Rivals (54 page)

“That's thoughtful of you, Maxine.”

She sniffed at his compliment. “I decided it was better to bring it now than get all the way upstairs and have you holler for me to get it.” Just as she set the tray down on the cherrywood table, there was another knock at the front door. The housekeeper left the room, muttering, “This house is turning into Grand Central Station.”

“Are you expecting someone?” Ben glanced at her curiously as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.

“No. But I wasn't expecting you either.”

Almost immediately, Maxine was back. “It's some real estate man named Hamilton Fletcher.” She handed Flame his business card. “He asked to talk to you, but he wouldn't say about what.”

Flame recognized the agency name on the card as one she'd commissioned to buy land for her. Ignoring Maxine's probing look, she said, “Show him in.”

With a white straw Stetson in hand and gleaming black cowboy boots on his feet, Hamilton Fletcher looked the part of a gentleman rancher, quiet and unassuming, with a thin, almost scholarly face. “I don't mean to be barging in on you like this, Mrs. Bennett,” he apologized immediately, talking in a soft drawl. “We've talked on the phone, but we've never met. I'm Ham Fletcher…with the Green Country Real Estate Agency.”

“Of course, Mr. Fletcher. I remember you,” Flame replied, then introduced him to Ben Canon, whom he already knew.

“I've just come from the Crowder place, the one you wanted me to try to buy for you,” he said. “Since I was so close, I thought I'd stop and see if I couldn't straighten something out. After I talked to you on the phone last week, I went to see the Crowders and made them another offer. When I stopped by today, they said they weren't interested in selling…and that they'd already told the other fella that.”

“What other fella?” She frowned.

“That's what I was wonderin',” he replied with a troubled smile. “If you've got someone else trying to buy their land for you, it'd be best if I backed off and not muddy up things. I know you were upset that I was taking so much time—”

“Mr. Fletcher,” she interrupted, “I don't have anyone else trying to buy the Crowder place for me.”

He lifted his head, his hazel eyes rounding slightly. “In that case, ma'am, there must be somebody else who's wanting to buy that land, too.”

“Then let me suggest that you go back to the Crowders and make another offer—a substantially higher one,” Flame stated crisply.

He hesitated, slowly turning his hat in his hand. “The last offer I made them was a hundred dollars an acre more than the land's worth.”

“Then make it five hundred,” she replied. “I want that land, Mr. Fletcher.”

He drew back his head. “I don't think there can be any doubt about that—not with that high of an offer.”

“Good. Then if there's nothing else, Mr. Fletcher—” she murmured, raising an eyebrow at him.

He took the hint. “I'm on my way to the Crowders. I appreciate your time, Ms. Bennett. Mr. Canon.” He nodded to both and left.

The agitation and impatience she'd managed to contain in Fletcher's presence broke free the instant he walked out of the library. She whirled from the doorway and started to pace. “Chance has found out I need that valley.”

“I think that's a safe bet.” Ben Canon nodded.

“And I think I know how,” she said grimly, turning to face him. “The day before I left San Francisco, I met with Karl Bronsky. It seems our application and plans for the dam have mysteriously disappeared. We have to submit everything all over again. If Chance doesn't actually have our original plans in his possession, then he has copies of them. Which means he knows everything.” Just as she had once known everything about his project. “Which is why he has someone out there trying to buy the rest of the valley before we can. Thank God we already have three of the parcels under option. But that Crowder piece is pivotal. We have to have it.”

“I'm sure Stuart knows that, too.”

“What do you know about the Crowders, Ben?”

He gave her an empty look and shook his head. “They're just a name on a county plat to me. You need to ask Charlie that question. He knows everything about everybody living within twenty miles of Morgan's Walk.”

Spring was a busy time of year at Morgan's Walk. Between the demands of Charlie's schedule and hers, Flame wasn't able to talk to him until the following day. Then she went to him, joining the foreman at the corrals—ketchpens, Charlies called them—where the ranch hands were ear-tagging, vaccinating, and branding the young calves and castrating the bull calves.

