The Heir Read online

  Praise for The Heir

  “Robertson’s first novel is a Grisham-like tale of intrigue and murder about the son, Jason Boyer, of a New England financial titan and kingmaker.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A wonderful, vicarious trip into the worlds of money, politics, and power. . . . Something to share with anyone who appreciates good writing and a great story.”

  —Aspiring Retail

  “. . . this is very, very good. I’m definitely interested in seeing what Paul Robertson has for us next. Recommended.”

  —Tim Frankovich, christianfictionreview.com

  “In The Heir, Paul Robertson serves up politics, privilege, and murder with a side of acerbic wit. What a fabulous book—a great mix of angst, humor, and, ultimately, hope.”

  —T. L. Hines, author of Waking Lazarus and The Dead Whisper On

  “Robertson’s lean and witty writing style fits the plot well. The story is told in first person through Jason’s intelligent persona and delivered with enough literary razzle dazzle to make it appeal to not only the plot addict but the word junkie as well.”

  —Violet Nesdoly, blogcritics.org

  “Intense and compelling, The Heir is a fast, smart read. The tension and suspense constantly build off one another. Often frustrating, frequently humorous, always thought provoking, The Heir has the makings of a mystery classic.”

  —Phillip Tomasso III, inthelibraryreviews.net

  Books by

  Paul Robertson

  The Heir

  Road to Nowhere

  THE

  HEIR

  PAUL

  ROBERTSON

  The Heir

  Copyright © 2007

  Paul Robertson

  Cover design by Paul Higdon

  Cover art by Carmelo Bongiomo/Getty Images

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-0-7642-0469-2

  * * *

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Robertson, Paul J., 1957–

  The heir / Paul Robertson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7642-0324-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-7642-0324-X (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 2. Corporations—Corrupt practices— Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3618.O3173H45 2007

  813'.6—dc22

  2006037952

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It may be that only a man who has struggled toward a goal for many years and finally reached it can know how much I thank my wife, Lisa, for her love and faith.

  Thank you to my parents, Ken and Nancy, and of course to the excellent Ellen, Greg, and Jeff.

  To my friends who prayed for and encouraged me and commented on the manuscript, to Steve Laube, and to the superlative staff at Bethany, thanks to you all.

  And my gratitude to Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea in Blacks-burg, Virginia—what a great place to write.

  . . . I say unto you,

  It is easier for a camel to go through

  the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to

  enter into the kingdom of God. . . .

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1

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  42

  1

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the casket. It was expensive, and it glowed, resting among the candles and the heaps of flowers. It so perfectly expressed the man inside.

  The dignitaries droned, and I didn’t hear them. We knew it all. We knew what he had done with his life. If a man knows his purpose, then everyone else will know it, too.

  They’d been told what to say and to keep it short, and they obeyed. They’d all gotten where they were by doing what they were told.

  It was tribute by catalog listing: achievements, philanthropy, and Senate career. The real man was never mentioned—the companies he inherited, the rivals he crushed, the cold blood behind the politics— but everyone knew. Was anyone else listening? It’s easy to eulogize a man who knew why he lived his life.

  I just stared at that gleaming box and wondered why I was living mine.

  We sang a hymn, and that brought me back—words obscure enough to drive any clear thoughts from a man’s brain. A voice behind me sang off-key.

  I watched the man’s wife instead. Her name was Angela, and she was sitting between my brother, Eric, and me. I might have given her a hug, but she had always objected to my familiarity. It was nothing personal; she objected to anyone. Her brother and sister were not at the service.

  She was his second wife. The other one died young of cancer, which had been worth a lot of sympathy in his first election. If he had grieved for her, I wouldn’t know.

  I looked back. The off-key voice behind me was another senator, a man I’d never liked. He had no speaking part. It was probably a snub.

  For a moment it seemed a pity the whole thing was going by so fast. The church was flawless, and the funeral was such a good use for it. Now I even knew the true purpose of candles: to reflect off that casket. They were going to look tacky anywhere else. And there I was staring at it again.

  Candles knew their purpose, but I didn’t have a clue about mine.

  The governor said his few words about what he had felt when he heard about the accident—the shock and sadness, the great man cut down in his prime, what a loss to the state. He shook his head at the whole sad mystery of life and death and checked his watch.

  “Jason?”

  I pushed past Katie and got up to the pulpit. Now the box was right in front of me, shining like a waxed floor. I needed something else to look at.

  The back wall of the place had a row of statues in it, saints or angels, and one had his hand up waving at me. I never had written anything to say.

