Book Description
Where there's smoke. . .
Sydney Teague makes her living by using her head, not her heart. But when it came to Seth Bolick, she couldn't help herself. He was a man obsessed, plunging his life and soul into one remarkable invention: a safe synthetic-nicotine substitute. When she agreed to take him on as a client of her small Charlotte, North Carolina, ad agency, Sydney could not imagine the work she would end up doing for Seth: It's her job to find his killer.
The police call it a suicide, and so does Seth's family. Sydney knows they're wrong. When she starts investigating Seth's last days and the forces that were gathering against him, she exposes a pattern of lies and murderous violence amid the tobacco-rich fields of North Carolina. Now Sydney Teague is not just another hard-driving businesswoman who doesn't know when to quit: She's the next, best candidate for murder. . . .
Sydney Teague makes her living by using her head, not her heart. But when it came to Seth Bolick, she couldn't help herself. He was a man obsessed, plunging his life and soul into one remarkable invention: a safe synthetic-nicotine substitute. When she agreed to take him on as a client of her small Charlotte, North Carolina, ad agency, Sydney could not imagine the work she would end up doing for Seth: It's her job to find his killer.
The police call it a suicide, and so does Seth's family. Sydney knows they're wrong. When she starts investigating Seth's last days and the forces that were gathering against him, she exposes a pattern of lies and murderous violence amid the tobacco-rich fields of North Carolina. Now Sydney Teague is not just another hard-driving businesswoman who doesn't know when to quit: She's the next, best candidate for murder. . . .
From the Publisher
Sydney thinks she knows the dangers of tobacco, until she takes on the most dangerous client of all. . . .
"Grant paints us a picture of the urban New South with dead-on accuracy, and wit as sharp as a razor."
--Dianne Day, author of The Bohemian Murders
"Anne Grant has a wry wit and a wise grasp of human nature. Her Sydney Teague is a no-nonsense, I'm-not-battin'-my-eyelashes-for-anyone New South woman."
--Teri Holbrook, author of The Grass Widow
About the Author
Anne Underwood Grant is the author of Multiple Listing, the debut novel in the Sydney Teague mystery series. She owned a small advertising agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, for ten years before moving to a cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina, where she writes full-time. Anne Grant's email address is annieug@sprynet.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Over ten years in advertising have made a cynic out of me. I can predict with frightening regularity exactly what prospective clients will tell me about their products. They all tell me they put their customers first, of course. Nobody believes that line anymore, but companies insist on it anyway. Companies all say the same things, so the challenge for me is to say it differently, somehow uniquely.
"Mr. Bolick should be here shortly," the young assistant said. "He's quite busy," she added as she readjusted the pierced hoop hanging from her ear.
Seth Bolick was thirty minutes late for our nine o'clock meeting. If he had been a typical client and his product like most of the others I build campaigns for, I would have left by twenty after. That I was sitting here too excited about Bolick's account to leave said a whole lot about Bolick the man and the product he insisted on calling Snake.
On November 3, Seth had walked into Allen Teague unannounced. Allen Teague is my ad agency. Allen for my birth family and Teague for the long-gone father of my two children. Two weeks earlier I'd never even heard of Seth Bolick, although Bill's law firm was handling Snake's patent work. Bill's my brother, and his purely corporate law firm is Todd, Rains, Allen, Dresser and Ellsworth, PC. I call them the TRADE group, although the only thing this collection of hidebound southern WASPs trade for is buckets of money. Even when my secretary, Sally, suggested he make an appointment through her, Seth Bolick insisted on sitting in the reception room until he could speak with me in person. Sally told me later how, in the two hours he sat with her, he could have charmed the wings off an angel. Of course, my Sally's no angel, and any man who says hello in just the right way has her in his pocket for at least a day.
I'm not so easy though. In fact, my first reaction to most prospects is disbelief. I find it useful. If I can be sold on a product, I figure I can sell others. But Seth Bolick got to me too. On a much deeper level than where he touched Sally. He touched feelings in me I thought I'd dealt with and overcome decades ago. I respected his keen intellect, his inventor's scientific imagination; mostly, though, I envied his dogged determination to right what he saw as a great wrong. And, yes, I guess he was charming on top of everything else.
