The Love of a Stranger Page 6

  Callister had no funeral home, so after an autopsy, what was left of Charlie had ended up in a mortuary fifty miles away. She had consented to cremation—someone had to—and said she would handle the disposition of the ashes. It was the most and the least she could do. She drove to the funeral home and picked up the eight-inch square stainless steel container. Then with Ted’s help and a member of the county’s road maintenance crew, who also worked as the grave digger, they buried the box in the Callister County Cemetery. She had even bought a family floral tribute and laid it on Charlie’s grave.

  While her mood remained gloomy, to say she was immobilized by grief would be untrue. She and Charlie had lived separately off and on for years before the divorce. Dealing with his binges and bimbos had long ago immunized her against paralyzing emotion where he was concerned. The feeling that had remained between them was an odd sort of bond, an inscrutable hodgepodge of insecurities and shared experiences and the comfort and shelter of lifetime acquaintance.

  Memories crept in and it wasn’t in her to spurn them. She pulled her robe tighter as a picture came back of herself and Charlie walking together down a dusty Arkansas road to their first day of school. The sun shone on his blond hair. It had been scrubbed clean in a galvanized, number-two tub by a neighbor on the back porch of the McGregor shack.

  As they walked, he held her hand and made light of her faded, too-big dress and second-hand shoes with worn soles and stitching loosening at the sides. Her school wardrobe had been a donation from a church. So had his. He was laughing, she was solemn. And hadn’t that been the way they had lived their lives? Maybe they hadn't cared about each other in a romantic way for a very long time, or never, really. But back then, over thirty years ago, on the first day of school, almost all they’d had was each other.

  As she sat in front of the windows, sensing rather than seeing the incredible outdoor beauty, for the first time since the cabin conflagration, tears puddled in her eyes and spilled to her cheeks, not for what had been, but for all that hadn’t. Indeed the grave in Callister’s prairie cemetery represented a decisive finality to a long unhappy chapter of her life.

  Another grave winged its way through the halls of her memory, the one in Los Angeles where she and Charlie had buried the daughter who had been their inspiration and motivation. He had never recovered from her death. Following her burial, he stayed drunk most of a year. Tortured by guilt, Alex believed, for the part he played in the car accident that took the ten-year-old from them.

  Alex had checked him into a substance abuse clinic, where he completed treatment and counseling. And soon after his release he had returned to the fog of addiction and irresponsibility, where he felt no pressure and couldn’t think a rational thought.

  Amazing after all this time how the pain could rip through the vagueness of memory as if the fortress within which she had enclosed it wasn’t there. Amazing how it could still cut into her heart and inflict a fresh wound.

  From out of nowhere, awareness of her own mortality nudged her and she felt a gnawing urgency to get on with things, to make decisions. No more time to waste. The trip to Salt Lake, put on hold by Judy, her assistant in her Manhattan Beach real estate office, had been replaced by the necessity to be in Los Angeles. Charlie’s sudden death had unleashed a hurricane of problems with the chain of ten restaurants the two of them had founded together and continued to co-own even after the divorce.

  A call to their California accountant confirmed what she feared. Charlie Boy’s Old South Barbecue, of which her former husband had been the CEO, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Now she knew for certain why she hadn’t received her monthly stipend from the restaurants all year. The accountant insisted she return to California. Purveyors had to be paid. Several hundred employees, worried about their jobs, had to be reassured.

  As always, when she thought of Charlie, thoughts of Carlton’s Lounge & Supper Club weren’t too far behind. On the one hand, she wanted to just get in the Jeep, drive to town and lock Carlton’s doors forever. But her practical side, where worry over food and shelter remained as constant as summer drought, hesitated to close a profitable tiny business with an unprofitable large one floundering.

