Inside, the gallery smelled like old leather, lemon polish, and a whole lot of money. Silver candlesticks and gilt-framed mirrors gleamed. Jack peeked at the tag on a spindly-looking chair.It was a Hepplewhite chair, circa 1760. Who would pay four thousand dollars for a chair that looked too fragile to sit on?
“Remember, don’t accuse him,” Alice whispered. “We don’t want to offend them because they might be completely innocent.”
“Can I help you find anything?” An elegant gentleman in a bow tie and with a priestly demeanor had materialized beside him.
Alice stepped in front of Jack before he could answer. “Hi, Winston. We’re looking for Kyle. Is he in today?”
“Absolutely. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Winston disappeared behind a tapestry curtain covering a rear hallway. Jack made a beeline to a glass display case filled with vintage jewelry, scanning the velvet cushions quickly. Pearls, cameos, gold pocket watches, lots of jewelry … but no seventeenth-century signet ring.
The tapestry flipped away from the back hall and Kyle came striding forward, monocle in place, his white teeth displaying perfect veneers as he smiled. “Alice! Oh, and Jack . . . it’s good to see you up and about. Healing nicely?”
Jack’s gaze slid down Kyle’s sports jacket to land on his right hand. “You’re wearing my ring,” he said bluntly. On his pinky finger, too! The Denby signet ring had been polished and now gleamed in the dim of the shop. Kyle looked completely unruffled.
“If you check the paperwork of our agreement, you’ll see that this ring actually belongs to the Tucker family.”
“How do you figure?” he bit out. “That agreement stated that in exchange for paying your debts, I took ownership of the Roost, the five acres it sits on, and everything inside it.”
Kyle gave a gentle laugh. “That’s not the agreement I’m referring to. It’s the hotel bill. The fine print on the hotel agreement says that any guest who walks out on their bill,leaving property in the room, is subject to having that property seized.”
“But, but . . .” Alice sputtered. “But I worked out a deal with Daisy! Jack was unconscious and I checked him out of the hotel. He shouldn’t have had to pay for those days he wasn’t staying there, and she agreed.”
Heat began to simmer beneath Jack’s collar. He grasped the handles of the crutches, wishing he could punch the condescending look off Kyle’s face.
Kyle gave a sad shake of his head. “Daisy’s sympathetic gesture had no legal bearing on the contract. She cleared the bill, but that didn’t void Jack’s responsibility for paying it. But look! I’m happy to take the ring as compensation.”
The self-righteous expression on Kyle’s face made Jack clench and unclench the grips of his crutches. Physical fights were off-limits to a hemophiliac, but Jack was good at fighting with his intellect.
“I will gladly sue you to kingdom come,” he said quietly. “I already own a third of your family’s golf course, and if you challenge me, I’ll go after you for the rest of it. I didn’t sign any agreement with Daisy—”
“But you didn’t contest it once you were conscious again,” Kyle interrupted. “That’s a token sign of consent.”
“A jury of our peers will side with me ten times out of ten.”
“There won’t be a jury trial,” Kyle said. “The fine print on the hotel contract you signed requires arbitration, to be decided by a judge. And the law is quite clearly on the hotel’s side.”
Jack faked a patient smile. “One of the things I’ve learned about the Tuckers since I’ve been here is that they don’t like anything that puts the family in a bad light. I’ve never been burdened by that weakness. There were a couple dozen witnesses when I found that ring, and local news reporters love this kind of gossipy story—”
“You’re not listening,” Kyle said. “The terms of the hotel contract are quite clear, and we’ve won every time we’ve gone to arbitration. Don’t waste your money hiring lawyers over an antique of piddly value.”
The problem with people like Kyle was that he was used to hiding behind lawyers, fine print on contracts, and his family’s reputation. Jack intended to render those defenses useless. He affected a congenial tone that still had a bite just beneath the surface.
“You’re right, Kyle,” he said. “This case doesn’t belong in a judicial courtroom; let’s take it to the court of public opinion. I’d love to hear what the local newspapers will think about how your wife stole a ring from a man who was fighting for his life in a hospital bed. In fact, why stop at the newspaper? I’ll talk to the local radio stations, the TV news, the town halls and neighborhood associations. Heck, the college is back in session, so I’ll sponsor a letter-writing campaign or maybe put some flyers up at the tourist hotspots.”
It didn’t take long for Kyle to cave like a house of cards. Ten minutes later, Jack walked out of the shop with the Denby signet ring back on his finger where it belonged.
Chapter Thirty-One
By the time Alice helped Jack get checked in to a chain hotel, the day was almost over, but he wanted to see the Roost.
She worried about it, because the ground was lumpy and littered with construction waste, dangerous terrain for a hemophiliac who walked with the aid of forearm crutches, but he insisted. It had been ten days since his accident and he was anxious to see the progress on the Roost before leaving town. Although his trip to Japan was cancelled, he was heading off to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in hopes of winning the golf course renovation contract. The deadline for proposals was next week, and Jack had already arranged to meet with the golf course manager and local contractors to discuss his bid.
It was nearing dusk as they arrived at the Roost. The chilly air carried hints of leaf decay and damp earth, as if the first frost was waiting quietly to arrive. Deep furrows left by tractors made the terrain uneven, and long shadows cast across the land made it even harder to navigate.
“Be careful,” Alice cautioned as Jack maneuvered his crutches around a lumpy pile of churned-up grass.
“I’m an old pro at this,” Jack said as he headed toward the blank patch where the original Roost had stood for hundreds of years. A line of boulders still demarcated the outline of the original building, but the rest of it had been dismantled. New shoots of weeds already peeked through the soil, exposed to sunlight for the first time in centuries.
