The New Mexico Scoundrel

by R Scott Wallis

  “About 18 hours. I get released in the morning.”

  The girl’s face fell. “Oh, Miss Reece, if I do you up now, I’m not sure what it’s going to look like come tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s the beauty of having so much time,” Georgia said. “I thought we could do it once now, as a rehearsal of sorts, and then you could come back again in the morning and get me ready for my departure.”

  “I guess I can do that,” she said. “But it’s going to cost a bit more.”

  Georgia produced the FedEx envelope that her bank’s wealth manager had overnighted to her at the hospital from New York City—she called him an ‘absolute lamb’ for seeing to it so quickly on the Friday before the holiday weekend. She pulled out a small stack of $100 bills and a brand new American Express Platinum card. “Cash or charge?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Darby was loosely wrapped in a terrycloth bathrobe and was sitting on the end of Sullivan’s unmade bed. His long hair was sticking up and out in every direction because after he took a shower, he got right into the bed with wet hair and it dried that way. Carter thought he looked like that famous police mugshot of the actor Nick Nolte from the early 2000’s—he was just missing the wild Hawaiian floral shirt. And Nolte’s talent.

  “What the fuck is wrong with your brain?” Carter asked. “Excuse my French, man, but you can’t just parade around the house buck naked, even if it were just the three of us here. Seriously. No one thinks this is funny. You’re just…just…you have no class, man. No class.”

  Darby was unfazed. “I don’t think the word fuck is French, actually.”

  Carter shook his head in defeat.

  “What’s up, buddy?” Sullivan was more optimistic. “What can we do to help you? Is it drugs again?”

  “I am not on drugs. I haven’t even smoked weed since I’ve been here. I don’t even have any with me. The worst thing I’ve had since I’ve been in this Godforsaken place is a few glasses of wine and a cigar or two. I’m clean as a whistle.”

  “So, what’s with the attitude? And nudity?”

  “I’m free with my body, Sully,” Darby said. “I don’t need to be ashamed of my nakedness. My maleness. My essence.”

  Carter exploded. “Your essence is a big pile of stinking bullshit, is what it is! Essence, my ass.”

  “At least I didn’t shoot anyone with Daddy’s gun today.”

  Carter lunged forward and grabbed Darby around the throat. They both went flying backward and toppling off the bed onto the floor as Sullivan jumped on the pile and feverishly tried to extract the eldest Lowery from the youngest before someone was choked to death. “Stop it, guys. Please. Stop!”

  Darby was fighting back, pulling on Carter’s hair and trying desperately to position his knee in order to deliver a…

  “Mother fucker!” Carter screamed, then he couldn’t catch his breath. Darby’s knee was indeed delivered, squarely, and quite forcefully, to Carter’s balls. The oldest brother rolled onto his back, tears escaping from his closed eyes.

  “Why’d you do that?” Sullivan asked as he pulled Darby to his feet. “Hasn’t he been through enough today?”

  “Has he? He doesn’t give a shit about me. He never has.”

  “Have you given him a reason? You’ve been nothing but a pain in everyone’s ass since day one. Even Mom and Dad thought that.”

  “Sully! Dude. That hurts.”

  ​“Oh, you are hurt?” Carter asked. He managed to prop himself up against the dresser. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”

  “Walk it off,” Darby said. He turned back to Sullivan. “I’m sorry if I have been less than pleasant on this trip. I really am committed to becoming a better person. That wasn’t a lie. Getting screwed over by my girlfriend has taught me a few things about life.”

  Carter massaged his crotch and tried desperately to control his rage. “I don’t want to fight with you. But if you won’t start acting like a normal, civilized person, you’re going to have to leave this house. This is no way to spend Christmas.”

  “You don’t have to leave,” Sullivan corrected. “We want to know what’s going on with you.”

  “I’m good,” Darby said quietly. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

  Carter exhaled deeply and managed to get to his feet. “Super duper.”

