White Hot Page 13

  Clark came back around to face Sayre. “During summer break, I have to keep the kids while Luce works. She has a job at the hospital. In the records office, filing insurance claims, things like that.”

  “You work at night and babysit during the day? When do you sleep?”

  “I manage.” He shot her a smile, but it gradually faded. “Don’t blame Luce for being rude. She’s not mad at you. I’m the one who’s put that chip on her shoulder. I’m not the most reliable husband.” Lowering his voice, he said, “The truth is, Sayre, I’m a drunk. Ask around about me, that’s the first thing folks will tell you.”

  “I would never pay attention to gossip, Clark. Especially about you.”

  “Well, the gossips would be right.” He turned his head aside and gazed off into the distance for several moments. “After . . . You know . . .”

  Yes, she did know.

  “After all that, I got off track,” he said.

  “We both did.”

  His eyes moved back to her. “But you got back on. And look at you. Wow. You’re something.” He gave another humorless laugh directed toward himself. “Then there’s me. I never got back on track. I went into a downward spiral and never saw much point in trying to pull myself back up. I didn’t see the point in much of anything.”

  “I’m sorry.” There they were again, those two words, heartfelt but utterly ineffective.

  “Luce has stuck with me longer than she should have. She’s given me more chances than I deserve to get my act together. I’ll do all right for a while, then . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked deeply into her eyes. His were filled with desperation. “I’ve got to find some purpose in life, Sayre. I’ve got to do right by my son.”

  “I’m sure you will. You’ll regain your footing and go on. Just as I did.”

  She reached out and touched his arm in encouragement. He glanced down at her hand where it rested, then looked at her, and they smiled at each other, but their smiles were rueful expressions of regret over what might have been.

  “I won’t keep you,” she said hoarsely, letting her hand fall away. “I should have called before I came by. Or maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you at all.”

  “I wouldn’t trade for seeing you, Sayre.”

  “Take care of yourself.”

  “You too.”

  Close to tears, she turned and walked quickly to her car. As she drove away, she glanced back at him. He was standing on the gallery, watching her. He raised his hand in farewell.

  She drove two blocks before bringing her car to a stop in the shade of a railroad overpass, then reclined her head on the back of the seat and sobbed, crying like she hadn’t cried over the loss of her own brother.

  The Clark Daly she had known, that talented and smart, sweet and sensitive, promising and ambitious boy she had known and loved was, today, just as dead as Danny.

  • • •

  Red Harper had made the request sound innocuous, but Beck was convinced that it was neither optional nor unimportant.

  Casual though Red wanted it to appear, Chris’s being called into the sheriff’s office to answer questions amounted to an interrogation. Beck hadn’t used that term with Chris, though. With more offhandedness than he felt, he’d said, “Apparently there are some loose ends that need tying up.”

  “Why does Red need me to tie up his loose ends?”

  “I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

  Beck hadn’t planned on telling Huff about the meeting at all—not until he knew the substance of it. But as luck would have it, Huff intercepted them on their way out. As with Chris, Beck downplayed the sheriff’s request. “I’m sure it’s just a formality and shouldn’t take more than half an hour, if that.”

  “What do you think it’s about?” Huff asked.

  “I think it’s about Red humoring his ambitious new detective, Deputy Scott.” The three of them laughed. Beck promised to give Huff a briefing as soon as they returned.

  But now, as they were ushered into his office, the sheriff’s bearing confirmed the seriousness of the meeting. He greeted them with a dour “Thanks for stopping by” and motioned them into chairs.

  Wayne Scott moved to stand beside Red, who was seated behind his desk, so that both officers were facing Chris and Beck.

  Before either Red or his detective had an opportunity to speak, Beck went on the offensive. “First off, I’d like to know in what capacity I’m here.”

  “Capacity?” Scott’s puzzlement seemed feigned, and Beck was immediately mistrustful of it.

  “Am I here to answer questions, or am I here as Chris’s attorney, or—”

  “Attorney?” Chris said. “Why would I need an attorney?”