  “Why am I here?” The little saint seemed friendly, so I figured I’d just talk to him. “I wish I knew.” Maybe it was a her, not a him. They all wear robes.

  “I think he could have told me. He knew why he was here, what he was doing. He never doubted anything he did.” Somehow, I was staring at the casket again. I found my friend on the wall. “Maybe he is now.”

  They were all watching me, but I watched the back of the church. “The one thing I ever really knew for sure in my life was that he was there. I only saw him a few times a year and I won’t miss him for that. It’s more like a mou
ntain is gone—one you’d see off in the distance.”

  Katie wanted me to be impressive for the assembled personages. She knew they’d be measuring and calculating, putting me in their equations. After three years of marriage, she also knew me enough to know I didn’t care. I did hope she wasn’t embarrassed. Her mother was sitting behind her and she’d be embarrassed enough for all of us.

  I wouldn’t inherit anything anyway. It was all going to his foundation. Eric and I would just get our monthly checks, as we always had.

  The saint’s stone hand was palm up, as if it had been holding something that had just flown away. “Anyway, he’s gone and we’re still here, so we’ll get by without him.” I finally got myself to look at the people. What a well-dressed crowd. “And everything he knew about life is gone with him, so I’ll get by without that, too.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say. I smiled at Angela, and then I nodded at Eric on her other side.

  I waited at the end of the pew as Eric got out, and he patted me on the back. Katie gave me a tight smile as I sat. She was annoyed, but not mad.

  Eric was tall, dark, and clueless behind the heavy wood pulpit. We look alike, especially with him wearing one of my suits. For all the money he has, he’d never figured out how to buy clothes. It was loose on him, and maybe that was why he looked so young. Or maybe it was because he was so young. There were no questions about life beneath that spiky black hair.

  But he kept his eyes on the audience the whole time and told them what a loving father the man had been. He did a good job. I appreciated him because he did the right thing, what I should have done, and maybe he thought what he said was true.

  Then the priest said whatever he had to, and it was over. When I got out into the light of day, I was so glad it had lasted no longer than it did.

  The rest of the festivities went about the same. In the limo, Katie chattered and Angela sighed about how nice the service had been. Eric was watching boats in the bay.

  I watched them, too. I prefer water to land because land is unmoving; the water is never still and has nothing fixed. Long Island Sound, Nantucket Sound, Block Island Sound—we were surrounded by silent waters named for the lands that confined them.

  Eric turned to me. “What did you mean, you wouldn’t miss him?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “And what were you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  He turned back to the boats and I did, too. I would rather have been out there. Anyone whose ancestors lived on these coasts would feel the same pull.

  Across from me, Katie was glaring, so maybe she was mad after all. She had her hair down straight, over her shoulders. Her simple, dark blue dress with the string of pearls was as perfect as the church. She had me done up just right, too, with the black suit she’d picked out a year ago for weddings and funerals. She had a tailor come every six months to keep all the suits fitted. That’s why it hung so loose around Eric’s shoulders.

  Change the subject. “He really was a great man,” I said to Angela.

  She smiled, and it was genuine. The funeral had penetrated the pink plastic armor. She wasn’t even fifty. Her husband had been fifteen years older, but she’d still expected a lot more years with him.

  They’d been married for nineteen.

  Katie smiled at me, and I was out of trouble. I pushed my luck.

  “What do you think he would have been most proud of?”

  “Most proud?” Angela always spoke so quietly, like a kitten. I’d wondered if it was an act, but it was no asset to a political wife, being so fluffy. She wasn’t striking or brilliant. Why did he marry her? He must have actually loved something about her. I wouldn’t even recognize her without the platinum hair and bubblegum lipstick. “He did so much. He didn’t enjoy Washington, but he accomplished so much there. He was happier here at home. And he was proud of his foundation. I think that’s what he was most proud of.”

  Not of his sons. Not of his oldest son, anyway. “I hope it will keep going,” I said.

  “Mr. Kern will run it. He’s always done such a good job there. And now he’ll have charge of all of Melvin’s companies.”

  Melvin. The name of the deceased hovered in the air for a moment like cigarette smoke, and Nathan Kern’s name was the smell of stale beer that went with it so well. I was not a patron of that saloon. I’d get my little allowance, and the big wad would go to the foundation. Melvin had made it very clear that Eric and I should have no expectations beyond simply living in the style to which we had become accustomed.

  We were born to be idle rich, Eric and I, and we’d never risen above it. I wondered what our new allowance would be. Katie was feeling constrained by our thirty thousand a month.

