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“Right. That’s it. Anyway, I narrowed it down and it looks like the guy who was married to Ginny Watson moved to Kentucky a while back. Lexington, in the seventies sometime, near as I can tell. I’m gonna visit him tomorrow.”
“You got his phone number?”
Zach heard nothing but silence for a few seconds.
“Well, do you?”
“Sure, I got it, but I figured a visit in person would be better. Seeing people face-to-face makes it impossible to hang up.”
“I want to speak to him.”
“Easy, boy. You’ll get your chance,” Oswald said smoothly. “Just let me break the ice. I’ll call you as soon as I have more news. I’ll leave the message with Jason.”
“Where will you be staying?” Zach demanded.
“Where will I be staying? That’s a good one. Maybe at the Ritz? Or how about the Hotel Danvers? You got one over in Kentucky? Shit, how’m I s’posed to know?” He hung up and the phone clicked loudly in Zach’s ear.
“What was that all about?” Jason asked, pouring two glasses from a bottle of Scotch he kept in the bar. His eyes were trained suspiciously on his brother.
“I’m just tired of waiting around and I don’t trust Sweeny.”
“Neither do I, but he keeps his mouth shut and if he finds out something, he’ll let us know, but it’ll cost. Now, where’s Adria? Are you hiding her somewhere?”
Zach didn’t answer and his older brother’s lips curved into a hard little smile. “Keeping her all to yourself?”
“I thought you wanted her low-profile.”
“She’s already been on the news and in the papers. Hardly low-profile.” Jason walked to the desk, opened the drawer, and flipped out clippings and copies and faxes. “She’s made the national news, you know…and I mean more than just the little blurb that was reported through the AP. The networks are beginning to call and even a few papers back East are showing a little interest. Every time I turn on the television, someone seems to be talking about her and during the day, at the company, there’s a fucking siege in the lobby.”
“Free publicity,” Zach said sarcastically.
“Go to hell, Zach.” Jason tossed back his drink. “It’s started here, too, at the house. It upsets Nicole and Shelly and…I feel like I did when London was kidnapped—all the reporters camped out at the gate.”
Zach remembered the throng of newspeople that had pummeled the family with questions, called at all hours, crowded around the gates to the house; he’d heard from his crew still cleaning up at the hotel, that the press had been ever-present in the lobby. Even his offic
e in Bend wasn’t immune; Terry had phoned and told him that a few reporters had shown up looking for him ever since Adria’s meeting with the press.
“It’s worse than I’d imagined,” Jason was saying as he reached for the bottle again. “Even the lawyers are beginning to worry. They want to talk to Ms. Nash, but I advised them to wait a while.”
“Just let me handle her.” He didn’t want her hustled away by a herd of bloodsuckers like the attorneys for the Danvers family. Impatiently, he jammed one hand through his hair.
“Has she hired an attorney yet?”
Zach lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so. But she’s with Mario Polidori tonight.”
“Polidori?” Jason’s face muscles flexed in disbelief and his nostrils flared in disgust. “Why?”
“Don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“So, the vultures are already circling. Great, Zach, that’s just great,” he said sarcastically, then pointed a finger at his younger brother. “You can’t let him get to her.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Like hell! Polidori, through a smoke screen of lawyers and holding companies and silent partners, has been trying to buy off chunks of Danvers International for years—waterfront property and the old hotel, downtown real estate, even a couple of sawmills. You name it, he wants it as long as it’s got the Danvers logo attached. He has this thing about acquiring our castoffs—so far we’ve held him off.”
“His money no good?”
“It’s not the money, it’s the idea that he wants it all,” Jason said and Zach smiled at the irony of it all.
