Coming Home to You (12 page)

Like his music, James was also appealingly different. Young people found someone to admire and imitate, a voice that represented their collective conscience. In a decade defined by money and self-gratification, James often sang about the environment, the plight of farmers and human rights. Most
importantly, he
lived
according to his beliefs. At least, he’d appeared to.

She pressed Fast Forward and moved to a point later in the concert, where the band was rocking and a camera pan of the audience showed thousands of kids dancing and screaming. She had to be pretty close to the spot where—

“You won’t see anything on the tape,” Bret said from behind her. She jumped, embarrassed at being caught looking at his personal things.

He moved unsteadily through the doorway on his crutches and across the room to where she stood. But instead of stopping the tape, he advanced it and said, “Right about here was where those kids got killed, but you won’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ve never been able to see anything, anyway.”

Silently they watched for several minutes, but Bret was right. All Kate saw was enthusiastic fans having a good time. The band hadn’t known until later that three girls had been crushed as the crowd—whipped into a frenzy by the music—had tried to press too close to the stage.

“I was told that James was pretty shaken up when he found out,” Kate said.

He nodded, not taking his eyes from the screen. “I don’t think he ever got over it. He felt guilty, depressed, angry. And he believed the deaths were an omen.”

Kate had never heard this before. “An omen of what?”

“Of even worse things to come.” He stopped the tape and pushed the button to rewind it. “He was
convinced something else bad was going happen. He just didn’t know what.”

“Are you saying he had some sort of premonition?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “No, not really a premonition, but a feeling that things were never going to be the same. He thought what happened to those girls was not only a tragedy, but a sign that what he and Lenny had envisioned when they formed the band had somehow gotten distorted. The music was supposed to be good, not destructive.”

“Is that why he spoke of quitting?”

“Partly. He had other reasons.”

“Lenny’s illness.”

“Yes, that was one of them. When Lenny started having psychotic episodes and had to be institutionalized, James was really…distraught. He and Lenny had been best friends since they were kids, yet he’d had no idea the guy was in such bad shape. But it wasn’t only Lenny that made him think about giving it all up. After the concert where those girls died, things started to unravel and he felt responsible.”

“When Lauren killed herself, did he blame himself for that, too?”

He swallowed hard before answering. “I guess he did. We didn’t talk about Lauren. She was a touchy subject between us.”

“Because you were both in love with her?”

Kate waited for his answer without taking a breath, watching the emotions reflected in his eyes. “Yes,” he said finally, confirming what she’d suspected for many years. “Because we were both in love with her.”

The tape stopped. He ejected it and returned it to its case. Kate followed him as he took it across the room and put it back on the shelf.

“Then Lauren’s suicide must have been as difficult for you as it was for James,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I dealt with it a long time ago.”

He closed the cabinet abruptly and headed toward the kitchen with his slow awkward gait. Kate walked silently behind him, although she was burning with questions about Lauren and the singer’s relationship with the Hayes brothers.

Her curiosity went beyond needing answers for the book. As a woman, she wanted to know what was so special about Lauren that two very different yet equally impressive men like James and Bret had both fallen in love with her.

Lauren had certainly been beautiful and a good backup singer, but she hadn’t had the talent for the solo career she wanted. Without James’s help, Lauren would never have achieved any recognition at all. The reviews of her two solos on the last Mystic Waters album had been brutal.

Kate’s empathy, though, wasn’t with Lauren and her failed dreams, and she was surprised to find it wasn’t even with James.

When she looked back on those tragic events, the person she felt sorry for was Bret. The woman he loved had killed herself after realizing she’d never be a star. Then, eight months later his brother had died, and in a way that left Bret feeling responsible. That was too much pain for any one person to handle.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, Kate’s manuscript arrived from her brother by courier, and Bret settled in the swing on the front porch to read it. When she came to the door for the tenth time in an hour to peek out at him, he wondered what excuse she’d offer to justify the interruption. Were there any she hadn’t used yet? He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“Just straightening up in the living room and thought I’d check on you,” she said, talking to him through the screen.