Charlie stood at the fence, his arms draped over the top rail and his boot hooked on the bottom one. When she walked up to stand beside him, he glanced sideways at her and nodded, the white of his mustache lifting in a quick smile.

“You gettin' all settled in Miss Flame?” he drawled, not bothering to raise his voice above the bawl of the white-faced calves and their mothers.

“I'm getting close.” She watched a cowboy on the ground prodding at a bewildered calf, urging it farther into the narrow chute. “How are the new men doing?”

Charlie made a sound of contempt. “Most of 'em are about as worthless as tits on a boar.” Then he quickly shot her an apologetic look. “Beggin' your pardon, Miss Flame, but that's what they are. I gotta watch 'em every minute or I'll find 'em sittin' on their brains.” Red dust swirled as a calf charged past them, newly released from the chutes. Charlie instantly straightened and yelled impatiently at one of the cowboys. “Holstener! You let that calf go without taggin' his ear. Run him back through.” Then he relaxed again in his negligent pose against the fence and muttered sideways at Flame, “See what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you worry about it, though. I'll get the work out of 'em.”

“I know you will.” She paused briefly, then asked, “Charlie, what do you know about the Crowders?”

“Which ones?”

“The Crowder family that owns that valley farm north and west of us.”

“Old Dan Crowder and his wife, you mean.” He nodded. “Yeah, they're still livin' there on what they call the homeplace. Although I hear their daughter and her husband are doin' most of the farmin' since ol' Dan took sick. They had two boys, but they're both dead now. They lost the oldest when he was just a pup. The other boy was killed in an automobile accident…must have been ten years ago. Now they've got just the girl. 'Course, she's got three young'uns. I can't remember what her name is…Martha…Mary…Marjorie. It's something like that.”

“You said Mr. Crowder's ill?”

Charlie nodded. “Operated on him last year for throat cancer. That family's had a rough time of it, one way or another. But they're good people—honest, hardworking. Makes you wish folks like that had a decent place to live.”

“The farm's not worth much?”

He shook his head. “The soil's too poor. Sittin' in the valley like that, you'd think it'd be good bottomland, but it ain't. They probably make enough from farmin' to keep their heads above water and that's about all.”

“You'd think they'd sell it and buy somewhere else.”

“You'd think so. But there's been a Crowder workin' that land since before this territory become a state. 'Course, there was already a Morgan here when they came.”

“Hey, Charlie!” a cowboy shouted. “Reckon we can have the cook fry us up a mess of mountain oysters for supper tonight?”

Charlie shouted back, “At the rate you boys are movin', we'll still be here come daybreak.”

“I'll let you get back to your work, Charlie,” Flame said, encouraged by the information he'd given her about the Crowders. The father's recent illness and surgery had to have placed the family in some financial straits. She felt certain they'd find her generous offer for the farm much too tempting to resist.

But a phone call to the real estate agent, Ham Fletcher, later that day failed to provide her with an answer—good or bad. He said he'd left the offer with Mrs. Crowder and planned to call back the first of the week if he didn't hear from them in the meantime. He promised he'd call her the minute he had an answer one way or the other.

But Sunday came and went without a phone call from him.

Flame frowned in her sleep at the blaring ring that tried to waken her. She tried to shut it out. For a time, she was successful. Then it came again, louder and shriller than before. With a groan, she rolled over, certain it couldn't be morning already. She felt as if she'd just fallen asleep. Then her grogginess faded as she realized it wasn't the alarm going off; it was the telephone ringing.

She groped for the pull-chain to the lamp by her bed and peered blearily at the green, shining numbers on her digital alarm clock: 11:36 P.M., they read.

“Malcom, there's a two-hour time difference,” she moaned and lifted the receiver, carrying it to her ear. “Hello,” she said, trying to force the sleep from her voice.

“You did not listen to me,” came that strange mechanical voice over the line, its monotone oddly distorted and tinny. Flame sat bolt upright in the bed, fully awake. “I warned you. You had better stop now or you will be sorry.”

