Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

When Jeff walked back to his car, he felt belittled, his face tingling. But he couldn’t say why.

An hour later he drove across the cattleguard and up the road to his house. The air was dry and cool and he could smell smoke from a fire in the woods somewhere beyond the house. Yes, he could even see a red glow in the sky and ashes rising against the moon, perhaps from the ravine that angled its way down to the river. But surely firefighters were on it and it offered no threat to his home.

He parked the car by the side of his house and decided to stay the night in Fletcher’s empty cottage. His stepmother would be asleep by now, in her own bedroom, with the door locked, while Jeff’s father walked aimlessly around the darkened first floor, his teeth unbrushed, trailing an odor like a gymnasium, or made long-distance calls to people who hung up on him.

Jeff picked up a half-filled bottle of Cold Duck off a table by the swimming pool and drank from it as he walked to the cottage. Tiny pieces of ash drifted onto the pool’s surface and floated like scorched moths above the underwater lights.

From the edge of the woods far above the house, Jessie Stump watched him through a pair of binoculars.

Earl did push-ups in the dark on the floor of his library. One, two, one, two, one two, his arms pumping with blood and testosterone, the tendons in his neck and back and buttocks netting together with a power that he’d never thought he possessed. The moon was full, a marbled yellow above the tree line on the ridge, and it shone through the French doors and lighted the library walls and rows of books with a dull glow like the color of old elephant ivory.

He stripped naked in the bathroom and shaved in front of the full-length mirror, showered and washed his ha

ir and brushed his teeth and gargled with mouthwash and changed into a pair of loafers and khaki slacks and a thin flannel shirt. While he combed his hair in the mirror he turned his chin from side to side and was intrigued by the way the light reflected on the freshly shaved surfaces of his skin.

She locked bedroom doors, did she? The king of the manor in medieval times would have just walled her up. But he was determined not to be vindictive. Why blame her for her feelings? No matter what they claimed, women were sexually aroused by rich men, and he was no longer rich. But he hadn’t believed she would set him up to be killed by Jessie Stump.

Earlier this evening he had found the security system on the back doors shut down. It wasn’t accidental. Someone had punched in the coded numbers with forethought and deliberation.

Actually, her level of iniquity intrigued him, caused a vague arousal in his loins in a way that he did not quite understand. No, it was not her wickedness itself, but instead his ability to perceive it, see through and transcend it, to match and overwhelm it in response and deed, that titillated him.

So a pathetic piece of human flotsam like Jessie Stump was the best assassin she could hire? What a joke. But in reality it made sense. She had no money. A fool like Stump could be micromanaged with the gift of an antique watch, then disposed of later.

Maybe he should give Peggy Jean a little more credit.

He walked out the front door and gazed at the constellations in the sky, the glow of a fire beyond the ridge, the long, green roll of the valley in front of his house. He could probably remain in default on his mortgages for another seven or eight months, then this would all belong to someone else. That thought made the veins tighten like a metal band along the side of his head.

He wagged a flashlight back and forth in the darkness and waited for the two deputies to walk from their posts out on the grounds onto the layers of black flagstone that formed the entrance to his house.

“Y’all come in and have some ice cream and strawberries with me. I won’t be needing y’all anymore tonight,” he said.

“I shined a spotlight up in them trees, high up on the ridge. I swear I seen some field glasses glint up there,” one deputy said.

“It’s probably a state forester. I think dry lightning started a fire in the ravine,” Earl said.

The two deputies looked at each other.

“We didn’t hear nothing about a fire in the ravine,” one said.

“There’s surely one burning. You don’t smell it?” Earl said.

“A fire was burning six or seven miles up the river. A lot of ash was blowing around in the wind, but there ain’t no fire in the ravine, sir,” the same deputy said.

“I’m sure someone’s taking care of it,” Earl said. He took them inside and fed them at the kitchen table, looking at his watch, feigning interest in the banality of their conversation. After they left he watched through the glass until their cars crossed the cattleguard and disappeared over a rise down the long two-lane road. He went into the library and removed his Smith & Wesson .38 revolver from his desk drawer, flipped the cylinder out of the frame, then snapped it into place again.

He walked into the kitchen, opened the circuit breaker box, and shut down all the floodlights on the grounds and the lights on the patio and terrace and in the swimming pool. The moon was veiled now and the hills that formed a cup around the back of his house rose up blackly into the stars. He threw open the French doors on the patio and smelled the gaslike odor of chrysanthemums and smoke on the wind.

He situated a heavy oak chair where the dining room hallway met the kitchen so he could look out onto the side terrace as well as the swimming pool, then he sat down and rested the Smith & Wesson on his thigh. Bankers and creditors could take his home and his cars, his thoroughbreds and his oil properties, even his fly-fishing equipment and rare gun and coin collections, but Earl Deitrich would leave behind a punctuation mark none of them would ever forget. Neither would his wife.

He had never killed anybody. He had been stationed in Germany and had missed Vietnam; as a consequence he had always competed with the soldier whom Peggy Murphy had truly loved and who had died at Chu Lai. She denied this, but he knew better. She closed her eyes throughout their lovemaking, her lips always averted, whatever degree of sexual pleasure he gave her always muted behind her skin.

He bit down on his molars, his hand clenching and unclenching on the pistol’s checkered grips. He was going to love blowing Jessie Stump’s liver out.

Then he heard the lock turn in her bedroom door. She stood at the head of the curved staircase, in a white nightgown, her hair brushed out on her shoulders, her bare feet enameled with moonlight.

In his hatred of her he had forgotten how beautiful she could look, even in her most unguarded moments. He started to speak, then he heard the footsteps by the swimming pool. He rose from the chair and looked up the staircase at Peggy Jean and put his finger to his lips, barely able to control the energy and excitement and gloat that surged in his chest.

The moon was behind a black cloud now, but Earl could make out a figure walking across the patio toward the back door. He cocked back the hammer on the Smith & Wesson, wetting his lips, aiming with two hands, trying to steady the trembling sight on the top of the sternum.