Cabal of The Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book #1 in the Templars in America Series) Read online

  “W-we came because you said you had important business to discuss with us,” Mr. Gendron responded.

  “Exactly.” McLovick’s face reddened. “Now I will not be asking you a third time.” Still standing, he shoved the document further across the table, grabbing Mr. Gendron by the wrist as he did so. “I’m paying you more than a fair price. Now sign the bloody deed.”

  Cam took a deep breath, stood and turned slowly toward the trio. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m a lawyer—can I be of any help here?” He smiled at the older couple, then turned to meet McLovick’s hostile stare while balancing on the balls of his feet with his arms loose by his side. He had been sucker-punched in an elevator once by an angry landlord in an eviction case. Fortunately an off-duty policeman witnessed the altercation and he was never charged for pummeling the man. But one sucker punch was enough.

  “We’re fine here. No need for your services,” McLovick snarled.

  Mrs. Gendron spoke after a short pause. She, too, stared at McLovick. “Actually, I do think it’s time we found ourselves a lawyer.”

  * * *

  An hour later Cam left the library, the Gendrons having left safely while McLovick stewed in his seat. Cam took the stone stairs two at a time, ignoring the pain in his knee still bruised and swollen from a rough sky-diving landing over the weekend. It would loosen up eventually, though not as quickly as it did when he was in his twenties. Or even his early thirties.

  He checked his watch. Still time to race over to Wilmington to watch the Bruins training camp practice for an hour before his softball game. He jogged left into the library driveway toward his Harley parked along a line of trees; one of the few good things about practicing law in the suburbs was he didn’t have to worry about some lowlife carting his bike away. As he dug in his jacket pocket for his keys, a thick man stepped into his path from behind a tree. McLovick.

  Averting his eyes, Cam changed his path to avoid the larger man. McLovick moved with him, his arms folded across his chest. Cam adjusted his course a second time, again mirrored by the Scotsman. Okay then. Stopping, Cam lowered his briefcase to the ground. “You want to dance, McLovick?” The man was half a head taller and perhaps 60 pounds heavier.

  “I grew up on the docks of Glasgow. It’s not dancing I have in mind.” McLovick unfolded his arms, freeing his fists. “Where I come from, a man minds his own business.”

  “Then I suggest you go home. Around here, we don’t bully our senior citizens.”

  McLovick took a step closer. Cam would rather not have been so close—in a fight, he would need to keep his distance and rely on speed. Plus McLovick smelled like he hadn’t showered in a few days. But he couldn’t back away. Titling his head back, he met the man’s glare.

  They were alone on the side of the building. If McLovick was going to throw a punch, he would do so now. Instead he leered and jerked his thumb toward the Harley. “Nice bike. Next time you might want to put some air in the tires.” The words hit Cam in an acrid fog of stale cigarettes and coffee. The bastard had slashed his tires.

  “Next time you do something stupid you might want to make sure there’s no security camera around.” He tilted his chin toward the device mounted on the side of the library. “I can see why a sharp guy like you left the docks.” He stepped around the bully. “Maybe you should have tried the dancing thing.”

  * * *

  Cam met with the Gendrons a couple of days later at the Senior Center in Westford, where he provided free legal advice a few days every month.

  “Let’s start at the beginning, Mr. Gendron. Do want to sell your house?” He was supposed to meet his mountain-biking buddies in a half-hour. They wouldn’t wait, not with the September daylight fading. He settled back in his chair—he’d catch them on the trail if necessary.

  Marvin Gendron looked to his wife before answering. “No, no. We’ve lived in that house since I returned from duty in Vietnam, in 1968. Paid $7,000 for it. A lot of money back then. We have no desire to sell it.”

  Cam set his pen down; it rolled toward the edge of the laminated banquet table. They were seated in metal folding chairs in a small room of what had originally been a Colonial-style school. “Obviously, Mr. McLovick believes otherwise.” He hadn’t told them about the encounter outside the library. No reason to alarm them further.

