Cole said even a little bit. Marcus said he's got money connections. He's got half the town council in his pocket one way or another. Got the particular attitude of a man who has always gotten what he wants by applying enough pressure to the right places. Cole was quiet.
Evidence. Marcus said at least she told me she does. She said she's been collecting it, but she hasn't done anything with it yet. I think she's waiting until she has enough that it can't be dismissed. How long can she wait?
Cole said long. Marcus said the mortgage is 3 months behind. If she loses customers for another 6 weeks, she'll have to make decisions about the property that she doesn't want to make. And Puit knows that. He's patient.
He doesn't need to force it when the pressure of circumstances will do the job for him. Cole put his hand flat on the workbench in front of him, but looked at Ray's motorcycle, the one Haley had fixed two nights ago. It was one that's running clean for the first time in months. Marcus, he said, the customers that were scared away. Irreversible.
A pause. What are you thinking? Marcus said, think about what she needs right now. Cole said a she doesn't need someone to fight her fight. She made that pretty clear.
Maybe what she needs is for the narrative about her to change in town. Because if Puit's been spreading rumors and it sounds like he has then part of what's kept customers away is that people have a story in their head about her that isn't true. What's the story he put out? Marcus said quietly. Oh yet, Cole said.
But I'm going to find out what he found out over the next two days through the particular intelligence network that exists in every small town but tends to flow more freely toward someone like Cole Harrison than toward most. Was this Garfield Puit was 61 years old. That he had grown up poor in Milh Haven, gotten rich through a combination of genuine business intelligence, and a complete indifference to the line between hard dealing and dishonest dealing, and had spent the last decade reconstructing himself publicly as a civic benefactor, the man who brought development, the man who created jobs, the man who modernized a town that was stuck in the past. He sat on two nonprofit boards. He had his name on the new wing of the public library.
He was by almost every public account a success story but account was different. Cole had learned three separate sources who each spoke to him individually and each insisted on not being identified. It had a consistent pattern in property acquisition approach he offered. He waited. If the answer remained no, began quiet at first then louder.
Rumors, interference with business relationships, and at least two previous cases, damage to property that was never officially attributed to him, but that had the unmistakable logic of someone making a point. Thomas Morgan had stood up to him twice, and then Thomas Morgan had gotten sick and his 24year-old daughter had stood up to him once, and the third time, Puit had apparently decided the conversation needed to be physical. Sat with all of this for one full evening. He sat with it the way he sat with hard mechanical problems not reacting just absorbing letting the full shape of it become clear before he decided what it required. It required he concluded was not a confrontation with confrontation was what Puit wanted.
Puit had been expecting it since Haley walked into the biker garage. Probably already building a narrative. The bikers threaten me. Bikers are harassing me. They're protecting one of their own.
Narrative Puit was very good at and it would hurt Haley more than it hurt him. What it required was something different. It required was for the truth to become visible. Showed up at Morgan's auto and cycle repair on a Saturday morning. Ahead, he came alone.
He drove his own truck or his motorcycle. This was deliberate because a man showing up in a truck is a man paying a visit. A man showing up on a Hell's Angel's motorcycle is a statement. And this was not the moment for a statement. He pulled in and parked.
He was inside. He could hear the radio through the walls. Something country, the kind with actual steel guitar. He knocked on the door frame of the open bay entrance. It was under the hood of a sedan.
She came up with a grease rag in her hand and looked at him with the same direct assessing look she'd given him the first night. Cole, she said surprised, not unwelcoming, just acknowledging to you, he said. She looked at him for a moment. Then she reached over and turned the radio down. I know what Puit has been doing, Cole said.
Everything but enough. Her expression didn't change. Something shifted in it. The very slight shift of someone who has been braced against a thing for a long time and has just felt the first indication that they might not be braced alone. Much do you know?
She said the property situation, our pressure campaign, the two previous properties. What happened 3 weeks ago? He paused. I don't know the specifics of 3 weeks ago, only that you had bruises and you called them something they weren't. Haley set the grease rag on the fender of the sedan at the floor for a moment.
Not in shame, in defeat. More like someone finding the floor useful to look at while they decide something. Then she looked up. They sent two men, she said. It was 10:30 at night.
I was locking up. They didn't say who sent them. They didn't need to. She paused. And the pause was the first crack in the composure.
A break. Just a half second of something raw showing through. They said, "If I loved my father, think about what stress does to a sick man and whether a sick man in a hospital needs to hear that his daughter is fighting a losing battle." Cole said nothing. He held very still.
"I told him to get off my property," Haley said. On the left, grabbed my arm. I pulled away. He grabbed harder. My hand caught the door frame when I got loose.