The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories

by Juliette Harper

  There it was again, that notion of Lockwood blood her father had thundered about for years. As she'd recently admitted to Kate, Jenny liked to tell herself such nonsense didn't matter in 2015, but that was a lie. They were all raised on ideas like blood and "your people," and, yes, the Alamo, and none of the girls had been able to really transcend those traditions.

  The series of events that began with Langston's suicide and culminated in the disclosure that Mandy's father was actually Phillip Baxter had led them all, individually and as a family, to re-evaluate what it meant to be a Lockwood.

  Jenny and Kate couldn't disavow their heritage even if they had wanted to. Although Jenny was only 5'5" or so, she was lean, dark, and angular like all the Lockwoods. Kate, who looked more like their father every day, stood just a hair under 6 feet. She too had the family coloring and features, but since her accident, Kate had taken on a sparseness that troubled Jenny. She knew her sister was in good health, but she also knew there were things that weighed on Kate's mind.

  Often on those late nights when Jenny saw the light on in the study and joined Kate to offer her companionship in her insomnia, Jenny studied her sister's face in the wavering glow of the lanterns Kate preferred. Although capable of gregariousness, Kate was not a carefree woman by nature, and her new limitations wore on both her patience and her sense of self.

  Langston's eldest daughter was born to be what all the old Lockwood men were — Texas ranchers. Now, faced with permanent disability, that lifestyle was no longer one that she could handle in the only way she knew how — hands on. There was no doubt that Kate was grateful to Josh for working with her, but Jenny knew her sister chafed under the need for that assistance. That fact, as much as her chronic pain, lay beneath Kate's restless roaming on the ranch.

  Jenny was, in her own way, restlessly roaming as well. She had finally been successful in getting the last of her clients to believe that she actually was out of the graphic design business for good. Now she entertained the idea of starting a gallery, and perhaps an artist's collective, but nothing was set in stone, and she, like Kate, grappled with a vague feeling that her life had lost its purpose.

  Mandy, on the other hand, seemed filled with nothing but purpose. Neither Kate nor Jenny cared in the slightest about Mandy being their half sister. That detail to them did little more than finally offer a reasonable explanation for Mandy's blonde hair, gently rounded features, and short stature. No fact of genetics could alter their love for her or change her status in the Lockwood family so far as they were concerned.

  Mandy had come back from her honeymoon glowing with happiness and armed with an iPad full of photos. After sitting her sisters down for the full Travel Channel account of her trip, she'd driven straight to Elizabeth Jones' house, laden with gifts for the old woman. Today, Mandy was having lunch with her best friend, Jolene, at the library, and then she was chairing a revitalization committee meeting at the courthouse.

  "Mandy’s running around being her usual belle-of-the-ball self while Katie goes looking for treasure up in Baxter's Draw and I stand in a graveyard talking to a tombstone," Jenny muttered. "Oh yeah. The Lockwoods are all perfectly normal." She shook her head at the irony of life, gave Weston's tombstone a little parting salute, and climbed back in her SUV.

  Jenny finished the drive to Mason listening to classic country cranked on the stereo and enjoying the change in the countryside. As she drew closer to town, massive red and pink granite boulders studded the pastures, creating an even more rugged texture for a landscape Jenny loved so much that the emotion was almost painful.

  Yes, she had run away from her home state and exiled herself in New York City to escape their father’s tyranny, but the love of Texas ran strong in her veins. Now, like any expatriate come home, she found herself at times almost drunk with the beauty of this familiar land. It was that intensity that drove her to return to her own artwork after years of neglect and to be drawn to others who found their creative energy from the same source.

  Jenny glanced at the sheet of directions lying on the SUV’s console as she drove into Mason from the west. She circled the courthouse square, and located the aptly named Granite Cellars Winery on the south side of town, just where Google maps said it would be.