  Emily fumbled in a canvas tote bag, pulled out a single sheet of paper and pushed it across the table, her hands marked by dirt caked under her fingernails and calluses on her palms. Probably a gardener. “Why don’t we let Mr. Thorne look at the paper. It might help explain things.”

  As Cam perused the document, he pulled on the whiskers of his goatee. The beard was new to his face; he often found himself plucking hairs, some of them tinting toward gray, from his chin. The document was the standard Massachusetts form for making an offer to purchase real estate. In the past year, since Cam had relocated from Boston and joined his uncle’s suburban law firm in the Nashoba Valley a half-hour northwest of Boston, he had seen scores just like it. He skipped to the bottom of the page. The offer was signed by McLovick. “You didn’t sign this, did you?”

  “No.” Emily reached back into her canvas bag, pulled out three more sheets of paper and slid them to Cam.

  He scanned them as well. They were identical to the first except for the purchase price. The original offer was for $325,000. By the fourth offer, the price had climbed to $410,000. “You have gold buried in your backyard?” The real estate market, after years of steady increases, had slumped. These increasing offers made no sense, unless the first offer had been a low-ball. “What do you think your house is worth?”

  Emily turned to Marvin. “The tax assessment is for $286,500,” he said. “Another house in our neighborhood, a Cape like ours, just sold for $315,000.”

  Odd. “How much land do you have? Is it possible that this McLovick guy is a developer and he thinks he can subdivide your lot?”

  Marvin shifted in his seat and played with his wedding ring. “I don’t see how. We only have a quarter acre. The house is in the front of the lot, Emily’s garden is in the back, a driveway is on the side.”

  Cam nodded and asked the obvious question. “Don’t take this wrong but if he’s offering you $100,000 more than the house is worth, why don’t you take it?”

  “Mr. Thorne,” Emily said in a low voice, “as my husband stated, we do not wish to move. We have lived our whole lives in Westford. Our friends are here. Our church is here. Marvin comes here to the senior center for card games. I have my garden. When we die, the house will go to our church.” Marvin nodded.

  “Okay then. But I thought McLovick said something about a signed agreement.”

  “He somehow forged Marvin’s signature. A young lady came to the door a week or so ago collecting signatures for a senior citizen property tax refund. Marvin signed that—perhaps he was tricked.”

  “You’re certain there’s nothing else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, he could always file a lawsuit against you and try to force you to sell. If he does, we’ll fight it, of course. But until then, just don’t sign any documents without showing them to me first.” He smiled as he clicked his pen closed. “Even petitions.” More than a legal problem, this was a mystery—why was McLovick willing to pay $100,000 more than the house was worth? And then get so angry that he resorted to fisticuffs when Cam interfered?

  Cam continued. “But you do have some legal options. You could file an assault case against him for grabbing Mr. Gendron’s wrist. Or we could get a restraining order against him.”

  Marvin sat tall in his chair. “He frightened my wife, Mr. Thorne, and Emily does not frighten easily. We do not want this McLovick fellow near us or our property again.”

  “All right. Meet me back here tomorrow morning at 11:00. By late afternoon you should have your restraining order.”

  * * *

  [Thursday]

  Cam obtained the temporary restraining order for Mr. and Mrs. Ge
ndron the morning after their first meeting. The order prohibited McLovick from contacting the older couple and from going within 100 feet of their property. But due process demanded that McLovick be given his day in court as well. Today, a week later, he would have the chance to give his side of the story and try to convince the judge to vacate the order.

  What was McLovick’s angle? When people tossed around $100,000 like a Frisbee, there was usually a good reason. Cam himself was a case in point—he took a $120,000 pay cut to come work for his uncle. Not that he had much choice. He had been working for one of those mega-firms in Boston where everyone drove a Lexus; the firm was defending the local archdiocese in a batch of priest sexual abuse cases and Cam was assigned to the case. Part of the defense strategy developed by the lead attorney involved intimidating abuse victims with embarrassing information culled from their medical records. One afternoon he watched a grown man sob during a particularly ugly deposition session. On the verge of making partner at age 36, Cam had reached one of those fork-in-the-road moments. That night he made a phone call and leaked details of the sordid defense strategy to the press.

