Slow Heat in Heaven (46 page)

"Not if something else causes a delay."

"I'll make sure nothing does. In fact, I'm not going to wait until the last minute. Today I ran a quick inventory of the timber we've got at the landing. I think I can ship enough to fill the order by Wednesday. No need to wait until next week."

That was the plan she had wanted to discuss with Cash. Now, even without his advice, she had decided to act on it. She would get the jump on anyone who had notions of seeing her fail.

"Tomorrow morning, I intend to step up operations. Start an hour earlier, work an hour later. With the bonuses I'm offering as incentive, I think everyone will be more than willing to put in the overtime."

"Leave organizing the loggers to Cash." Cotton was absently rubbing his chest.

Schyler noticed. She mentally flipped a coin on whether or not to tell him she had fired Cash. She decided that it would relieve Cotton to know that she was no longer involved with him. "Cash won't be acting as foreman any longer. I fired him today."

The three were stunned by her announcement, Cotton most of all. "You fired Cash?"

"That's right. I ordered him off Belle Terre. He'll be gone within a week."

"Cash is leaving Belle Terre?" Cotton parroted in a thready voice.

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Of course, of course," he said. "It's just that I'm shocked to hear that he agreed."

Her announcement hadn't been met with the reaction she had expected. She wanted to pursue it with Cotton, but Tricia distracted her.

"You're going to bring this about all by yourself?"

"That's right."

Tricia snickered. "If nothing else, it's been hightly entertaining to watch the rise and fall of Schyler Crandall. And about that sale of Belle Terre, Daddy, I don't think the choice will be left up to us. Not even to you. Coming, Ken?" She glided out of the room.

Schyler rushed to the doorway and called for Mrs. Dunne. "Help Daddy get to his room and into bed," she said the moment the housekeeper appeared. "He's upset, so give him his medication even if it is an hour early. He needs to go to sleep."

"Don't fuss, Schyler," he said cantankerously as he la
bored to get out of his chair. "I'm still standing. It'll take more that Tricia, Ken, and their hush-hush plans for Belle Terre to kill me."

"You knew they'd been talking about it?"

He smiled at her, tapping his temple, and winked. "I'm a mean son of a bitch. I learned to take care of myself on the docks of New Orleans. Not much gets past me."

"You own Belle Terre. Nobody is going to take it away from you."

He shook his head, his expression reflective. "No one can own Belle Terre, Schyler. It owns us."

He let himself be led away by Mrs. Dunne. Schyler watched him go. He looked frail as he shuffled down the hall. She wasn't ready for him to be aged and feeble. Her daddy was strong. Nothing could bring him down.

More than ever she regretted the years they'd been separated by the misunderstanding based on Tricia's lie. She echoed the sentiment Tricia had voiced earlier. She was very glad the same blood didn't flow through their veins.

Her shoulders stooped with fatigue, she turned into the room again. She had almost forgotten that Ken was still there. "I thought you went upstairs with your wife."

He was pulling his lower lip through his teeth. "No, uh, we left a matter up in the air."

"What matter?"

"That." He nodded down at the file. Schyler had forgotten about it.

"I'll cover for you, just as Cotton has."

"Don't do me any favors," he said sarcastically.

"Then you'd rather go to jail?" Schyler's nerves were shot. Ken should have known better than to press her when he was ahead.

Apparently her tone of voice brought him to that same conclusion. "No, of course not. But I want you to know, Schyler, that I'm not a thief."

"You stole something that didn't belong to you. That's the generally accepted definition of a thief."

"I only took what I felt I had coming."

"You only took what you needed to keep the loan sharks from breaking your legs."

"And to keep Tricia off my back about money. That woman thinks she's a Vanderbilt and has to live like one. Cotton's a stingy bastard. He never paid me according to my ability."

Schyler looked away, not wanting to point up the obvious, but Ken saw her expression and took issue with it. "I guess you're going to say that my contribution wasn't worth even what I got."

"I'm not going to say anything except good night. I'm exhausted."

He barred her way to the door. "I know what you're thinking."

"What?"

"That
I
've been putting moves on you just for the money."

"Haven't you?"

"No."

"You're right. That's what I was thinking. Not very flattering to either of us, is it?" She looked him in the eye. "Not that it matters. I would have rejected you anyway."

She tried to go around him. Again he blocked her way. "Are you going to fire me? Is that your next duty as CEO of Crandall Logging?"

"I haven't really thought about it, Ken. I can't think about anything until I get a check from Endicott and endorse it over to Gilbreath."

"But firing me would be just your style, wouldn't it? You like throwing your weight around. You must have what the shrinks call penis envy. You want to be the son your daddy never had, don't you? That's probably what went wrong between you and Boudreaux. There can't be two studs in one bed."

"Good night, Ken." When she tried pushing him aside, he caught her arm roughly.

