Hoaley Ill-Manored (12 page)

In spades.

DS

Adam didn’t know where to go, he was too
angry to go back to work and he needed to get away from the manor.
He didn’t want Dirk to be able to find him. So he just started
driving, and soon found himself passing the River Bluff Bar and
Grille. On an impulse, he turned into the parking lot and headed
for the bar. Teddy Worth wasn’t there. Instead a young, pretty
blonde woman with a butterfly tattoo across the exposed crescent of
one breast stood behind the bar, texting something on a pink-clad
phone.

The woman looked up and smiled as he
approached. “Hi! What can I get ya?”

Adam dropped onto a stool and looked around.
The place was empty except for one other man sitting in the corner,
nursing a cup of something hot. The elderly man was impeccably
dressed and perfectly turned out. Adam suddenly realized what a
mess he was—literally as well as figuratively.

He smiled at the bartender. “I’ll take a
beer. Whatever’s on tap is fine.”

She nodded and grabbed a frosty mug from the
cooler, filling it from the tap. “You look like you’ve had a hard
day.”

He fought the urge to scrape sawdust off his
forearms. It wouldn’t help his case to cover her spotless bar in
wood dust. “Yeah, sorry I’m such a mess. We’ve been working out in
the sun all day, cutting up a huge tree.”

“No worries.” She set the frosty mug in
front of Adam. “I love to see a hard working man drinking beer.”
When she smiled Adam noted the straight, white teeth and the
sparkle in her brown eyes. She had a very pleasant face and manner.
Much easier to be around than Teddy Worth. “It’s why I tend bar
instead of doing what I went to school for.”

Adam settled his mug onto the bar. “And what
was that?”

Laughing, she grabbed a pot of coffee off
the warmer. “Psychology.”

Adam laughed with her. “Well, I’d guess you
probably use that here.”

“You have no idea.” The girl slipped through
a swinging gate at the end of the bar and crossed the room to
refill her other customer’s coffee cup. She stood for a moment and
spoke to him, then touched him on the shoulder before leaving him
to his thoughts and returning to the bar.

Adam sipped his beer, lost in his thoughts.
He needed to think through what to do about Dirk and his pushy
friend.

“Take, for example, that sweet old man over
there,” she said quietly.

Adam cringed inwardly. Apparently he wasn’t
going to be left to drink in miserable silence. “What about
him?”

“He just lost his wife. The two of them used
to come to the restaurant every Monday for lunch and every Friday
night at five for dinner. He still comes but instead of eating he
just sits there and drinks coffee. It’s so sad. He’s at loose ends,
unsure how to move on with his life now that she’s gone.” She shook
her head and started cutting up fruit behind the bar.

“That is sad.”

“I try to talk to him, keep him company when
he’s here. I just hate to see him so unhappy.”

“I’m sure it helps.”

She shrugged and continued to slice oranges
for a minute before glancing at Adam. “You live around here?”

“Recently, yes. I’m rehabbing the old
Bilsworth Manor.”

She stopped chopping and her eyes lit up. “I
love
that place? I bet it was just gorgeous in its day.”

“I’ve seen pictures. It was very elegant.
I’m hoping I can return it to its former glory.” Unbidden, Franklin
Spence’s offer slipped through his mind like poison, making him
frown.

“I heard you had a fire there the other
night.”

Adam blinked, looking up from his beer. “We
did. News gets around fast here. I guess it was in the local
paper?”

“It probably was. But I don’t get the paper.
I don’t need to. I hear all the news I need to hear on the job.”
She grinned and Adam had to laugh.

“I’ll bet.”

“Actually, Teddy told me.” She dropped some
orange slices onto a plate and put it in front of Adam. “Do you
know, Teddy Worth?”

“Thanks. I do, yes. I spoke to him right
here last night in fact.”

She nodded. “He happened to drive by the
fire that night, said it was so hot it demolished the gazebo within
minutes.”

Adam’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth, an
orange slice dangling from his fingertips. “He what? I thought he
was here that night, working.”

