Family Sins(86)

He was a little put out with his Uncle Jack for behaving as if Justin no longer existed. Despite what he’d done, he was still family, and then he remembered they’d done the same thing to Leigh with far less reason.

Deciding a face-to-face invitation was a better choice than a phone call, Blake left his office to find Charles.

He stopped at his secretary’s desk.

“Connie, I’ll be out to lunch for a couple of hours,” Blake said. “I don’t have any afternoon appointments, but if there’s an issue or another call from one of the companies, have them call my cell, okay?”

“Yes, sir. Have a good lunch,” Connie said.

“Thank you,” Blake said, and walked out into the hall, then headed left to Charles’s office.

This was Charles’s first day back at work after the fight with Nita, and he was still self-conscious about the scabby streaks on his face and neck. When his father walked in, he was genuinely glad to see him.

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

“I came to see if you wanted to go to lunch with me.”

Charles grinned.

“Yes. Absolutely. Is Uncle Jack coming, too?”

“I haven’t asked him yet. Do you want him to tag along?”

“As long as no one talks about the splash we made on the national news, I’m good,” Charles said.

“I’m so sorry all of that is happening,” Blake said.

“So am I,” Charles said, as he began logging out of his computer and locking up his desk. “Sometimes I can’t believe all this chaos is real. One day we were just doing our thing, and then all of a sudden we’re caught up in the middle of a nightmare.”

Blake frowned. “Well, a man was murdered. That’s what started it.”

Charles shrugged. “But we didn’t know him.”

“Well, actually the rest of us did, just not you.”

Jack walked in at that moment and patted Blake on the back. “I’m going to lunch. Do you two want to come along?”

Charles glanced at his dad and nodded.

Blake got the message. “Sure, Uncle Jack. We’d love to.”

They walked down the hall to the elevator and moments later exited into the lobby of Wayne Industries.

A janitor was using a floor polisher on the white marble tiles. The guard in the lobby was on the phone, but he quickly hung up and smoothed a hand down the front of his uniform when he saw them coming. A pizza delivery boy was coming in the front entrance with a half-dozen boxes of pizza. Some people were obviously staying in for lunch.

Then Charles saw the police cars pulling up at the front of the building and pointed.

“Hey, Dad. What’s going on?”

Blake sighed. “Who the hell knows,” he muttered.

Jack frowned. “Does this shit never end?”

They watched Constable Riordan, Chief Clayton and a trio of officers enter the lobby, but when the officers suddenly fanned out as they approached, Blake’s gut knotted.

“Dad?” Charles said as he took a step back, his voice suddenly pitched higher than normal.

“We’re fine,” Jack said.

Blake wasn’t so sure. This was too reminiscent of Justin’s arrest. What the f*ck did the cops know?

The lobby guard looked nervous, but he stayed behind the desk.

Riordan gave a nod, and the officers headed for the Waynes.

Blake saw the handcuffs and panicked. What’s going on?” he said.

Jack Wayne glared and then shouted, “I demand to know the meaning of this.”

Riordan produced the arrest warrant. “Jeffrey Jack Wayne, you are under arrest for the murder of Stanton Youngblood. You have—”

Blake gasped. “You have to be kidding!”

Charles was shaking, afraid they were all going to be arrested before this nightmare was over.

“You have my alibi. You have nothing to back this up. Blake, call our lawyer. Now!” Jack demanded.

Riordan finished reading Jack his Miranda rights as the officers handcuffed him.

“Actually, we do have proof,” Riordan went on. “A most revealing video of you less than an hour before Stanton Youngblood was murdered running into the lake house to get a rifle, and then a follow-up video of you coming back forty-five minutes later, when you sat down and calmly cleaned the rifle before putting it back in the gun case.”

The shock on Jack’s face was obvious. “You don’t! You can’t! How—”

Blake was shaking. “Is this true? You have proof?”

“Yes. It was actually turned in to my office first, so we’ve both seen it,” Clayton offered.

Blake turned on his uncle in disbelief.

“From the start, you tore into all of us, trying to pin us down with alibis, making it look like all the trouble we were in was because of something one of us had done, when all the f*cking time it was you? Why? Just tell me why?”

Jack shrugged. “He ruined everything.”

“But it wasn’t that big an investment!” Blake cried. “We’ve lost far more money on bigger projects before, and one way or another we’ve always recouped it.”

“I guess you may as well hear the truth from me, rather than hearing it in court. I transferred money from offshore accounts, and from accounts the board never got a chance to approve, and I manipulated some assests through East Coast Lenders in order to buy up the loans from the bank and force those foreclosures.”