"Tricia was right. Everything turned to shit when you came back. Why didn't you stay with your gay friend? That relationship was more suited to you. You could be the man. Why'd you have to come back here and screw everything up?"

Schyler wrenched her arm free. "I came back to find everything already screwed up, thanks to you and Tricia. I'm going to put things back the way they should have been all along. And nothing is going to stop me."

From where she stood out on the veranda, Gayla heard Schyler's exit line. Through the windows, she watched her enter the hall and head toward her father's bedroom. Gayla saw Ken Howell in the parlor, working free the knot of his necktie with one hand and pouring himself a stiff bourbon with the other. He muttered deprecations to Schyler, to Cotton, to his wife.

Gayla considered Ken a dangerous man. He was like a wounded beast. He would lash out at anything or anyone, even someone who tried to help him. Weak men were often the most dangerous. They felt threatened from every direction. They had something to prove.

Gayla hadn't been eavesdropping intentionally. She and Mrs. Dunne had been drinking coffee together in the kitchen when the hue and cry went up in the back parlor. They'd glanced at each other, then took up their conversation, trying to ignore the raised voices and what they might signify. After Mrs. Dunne had been summoned to take Mr. Crandall to bed, Gayla had slipped out the back door.

It had become her nightly ritual to walk the entire veranda several times before going to bed. It was a masochistic exercise. Nothing scary had happened since the appearance of the doll on her pillow. She never saw anything unduly alarming on these nightly excursions.

But she knew that someone, something, some
presence
that bore malice toward the people of Belle Terre was out there in the darkness, lurking, watching, biding his time.

Schyler, she knew, passed off her skittishness to ethnic superstition at best and to her remnant fear of Jigger at worst. Gayla was sure that in the latter respect, Schyler was right She was terrified that one day he would seek retribution for her desertion.

She had ridden into town with Mrs. Dunne for the first time only the day before. When they arrived at the supermarket, however, she had refused to go inside with her. Instead she had sat in the car, sweltering in the noon heat, with all the windows rolled up, anxiously glancing around.

Her fears were childish. But one glance at her scarred naked body was sufficient to remind her that they were justified. The worst of her scars didn't show. They were on her mind and in her heart. Jigger had marred her soul. She prayed for his death each night. She would burn in hell for that, and for being his whore, and for betraying Jimmy Don's sweet, pure love.

The only comfort she could derive was that Jigger would burn in hell, too. Hopefully there were stratas of hell, where those who sinned because they had no choice were dealt with more kindly than those who sinned out of meanness.

She only hoped that before she was consigned to hell, she would know that Jimmy Don was out of that awful place. Gayla felt guiltily responsible for Jimmy Don's imprisonment.

She had just about come full circle. She rounded the comer of the veranda, but immediately she ducked back, clamping her hand over her mouth to keep from uttering a squeal of fright. A tall shadow had made a dent in the rhododendrons the instant she'd stepped around the comer.

Her instinct was to run as fast as she could for the nearest door, but she forced herself to stay where she was. After several seconds, she peered around the comer again. Every leaf on the shrub had fallen back into place. The blossoms were motionless. There was no shadow, no evidence that anybody had been on the veranda.

Maybe she had imagined it. She crept forward, inching along the wall. At the parlor window, she glanced inside. Ken was pacing the floor, drinking and bad-mouthing his misfortunes beneath his breath.

Gayla slipped past the window unseen. She figured that anyone on the inside couldn't see out onto the veranda because the lights in the parlor were so bright. But anyone on the outside could see inside clearly, as well as hear everything that was said. It would be like watching a picture show.

But there hadn't been anybody there. A bird had probably disturbed those rhododendron bushes. She had imagined the shadow. Her overactive nerves were making her see things that didn't exist.

Gayla had almost convinced herself of that when she turned and caught, on the still evening air, the unmistakable fragrance of tobacco smoke.

At two minutes past nine the following morning, Dale Gilbreath took a telephone call at his desk.

"What do you mean she's going to ship ahead of time!" He sat bolt upright in his reclining chair.

"She's sending the timber out on Wednesday."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?" his caller asked impatiently. "She's a damn clever bitch. She's trying to avoid exactly what we had planned for that last shipment."

Dale quickly assimilated the information. "I don't think this will cause any problems. Flynn's agreed to our price. He's willing to do it. More than willing since that Frances girl is at Belle Terre."

"Are you sure he knows how to use the materials?"

"Yes. You just see to it that he gets them. I'll notify him about the change in the date. What time Wednesday?"

"If the train is on schedule, it arrives Wednesday afternoon at five-fifteen. I rechecked this morning."

"You know," Dale said thoughtfully, "that if anyone on that freight train gets killed, it'll be murder."

"Yes. Too bad Schyler won't be on it."