  “But there is one thing I really could use some help with.” Darby swallowed hard and tried displaying a small crooked smile before he continued. “I sorta, kinda owe a guy named Amancio Granada $750,000 by New Year’s Eve.”

  The twins were speechless.

  “Say something, guys.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Sullivan managed.

  Carter shook his head slowly. “We don’t have that kind of cash lying around, dude. Everything Sully and I have in the world is tied up in new hotel projects right now. We reinvest every damned dime in order to grow the company.” He took a deep breath, but it wasn’t helping. He started to get angrier. “Are you serious right now? Who is this Granada person? A drug dealer? There is no way that you could have possibly racked up…”

  Sullivan threw a hand up in Carter’s face and then sat down on the edge of the bed next to Darby. “Amancio Granada, the Broadway producer? Is that who you are talking about? Why on Earth would you owe him money?”

  Darby was staring at the wall.

  “Darby. Three quarters of a million dollars, for what?”

  “I kind of told him that Franklin-Lowery was interested in branching out into the entertainment business and that we wanted to invest in his new musical. It all happened so fast. I was on the spot.” He got up and fished his wallet out of his crumpled jeans on the floor. He dug out a business card and passed it to Sullivan.

  Darby Lowery

  Business Development

  Franklin-Lowery LLC

  175 5th Avenue

  New York, New York 10010

  212-555-0229 / DarbyLowery@franklinlowery.com

  “Where did you get this?” He handed the card to Carter.

  “You don’t work at Franklin-Lowery. You never have.” Carter crushed the card in his fist. “You can’t commit us to investments if you don’t work for the company. This is just about the most insane thing you’ve ever done, buddy, and you’ve done some seriously screwed up stuff in your short lifetime. I’ll make this very simple for you: You need to get yourself out of that deal.”

  “Contracts were signed.”

  Carter started out of the bedroom, but then stopped short and turned around. “You signed a contract by misrepresenting yourself. You! Sully and I have nothing to do with this. The company has nothing to do with this.”

  “Actually, that’s not quite true,” Sullivan said calmly. “Darby technically owns a third of our shares of Franklin-Lowery.”

  It took a few long seconds for him to realize what his brother had just confessed, then Carter slumped against the doorjamb. “Mother. Fucker.” He waited a few beats and then said, “Damn it, Sully.”

  “I own what?!” Darby yelled. It was starting to sink in. He jumped off the bed and crouched down like a football player waiting for the quarterback to call the play. “I own a third of Dad’s company and you never told me?” He stood straight up and put a hand on his forehead. “I don’t understand. I was faking that I worked at the company and I could have been doing it for real? Why would you guys keep this from me? How do I own a third of the company? How did this happen? A third? Really?”

  “It’s a very complicated story,” Carter said. “But the lawyers were in agreement with us and we all decided to keep it from you for your own damned good. When Dad died, you were in rehab for the second time. But maybe you don’t remember that.”

  Sullivan approached his younger brother and placed a hand on his back. “We were going to tell you. Eventually. We were waiting for you to grow up.”

  “Well, damn. I’m rich.”

  Carter shook his head. “You aren’t that rich.”

  “How mu
ch am I worth? Like, on paper.”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30. But most of it is tied up in the hotels, obviously. You can’t get at it. But you get dividends.”

  “Thirty?” Darby asked, literally scratching his head. “Thirty, what?”

  “Million,” Sullivan said matter-of-factly.

  Darby let out a bloodcurdling scream that the tourists in downtown Santa Fe most likely heard.

  * * *

  “What the hell is going on back there?” Leonard asked Skyler when she joined him in the Great Room.

  “A family squabble of some sort, I imagine. I couldn’t hear much. These walls are too damned thick.”

  “It’s basically a log cabin. Not great for eavesdropping.”

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” Skyler said. She sat down on the couch and put a hand in Leonard’s lap. “Okay, I was trying to listen. It’s all so juicy.”

