“He gave you the answer you deserved,” Max said, his eyes glinting with an odd light that had moved many a man back a step. “We don’t discuss wives and children in this room.”
“Maybe not,” Holland said. “But your daughter-in-law makes herself impossible to ignore, Max. And a lot of people around this table agree with me.”
There was some awkward shifting in the chairs, but nobody spoke in support of Holland. Paul was grateful for his father’s defense.
“I hear she works with McEwan on stories,” Beau went on. “Feeds his reporters information. And some of that stuff splashes on us.”
“Then get yourself a fucking raincoat,” Max said. “Bid-rigging sounds like your area. You feeling the heat, Beau?”
Holland’s eyes smoldered, but Buckman spoke up before he could shoot back at Max. “Max is right,” the banker said with an air of finality. “Wives and children are off-limits. Paul, I wonder if you’d mind excusing yourself now. We have a little housekeeping business to take care of before we adjourn.”
There were no groans at this announcement, Paul noticed. Everyone in the room was watching him again, and the air felt brittle with expectation.
“Sure,” he said. “No problem.”
He slid his chair back and got up, then walked to the door, his eyes on a photograph of stooped black figures chopping cotton in a field. I know how you feel, he thought. As he took the elevator down to the first floor and moved through the lobby, he came to a certainty about one thing: Somebody in that room killed Buck Ferris.
The only thing he wasn’t sure of was whether they’d done it on orders from the club. He thought about waiting for his father to come down, but then the others would see that he’d waited. If Max wanted to tell him anything, he would call.
Three minutes later, Paul’s cell phone rang as he pulled his F-250 into his spot down at the wood treatment plant.
“Hey, Pop,” he said. “How about Beau Holland, huh?”
“I’m gonna hammer a punji stick up his ass one day.”
“Beau might just like that.”
Max laughed heartily. “You know he would.”
A flatbed truck pulled through the gate stacked with bundles of green pressure-treated fence posts.
“What do you think about the Buck Ferris thing?”
“I think Holland killed him. Unless it was Russo. He’s got the history for it.”
“Did the club order that hit?” Paul asked tentatively.
“No. But I don’t think anybody’s upset about it. Buck was a real threat to the mill. You know that.”
“Problem is, killing him didn’t remove the threat. It magnified it. You guys better walk on eggshells for a while.”
“You mean ‘we,’ don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure. But I’m not a real member. And I don’t stand to make half as much off the ancillary deals as those assholes do.”
“You’ll be making plenty. And I’ll be making more. You need to keep that in mind if your buddy Goose makes himself a problem.”
Paul said nothing.
“You also need to make sure he doesn’t get too tight with Jet. The two of them together make a bad combination.”
Paul felt his face color. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Just make sure your wife doesn’t insert herself where she doesn’t belong. And vice versa.”
Max’s syntax was too tortured to try to unravel, but Paul got the point. “I’m losing you, Pop. You going by the field tonight?”
“Yeah. I know we have that party, but Kevin’s pitching good. I’ll make it to the Aurora in plenty of time to see the Killer.”
Paul got out and walked into his office, the conflicting odors of creosote and chromated copper arsenate following him through the door. As he nodded to the receptionist, he remembered seeing Marshall talking to Jet in the refreshment line down at the industrial park. When she’d lowered her sunglasses to look at Marshall, Paul had seen one thing with painful clarity: she was glowing. Given the complicated history they shared, it would be naïve to expect Jet and Marshall to avoid each other under the present circumstances. But it had been a long time since Jet had glowed like that when she looked at Paul. Years . . .
He thought about the last time he’d slept with her. Nearly a month ago now. He’d felt good going into it, and he’d taken a 50 mg Viagra to be sure he could finish her properly. But while Jet hadn’t put him off, she’d submitted to the act as though it were any other habitual