Those Texas Nights

by Delores Fossen

  “Is my baby girl all right?” Voice number two.

  Her mother, Belle. The one most likely to coddle her, but the coddling would quickly turn to smothering. Then nagging. Then, she’d go after Brantley with a vengeance.

  “We know she’s here. We followed her muddy footprints.” Voice number three. Lawson. Her cousin. He’d berate her, coddle her and then assist Garrett and her mother with giving Brantley a serious butt-kicking.

  The only Granger missing was her other brother, Roman. He’d been invited to the wedding, of course, but he hadn’t shown and probably wouldn’t. Too bad, because if Roman had come, then it would have taken some of the ugly spotlight off her. A black sheep brother could do that.

  “We need to see her.” Voice number four. Her best friend, Mila Banchini. There’d be no nagging, butt-kicking and only minimal coddling from her, but for the next decade Sophie would have to listen to Mila’s attempts to find her a suitable husband.

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie said to the chief.

  “For what?”

  “This is the only tweak I can think of.” And despite it being a stupid tweak, Sophie launched herself into Chief McKinnon’s arms.

  From the corner of her eye, Sophie watched her family and friend trickle in. She also felt the chief’s muscles go statue-stiff and expected a similar reaction from the others.

  That didn’t happen.

  They were standing there. Three Grangers and Mila, who was wearing her champagne maid of honor dress. Each of them looked at her not with sympathy, exactly. There was something else. Something that caused her to go still.

  They didn’t rush to coddle her. Didn’t issue death threats about Brantley. And they especially didn’t ask what she was doing in Chief McKinnon’s arms. The chief remedied that, though. He backed away from her, staying by her side and studying her family.

  “We know about Brantley,” Garrett said. “He came and talked to us right after he spoke to you.”

  Oh. Sophie hadn’t expected that from the man she was now thinking of as freshly dropped cow dung.

  “I know it’s hard,” her mother added. “You’re crying.”

  It was the right thing to say. The right tone, too, but the four were still standing in the same spot as if someone had magnetized their feet to the floor. And Lawson and her mother were dodging her gaze. Definitely not a good sign.

  “Did someone die?” Sophie came out and asked. Then, she got a horrible, gut-twisting thought. “Did one of you kill Brantley?”

  “No,” Garrett answered. He didn’t add more because his phone buzzed. He mumbled something about having to take the call and walked out.

  That knot in her stomach got worse. Because here she was jilted and broken, something Garrett would have almost certainly realized, and yet he’d taken a call.

  “Did Brantley do something to harm himself?” the chief asked.

  Evidently, he was also aware that something wasn’t right about this visit. Something other than the obvious, that is, since she’d just been jilted and her family had seen her with her arms wrapped around the police chief.

  “As far as I know, Brantley’s okay,” Lawson said.

  There was a huge but at the end of that. Sophie could hear it. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Her mother, Mila and Lawson volleyed glances at each other, but they didn’t say a word. They appeared to be waiting for Garrett to return, which he did a couple of moments later.

  “Anything?” her mother said to him.

  Garrett shook his head and drew in a long breath as if he would need it. He went to Sophie, taking her by the shoulders. “I know this is a shitty day, but I’m about to make it even shittier.”

  Not possible.

  But a moment later, Sophie learned she was wrong about that. A whole new level of shitty had been added to her life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A FAILED WEDDING. Now a funeral.

  Not a literal funeral, but to Sophie it certainly felt like another sucker punch of fate. This couldn’t happen. It had to be a mistake.

  “It’s a mistake,” she repeated, this time aloud, but Garrett didn’t react. Probably because she’d already repeated it a dozen times, and he’d likely gotten tired of telling her that it wasn’t.

  That something very bad had indeed happened to Granger Western.

  Just how bad, they didn’t know yet because they didn’t have answers. Answers they needed from their chief financial officer, Billy Lee Seaver, who’d seemingly taken money and lots of it from the company.

  Sophie held on to the seemingly part, figuring this was all some kind of banking error or a computer glitch, and she made a call to the next person on her contact list. The first sixteen calls hadn’t produced much, and this one was no different. Saturday evenings apparently weren’t a good time to reach business associates who would perhaps know Billy Lee’s whereabouts.

  When she struck out with the next two calls, Sophie looked at Marcum Gentry, their legal advisor, to see if he’d had any better luck. Judging from his body language that would be a no. He was pacing while having an intense conversation with someone at Austin PD. Marcum’s pricey shoes clicked and tapped on the hardwood floors as he went from one side of Garrett’s office to the other.

  Her brother wasn’t pacing, though. Garrett was seated behind his desk, looking very much like a troubled cowboy rather than a concerned CEO. He was in his usual jeans, his Stetson sat on the corner of his desk and he’d ditched the two items he rarely wore—a jacket and a bolo tie. Sophie hadn’t even tried to talk him into wearing dress pants for the wedding because she was reasonably sure that her brother didn’t own dress anything. However, he had put on his good boots to attend the ceremony, which he’d also already swapped out for his usual ones.

