He pushed himself up and inched toward the bathroom. He might even be able to eat a little. He hadn’t eaten all day and the food at least sounded good when his butler mentioned it.
So he washed his face and hands, then cautiously made his way downstairs where he knew dinner was waiting.
7:50P.M.
CHRIS TRIED TO FINISH THE MEAL BUT COULDN’T, LITTLE MORE THANpicking at most of it. Finally, he shoved the cart away from the chair.
He was watchingJeopardy!, as he did most nights. He enjoyed the game. And it definitely beat those exposé newsmagazine shows or sitcom reruns that dominated most of early-evening television. He enjoyed seeing how many questions he could pose. The only annoying thing about the half hour was how much the new host looked like Hamilton Lee.
Both were tall and thin with grayish-brown hair. High furrowed brows led down to deep, full eyes. Each sported a graying mustache and was swarthy-complexioned, though he knew Lee spent a lot of time in a tanning bed at an expensive men’s salon where he also had his hair styled, mustache trimmed, and nails manicured. Lee even dressed like a game-show host. Double-breasted suits, no vent, wide lapels in the European style, a splash of silk puffed out of a jacket pocket that matched at least one color in his usually loud ties.
“European Castles for $800, please.”
“It’s the smallest of Ludwig II’s three Bavarian masterpieces.”
“What is Linderhof?” he whispered before the contestant dingedand echoed the same thing. He knew that only because he spent one July in southern Germany touring the castles and enjoying the Alps.
His brief interlude without pain ended just as the Double Jeopardy round drew to a close.
He shook his head in disgust.
It was going to be another long, sleepless night.
Upstairs in his bathroom, hidden away so the staff couldn’t find them, were the few remaining pain pills prescribed months ago when the last attack occurred. There’d been no need of them for a while.
He sat like a statue and waited for the agony to subside.
He thought again about his two partners and the rift that had widened between them. There no longer seemed any practical way to erect a bridge. He was the oldest of the three at sixty-eight. Hamilton Lee the youngest at fifty-eight. Larry Hughes in between at sixty. Their respective ages, though, carried no associated seniority. The articles of incorporation were clear. Each shareholder controlled an identical one-third interest. Yet the two younger men had, of late, effectively teamed to freeze him out of any real say in company policy. This was particularly true regarding Priority decisions where, in recent years, he’d become reluctant to authorize the number Lee and Hughes routinely favored. But what could he do about it? Turn them in? Make a deal with prosecutors? Give them Lee and Hughes in exchange for immunity?
Hardly.
His crime was too great for any show of mercy. No prosecutor would even consider a deal. And he had no desire to spend the rest of his life in prison. So what could he do? Vote no? That’s about it, though the gesture seemed meaningless. People were still going to die, since two-to-one would always be a majority.
He glanced around the study.
Bookshelves lined one wall, fashioned from what used to be a choir stall imported from a convent in northern Italy. The walls themselves were part goffered velvet, part fresco. The décor wasall original Italian antiques. He loved the room. It was where he read his paper in the morning and watched television in the evening. All beautifully coordinated. Detailed. Like his life. A neatly organized package surrounded by calculated extravagance. He’d come a long way from a deputy loan officer and had no desire to retreat. But he could also still hear the priest’s words from the confessional.
Mortal consciousness is a measure of the eternal soul.
That it was.
11:38P.M.
FRANKBARNARD GLANCED AT HIS WATCH.MELVINBENNETT’S CABINhad been dark nearly two hours.
Time to move.
He entered through the front door, now locked since Bennett was home for the night. But the tumbler was ridiculously easy to pick.
The cabin’s central air-conditioning engulfed him with welcome relief from the stifling humidity of the west Georgia night. His clothes were soaked with sweat from the last few hours of waiting, now transformed into the feel of a cool wet rag.
Bennett lay sprawled on the floor, where he’d fallen after being seized by an attack. Considering the high concentration, the symptoms would have been nearly instantaneous. Tightening in the throat. Shortness of breath. Wheezing. Abdominal cramps.
Then death.
He checked for a pulse.
None.
