Knickers in a Twist

by Kim Hunt Harris

  On the one hand, it wouldn't have made a lot of sense for Dorsett Oil to be behind a murder like that. Peter was one reporter. It wasn't as if someone else couldn't have taken up the thread. For all I knew other reporters were already doing it—I hadn't looked for any other reports. So it would be foolish to kill someone to silence them when someone else could easily start where Peter left off. Like a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole.

  On the other hand, I was a big chicken. Powerful men scared me.

  When Viv picked me up in her Crystal Frost Caddy, I told her as much.

  “Salem, men are men. A few well-placed compliments and meaningful looks, and they all fold.”

  I bit my lip on that. Viv was 80-something, and I was still too overweight to believe anyone would fall for my wiles, Tony being the exception. “Maybe it would be a good idea to let someone know where we are, just in case. Where is the office?”

  “In the Metro Tower building. That's where Browning did his interviews, too.”

  “Oooh! That's the tall building downtown!”

  I hadn't been inside that building, but I'd always wanted to go. Forty-something years before, a tornado had torn through downtown Lubbock and demolished a bunch of buildings. The Metro Tower building, then (and now) the tallest building in town, had been damaged but not destroyed. I had heard that if you looked closely, you could tell that the building was slightly twisted.

  Although I had stood at the corner of that building no less than five times, peering up along the brick line, I had never been able to discern any twist. Maybe I could see a slight curve. Maybe it just seemed that way because I was looking straight up and my equilibrium got a bit woozy. I wondered if I would be able to tell any better from inside the building, looking down.

  “Are you sure your hubby's going to be okay with this?”

  I thought about that, but wasn't sure how to answer. I had told him I would be careful. Was this being careful?

  “It's a downtown office in the middle of the day,” I finally said. “It's not like we're going to be combing back alleys. Again.”

  Viv shrugged.

  “Seriously, nothing is going to happen inside some oil baron's office in the middle of the day. Come on.”

  “You're the one who was worried about them bumping us off.”

  “Well, yeah, but that was before I knew their offices were in the death-defying-tornado building. Besides, how many opportunities do we have to even go in a skyscraper around here.”

  “Honey, you need to get out of Lubbock if you think that's a skyscraper.”

  “One, yes. Yes, I do. And two, it's close enough to a skyscraper for me. I want to try and see the twist.”

  Viv flapped a hand. “It's nothing, barely even noticeable.”

  “You've seen it?”

  “Yes, I've seen it. It's just a slight curve near the top of the building.”

  She said it as if it wasn't a super-amazing freaky fact.

  “Seriously? I need to see that.”

  “Why?”

  “A tornado turned an entire brick building.”

  “Just a little bit.”

  “A tornado turned an entire brick building!” I repeated for emphasis. “Come on! Like, it twisted an entire building.” I held my hands out, twisting them in opposite directions as you'd do if you were demonstrating how to twist open a jar of face cream. “Admit it, that's pretty freaky.”

  “I guess.”

  “Can we pretend like I'm your granddaughter and I'm going to inherit your wealth?”

  “Granddaughter?!”

  “I meant daughter,” I said quickly. “Or sister. Maybe your sister who will inherit your millions.”

  “Sure. If I were you, though, I'd rather pretend I had my own millions to invest.”

  I hadn't thought of that. Even in my wildest imagination I was mooching off someone else.

  I tried again to see the twist in the building, but it still didn't look like anything but a plain old tall building to me.

  “Maybe the whole thing is just urban legend,” I said as Viv pushed the elevator button for the 20th floor. “Like the lights at Marfa.”

  “Oh, the lights at Marfa are real,” Viv said. She straightened her collar in the reflection of the elevator door.

  “You've seen them?”

  “A couple of times, actually.”

  I frowned and kept my mouth shut. I would complain that I'd led a sheltered life, but it hadn't really been that sheltered. Just kind of boring and highly localized. Here I was excited about going up in a 20-story building.

  I swatted at my pants and top again to knock away any lingering dog hair. The elevator came to a gentle stop and dinged softly before the doors slid open.