  Oh, she knew she would hear the snickers of customers in Carlton’s and see them talking behind their hands. This scathing new tale of Charlie McGregor’s reckless antics and his cold, emotionless ex-wife already back to business as usual was the best one yet. Callister’s citizens hadn’t enjoyed such juicy gossip in months. But why should she care? As long as they continued to lay down cash or credit card for food and liquor, what difference did what they said make?

  In truth, she was comfortable among Carlton’s earthy customers and the simplicity of Carlton’s compared to what she did in L.A. Having grown up among people to whom higher education came in low on a list of priorities, she understood people who made a living with their hands.

  Of course Carlton’s would never pay off like a fat real estate deal on a city shopping center or an apartment building, but running it was much less stressful. A disturbing thought sneaked into her musing. If forced to make a choice, she might pick Carlton’s over her real estate brokerage.

  She didn’t have to make a decision about it tonight. Tonight she had to change directions and instead of preparing for a planned trip to Salt Lake, she had to prepare for a detour to Los Angeles. And she had only tomorrow to do it. If she got underway Monday morning, she could make the nine hundred mile drive with only one stopover in Reno and pull into Manhattan Beach on Tuesday night. She left her chair, hauled her suitcase from the bedroom to the end of the living room sofa and resumed packing.

  And packing was what she was doing when the churn of a diesel engine at low speed caught her attention. She strode to a living room window and in the last glimmer of daylight, saw headlights crawling up her driveway. As the vehicle drew closer, she recognized a Miller Logging Company’s dirty red truck.

  The injunction crashed into her thoughts and her heart lurched. She had talked to Bob Culpepper’s assistant only a few days ago and he was out of town. The injunction couldn’t have been served. Or could it?

  Since the fire, Kenny had been calling and leaving messages on her voice mail—two just today. She wished she had returned the calls. If she had, chances were, he wouldn’t be approaching her house now.

  She rushed back to the bedroom and threw off her robe, grabbed from the floor the same silk noile jump suit she had been wearing at home for a week and slid her feet into tan leather mules. Her closets bulged with clothes, everything from casual rough-outs to designer labels, but since the fire, her attention had been so fractured, even choosing clothing seemed too hard.

  She hurried outside. At the edge of the deck, she crossed her arms under her breasts and waited as Kenny killed his engine and dismounted. To her astonishment, he wore dark dress slacks and a long-sleeve dress shirt. White. He wore no cap. She had never seen him without a greasy Miller Logging Company gimme cap covering his close-cropped black hair. What could he be up to? Gooseflesh raised on her arms.

  He started up her wooden deck steps. Even with ten feet between them, she saw his flushed face and suspected he had been drinking. Small black eyes in a square face, close-set under thick brows, glittered up at her. “I been calling you, Alex.”

  “I haven’t returned any calls yet.”

  His bulk filled the stairway. One hammy hand gripped the stair rail as huge black-booted feet hefted his dense body up the steps. “That was too bad, what happened to Charlie.”

  When he reached the top step, she retreated a few feet. “What do you want?”

  “My right-of-way across Old Ridge Road. I can’t get to my timber in Soldier Meadows without it. I need your signature.” He reached back and pulled a folded paper from his hip pocket. “My lawyer drew up—”

  “I’m not signing anything that has to do with logging and Swede Creek.” She sidled to the front door drawing a breath of relief that he hadn’t come about the inj
unction. Maybe he hadn’t yet been served.

  “You still refusing to honor agreements you made?”

  Honor. The word was an abomination coming from Kenny’s mouth. She placed her hand on the brass escutcheon that opened her front door. “Just back up. We’ve already been through this. I didn’t make any agreements—”

  “It’s already bought. I paid Charlie—”

  “Perhaps you should have paid me. At least, I would have given you a receipt.”

  He raised his palms and shook his head. “I didn’t come up here to pick no fight, Alex. Ain’t you gonna invite me in so we can set down and talk like civilized people?”

  She didn’t want him inside her house and the word civilized didn’t apply to the brute standing in front of her. “No.”