The assistant shifted uncomfortably on the small red swivel chair. She tugged at her short skirt with both hands, her heels spiking themselves into the hardwood floor to keep the chair from shooting out from under her. The concentrated determination she brought to this task showed in her wrinkled forehead, reminding me of Chris Evert during her heyday. I couldn't help chuckling.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Did I say something?"
"You'd think Seth would give you a real chair," I said, pointing toward her seat.
She smiled. "Arms would help." She looked more closely at me. "You called Mr. Bolick Seth. Is he a friend of yours or is this a business appointment?"
"Both. With Seth, I think business is personal and vice versa."
Her expression revealed a confusion I wouldn't have expected in someone who worked with Seth Bolick.
"You're bound to know that," I continued. "You work with him."
She held on to the edge of her metal desk and pulled her chair forward. Once she felt secured between the flanking drawers, she held up both hands, palms up, fingers splayed outwards.
"This all's new," she said. "Last week, I think. They were delivering furniture during my interview. Today's my first day." She looked at me and smiled again, an eager-working-girl, mid-twenties smile. "I just met Mr. Bolick at my interview."
I was curious. "Do you even know what his business is?"
She blushed slightly, cocked her head, then shook it. "Should I? He told me his work was somewhere else, that this office space was for investors and for marketing." She seemed embarrassed, uncomfortable. "Are you an investor?"
"I'm the other. Marketing." I smiled, hoping to undo the tension I'd obviously built with my last question. "Any other employees here?"
"Mr. Little came in at eight thirty for about five minutes, then left. I believe he's a financial officer. But no one was here at eight, when I got here, and I haven't heard from Mr. Bolick." She reached inside the desk drawer and pulled out a key. "Good thing he gave me this."
The phone startled us both. She looked at her watch and said, "I'll bet that's Mr. Bolick."
I glanced at my own watch as she took the call. Nine forty-five. No matter how excited I was about Snake, I needed to be doing something more productive than sitting in Seth Bolick's recently created reception room.
"Did you say your name is Sydney Teague?" She held the phone away from her ear and motioned for me to come over and take it.
I didn't recognize the voice on the phone. I'd expected Seth, so the clipped tones of a woman I didn't know jarred me for a second.
"Yes, of course I know Sally Ball," I said. "She works for me. Who is this?"
The woman didn't identify herself. Instead she told me Sally was in the emergency room of Wade Community Hospital in Bredon and that my name was the emergency contact found in her wallet.
"Your office gave us this number," she added.
"Are you calling from the hospital?" I asked in disbelief.
"Wade Community Hospital," she repeated.
"What happened? What's wrong with Sally?"
"All I know is she was in a wreck on Highway 29." I could hear a lot of noise in the background. "They just brought her in and had us go through her things to find a contact."
"Wait a minute," I screamed. "Does this mean she can't talk? I want to speak to Sally."
The woman didn't answer. I gripped the phone so tightly I watched my fingers drain of blood.
"Is she conscious? Please answer me."
In the same clipped, noncommittal, reserved voice, she said, "I'm not at liberty to tell you anything, only to request that you come to the emergency room."
I must have dropped that phone. The next thing I remember, I was in the elevator in the middle of the long, slow descent to the bottom of the NationsBank building.
Bredon is twenty-five miles north of Charlotte. My old black Trooper and I were bumper-to-bumper on I-85 before I realized I had no idea where the hospital was.
Her wreck was my fault, dammit. I'd asked Sally to drive up to Wade County before going to work and pick up the video equipment I'd left at Seth Bolick's farm yesterday. I should have driven back there myself. Or called Seth and had him bring it all to town today for our meeting.
My mind flipped back to the sterile reception room I'd just left. How in hell could he have stood me up for such an important meeting? A meeting he called "the official launch of the most important product since the polio vaccine."
"We're not launching it tomorrow," I'd said to him as I was getting ready to leave his farm. "We're beginning a process that's going to take months. Besides, I don't think Salk would have appreciated such a comparison."
But you couldn't have convinced Seth Bolick of that. His new product was his obsession, his life. His enthusiasm was so contagious I had rearranged my schedule and subbed out some small campaigns to create the chunk of time Snake would require.
