Heaven, Texas (Chicago Stars #2)(35)

Since the rumors had surfaced about the closing of Rosatech, Bobby Tom had made it his business to learn everything he could about its owner before he’d met with him last March. Way Sawyer had grown up poor and illegitimate on the wrong side of Telarosa’s railroad tracks. As a teenage troublemaker, he’d been tossed into jail for everything from petty theft to shooting out porch lights. A stint in the marines had given him both discipline and opportunity, and when he’d come out, he’d taken advantage of the GI Bill to earn an engineering degree. After graduation, he’d gone to Boston, where, with a combination of intelligence and ruthlessness, he’d climbed to the top of the growing computer industry and made his first million by the time he was thirty-five. He’d also married, had a daughter, and divorced.

Although the people of Telarosa had followed his career, Sawyer had never returned to town. Therefore, everyone was surprised when, after announcing his retirement from corporate life, he’d shown up eighteen months ago with a controlling interest in Rosatech Electronics and announced his intention to run the company. Rosatech was small potatoes to a man with Sawyer’s reputation, and no one could figure out why he’d purchased it. Then, six months ago, rumors had surfaced that he would be closing the plant and moving its equipment and contracts to an operation in San Antonio. From that point on, the townspeople had been convinced that Sawyer had only purchased Rosatech to take his revenge against the town for not treating him better when he was a kid. As far as Bobby Tom knew, Sawyer had done nothing to dispel that rumor.

Sawyer gestured with the cone toward Bobby Tom’s damaged knee. “I see you got rid of the cane.”

Bobby Tom set his jaw. He didn’t like to think about those long months when he’d been forced to walk with a cane. Last March, during his recuperation, he’d met Sawyer in Dallas at the request of the town fathers to try to persuade him not to move the plant. It had been a fruitless meeting, and Bobby Tom had taken a strong dislike to Sawyer. Anyone ruthless enough to ruin the well-being of an entire town didn’t deserve to be called a human being.

With a flick of his wrist, Way tossed his barely eaten cone into the stubbly grass. “How are you adjusting to retirement?”

“If I’d known it would be this much fun, I’d have done it a couple of years ago,” Bobby Tom said, his expression stony.

Sawyer licked his thumb. “I hear you’re going to be a movie star.”

“One of us has to bring some money into this town.”

Sawyer smiled and pulled a set of car keys from his pocket. “See you around, Denton.”

“Bobby Tom, is that you?” A female shriek came from the direction of a blue Olds that had just pulled into the parking lot. Toni Samuels, who’d played bridge with his mother for years, came rushing forward and then froze as she saw who he was talking to. Her cheerful face hardened with hostility. No one made a secret of the fact that Way Sawyer was the most hated man in Telarosa, and the town had turned him into a pariah.

Sawyer seemed impervious. Palming his keys, he gave Toni a courteous nod, then walked away toward a burgundy BMW.

Thirty minutes later, Bobby Tom parked in front of a big white colonial on a tree-shaded street and got out of his truck. Light splashed on the sidewalk from the front windows as he approached. His mom was a night owl, just like him.

The fact that nobody at the DQ had seen Gracie had escalated his worries, and he’d decided to stop and see if his mother could come up with any additional ideas about how to locate a missing person before he went to see Jimbo. She kept a spare key under the potted geraniums, but he rang the bell instead because he didn’t want to scare her.

The spacious two-story house had black shutters and a cranberry red door with a brass knocker. His father, who’d built up his small insurance agency over the years until it was the most successful one in Telarosa, had bought the house when Bobby Tom went off to college. The home Bobby Tom had been raised in, the small bungalow the city foolishly planned to convert into a tourist attraction, lay on the other side of town.

Suzy smiled when she opened the door and saw him. “Hello, sweetie pie.”

He laughed at the name she’d called him for as long as he could remember and, stepping inside, tucked her under his chin. She slipped her arms around his waist and gave him a hard squeeze.

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“I don’t know. I guess not.”

She gazed at him in gentle reprimand. “I don’t know why you had to buy that house when I’ve got plenty of room here. You don’t eat right, Bobby Tom. I know you don’t. Come on into the kitchen. I’ve got some leftover lasagna.”

“Sounds good.” He tossed his hat on the brass rack in the corner of the hallway.

She turned to him, her forehead creased in an apologetic frown. “I hate to bother you, but did you get a chance to talk with the roofer? Your father always handled that sort of thing, and I wasn’t sure what I should do.”

Hearing this sort of uncertainty from the woman who so competently oversaw the budget for the public school system worried Bobby Tom, but he kept his feelings to himself. “I called him this afternoon. He seems to be giving you a good price, and I think you should go ahead with the job.”

For the first time he noticed that the pocket doors leading into the living room had been pulled shut. He couldn’t ever remember that room being closed off and he gestured toward it with a tilt of his head. “What’s going on?”