Getting up from the desk, she walked to the window and looked up toward the draw in the soft light of early morning. A lone red-tailed hawk soared high over the mesquite and cedar. If Langston Lockwood had unfinished business over Baxter's Draw, it was theirs to settle now, but how they were going to set about doing that, Kate had no idea.
THE END
Part II
Book 2 - Baxter’s Draw
24
Kate Lockwood held her coffee mug in both hands to warm her fingers against the autumn chill. It was getting too cold to stand out on the porch every morning, but she liked to watch the whitetails amble through the pasture toward the deer feeders. Today they were accompanied by a procession of Rio Grande turkey.
With a practiced eye, Kate made out three gobblers with beards that might well go trophy length, but for the first time in recorded memory, there were no hunters on the Rocking L. By popular agreement, Kate and her sisters, Jenny and Mandy, broke the old hunting leases to the considerable ire of the corporate clients their father had milked for exorbitant fees for decades.
The girls all loved the animals far more than the money, which they didn’t need, and none of them wanted to hear gunfire on this land again any time soon.
Just three months ago an unidentified sniper killed the family attorney, John Fisk, as he sat in one of the living room chairs. At the time, Fisk was trying to explain why he hadn’t stopped their father, Langston Lockwood, from killing himself in the barn earlier in the summer with a vintage Colt .45.
Mulling over those events on this cold October morning, Kate shook her head. She’d lived through it all and it still sounded ridiculous. The killing of John Fisk was an open case. After scouring the bluffs more than a mile across from the house, local law enforcement, DPS, and the Texas Rangers hadn’t come up with so much as a shell casing.
The expert marksman who put that bullet in John Fisk’s heart was a professional gun for hire. He disappeared without a trace. All three girls went to the funeral and genuinely grieved for Fisk’s aged parents. Although their own father and George Fisk had been boyhood friends, the prominent local attorney suffered for years at Langston’s hand, the victim of a longstanding vendetta over a girl who died one icy December night.
Langston took the blame for the accident, allowing George to go on to law school and to cultivate the beginnings of a promising political career, but the secret and the bitterness was too much for their father. Ultimately, he sought his revenge, taking one woman, their mother, away from George and then having an affair with the current Mrs. Fisk, Pauline.
At John’s funeral, Pauline’s aged green eyes met Kate’s and some understanding seemed to pass between them. Whatever animosity the Fisk family held for Langston Lockwood, it was not being visited upon his daughters — at least not by the surviving parents. In the days that followed the service, the elder Fisk shuttered his law practice. Now he spent his time puttering in his woodworking shop and “doing some writing.”
The town buzzed with suppositions and wild theories for weeks, but then other gossip took center stage. Mandy, the youngest of the Lockwood girls, became increasingly involved with Joe Mason, the town’s mayor. She didn’t know it, but he planned to propose at Christmas time. He begged Kate and Jenny to go with him to pick out a ring, and they both privately agreed their sister would be hard pressed to find a man who would ever love her more.
Jenny’s long-distance graphics business was thriving. The terms of Langston’s will forced his daughters to live on the ranch. Mandy gave up her life in Houston. Jenny walked away from the clientele she built in New York, but to her surprise and pleasure, working remotely from the ranch over an insanely expensive Internet connection, she now had more contracts than she could handle.
She also had the helpful eye and willing ear of neighboring landowner and professional photographer Josh Baxter. They were taking their relationship slower than Joe and Mandy, although Kate had noticed Josh slipping out the door of Jenny’s studio at dawn on more than one occasion of late.
“Why are you making him do that?” she demanded of her sister.
“I’m not making him do anything,” Jenny said. “I told him he’s being an idiot, but he’s afraid of you.”
“Me?” Kate exclaimed. “When did I get to be the mother superior of this outfit?”
Jenny smiled, “Well, as the oldest sister, you are, technically speaking, the head of the family. He’s actually kind of old-fashioned. He thinks he should, well, ‘ask for permission to come calling.’”
