The Last Day Read online

  After showering and dressing, on his way out, Ward stopped in the hallway outside the door to Barney's bedroom. He pressed his ear up to the door quietly, as if to not wake his son. For long seconds he stood staring at the pattern of the hardwood.

  After Barney died people had related to Ward differently—his old friends standoffish or guarded in their conversations with him. Friends with their own children had stopped calling after a few weeks, and Ward and Natasha's socializing had slowed to a crawl. They stopped going to the country club, and no longer attended ser vices at the First Methodist Church in Concord. It wasn't that Ward blamed God for Barney's death; it was just that he and his wife had lost interest in participatory worship, just as they had lost interest in a lot of other things they'd done as a family. Ward hadn't lost his faith, but he didn't believe that God was paying attention, believed that His interference was as random as the flight of a discarded plastic shopping bag on the Interstate.

  Something always drew him to open Barney's door. He always approached the room shrouded in the feeling that he was entering a tomb, and entering was something he did with increasing reluctance. Finally he reached down, pressed the lever, and opened the door to what could have been a museum exhibit dedicated to the beautiful boy. Barney had handled the objects on display, and his collection was open only at the whim of the curators, only visited when they felt a need to touch base. At that moment Ward knew something was off, something he was supposed to do that he couldn't put his finger on.

  His eyes went immediately to the wall that held four wooden shelves, where colorful NASCAR die- cast models were lined up, angled with their grilles facing out like vehicles parked and awaiting tiny drivers to jump in and roar away. There was an open slot in the center, like a missing tooth.

  Ward hurried to the kitchen, located his briefcase, placed it on the counter beside the sink, and popped it open to discover that the prototype race car was not in its padded envelope. He felt sick to his stomach.

  Jerking up the phone, he was already dialing Natasha's private number when he realized that she would not have opened his briefcase, much less taken the car from it. The receptionist answered on the third ring.

  “Piedmont Pediatric Surgical. How may I help you?”

  “Mary Katherine, it's Ward. Is Natasha in?”

  “She went into surgery an hour ago. Can I have her call you when she gets back? Do you want her voice mail?”

  “No, I'll talk to her later.” He pressed the off button and, feeling hollow inside, replaced the phone in its charging base.

  Ward's mind raced over the last time he'd seen the car and he remembered taking it out on the plane, but he'd definitely put it back after the girl looked it over. “God damn her!” he shouted.

  After grabbing his car keys and briefcase, Ward took off for his office with his mind racing. He had told the girl to call his secretary, Leslie, for that free car he'd offered to give her for her NASCAR- fan mother. If she followed through, he would talk to her, or at the least have an address so he could find her. He felt a wave of fear and uncertainty. Accusing her of stealing would be awkward, but he had to get the prototype back. As he got out of his car in the parking lot in front of his building he wondered how many of the electronic devices in her bag were pilfered from other unsuspecting people she'd run across.

  Just wait until little Miss Bad Hair finds out that lifting that little toy was grand larceny.

  TEN

  Watcher was in the kitchen of his rented house drinking coffee when the GPS showed McCarty's BMW two miles away, getting farther. A minute later, Watcher left the house and moved rapidly through the woods, down the hill behind the McCartys’ house and up the slope, carrying his rucksack. He passed beside the swimming pool and, first using a device to fool the house alarm system, he opened the far left garage with a multifrequency transmitter. He closed the door behind him. The McCartys had good reason to believe their alarm system was impenetrable, and it would have been for any but the best professional burglars. Watcher wasn't interested in taking anything but their lives.

  Using the spare key he'd predictably found hidden under the doormat months before and copied, he entered the McCartys’ kitchen and strode down the utility hallway. Passing the laundry room, he went straight into the large storage room.

  Metal shelves loaded with cardboard and plastic boxes wrapped the room. Watcher went to the box marked “Christmas Decorations” that he had selected and took it down. It was unlikely to be opened. He took the digital recorder from the box and downloaded the audio and video into his laptop computer. He had audio-only bugs that transmitted to a recorder in the home he rented nearby, but he didn't depend on those. He needed to visit the house anyway. He walked through the rooms, read the mail, and used his senses to gather intelligence that even the expensive cameras and sound microphones couldn't pick up. And most important, he had to come inside to fuck with things.

  In the doctor's bedroom he paused only long enough to pilfer the stuffed bear. Perhaps he would take more than life.

  In the kitchen he looked at the calendar and used a red pen to circle the anniversary of their child's death. After capping the pen, he noted the glasses in the sink and sniffed the highball glass, detecting the odor of Scotch. He smiled, imagining the gloomy void Ward had been trying to fill the night before. He checked to see if the doctor had purchased any new bottles of the juice she drank, and saw that she had purchased two since the last time he'd visited. Watcher used a syringe to penetrate the cartons and add a thin stream of liquid.

  Watcher lifted the Scotch glass and set it carefully upside down in the sink beside the wineglass. He left the house the way he'd come, the small stuffed bear tucked under his arm.

