Chapter 4 - The Price of Quiet
Travis Bennett woke Sunday morning with a swollen cheek and three missed calls.
One was from his brother in Maryland.
One from an unfamiliar local number.
The third was Graham Mercer.
He deleted none of them.
Instead, he stood in his kitchen watching coffee drip into a chipped mug that read World's Okayest Engineer.
His younger sister had given it to him for Christmas.
She'd said Best would have been dishonest.
He'd told her that was why she wasn't invited back.
Ordinarily, remembering the exchange would have made him smile.
That morning, it didn't.
He could still feel Wesley's forearms in his hands.
Small.
Slippery.
Straining.
He could still hear the child crying.
And he could still see Marjorie Mercer sitting in that ridiculous cream cardigan as if she'd been waiting for something interesting to happen.
A knock came at the door.
Travis opened it to find Detective Rosa Delgado, a woman in her early forties with observant dark eyes and a paper coffee cup.
"Mr. Bennett?"
"Depends. Are you here about my charming neighbors or the branch I've been meaning to trim?"
"Detective Delgado. You called the nonemergency line last night."
"Then it's the charming neighbors."
She glanced at his face.
"That looks uncomfortable."
"You should see my ego."
She didn't smile.
Travis stepped aside.
"Coffee?"
"I've got some."
"Good. Mine tastes like a roofing accident."
They sat at the kitchen table.
Travis described what he'd seen.
He didn't exaggerate.
He hadn't seen Marjorie remove the ladder.
He hadn't seen Wesley enter the pool.
He had heard the crying, turned, and found the boy struggling at an edge where a ladder should have been.
Then he'd rescued him.
Then Graham had struck him.
Then Marjorie had accused him of harming Wesley.
Delgado wrote everything down.
"You and the Mercer family know each other?"
"Neighborly. Mostly wave over the fence, complain about the same squirrels."
"Any disputes?"
Travis paused.
"Yeah."
"About?"
"Land."
Delgado waited.
Travis pulled a folder from the shelf.
"Mercer Mill and Land owns sixty-two acres along Ash Creek. They've been negotiating a sale."
"And you're involved?"
"I'm a civil engineer. I reviewed some publicly filed drainage drawings because a proposed connector road would discharge runoff toward our neighborhood."
"Was that part of your job?"
"No. I looked at the public records on my own time."
"Did anyone object?"
"Marjorie Mercer doesn't enjoy being questioned. I'm guessing that isn't news."
He handed her a copy of a letter.
Two weeks earlier, Travis had written to the company asking why its proposed buyer had based the property's value on an obsolete road-access restriction.
He hadn't received an answer.
Instead, Marjorie had telephoned him.
"She called me a professional nuisance," Travis said.
Delgado glanced up.
"Those exact words?"
"Pretty sure. I was hoping to have them embroidered on a pillow."
Delgado read the letter.
"Did you accuse them of fraud?"
"No. I asked for an updated appraisal. That's different."
She nodded.
"Keep these documents. And don't confront anyone."
"Trust me, I've lost my appetite for family reunions."
After she left, Travis listened to Graham's voicemail.
Travis, it's Graham. I wanted to check whether you're okay. Call me when you can.
He listened twice.
Not an apology.
Not yet.
At the Mercer mansion, Graham sat across from his mother and Victor Kline.
Victor was fifty-eight, meticulous, and so devoted to expensive watches that Graham sometimes wondered whether he wore one on each wrist when nobody was looking.
Spread across the table were the documents for the proposed sale of Ash Creek.
Sycamore Acquisitions had offered $9.2 million.
Mercer Mill and Land needed cash. The company's revolving credit line was under review, and two aging industrial buildings required expensive repairs.
Selling the tract would be an easy answer.
Too easy, Graham was beginning to think.
"Sycamore wants a preliminary agreement by Tuesday," Victor said.
"What happened to the other buyers?"
"They didn't submit firm offers."
"Did they receive the updated road-access information?"
Victor glanced toward Marjorie.
"Everything relevant was made available."
"That's not what I asked."
Marjorie laid a hand on the folder.
"Graham, we need to stay focused. We can't let yesterday's unpleasantness derail an important transaction."
"My son nearly drowned."
"He became frightened in the pool."
Graham looked at her.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Make what happened sound smaller because it's inconvenient."
Victor cleared his throat.
"Perhaps the family matter should be handled separately."
Graham turned back to the documents.
His father, Thomas Mercer, had established the company decades earlier. After Thomas's death, Graham owned forty-five percent, Marjorie twenty-five percent, and a protected trust for Wesley owned the remaining thirty.
The company agreement required an eighty-percent membership vote before selling a major asset like Ash Creek.
That meant Graham and Marjorie couldn't approve the sale alone.
They needed the independent trustee to vote yes.
Nina Ellis, the trustee, had been requesting a new valuation for months.
Graham picked up the preliminary agreement.
"Why is this pushing for an exclusive deal before Nina gets the appraisal?"
Victor shifted.
"Market conditions."
"Which conditions?"
"The sort that change while people hesitate."
"That's a nice sentence. Doesn't answer me."
Marjorie's eyes narrowed.
"Graham."
He closed the folder.
"No exclusivity until we've got an independent number."
Victor's smile faded.
Marjorie was very still.
"You realize what you're risking?"
"Apparently not. Everybody keeps telling me there's a disaster coming, but nobody can agree on which one."
He stood.
"We'll meet Monday. Bring the underlying numbers."
He left them at the table.
Victor waited until he heard the front door close.
Then he leaned toward Marjorie.
"He's asking questions."
"He's grieving. He's angry. He'll settle."
Victor tapped a finger against the Sycamore folder.
"There's a difference between a difficult son and a man who's about to read his own company's books."
Marjorie looked toward the window.
Across the lawn stood Travis Bennett's house.
She hated how much she could see of it.
Victor lowered his voice.
"If Graham finds the consulting transfers, we don't get to call this a family misunderstanding anymore."
May you like
Marjorie turned back.
"Then he mustn't find them."
