She was right, of course, as he’d discovered she often was. With his mother and father dead, Mary removed, and his wife and son estranged from him, only Ollie was left and Matthew, whose affection, while warm and real, was nonetheless that of a nephew for a favorite uncle. It was a good deal less than what he’d hoped to be enjoying at the age of forty after fourteen years of marriage.
Had Mary somehow gotten wind of his ongoing affair with Sara Thompson?
After sending Wyatt back to school with a split lip and swollen nose, he had stopped by her classroom weekly to discuss his son’s conduct. One thing had led to another over time, and now they met regularly in out-of-the-way places. He had gone to great lengths to keep their relationship secret, not so much for his sake as Sara’s. By now, everyone knew the state of the Warwicks’ marriage, and none would have blamed him for taking a mistress, as long as it was somewhere beyond Howbutker and the eye of his wife and son. Still, he lived in fear that some little something would trip them up and their liaisons would eventually be discovered. They’d had a few close calls already, and now, with a tight chest, Percy wondered if this meeting was to alert him that a scandal was about to break.
He arrived at the cabin early, but she was already there. A shiny roadster was parked under the tree where Shawnee and the buggy were once tied. Percy remained in his Cadillac for a few minutes to quiet the old ache under his rib cage. It was always with him, but buried so deeply that he was hardly conscious of it, like a chronic pain felt only in certain weather.
She was standing in the center of the room, her sleek head cocked to one side, and he wondered if she was caught up by echoes from the past. She turned as he entered, a vision in a red floral dress that brought out the sensuous highlights of her blue black hair. She was thirty-five, in the prime of her womanhood.
“There have been changes here,” she said. “I don’t recognize the couch.”
“It’s one I used to have in my office,” Percy said. “Matthew conscripted it at Wyatt’s suggestion.”
She chuckled. “One more generation of boys to enjoy its allure. I’ll need to remind Matthew that they should keep the place clean.”
“And how will you do that without giving away that you’ve been here?”
She gestured with an embarrassed movement of a beautifully manicured hand. Every inch of her reflected the attention and excellent taste of a husband who took great pleasure in adorning her in the finest. “Good point,” she said. “I know this is awkward for both of us, Percy, but the cabin is the only place where I thought we’d be completely private. If we were seen with our heads together, Ollie is likely to figure out why we met… what I asked you here to discuss.”
So this wasn’t about Wyatt or Sara. Percy breathed a little easier, but his heart missed a beat nonetheless. “Is something wrong with Ollie?”
“May we sit down? It’s early, but I brought us something to drink. Scotch for you. Tea for me.” She gave him her usual smile, a small parting of the lips. He rarely saw her smile at full throttle anymore.
“I’ll wait,” he said.
“Very well.” Mary swatted the seat cushion of one of the chairs. Dust flew up, but she took the seat anyway, crossing her legs. “Have a seat, Percy. I could never talk to you while you were looming over me.”
A muscle tightened along his jawline at the flurry of memories. He sat forward on the couch in his “no-nonsense mode,” Lucy called it, hands locked, forearms on his knees, gaze cool. He and Mary had not been alone together since the last time they were in the cabin. “What’s wrong with Ollie?”
An eyelid quivered at his tone, but her air remained calm. “He’s in deep financial trouble. He’s on the verge of losing the stores. A man named Levi Holstein holds the mortgages, and he refuses to give him an extension. He wants to include them in his chain of dry-goods stores. I’m sure you can imagine what it will do to Ollie and his father if the main store should fall into the hands of a man like him. It will absolutely kill Abel.”
Percy knew Levi Holstein by reputation. He bought the mortgages of foundering retail properties from banks desperate to get out from under the loans and foreclosed promptly without mercy when the retailer could not meet his payments. His scheme was to pick up stores like the DuMont Department Store cheaply, keep the name, but strip them of their trademark trappings and stock them with inferior merchandise. “Both stores?” Percy asked, dumbfounded. “Including the one here in Howbutker? But I thought it was mortgage-free.”