  Next door to the winery, Rachel Stark kept a small gallery at the front of her workshop. The woman was clearly not into marketing. The hand painted sign on the front of the building simply read “Pottery” and nothing more. The door of the shop was open, but the place was deserted when Jenny stepped inside. "Hello?" she called out.

  "Back here," a woman's voice answered. "Sorry, I've got my hands in wet clay. Just come through the curtain, you'll find me."

  Jenny did as she was told and entered a large, open workroom where Rachel was seated in front of a potter's wheel throwing an elegant, slender vase. "Hi," the woman said. "Are you Jenny?"

  "I am," Jenny said. "And I love the lines of that piece you're working on."

  "Thanks," Rachel said. "It's a form I've been trying to get out of my head and into reality for days. Inspiration struck about half an hour ago and I had to sit down and work even though I knew you were coming today. Sorry, but you know how it is. Do you mind if I finish this?"

  "No, not at all," Jenny said. "I know exactly how it is." She pulled a stool out from under an adjacent workbench and sat down, taking a moment to study her host. Rachel fit the profile of almost any bohemian artist plying her trade in a secluded town well away from the pressures of society. She was wearing a loose peasant blouse, well-faded jeans, and the requisite Birkenstocks. Her long, graying hair was drawn away from her face and piled on top of her head in a random swirl held in place by a massive tortoiseshell clip.

  She looked up and caught Jenny studying her. "You ever worked with clay?" she asked, recognizing the curiosity of an artist for an unfamiliar medium.

  "No," Jenny said, "but I've always meant to give it a try."

  "I'll show you some time if you like," Rachel said. "It's a wonderfully tactile experience."

  "I can see that," Jenny said, watching the minute adjustments Rachel crafted in the spinning pot with deft manipulations of her fingers. "I noticed the glazed pieces in your showroom. You’re using an interestingly complex palette. The tones are a perfect match for this area."

  "That's at least part of my vision," Rachel said, cutting the pot away from the bat with a taut piece of string. She carefully removed the wet piece of art, still resting on the bat, and set it aside to dry on a shelf.

  As she began to wash her hands, she said, "I'm trying to capture not just the tones of the region, but the natural shapes, especially those in the native rock formations. Some of those huge boulders are really sculptures in their own right. What are you working on?"

  "Right now a landscape of the bluffs across from our ranch house," she said, "but I do a lot of wildlife sketches. The man I live with is a wildlife photographer. He's been teaching me how to observe animals while sitting in a blind."

  "Cool," Rachel said. "So tell me about this collective you have in mind."

  Over the next hour the women discussed Jenny's idea to help area artists by providing a central location to work on shared projects with grants for greater access to equipment and materials. She didn't mention that the funding would come from her own family. No one needed to understand why the Lockwoods owed the art world something, but by Jenny's reckoning, that was very much the case.

  Not only had her father hidden his own impressive talents, limiting his creations to one obsessive fantasy image of Alice Browning after another, he had actively tried to thwart Jenny's own talent. The idea of Lockwood money supporting young, struggling artists pleased her more than she could say.

  Since Jenny's concept wasn't yet fully formed, she listened with interest to the suggestions Rachel made and found herself liking the older woman a great deal. Rachel agreed to put together a small gathering of other area artisans so Jenny could meet them as a group. "Let me make a few phone calls
," she said, "and I'll get back to you. Sometimes getting this bunch together is about like nailing Jell-O to a tree."

  Jenny laughed. "That doesn't surprise me one bit," she said. "I'll look forward to hearing from you."

  When she stepped back outside, the heat of the August afternoon hit her full in the face. Glancing at a thermometer nailed to a nearby tree, Jenny saw the red line sitting at 99 degrees. She was startled by a female voice with a thick Northern accent. "How do you people stand this God-awful heat?"

  Turning toward the direction of the winery, Jenny saw a woman about her own age step off the porch of the building. She was dressed casually in white linen trousers that, by some miracle Jenny couldn't fathom, were both spotless and unwrinkled. "We try not to think about it," Jenny said.