  ELEVEN

  The year before Ward was born, his father purchased eighteen acres of farmland three miles from the Lowe's Motor Speedway complex, which despite being technically located in Concord, was then called the Charlotte Motor Speedway. His father bought the land figuring that even if his business failed, or if NASCAR turned out to be a flash in the pan, Concord and Charlotte would eventually grow together and the land would be a solid long- term investment. In those early years most racetracks were going through tough financial times because ticket sales often failed to cover track expenses. In those days, the big names in racing were, were related to, or were trained by the ex-moonshine runners who had begun racing each other in their overpowered coupes—fitted with tanks for carrying liquid contraband—on small dirt tracks throughout the South. Ward loved the illicit history of his legitimate business.

  The crude structure that had housed Raceway Graphic's first three employees—a two- thousand-square- foot Quonset hut built as an equipment garage in 1937—had since grown into a fifty-thousand- square- foot complex of offices and design studios, an employee cafeteria, the stock warehouse, and shipping dock.

  A tree- lined parking lot in the front was for office employees and visitors while another larger one to the side served warehouse workers and delivery trucks. Picnic tables, protected by a roof, allowed employees to eat lunch outdoors when the weather was pleasant. Ward's father had personally planted a number of the trees.

  Ward had hardly gotten to the reception desk when his uncle waved at him from the mezzanine stairs.

  Mark Wilson, sixty- three years old, had a full head of white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. Ward McCarty Sr., called Wardo by everyone who knew him, had started the company alone. But after a few months, when he'd needed both operating capital and help, he had sold his brother- in- law—then a successful car salesman— forty- five percent of the company's stock for five thousand dollars. Ward Sr. had been a thoughtful introvert with no marketing or sales experience, and no interest in learning any. Mark was the opposite, and together they'd made a dynamic partnership for thirty-eight years.

  Mark and Ward's father had spent most of their workdays together, as well as countless long days and nights on the road during race season, peddling their merchandise
at the racetracks from a small trailer.

  Wilson played tennis and golf and knew the names of the coaches and players and the rankings of every professional and college baseball, football, and basketball team in the country, one of which was always sure to break ice with both suppliers and customers.

  “How was your trip?” he asked, slapping Ward's shoulder paternally. Ward had always been the closest thing Mark had to a son, and for the past few years Mark was the closest Ward had to a father figure.

  “Fine,” Ward said. “Same old bunch. My feet hurt as much as my eyes.”

  “Always the same. Bunny enjoyed the slots more than seeing Wayne Newton.” He lowered his voice. “How did your meeting with the video game designer go Saturday night?”

  Ward smiled. “Great. I saw the beta version of Driver's Seat and even got to play with it for an hour. The accelerator and braking are perfect, but the steering and suspension controls have to be adjusted. The handling is still sort of sloppy, but it has even better graphics than I'd imagined. Unk, it's so real on the monitor I swear I could smell the tires burning when I made my way around a six- car crash on turn two.”

  “I'm glad to hear it. It's going to make you rich, nephew. Beyond rich. Look at Grand Theft Auto. Tens of millions. And with the race downloads available.”

  “If people buy it, it'll make us both rich.”

  Mark grinned, shrugged. “RGI was always your father's dream, and I know you came in because Wardo and I needed you. The game is all your dream, kid. And the first of many, I'm sure.

  “So, how's your mother?” Mark said, furrowing his brows.

  “No change,” Ward said. “At this point that's real good. She still thinks I'm my father.”

  “I'm sorry, Ward. Hey, Bunny is excited about spending next weekend with you guys. My gal loves the spa, and it shows. Am I right?”

  “What?”

  “Next weekend. In Asheville at the Biltmore Hotel.”

  “Sorry?” Ward asked, tilting his head.

  “You said you and Natasha would join us. I made the reservations right after we spoke last night.”

  “Yes,” Ward said uncomfortably. Bunny Wilson was Ward's age and she treated Mark more like a rich elderly uncle than a husband. Natasha believed that Bunny was far smarter and conniving than she let on. After the wedding, when Ward had made a “trophy wife” comment, Natasha had said, “I wonder who got the one for first place.”

  Mark had met Bunny at the Speedway Club, where she'd been a bartender who'd spent her time flirting, mostly with men who should have been old enough to know it was their bankbooks that she found attractive. Natasha resented the fact that Mark and his wife of twenty- four years hadn't had children only because Mark hadn't wanted any. So naturally, when he left Ward's aunt because Bunny was pregnant with his child, it pissed Natasha off. Women took intimate betrayal personally. A week after Mark proposed and set a certain date, Bunny suffered a miscarriage while visiting an old friend in San Francisco. When Ward told Natasha that Bunny had lost the baby, she shook her head in amusement. “Surprise, surprise,” she said. “Imagine how she'd have looked pregnant in a wedding gown.”

  Ward had never been close to his aunt Ashley because she'd openly resented the fact that her brother hadn't made Mark an equal partner in RGI. She had believed that Mark deserved to own the majority of stock in the company because he did most of the “real” work. And Ashley McCarty Wilson had acted as though she was somehow superior to Ward's mother in every way. When they were together the tension was palpable, but Ashley had been kind to Ward and Natasha and had spoiled Barney with expensive toys and lavished him with her attention. Since Barney's death she had all but stopped communicating with Ward and Natasha. Ward supposed it was because she couldn't face being reminded of her only nephew, and because Ward loved the man she now hated.

