Chapter Twelve
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That was unexpected,” I said.
“You okay with giving her a job?” Griffen asked, noting something down on the pad in front of him.
“I guess that depends on how it ends up working out. But I never would have thought she'd slow down the drinking the way she has. Who knows? She seems a lot less angry. Less reckless. That means a lot. And unlike the rest of them, she didn't revolt at the idea of working for a living.”
“Always a good sign. I assume Bryce wasn't interested in a similar offer?”
“I didn't exactly make Bryce a similar offer,” I admitted. “Mostly because he's still an asshole, and he's not my little sister.”
“Well, we have to put up with them living in the house once the guest wing is ready, but nothing in the will says we have to support them. If Bryce decides he's willing to lower himself to employment, maybe we'll find something for him.”
“You still haven't gotten to your lunch,” I said, stacking my empty dishes on the tray. “I’ll run down The Inn business while you eat.”
“Works for me,” Griffen said, picking up his sandwich again. “I'm starving.”
“Tenn is going to make an offer to Forrest Powell. If he works out, he’ll fill in for the time I’m spending here and put us a little ahead.”
Griffen ate as I went over construction details on the cottage expansion. While I was talking, my phone beeped. A quick look showed a message from Tenn.
Produce emergency averted. I don't care what the coin says, next crisis is yours.
“Tenn said he covered the latest emergency. We have to figure out who’s behind the sabotage at The Inn before it gets any worse. At first, it was canceled reservations and guests who thought things were missing from their rooms. Then the guy with the cockroaches—”
I shook my head as I remembered the swelling in Daisy’s cheek. That was on me. I wasn’t the one who’d hit her, but she should have been safe at The Inn.
“Tenn will have the purchasing staff call all of our major vendors, letting them know to double-check any unusual changes. But narrowing it down seems impossible. West arrested cockroach guy and it still didn't get us anywhere.”
“Lately, all we have are dead ends,” Griffen agreed. “West still doesn't have anything on the nutcase who tried to run me off the road and broke into the Manor. Same story—somebody paid him to do it, but he doesn't know who it was. I believe him, but that doesn't fucking help us.”
“I'm not even sure I can narrow down the suspects,” I said. “Dad had so many enemies one walked right into Heartstone Manor and shot him in the head. I'm not sure they see much of a difference between him and the Sawyer family in general. Do you think—” I stopped, not sure I wanted to put my thoughts into words.
“What?” Griffen prompted.
“Any chance Vanessa has anything to do with it?”
Griffen let out a long sigh and stacked his now-empty plates, pushing the tray to the corner of his desk. “I don't want to think she does. She's not my favorite person, but hiring someone to kill me seems a little extreme. Still, I don't think I can exclude her. Same for Ophelia and Bryce. I don’t see them committing murder, but the issues going on at The Inn? That's just the kind of petty bullshit I could see Bryce thinking up. Or maybe I just still hate him from when we were teenagers.”
“He hasn't gotten much better, from what I can see.”
“The investigator at Sinclair Security keeps hitting dead ends, too,” Griffen said, shoving his hair off his forehead in frustration.
“They put their best guy on it, and he couldn't find anything that didn't point straight to Ford as Dad’s killer. And he dug deep. Then I had them put their best forensic accountant on tracing the missing artwork. She's been more successful. She's found some sales, some records of where the money went. But she hasn’t uncovered the whole picture. Whatever Dad was up to, it wasn't straightforward.”
“Nothing with Dad ever was,” I said.
“True. He was always up to something.” Griffen picked up Hope’s list. “Okay, some of this is going to be a little harder without Hope, but let's dig into some ongoing business. Cole Haywood will be here at four. We should try to make some headway before then.”
That name rang in my ears as I pulled out my own laptop and moved to the chair Hope had occupied beside Griffen.
Cole Haywood was our brother Ford's defense attorney. He'd been pushing for Ford to plead guilty to our father’s murder and take the deal the prosecutor was offering. Cole didn't care that Ford was innocent, that if he took that deal he'd spend years in prison for a crime he hadn't committed.