Chapter 24 - The Cold Furnace
Greer’s face went the color of curdled milk. The smug, patrician sneer vanished, replaced by a sudden, sickly slackness around his jowls. He gripped the silver handle of his cane until his knuckles turned translucent white.
"What did you say?" Greer whispered.
Mack Turner shifted his weight, his heavy brow furrowing in confusion. "Mr. Greer? What's she talking about? Donald Miller drowned in a spring freshet back in '68. Everybody knows that."
"Shut your mouth, Mack," Greer snapped, his voice sharp and ragged, all courtesy stripped away. He stared down at me through the trapdoor, his eyes darting frantically from my face to Ellis's hands, trying to discern what we were carrying. "Sanford was senile. He was raving for five years before he died. Nothing he wrote has any legal standing!"
"Then why did you drive out here on a Sunday afternoon with a hired goon?" Ellis challenged, stepping beside me onto the first rung of the ladder, his dark eyes locked on the lawyer. "Why did Raymond spend thirty years paying off your firm to keep the probate open? Why did Raymond slap his own daughter in front of two hundred guests the second she wouldn't let him burn that walnut box?"
"You don't understand what you're doing, Miller," Greer hissed, leaning over the opening, his polite facade entirely dismantled. "You think you can take Raymond down with a dead man's diary? Raymond owns the county prosecutor. He owns the sheriff's mortgage. He owns the bank that holds the note on this very mill! By tomorrow morning, the tax assessor will have this entire section declared eminent domain for the state highway bypass. You won't have a square inch of dirt to stand on!"
"Let him try," I said. "And while he’s signing the paperwork, I’ll be sitting in the United States Attorney’s office in Grand Rapids. County lines won't protect Raymond Vance from federal bank fraud and interstate conspiracy. Tell him that, Harlan."
Greer’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He looked at Mack Turner, then back down at the dark, rushing water beneath our feet. For a second, I thought he might order Mack to jump down the shaft and take the papers by force. Mack was twice Ellis's weight, a monster of a man who spent ten hours a day rolling hemlock logs.
But Mack had heard Donald Miller's name. The sawyer was looking at the water wheel, his gaze distant, unease settling over his weathered face. "My dad worked the saws with Donald," Mack muttered, taking half a step backward. "My dad always said Donald was a fish in the water. He said Donald could swim the Pigeon in full ice."
"Mack, let's go," Greer spat, whirling around toward the gravel driveway. "Now!"
The sound of their heavy boots hurried away across the loose pine needles outside, followed seconds later by the throaty roar of Greer’s Lincoln accelerating down the washboard road toward Hastings.
Ellis let out a long, ragged exhale and rested his forehead against my shoulder. I could feel the tremor in his muscles—not of fear, but of thirty years of suppressed fury finally breaking the surface.
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"They're going to burn this place down, Abby," he whispered against my hair. "Raymond won't wait for morning. If Greer tells him what you said, he will send someone tonight to torch the mill and the house with it."
"Then we don't stay here," I said, my heart pounding with cold clarity. "We pack Clara, we take the ledger and Sanford’s letter, and we strike first."
