CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ross Hampton smiled when Maude Drayton walked into that diner with Edmund walking beside her.
Don stayed at the entrance to guard the door.
Wyatt was released from the hospital with what doctors said was only a superficial wound, and was able to get back on duty later that day.
He sat behind the wheel of their new rental: another borrowed Tahoe from the dealership in town after their first one was totaled in that crash.
He and Don joked that money talked around Dillon because had either one of them totaled a brand-new Tahoe straight off the showroom floor, that dealership would have told them to keep on walking if they went back for another one.
But as Maude and Edmund approached the table where the husky white man was seated, he was smiling too.
But not at anybody’s joke. He was smiling as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“That’s Maude Drayton for you,” he said as they stopped at his table inside the empty diner.
“I knew you wouldn’t have the balls to show up alone. ”
But Maude didn’t skip a beat. “I’m surprised you have the balls to show up at all. After what you did.”
“I haven’t done shit,” Hampton said. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve been scandalizing my name, young lady. I’m here to clear my name.”
Edmund pulled out a chair for Maude. She sat down. He sat down beside her.
“So you’re Tasha’s brother,” Hampton said to Edmund. “You’re the one who treats her like she’s a piece of trash.”
Edmund didn’t dignify that comment with a response.
But Maude did. “I’m sure that’s what she told you. But it’s not true. But when did truth matter to you? Right, Hamp?”
“Let’s get on with it,” Edmund said. “What do you want?” he asked Hampton.
“First of all, I didn’t frame Tasha. That’s the first lie I wanna clear up. She was arrested because the evidence the police collected at the scene tied her to that murder.”
“That’s bullshit, Hamp.”
“How is it bullshit?”
“Because it’s the same thing you said about that lady you accused of murdering your first wife.
The police had no evidence. Just your so-called eyewitness testimony.
And because you’re supposedly this big, ethical businessman, they believed you.
But Natasha’s arrest was just a smokescreen anyway. Wasn’t it?”
“A smokescreen? How could it be a smokescreen? What are you talking about, Maude?”
“Why did you ask her to come here?” said Edmund. “Answer that.”
“I told you. To clear my name.”
“Isn’t it my sister’s name that needs to be cleared?”
“I might have told the police I saw Tasha do it. Yes, I might have said that. And I didn’t exactly see her do it, that’s true. But the Police found her DNA at the crime scene. That’s why she was arrested. She wasn’t arrested because of what I said. She was arrested because of what they found.”
Edmund looked at Maude. “That’s true?” he asked her.
Maude didn’t get a chance to investigate the case.
She found out about the arrest after she was already fired.
She no longer had press credentials. “Because of my investigative reporting into all of the corruption in Dillon, I had just been fired from the Post-Dispatch when she was arrested. Thanks to Hamp, I couldn’t access information about that case.
I didn’t get a chance to find out the details. ”
Edmund frowned. “Then why were you so certain she was framed?”
“Because I investigated the first case. That lady serving time for killing his first wife was framed. She was his first wife’s best friend.
They found out about his shady business dealings and suddenly his first wife was dead and her friend was arrested?
And she was accused of killing her even though she had no motive to do so?
All the cops had on her was Hamp’s eyewitness testimony.
Now suddenly he’s an eyewitness in this case too? ”
“I told you they have her DNA. They don’t have to just take my word for it.”
“Let’s cut the bullshit,” Edmund said. “Where’s Natasha?”
Hampton frowned. “How the hell should I know? You’re the one who got her off.”
“And you’re the one who had one of your goons to pick her up after your other goons failed to kill us off,” said Maude.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Hampton leaned back and said with a smile. “That wasn’t me or any of my guys.”
“Sure Hamp.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“Then why was that BMW that my sister got into registered in your name?” Edmund asked.
“It was stolen,” Hampton said.
“Oh give me a break!” Maude said.
Hampton leaned forward. “I’m telling you I had nothing to do with anybody trying to kill you and I’m not trying to frame Tasha. And I don’t know where she is and I don’t care. I’m telling y’all the truth!”
“Why are we here?” Edmund asked him again.
Hampton pulled a sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and threw it at Maude. Maude grabbed it. “What’s this?”
“A cease and desist letter. You’re defaming me. Next time you’ll be slapped with a lawsuit. And now that you’re dating a man of means, I just might actually be able to collect handsomely.”
Maude tore that letter up as she stood up, and threw it back in his face. “You know what you can do with your letter. You told me you had information.”
“I gave it to you. The Police has her DNA at the crime scene. That’s information.”
“Which I’m sure you and your goons put there,” Maude said.
Edmund gave Hampton a hard look. “If my sister is harmed in any way, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
But Hampton only leaned back and folded his arms. “You got the wrong man. But don’t you worry. The truth will come out.” Then he looked Edmund squarely in the eyes. “You’d better hope it doesn’t blow back on you.”
