“I better go. I’ll talk to the historical society. You see what your attorney can find out. Do we know anyone who might have information about proposed road improvements and new extensions?”
“I’m working on it. There’s an investigator who my brother used a few years back, they were having issues with an owner stacking the books.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the owner had a great horse but would force the jockey to lose several races so that odds were against them. Then when the stakes were high, he’d have him go full throttle for the win and take the purse.”
“And the investigator caught him?”
Reid nodded. “Yep, got us everything Adler needed to take to the racing commission and get the owner permanently banned. Anyway, I want to see if I can hire the investigator he used to work this case.”
I tapped my pen against my notepad and then flipped to a clean sheet. “So, we are dividing and conquering. Your attorney is checking on what?”
“Laws about eminent domain and contacting the Transportation Commission.”
“I’m going to the historical society, and you are contacting some guy who is going to get the lowdown on Holbrook?”
“And possibly Shane,” Reid reminded me.
“Yeah, possibly the councilman.” I stood and glanced to the clock before making my way to the door. Reid followed just close enough behind me that I couldn’t ignore his presence.
“Holland?”
“Yes?” I said without turning to look at him. I kind of just needed to get out of his house.
“I liked not fighting with you tonight.”
His words made me uncomfortable, so I pulled my indifference around me like a damn coat. “Don’t get used to it.”
Reid let out a loud chuckle. “Why am I not surprised?” I flipped him off and headed out the back door.
Chapter Five
Reid
Why was it that it was easy to get out bed at five some mornings, but other mornings it seemed as if the world would end if I opened my eyes? Oh, I knew. It was because the latter were usually the mornings after I’d stayed up too late thinking about Holland.
After heaving myself out of bed, I headed to the kitchen. I needed coffee and lots of it. Once I had a nice tall Yeti cup full in one hand, I grabbed my phone with the other. There were few people who I knew that I could call at this time of the morning but as I scrolled through my contacts and stopped on my oldest brother’s name, he was one of them.
“Hey, what’s up?” Adler asked as way of answering.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Ha ha, just sitting at the table and finishing breakfast.”
“You have a second?”
“Sure, do I need to go into the other room? Elizabeth is sitting by me.”
“No. Tell her I said good morning and I’m sorry for interrupting y’all’s time together.” I listened as Adler repeated my message to her. “She says good morning as well. Now tell me what’s going on.”
“Hey, I’m having some problems with a dirty businessman. I was calling to see if I could get the contact information for the private investigator you hired a few years back?”
My brother paused for several seconds, which was something out of the norm for him. He was usually so self-confident. “It wasn’t a he; it was a she.”
“I don’t care about that. I just want someone who is good and can dig up dirt.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“What, Adler? What the fuck aren’t you telling me?”
“It was Brandy, Brandy Lakote.” I let out a long whistle. “Yeah, I know, that’s why I never told you the name. Look, we didn’t know it was her until after we had called the company. She came highly recommended. She was certified nationwide, which was what we needed since races were in different states.” My brother kept babbling on but I hadn’t said a word.
Brandy Lakote had been my high-school sweetheart. One date with her, and I was a goner. I thought she was the one. For two years, I spent every day and night thanking the good Lord that she was on my arm. But I got a football scholarship to UK and she wanted to go to school in Texas. We broke it off, promising to still be friends. I let out a half-chuckle, half-groan because those things never happened, people never remained friends. And I never heard from Brandy again. At that time, I thought I was going to die.
“Reid? Are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“She’s good. She is a computer genius and has a way with words, I think that she could talk the devil into changing his ways.”
“She always had a way with words.”
“I’m sorry, man.”
“No need. Water under the bridge.” My family knew all too well the heartbreak I had suffered, looking back it seemed like just a stepping-stone. Something I needed to go through to be me. “Do you have her number handy?”
“Sure, but what’s going on, what kind of dirty businessman?”
“There’s a land developer threatening eminent domain, but he’s bullying people about it. I want to find out what he’s really doing.”
“What I know about eminent domain is that it takes a while, there will be lots of hearings, and it will all make sense. Maybe not to the people losing their land, but if you step back, you can see how it is all connected.”
“That’s the problem, there haven’t been hearings, and the first time anyone heard about it was at that meeting. For some reason, this developer has a councilman on his side. As far as the land, it’s random pieces that don’t make sense for what they are proposing.”
“If there’s something shady going on Brandy will find it. You got a pen handy?” Adler asked.
“Yep.” I grabbed one from the junk drawer as Adler called off her number.
“That’s her cell. She travels all over so I found that calling around noon our time was best. Just in case she was on the west coast or something then I wasn’t calling too early.”
“Thanks. I’ll call her later.” I disconnected and then entered her number into my phone’s contacts. Before folding the piece of paper in half, I stared down at it, a memory of when she had given me her number on a piece of torn notebook paper flashed in front of my eyes. Shaking my head, I stuck the note on my fridge with a magnet as backup.
