Chapter 3 - SOMEONE WANTED MAIZE GONE BEFORE KNOX COULD ASK WHY
Silas Crowe arrived at Knox’s office forty minutes later.
He entered smiling.
That was his first mistake.
“Knox.”
Knox remained behind his desk.
“Sit.”
Silas sat.
At forty-six, he had the polished appearance of a man who had spent twenty years learning how to make greed look professional. Silver at the temples. Navy suit. Yale ring. Expensive restraint.
He had helped turn Sheridan Development from a side business into one of the largest private property groups in Tennessee.
Knox trusted very few men.
Silas had been one of them.
“The Lamar acquisition is nearly complete,” Silas began. “I assume this is about Unit Seven.”
“It is.”
“I heard you stopped by.”
“Who ordered demolition?”
Silas’s smile did not move.
“Routine planning.”
“Before we owned the property?”
“Conditional scheduling.”
Knox leaned back.
“Try again.”
Silas exhaled.
“The Ward woman has become difficult.”
“She owns a building and refuses to sell.”
“She’s holding up a hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar development.”
“She’s allowed to.”
Silas stared at him.
“Since when do you become sentimental about holdouts?”
“Since my employees started threatening people without telling me.”
“Nobody threatened her.”
“Three men walked into her restaurant on opening morning.”
“To make an offer.”
“After she said no.”
Silas spread his hands.
“This is business.”
“No. Business stops when the owner says no.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed.
That small reaction told Knox more than the words did.
“You know her?” Silas asked.
“I knew her grandmother.”
There.
Too quick to notice for most men.
But Knox saw Silas’s fingers tighten against his knee.
“You knew Ruth Ward?” he asked.
Knox became very still.
He had not told him the grandmother’s name.
“No.”
Silas realized the error.
Knox’s voice lowered.
“I said I knew her grandmother.”
Silence.
Perry stood near the door.
Silas adjusted his cuff.
“You probably mentioned the name at some point.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then someone at the site—”
“Why do you know Ruth Ward?”
Silas looked toward Perry.
Then back to Knox.
“She’s on the title history.”
“She never owned Unit Seven.”
Another mistake.
A smaller one.
But enough.
Silas smiled.
“You’re right. I must be mixing up the paperwork.”
Knox closed the folder in front of him.
“Leave.”
“Knox—”
“Now.”
Silas stood.
At the door, he turned.
“The project can’t survive endless delays.”
Knox looked at him.
“Neither can people who lie to me.”
Silas left.
Perry waited three seconds.
“He knows.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“That’s the interesting part.”
By noon, Perry had a team reviewing every Lamar transaction made during the previous thirty-six months.
Knox went somewhere else.
Maize.
He arrived alone.
Perry hated when he did that.
Knox ignored him.
The lunch rush consisted of eleven people, which meant three customers were standing while they ate.
Mabel had converted a milk crate into a seat.
Jolene moved between kitchen and dining room with a speed that made exhaustion look graceful.
She saw Knox.
Her expression changed from surprise to suspicion.
“No security detail today?”
“They’re nearby.”
“So nearby means hidden?”
“Yes.”
“That’s creepy.”
“I’m told.”
She pointed at table one.
“Sit if you’re eating.”
He sat.
Mabel appeared instantly.
“Corn cake?”
“Yes.”
“Beans?”
“Yes.”
“Greens?”
“What do you recommend?”
“All of it.”
“Then all of it.”
She nodded professionally.
“Drink?”
“Coffee.”
“It’s bad.”
Jolene called from the counter, “Mabel!”
“What? You said we don’t lie to customers.”
Knox looked toward Jolene.
“Coffee.”
Jolene gave him a look that said he deserved what happened next.
The coffee was terrible.
The food was not.
By the second bite, Knox understood why Ruth’s notebook was framed.
These were her recipes.
But not exactly.
Jolene had changed them.
Smoked paprika in the beans.
More black pepper in the greens.
Honey reduced in the cornbread.
Ruth’s foundation.
Jolene’s hand.
“You changed the recipe,” Knox said when she passed.
She stopped.
“The cornbread?”
“Yes.”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“Because Grandma cooked for people in 1999. I cook for people now.”
He nodded.
“She would’ve complained.”
Jolene smiled despite herself.
“She did.”
Knox looked up.
“What?”
“I started changing recipes when I was sixteen.”
“She knew?”
“She told me if I ruined her cornbread, she’d haunt me.”