  “I'm going to give you help with your golf game next weekend while the girls bond in the antique shops,” he added. “You need something to get your mind off work.”

  “I don't have a golf game,” Ward said. “I'm surprised the PGA hasn't asked me to sell my clubs.” Ward decided that he would wait a day and tell Mark his wife had surgeries scheduled, or some such excuse. And, truthfully, he didn't believe Bunny actually wanted the four of them to spend a weekend together any more than Natasha would. “I still have to run next weekend past Natasha,” Ward said.

  “You didn't clear it with her?”

  “She was already asleep, and she was gone when I got up. If she has conflicts, you guys will understand, right?”

  Mark looked disappointed, and Ward felt the way he always felt when Natasha refused an invitation to be with Bunny.

  Ward went up the stairs. Checking his cell phone's log he saw that Mark had called him at ten- thirteen the night before. They had talked for eleven minutes. And Ward did not remember it.

  TWELVE

  Leslie Wilde had worked for RGI for two years and had been Ward's secretary for fourteen months. Anna Bost, who had been his father's secretary was seventy- eight when she'd finally retired and moved to a condo in Charleston. Leslie had been the first applicant. She was bright, efficient, attractive, and quick- witted, and since she already worked for the company and had a reputation, he'd hired her.

  Leslie was busy at her computer terminal when Ward entered her office, which was just next door to his.

  “Good morning, Leslie.”

  “How was the trade show, Mr. McCarty?” she asked him, smiling.

  “Busy,” he told her.

  “I put the order sheets on your desk,” she said. “I also have a stack of letters for your signature, and the new inventory report. The calls you need to return ASAP are on yellow Post- its, the should-be-returned-at-your-earliest on blue, and the standard sales calls on green. No personal calls.”

  Ward had resisted installing an automated messaging system because he hated listening to a recorded voice and punching numbers to navigate to an actual person. He did have voice mail, but Leslie always asked the caller if she could take a message, or if they wanted to leave a message on Ward's voice mail. Most left a message with her, which further reinforced his belief that given a choice, people preferred to interact with living, breathing humans. Please listen carefully, as our options have changed. Please press one because we're insensitive assholes who are too cheap to hire an employee to answer your call.

  “Very good,” he said. “Listen, Leslie. There's something I want to mention. If a young lady calls to ask for a die- cast car that I offered her for her mother on the flight home, get her name and mailing address.”

  “You don't know her name?” Leslie asked, reaching for a pen.

  “No. I told her I'd give her a die- cast car if she'd call. Get her name and address for me.”

  A look of concern crossed Leslie's features, as she made a note to herself, then stared at Ward with alert brown eyes.

  “Do you want to talk to her?” She was familiar with Ward's slipping memory and she, like everyone else in the offices, knew of his mother's illness. It had crossed his mind more than once that the same disease might be sneaking up on him from behind like an assassin. Ward was too young, wasn't he?

  “No. Tell her you'll mail her the car unless she wants to pick it up,” he said, not wanting to chance spooking the girl. That is, if she called.

  Ward went to his office, which had remained pretty much the way his father had left it—cluttered but clean. He hadn't cleaned out but a few of his father's personal items, merely introducing a few of his own. Wardo hadn't had a computer in his office, preferring to write out personal correspondence by hand, or type business letters on his Selectric, using carbon paper. In his last years, he'd had his secretary type that which needed formalizing and make copies for files.

  Ward, a generation later, had a desktop and a couple of laptops. A picture of his family stood on his desk that had been taken in Killarney Ireland. Dermott O'caloughan, the owner of the Failte Hotel, had taken it the year before B
arney died. Natasha had commented that she'd never visited any place as warm, or any place that had so many tourist shops whose inventory was comprised of so many things she didn't want to own. There was a second picture of Wardo, Mark, and himself taken during a charity tournament on the golf course at the Cabarrus Country Club. All three of the men smiled out from the framed snapshot like successful politicians who hadn't yet been caught at skullduggery.

  For an hour Ward took care of necessary business. He was just about to walk to the warehouse to go over the incoming inventory, and to the studio to check the progress of designs on new products, when Leslie appeared at the open door, her long black hair tucked neatly behind her ears.

  “Gene Duncan's secretary called to remind you that you're supposed to meet him for lunch at eleven- thirty at the Speedway Club. I don't have it on your planner.”

  “Today?” Ward asked. He didn't remember making the appointment. Christ. “Tell him I'll see him there.”

  As she turned to leave, Ward remembered something. “Leslie, are you still dating that private detective?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Todd Hartman.”

  “Is he good?”

  Her cheeks flushed.

  “Sorry, I meant is he a good detective?”

  She giggled. “He doesn't brag, but his friends all say he's the best around. He has like two full-time investigators, a secretary, and lots of freelancers he uses. He does a lot of work for lawyers.”

  “Does he work for individuals?”

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “And you'd recommend him. Even if you weren't dating?”