  The boots and his clothes were the only thing usual about this day, though. Garrett was having his own intense conversation with one of their accountants he had managed to reach. Sophie watched Garrett’s mouth move, and she was hearing him say the words. But her brain just wasn’t processing what he was saying. Perhaps it was the tequila aftermath or maybe her mind just couldn’t handle two major shocks like this in the same day.

  At least she wasn’t having to deal with this shock while wearing her wedding dress. Once they’d arrived at the Granger Western building in downtown Austin, Sophie had made a beeline to her office and changed into one of the spare business suits she kept there. Thankfully, none of their employees had been around to see her.

  Of course, having their employees see her was the least of their problems.

  If the initial reports were true, then Billy Lee had basically screwed them six ways to Sunday by embezzling a fortune. And after doing that, he’d disappeared.

  Much as her ex-fiancé had done.

  Too bad her heart hadn’t done a vanishing act along with them because she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. The panic was rising inside her. The pressure in her chest, too, and if this was some dream, she prayed she’d wake up from it soon.

  Sophie forced herself to her feet, and while dodging Marcum’s pacing pattern, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling window in Garrett’s office. It was identical to hers, which was just next door. The view of downtown Austin was one of the best in the city, and it normally gave her a jolt of pride.

  This was theirs.

  The company their great-grandfather Zachariah Taylor Granger had built from the ground up. To remind them of that, there was a massive twelve-foot-high oil portrait of Z.T. on the wall of Garrett’s office. Not an especially good portrait, Sophie had always thought, what with his stern gaze, slightly narrowed eyes and a “don’t screw this up” sneer.

  Garrett and she hadn’t screwed it up. They’d nearly doubled the size of what customers affectionately called Cowboy Mart, had put it on the Texas finan
cial map. It’d made them wealthier. Happier. It’d made them who they were.

  It had to stay that way.

  Marcum finished his latest call, but he didn’t stop pacing. He kept moving until he was right in front of Garrett’s desk. That cued her brother to make a quick end to his conversation.

  “You want the good news or the bad news first?” Marcum asked them.

  “Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison.

  Despite their quick agreement, Marcum still took a couple of moments to answer. “Billy Lee robbed you blind. We don’t know how exactly, not yet, but he embezzled nearly ninety percent of the company’s operating funds.”

  Sophie decided it was a good idea to sit down, but since there wasn’t a chair nearby, she just sank to the floor.

  “Fuck,” Garrett growled.

  Sophie wanted to growl something, too, something equally as bad as the f-word, but she couldn’t get her mouth working.

  “How?” Garrett added. It was also growled.

  Marcum shook his head. “That will take some time to unravel, but Billy Lee must have had the pieces in place for a while to do this. I don’t suppose you had any checks and balances on him?”

  “No,” Garrett and she answered in unison again.

  “He’s my godfather,” Sophie added. “Our late father’s best friend.”

  Garrett had his own adding to do. “Billy Lee’s worked for the company for forty years and never gave us any reason not to trust him.”

  Until now.

  God, until now.

  “What’s the good news?” Sophie asked Marcum.

  “I don’t think Garrett and you will have to go to jail.”

  Sweet baby Jesus in the manger. “Is that stating the obvious, or was there actually a chance of that happening?” she pressed.

  “A chance,” Marcum answered without hesitation. “It appears that over the past couple of months, Billy Lee might have dabbled in some money laundering with the funds he was embezzling.”

  Sophie thought she might not be able to stave off that puking any longer. Her stomach balled up into a knot, started dribbling like a point guard on the basketball court and she got to her feet in case she had to make a run to the bathroom.

  “Billy Lee must have snapped,” Garrett mumbled.

  That stopped her for the time being, and she latched on to that like a lifeline. Yes, that had to be it. Because with the stomach knot and crushed heart, Sophie couldn’t grasp that a man who was part of their family had done this to them.

  “Maybe someone set Billy Lee up?” she suggested.

  Both Garrett and Marcum made sounds of agreement. Weak agreement, though. But it was another lifeline that Sophie was choosing to grab.

  “What do we do now?” Sophie asked.

  “Get drunk,” Marcum readily answered.

  “Will that help?” And she was serious.

  Marcum shrugged. “Only if you drink enough to pass out.”

  Sophie decided to keep that as an option.

  Her phone buzzed at the same time that Marcum’s rang, and Marcum stepped into the hall to take it. Maybe because he didn’t think it would be wise for them to get another dose of bad news so soon after the last one.

  But it was too late for that.

  Brantley’s name was on her phone screen.

  She debated letting it go to voice mail. Debated answering it just so she could curse him. Debated the getting drunk option again. But after five rings, Sophie hit the answer button.

  “Are you all right?” Brantley blurted out before she could curse him.

  No, she wasn’t, but her pride prevented her from saying that. “If you’re calling to grovel, it won’t work. I won’t take you back after what you did to me. How could you do this to me? How?” Now, she added some of that profanity.