“Oh, he was, until about eleven. Then he
asked me to cover for him so he could run an errand. I thought it
was a strange time to be running errands but Teddy’s different like
that, so I agreed to stay on and not tell the boss.” She grimaced,
leaning close. “Our boss doesn’t like it when we mess with the
hours. He doles them out very carefully so that everybody gets
exactly the same amount of time and he likes complete control over
everything that happens here.” She shook her head. “Teddy’s gonna
cover for me on Saturday so we’ll be even.”

Adam was only half listening. His mind was
racing with the information. It changed everything. Teddy Worth was
not only a possible suspect for the fire, but chances were good he
was the culprit. The way the lake and the gazebo were situated,
there was no way at all Teddy could have seen the fire from the
road, let alone known how long it took for the fire to consume the
gazebo.

He’d lied. To Adam
and
to the girl
across the bar. And people didn’t lie unless they had something to
hide. In this case, Adam could guess what he was hiding. Suddenly
he couldn’t sit still. He pulled out his wallet and threw a ten
dollar bill on the bar. “Thanks…”

“Melissa.”

“Melissa. I’m Adam.” He shook her hand. “It
was nice talking to you.”

“Going back to work?”

“Yeah. I am. But first I need to go talk to
somebody about a fire.”

She looked perplexed but Adam didn’t stay to
explain. He was already heading for his truck.

Adam’s anger carried him all the way to
Teddy Worth’s cabin. It got him down the driveway and even gave him
the strength to get out of the truck and pound on Worth’s door. But
even as mad as he was, once he was outside, unprotected and alone,
Adam couldn’t shake the feeling that someone watched him from the
thick woods surrounding the house.

A cold awareness prickled between his
shoulder blades.

No one responded to his determined knocking
and, after five minutes, he turned away and stood on the porch,
looking around the property. Teddy’s ancient, green truck sat in
the drive ahead of Adam’s. Adam figured Teddy might be at the barn.
There was a narrow path leading into the woods from one side of the
small patch of grass that served as a yard. The pathway led in the
right direction for the barn.

Despite a veritable cacophony of warning
bells going off in his head, Adam made a quick decision that he
knew could spell disaster. He stepped down off the porch and headed
for that path.

As soon as he started down the path the
woods seemed to close around him. The trees were a vibrant, hulking
presence on either side of the narrow dirt pathway, shutting off
much of the light of the dying sun and damping down even the sound
of cars on the road.

Birds called and chattered high in the
treetops and a fly buzzed around Adam’s head, driving him crazy
with its persistence. He swatted at the fly and forced himself to
move forward. The feeling of having stepped into another world only
increased as he moved farther down the path. The vegetation at the
base of the trees whispered as something moved through it and Adam
stopped, his gaze sliding to the place where the jagged edges of a
plant with deep green leaves still swayed.

Nothing else moved so he started off
again.

A moment later a loud crack, like someone
had stepped on a branch, stole the silence. Adam jerked to a stop
again, listening. He thought he heard a low growl and spun toward
the sound.

There was nothing. At least nothing he could
see.

Walking on, Adam soon came to a place where
the path went in two directions. He could just make out the red
walls of the barn through the green wall of vegetation on the left.
He started to head in that direction.

A dog barked. His head whipped around. It
had come from the opposite direction. Adam realized that, if he was
smart, he’d put as much distance between himself and Teddy Worth’s
massive, angry eyed dog as he could. Unfortunately, he figured
there was a better than even chance that Teddy was with the dog, so
he started down the path that veered to the right.

Silence fell over the woods again. Adam
stepped carefully over thick roots bulging from the ground,
watching for snakes and anything else that might choose to arrange
itself between him and his destination. A moment later, Scout
barked again and something thrashed through the undergrowth not too
far from where Adam stood. A terrible growly sound filled the air.
It sounded like Scout had something cornered.

The thrashing and growling continued for a
minute and then a whistle pierced the air. The fight stopped
immediately. Adam wondered if Scout had subdued his prey or, like a
good dog, had given it up in favor of his master’s command.

The path ended abruptly, opening up into a
clearing that Adam unfortunately recognized. “Shit,” he whispered.
The slave cabin stood in a weak web of dappled light, looking every
bit as cold and ugly as it had the last time Adam had been
there.