“Is that what it’s called now?” Kate asked drily.
“I told you he’s kind of old-fashioned.”
“Then for God’s sake tell him to get to asking before he freezes to death out there some morning,” Kate snapped, but privately her opinion of Josh, which was already good, got even better. She liked people who did things the old-fashioned way.
As for her own life, she was settled in the main ranch house busying herself with future plans for the Rocking L. Like most ranchers, they continued to raise sheep and goats and ran a few head of cattle because . . . well, they were Texas ranchers. But it was clear from Langston’s own accounting that the hunting contracts, including those on the few head of exotics, mainly axis deer and blackbuck, he’d established on the land were far more profitable.
To the girls’ considerable surprise, however, it was neither the ranch nor the hunting that formed the foundation of their father’s multi-million dollar estate, but shrewd investments he personally supervised. A tyrannical and dictatorial man, he left behind a slate of accountants and brokers who still cowered at the mention of his name. Kate had no interest in finance, but surprisingly her baby sister, Mandy, did and was tackling that aspect of the family business with enthusiasm.
They were all settling into their new lives on the ranch, but the unanswered questions from the events of the summer would not go away, principally why John Fisk died with a map of the Rocking L in the breast pocket of his jacket on which Baxter’s Draw was circled. Milton Lockwood, Langston’s father, won that land from Daniel Baxter, Josh’s grandfather, in a poker game. As Kate described it to the sheriff the night Fisk was killed, “there’s nothing up there but scrub brush and rocks.”
Now she had half a dozen independent geological reports on her desk confirming that fact. No significant minerals. No oil. No natural gas. They couldn’t even drill and hit water up there. Why was John Fisk interested in Baxter’s Draw and what really happened between him and their father that afternoon in the barn?
Even after discovering a half-finished letter from their father to the three of them revealing his recent diagnosis with Lou Gehrig’s disease, his suicide made no sense to Kate. Langston Lockwood was many things, but he was not a coward. According to his doctor, he would have had years of reasonably good health given the slow progression of the disease in his case. Nothing about the suicide scenario added up.
Across the expanse of yard Kate saw Jenny take the three steps from the converted shipping container she called home to the second unit she used as her studio.When the lights came on, Kate could see the interior of the work space. Through the picture windows that covered the front of the structure Jenny noticed Kate on the porch and motioned for her to come over, miming the action of pouring more coffee.
Pushing off the porch post with her shoulder, Kate walked the short distance across the yard and stepped into the inviting warmth of the studio. “Morning,” Jenny said. “Just put your cup on the Keurig machine and hit the blue flashing button.”
“Morning,” Kate said, doing as she was directed. “I still don’t think you can call this making coffee,” she added, watching a dark stream of liquid pour into her mug.
“Which apparently doesn’t stop you from drinking it,” Jenny shot back, shoving sketchbooks aside and making room for her sister on one end of the couch.
“Where’s Josh?” Kate asked.
“He didn’t stay last night,” Jenny said. “Early pho
to hunt with some clients this morning.”
“We need to talk with him some more about letting him take people on that stretch of our land by the river,” Kate said, sitting down. “That’s pretty country down in there, and full of wildlife.”
“Daddy would do grave spins,” Jenny laughed.
“Wait until I get the water catchment system built and put in the greenhouses and raised beds this spring,” Kate said.
“Can’t you just hear him?” Jenny said. “‘Goddamn Sister, we’re not farmers.’”
“Only man I ever knew who could make ‘farmer’ a dirty word,” Kate laughed.
“Are you still thinking about grapes?” Jenny asked.
“Yep, just don’t know enough about the business yet, and I’ve got a request from some bone hunter from the Texas Tech archaeology department wanting to survey the land along the dry creek at the base of Baxter’s Draw for a possible dig,” Kate said, fishing in the pocket of her sweater and handing Jenny a letter. “Just opened it this morning.”
Jenny scanned the slightly crumpled page, “Lowell J. Martin,” she said. “Associate Professor of Archaeology. Huh. What do you think?”