  Ahead of us, the hearse turned onto the gravel road into the cemetery. We parked beside it. As we waited for the other cars to park, I walked to the open grave. What a view he’d have, of the cliffs and the waves breaking. I was about fifty feet from the edge of the grass, and it was twenty feet straight down from there into the violent water. In a thousand years the whole place would be gone, worn down by the surf. Usually he planned better than that, but while it lasted, it would definitely be a view to die for.

  There were six pallbearers. Nathan Kern and the governor took the middle on each side, for show. The casket was heavy, though, and it needed at least four strong men out of the six. So Eric and I were in front, and two gardeners from the estate were in back. We walked the short distance slowly. The sun was bright, between clouds; the better to dramatize the moment. The mourners added darker colors to the brilliant blue and greens, and the brown of the earth piled by the grave.

  Five minutes after we set the box down, we were done with the words and the gardeners were lowering it into the ground. I took the shovel they handed me and dropped some ceremonial dirt down on top of the box, and then a couple more good heavy loads just for the exercise. I was just kicking into gear, and I would have filled the whole pit, but then I had to stop. I felt lightheaded and my vision blurred and my breath stuck in my throat, and that was when I knew he was gone. I dropped the shovel and walked over to the cliff, and I didn’t know if the pounding I heard was the waves or my own blood filling my ears.

  Then Katie was beside me. “Jason? Are you all right, dear?”

  I nodded. Wherever we all end up going, he was there now— where he knew the answers to all my questions and where I couldn’t ask them of him. I looked around again at the strength and ferocity of that place with its hard stone and unrelenting breakers. It was everything hard, without mercy or forgiveness. I hoped he’d enjoy it.

  “Come on, let’s go back.” Katie sounded nervous. She knew me well enough to want me away from the cliff.

  “Don’t worry.” The moment was over. I took her hand and we strolled back to the others.

  We stood for the right number of minutes in the rolling clouds and sun, nodding to the mourners, saying the proper words. The cloud shadows were chill, a reminder that the New England summer would soon have its own abrupt end.

  “I’m getting cold, dear.”

  I hadn’t noticed Francine next to us. The last I’d seen her, she’d been talking to the senator.

  “You should go home, Mother,” Katie said. “I’ll call tonight.”We watched her skitter across the grass, like a little crab.

  “I’m getting cold, too,” I said.

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “Let’s go home anyway.”

  My own car was waiting for us. I was about to open the door for Katie when Melvin’s lawyer waddled over to us.

  Fred Spellman was a nice man. He must have been very smart to have been Privy Counsellor, but I’d never seen him in action. To us, he had always been Uncle Fred, and I had better childhood memories of him than of Melvin.

  He gave me a paternal pat on the back and kissed Katie’s hand, and I might have thought he’d been crying. But he took a deep breath and pulled himself together.

  �
��Well, well.” Then he paused and took another breath and tried again. “Well. We have some things to discuss, Jason, my boy. I need to have you and Eric come see me.”

  “Right. The reading of the will.”

  Melvin’s secretary, Pamela, was next to us. She really had been crying, and she still was. She hugged Katie, patted my shoulder, and walked on, all without words. I watched her.

  “It won’t take long,” Fred was saying. “Would tomorrow morning be too soon? Or do you need time to . . . adjust? I don’t want to hurry you, but there are some things that will need attention, sooner rather than later.”

  “That’s fine. The body’s still warm, but at least it’s underground.” I looked away from Pamela to my watch. “We could do it right now, sitting on his grave. That would be poetic. I’ll call Eric.”

  “He’s not serious,” Katie said. “What time tomorrow?”

  Maybe I had gone too far with him. He stared at me in a way I hadn’t seen. “Nine o’clock?” he suggested. “Eric is available.”

  “What about Angela?” I said. “The grieving widow, you know. The scene wouldn’t be complete.”

  “She will have her own meeting.”

  “Whatever.” I opened the door and Katie slipped in. “May I bring my wife?”

  “That will be at your discretion.” He smiled, the old teddy bear smile. “I think you should. It helps to face these things together.”

  I shrugged. “It’s really not a big deal, Fred. Not to me. We’ll just putter along like always. Nathan Kern will have the headaches.”

  That look again. I couldn’t read it, and it was not from the kindly family friend I’d always known. But then we both turned to watch Eric vroom vroom out of the cemetery on his Yamaha. Nice touch, or it would have been if the thought had occurred to him. I would have done the motorcycle-at-the-funeral thing to make some kind of statement. He did it because he was oblivious.

  Or maybe the bike was the most presentable thing he had. None of his five cars was very solemn. The leather jacket was going to mangle the borrowed suit.