  As the stranger drew closer, Jenny frowned. "Do I know you?" she asked.

  "Not yet," she said, "but you will. I'm your first cousin, Jessica Northrup."

  70

  As the small group rode along the dry creek bed leading up to Baxter’s Draw, Jake moved Horsefly alongside Kate’s horse, Bracelet. She glanced over at him. “How you getting along there, Professor?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ve come a long way since the first ride you and I took together.”

  Kate laughed. “You were so funny that morning,” she said. “I’ve never seen a grown man so damned scared of a horse. I hope you’ve apologized to Horsefly for the way you talked about him that day.”

  “I have,” Jake assured her, “many times. We’re good friends now, aren’t we, boy?” he asked, leaning forward and patting the old horse on the neck. Horsefly shook his neck in reply, and Jake said, “See. He’s backing up my story.”

  “He’s backing up your story because you take him an apple every day,” Kate said. “I see you sneaking up to the barn to spoil the old darling.”

  “I don’t sneak,” Jake said. “Horsefly and I talk about things.”

  “What things?” Kate asked.

  “World affairs,” Jake said. “Politics. He’s got a lot of . . .”

  “If you say horse sense,” she warned, “I will have to hurt you.”

  Jake snickered. “Sorry, that was low hanging fruit even for me.”

  “So low we’re almost tripping over it,” she agreed.

  “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” he asked Kate. “You’re downright chipper. You getting bit with the treasure bug?”

  Kate cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me chipper in my whole life.” she said. “And seriously, don’t you want to know what’s under that trapdoor as much as I do?”

  “Of course,” Jake said, “but you know as well as I do that with your father’s habit of constructing intricate puzzles, it could take months for us to figure out how to get down there without disturbing the floor of the structure.”

  Kate sighed. “I know,” she said. “There’s a part of me that would like to just take a crowbar to the whole contraption, but it’s important to Jenny that we don’t disturb anything. She hasn’t made her peace with whatever is left of Daddy in that place. We can’t destroy anything in there, so all we can do is get in that cave and try to find the trigger for that door.”

  “I agree,” Jake said. “I’m just asking if you’re prepared for the part of treasure hunting that involves long, drawn out, tedious work?”

  “As prepared as I can be,” Kate said. “As for being bitten by any sort of bug, I think it’s more the archaeology bug, than the treasure bug.”

  Jake scrubbed at his face with his hand and shook his head ruefully. “They’re both from the same insane branch of the insect family,” he admitted. “There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t want to find the next King Tut’s tomb or unearth some spectacular buried city. We can talk about the fascinating value of broken pots all we like, but every archaeologist secretly wants to be Indiana Jones.”

  They had reached the mouth of the draw, and Kate pulled back on the reins bringing Bracelet to a full stop. “We walk from here,” she said, turning to address Chris and Amy. “It gets narrow up in there and you all don’t know the ground. I don’t want to risk hurting one of these animals.”

  “No problem,” Chris said, gratefully sliding out of the saddle and rubbing the seat of his jeans. “I’m fine with walking.”

  The group fell into a single file, but Jake looped his reins over the saddle horn, leaving Horsefly to follow along obediently. Jake walked beside Kate, and resumed their interrupted conversation with a question. “So,” he asked, “you’re getting bitten by the archaeology bug, eh?”

  “It’s your fault,” she said defensively. “I never even heard of Montezuma’s treasure until you came along. Do you really think that’s what could be under the floor in Daddy’s cave?”

  Jake considered the question and then said, “The space under the floor would have to be really large to hold all the loot that the legend says the Aztecs moved out of Mexico while Cortez was back on the coast fighting the Spanish government.”

  “How much loot are we talking here?” Kate asked.

  “According to the story,” Jake said, “seven caravans left Tenochtitlan. Each one was made up of 100 porters carrying an estimated 60 pounds.”

  Kate did the mental math. “That’s 21 tons!” she exclaimed.