He shifted in the swing with a “Uh-huh,” not looking up from the page but resisting the urge to laugh. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her move nervously from foot to foot. He couldn’t see her hands, but on one of her earlier trips, he’d noticed she’d already chewed off her fingernail polish and started on the nails.

And he was only on page 308. By the time he’d finished the more than six hundred pages, she’d likely have chewed right up to her elbows.

“How’s it coming?” she asked.

“Get lost, Morgan.”

“But I—”

“Get lost.”

“Oh, all right.” The bare feet and legs disappeared
from his peripheral vision without further comment from their owner, leaving Bret and Sallie alone on the porch—for the moment. He was certain it wouldn’t be long before some other excuse would bring Kate to the screen door again.

First, there’d been the pillow for his back, the glass of tea in case he got thirsty, followed by the pencil to mark any parts of the manuscript he thought they should talk about. Then she’d made three trips to find out if the pillow was soft enough, the tea sweet enough and to ask whether he wanted a pen instead of the pencil.

After that, the cleaning frenzy had begun: chairs, porch floor, steps. She’d pinched the dead leaves from the hanging plants and rubbed the windows so hard that the squeaking had almost driven him insane. Unfortunately that hadn’t been the end of it.

When she’d run out of reasons for being on the porch, she’d moved her base of attack to the living room so she could peek out the door every few minutes and see how far along he was in his reading. In the past hour she’d rearranged the books in his bookshelf, swept the floor, dusted, taken down the curtains for a trip to the dry cleaners and gathered his throw rugs for torture on the clothesline with a stiff brush.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he told a trembling Sallie, who had pressed herself tightly against his side. “I swear I won’t let her get you.”

The normally ferocious dog had watched the activity with growing alarm, apparently deciding she was next in line for a good cleaning. The intensity of her growls had lessened with each of Kate’s appearances
until the only sound she made was a low pitiful whimper.

He patted her reassuringly. “It’s okay. I understand. She scares the hell out of me, too.”

He found his place and went back to reading, knowing that the only cure for Kate’s ailment was for him to finish. So far he’d been mesmerized. She’d captured his and his brother’s childhood on paper with such clarity that reading the accounts was like reliving it.

It bothered him to destroy what she’d worked so hard to create. Sadly, he realized he had no choice.

The screen door squeaked and he looked up, expecting Kate. His hired hands, Aubrey and Willie, each carried a bowl.

“Man, look at you,” Aubrey said with a grin, shaking his head. “Feet propped up, a big pillow behind your back. A couple more days of this and you ain’t gonna want to git back to work.”

“You know me better than that.”

“Yep, I do.”

Aubrey folded his tall lanky frame into a nearby rocking chair. Willie, in his usual way of trying not to be obtrusive, chose to sit on the steps and quietly eat.

Bret eyed the contents of Aubrey’s bowl. “Is that my peach cobbler you’re eating up?”

“We figured we better eat it to keep you from gettin’ fat, seein’ as how you’re not doin’ any work.”

“You better have left me some, you sorry rascal.”

“Well, now, maybe we did and maybe we didn’t. Can’t rightly remember if we got the last of it or not.” He took off his cap and scratched his head in feigned
confusion. “Seems to me we scraped the bottom of that bowl. Ain’t that right, brother?” Willie snickered and bobbed his head in agreement. “Maybe if you snuggle up to that pretty little gal, she might cook you another one.”

Bret shook his head, used to Aubrey’s good-natured ribbing. “You’re so full of shit sometimes.”

“Well, now, that’s true, but if I had a woman who looked like that waitin’ on me like she’s waitin’ on you, I’d sure be doin’ me some snugglin’. More than snugglin’, if you catch my drift.”

Bret did. And while he’d never admit it to Aubrey, the idea had crossed his mind with alarming frequency the past few days. He’d been in a state of partial arousal ever since Kate had walked in this morning in blue-jean shorts and her hair spilling all loose and shining across her shoulders.