Looking around, he didn’t see any sign of
Teddy. He was just opening his mouth to call out to the other man
when every hair on his body stood straight up. A cold chill ran
through his body and his airways shut down.

A low growl throbbed on the air just behind
Adam. He held perfectly still, imagining he could feel the dog’s
hot breath on the backs of his legs. The growl deepened, grew more
threatening, and Adam was pretty sure he heard the sound of a
tongue snapping over lips.

When he started to turn around, the growl
turned to a snarl, teeth audibly clacking together. Adam eyed the
cabin and wondered if he could make it that far before the dog was
on him. Then he realized there was no door. He wouldn’t be any
better off there than he was in the open. He’d only add to the
death vibes already saturating its walls. “Easy boy.” Adam squared
his shoulders and prepared to turn, hoping he could convince the
big Rottweiler he was more Alpha than Alpo.

The shadows within the open cabin doorway
shifted and Teddy Worth emerged. He was brushing his hands on his
dirty jeans and frowning. Suddenly his head whipped around and his
brown gaze widened in surprise. To Adam’s amazement, he laughed.
“That detective was right, Hoale. You are an idiot.”

Adam frowned.
Damn that CC
. “Just
call your dog off, Worth. You and I have something to discuss.”

Teddy crossed arms that Adam suddenly
noticed were massive across an equally impressive chest. “You’re
not exactly in a position to make demands.”

Adam realized neither dog nor man was going
to quake in fear any time soon, so he tried a bluff. “CC and Dirk
know I’m here. If I don’t come back they’re gonna come looking for
me.”

Worth stared hard at him for a moment. Adam
couldn’t read Teddy’s thoughts from his expression. Finally he
shook his head. “You got the wrong idea about me, man.” He glanced
beyond Adam, to his dog. “Come here, Scout. Leave it.”

The growling stopped and Scout trotted past,
throwing Adam a glare and shark bumping Adam’s leg as if to say,
“You’re mine if the big guy stands down.”

Scout trotted over to Worth and lay down
next to him, his stub of a tail wagging with doggy innocence.

“What are you doing here, Hoale?”

“I could ask you the same thing. You told me
you never came to this cabin. Were you the one who put the noose up
and the flowers?”

Worth unfolded his arms and, for the first
time Adam saw the coil of rope in his big hand. “No. But I’m the
one who took it away.” His brown gaze was hard as lead, consuming
the meager light in the clearing like a pair of miniature black
holes. His dislike of Adam throbbed across the distance separating
them.

Adam couldn’t care less. He didn’t like
Worth either. “You lied to us about the night of the fire. You
weren’t working that night. You were at Bilsworth Manor, setting
the fire yourself.”

For an unnervingly long time, Worth didn’t
respond. He continued to stare at Adam with that fathomless gaze.
Finally he shook his head and sighed. “Like I said, you got me all
wrong. I was there, yes. But I didn’t set that fire.”

Adam laughed. “You actually expect me to
believe that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really care if you
believe it. It’s the truth.”

“Then why were you there?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s personal.”

“Yeah. It’s personal for me too, Worth. I
took it very personal that my property was used as kindling that
night. Don’t give me that bullshit. Just tell me why you were
there!”

“I can’t.”

“We’ll see about that.” Adam turned around
and gave a cry of alarm. A huge dead raccoon lay in the dirt behind
him, its glassy, sightless eyes seeming to stare right at him.
“Shit!”

Worth came up beside Adam. “This place is
thick with coons. They’re very destructive you know…raccoons. And
despite all the natural predators, they seem to thrive.”

Adam couldn’t stop staring at the dead
raccoon. He felt a little sick to his stomach. “This one isn’t
exactly thriving.”

“Nature’s a cruel bitch, Hoale. Only the
strong survive.”

Adam looked at him. Like at the bar, Teddy’s
gaze seemed filled with warning.

“Are you strong, Adam Hoale?” Teddy held
Adam’s gaze for a moment and then bent down, picking up the dead
raccoon, and started toward his cabin, the coon dangling from one
hand.

Adam stood rooted to the spot as man and dog
disappeared, the path swallowing them up about ten feet in. When he
was sure they were gone, Adam lifted a shaky hand to his face and
scraped it across his brow where a cold sweat had gathered.