  A week later he got caught.

  Lawyers are nothing if not self-important and in the legal world few sins are considered more grave than disloyalty to a client. Instead of a piece of the partnership pie, he ended up with a temporary suspension of his law license and an exile to the suburbs.

  That was the story behind Cam’s six-figure folly. What was McLovick’s?

  Cam met Mr. and Mrs. Gendron a few minutes before 10:00 at the Lowell Superior Court. The commanding stone structure harkened to Lowell’s glory days. Few people knew that Lowell, not Boston, had been Massachusetts’ leading city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a world leader in textile manufacturing. Today it was a struggling mill city trying to reinvent itself through high tech industry and a revitalized downtown.

  They climbed the long marble staircase to the second floor, the treads grayed and worn from decades of use. Cam was not surprised to see McLovick standing next to the courtroom door—the injunction itself was not a hardship for him but he would want it removed to protect his reputation. Cam approached. McLovick wore the same tattered blue blazer and a poorly-knotted solid red tie. Cam reached out his hand to shake, curious to see how McLovick would react.

  “I have a cold,” he said tightly. “Wouldn’t want you to get sick.” He leered. “Or anything.”

  “Or anything,” Cam repeated, dropping his hand to his side and taking a large step back. “Are you represented by an attorney?”

  McLovick, his small eyes darting and shifting beneath swelled lids, exhaled another acrid gust of stale coffee and cigarettes. Cam edged away further. “No, I don’t have a lawyer.” He thrust his chin forward. “I haven’t done anything wrong so I don’t need one, right?”

  Ten minutes later they stepped in front of the judge, a middle-aged woman with a thin face and short, graying hair. She disposed of some formalities and offered McLovick the opportunity to explain his side of the case. “Your Honor, I honestly don’t know why we are here today. All I did was offer to buy their house. In fact, I offered substantially more than it is worth.” He smiled, spread his hands. “If that’s a crime, I wish someone would victimize me.”

  The judge nodded and turned to Cam, who stood. “My clients are elderly, Your Honor. And they have absolutely no desire to sell their home, to Mr. McLovick or anybody else. As you can see by their affidavits, they are frightened by Mr. McLovick. He forged Mr. Gendron’s signature. He has been acting in a menacing manner. And they are concerned he will not take no for an answer. I personally witnessed him grab Mr. Gendron by the wrist. And he vandalized my motorcycle—I have security camera video to prove it.”

  “You may serve as either witness or counsel, Mr. Thorne,” the judge admonished. “Not both. Which is it?”

  “Counsel, your Honor.” Of course his testimony about the wrist grab and tire slashing would not be admissible. But he wanted the judge to hear it anyway.

  The judge studied Mr. and Mrs. Gendron, then eyed McLovick. “I must say, this seems like flimsy grounds for a restraining order. But I do wonder why you persist in this, Mr. McLovick. What is it about this property that makes it so important to you?”

  He offered a wet smile. “To be honest, Your Honor, it reminds me a bit of my own childhood home.” He shook his head sadly, his play for youthful innocence undermined by his menacing bulk. “I spent many happy years there.” He raised his chin. “And as much as I’d like to purchase it, I must reiterate that I did not threaten these people.”

  She peered down. “You can’t give me more information about your interest in the property? Beyond its sentimental attraction, that is?”

  “I am afraid not, Your Honor.”

  “Well, then, I am afraid the order stands.”

  McLovick leaned forward, his face flushed. “But, Your Honor--”

  She banged her gavel. “Next case.”

  * * *

  Cam returned to the office, a nondescript cluster of white-walled rooms in a strip mall on the town’s commercial highway. At his old law firm, the other tenants in the office tower included Fortune 500 companies and Fidelity Investments. Here, he shared an entryway with a bakery, a weight loss center and a dentist. Perhaps the latter two subsidized the bakery’s rent.