“Well, we used to pull the odd arrowhead out of the creek bed when we were kids. Might be interesting to see what he finds. He says he’d like to talk to us about it ‘via video conference if possible’ or ‘in person if that proves more practicable.’”
“‘Practicable?’” Jenny said, arching her eyebrows. “Great. He sounds like he’s 140 and boring as hell.”
“I don’t know about you,” Kate said, blowing on her coffee before she took a sip. “But I’m completely up for some boring around here.”
The man behind the desk tapped his pencil up and down on the reproduction of the map spread in front of him. The 250-year-old original lay sealed in an airtight vault. Three glossy photographs were scattered on top of the map. Katherine, Jennifer, and Amanda Lockwood. Unexpected complications.
Through that imbecile John Fisk, he'd offered Langston Lockwood excellent terms. The man was already wealthy, but careful research revealed his hidden agendas, all of which could be satisfied immediately and according to his stipulations. Lockwood had no use for the ancillary . . . artifacts . . . on his land, but he refused to cooperate.
When Fisk let the truth of his own stake in the outcome slip, the elder Lockwood's thirst to fulfill a decade's long revenge proved greater than his will to live. By putting a bullet in his own brain, the cursed man managed to not only bring more grief on the head of George Fisk, he also continued to jealously guard the secret of Baxter's Draw.
The thoughtful tapping continued, but the blows fell harder on the paper, betraying the man's growing irritation. Everyone would have benefited. John Fisk's unfortunate gambling debts paid, Lockwood's goals realized, and the artifacts . . . The long fingers snapped the pencil in two. The exact location of the artifacts died with Langston Lockwood.
The man picked up a fourth photograph and stared at it. Now the game would be played with wildcards, including one named Lowell J. Martin.
25
Joe Mason woke up in an empty bed. He fumbled on the bedside table and stared blearily at his iPhone. Six-thirty in the morning? He scrubbed at his face to wake up, padded to the bathroom, threw on his robe, and went in search of Mandy.
The kitchen was brightly lit and the center island was covered in a mess of papers. Mandy’s laptop, encased in pink polycarbonate, sat propped open beside her. She chewed absent-mindedly on the end of a pen as one lacquered nail tapped up and down on the map of downtown lying in front of her.
Joe came up behind her, circling his arms around her waist and nuzzling her neck. “Morning, darling,” he purred against her ear.
“Good morning, yourself,” she said distractedly.
Joe let his hands wander higher, slipping one inside her pajama top. “Whatcha doing?” he asked.
Well, he certainly had her attention now. “Working on the theater renovation grant,” she said, her voice going breathy at his touch. “And you’re not helping my concentration.”
“Wasn’t trying to,” he whispered, kissing a line along her jaw.
God, she thought, of all the mornings for him to wake up so . . . inspired. “Okay,” she said, reluctantly extricating his hand. “Honey, really. We need to behave ourselves.”
“Good behavior is overrated,” he said, sliding his hand past hers and resuming his caresses.
This time, against her better judgment, Mandy didn’t stop him. To hell with it. The world wouldn’t end if they were late to one meeting.
She turned in his embrace and kissed him, thrilling at the warm rush of his mouth against her own. Joe undid the top button on her pajamas and she began to loosen his robe . . . just as the alarm on her iPhone blared and the force of the accompanying vibration sent the gadget skipping across the counter.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, pulling back slightly. “What the hell is that?”
Sighing, she said, “The notification for your 8 o’clock planning meeting and my 8:30 appointment with the Main Street Beautification League. We really shouldn’t be late, babe.”
Making an obvious effort at self-control Joe groused, “I can’t believe those old biddies actually call themselves that. A ‘league?’ Really? It’s just silly.”
“They’ve raised $5,000 to put in planters around the courthouse square,” she said placatingly, resting her head against his shoulder. “And I need them to help with the Christmas carnival.”