  With a look, Beck told him to shut up. “As I was saying, why was I asked here? Do you suspect me of some wrongdoing? In which case, I want my own lawyer present.”

  “Now, Beck,” Red said with an uneasy laugh, “you’re jumping the gun. There’s no need for you to go all legal on us.”

  “I think there is, Red. Before we go any further, I’d like to know the nature of this meeting and the questions you intend to pose to Chris. Are you simply ironing out the details of Danny’s suicide? Or do you have reason to believe that his death was a homicide?”

  Scott avoided giving a direct answer. “It’s just that a couple of things don’t add up. I believe Mr. Hoyle might clarify them for us.”

  Beck glanced at Chris, who shrugged indolently. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  “All right,” Beck said to Scott. “Ask your questions, but at any time, I may instruct my client not to answer.”

  “Fine.” Scott consulted a small spiral notebook. “How often did the deceased go out to your family’s fishing camp, Mr. Hoyle?”

  “I don’t know. Danny and I kept separate schedules. The last person there was responsible for cleaning up, turning out the lights, and replacing anything he’d used. Beer, toilet paper, necessities. That was the understanding. So it was difficult to tell when someone had been there.” He looked at Red. “Is that important?”

  “Could be,” he replied with a noncommittal shrug. “Did Danny fish much?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “This morning, your sister said—”

  “My sister? You called me in here to verify or deny something that Sayre told you? What did she say?”

  Beck held up his hand to silence Chris, then asked the detective, “Are you seriously basing this interrogation on something said by someone who hasn’t even lived in Destiny for more than a decade and hasn’t spoken to any member of her family in all that time?”

  “She told Sheriff Harper that Danny loathed fishing. Her word, right, Sheriff? Loathed?”

  “That’s right.”

  Chris looked over at Beck and started to laugh. “What are they getting at? That somebody took a shotgun to Danny because he bad-mouthed fishing?”

  “This isn’t a joke,” Scott snapped.

  “Really?” Chris looked at him coldly. “I think you’re hilarious.”

  Beck tried to improve the climate in the room. “What was Danny doing out at the fishing camp when he didn’t like to fish? That’s what you’re trying to reconcile, correct?”

  “Correct.” Scott, who was still smarting from Chris’s insult, looked toward him for an explanation.

  “How the hell should I know?” Chris said. “Maybe he had decided to give fishing another try. Or maybe the last thing on his mind was fishing. He could have gone out there to pray. Or to take a nap. Or to jerk off. Or to do exactly what he did, which was to blow his brains out. The fishing camp afforded him privacy.”

  “Fishing gear was found on the pier.”

  “There you go,” Chris said with an idle wave of his hand. “Danny was going to give fishing another try, test his loathing for it.”

  “Without bait? Tackle box, rod, everything was assembled there on the pier, but there wasn’t any bait.”

  Chris gave each of them a look
in turn, then raised his shoulders in a shrug. “I can’t help you.”

  “It just looked sort of staged, you know?” Scott said. “Like somebody wanted us to think he’d gone there to fish, changed his mind, killed himself instead.”

  Chris snapped his fingers. “I think you’re on to something, Deputy Scott. He forgot to buy bait, so he shot himself.”

  “Chris.”

  If Sheriff Harper hadn’t reproved him for that remark, Beck would have. His sarcasm was inappropriate and certainly wasn’t helping relations with the deputy.

  “I apologize,” he said, looking like he meant it. “I meant no disrespect to my brother. But these questions are asinine. Danny’s reason for being at the camp is obvious. He went out there to kill himself, and he did.” Fixing his dark gaze on Wayne Scott, he said, “Anything else?”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Saturday. At the country club. We played several sets of tennis that morning. We quit around noon because of the heat. I stayed to swim for a while. Danny left right after our match.”

  “You didn’t see him on Sunday?”

  “Chris answered your question,” Beck said. “He last saw Danny on Saturday morning. They parted company around noon.”