If I'd been honest with myself and Seth, I would have told him Allen Teague was too small, too geographically off-center to handle the introduction of such a major product. But I hadn't been honest. I'd been selfish and eager and flattered and caught up in Seth Bolick and his cause.
And because of my dishonesty, Sally was probably near death in a Podunk little hospital in the middle of a county known only for its turkeys, its hogs, and its historic tobacco allotments. My speedometer hit eighty-five before I saw the green hospital sign directing me off the interstate.
Wade Community Hospital is all one story, laid out in the shape of a capital E, with its emergency entrance at the end of the top horizontal wing. The winding road leading to this entrance is flanked by waves of Bradford pears, which at this time of year were a deep, mottled crimson. Surprisingly, these leaves hadn't fallen yet.
I screeched to a stop in the almost empty lot, taking the first visitor's space next to an idle EMS van. I steeled myself for what I might possibly find inside. Why hadn't that woman had the decency to tell me what shape I'd find Sally in? It certainly couldn't have been worse than what I'd imagined during the drive up here.
Two sets of automatic double doors swung open ahead of me. The second one emptied me into a room so garishly lighted by fluorescence that I squinted in reflex. On my left, rows of orange plastic chairs were connected to each other by a...
"Mr. Bolick should be here shortly," the young assistant said. "He's quite busy," she added as she readjusted the pierced hoop hanging from her ear.
Seth Bolick was thirty minutes late for our nine o'clock meeting. If he had been a typical client and his product like most of the others I build campaigns for, I would have left by twenty after. That I was sitting here too excited about Bolick's account to leave said a whole lot about Bolick the man and the product he insisted on calling Snake.
On November 3, Seth had walked into Allen Teague unannounced. Allen Teague is my ad agency. Allen for my birth family and Teague for the long-gone father of my two children. Two weeks earlier I'd never even heard of Seth Bolick, although Bill's law firm was handling Snake's patent work. Bill's my brother, and his purely corporate law firm is Todd, Rains, Allen, Dresser and Ellsworth, PC. I call them the TRADE group, although the only thing this collection of hidebound southern WASPs trade for is buckets of money. Even when my secretary, Sally, suggested he make an appointment through her, Seth Bolick insisted on sitting in the reception room until he could speak with me in person. Sally told me later how, in the two hours he sat with her, he could have charmed the wings off an angel. Of course, my Sally's no angel, and any man who says hello in just the right way has her in his pocket for at least a day.
I'm not so easy though. In fact, my first reaction to most prospects is disbelief. I find it useful. If I can be sold on a product, I figure I can sell others. But Seth Bolick got to me too. On a much deeper level than where he touched Sally. He touched feelings in me I thought I'd dealt with and overcome decades ago. I respected his keen intellect, his inventor's scientific imagination; mostly, though, I envied his dogged determination to right what he saw as a great wrong. And, yes, I guess he was charming on top of everything else.
The assistant shifted uncomfortably on the small red swivel chair. She tugged at her short skirt with both hands, her heels spiking themselves into the hardwood floor to keep the chair from shooting out from under her. The concentrated determination she brought to this task showed in her wrinkled forehead, reminding me of Chris Evert during her heyday. I couldn't help chuckling.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Did I say something?"
"You'd think Seth would give you a real chair," I said, pointing toward her seat.
She smiled. "Arms would help." She looked more closely at me. "You called Mr. Bolick Seth. Is he a friend of yours or is this a business appointment?"
"Both. With Seth, I think business is personal and vice versa."
Her expression revealed a confusion I wouldn't have expected in someone who worked with Seth Bolick.
"You're bound to know that," I continued. "You work with him."
She held on to the edge of her metal desk and pulled her chair forward. Once she felt secured between the flanking drawers, she held up both hands, palms up, fingers splayed outwards.
"This all's new," she said. "Last week, I think. They were delivering furniture during my interview. Today's my first day." She looked at me and smiled again, an eager-working-girl, mid-twenties smile. "I just met Mr. Bolick at my interview."
I was curious. "Do you even know what his business is?"