  The elevator opened onto a short hallway, flanked by one metal door to the right that led to the stairwell, and one glass door to the left that led to the office of Dorsett Oil. Viv strode through the door like she already owned the place. I followed, trying and probably failing to take on an air of nonchalance.

  “Vivian Kennedy,” Viv told the middle-aged woman at the desk.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Kennedy.” She smiled brightly. The smile faded just a fraction when she took me in.

  “This is my niece, Salem,” Viv said. “My much older sister's daughter.”

  The woman gave a noncommittal smile and nodded. “I believe Mr. Dorsett is ready for you. Have a seat and I'll let him know you're here. Would you like something to drink? A bottled water or soda?”

  I took a look around and decided this place could afford to spring for a soda. “Do you have Diet Coke?”

  “Of course.” She smiled like I shouldn't have to ask that. Viv asked for a bottled water.

  We had a seat. Viv looked around like she was judging the decorating and finding it wanting. I tried to sit as lightly as I could, in case the scent of Furr-Ever Lovely Dog Cologne lingered on my clothes.

  Mr. Dorsett followed the receptionist back to the waiting area.

  “Vivian!” he said, holding out a hand to be shaken.

  They shook hands and greeted each other like old friends. I stood and smiled a flat, don't-mind-me-I'm-just-the-deadbeat-niece smile. The receptionist handed us our bottles and went back to her desk.

  We followed Dorsett back to his office, which looked exactly the way I expected an oilman's office to look—dark wood paneling, one wall of books that probably nobody read, and a painting of a longhorn standing in bluebonnets behind his desk.

  Dorsett got right to the point. “So, your lawyer tells me you're interested in getting into the oil business.”

  “I'm thinking of expanding my interests in the oil business,” Viv clarified. “I've been in the oil business since I married Hoss. But I'm hearing a lot of good things about newer techniques that Hoss wasn’t involved in, and I wondered if it might be a good idea to investigate them further, see if it might be a good idea to venture into some other areas and diversify my portfolio.” She smiled and leaned on her cane. “You could call this a bit of exploratory drilling.” She laughed at her own joke.

  Dorsett laughed back. “I understand completely. And you're right, traditional drilling is a safe bet for the conservative investor. Somewhat safe, at any rate. Getting less safe every year, though, as oil is getting harder to find and more expensive to bring up. That's why we've included fracking in our processes. It's not even really new anymore. We've been doing it for fifteen years, and we only got in after we saw other companies work out the logistics.” He smiled broadly. “My motto is, it's a lot easier to learn from other people's mistakes than to go through them yourself.”

  He gave me a look that I interpreted as “Are you listening, loser?” but I could have been wrong.

  “I heard that,” Viv said.

  “And now is the time to buy, since our stock is down from all the stuff in the news.” He moved his hand like he was waving away a particularly ineffective gnat. “It'll go back up, believe me. Here. My sales team would give me heck if I don't g
ive you a prospectus. So here.” He handed her a folder emblazoned with a serene picture of an open prairie at sunset, the oranges, reds, and yellows of the sky contrasting with the dark purple of the prairie. A weathered windmill stood in the foreground, and a cowboy father and his grade school daughter—wearing a set of pink cowboy boots and her own cowboy hat—walked toward a white farmhouse cozily lit against the oncoming dusk. A pump jack stood in the mid-right of the picture, unobtrusively pumping away to provide this picture perfect world for these picture perfect people.

  “But I can summarize everything in that folder in a few sentences. If you trust us with your money, we'll put it to work. We'll use it to put men to work, to harvest our country's natural resources, and we'll do it in a responsible, ethical way. And you'll get a return on your investment that's a lot prettier than what you're getting from traditional drilling.”

  “Let's talk about that responsible, ethical thing you just mentioned.” Viv leaned back in her chair and tapped the bottom of her cane on the carpet. “I'm getting conflicting information about the practice of hydro-fracking in general, and about injection wells and earthquakes in particular.”