Then I got ready for my day and headed down to the stables. My mind was still on how to approach Brandy, when I heard the rumble of tires and looked to see one particular truck leaving the Kelly Ranch. Of course, it was flying like a bat out of hell. Holland Rose Kelly . . . fast at everything . . . driving, riding, and let’s not forget losing her temper.
Chapter Six
Holland
This was the definition of purgatory. Yeah, it wasn’t hell because I could imagine things being worse but I couldn’t imagine anything being more boring. I was sitting at a long oak table that had been hand carved, I know this because I had been told no less than nine times by Miss Nancy, the town historian. Oh, and it was hand carved by Mrs. Yarborough’s great-grandfather. And just in case you’re wondering, Mrs. Yarborough’s sister ran off with a door-to-door salesman. Not interested? That was okay, neither was I, nor was I interested in hearing about the Buckland family who still resided in these parts or the Slaviks, who moved away in nineteen thirty, but not to worry because their grandchildren still lived here.
The historian was in her late seventies and wore clothes that were obviously from the late seventies as well: a plaid short sleeve shirt with pearl snaps and puffed sleeves tucked into the mom version of bell-bottom jeans that rested under her boobs. It was set off by beauty parlor permed gray hair.
“Miss Nancy . . .”
“And we have an old Edison record player. Here, let me play it for you.” Miss Nancy got up and slid a long tube onto the player. “This record player doesn’t have electricity, so the needle doesn’t move. See the record? It isn’t round like you kids are used to.” I decided that I probably shouldn’t tell her that
records were before my time as well. “I have to crank it to get it playing.”
“That’s an interesting piece of history.” I gave her a tight smile and waited just long enough to avoid coming across as rude before saying, “I really stopped by to talk you about something, though.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?”
Umm, I did, several times. As she walked past items, I could tell that she was longing to tell me about them, and part of me felt bad for stopping her, but I had to get back to the ranch, I had chores to do.
“I was wondering if you knew anything about historical events that happened in Geneva. Maybe about historically important people who have lived here or died here?”
“Well, Chief Osceola . . .” Miss Nancy began her long history of who, when, where, and even why people had moved in and out of Geneva. “The Anthropological Society discovered shards of pottery from 1450 BC—”
“BC as in before Christ?”
“Yes, ma’am, the Timucuan Indians called this area home. And there are maps that show William Powell, who most people know as Chief Osceola had a village here in 1835 . . .”
I wrote down each fact, including the one about the two acres of Indian burial grounds. When Miss Nancy was finally finished, I pushed my chair back before she began on another history lesson. “Thank you so much for your time. If I have more questions, may I call you?”
“Absolutely. Let me give you one of the cards.” She handed me a pamphlet with the address and number of the museum, which wasn’t exactly a business card, but I smiled anyway.
“Thank you again,” I said as I tucked everything into my bag before heading home.
When I pulled into my driveway, there was a shiny Ford F-250 Platinum Super Crew cab parked in front of my house. Yeah, I knew my pickup trucks. I also knew that there was no way in hell I would be willing to spend almost ninety thousand for one.
What I didn’t know was who owned that truck or why it was at my house.
When I walked inside, Paris was in the kitchen, and she turned to me with a smile. “Hey, you’re back.”
“I am, but I never thought I was getting out of there. Who is overcompensating for the lack of something?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think she’s referring to me.”
I turned and grimaced. “Should have known. What are you doing here?” Johnson Holbrook was standing in my home, and all I could think was: where the hell had we put Daddy’s gun.
“Waiting for you. Seems your sisters refuse to talk to me as well.”
“Seems my sisters have good judgment.”
“I had him wait in my office until you came back since I had work to do and no time to babysit. Plus, he refused to believe that I wasn’t you,” London said. The three of us were almost identical, and if it weren’t for each of us being three years apart, we could have told people we were triplets.
“What do you want, Mr. Holbrook?”
“Well, young lady, I was hoping that I might have a moment of your time. It seems that we got off on the wrong foot.”
“You think? Was it the part where you told everyone that it was small pieces of land and then I find out it is twenty-five percent of ours or was it the part where you told me that you didn’t have to pay us your elevated”—I used air quotes when I said elevated—“price. Or, wait I’ve got it, not to get on your bad side. Let me ask you, Mr. Holbrook, do you have a good side?”
As I waited for him to say something back to me, I took in him in. He was trying hard to fit in . . . too hard. His John Deere shirt was crisp and new. He had obviously gone and raided Tractor Supply along with his brand new, not broken in, had to be killing him and giving him blisters, Lucchese cowboy boots. When he didn’t say anything, I decided to keep prodding, of course I did. I knew that my temper was my downfall but damn it all to hell, I needed an outlet. “Fancy boots.” I smirked. Those things set him back a good thousand dollars or more, and for what? To impress a bunch of people who couldn’t care less about brand names.
“I’m a businessman, but I’m also a family man. I understand that you love this land because it has been in your family.”
“You could say that. My grandfather grew up on this property, and my dad was born in this house.”