  “I’m not calling to ask you to take me back,” Brantley interrupted. His words sounded a little slurred or something. “I meant it when I said I can’t marry you.”

  That stomped on her pride and her heart some more. “Then why the heck did you ever propose to me?”

  Silence. Which was just another form of heart stomping. The least Brantley could do was apologize and call himself some of the names she’d just called him, but the silence dragged on and on.

  “Look, I’m busy,” she finally said in the same moment that Brantley said, “I thought I loved you, Sophie. But I was wrong.”

  Mercy. Each word was like another little dagger. He hadn’t loved her? “You did a darn good job of faking it, then.”

  “I know. I’d fooled myself, too. It’s because we’d been together so long. I kept thinking it was time for the next step, but the next step should have been for me to break things off.”

  That stomach ball started to bounce against her other internal organs. She was definitely going to puke.

  “I should have never let things get as far as they did,” he said. At least that’s what she thought he said, but he was slurring.

  “Are you drunk?” she snapped.

  “Uh, no. It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”

  “I don’t care a rat’s butt if you’re fine or not. And I have to go,” Sophie insisted.

  Brantley blurted out something just as she hit the end call button. Something about a belt. She probably should have been concerned that he was about to hang himself, but her concern meter for him was tapped out. Besides, Brantley had plenty of faults, but he wasn’t the sort to kill himself.

  Sophie put her phone in her pocket, looked at her brother, and that’s when she realized he had his attention nailed to her. Marcum did, too, though he was still talking on his phone.

  “Anything about Billy Lee?” she asked Garrett as a preemptive strike. Sophie definitely didn’t want to talk about Brantley and what he’d just said to her.

  He hadn’t loved her.

  The anger ripped through her. A better feeling than the soppy tears because she didn’t need to blow her nose, but she needed to blow off some of this rage. She yanked off her two-carat engagement ring and threw it against the wall. Probably not the smartest idea she’d ever had because it hit the oil painting of their great-grandfather and made a dent in the canvas just below his left nostril.

  “I’m guessing that call didn’t go well,” Garrett said on a heavy sigh.

  “But please tell me your call went better.”

  Garrett lifted his shoulder. “It was Chief McKinnon. He was checking on you.”

  Great. Now, her date was chiming in on this. She didn’t want anyone checking on her. Especially anyone who’d seen her make a fool of herself. At the moment, though, that included pretty much everyone in Wrangler’s Creek. Later, in a day or two, she’d need to call him and apologize. Perhaps blame what she’d done on the tequila and temporary insanity.

  Marcum finished his call, glanced at the two-carat ring that was now on the floor, before his gaze volleyed between Garrett and her. “You want the good news or the bad news first?” he asked again.

  “Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison for a second time.

  Marcum nodded. “The company’s assets will be frozen while the feds investigate the money laundering charges.”

  Sophie’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

  “Frozen?” Garrett snapped. “For how long?”

  “I’m not sure. These things can take awhile.”

  “Define awhile.” Garrett’s snap was even snappier that time.

  “Months. Maybe years. And it’s possible everything will be seized if Billy Lee really was using this company as a money laundering operation.”

  Still no sound. Her breath had vanished, and she figured it was a good time to sit back down on the floor again. Good thing, too, because the bad news just kept on coming.

&nb
sp; “The frozen assets include both your apartments here in Austin since they’re company holdings,” Marcum added. “Your cars, too.”

  No car, no apartment. It wouldn’t be as great of a loss to Garrett as it was for her because he split time between Austin and Wrangler’s Creek. And she doubted he’d ever even started the company car since he still drove their late dad’s truck. But for her, the apartment was, well, home.

  “The investigators will be going through everything in the offices,” Marcum continued. “The vehicles and apartments, too.”

  They wouldn’t find anything. Well, they wouldn’t unless Billy Lee had truly gone bonkers and stashed some stuff there. Though with the way her luck was running, there’d be a counterfeiting machine, a kilo of cocaine and Jimmy Hoffa’s body beneath her bed.

  “Your personal bank accounts are also frozen for the time being,” Marcum went on. “But I feel that’s something we can resolve faster than the company assets.”

  There was no way for the ball in her stomach to get any tighter or bounce any harder.

  “So, basically everything we own, including where we live, has just been taken away from us, and we might never get it back?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” Marcum agreed.

  “I’d like to hear that good news now,” Sophie grumbled.

  “The ranch.” And apparently Marcum thought that was enough of an explanation. It wasn’t. Sophie motioned for him to keep going. “The ranch and the operation there aren’t part of the company or your own personal assets. That’s because Roman legally owns it, and he has no connection to the company.”

  She gave Marcum a very blank look.

  “So, you know what this means, right?” Marcum asked.

  Sophie thought Marcum might be trying to tell them something more than the obvious here. “We won’t lose the ranch,” she concluded.

  “It’s more than that. It means you’ll have a place to live. I just got the okay from Roman, and you and Garrett will be closing things down here in Austin and moving back home.”