Page 100 of Sapphire Nights
Chapter 33
Stridinginto Hillvale the next morning, Walker rubbed his bruised arm and studied the gardens of colorful flowers decorating the boardwalk and every vacant alley. Heavily blooming pink roses had seemingly sprung up overnight, spilling over what had been a broken, fadedfence by the town hall. In addition to the playful barrels on the boardwalk, baskets displayed an array of blossoms dangling from the sagging overhangs of severalstores.
Sam had turned the tired town from faded gray to a bouquet of vibrant color and fragrance—just as she was bringinghimback to life. If he believed in magic, he would call herenchanted.
The men waiting inside thetown hall were not in the leastmagical.
Walker had persuaded the sheriff that Xavier and Francois were more likely to talk if they weren’t intimidated by badges and uniforms. Monty was there as witness. He’d brought in more chairs from the lodge, and the two older men had aligned themselves in front of the mayor’s desk. Walker pulled the last chair to one side so he could watchfaces.
Xavier no longer wore a green jacket. Someone had provided him with a navy blazer that he wore over an open-necked white shirt. Clean-shaven, back straight, with his graying hair trimmed, he almost looked like a lawyeragain.
Francois had removed the epaulets from his livery, but his brass buttons still shone with polish. His face was lined and yellowed by years of smoking, and hehadn’t done more with his thinning gray hair than tug it into a rubber band at his nape. His brown-stained fingers shook as he reached for a cigarette that wasn’tthere.
Monty had dressed casually, sporting a short-sleeved shirt—a blue one with a fancy collar and expensive detailing that had been probably been purchased in a Monterey boutique. Kennedys couldn’t even do casual properly.The mayor glanced at Walker, waiting for him to lead thediscussion.
“All I want is details for my report, gentlemen,” Walker said. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he’d chosen his blue, collared shirt and khakis to give him a measure of authority. He addressed the lawyer first. “We’d like to close the case with no looseends.”
He pulled out his recorder. “If you don’t mind, I’dlike to record while we talk. Xavier, do you mind if we start with you? I think you’ve been familiar with Hillvale for as long as Monty and Kurt, am Iright?”
The rental agent looked relieved to be able to speak. He hesitated, apparently seeking a starting place. “I came up here with their father during spring breaks, before Geoff married. Hillvale had quite a reputation as ahappeningplace.” He looked almost startled that he’d said that. “The commune was no more than a group of starving artists, and the farm was dilapidated. We mostly came to do drugs. Ingersson always had asupply.”
“How much did you know of Geoffrey Kennedy’s desire to acquire more land and create a resort town?” Walker asked, not looking atMonty.
“Everything.” Xavier shrugged. “The shopswere empty. Rats ran loose. The Ingerssons smoked up anything they earned. By the time I had my law degree, we’d already started buying out people who wanted to leave. Our families had money, and property up here wasn’t worth anything then. It was all perfectlylegal.”
Walker waited, letting the older man gather his thoughts. This many words out of the spaced-out lawyer was a miracle initself. Cass had done some serious mumbo-jumbo on hishead.
He couldn’t believe that Cass had magic potions or hypnosis to influence witnesses, but Xavier had changed overnight. Or maybe he’d just dried out. That ought to worry him, but oddly, it didn’t. He’d seen what Cass had done to Sam—and what the Lucys had done to an avalanche. He still didn’t believe in magic, but there was somethingat work in Hillvale that he’d never seen in the city. He’d settle for believing in geological energy fornow.
“But after a while, Geoff got impatient. He partnered with the Commercial development team and...” Xavier wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not sure when it became intense. He hired me to work with his mortgage company, and we started with aggressive sales pitches. We used borderlinecoercion on the shop owners to borrow and improve their buildings, even though we knew they couldn’t pay back the loans. I arranged a refinance on the Ingersson farm, even though they couldn’t prove they had an income, knowing they’d smoke the money and fall behind. Ingersson thought we were friends helping him through a bad time. But we were focused on the end game and didn’t really care aboutpeople who lost their homes or stores. They were old shacks and needed to be torn down anyway. We were young and ambitious and the world was our oyster, even after Ingersson went bankrupt andsued.”
Monty got up and opened a small refrigerator, producing icy bottles of water that he handed around. This was Monty’s father Xavier was talking about. It couldn’t be easy hearingthis.
“And then six or seven years after the lawsuit was settled, and we had almost acquired all the land we needed, I had a tourist ask me an odd question about the ownership of the farm and some of the lots in town.” Xavier quit looking in Walker’s direction. “That was nearly two decades ago. The face and name have faded. I was drinking heavily then. I got sloppy drunk and talked to a few of the guysin the development team. They wore those awful green jackets and everyone hatedthem.”
“The people or the jackets?” Walker asked, hiding the horror building at this tale. Xavier didn’t even remember Michael Walker’s name, but his father had almost certainly been the tourist askingquestions.
“Both,” Xavier replied with a snort. “But they were going to make us rich. So I told themabout the snoopy tourist, pointed him out in the bar. Alan Gump was one of the men I talkedto.”
Walker glanced at Monty, who looked paler than usual. But the mayor tightened his jaw and drank from his water bottle withoutspeaking.
Xavier continued, “Talking to Gump was probably the worst decision of my life, but at the time, it was just meaningless bar talk. He said he recognizedthe inquisitive stranger from LA, and he’d have a talk with him. I went back to my office in San Francisco the next day. I had no idea what happened until later, when the sheriff started making inquiries about a missingtourist.”
Francois had tensed at the mention of Gump. The chauffeur reached for a cigarette again, then took the bottle of water just to steady hishands.
Intenton telling his tale, Xavier seemed unaware that anyone was in the room. He stared at an ugly piece of abstract art over Monty’s head. “The bottom started falling out of our dreams about that time. It’s all pretty blurry in my head,” Xavier admitted. “The sheriff canvassing the town for a missing tourist was followed by legal beagles from the attorney general’s office. Gump and the rest of the greenjacket sales team faded away. Geoff died, and I... fellapart.”
He stopped like a mechanical toy whose spring had worn out. He stared blankly at the bottle cupped between hishands.
“Kennedy’s death halted the development plans?” Walker asked, disappointed that Xavier knew no more about his father’s death. “The plans died withhim?”
Xavier shrugged. “Some of the team mayhave hung around, talking to Carmel, but she was too grief-stricken to care. She sold the mortgage company, and I was too addled to hold onto my job. I’m sorry I can’t be morehelp.”
Francois took a swig of water, then spit it at the worn wooden floor. “You let the monsters live to kill and torment again, you pathetic, sanctimonious bag of hotair.”
After the chauffeur’s burst ofvenom, Monty Kennedy lost it. “Francois! This is not the time to throw blame. They foundyourfingerprint on my mother’s gun, the one that killedJuan!”
Walker understood the explosion. Until this moment, Xavier had seemed to convict Gump for murder, if only by innuendo. But Francois had hit the guilt button. Not spineless Xavier, butGeoffrey Kennedyhad been the one to set the vulturesto picking Hillvale’s bones. Monty’s father had let loose the soulless fortune hunters to claim the land, much as the gold diggers had destroyed the Spanish in a different era. And the Spanish had destroyed the natives beforethat.