“Ollie wasn’t as… wise as you, Percy, in believing that the market was overspeculated. He… put his money in stocks and borrowed to build the second one and buy inventory, using the flagship store as collateral. Even if he were able to sell the Houston store, the money he’s been offered isn’t enough to keep the one in Howbutker afloat.”
Percy’s mind reeled. It was worse than he’d feared. Ollie, his friend and brother, no longer the owner of the incomparable DuMont Department Store in Howbutker? Nearly a hundred years of excellence down the drain? It was unthinkable. And Mary was right to believe Abel would not survive it. He was already in ill health, and as much as he enjoyed his grandson, he had been lost since the deaths of Percy’s parents. And what about Matthew, who he was secretly hoping would step into Ollie’s shoes rather than Mary’s?
“How soon?” he asked.
“By the end of the month, if Ollie can’t meet the full terms of his note,” Mary said. A bleak light broke in her eyes. “I’d sell Somerset, every acre of it, I swear, if Ollie would permit it and if I could get a fraction of what it’s worth, never mind find a buyer. Nobody wants a cotton plantation when they can pick up cheaper land elsewhere that’s already under a more productive cash crop.” She stood suddenly, massaging her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, crossing to the sink. “My mouth has gone dry. Before I go on, I must have something to drink.”
Percy almost got up to go to her, but a force of will held him to his seat. The strain he saw in those shoulders tore at his heart, but it wouldn’t do to put his arms around the beautiful woman he still loved, still wanted, the wife of his best friend, a man he’d give his life for. Talking over the clink of ice cubes, he said, “You called me out here because you obviously think I can help. Now tell me what you want me to do.”
“Commit fraud,” she said.
“What?”
After a long swallow of iced tea, Mary reached for her handbag on the counter. She withdrew an envelope and a folded document and handed them to him. “These are from Miles,” she said. “One is a letter written to me and the other is a land deed. I received them shortly before his death.”
Percy inspected the land deed first. He noticed that Mary’s name was written on its face. “This is the deed to that section along the Sabine that your father left Miles,” he said.
Mary nodded. “Miles transferred the deed to my name with the intention that I hold it for William until his twenty-first birthday. As you know, minors cannot possess land in Texas. His instructions are spelled out in that letter.”
Percy read the letter, slowly understanding why she’d asked him out here, the word fraud ringing in his ear. He looked up, appalled, when he’d finished reading. “Mary, Miles specifically states that you’re to hold his land in trust for William. You’re not proposing I buy it, are you?”
“You’ve said you’re interested in buying land along a waterway to dispose of wastes from a pulp mill you’re hoping to build—”
“God, Mary!” Fury pulsed in his head. “I’ll give you any amount of money you need, but I will not buy what Miles intended William to have.”
“I believe you will, when you hear me out,” she said. “All I ask is that you hear me out.”
Percy drew a breath. How could he refuse her? He’d done that once, to his everlasting regret. “All right,” he said, suppressing his anger. He pushed back into a more comfortable position and extended an arm along the frame of the couch, as he had those many years and misbegotten dreams ago.
“You have my attention.”
He could see that she was too wrought up to sit down. The filmy dress floated about her legs as she strode back and forth to present her arguments, sounding as if she’d rehearsed them a hundred times in her head. Percy needed property accessible to water, she said. Without Miles’s section, he would have to go outside the county to acquire it, removing potential jobs from Howbutker, which she was sure he did not want to do. The money from the purchase would pay off Ollie’s loans and save at least the Howbutker store. Percy needn’t worry that she was cheating William out of his birthright. Upon her death, he would inherit half of Somerset, whose worth would far exceed the value of the strip along the Sabine. In some form, he’d inherit a portion of the store as well, an asset that would not be available if it was allowed to be lost.
“But with William receiving nothing at twenty-one and never knowing his father had left him that section,” Percy pointed out.