  “I got a deal for you. A good deal.”

  Hope sputtered to life. Last year she had attempted to buy Soldier Meadows back from him, but he had laughed in her face. Maybe he had decided to sell it after all. She had too much at stake not to listen to his proposition. On a great sigh, she said, “All right, Kenny. Come in. But please make it short.”

  When he passed through the doorway in front of her, a strong alcohol odor confirmed her suspicions and prompted her to question the wisdom of letting him into her house. She led him into her office to the left of the entry and switched on a table lamp beside the oxblood leather sofa.

  Though she didn’t invite him to sit, he seated himself on the edge of the sofa as if he were welcome. His weight sank into the buttery cushions. He planted filthy work boots on her gray wool rug. Her jaw clenched. Kenny was wealthy. It was his arrogance, not his bank book, that made him wear dirty work boots with dress clothing. He looked so grossly out of place against the sofa’s rich upholstery and the bronze nail heads outlining the fronts of the thick arms, a shudder passed over her.

  Looking up at her, he patted the cushion beside him. “Ain’t you gonna set and talk?”

  Alex thrust forth a defiant chin. “You aren’t going to be here long enough for me to set. What’s on your mind?”

  Kenny looked down to his shirt pocket, plucked out a check and held it out. “I want to buy you out. I got a check here...It’s for five hundred thousand—”

  “What?” She gasped and frowned. “My home isn’t for sale.”

  He didn’t move a muscle or blink an eye. “Ain't nothing that ain’t for sale, missy. You’re a smart broad. You know what’ll happen when I start logging next door to you in Soldier Meadows.”

  Alex was glad to be standing. Being taller than her adversary was good power psychology. She always conducted difficult conversations on her feet. And on a scale of one to ten, this one had to be a thirteen. “Oh? Have you found a new way to get over there?”

  He hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees, and looked up at her from beneath his brow. “I’m going across Swede Creek, blondie. Right across the backend of your property. Me and Charlie agreed. I’m taking my trees while they’re prime. Them trees is the only reason I bought that damned ol’ steep hillside. And you know me crossing Swede Creek was part of the deal.”

  Alex rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Give me a break, will you? How many times can we have this conversation?” She marched out of the office toward the front door. Almost there, she realized he hadn’t followed. She stopped, turned back and saw him still seated, his gaze intently focused on her.

  Inside, she sighed and swore. Butting heads with him would only make her forehead bloody. Seeking another tack, she returned to the office and moved behind her desk. She clicked on the desk lamp, sat down and folded her forearms on the desk, eschewing power psychology and hoping for a rational conversation. “Kenny, look. I know you think I haven’t considered this problem, but I’ve been thinking about it for months. You’re right”—she patted the air with her palms for emphasis—“it isn’t fair you paid Charlie for something you can’t use. I know that. I’m still willing to buy Soldier Meadows back from you for more than you paid—”

  “Nuh-unh. No point talking about it. You wouldn’t pay what I’d want. It’s too hard to find timber that good any more. I’m gonna take the profit from harvesting it.”

  She might as well have been speaking to Maizie or Robert Redford, she realized, but she plowed on. “Listen, I understand how you feel. I’m the last person to fault you for wanting to make a profit. But driving trucks through the creek isn’t necessary. You’re an enterprising man. You know there's more than one way to skin a cat.”

  “Trucks is the only way to get them trees off that mountain.”

  “That isn’t true. I know of a couple of companies on the Oregon coast that do helicopter logging. If you hired one of them, you wouldn’t have the expense of building a road. And you’d be doing a community service by preserving Granite Pond.”

  “Nuh-unh. Costs too much. The community don’t get no benefit from that pond anyway. You don’t even let kids go up there anymore.”