Wednesday dawned hot and still. The hazy sky was the color of saffron. Area bayous seemed to lack the energy to flow at all. Their viscous surfaces were unbroken except for an occasional insect skimming them. Thunderheads built up on the horizon in the direction of the Gulf, but at five-ten in the afternoon, the sun was still beating down.

The explosion occurred a mere quarter of a mile from the Crandall Logging landing. It blew the glass out of the office windows and showered the desk with flying shards that ripped the leather upholstery of Cotton's chair.

A large column of black smoke rose out of the pile of twisted metal. It could be seen for miles. The boom was loud enough to have heralded the end of the world. The impact of it rattled the beer bottles behind the bar at Red Broussard's cafe.

One of Red's frequent customers, sitting alone at a table, smiled with supreme satisfaction. He'd done a damn fine job.

"Stop looking at me like that, Daddy. I'm fine." Cotton's cheeks were flushed. He was propped up against the pillows on his bed. Schyler was glad he wasn't up and moving about. "You don't look fine. What happened to your knees?" She glanced down, noticing for the first time that her knees were raw and bleeding, as were the heels of her hands. There were particles of gravel embedded in the flesh. She brushed them off, trying not to wince at the stinging pain.

"I was standing out on the platform, watching the train approach. The blast knocked me off my feet. I landed on my hands and knees beside the tracks."

"You could have been killed."

She thought it best not to tell him that she probably would have been if she'd been sitting behind the desk in the office. "Thank God no one was."

"No one on the train?"

She shook her head. "It was pushing two empty locomotives. They sustained the worst damage. The engineers in the third diesel weren't even bruised. Scared, naturally. It was a costly, uh, accident, but thankfully not in lives or injuries."

"Accident, my ass. What happened, Schyler?" He frowned at her. "And don't sugareoat it for the heart patient. What the hell really happened?"

"It was deliberately set," she admitted with a deep sigh. "They used—"

"They?"

"Whoever. . . used some kind of plastic explosive. Once the smoke had cleared and we had made sure nobody was hurt, the sheriff conducted a preliminary investigation."

"Investigation," Cotton scoffed. "Patout doesn't know shit from shinola. He wouldn't recognize a clue if it bit him in the butt."

"I'm afraid you're right, so I stayed right there with him. That's one reason I'm so grubby." She swept her hand down the front of her dress. "There are a thousand and one unanswered questions. Since the train is interstate, several government agencies will be going over the scene with a fine-tooth comb. It'll take weeks, if not months, to sort through all the debris."

"And in the meantime, the tracks are unusable."

"The tracks look like iron hair ribbons all knotted together." Dejectedly, she sat down on the foot of his bed. "What I can't figure out is why the explosives were set to go off before the train reached the landing. If someone wanted to stop that shipment, why didn't the explosion occur after the train was loaded with Crandall timber and not before?"

"Somebody wanted to put us out of commission, and they did."

"Like hell," Schyler said, with a burst of enthusiasm. "I swore to you, I swore to myself, that I was going to meet that deadline and I'm going to."

"Maybe you should let it go, Schyler." Cotton's face looked heavy and old with defeat. The familiar zest was absent from his blue eyes. There was a hopeless lassitude in his posture that had nothing to do with his repose. He didn't look at rest; he looked resigned.

"I can't let it go, Daddy," she said huskily. "To let it go is tantamount to letting Belle Terre go. I can't. I won't."

"But you can't do this alone."

He struck at the heart of her most basic fears. She was utterly alone. Cotton could coach from the sidelines but, through no fault of his own, he was a weak and unreliable ally. She wished she had someone to act as a backboard for her ideas, her apprehensions.

She wished she had Cash.

She desperately needed his counsel on what action to take next. But
he
might be the very one who had blown up the tracks. She tried to forget his telling her that he'd been an explosives expert in Vietnam. He was clever enough to have disabled Crandall Logging without hurting anybody. But was he capable of such wanton destruction? And why would he destroy all he had built?

She recalled his face the last time she'd seen it, hard and cold, reeking contempt. There hadn't been a spark of human feeling in the eyes that bore into her. Yes, he was capable of doing anything. Mere pride wouldn't prevent her from going to him on her knees
and
begging his advice, but consulting him now was out of the question. He was a suspect.

She thought of calling Gilbreath and humbly appealing to his emotions, but she seriously doubted he had any. If he wouldn't extend the deadline of the loan in light of Cot
ton's heart illness, what would compel him to do it in light of this catastrophe? Besides, for all his unctuous mannerism, she suspected him of celebrating each mishap that had befallen her and Crandall Logging.

Most unsettling of all was 5iat only a handful of people knew that she had changed the day of the shipment. They were the people closest to her, people she should have been able to trust.