“If this is supposed to be funny,” she declared angrily into the phone, “I am not amused.”

But there was no reply, nothing but the hollow sound indicating the connection had been broken. Flame gripped the receiver an instant longer, then slammed it down. Who was doing this? The hawk-faced man? But why? First he had warned her to
stay away from him
. By that she had assumed he meant Chance. Had he? Now he was warning her to
stop
. Stop what? It didn't make any sense. The two didn't seem to connect.

But if it wasn't the hawk-faced man, then who? Chance? He had tried to warn her off that night at the opera, hadn't he? Was this some tactic of his to scare her away? Perhaps. Yet, try as she might, she couldn't imagine him deliberately frightening her like this.

On Wednesday, Flame sent Maxine home early. Twenty minutes after she left, the telephone rang. Flame stiffened instantly, a high tension leaping through her nerves. She stared at the phone on the desk and listened to it ring a second time, reminding herself that she hadn't received any threatening calls in the last three days. Did that mean they had stopped? Or was this one?

Hating her jumpiness, she picked up the phone. “Who is this?” An instant of silence followed. “I—”

“Flame? Is that you?”

“Malcom.” She recognized his voice and immediately felt foolish for sounding so combative. Those calls had bothered her more than she realized. “I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“It doesn't matter.” She didn't want to go into it just now. There were too many other—more important—things she had to talk to him about. “I'm glad you called. I was going to try to reach you later tonight. How are you? Is everything all right there?”

“Everything's fine…although lately my luncheon meetings have become very dry and boring affairs.”

“It must be the company you're keeping nowadays.”

“I'm sure of that,” Malcom replied.

“Listen, I have some good news. We've been able to secure an option on another parcel. At least, it's verbally secured. Ben's drafting the agreement now and I'm having dinner with him tonight to go over it. Hopefully we can telex it to you in the morning.”

“Why don't you bring it with you when you fly back on Friday? One more day shouldn't hurt anything.”

For a moment she didn't know what he was talking about. Then she remembered she'd originally said she would fly back this weekend to wrap up any loose ends. “I won't be able to come, Malcom. I'm sorry. I have too many things to do here.”

“It's amazing, Flame,” he said in a tone that revealed his ill humor. “You were too busy to see me before you left. And now you're too busy to come back. In all the times we've talked this last week, I have yet to hear you say you miss me. We made an agreement, Flame, and this long-distance communication wasn't part of it.”

“Believe me, I don't like it either. I do miss you, Malcom. Maybe I haven't said it, but you don't know how many times I've wished you were here. I need you, and there's so much we need to talk about. It appears we're going to have a problem acquiring the Crowder property. They turned down our last offer. I know they need money. They don't have medical insurance and they owe the hospital a small fortune for the operation Mr. Crowder had last year. With the doctor bills and the ongoing treatment he needs, they have to be deeply in debt. I'm trying to find out how much they owe. That's one of the things I wanted to go over with you. Maybe if we offer them enough money to pay off all their bills and have a little nest egg left, we might be able to induce them to sell. What do you think?”

“It sounds logical,” he replied, cynically thinking that she missed talking to him all right—about business. Why couldn't she have said she missed him—and left it at that?

“It means we'll be paying more than the farm's market value. But that land is so crucial to us I think ultimately it will be worth whatever we have to pay.” There was a slight pause, then she said, “Malcom, why don't you fly here? Once I get all the figures together, it will be so much easier to go over them with you in person than trying to do it over the phone.”

“It certainly would, wouldn't it?” he murmured dryly.

“This isn't a decision I want to make without you, Malcom. Can you come?”

“Not this weekend. I have a board meeting to attend Saturday morning.”

“What about the following weekend?”

Malcom hesitated. Opening Day was the following weekend, signaling the start of the yachting season in San Francisco. In all the years he'd been married, he and Diedre had never failed to participate in the event, frequently holding a party on their boat. But he wanted to see Flame. Out of all those years, what harm would it do to miss one Opening Day?