When she’d bent over him a little while ago to put the pillow behind his back, her top had gaped open at the neck and he’d had lace-covered breasts staring him right in the face. That was too much temptation for a man who’d spent more time with horses than women in the past few years, and had nearly forgotten what breasts looked like.

“Brother, I do believe he’s givin’ it a hard think,” Aubrey said, making Bret realize he’d been doing exactly that.

Bret growled, “Quit your jawin’,” making both Aubrey and Willie chuckle. Heat rose noticeably to Bret’s face.

“Gettin’ hot imagining it?” Aubrey asked.

The door opened again and Kate came out, wearing her shoes and carrying her billfold and keys. She had
books under her arm and his living-room curtains in a big ball. Aubrey and Willie both shot up and almost ran into each other trying to help her. Sallie whimpered, jumped down and scampered off the porch with her tail between her legs.

“Here, ma’am, let us tote that for you,” Aubrey said, taking the curtains and books, then immediately passing them to Willie.

“Thank you, Aubrey, and I want to thank you again for bringing the oysters. That was very thoughtful of you.”

“My pleasure ma’am. Hope you enjoy ’em.”

“Oysters?” Bret asked.

“Yes,” Kate said with a nod. “He brought us some mountain oysters to warm up for our dinner.”

Aubrey grinned.

“Do you like mountain oysters?” Bret asked her.

“Well, I don’t know, because I’ve never eaten any, but the idea of oysters grown in freshwater ponds sounds intriguing.”

Aubrey’s grin grew wider.

“Well,” Kate said. “Bret, will you be all right for a little while?”

“I think I can take care of myself for an hour.”

“It may be a little longer than that. I had Marcus throw in some extra copies of my books in that package he sent. I want to drop them off at the library for Miss Emma.”

“I’ll manage.”

“I made your lunch and left it in the oven.” She looked at him oddly, walked over and gently felt his forehead and cheek. “You look flushed. You aren’t getting too hot out here, are you?”

Aubrey and Willie exchanged grins behind her back, making Bret narrow his eyes at them in warning. “I’m fine,” he told her. “Go on and run your errands. These two comedians and I have business to discuss, anyway.”

“Okay, I’ll be back in a little while.” She turned to leave, then stopped. “Oh, while I’m in town I might go by the courthouse to see if I can look at the file on Henry’s mother. Do you have any problem with me doing that? I’m curious about what’s happening with her case and what motions her attorney might have filed. I used to cover a court beat for the newspaper, so I could decipher the legal mumbo jumbo for you if you’d like.”

“Go ahead. I’d be thankful for the information.” He gave her the name of the mother and boyfriend.

Bret turned in the swing and watched while she and Willie walked to the car. His gaze went to her denimclad behind and the alluring way it swayed when she moved.

“I might have to kill you over those oysters,” he told Aubrey casually, not taking his eyes off Kate. She bent over and arranged the curtains on the back seat, putting a twist in his gut that would take a tractor to yank out. “She has no idea what they are.”

Aubrey chuckled. “A man’s gotta have a little fun now and then.”

“Yeah, well, it seems to me you have more than your share of fun.”

“Ain’t
my
fun I’m worried about, boss man, it’s yours.”

Bret turned and looked at him. “Meaning?”

“Ain’t you ever heard? Mountain oysters is supposed to be one of them afra-dizziacks.”

R
ECORDS OF THE CIRCUIT
court weren’t computerized, and it took the clerk a while to locate the files Kate requested on Henry’s mother and her ex-boyfriend.

Next she went to the probate and tax assessor’s offices to check Bret’s land records. He’d seemed forthright about his life here, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of not confirming what he’d told her. Erroneous information, sometimes given unintentionally by a source, was a biographer’s nightmare if it appeared in print; it could taint the entire book.