She blushed slightly, cocked her head, then shook it. "Should I? He told me his work was somewhere else, that this office space was for investors and for marketing." She seemed embarrassed, uncomfortable. "Are you an investor?"
"I'm the other. Marketing." I smiled, hoping to undo the tension I'd obviously built with my last question. "Any other employees here?"
"Mr. Little came in at eight thirty for about five minutes, then left. I believe he's a financial officer. But no one was here at eight, when I got here, and I haven't heard from Mr. Bolick." She reached inside the desk drawer and pulled out a key. "Good thing he gave me this."
The phone startled us both. She looked at her watch and said, "I'll bet that's Mr. Bolick."
I glanced at my own watch as she took the call. Nine forty-five. No matter how excited I was about Snake, I needed to be doing something more productive than sitting in Seth Bolick's recently created reception room.
"Did you say your name is Sydney Teague?" She held the phone away from her ear and motioned for me to come over and take it.
I didn't recognize the voice on the phone. I'd expected Seth, so the clipped tones of a woman I didn't know jarred me for a second.
"Yes, of course I know Sally Ball," I said. "She works for me. Who is this?"
The woman didn't identify herself. Instead she told me Sally was in the emergency room of Wade Community Hospital in Bredon and that my name was the emergency contact found in her wallet.
"Your office gave us this number," she added.
"Are you calling from the hospital?" I asked in disbelief.
"Wade Community Hospital," she repeated.
"What happened? What's wrong with Sally?"
"All I know is she was in a wreck on Highway 29." I could hear a lot of noise in the background. "They just brought her in and had us go through her things to find a contact."
"Wait a minute," I screamed. "Does this mean she can't talk? I want to speak to Sally."
The woman didn't answer. I gripped the phone so tightly I watched my fingers drain of blood.
"Is she conscious? Please answer me."
In the same clipped, noncommittal, reserved voice, she said, "I'm not at liberty to tell you anything, only to request that you come to the emergency room."
I must have dropped that phone. The next thing I remember, I was in the elevator in the middle of the long, slow descent to the bottom of the NationsBank building.
Bredon is twenty-five miles north of Charlotte. My old black Trooper and I were bumper-to-bumper on I-85 before I realized I had no idea where the hospital was.
Her wreck was my fault, dammit. I'd asked Sally to drive up to Wade County before going to work and pick up the video equipment I'd left at Seth Bolick's farm yesterday. I should have driven back there myself. Or called Seth and had him bring it all to town today for our meeting.
My mind flipped back to the sterile reception room I'd just left. How in hell could he have stood me up for such an important meeting? A meeting he called "the official launch of the most important product since the polio vaccine."
"We're not launching it tomorrow," I'd said to him as I was getting ready to leave his farm. "We're beginning a process that's going to take months. Besides, I don't think Salk would have appreciated such a comparison."
But you couldn't have convinced Seth Bolick of that. His new product was his obsession, his life. His enthusiasm was so contagious I had rearranged my schedule and subbed out some small campaigns to create the chunk of time Snake would require.
If I'd been honest with myself and Seth, I would have told him Allen Teague was too small, too geographically off-center to handle the introduction of such a major product. But I hadn't been honest. I'd been selfish and eager and flattered and caught up in Seth Bolick and his cause.
And because of my dishonesty, Sally was probably near death in a Podunk little hospital in the middle of a county known only for its turkeys, its hogs, and its historic tobacco allotments. My speedometer hit eighty-five before I saw the green hospital sign directing me off the interstate.
Wade Community Hospital is all one story, laid out in the shape of a capital E, with its emergency entrance at the end of the top horizontal wing. The winding road leading to this entrance is flanked by waves of Bradford pears, which at this time of year were a deep, mottled crimson. Surprisingly, these leaves hadn't fallen yet.
I screeched to a stop in the almost empty lot, taking the first visitor's space next to an idle EMS van. I steeled myself for what I might possibly find inside. Why hadn't that woman had the decency to tell me what shape I'd find Sally in? It certainly couldn't have been worse than what I'd imagined during the drive up here.
Two sets of automatic double doors swung open ahead of me. The second one emptied me into a room so garishly lighted by fluorescence that I squinted in reflex. On my left, rows of orange plastic chairs were connected to each other by a...
