Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

Releasing a long sigh, he mumbled, “We talk by phone. Off and on. Not regular. Half the time, he doesn’t answer or call me back if I leave a message. I worry about him. He’s not a well man. Chest wheezes like a bagpipe.”

“That’s too bad,” Dent deadpanned. “Where does he live?”

“I don’t know.”

Dent looked around the room. “Got a Phillips screwdriver handy?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where he lives!” Haymaker exclaimed. “Swear to God I don’t. You could put my eye out and I still couldn’t tell you.” Then he raised his pointed chin defiantly. “Even if I could, even if he lived next door to me here, I wouldn’t tell y’all, ’cause Dale would want nothing to do with talking to you. You’ve wasted your time coming here.”

Dent and Bellamy exchanged a look, each conceding that they believed him but were at a loss as to where to go from there.

Then, moving suddenly, Dent reached across the space separating him from the small table at their host’s elbow and picked up a cell phone.

Haymaker’s recliner sprang upright. “Hey!” He tried to snatch the phone from Dent’s hand.

He held it just out of the other man’s reach. “Moody’s number is in here, right? Call him. Tell him we want to talk to him. Tell him you think it would be a good idea. It would give him a chance to validate the outcome of his investigation.”

“He doesn’t have to validate shit.”

“Then that’s what he can make clear to us.” Acting on a hunch, Dent added, “At the very least, he can explain how he and Rupe Collier built their case against Allen Strickland.”

Haymaker’s elfin eyes darted back and forth between them. “You’ve got nothing on them.”

“So there were some machinations?” Bellamy said.

“That’s not what I said,” he sputtered. “Don’t put words in my mouth, missy.”

“We’re not really interested in what you have to say, Haymaker. We want to talk to Moody.” Dent grinned with malice. “If he bent some rules, we’ll be giving him a chance to cleanse his soul. When he dies, he’ll go to heaven instead of hell. Good for everybody.”

“Call him, Mr. Haymaker,” Bellamy softly urged.

He silently debated it for several moments, then held up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Fine. I’ll think about it.”

Dent said, “You’ve got five seconds.”

“Look, come back tomorrow—”

Dent made a honking sound like a quiz-show buzzer. “Can’t wait till tomorrow.”

“How come?” Haymaker looked at Bellamy. “What’s your all-fired hurry?”

“I have my reasons for needing to see him as soon as possible. Call him.”

The former cop continued to fidget, continued to stew.

“Time’s up.” Dent slid his thumb across the bottom of the screen, engaging the phone. “If you call him, you’re his concerned friend offering advice. If I call him, you’re the buddy who betrayed him. You choose.”

When Steven saw the name on his phone’s caller ID, he signaled William to take over for him at the hostess stand and quickly made his way into the relative quiet of the office behind Maxey’s busy kitchen. His phone had stopped vibrating by the time he closed himself in, so he redialed. Olivia answered on the first ring.

“Sorry I couldn’t answer in time, Mother. Is it Howard?”

“He’s holding on by a thread.”

Steven could tell by the hoarseness in her voice that she’d been crying.

“So am I,” she added shakily. “A very slender thread. He’ll have minutes of perfect clarity, and then periods when he lapses into a semiconscious state that terrifies me. I’m afraid he’ll never come out of it. He looks so old and feeble I can barely believe it’s my Howard.”

“Jesus. I know how hard this must be for you.” If William were dying, he would feel like his world was collapsing and he was powerless to stop it. “I’m sorry you’re there dealing with this alone.”

“Bellamy was here last night.” When he didn’t say anything, she softly added, “I know she came to see you, Steven. She told me. I was surprised she went all that way, given Howard’s condition. He was desperate to talk to her last night.”

“I’m sure he fears that each time he sees her will be the last.”

“Exactly. Which makes me wonder why he sent her away.”

“He did?”

“She was here barely an hour. She saw Howard alone for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, then she and Dent left.”

“Dent was still with her?”

“He flew her down.”

“They seem to be fairly chummy.”

“Much to our dismay. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking.”

“She probably thinking he’s a superstud. Just like Susan did.”

Olivia said nothing in response to that, probably because she was offended by the very idea and couldn’t bear to consider the implications.

“They flew back to Austin late last night,” she continued. “I don’t know what her hurry was, why she didn’t stay over until this morning at least.”

“Did you ask her?”

“She told me that Howard had sent her back to do something for him, but when I pressed her on it, she was evasive. When I asked Howard about it, he brushed it off as being unimportant.”

“Well, then—”

“But I think they’re keeping something from me, and I’m afraid.” She began to cry.

“Mother, don’t do this to yourself. You’re reading something into nothing. You’re exhausted and overwrought, and in your present circumstances, who wouldn’t be?”

“Everyone’s dancing around the issue.”

“What issue?”

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed raggedly. “That’s just it. I feel like I’m the only one not in on the joke. I hated that you and Bellamy had drifted apart. I’m thrilled that you got together. But what was so urgent that she left her dying father and went to see you now ? What did you talk about?”

“We caught up on each other’s lives. She met William. I told her about the restaurants, congratulated her on her book’s success. It was like that.”

“Why are you lying to me, Steven? Bellamy herself told me that she went to see you to talk—as adults—about that Memorial Day.”

He lowered his head and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose until it hurt. “All right, yes. Bellamy wanted to hear my perspective of events because apparently there are things she doesn’t know.”

“I don’t understand her preoccupation. Truly I don’t. It’s ancient history.”

“Not to her it isn’t. It’s very much in the present.”

“Do you think that’s healthy? For any of us?”

“No.”

“So what did you tell her? Did you tell her—”

“That I had pimped for Susan that day?”

“That’s a horrible thing to say! About your stepsister and yourself.”

“How would you put it?”

“Not nearly as crudely.”

“Well, I didn’t tell Bellamy about it in any terms.”

“There’s no reason why you should have. Boys and girls have been using go-betweens since there were boys and girls. Susan wanted to dance with Allen Strickland, and she asked you to deliver the message to him. It had tragic consequences, but, at the time, it was an innocent action, something that any typical teenage girl would have done.”

Except that Susan wasn’t typical and was by no means innocent.

He’d never shared with his mother or Howard the horrible secret of what was happening in his bedroom most nights, but he had admitted to them what had happened at the barbecue.

“If it was all that harmless, Mother, why did you and Howard want me to keep it from the police?”

“All we said was that if Allen Strickland didn’t make a point of it when they questioned him, you shouldn’t volunteer it. It wasn’t germane.”