If Winter Comes (14 page)

Dully, she thumbed
through the rest of the material. There was a photostat of a page of financial
records with the disbursement of five hundred thousand dollars to James White
Realty for a tract of land marked airport land purchase. Another sheet was from
the tax assessors office, showing the fair market value of the property at one
hundred thousand dollars. It was enough, more than enough, to give to the
paper’s legal staff. In fact, the very obvious overpayment might be enough to
make an accusation and prosecute.

“This will destroy
Bryan Moreland politically,” she murmured.

“Probably,” came the
cool reply. “But the evidence speaks for itself. They were trying to cover up
an overpayment of four hundred thousand dollars—of which your aging boyfriend
received one-fourth. Explain that, if you can.”

She stared at him,
pausing while the waitress put the cup of espresso in front of her. “Now tell
me the real reason why you’re doing this,” she asked quietly.

He looked taken aback.
“I told you already, I…”

Her eyes narrowed. “I
know what you
told
me. I want the truth.”

He shrugged, averting
his gaze. “All right, maybe I felt like a little revenge. We were in love, you
know.”

“You and who?” she
persisted.

“Mrs. Moreland, of
course,” he said bitterly. “She was much younger than he was, and he treated
her like dirt. She was nuts about me.”

Those words haunted her
all the way back to the office. Something wasn’t quite right, although revenge
might be a good motive for helping to nab a crook. But if it wasn’t revenge…

When she handed over
the photostats to Edwards, he and the legal staff were convinced that they had
a blockbuster of a story.

“You’ve done a damned
good job, Carla,” Edwards told her with a rare smile. “I knew you’d pull it
off.”

“Brown won’t testify,
you know,” she said. “And I can’t reveal my source by telling where and how I
came by those photostats.”

“We’ll work that out,”
he assured her.

“What if…” she cleared
her throat. “What if it’s a frame?”

He studied her closely.
“You know better than to get involved with a news source.”

She nodded, and smiled
bitterly. “You can’t imagine how well I’ve learned that lesson.”

“Go eat something,” he
said with a paternal pat on her shoulder. “It will all come right.”

Bill Peck stopped her
just as she started out the news-room door. “Want to have lunch with me and
talk about it?” he asked with uncharacteristic kindness.

She shook her head.
“Thanks. But there’s something I’ve got to do first.”

His eyes narrowed.
“Don’t go. He’ll rip you into small pieces.”

Her thin shoulders
lifted fatalistically. “There’s very little left to be ripped up,” she said in
an anguished tone. “See you.”

She walked into the
waiting room of Moreland’s office with a heart that felt as if it had been
pounded with a sledge hammer. Her face was pale, without its usual animation,
and her body felt as taut as rawhide.

“Go right in, Miss
Maxwell,” his secretary said with a smile.

“Thank you,” Carla said
gently. She opened the door to his office with just a slight hesitation.

He was sitting behind
the big desk, his dark eyes riveted to her trim figure dressed in a gray suit
and black boots. A smile relaxed the hard lines in his face and made him seem
younger, less intense.

“Sexy as hell,” he
remarked with gentle amusement.

She swallowed, and not
to save her life could she return his smile. “Hello,Bryan ,” she said in a loud
whisper.

The smile faded.
“What’s wrong?” he asked gently. “Did you stop by to tell me you couldn’t make
it for lunch?”

Her shoulders lifted
slightly, as she gathered her courage. “I don’t think you’re going to want to
take me out when you hear what I’ve come to say.”

His heavy black brows
collided. “Sit down.”

She shook her head. “If
it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stand,” she said miserably. She fumbled
in her purse for the photostats she’d made of Brown’s material. “I think this
will explain it all,” she said, handing them to him. She waited while he
studied the documents, his eyes narrowing, his face becoming as hard, as formidable
as she remembered it from their first conflict.

His dark eyes flashed
up to her face, blazing. “Well?” he growled. “What about it?”

She curbed an impulse
to turn and run. “Do I really have to tell you that?” she asked in as calm a
voice as she could manage. “We’re going to publish this information. We can’t
afford not to.”

His jaw tautened. “You
think this check is a kickback?” he asked in a strange, deep tone.

“We know it is,” she
agreed tightly. “It’s painfully obvious that you don’t pay five times fair
market value for a piece of land unless somebody benefits. We’ve already
checked with the man who owns the land. All he got out of the deal was two
hundred fifty thousand dollars. That leaves the other half unaccounted for,
except for your cut. Either White alone or with another conspirator pocketed
the rest, and we can prove it. I’m sorry, but…”

“You believe I’d take a
kickback?” he asked with barely controlled rage. “You really believe I’m
capable of that kind of vice?”

