Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(103)
Monty had dressed casually, sporting a short-sleeved shirt—a blue one with a fancy collar and expensive detailing that had been probably been purchased in a Monterey boutique. Kennedys couldn’t even do casual properly. The mayor glanced at Walker, waiting for him to lead the discussion.
“All I want is details for my report, gentlemen,” Walker said. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he’d chosen his blue, collared shirt and khakis to give him a measure of authority. He addressed the lawyer first. “We’d like to close the case with no loose ends.”
He pulled out his recorder. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to record while we talk. Xavier, do you mind if we start with you? I think you’ve been familiar with Hillvale for as long as Monty and Kurt, am I right?”
The rental agent looked relieved to be able to speak. He hesitated, apparently seeking a starting place. “I came up here with their father during spring breaks, before Geoff married. Hillvale had quite a reputation as a happening place.” He looked almost startled that he’d said that. “The commune was no more than a group of starving artists, and the farm was dilapidated. We mostly came to do drugs. Ingersson always had a supply.”
“How much did you know of Geoffrey Kennedy’s desire to acquire more land and create a resort town?” Walker asked, not looking at Monty.
“Everything.” Xavier shrugged. “The shops were empty. Rats ran loose. The Ingerssons smoked up anything they earned. By the time I had my law degree, we’d already started buying out people who wanted to leave. Our families had money, and property up here wasn’t worth anything then. It was all perfectly legal.”
Walker waited, letting the older man gather his thoughts. This many words out of the spaced-out lawyer was a miracle in itself. Cass had done some serious mumbo-jumbo on his head.
He couldn’t believe that Cass had magic potions or hypnosis to influence witnesses, but Xavier had changed overnight. Or maybe he’d just dried out. That ought to worry him, but oddly, it didn’t. He’d seen what Cass had done to Sam—and what the Lucys had done to an avalanche. He still didn’t believe in magic, but there was something at work in Hillvale that he’d never seen in the city. He’d settle for believing in geological energy for now.
“But after a while, Geoff got impatient. He partnered with the Commercial development team and. . .” Xavier wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not sure when it became intense. He hired me to work with his mortgage company, and we started with aggressive sales pitches. We used borderline coercion on the shop owners to borrow and improve their buildings, even though we knew they couldn’t pay back the loans. I arranged a refinance on the Ingersson farm, even though they couldn’t prove they had an income, knowing they’d smoke the money and fall behind. Ingersson thought we were friends helping him through a bad time. But we were focused on the end game and didn’t really care about people who lost their homes or stores. They were old shacks and needed to be torn down anyway. We were young and ambitious and the world was our oyster, even after Ingersson went bankrupt and sued.”
Monty got up and opened a small refrigerator, producing icy bottles of water that he handed around. This was Monty’s father Xavier was talking about. It couldn’t be easy hearing this.
“And then six or seven years after the lawsuit was settled, and we had almost acquired all the land we needed, I had a tourist ask me an odd question about the ownership of the farm and some of the lots in town.” Xavier quit looking in Walker’s direction. “That was nearly two decades ago. The face and name have faded. I was drinking heavily then. I got sloppy drunk and talked to a few of the guys in the development team. They wore those awful green jackets and everyone hated them.”
“The people or the jackets?” Walker asked, hiding the horror building at this tale. Xavier didn’t even remember Michael Walker’s name, but his father had almost certainly been the tourist asking questions.
“Both,” Xavier replied with a snort. “But they were going to make us rich. So I told them about the snoopy tourist, pointed him out in the bar. Alan Gump was one of the men I talked to.”
Walker glanced at Monty, who looked paler than usual. But the mayor tightened his jaw and drank from his water bottle without speaking.
Xavier continued, “Talking to Gump was probably the worst decision of my life, but at the time, it was just meaningless bar talk. He said he recognized the inquisitive stranger from LA, and he’d have a talk with him. I went back to my office in San Francisco the next day. I had no idea what happened until later, when the sheriff started making inquiries about a missing tourist.”
Francois had tensed at the mention of Gump. The chauffeur reached for a cigarette again, then took the bottle of water just to steady his hands.
Intent on telling his tale, Xavier seemed unaware that anyone was in the room. He stared at an ugly piece of abstract art over Monty’s head. “The bottom started falling out of our dreams about that time. It’s all pretty blurry in my head,” Xavier admitted. “The sheriff canvassing the town for a missing tourist was followed by legal beagles from the attorney general’s office. Gump and the rest of the green jacket sales team faded away. Geoff died, and I. . . fell apart.”
He stopped like a mechanical toy whose spring had worn out. He stared blankly at the bottle cupped between his hands.