T. Bunn - Winner Take All

“Where was he raised?”

“Burgaw. A reporter at the Wilmington newspaper described the town as, blink and you’ve missed all the fun.” Her hair caught the sunlight and teased him with the afterglow. “According to the same reporter, Dale took the UNC-W team from the swamps to the treetops. He won the conference title his junior and senior years, more or less single-handedly.”

“Now I remember where I’d heard his name before.”

“The paper dubbed him the Wilmington Wonder. The Bengals took him in the second round. But during the final game of the regular season, he was hit bad and broke both his collarbone and his hip. He was stretchered off, never to return.”

Kirsten recounted Dale’s rehabilitation and MBA and return to Wilmington without referring to her notes. “The company barely held its head above water for three years. Then Dale hit pay dirt when, of all things, a leading maker of wedding gowns offered him a long-term agreement. They liked his precision sewing, they wanted an American supplier. Dale’s turnover doubled in eleven months. Four years later, New Horizons bought him out.” She pointed ahead. “That’s your turn. The Steadman residence should be four miles down on the left.”

Marcus halted at the traffic light, studying her and the vast distance between them. Her skin glowed with the fabled luminosity of a perfect blonde. The open file in her lap did not quite cover the stockinged legs emerging from the sky-blue linen skirt. Her lips were as pale as her lashes and just begged to be kissed. Kirsten turned to him then, and recognized the hunger. She did not draw away. Instead, the gemstone gaze melted with resignation and fear.

The question was out before he could halt it. “Who hurt you?”

Her lips parted, reaching not for words but air.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe the only answer is in trusting me? Just for a moment, long enough to separate me from whatever it is you’re carrying around inside?”

Kirsten began trembling. He could see the tight shivers attack her frame. He reached over, but halted his hand in midair when she flinched from the coming touch.

A horn honked behind them.

Marcus took the turn and drove a tunnel of country greens down to where the road forked. A half-mile farther on, he started across a long plank bridge that led to Dale Steadman’s private island preserve. Before them rose a faux French manor of cream-colored brick, with gray shutters and a peaked slate roof and eleven dormer windows on two floors. Marcus cut off the motor and sat there.

He hated the fear she showed him. Hated how vulnerable she looked, unable to move yet awaiting his next words as she would a vicious blow. Which was why he swallowed down what he wanted to tell her, and instead merely said, “I think you should take the meeting with Senator Jacobs.”

He could see she was tempted to refuse, and knew with dagger-like certainty she was close to departing. “All right.”

“I might need more time down here to map out a strategy with Dale.”

“I said I would.” She ended the discussion by rising from the car.

The front portico was domed in the manner of a European palace and ringed by ornate columns. The manor’s south side was gutted and blackened, such that a dozen windows watched their arrival like charred and wounded eyes. As they started across the drive, Dale Steadman opened the front door. Marcus realized instantly the man was drunk. Dale observed their approach with a bleary gaze, muttered a half-formed greeting, pushed off the doorway, and shuffled inside.

Although the rooms through which they walked were relatively unscathed, the stench of cold ashes was everywhere. Tools were piled by sawhorses and lumber. Plastic tarpaulins split the central hallway and covered the south-facing doorways. Dale led them into a rear parlor that ran the length of the house. Three walls were fashioned as a rich man’s study, with panels of oiled walnut and burl. A spiral brass staircase rose to a long balcony fronted with bookcases. The fourth wall was a ribbon of French windows, through which Marcus could see slate decking and the precision of professional gardening. Beyond the lawn, the Intracoastal Waterway sparkled with a carnival’s myth of easy living and only good times.

As Kirsten followed Dale over and settled him into a sofa, Marcus’ phone rang. He stepped back into the hallway. “Glenwood.”

It was his secretary. “I couldn’t find you a hotel at any price. It’s summer, it’s the weekend, it’s the coast.”

“Now that I’m here, I can’t wait to get back,” Marcus replied. “Any luck on that other matter?”

The previous afternoon Marcus had given Netty a list of Wilmington attorneys he had met over the years, and asked her to call around and see if anyone would meet with him. “One lawyer by the name of Garland Perry. Now Judge Perry.”

“I don’t remember him.”

“He couldn’t place you either. But he knows Mr. Steadman, and it didn’t add a good flavor to his Saturday to hear why I was calling.”

“But he’ll see me?”

“Only if you can be there in a half hour’s time. He’s on his way out of town.”

“Call him back and tell him I’m coming.”

He slipped his phone into his pocket, reentered the back room, and asked Dale point-blank, “How drunk are you?”

Strangely, the New Horizons chairman gave his response to Kirsten and not to him. “Still looking for that place where it won’t matter anymore.”

Kirsten focused upon Marcus, finishing the triangle and keeping him from saying what he was thinking, that Dale was wasting everybody’s time.

Dale only slurred his words a small amount. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m new to this game.”

“Which game is that?”

“The one where I have mercenaries going to war in my place. I’ve always fought my own battles.”

“Your ex-wife is working hard to keep custody of the child.”

Dale used the hand holding the glass to punch himself upright, leaving a dark bourbon stain on the sofa’s arm. He weaved his way over to where he stood before the central glass doors. He was burly, loud, and almost comic in his glorious wreckage. “That makes no sense whatsoever.”

“Why do you say that?”

The bourbon stained his mouth with golden tears. “Erin never cared about the baby. Not till the publicity started.”

“That doesn’t jibe with the fact that she has hired a courtroom brawler.”

“Hamper Caisse.”

“That’s right. Yesterday he brought in witnesses who attested to your unfitness as a father.”

Dale’s next gesture collided with the window. “That makes even less sense.”

“That they would condemn you as they did?”

“No. That Erin would go to all this trouble.”

“You’re not worried about your good name being demolished in open court?”

“Only got room for one worry right now. And that’s not it.”

Kirsten spoke up for the first time. “Marcus is a fighter. But you’ve got to help him.”

“Show me how.”

Marcus extracted the custody agreement from his pocket. “Your ex-wife’s attorney has presented a notarized agreement to the court, claiming you and she settled the issue of your child privately.” He waited while Steadman gave the pages an owl-eyed scan. “Is that your signature on the last page?”

“Absolutely.” He tossed the pages to the floor. “And I’ve never seen this before.”

“You’re claiming Erin Brandt’s lawyer lied in open court?”

“Somebody sure did.”

“Sir, I dislike carrying on important business under these circumstances.”

Dale Steadman carried his laugh into his glass. “That makes two of us.”

“I have to see a local attorney about a matter. Then we’ll be leaving for Rocky Mount, since I couldn’t find us a hotel room. I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll try again. I’d appreciate it if you would try and be sober for the occasion.”