  “I couldn’t care less. I want to go help get this Georgia person and then I want us to hightail it out of here. Brenda’s onboard, too. She just went to her room to see if she could make a Skype call since the phone service sucks so much.”

  “Who is she calling?”

  “A charter service. We’re going to Vegas to finish out this trip.”

  “Christmas in Las Vegas does not sound right to me.” She gestured around the cavernous room complete with roaring fire in the stone fireplace and the commanding view of the trees and mountains outside. “This is Christmas.”

  Leonard took Skyler’s hand in his own and gently squeezed. “Let me get this straight. Now you’d rather stay here, in a cabin, miles from town, with people we hardly know, and multiple madmen on the loose? And risk your boyfriend being shot again in the woods? That’s Christmas to you? I thought you were ready to leave.”

  Skyler’s face wrinkled up. “It sounds crazy, I know. But Georgia is a very good friend of the twins. The twins are Brenda’s business partners. And Brenda is my best friend in the world. So, this seems like the place we should be. For now. If we had family we wanted to be with somewhere, I’d probably feel differently. But since I am not at all eager to go watch my nieces and nephews tear open gifts at 5:30 in the morning, and because a smoky Vegas casino is just not the place I really enjoy at all…then this is it.”

  “But your best friend in the world is in there getting a plane to take us out of New Mexico. If she’s comfortable leaving the insanity behind, I think we should be, too.”

  “I’m conflicted.”

  “I’m not.”

  “So, you’re just going to go get Georgia and then run? Not see this through? Where’s the Christmas spirit in that? I really do feel like we should help, Leonard. It’s what we do. And let’s not forget that the local police have not done a damned thing. The security team Georgia hired was a complete nightmare. Even the F.B.I. seems uninterested. We are her best bet, and you know it. Plus, you saw what Carter did.”

  “Saw?” Leonard exclaimed. “I felt what that idiot did. And it still smarts.”

  “We really should go to the hospital.”

  “You need to drop it. I’m fine. And I’ve already explained why that isn’t going to happen.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, staring at the fire.

  “Carter isn’t an idiot,” Skyler finally said.

  “Maybe he’s not, I don’t know. But I do know that he has no business handling a firearm.”

  The next few hours were spent hemming and hawing about leaving New Mexico. Skyler wanted to stay, Leonard was ready to leave, and Brenda had become indifferent, especially when it became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to charter a plane because of the holidays. She contacted every outfit she could think of and absolutely nothing was available. There were options on American and United, but getting to Las Vegas from Santa Fe meant changing planes in Denver or Dallas, and it didn’t matter anyway, because she refused to fly commercial with two large dogs in tow. She’d rather walk the 630 miles than put Mulder and Scully in cages and ship them in the belly of a freezing, dark airplane.

  So, it was decided that they’d hunker down and make the best of it in the Lowery’s beautiful rented house. Brenda hatched a plan to stock the kitchen. Skyler volunteered to find a Christmas tree and decorations. And the twins—when they weren’t fielding 7,000 questions about the family business from their ecstatic new partner—decided that it would be best to let Georgia take the lead on which Lowery brother (Darby not included) she wanted to share a bed with upon her return. Vying for the same woman was a situation Carter and Sullivan had never been in before, but one thing was made crystal clear that afternoon: They would not be sharing her. Carter was still sore that Sullivan would even suggest such a ‘perverted arrangement,’ as he called it.

  When Brenda, Skyler, and Darby left to run errands, Leonard helped the twins move furniture around the Great Room to make room for the tree. When they were happy with the new arrangement, they popped open three beers and sat in front of the fire.

  “I confirmed the King Air,” Carter said. “We’re taking off from S.A.F. tomorrow morning at 8:30. The pilot is getting double time for flying on Christmas Eve, so it wasn’t all that cheap. But, I don’t see that we had much of a choice since we ruled out driving.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Leonard said. “I’m not excited about it, but I’ll soldier through. I’m bringing my gun, by the way, in case you need to alert the pilot.” He turned to Carter. “And you are not bringing your gun, buddy boy.”