She quickly located the records, comparing the descriptions to the assessed value of the property. In March of 1992 he’d bought his farm and the old family homestead, valued collectively at $750,000. Where had he gotten that kind of money? From James? His brother was still living then. From George Conner? His stepfather had a lucrative dental practice at the time.

Someone must have helped him with the purchase. He’d been twenty-five with no college degree and a less-than-stellar employment history. She made a note to herself to check where Bret was working that specific year.

He’d subdivided the more valuable property—the homestead—four years later, retaining ownership of fifty acres, as he’d told her. Getting down another index, she followed the paper trail for the remaining six hundred acres, the land he’d donated for Pine Acres. The current owner was listed as…the Mason Bret Hayes Foundation.

“Well, well,” she muttered. “You’re simply full of surprises, aren’t you?”

He’d set up a foundation to operate the ranch. Why go through the red tape and tax hassle of that when he could have used the foundation his mother had created in James’s name?

She paid for copies, dropped the signed books off at the library and went to the motel room. Cell phones were insecure for the kind of information she and Marcus often swapped, so she’d told him to call her room with any messages. He’d left five. She dialed her office.

“Kate, how about checking in more often?” Marcus said. “I don’t like not hearing from you for days.”

“But I’ve e-mailed you every night.”

“Doesn’t count. I need to hear a real voice once in a while.”

“I’m sorry. What was so urgent that you had to leave me this many messages?”

“I dug up a few things you’ll be interested in. Nothing on the drug allergies you asked me to look into, but the rest of what I have you’ll want right away. Do you want to download?”

She looked at the clock on the bedside table and saw that she’d been gone from Bret’s for more than two hours. Before she left, she wanted to go on-line to check the law on capital murder in Alabama. She’d better hurry.

“No, I’m pressed for time. Tell me briefly what you found, then put everything in a file on my hard drive with today’s date and I’ll dial in tonight and get it.”

“Will do.”

He gave her a brief account of what it cost to run a breeding farm the size of Bret’s and how much he could expect to net each year.

“From what I’ve been able to find out, Hayes has a good reputation, his stock is excellent and he probably makes a fair income, but he could do a lot better if he wanted to. I talked to some of his competitors and they say he’d have a first-class operation if he’d expand and stop turning down business.”

“Probably worried about losing his privacy if he gets too big. Or maybe he doesn’t need to work. Conceivably he could be living modestly on what’s left of his inheritance.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I found news stories on seventeen other ranches he’s set up.”

“Seventeen?” Kate’s surprise made her bolt into a sitting position on the bed. “There are seventeen more of them?”

“Yep, they’re all over the South. Hayes built them through a separate foundation, and that’s why we didn’t pick up on them until now.”

“The Mason Bret Hayes Foundation.”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

She outlined what she’d learned at the courthouse.

“I never dreamed there was more than one ranch, Marcus. If he’s supporting seventeen, this goes beyond a local project. We’re looking at a major charity using an incredible amount of money, possibly even more than Bret had to begin with. Where’s he getting it?”

“I think I’ve figured that out. Up until today I thought the entire seventy-two million his mother and sister got after taxes went to set up the James Hayes Foundation.”

She frowned. “That’s not the case?”

“No, I don’t think so, and I don’t think all the annual income from investments and music royalties is going into that foundation, either. I can’t be absolutely sure because the records aren’t open, but working backward and using what I could find through public sources, I added up the contributions the foundation’s made to university music programs, scholarship funds and other charities. Then I factored in what I estimate the investments should be bringing in annually. The revenue’s coming up short of the expenditures.”

“How short?” She picked up a pen and started jotting notes.

“Way short. A minimum of twenty-five million a year.”

She stopped writing, stunned. “That can’t be right.”

“Sis, either that money
isn’t
being invested, which is fiscally irresponsible, or it’s going somewhere else.”

“And you think they’re giving it to Bret’s foundation?”

“I do. While he probably used his inheritance to build the first few ranches, I think he’s maintaining them and building new ones using the income from James’s music royalties. He’s also made several large donations there in Alabama.”