  She drew a deep breath, dreading the very idea of the offer, the expensive and desperate offer, she was about to make him. “You know what it means to me to leave my acreage as well as the creek and pond undisturbed. If you get an estimate on the helicopter logging expense, I’d consider picking up part of it.” She leaned to the left and opened her bottom drawer, lifted out a Portland phone book. “I’ll even give you a name and number to call.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. It’s too much money, but I meant what I said. I’ll buy you out.” His head tipped back. His eyes scanned the room and its dark, ornately carved floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls, the tall casement windows that made up the other two walls. Envy showed so blatantly in his eyes she felt a shiver.

  His gaze came back to hers. “Ol’ Man Callister used to be the timber king around here. But I’m the timber king now. I want to own this ol’ Callister house.”

  Indeed her house had been built by a timber baron, which explained Kenny’s desire to own it. If it belonged to him, she had no doubt he would not log the five sections beside it. Owning things was important to the ego of a man who had spent his youth not knowing where his next meal might come from. She knew, having been in that situation herself. She hated being reminded they had that much in common. “And you think you can just walk in here and buy it for five hundred thousand?”

  “Cash money.”

  “You offered me more than that last summer.”

  A malicious grin tipped up one side of his mouth. “This summer’s different. This summer, you’re desperate.”

  Her spine stiffened. “I am never desperate. And your offer’s a joke. This house has been restored from top to bottom and updated. I’m sure Charlie told you what I’ve spent. It and the timber that’s left on my acreage are worth six or eight times that.”

  “I ain’t paying you millions, missy.” His gravelly voice—it had always reminded her of a rock slide—took on an ominous tone. “Forget that shit. You just better stop and think about what’s going on around you and come to your senses.”

  Anger burned through her. Something at her core wouldn’t permit her to be talked down to, even by someone common sense told her to fear. She sprang to her feet, her hand squeezed into a fist. “You're dreaming if you think threatening Swede Creek and the pond is going to drive me to sell this place for a fraction of its value. I will not. And if I have to lie down in front of your trucks, I’ll keep you from building a road across that creek.”

  The logger jumped up, too, and stalked to the front of her desk. A vein throbbed in his temple. He stabbed the air in front of her face with his finger. “Charlie was right about you. You’re a damn nut.”

  She couldn’t let him see panic. “Charlie no longer has a say, does he?”

  “Godammit, you knew I was gonna log. You agreed.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything about destroying Swede Creek or Granite Pond. Or using my driveway for a logging road. If I hadn’t been preoccupied with something out of state, this sorry deal would have never hatche
d.”

  “I paid Charlie cash, Alex. A lot of cash.”

  She had to maintain level-headedness. Groping the recesses of her mind for another argument, she stepped back, away from his withering breath. “I sent you a copy of the environmental study I had done.” She moved sideways to the bookcase, grabbed a copy of the thick engineering report off one of the shelves and slapped it onto the desk top. “Didn’t you read it?”

  He threw a hand in the air. “Them college pussies don’t know shit. I lived in these woods my whole life. I seen Mother Nature do more damage overnight than my trucks will do in a season.” He stabbed the gray report cover with his finger. “That’s nothing but a pile of paper.”

  Realizing he was right pecked at her. She had paid thousands to scientists and engineers for an environmental impact study of logging the Swede Creek basin. Like children, they had argued with each other. Their report was inconclusive, generating more questions than answers and weakening her position. “Okay,” she said, grabbing at straws. “Here’s a price for you. How does five million sound? Write me a check and the whole place is yours—house, trees, right-of-way, everything. I’ll even throw in the furniture and antiques.”

  He stared at her from beneath a furrowed brow. “Playing games with me, blondie, is wrong-headed. I already said I ain't paying you nowheres near that.”

  “Then we’re wasting time. Good-bye, Kenny.” She started for the front door again.

  “Wait...”

  She stopped in the office doorway and turned back.

  “I’ll tell you what I will do.” His black eyes leveled on her mouth. A premonition made her catch her breath. She should shove him out the door before he said what she knew he was going to.