Thirty-Five and a Half Conspiracies
Page 13

I struggled to keep from jumping out of my skin. “What other reason could there be?”
“There’s something I haven’t told you about Hale, something that might make a difference …” He shifted to his back, pulling me with him so I rested on his chest. “Hale’s good at representing the criminal element. He’s outwitted me more times than I’d care to admit. But I’m pretty damn sure he has ties to Skeeter Malcolm.”
I fought to take a breath. “Why do you say that?”
“He takes a high proportion of the cases that have ties to Malcolm.” He was quiet for several seconds, and I could practically see the wheels spinning in his head. “When I went to Hale’s office on Friday night, he told me that he’d seen one of Malcolm’s men hanging around outside your office.” I could feel his heartbeat quicken in his chest. “What if Malcolm convinced Hale to take your case?”
“Mason.” I fought to keep my voice level. “What purpose would Skeeter Malcolm have for doing that?”
“To hurt me by using you? I don’t know. I know it doesn’t make sense, but something’s not adding up here.” He was getting agitated.
I stroked his face, searching his eyes. “I think you’re reading too much into it.”
“I’m not so sure,” he said, pushing out a groan of frustration. “I think I should find you a new attorney.”
I could only imagine what Skeeter would do if I fired Carter. But according to Carter, Skeeter had run off. He wasn’t around to do much of anything.
But I couldn’t ignore the fact that the two men who were in the thick of this with me—whether Mason realized it or not—had both turned to the same man. The coincidence was too great. “I think we stick with Carter.”
“His ties to Malcolm are too strong. I don’t trust him to do this for the right reasons.”
I’d had an entire weekend to do nothing but think, and all that thinking had brought me to one conclusion. Mason, Skeeter, and I had to face this fight together. But for the life of me, I had no idea how to make that happen without telling Mason the whole, ugly truth.
Trying to sound steadier than I felt, I said, “I’ve been thinking about J.R.’s involvement in other things …”
“What do you mean?”
“I think Joe’s father is up to something in Fenton County. If we can figure out what he’s been doing here, it stands to reason that it would be easier for us to find proof of that than to investigate rumors of a case somewhere else.”
I had his attention. He sat up and looked down at me. “What makes you think Simmons has other current ties to Fenton County?”
Something in his voice told me he knew something. “What do you know?”
His eyes darkened. “It’s county business.”
“And you’re no longer a county employee.”
“I’m curious about how you made the leap to a connection between Malcolm and J.R. Simmons.”
Crappy doodles. What information did he have? And what was I gonna tell him? I looked out the windows overlooking the sun porch that had served as my nursery such a long, long time ago, and relief washed through me. Just like that, I knew what to say. “We know this isn’t the first time he’s fiddled around in Fenton County. He was here causing trouble twenty-five years ago. My birth mother had proof of it in that journal I found taped to the bottom of my crib. And we know it’s important, because right after Joe took it, he had you fired and me arrested.” Pain stabbed my heart at the reminder of his betrayal, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that. I sat up next to Mason, starting to get excited. “We need to go back to the plant and find the secret safe.”
“Why? And I never got a good handle of what went on there. All I had to go on was your short explanation, and the sheriff’s department won’t tell me anything. Their report is much too short. I went to the hospital to talk to Hattie and get her take on things, but she’d already checked out. And when I called her parents, they told me she left town. That’s all she said to them, though—they have no idea where she went.”
“She’s gone?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised. She knew about J.R.’s involvement in this and was probably trying to get as far away from ground zero as possible.
“Yeah. Why would she do that?”
“She’s scared of J.R.” I gave him a weak smile. “Hattie told me to meet her there so she could provide me with some kind of proof about my birth father.”
His expression softened. “You really think Harrison Gardner might not be your father?”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “Apparently my father might be Paul Buchanan, the son of the owner of Atchison Manufacturing. Hattie confirmed that Dora had an affair with him right after her affair with Daddy. But Henry Buchanan was about to give Paul everything. His daughter Beverly didn’t like it, so she tampered with Paul’s car, and he and his wife were killed in a car accident. Dora was already pregnant with me, and Paul had told her that he was going to leave his wife. He wanted to marry her and be my daddy.”
“Oh, Rose. I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head and gave him a tight smile. “I’m strangely okay with it. I just want the truth. But honestly, I’m still pretty certain Harrison Gardner was my birth father. Otherwise, how do I explain my visions? Daddy’s momma had them too.”