Maude stared at Hampton. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ask your boyfriend. He knows.”
“This is a waste of time,” Edmund said more dismissively than Maude felt, but she didn’t resist him when he decided it was time for them to leave. They left.
When Maude glanced back, Hamp was laughing. “What is wrong with him?” she said out loud.
But Edmund had a bad feeling about that guy. He took Maude by the hand. He just wanted to get away from there.
But as they were walking across the parking lot to their SUV, with Don walking behind them, Maude looked at Edmund. “What did he mean by that?”
Edmund looked at her. “By what?”
“He said you’d better hope it doesn’t blow back on you. Why would he say that?”
“How should I know, Maude? He’s an idiot.”
“But he’s not a fool,” Maude said. “He knows what he’s doing. I just don’t understand why he would try to implicate you.”
“The same reason he’s pretending he doesn’t know the whereabouts of my sister.
It’s all in the game he’s playing. Whatever that game might be,” Edmund added as Don moved ahead of them to open the back passenger door for them.
“I’m inclined now to just let the Police handle this.
They know she’s missing. Let them get to the bottom of it. ”
Although that wouldn’t help Maude’s career, she was inclined to agree with him. This was getting in danger zone to her.
And just as she was thinking it, that was when they heard what sounded like a man screaming inside that diner, and then a sound so loud that they thought a bomb was going off.
And the force of that blast knocked Edmund, Maude, and Don off their feet and threw them several yards across that parking lot. It even rocked the Tahoe.
By the time they all realized what had happened, they were staring at a diner in flames. Wyatt jumped out of the Tahoe and ran to make sure they were all okay.
Although they all were fine, they got up, not only dazed, but more confused than when they first got there.
Especially Maude. “Who would want to kill Hamp?” she asked with a fixed frown on her face, but even she knew it was a rhetorical question. Because their number one suspect, their only suspect really, had just gone up in smoke.
And after the police cars and fire trucks arrived, they were ushered further back, away from the blaze, but ordered not to leave the scene.
Then when fire-and-rescue pulled Hamp out of that diner, with one fireman commenting that he was burned almost beyond recognition, it felt like a ton of bricks on top of Edmund.
Because they had just walked out of that building themselves.
A few seconds sooner, it could have been them, and more specifically Maude, being carried out on a gurney.
He allowed her to meet with Ross Hampton. He allowed her to meet with a man whose background screamed dangerous. But he allowed her to come to that meeting anyway. The guilt he felt was almost unbearable.
And as if that wasn’t enough to deal with, his phone suddenly began ringing.
Maude, Wyatt, and Don looked at him. Because they were still trying to process the implications of what just happened to Hamp, the fact that his phone was ringing took on a significance it should not have had.
But they were all on edge. Was it the perpetrator taking responsibility for the crime?
Were they calling to tell Edmund that they were the real targets and they blew up their boss instead? Was it Natasha?
But Edmund mostly listened to the person on the other end of the call with little to no emotion. As if that call had nothing to do with that explosion. He ended the call within seconds of answering it.
They all looked at him, as he put his phone back in his pocket.
But although he showed no emotion to Wyatt and Maude, Don could tell from that very slight change of expression in his large blue eyes that it was a disturbing call. “What is it, Boss?” he asked him.
Edmund exhaled. “I’ve been summoned to Kennebunkport.”
Maude was baffled. “Where the Kennedys live?”
“They’re neighbors, yes. But I’ve been summoned to come see my father.”
“Oh,” she said as they looked at each other.
With all of that police and fire-and-rescue activity, and more and more people gathering in the streets around them, it all seemed so chaotic and devastating and uneasy.
And although that phone call didn’t seem like a big deal to Edmund, and in the larger scheme of things it wasn’t a big deal, it was a huge deal to Maude.
That summons from his father meant that he would soon be leaving her to once again fend for herself.
Not that she wasn’t doing that anyway, but with Edmund around it kind of felt like she had somebody in her corner. Like she wasn’t alone anymore.
She wasn’t enough for him. He’d already made that perfectly clear.
But she couldn’t help the fact that he was more than enough for her.
Which placed her, once again, on that island all by herself.
Where she was always falling for the absolute wrong guy.
Always getting a number run on her. Always ending up alone.
She looked away from him and back at all of that destruction that was right in front of her.
But Edmund had already seen the distress all over her beautiful face. And in the moment, in seeing that pain she carried like a second skin, he made up his mind. “You’re coming too,” he said to her.
Maude looked at him. He didn’t have to say where. “I am?”
“You are. It’s time for you to meet my parents.”
Even Don and Wyatt glanced at Edmund when he said those earth-shaking words. Those words held a deeper meaning on every level even to them.
But especially to Maude. So much so that she didn’t know what to say to that. It felt as if it was too much all at once for her to even compute. So she didn’t even try. She simply said okay.