Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,34
cell phone to see if she’d missed a call from Sutton while she was talking to Captain Rayburn. No messages.
He’d seemed preoccupied when they’d parted ways at the trucking company. Had he seen the truck in the cleaning bay and come to the same conclusion she had?
If so, what was he up to now?
* * *
SETH HAMMOND WALKED past Sutton, who stood frozen and numb in the middle of his father’s bedroom. Setting a tray of food on the table next to Cleve’s wheelchair, Seth stuck a straw in a glass of iced tea and shifted the fork to the left side of the plate.
“Made your favorite,” he told the chair-bound man, whose expression softened as he looked up at the younger man. “Chicken bites with honey mustard dip. And this time, you eat those carrot sticks I cut up for you instead of throwing them at the TV.”
Seth looked at Sutton. “Cleve likes to watch Judge Everett, but he gets a little too involved and ends up throwing things at the litigants.” He grinned at Cleve. “Always the vegetables, I notice, Cleveland. You’re not foolin’ me, you old coot.”
Cleve made a grunting sound and waved his good hand at the television.
“Hold your horses, old man. I’m getting there.” Seth picked up the remote from the side table and handed it to Cleve. The older man frowned his displeasure and tried to hand it back to Seth. “No, sir, you know you’re supposed to be doing things for yourself. You’ve got a good hand. Use it.”
Sutton felt a flood of nausea rise up his throat as Cleve growled his displeasure at Seth, but Seth just laughed it off and nodded for Sutton to follow him out of the room.
Seth closed the bedroom door behind him and headed toward the living room, nodding his head for Sutton to follow. “He knows how to use the remote. He just likes to have someone snap to attention whenever he barks.”
Sutton stopped in the middle of the hallway, forcing Seth to stop and turn around. “Five years of that?”
“It was a lot worse for the first year or so. He couldn’t do much for himself at all then. I know it’s hard to tell, but he’s made a good bit of progress. Not as much as he should’ve, but you know what a stubborn old cuss he can be, and the stroke made him that much worse.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Seth’s eyes glittered with meaning. “You wouldn’t take my calls.”
Damn. Seth had tried to call him about five years earlier, but Sutton had ignored the messages. He’d been up to his eyeballs in jihadists on a daily basis. The last thing he’d wanted to deal with was his old friend’s latest mess. “I thought you wanted me to bail you out or something.”
“Lucky for me I didn’t,” Seth murmured, gesturing toward the doorway into the living room. “Come on, let’s sit down. You’re looking a little pasty.”
Sutton dropped into the nearest armchair, his knees feeling shaky. “God.”
Seth sat on the sofa adjacent, leaning forward a little. “Seriously, you okay? You want a glass of water?”
“Did the doctors know what caused it? High blood pressure?”
Seth’s lips quirked slightly, though they didn’t quite make it to a smile. “I reckon Bart Ludlow would call it divine retribution.”
Sutton frowned, not following.
“Remember when Ludlow filled your daddy’s backside full of buckshot for messing around with Ludlow’s wife?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they didn’t get all the buckshot out, as you probably remember. Apparently one of those pellets did something they call ‘embolize.’ Went right up his bloodstream, lodged in a vessel in his head and caused a stroke.”
“God.” How bloody typical, he thought, that one of his father’s myriad sins would have come back to bite him. “Who found him?”
“I did. I usually checked on him every day or so. Doctor said the timing was damned near a miracle. Too much longer and they couldn’t have saved him.”
“Did he ask to see me after he was awake?”
Seth’s eyes narrowed. “I told you, he can’t talk.”
In other words, Sutton thought, he hadn’t. Why would he? Sutton had left the second he turned eighteen and made it clear to his father that he didn’t want to see him again. “He can understand you, right?”
Seth nodded. “The doctors aren’t sure why he’s not able to talk. They think it might be psychosomatic. You know how vain Cleve’s always been about his looks. The doctors speculated staying mute might be a way to avoid interacting with