  “Of course, you are,” Dorsett said without skipping a beat. “That's the nature of the world we're living in, isn't it? Everybody's got a subject matter expert, and no two of them agree on a single point.”

  “True, but still. I want to put my money to work making more money. I'm not interested in funding the poisoning of our water or creating earthquakes.”

  “Yeah,” I said, mostly just because I hadn't uttered a single word since we walked in and I was getting annoyed with that.

  Dorsett shook his head and frowned a little sadly, as if he couldn't believe we'd be so gullible.

  I wondered if he'd practiced that look in the mirror.

  “I don't know what reports you've been hearing—”

  “Peter Browning's,” I said. I studied his face to see what reaction he had to the name.

  His frown deepened, but I really had no idea if that indicated more sadness at Browning's passing, or mere annoyance that he was still having to deal with the guy after his death.

  “Peter Browning was a good man and obviously passionate about his job. The problem is his passion got the better of his brain. He was looking for any scandal he could find in order to make a name for himself, and to be honest, I don't think it mattered one bit to him what the actual truth was. He had to be David to somebody's Goliath.” Dorsett shrugged. “And it's a shame, what he did. I wonder if in his heart he knew the truth and couldn't live with what he'd done.”

  “There are some reports that perhaps his death wasn't a suicide after all,” I said.

  “What reports?” Dorsett said, barely holding back a scoff.

  My turn to shrug. “I've heard rumors.”

  “Well, I guess that'll ultimately be for someone else to decide. I know I wasn't there. I assume you weren't, either?” He gave me a pointed look and I had to allow that I had not, in fact, been there.

  “But whatever comes out from that doesn't change a few hard facts. Browning skewed his report. I gave him all kinds of sources—” He waved a hand. “All kinds of sources. Geology reports, industry reports, unbiased, scientific studies that all said there was no proven connection between hydro-fracking and earthquakes. Did he mention one of those, ever? No, he did not.”

  “I think he did,” I said.

  Viv gave me the side-eye. We probably didn't want to reveal that we'd spent several hours two days before re-watching every single one of Peter Browning's “Special Reports” on the oil industry. That might be hard to explain.

  “I think,” I stressed. Lame.

  I remembered the little Diet Coke in my hands. I twisted off the top and took a swig.

  Immediately, I felt my diaphragm constrict. Hiccups. Crud.

  “Well, if he mentioned them, it was only in passing. He stressed over and over again a ‘connection’—” Air quotes. His lips tightened and he shook his head, like ‘Can you believe it?’ “The connection between injection wells and earthquakes until it looked like Dorsett Oil had personally crippled that little girl. Or David Baucum had.”

  “Is that what you mean by 'what he'd done?'“ I asked. Or tried to ask. In the middle of “done,” I hiccuped. It was so loud. “Sorry,” I said. “What I mean is, do you think he felt some kind of responsibility for David Baucum's death and killed himself out of remorse?”

  Dorsett shrugged. He didn't smile or otherwise noticeably change his expression. Still, he managed to look chillingly smug.

  “Could be. I guess we might not ever know. But I know how I'd feel if I'd vilified a man for something that was an act of God. Hounded him until he lost his family's business, until he had nothing left to live for. I'd feel pretty bad about that, let me tell you.” He shook his head in an “ain't-it-a-shame” kind of way. Then he lifted his hands, took a deep breath, brought his elbows onto the desk, and faced Viv. “Anyway, we're completely off track here. What Peter Browning did or didn't do isn't why you're here.”

  My heart raced a tiny bit at that. “Of course no-OT,” I couldn't help but say. And hiccup.

  “Of course not,” Viv echoed, giving me a scathing look. “I just like to know what I'm mixed up in.”

  “Well, I can put your mind at ease about that. In that prospectus is a copy of all our reports. Our industry is regulated like no other, and you can read through our entire clean bill of health if you need something to put you to sleep at night. It's all in there, every time we dotted an I or crossed a T.”

  I nodded toward the folder and hiccuped again.