  “Where were you on Sunday?” Scott asked Chris.

  “Home. All day. I slept late. Lounged around. Read the Times-Picayune. Beck came over in the afternoon, and we watched a Braves game on TV. Our housekeeper can vouch for me. Is this necessary?” he asked, suddenly turning to the sheriff. “What’s this about, Red?”

  “I’d like to know, too,” Beck said.

  “Indulge us just a little longer,” Red said. “Hurry it along, will you, Wayne?”

  The deputy consulted his spiral notebook again, but Beck figured that was window dressing. Scott seemed to have a direction already. “Where were you on Saturday night?”

  “What difference does it make?” Chris countered impatiently. “Danny wasn’t there.”

  “Where were you?” Scott repeated.

  Chris held the detective’s stare, rocking slightly back and forth in his chair, clearly furious over having to answer to someone he felt was inferior. Eventually he said tightly, “I went to a new nightclub in Breaux Bridge. It had a great band. Pretty cocktail waitresses. You should try it, Deputy. Let it be my treat.”

  But Deputy Scott was unimpressed with the offer. “Do you smoke, Mr. Hoyle?”

  “Not habitually. Sometimes when I’m out.”

  “Did you smoke on Saturday night at the new club in Breaux Bridge?”

  Beck jumped in before Chris had time to answer. “Nothing more from Chris until I know where this is going.”

  Scott looked down at Red Harper, whose hang-dog face seemed to have stretched another several inches since the interrogation began. With apparent reluctance, he opened one of his desk drawers and withdrew a brown paper sack, like the ones they used for collected crime scene evidence. He handed it to the deputy, who made a production of opening it and shaking out the contents onto Red’s desk.

  chapter 12

  “Beck—”

  “Not until we get outside.”

  “But this is—”

  “Not until we get outside,” Beck repeated with emphasis. Ignoring the startled staff, he pushed Chris down the hallway, through the anteroom, and then out the door of the sheriff’s office.

  He didn’t allow Chris to speak until they were inside his pickup, which felt like a convection oven cooking them from all directions. He started the motor and set the air conditioner on high, then turned to his friend, who it now appeared was a suspect in a homicide investigation.

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Chris said with remarkable calm. “Just like I told Red and that . . . that deputy.” He spoke the word like an insult. “Regardless of what he found at the fishing camp, he can’t link it to me. I was not there on Sunday. Selma knows I didn’t leave the house all day. You yourself were with me for several hours. I did not see or talk to Danny after Saturday morning at the country club.”

  “Where the two of you were overheard having a heated argument.”

  “Over a baseline call. Who doesn’t argue over tennis? Jesus.”

  “Him, too.”

  “What? Oh.” Chris directed the vent in the dashboard toward himself so he could catch the blast of air that was finally beginning to turn cool. “True enough. According to Danny I blasphemed and said some derogatory things about his Holy Roller church. He was my brother. I saw my brother taking a wrong path. I was entitled to my opinion.”

  “But did that entitle you to ridicule?”

  Chris sighed. “Huff had asked me to see if I could talk sense into Danny, turn him around. If I got a little sarcastic—”

  “You came down on him pretty hard, if those witnesses that Scott talked to heard correctly. Did they?”

  “I don’t remember exactly what I said.”

  “ ‘I don’t remember what I said.’ Not a very solid defense to take into court, Chris.”

  Chris looked at him sharply. “Court?”

  “Haven’t you caught on yet? They’re trying to put you at the scene. They’re this close to placing you at the spot where a shotgun blasted Danny’s head all to hell.”

  “They can’t place me there because I wasn’t there.”

  Beck looked at him hard. “You cannot lie to me, Chris. If this thing turns ugly, I don’t want any surprises sprung on me.”

  “What do I have to do? Cross my heart and hope to die?”

  “Fine. Be funny. This is all a huge gotcha joke.”