  He shook his head—adjacent to a bakery was a hell of a place for a diabetic to find himself, especially one who loved pastries and who didn’t always abide by his doctor’s orders. He had always believed what he read when first diagnosed at age 10—that the odds were pretty good he would be dead by 35, that his age would never exceed his waist size. So what difference would a candy bar or a beer make? Now he was 37, his waist measured 33 and the odds had swung in his favor due to recent medical breakthroughs. For the first time in his life he started thinking about unthinkable things. Like his future.

  After thumbing through a small stack of messages he typed the name Alistair McLovick in a Google search. He scrolled through a series of random matches, then his fingers froze—McLovick was a treasure hunter. Perhaps Westford wasn’t such a sleepy suburb after all.

  He picked up the phone and called his cousin, Brandon, Peter’s son. Peter—never Pete—had always hoped Brandon would go to law school and take over the practice. And Brandon had the brains for it; he was a straight A student. But he loved working with his hands. He had no interest, as he bluntly put it, in sitting in an office arguing on the phone all day. Which was essentially what his father did—Peter was one of those people who liked to argue, who gave life to that old joke about putting two lawyers in the room and getting three opinions. Brandon had worked on a landscaping crew after high school, then saved a few bucks and bought his own truck. Taking advantage of the seasonal nature of the work, he went back to school and got a degree in landscape architecture. He now had a crew of six guys and more than enough work designing and building stone walls and patios and ‘outdoor entertainment centers’ in increasingly-affluent Westford.

  “Hey, I want to bounce something off you. You free for lunch?”

  “You pick up sandwiches,” Brandon said. “I’ll get some gas for the boat. Be on your dock in a half hour. And bring your ski.”

  Because Cam was seven years older than Brandon, the cousins had never been close growing up. But in the past year the two had become almost inseparable. Partly that was because most of his friends and peers were already on their second or third kid. Some were even on their second or third wives. He didn’t even have a girlfriend. At least not one he ever saw—Heidi was fun and attractive and passionate; she also happened to be a professional ski racer, which meant she made it back to Boston about as often as he found himself in the Swiss Alps. Great company for a yearly back-country ski trip. Not so great for a weekly dinner and movie.

  But he did take some small steps into grown-up land when he moved to Westford. He bought a house. And also got a dog. Hardly a 401(k) or a set of matching ch
ina but still a significant psychological step. Friends had advised against Golden Retrievers because they had health problems that shortened their life expectancy. That sealed the deal. Pegasus, a purebred, cost him almost as much as the house, a true mutt. A rundown summer cottage with a leaky roof and no heating system, the property had been vacant for years. But it was lakefront, just a few houses up from Brandon’s, and Brandon promised to help him fix it up. At the time he had three months to kill while he served his bar suspension. Of course, 15 months later the house was still only half-finished. But at least Pegasus had chased away the squirrels nesting in it.

  Thirty minutes later, Pegasus at his side, he stood on his dock in his swim trunks. Same size he wore in college. And same kid-like anticipation at the prospect of hitting the water. If he lived to be as old as the Gendrons, he expected to still be skiing.

  Brandon nosed in with his Ski Nautique. Cam tossed his slalom ski and ski vest into the boat and hopped in as Brandon reversed the engine and pulled out. Pegasus leapt in behind him. Brandon rubbed Pegasus’ head. “Glad you called, the lake is like glass.” Physically, it was hard to believe the cousins came from the same stock—Cam was lithe and wiry like a baseball middle infielder, while Brandon was tall and broad and muscular like a linebacker. But they both had an easy smile and a thick mane of wavy brown hair. Cam had lived in town for over a year and never heard anyone say a bad word about his cousin.

  “What about a spotter?” Cam asked. State law required one; usually Brandon brought one of his workers along.

  Brandon scanned the lake. No other boats. “Don’t be such a lawyer.” He smiled. “Besides, isn’t that why you brought Pegasus? You’re up first.”

  Cam removed his insulin pump and put on a ski vest. Sitting on the stern, he slathered some baby oil on his right foot and tugged the tight-fitting slalom ski boot on. He grabbed the ski line with one hand and pushed himself off the back of the boat with the other, gasping as he hit the water. The air was warm but the cold September nights had chilled the water. Brandon gently throttled forward, tightening the ski rope. “You say when,” he yelled back.