  “Exactly,” Jake said. “There would have to be one heck of a cavern down there to hold that much treasure.”

  “What kind of treasure is this supposed to be?” Kate asked. “Coins? Ornamental stuff? Jewelry?”

  “Gold in various forms,” Jake said. “Montezuma even had the buildings stripped of their ornamentation. And, of course, gems, loose and set in pieces of jewelry. No one really knows for sure, or if the estimates are low or high.”

  “What are the chances that the cave in Baxter’s Draw is the entrance to a cavern big enough to hold all that?” Kate asked.

  “Pretty good, actually,” Jake said. “There are caves and caverns all over the Texas Hill Country. Cascade Caverns in Boerne, the Longhorn Cavern in Burnet, Natural Bridge in New Braunfels, the Sonora Caverns, the Wonder Cave in San Marcos. Those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.”

  “I can’t think of any other reason Daddy would have built that trap door unless he was hiding something important,” Kate said.

  “True,” Jake said, “but it could be something else to do with his obsession about Alice Browning.”

  “Yes,” Kate conceded, “it could be, but if that’s the case, we need to know that, too.”

  When they reached the back wall of the draw and tied up the horses, the four of them stood looking at what appeared to be native rock. “Okay,” Jake said, “show time.” He bent down, manipulated the round rock, and watched as the door swung open smoothly without so much as dislodging a particle of soil.

  “Wow!” Amy said. “It really is like something out of a movie. Can we go inside?”

  “Wait for us,” Jake said. “Let us get in there and get the lights on.”

  He and Kate stepped inside the hidden space and methodically lit the oil lamps mounted in sconces at intervals along the walls. As the details of their surroundings came into focus, Kate stood in the middle of the room and shook her head.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t care how many times I come up here,” Kate said, “I’m still blown away by how hard he worked by himself to create all this. Daddy was never lazy, but this was an almost superhuman effort. I can’t even imagine how he managed to get the cut lumber up here.”

  Jake stepped to the entrance of the cave and gestured for his interns to come inside. They almost fell over themselves spilling through the door, only to halt dead in their tracks when they saw the well-finished trim of the room. “My God,” Chris said. “It feels like we could be in a mountain cabin somewhere.”

  “One without windows,” Kate said, “but I think that’s exactly what my Dad was trying to do. He wanted this to be his home away from
home.”

  “Why did he do that?” Amy asked.

  Jake held his hand up flat and said, "Stop. That’s a personal question. You don’t need to know what motivated Ms. Lockwood’s father in order to do your jobs.”

  Kate couldn’t help but smile at his protectiveness, but she countered his position all the same. “That’s not true, Jake,” she said. “They do need to understand why Daddy did all this. His motivations are the underlying story of everything that has happened in this draw for the last 50-some-odd-years.”

  She turned toward Amy and Chris and said, “My father loved a girl when he was a young man . . .”

  Long minutes later, when Kate finished outlining the major milestones in her father’s descent into a fantasy driven secret life, the story left the young interns speechless. They were both sitting on the wide fireplace hearth and neither said anything in reaction at first. Then Amy broke the silence. “I can’t even imagine how much your father must have loved Alice Browning to go through all of this to create some semblance of a life with her. It’s incredibly romantic.”

  Kate bit her tongue not to say, “God, you are young.” Instead she said, “That’s one way to look at it.”

  Amy might have been young, but she knew better than to press for more details. For his part, Chris was interested in getting down to business and said so. “Let’s locate the position of the trap door,” he said, pulling out an iPad in a rugged case.

  It took several minutes and a lot of calculations with a laser measuring tool, but Jake finally said, “If I’m reading all of this correctly, the hinges should be here and here.” He put two chalk marks on the floor.

  “What are these stains on the floor?” Amy asked, pointed to the dark streaks on the wood planks that stretched from the far corner to the entrance.

  Before Jake could answer, Kate said without hesitation, “That’s my blood.”