Ken. There was hostility there to be sure. Her discovery of his embezzlement had only stoked his resentment. He had hurled vicious insults at her, but Schyler doubted there was a violent bone in Ken's body. He was all talk and no action. An explosion just didn't seem in keeping with his personality. Besides, he would lack the ambition and knowledge to pull it off successfully.

Tricia. She was certainly vindictive enough. She would rejoice in the company's failure because it would expedite the sale of Belle Terre. But again, she wouldn't have the expertise to do something of that caliber.

Jigger Flynn. Motive, yes. But no opportunity. He couldn't have known about her secret change in plans.

Cash wasn
't
among those who knew either, but Cash could have found out. The loggers must have known something was in the wind by the way she'd been pushing them the last few days. They drank together in the local watering holes in the evenings. Cash could have overheard tongues lubricated by too much liquor.

Whoever the culprit, he was still around and very close to her.

"I'm afraid for you," Cotton's raspy voice jostled her out of her brooding.

She forced a confident smile. Through his socks, she massaged his feet. "I'm more afraid for Belle Terre. If we were forced out, we'd have to change our personal stationery. Imagine what a hassle that would be."

He didn't crack a smile at her attempted humor. "Did Cash do this to us?" The disillusionment in his expression made his whole face appear ravaged.

"I don't know, Daddy."

"Does he hate me that much?" Cotton turned his head and stared out the window. "I probably haven't been fair to the boy."

"He's not a boy. He's a man."

"He could be a better one. Monique was so proud, she wouldn't let me buy him clothes, wouldn't let me pay for anything. When he started school, he was laughed at. Made fan of." He squeezed his eyes shut. "That works on a kid, you know. It either makes him a pansy or a mean son of a bitch. Cash started fighting back. That was good. I knew he'd have to be tough to make it in this world. But Jesus, that boy has turned into a pain in the ass."

"Whatever tiffs you've had with him, nothing warrants what happened today," Schyler remarked. "If it's ever proved that he was involved, I'll see to it that he's punished to the full extent of the law."

Cotton's chest rose and fell heavily. "Monique would hate to see him locked in some goddamn jail. Cash belongs in the forest, on the bayous. That dark water flows in his veins instead of blood, she used to say." He gnashed his teeth. "Christ."

Schyler stroked his thick white hair out of compassion for his suffering. "Don't worry about Cash. Tell me what I should do. I need your guidance."

"What can you do?"

She thought a moment. "Well, the timber is still intact at the landing. They were hauling the last—"

Suddenly she broke off. Her mind halted and then backtracked as she recalled the last half hour before the explosion when the landing had been a beehive of activity. "Daddy, when you first took over the company, how did you transport the timber?"

"That was before I built the landing and weasled the railroad into laying the spur."

"Exactly. How did you haul the timber to the various markets?"

His blue eyes flickered. "Like most of the independents do now. Rigs."

"That's it!" Schyler bent down and planted a smacking kiss on his lips. "We'll drive that shipment to Endicott's. Right up to Joe Jr.'s front door."

*
  
*
  
*

"Why wasn't it done right?" the caller hissed into the telephone receiver.

Gilbreath had been sitting hunched over his desk, asking himself the same question. "Jigger must have been drunk. He misunderstood our instructions. Something. I don't know. For some reason he didn't realize that he was supposed to blow the tracks after the shipment was loaded, not before."

"We were fools to depend on him."

"We had to."

"I think I'm a fool to depend on you, too. I can do this by myself and cut you out entirely."

"Don't threaten me," Dale said coldly. "We haven't lost anything yet. It didn't go as we expected, but there's no way in hell she can get that shipment off in time."

"Want to bet? Tomorrow night."

"What?"

"Yes. Tomorrow night. By truck."

"Crandall's doesn't have that many rigs."

"Schyler's been mustering them all day. Everybody in the parish who owns or has access to a rig, she's enlisting. Paying top dollar. She'll make it, I tell you, unless she's stopped."

Gilbreath's palms began to sweat. "We'll have to use Jigger again."

"I guess so. I'll let you handle that, but you make damn certain he knows what he's doing this time."

"I'll see to it. Don't worry."

"Funny. I do."

Gilbreath, choosing to disregard the dig, asked, "What time tomorrow?"

"I don't know yet. I'll have to call you when I find out."

"That means Jigger will have to use a timer."

"Probably."

"The stakes are higher this time. There will be men driving those rigs."

"I can live with a guilty conscience if you can."

"Oh, I can," Gilbreath said with a chuckle. "I just wanted to be sure you could."

"Don't doubt it."

"After your call tomorrow, I don't think we should speak to each other again. And for a long time after this is over."

"I agree. Too bad we won't be able to have a celebration drink."

"When Rhoda and I are ensconced in Belle Terre, we'll invite you out for cocktails."

There was a laugh. "You do that."