“Yes, there’s that,” Mary agreed, stopping her pacing to look at him with regret, “but how can he be hurt by what he’ll never know? Once he’s old enough, I’ll be only too happy to turn over the reins of Somerset’s management to him, and he’ll share in its revenue along with Matthew. Rather than Miles’s heir, he’ll be mine. How could my brother want anything more for his son, and how could I be more pleased than to have another Toliver on the land?”
Percy remained closemouthed but felt a faint palpitation in his upper lip at Matthew’s name mentioned in the same breath as her hopes for William.
“Percy, you know that Ollie will accept no money from you outright,” she said, sitting down at last and imploring him from the edge of her chair. “You could empty your bank vault into his lap, and he wouldn’t accept it. However… if you can convince him of your crucial need for that land and of the job opportunities a pulp mill would provide the community, then Ollie might go along with accepting money from the sale. As a matter of fact”—her tone lifted—“he made an agreement with me long ago when he gave me his signature to save Somerset after the harvest failed….” Her eyes begged forgiveness for bringing up a painful memory. “I made him promise that he would allow me to help him if he was ever in my situation. I’m going to hold him to that promise, if you will help me.”
Percy removed his arm from the back of the couch and hunched forward. Her arguments made good, if criminal, sense. They’d all benefit if he bought that Sabine strip. Even if Mary was unable to keep Somerset afloat—and that was a decided possibility—the store would provide a living and a possible inheritance for Matthew as well. No one stood to lose—except William. “One thing you’ve forgotten, Mary,” he said. “Ollie will never permit you to sell William’s land. He’ll expect you to abide by the terms Miles spelled out.”
There was a small silence filled by the katydids striking up a chorus from the lake’s edge. Percy’s scalp hair tingled. He recognized the nature of that silence. “What are you not telling me?” he asked.
“Ollie hasn’t seen the letter,” she said. “I… didn’t show it to him when it arrived. I told him only that I’d received a letter asking that we take William in, but I pretended I misplaced it. I showed him only the deed with my name on it and told him that Miles had transferred it to me when he learned he was dying.”
Percy forced down a surge of revulsion. He visualized Miles, dying of agonizing lung cancer, writing the letter in trust that his sister would do the right thing by his son. “Then why the hell did you show me the letter, Mary? I would have bought the land without ever knowing Miles asked you to hold it for William.”
She looked at him helplessly, shamefaced. “I… guess I couldn’t bring myself to deceive you, too, Percy. I… didn’t want you to agree to my proposal without knowing the truth.” A flush heightened the perfection of her cheekbones. “I wanted you to know everything, so that you… could refuse without… guilt.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. As if you thought I would!” He pounced up. “Where’s that Scotch?” He struck off to the kitchen alcove and rattled around in a paper sack, Mary watching fearfully as he found the bottle and poured a stiff drink. After a moment of letting the Scotch do its work, he said, “Maybe there’s another way.”
“What is that?”
“I could go to Holstein, offer to buy the mortgages. Ollie need never know I’m the buyer. I could extend him as much time as he needs to meet his loan.”
Hope flamed in her face. “I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think it’s possible?”
“Let me give it a try. If Holstein refuses, I’ll agree to your proposal, but you must swear one thing to me, Mary.” His tone warned against any thought of deception.
“Anything,” she said.
“You must swear that you’re asking this of me on behalf of Ollie and not Somerset.”
“I swear… on my son’s soul.”
“Then you better make damn sure you’re not putting it in jeopardy.” He set down his glass. “I’ll need a few days to meet with Holstein, then I’ll contact you by letter. I’ll send one of my boys around with it. We can’t chance the phone.”
A week later, Percy sat at his office desk and composed a letter to Mary. He had failed in his negotiations with Levi Holstein. Not only had the retailer hooted away his generous offer, saying that he’d waited half a lifetime to acquire department stores of the DuMont quality, but he’d sneered that Ollie had only himself to thank for his financial pickle. “He lacks good business sense,” he’d declared in his mean little office in Houston, tapping his forehead with a jaundiced-nailed finger. “What store owner in his right mind accepts IOUs for goods in times like these? What landlord refuses to evict tenants who do not pay their rents when the oilfield workers flooding East Texas would pay double for a place to live?”