“Oh, alright, fine,” he groaned. “But I expect to resume consideration of this . . . agenda . . . this evening.”
“Duly noted, Mr. Mayor,” she laughed.
He kissed the top of her head, and reluctantly released her. “Can you spare a minute to make me something high octane out of that thing?” he asked, pointing to Mandy’s prized La Marzocco GS/3.
“I’d say your motor is running just fine,” she teased, “but yes, I’ll make you an espresso.” She slid off the stool and moved to the coffee grinder. “I sure wish we could convince Starbucks to put a location in this town.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Joe said, taking in her tousled blond locks and the soft drape of her top, the buttons still half undone. “I kinda like the barista I have.”
Mandy glanced down and giggled, fastening the buttons with one hand. “You better be careful, Joe Bob Mason, you’re going to be accused of sexually pursuing a volunteer on your staff.”
“Guilty as charged,” he grinned wolfishly. “I’m right here, pursuit ready. Git to running.”
Mandy waved a warning finger at him. “Take your espresso and go get your shower. Now,” she ordered. “And shave.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with mock contrition, taking the tiny cup she held out for him. “I live to obey.”
As he walked down the hallway to the bathroom, Joe shook his head. Drinking espresso at the crack of dawn with a gorgeous woman whose bed he had the privilege of sharing. “God,” he whispered, “if this is all a dream? Please, don’t ever make me wake up.”
In the kitchen, Mandy hit the button for a FaceTime call and Jenny’s frowning features filled the screen of the laptop. “For God’s sake, Mandy, I can see your house from here. What?”
“I’m still in my pajamas, Joe’s been being frisky, and I knew you’d be up,” Mandy said brightly. “And good morning to you, too.”
“Good morning,” Jenny said. “And for the record, ‘too much information’ on the Joe thing.”
“Like you didn’t wake up with a cowboy in your bed this morning?” Mandy teased.
“Alas, I did not,” Jenny grumbled.
“Well, no wonder you’re in a bad mood,” Mandy laughed. “Josh is falling down on the job.”
“Josh does his . . . job . . . just fine,” Jenny said. “Now. Again. What?”
“Oh, sorry, do you have those concept sketches of the theater ready?”
“I do have paying clients, deadlines, obligations. You
know that, right?”
“So are they ready?” Mandy grinned.
“Yes, they’re ready. You can pick them up on your way into your meeting.”
“Do you need anything from town?” Mandy asked.
“No, I already gave my list to Katie. She left 15 minutes ago. I think she wanted to stop at the cafe and shoot the shit with the guys,” Jenny said. “And she has to go by the vet clinic for something involving bulls. I didn’t ask.”
Mandy shuddered. “Thank God, or she would have told you. Talk about ‘too much information.’”
“We’re supposed to talk to an egghead from Texas Tech on Skype this afternoon,” Jenny said. “Kate emailed the guy and he’s free at 3. Some archaeologist. Wants to come out and survey the area around the dry creek bed for a dig. You want to join us?”
“If I’m back by then,” Mandy said, gathering up her papers. “If not, you can just tell me about it. Does he sound interesting?”
“He sounds ancient and stuffy as hell,” Jenny said.
“Great. So what are you doing with the rest of your day?” Mandy asked.
“As soon as Josh is done with his clients we’re going to go over his latest batch of photos from Baxter’s Draw.”
Mandy stopped shuffling her papers and looked at her sister, “You know we may never figure it out,” she said quietly.
“We’ll figure it out,” Jenny said, her voice taking on an edge. “Daddy thought it was important enough to kill himself over, and John Fisk died because of it. That’s not the kind of information that just fades away to nothing. Somebody besides us is interested in Baxter’s Draw and I intend to find out who and why.”
“Please be careful, Jenny,” Mandy said softly. “I have a bad feeling about all of this.”
26
Digital images of Baxter’s Draw filled three 27-inch iMac screens, which Josh controlled from his MacBook. He and Jenny sat side-by-side at her over-sized work table staring silently at the pictures.
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 12