  The problem was, it was funny. And when I try not to laugh, I get semi-hysterical. In fact, nothing in the world is funnier than trying not to laugh.

  I felt the hysteria bubbling in me and decided I had to get out of there. I slid to the front of my seat. “Well, we appreciate yo-UR time.” I clamped my lips together, but some bubbles of laughter escaped out my nose.

  Viv gave me another withering look as I stood, but she stood, too, and held out her hand. “I'll be getting back to you,” she said.

  Back in the reception area, I smiled and nodded at the receptionist, hurrying through as quickly as I could while also trying to look like I was not hurrying.

  Viv, not ready to let go of her role as Wealthy Investor just yet, swanned through the room holding the prospectus folder with her nose in the air. She joined me in the hallway as I pushed the elevator button.

  “What is your deal?” she asked, irritated.

  “Hicc-UPS,” I said. Then giggled.

  “I know that.” She sighed and pursed her lips. “You act like a ten-year-old boy who's just seen his first nudie. How are we ever going to be taken seriously if—”

  “Oh, my gosh!” I cut her off. Exiting another office down the hallway was Imogene Walker.

  I grabbed Viv's arm and pulled her toward the stairs.

  The stairwell door slammed behind us. “Imogene!” I hissed. Then hiccuped. The sound echoed off the concrete walls.

  Viv frowned and looked through the window. “What in the world is she doing here?”

  “I don't know, but I don't want to ta-ALK to her.” I giggled, collapsing against the stair rail.

  “Not in the state you're in,” Viv agreed. She narrowed her eyes at me, which made me laugh even harder. “Get a grip on yourself, for crying out loud.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to do just that. “Come on,” I said, heading down the stairs.

  “Well, I'm not going to climb twenty flights of stairs,” Viv said behind me. “We'll go down one and then get the elevator there.”

  “But what if she's coming down and we ca-ATCH her there?” I asked. I couldn't help it—I pictured the elevator door sliding open, me letting a roaring hiccup loose into the confines of the small space, and Imogene unleashing the full force of her disapproval in one eye-burning glare.

  This sent me into a fresh gale of giggles. I staggered
down the steps, holding onto the rail and fighting for breath. The more I laughed, the more I hiccupped. The sound reverberated against the walls and made me laugh harder.

  “Stop it!” Viv smacked me on the shoulder. “You look like a lunatic.”

  I nodded and swallowed, fighting for breath. “Sorry,” I said. I stopped on the landing for the 19th floor and wiped tears of laughter from my eyes. I took a deep breath, feeling the tightness in my chest ease a bit. Maybe I was done. I tentatively took a few more breaths. Yes, I was done. I was almost sure of it.

  Okay. One more deep breath. I swallowed, determined to move forward like a rational, sane person.

  In mid-swallow, though, I hiccuped again. The spasm jerked my tongue back. For a second I felt like I was going to swallow my own tongue.

  I gasped and grabbed my throat. “Oh my gosh!”

  Aaaand, I was off again. Giggling, hiccuping, staggering down steps, clinging to the stair rail, bent over as tears streamed down my face. I made it to the eighteenth floor landing and sat on the bottom stair, helpless and weak.

  When I was finally able to get myself back under control, I wiped my eyes again and looked around for Viv. She was standing beside the stairwell window, silently scrolling through something on her phone.

  I drew a few test breaths. Yes, I was definitely done now. No more hiccups. No more giggles. “What are you looking at?” I croaked.

  “I'm searching for what is wrong with you.”

  “Well, let me know what you find out,” I said. “Whew.” I drew another breath and wiped my hands on my pants. “That was fun.”

  “According to this, you might have emotional incontinence.” She held a warning finger up. “Do. Not. Start again.”

  I laughed, but it was just normal laughter now, somewhat controlled. “How am I not supposed to laugh at that?” I stood and looked over her shoulder. “Emotional incontinence sounds like—y ikes. That's a real thing?”

  “A neurological disorder, usually caused by head trauma.”

  I skimmed through the Google description. “Uncontrollable crying and laughing. Wow. How awful.”