“You accepted a check
from James White for one hundred thousand dollars,” she said in a voice that
trembled, “just two days after the check for the airport land left city hall.
What else am I supposed to think?”

“Get out.”

He said it so softly,
so calmly, that she did a double take. He didn’t raise his voice, but then, he
didn’t have to. There was an arctic smoothness in his words.

She turned to go. “I’m
sorry,” she said inadequately, her voice a bare whisper. Inside, she felt as if
she were frozen forever.

“Not half as sorry as you’re
going to be, I promise you,” he said. “One more thing, Carla.”

“What?”

“Was it really
necessary to get that involved with me to get the story?” he asked coolly. “Did
you have to pretend an emotional interest, or was that just a whim?”

Her face reddened.
“But, it wasn’t…”

He laughed shortly,
leaning back in his chair to study her with eyes that shone with hatred. “I
should have been suspicious at the beginning,” he said mockingly. “A woman your
age wouldn’t have been so interested in a middle-aged man. I suppose I was too
flattered to ask questions.”

“But,Bryan , you don’t
understand…!” she cried.

He ignored her. His
eyes were those of a stranger. “Go print your story,” he said. “You might add a
postscript. I got my funding for downtown revitalization this morning. I may
leave this office, but I’ll take the city slums with me.”

Tears blinded her. She
turned and ran out of the office leaving a puzzled secretary staring after her.

The story hit the
stands the next afternoon, with a blazing banner headline that read, “Kickback
Suspected in Airport Land Purchase.” The story carried Carla’s byline, even
though Edwards had had a hand in writing it. She hadn’t slept the night before
at all. She could imagine the anguish Moreland was going through. She’d
destroyed him. And he thought that she’d been pretending when she said she
loved him. That hurt most of all, that he could believe she’d be that cruel for
the sake of a story. But, after all, didn’t she believe that he’d been crooked
enough to take a kickback? How could she blame him?

Over and over she heard
his deep voice growling at her accusingly. It began to haunt her. And Daniel
Brown’s voice haunted her as well, admitting that he’d been in love with Mrs.
Moreland, that she was “nuts about him.” From what she’d heard about Angelica
Moreland, she was hardly a lovable woman. And she would have had to be a good
deal older than Brown, who was still in his middle twenties. None of it made
sense. If only she could get her mind together enough to think logically!

She walked into the
newsroom the next day with a feeling of unreality. Her mind was still on
yesterday, but Peck snapped her out of it with his greeting.

“We’re into it now,” he
greeted her grimly. “Moreland’s filed suit for defamation and character
assassination.”

“Did you expect him to
admit he was guilty?” she asked with a bitter smile.

He grinned back. “Hell,
no.” His pale brows drew together. “Something bothering you besides the
obvious? Making accusations sometimes goes with the job, honey. Reporters don’t
win popularity contests, you know.”

“I know.” She slumped
in her chair. “What do you know about the late Mrs. Moreland?”

“Angelica?” He
shrugged. “She liked men and money, and she hated her husband and motherhood.
That about wraps it up.”

“What kind of men did
she like? Young ones?”

“Angelica!” he
exclaimed. “My God, she liked them older than her husband. I think it must have
been a father fixation. She was never seen with a man under fifty except
Moreland.”

Her lips made a thin
line. “Do you know anybody who could help me get some information on Daniel
Brown’s private life?”

One eyebrow went up and
he grinned. “Think Moreland’s innocent?”

Her chin lifted. “Yes.”
Her eyes dared him to make a comment.

He only smiled. “So do
I.” He laughed at her expression. “Don’t look so surprised, honey. I’ve known
His Honor for a lot of years, and he’s got more integrity than any other public
official I know. Sure, I’ll help you dig out some info on Brown. I think he had
an angle, too.”

She returned the smile,
feeling a weight lift off her shoulders. “Then, let’s go. I want to see a man I
know at the city police department about some personnel records.”

“I’ll check with a
contact of mine,” he said, following her out the door. “My God, don’t we remind
you of the news staff on that hit television show?”

She laughed. “Which
one? The one where we solve crime and makeAmerica safe for consumers, or the
one where we fight for truth, justice and the…”

“Never mind. Let’s
sneak out before Eddy can ask where we’re going.”

“I don’t think he cares
if we even work today,” she replied. “He looked sick when I poked my head in to
ask about assignments, and he didn’t even offer me one.”

“He’s brooding over the
lawsuit,” he told her. “The attorneys warned him that he mightn’t have enough
concrete evidence to avoid one, but he took the chance. Without asking old man
Johnson,” he added, grimacing.

“He didn’t ask the
publisher?” she exclaimed.

He shrugged. “He
couldn’t reach him by phone, and the deadline was coming up fast. He took a
gamble on the hottest story in years. Now Johnson’s all over him like ants over
honey.”