“And now both of your sisters have homes here and are building their own families here. That’s why I went to the surveyors to see if we could try to salvage some of your land. I know that originally we were asking for one-hundred acres.” Holbrook reached into what could only be an ostrich leather briefcase and pulled out folded papers. “If you see here, it looks as if we can get by with seventy-one acres. I know that still sounds like a lot, but it is better . . . don’t you think?”
“Much better,” Paris added. “It looks as if it is toward the back, so the stables would stay.” I cut my eyes to Paris and gave her a silent but no less effective shut-the-hell-up stare.
“See, I’m a reasonable guy.” He grabbed another form and a pen. “Let’s save us both the headache and take care of all of this right now. I’ve upped the offer per acre a substantial amount.”
I took the paper and pen and read over it, he had raised the offer by almost two hundred dollars per acre. “Wow, you must really want this property if you’re willing to pay this much, it does give one reason to pause. I have to ask myself . . . why?” I touched the pen to the paper, and in one swift movement wrote, hell no, from top corner to bottom corner. Then recapped the pen and handed them both back over. “Thanks for stopping by, but I think that you’re full of shit and right now the only thing I have time for is horse shit, got to go clean the stables and shove some.”
He shook his head at me. “Well, I came to let you know that several of your neighbors have agreed to sell.” I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. I was glad that my back was to him. Reid and I needed to get to the ranchers and talk with them—like now. At least, we needed to talk to the ones who hadn’t agreed to sell yet.
“There’s no sense holding out, Miss Kelly. We’re moving forward with this deal, and it would be nice to have you on board, but it isn’t necessary. Especially since Reid Brooks just agreed to sell us less acres for more money.”
“Reid Brooks is selling his property? You have his signature on your contracts?”
“Sure do. It was a mutual agreement that we would not go after more of his land.”
I couldn’t believe Reid was selling. No way, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. If he did? Just wait until I get my hands around that two-faced, no-good, son-of-a-bitch’s neck. And let’s be honest, it will be sad not having him around to aggravate or gaze upon, he was rather attractive.
He reached into his briefcase, pulled out a Manila envelope, and held it out to me. “I’ll give you one more chance. Miss Kelly, I advise you to take this offer. It isn’t going to be this good again.”
I took the envelope. “Well, if it is written in these papers, then at least I know it can’t get any worse, right? If everything you’re promising me isn’t in the papers, then why would I sign in the first place?” I smiled when my statement squashed his empty threat. Yeah, that was right, city slicker, I might not be the brightest crayon in the box, but I sure as hell wasn’t as dull as you. Or Dick Brooks, for that matter. “Thank you for bringing these out.” I stood and resisted the urge to shove the envelope into the garbage disposal. “Let me see you to the door.”
“Listen—”
I held up a hand. “No, I’ve heard what you have to say, and now it’s time for you to go. I’ll look these over and talk with an attorney. If you change your mind about your offer in the meantime, we will take it as a sign that you are not the kind of person we want to do business with. It will be proof that we will need to fight you and this so-called eminent domain. If that is truly coming down the pipeline.”
“Oh, it is, little lady.”
“Yeah, still a condescending asshole, that isn’t winning you any favors.” I opened my front door and waved one arm,
signaling for him to get the hell out of my house. When he finally did, I slammed it shut and turned to face my sisters.
“This is exactly why I wanted you to deal with him. You stand strong, he tried to rile you, but you didn’t get into a pissing match over whether or not Reid agreed to sell.” London folded her arms and leaned against the doorframe of her office.
“No joke. He was pissed that he couldn’t force you to be a biddable young lady.” Paris was stirring something in a large bowl that she had cradled in the crook of one arm.
“I’m not so sure about that. But I do need to talk with dickhead next door.”
“Do me a favor?” Paris asked.
“What’s that?”
“Calm down first. Go do your normal work and give yourself time to think before you go.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?” London raised one eyebrow, totally not believing my word. “You don’t know that he’s selling. This Holbrook fellow may be lying about that as well.”
Throwing my hands up in the air, I headed out the door and heard them laughing behind me as I walked to the stables. When I got inside and got to mucking out the stalls, it had the opposite effect on me. Instead of calming me, it ignited my inner fire.
Ugh, I hated Johnson Holbrook. He was a giant douche canoe. A dickcicle. I used the pitchfork to shovel the dirty hay into the wheelbarrow and then add fresh to the first stall, which was Ursula’s, and then I moved down to the next. There was no way on God’s green earth that Reid would sell, Holbrook was lying. Reid and I were a team. We were working together. I moved on to the next stall. I was just going to have to go over there and ask Reid myself. Hell, he had hired an attorney. There wasn’t any way he would sell. We made a plan of attack . . . together. Crap, I wasn’t going to get one moment of peace until I asked him.
I marched over to the fence that separated our two stables, be nice, be polite, I kept chanting to myself. “Brooks. Hey, Reid, I have a question for you!” I shouted loud enough so he could hear me.
Steadfast (Iron Horse Book 3) Page 4