  “Holy shit,” Carter said. “My gun.” He placed his beer on the coffee table and got to his feet. “Holy shit!”

  “Where is the gun?”

  “I never picked it up after I shot you,” Carter said. “Unless you picked it up. Tell me that you picked up the gun.”

  Leonard shook his head. “I did not. I was too concerned about bleeding to death in the woods.”

  “Then it’s out there lying in the brush.”

  “I think someone needs to go out there and get that damned gun,” Sullivan said. “And you guys better be more careful this time. And please don’t forget that there’s a crazy woman on the loose out there and maybe even a lunatic Italian man. Not to mention all the bears and coyotes.”

  “Thanks, Sullivan,” Leonard said. “That makes me feel much better.”

  Carter and Leonard bundled up for a late-afternoon trek back into the woods, then left a weaponless Sullivan with the dogs to guard the house.

  After nearly two hours of attempting to retrace their steps, they finally came upon the spot where they thought the gun went off. When Leonard found and removed the slug from the side of a tree, they were certain.

  They feverishly searched the ground until just after sunset, but the unregistered weapon was nowhere to be found. They stood in the nearly dark woods, both breathing heavy.

  “Now what?” a distraught Carter asked.

  “You better start praying,” Leonard said. “How many bullets were left in it?”

  “Five.”

  “Pray real hard.”

  * * *

  When everyone returned to the house, the six of them worked as a team redecorating the Christmas tree that Skyler and Darby commandeered from Georgia’s house. Everyone was able to table their various anxieties for the evening—including Darby, who was still riding high on the news that he was actually a very well-off young man—and they enjoyed pizza and beer around the Great Room fireplace, then all retired at a reasonable hour. It went without saying that they knew the next few days would be eventful ones.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  On Christmas Eve morning, Brenda woke up with a start, worrying about Froment du Léon cows.

  During her time as an apprentice at Joël Corentin’s L’Atelier Delphine in Paris, she learned about the plight of the French breed of dairy cattle from the restaurant’s chef, who was quite obsessed with the topic. If you would listen, he would talk about the cows ad nauseam and, besides cooking, the chef had made saving the cows his li
fe’s passion.

  In the early twentieth century, there were thousands of the brown and white horned bovines, and they were, and still are, revered for their yellow, high fat content milk that is used to create the most decadent butter. By the middle of the century, the population was dwindling fast, and by the late-1970’s, their numbers were reduced to a mere 50 head.

  A breed society was established and ever so slowly, their numbers began to grow again. In the early twenty-first century, there were a few hundred, and it continues to grow, albeit too slowly for many who care about such endangered things. Like Brenda’s old teacher.

  Brenda knew every last detail about the effort to save the majestic cows who lived in France’s north-west coastal region, because of her teacher’s new book, “Sauvez les Bovins: Froment du Léon.” It went into great detail about the effort to preserve the breed and included some pretty amazing recipes, too. It was written in French, naturellement, and the exercise of forcing herself to read the fat tome was not only educating her about the cows and their milk, but she was brushing up on her rusty French at the same time.

  It was all going to her head and staying there. Especially when she took the book to bed late at night and then dreamt of fatty butter until morning.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and found her bathrobe amongst a giant mess of clothes and other belongings on the floor. I’m as big as a Froment du Léon and as messy as a porc, she thought, which caused her to laugh out loud. She was still chuckling when she entered the kitchen as Leonard and the twins were preparing to head out the front door.

  Skyler raised up on to her toes in order to reach Leonard’s lips for a kiss. “Don’t forget to ask Georgia the name of the design student.”

  “I won’t,” Leonard said as he zipped up his jacket. He bellowed over his shoulder as he held open the front door for the twins, “Good morning, Brenda. See you soon. I hope.”

  And they were gone.

  Brenda looked at a now sullen Skyler who had sat down at the table. “I’m sorry I slept so late. I was dreaming about endangered cows.”