  Chris relaxed his smirk. “Look, I realize you’re in lawyer mode now. Like Huff said, you’re paid to worry, so we don’t have to. But I don’t know what else I can say to convince you that I wasn’t at the fishing camp this weekend.

  “The last time I was there was that night several months ago with you. And the last time I saw Danny, he was headed for the locker room at the country club on Saturday morning. He’d gone round the bend with that religion nonsense. He was supersensitive to criticism of it. I made some irreverent cracks about it, so, yes, he left a little hot under the collar.”

  “What about you? What was your mood when you separated? Danny was always so tractable. Suddenly he’s developed a stubborn streak. How did that sit with you?”

  “I admit I was upset with him for making such a fool of himself in front of those Bible beaters. A lot of them work for us. We can’t have them thinking we’re pussies, for the Lord or anything else. I was angry.

  “To cool myself off, I did laps in the pool, then went to Lila’s house as soon as she called me with the all-clear, and spent the rest of the afternoon between her strong thighs. It’s amazing how much frustration you can work off having sex with a rough and rowdy partner like Lila. Her creativity knows no bounds.”

  “Spare me the details.”

  “Your loss, friend. Anyway, I left her house around five, went home to change, then drove to Breaux Bridge. That’s it. There’s nothing more to tell.” Spreading his hands, palms up, he looked at Beck imploringly. “Besides, give me one good reason why I would want to kill Danny.”

  “We have that going for us,” Beck said. “Lack of motive. But they’re trying to place you out there, and that eager young detective is going to be digging for a motive. If there’s something I don’t know—”

  “There isn’t.”

  “You’d better tell me now, Chris. Don’t lie to me. Should I be soliciting a trial lawyer, putting a criminal defense attorney on the payroll?”

  “No.”

  Beck’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID. “It’s Huff.”

  Chris covered his eyes with his hand. “Fuck.”

  Beck answered. “Hey, Huff, we’re leaving now and should be back in five minutes. Want a Blizzard? We could swing past the Dairy Queen. You sure? Okay then. Yes, I’ll fill you in the minute we get there.” He clicked off and said to Chris, “We’re not to
stop for anything on the way back. He’s waiting for us.”

  “How much should we tell him?”

  “Everything. If we don’t, he’ll get it from Red. Outside of Wayne Scott’s hearing, of course.”

  “That’s the other thing I’ve got going for me,” Chris said. “Good ol’ reliable Red Harper. He’s not going to let me get hit with another bogus murder rap.”

  • • •

  Sayre didn’t make the drive back to New Orleans. Following her visit to the foundry, her conversation with Clark, and the resultant crying jag, she was physically and emotionally whipped. Driving for two hours, then having to contend with the inconveniences of modern air travel held no appeal whatsoever.

  One of her clients in San Francisco was president of a jet charter service. He owed her a favor for re-decorating his Russian Hill town house under a ridiculously short deadline. She placed a call to him. He lent a sympathetic ear and then asked for five minutes to make the arrangements. He called her back in four. “Luckily we had an available plane in Houston. It’s on its way to you now.”

  “Can the runway here accommodate a private jet?”

  “That was the first thing I checked. There’s some big outfit in Destiny, a metal pipe manufacturer. They have a company jet.”

  She remembered now Beck mentioning that, but she didn’t tell her client that she was a partner in that “big outfit.”

  “Leave your rental car keys with the airfield personnel,” he told her. “Someone will pick the car up later and drive it back to New Orleans.”

  The royal service was a rare luxury for her, but she could afford it. And if it got her out of Destiny sooner rather than later, it would be well worth the cost.

  When she reached the airfield, she parked the rental car in the designated space and retrieved her overnight bag from the backseat. As she entered the compact building, a middle-aged woman approached her. “Are you Ms. Lynch?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your plane’s coming in now, honey. Have you got car keys for me?”

  The concrete tarmac was like a broiler when Sayre walked out to greet the distinguished-looking gray-haired pilot who stepped out of the small, sleek jet that had taxied to within twenty yards of the building.