Page 97 of Long Gone

My heart skipped a beat. “Where did they go?”

He kept silent.

Dread settled in my belly. “What are you covering up, Dad?” I wanted to ask him about owning the building that had housed Hugo’s office and cleaning it out, but I was hoping he’d admit to it instead of me confronting him with what I knew.

His gaze held mine, his face pleading for understanding. “The past is always better left in the past, Harper.”

“Are we talking about Hugo Burton’s contracts or Andi’s murder?”

His face paled. “Of course we’re talking about Hugo.”

I wasn’t so sure. I had questions about the aftermath of her murder, about how much he knew about the Sylvester brothers’ father calling Andi’s kidnapper to warn him the police were about to show up with a search warrant. The police chief had reprimanded Sylvester but hadn’t pressed charges. My father had been mayor at the time, so he’d likely known something. If so, why hadn’t he objected to Barry Sylvester’s slap on the wrist? But I realized I wasn’t ready for those answers. Not yet.

“Mitch hired me to find out what happened to Hugo. Does he know you worked with Hugo?”

He swallowed. “No, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him.”

“He’s paying me to find information, Dad. You want me to purposely withhold it?”

“You’re not bound by the law,” he insisted. “You can decide what to share and what not.”

“Why wouldn’t you want me to tell Mitch? Why hide it?”

He took a drink, an obvious stalling tactic, and then set down the glass. “I didn’t create the contracts through the firm. I worked on them at home.”

“And it was wrong to create contracts outside the firm?” I asked in confusion, then it hit me. “Oh. They didn’t get their cut.”

He nodded. “The other two did it too from time to time.” He looked down at his half-empty glass of iced tea and ran his finger on the side, swiping at the condensation. “Hugo was on a shoestring budget. I wanted to help him out.”

“But why? How did you know him?”

He drew another breath, obviously not wanting to tell me, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook.

“How did you know him, Dad?” I had a good idea at this point, but I was going to make him say the words.

He sat up and ran a hand over his eyes. “I invested money into his Sunny Point project. I was one of the two original investors.”

And there it was. My father was the very man I’d been looking for. Had Malcolm known?

“Part of my investment was drawing up the LLC paperwork for him and the contracts for the investors.”

“So why doesn’t anyone know that? You had to know the sheriff’s detectives were looking for them.”

“I couldn’t let my partners know.”

“Are you serious? Surely creating contracts outside of the firm couldn’t get you into that much trouble. You just said the others had done it too.”

Kylie appeared next to the table with our plates and my father looked all too happy to have an excuse not to answer me. In fact, he kept Kylie at our table for over five minutes, talking about the weather, the new gas station going in outside of Jackson Creek, and the current real estate market.

By the time she was called to take another table’s order, I was nearly done with my sandwich and fries. I wiped my hands off on my napkin and set it on the table.

“You need to tell me everything, Dad. Start from the beginning.”

He placed his hands on the table, on either side of his plate, and leaned closer, his eyes full of panic. “It’s all in the past, Harper.”

“Someone killed Hugo Burton, Dad, and what you know might help me find out who did it.”

His face lost color again. “Hugo ran off. Everyone knows that. Why would you say he was murdered?”

---