Talk about a guy with hidden ulterior motives. Royce had said the cult leader was a mind-control guru even he could learn from—which reminded Matt again that, even working for and with a dynamo like Royce, he still needed to be his own man.

      He had another unsettling thought. He closed his vertical blinds. If someone was watching or stalking him, they could see right in, and this house was full of large windows.

      “Hey,” Royce said as Matt hurried down the freestanding staircase and went to the front hall closet to get a jacket. “I’m telling you again, you need a good woman in your life, my man. Now Veronica, this new lady I’m seeing, has a younger sister who’s a knockout, and we’d like to fix you up with her.”

      “The fixing up I need right now is to figure out who almost killed me and why. And to make sure no one tries it again.”

      * * *

      “So one thing I haven’t mentioned,” Gabe told Tess and Char after questioning Char about what she’d seen up on the mountain, followed by a late dinner. “In Matt’s burned-out truck, we found a pristine piece of paper that had a crude skull and crossbones on it and read, ‘Your fired.’” He spelled it out for them. “I’m sending it to my friend Vic Reingold at the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to see if we can get prints or DNA off it, but that may take a while.”

      “Bad spelling, so maybe an uneducated writer,” Char observed. “Sad to say, there are plenty of those around here. What do you think it means?”

      “Don’t know,” Gabe СКАЧАТЬ