“That sounds like her.”
Jolene leaned against the empty chair.
For the first time, suspicion gave way to curiosity.
“How well did you know her?”
Knox looked toward Mabel, who was showing Mrs. Glenda how to operate the card reader.
“Enough.”
“That means you don’t want to answer.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because Ruth Ward had once hidden him in her pantry while two men looking for his father’s debt kicked her back door.
Because she had cleaned blood from his eyebrow.
Because she had given him his first legitimate job washing dishes.
Because the night his mother disappeared for good, Knox slept on flour sacks in Ruth’s storeroom and woke beneath a blanket he knew she could barely afford.
Because he had become rich enough to buy half of Memphis and still never managed to tell one dead woman thank you.
“I was a difficult kid,” he said.
Jolene laughed once.
“I’m shocked.”
“She fed me.”
“She fed everybody.”
“No.”
Knox looked directly at her.
“She fed everybody who could pay. She fed me when I couldn’t.”
Jolene’s expression softened.
Only slightly.
Then the kitchen alarm beeped.
She turned.
A second later, Mabel called, “Mommy!”
Jolene ran.
Knox stood.
Smoke rolled through the kitchen opening.
Not much.
But enough.
Jolene killed the stove and grabbed an extinguisher.
The smoke stopped.
“No fire,” she said.
Mabel clung to Mrs. Glenda.
Jolene opened the rear door.
Then froze.
“What?”
Knox joined her.
The smell hit first.
Gasoline.
A thin wet line ran beneath the back threshold.
Not enough to ignite yet.
Enough to make the threat obvious.
Someone had poured it along the alley wall.
Jolene went pale.
Knox crouched.
Fresh.
Very fresh.
He stood.
“Take Mabel outside.”
“No.”
“Jolene.”
“This is my restaurant.”
“And someone just poured gasoline behind it.”
Her eyes flashed.
“You think I don’t see that?”
“I think your daughter is standing twenty feet away.”
That landed.
Jolene looked at Mabel.
Then immediately moved.
“Mrs. Glenda, take her across the street.”
Mabel protested.
“Mommy—”
“Now, baby.”
Mrs. Glenda did not argue.
Knox called Perry.
“Maize. Back alley. Now.”
Jolene heard.
“You knew this would happen.”
Knox turned.
“No.”
“Your men come yesterday, today someone pours gasoline outside?”
“They weren’t my orders.”
“They were your company.”
“Yes.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
“It is when your name is on the building.”
Her words hit harder than she knew.
Knox had spent years insisting divisions existed between his legitimate businesses and the men who did uglier things around them.
Jolene did not care about legal distinctions.
If his name frightened people, then his name carried responsibility.
Perry arrived with two men.
Within minutes, cameras from neighboring shops were being checked.
The alley camera at Maize had been cut.
Of course.
A hardware store three doors down had footage.
At 12:37 p.m., a dark sedan entered the alley.
A man stepped out wearing a cap.
He poured gasoline along the wall.
His face never appeared clearly.
But the car did.
Perry zoomed the plate.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Perry showed Knox.
The vehicle belonged to a shell company.
Sheridan Urban Services.
One of Silas Crowe’s subsidiaries.
Jolene saw the screen.
Her face emptied.
Knox called Silas.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Perry said quietly, “His office says he left twenty minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“Nobody knows.”
Knox looked at the gasoline.
Then at the framed notebook visible through the rear doorway.
This was no longer about forcing a sale.
Silas knew Ruth Ward’s name.
He wanted Unit Seven badly enough to threaten a five-year-old’s mother.
There was history here.
Buried history.
And Silas was afraid Knox might uncover it.
That evening, Knox returned to his penthouse and opened a steel safe he had not touched in years.
Inside were photographs.
A gun.
His father’s watch.
And one paper bag containing everything he had kept from the years before he became Knox Sheridan.
He found the photograph near the bottom.
Ruth Ward stood behind her diner counter.
Beside her was thirteen-year-old Knox.
Thin.
Angry.
Alive mostly by accident.
And behind them stood another boy.
Older.
Smiling.
Jolene’s father.
Eddie Ward.
Knox stared at him.
A memory surfaced.
Eddie arguing with a man behind the diner.
A younger Silas Crowe.
Knox sat down hard.
He remembered something else.
The night Eddie Ward died in what police called a warehouse accident, Ruth had cried in the kitchen.
May you like
Knox had been fourteen.
And Silas Crowe had attended the funeral.