“A good man, maybe?” Percy had suggested.
“A foolish man, Mr. Warwick—of the kind that you and I are not.”
“Are you sure about that, Mr. Holstein?” Percy had asked, and watched the man’s face pale from the implication.
He sealed the envelope and summoned one of the mail boys up from the basement. “Take this letter to Mrs. DuMont and put it directly into her hands. No one else’s. Understood?”
“Understood, Mr. Warwick.”
From his top-floor window, Percy, with an acrid taste in his mouth, watched the boy pedal off on his bike. The pathway to hell was paved with good intentions, but what about the wrongs committed for the right reasons? Were they included as well? Life had taught him that anything that starts wrong, ends wrong. In this case, he supposed that only time and its unpredictable mercies would tell.
Chapter Forty-one
HOWBUTKER, SEPTEMBER 1937
Percy sat in the Warwick pew waiting for the church service to begin, lulled into inertia by the hum of conversation around him and the drowsy whirr of overhead fans. He was the only member of his family present. Lucy had once contemplated converting from Catholicism when they married but never had, and Wyatt had spent the night—as he did every Saturday night—at the DuMonts’. Unless Ollie had cracked the whip this morning, odds were the boys would not make it to church but were probably still in the rack or devouring stacks of Sassie’s pancakes drowning in butter and ribbon cane syrup. Of the two families, only he and Ollie attended church regularly. Mary was an inconsistent churchgoer, usually spending her Sunday mornings going over accounts at the Ledbetter place, and Lucy, a nonpracticing Catholic, spent hers sleeping in.
Ollie must have cracked the whip, Percy observed in amusement. A side door of the church opened, and his old friend stepped through, followed by Matthew, Wyatt, and Miles’s son, William. Percy smiled to himself. He could imagine the scene this morning with Ollie and Sassie getting that trio scrubbed and brushed and harnessed into suits and neckties. No doubt Mary had left for the Ledbetter place before daybreak, since it was now harvesttime.
All four saw him. Ollie’s face broke into its usual broad smile, eyes turning ceilingward in mock long sufferance of
the morning’s ordeal, and Matthew and William each grinned and waved. Only Wyatt’s countenance remained impassive, his eyes sliding away from his father without acknowledgment.
Percy watched the boys follow Ollie down the far aisle to the DuMont pew, Wyatt maneuvering to get a seat next to Matthew. He could not help but feel a stab of envy as he stared at his friend seating himself, both of his sons on one side of him, and now Miles’s son belonging to him, too. Ollie would not sit in his pew wondering, with a tug of loneliness, what he would do with himself for the rest of the day, as Percy was now doing. Ollie would go home at the end of the church service, the boys in tow, and Mary would be there waiting, the house smelling of baking ham or frying chicken or roasting beef. He and Mary would sit on the screened back porch, she drinking her iced tea and Ollie his French wine, while the boys did their best not to rend asunder their Sunday suits until dinner was over and they were free to change. Afterward he’d grab a nap while Mary did her bookkeeping and the boys were out on the lawn playing the same games that Percy and Ollie and Miles had played every Sunday of their lives when they were growing up. In late afternoon, there’d be a rousing game of cards followed by a light supper—maybe even fudge—and Ollie would finish the day with his family gathered around the radio. A wonderful Sunday, that. None better. Percy remembered those kinds of Sundays in his own home when his parents had been alive, and before Lucy. Odds were he’d never experience their like again.
The church service began. Percy went through the motions of participation, his attention on his two sons sitting side by side a few pews down the other side of the aisle. How unalike they were. And how odd that both should so thoroughly resemble their mothers. They took only their height from him, Matthew at sixteen and Wyatt nine months younger, already standing a head taller than their peers.