The Tycoon

by Anna Jeffrey

  “My God, Shannon. It’s a man, isn’t it? You’re going off to spend the night with some guy, like you used to do with that Justin Turnbow. I thought you had cleaned up your act. Who is it this time?”

  Shannon bit back a sarcastic comeback. “A friend from Fort Worth. No one you’d know.”

  Colleen picked up her coffee cup, her face contorted into a pinch-mouthed expression. “Well I hope he isn’t married.”

  “Oh, Colleen, give me a break here.”

  “I thought you’d learned your lesson. Living there in Grammy Evelyn’s house, showing off as a respectable businesswoman and risking everyone in town finding out you were sleeping with a married man. I still don’t know how you look yourself in the mirror.”

  “It was two years ago. Justin and his wife were separated. Can’t you just leave it alone?”

  “Don’t you ever stop to think that what you do affects your family, too?” Colleen said indignantly. “What if Gavin decides to run for office? What would we tell people? Most of the people in this town are honest and God-fearing. They don’t cheat—”

  “Oh, grow up, Colleen. Half the married couples in this town cheat. They don’t have anything else to do. And what I do in my personal life won’t endanger Gavin’s political future.”

  “I still say, this is Camden, Texas. Who would want to do business with a—”

  Shannon stopped her by setting her cup on its saucer with a clack and glaring. Anger boiled through her. “Don’t say it, Colleen. Don’t you dare say it. I don’t need a lecture or to be called names.”

  She now realized asking her sister for help had been a mistake. “All I wanted you to do was check on Grammy. I’d think that surely you could do that for our grandmother regardless of what you think of me.”

  Colleen’s reply was an exaggerated sniff.

  Out of patience, Shannon stood up and picked up her coat from the stool where she laid it. Her sister hadn’t even offered to hang up her coat. She could think of no one else she wanted to ask to look after their grandmother, but she said, “Never mind. I’ll find someone else—”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. If you get someone else, everyone in town will know what you’re up to.”

  Shannon’s jaw clamped like a vise, but relieved to get Colleen’s cooperation, she held her tongue. As she slipped into her coat, Colleen said, “So tell me, Sister, if I babysit Grammy, would that mean I might get that pair of diamond and opal earrings I’ve always wanted.”

  Shannon stopped and gave her a look. “What diamond and opal earrings?”

  “The ones Grammy said she wore when she and Grandpa got married.”

  “I don’t have them, Colleen, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Hm. Well you’ve gotten everything else from her. I just assumed you’d gotten those, too.”

  This was the way most meetings with her sister went, Shannon thought bitterly. Sooner or later, she always grumbled and complained about Grammy’s personal belongings. “I don’t have them. I imagine they’re in her jewelry box. If you asked her, she’d probably give them to you.” She started for the door. “I have to go.”

  Colleen followed. After their bickering, saying good-bye was awkward.

  “Don’t worry about Grammy,” Colleen said from behind her.

  Shannon nodded, freeing her hair from her collar and hanging her bag on her shoulder. “I appreciate your looking in on her.” As she stepped through the doorway, Colleen said her name and she looked back.

  “I hope it’s worth it,” her sister said.

  “Worth what?”

  “What you’re doing. I just hope it’s worth it.”

  With that, Shannon found herself standing on her sister’s front porch with the door closed in her face.

  Shaking her head at the futility of ever having a cordial relationship with her older sister, Shannon scooted behind the wheel of her SUV. All the way back to town, she stewed over how poorly she and her only sister got along. The age difference between them was enough for them to never have been friends. When Shannon was a little girl, Colleen had been her babysitter while their harebrained mother did who knew what. The responsibility had kept Colleen from socializing with her friends. She had resented it then and Shannon wondered if she still did after all these years.

  She stopped by her office to catch up on some last minute Friday housekeeping chores before calling Drake. Only Chelsea was present. As she sat at her desk shuffling through the pages of a contract Terry had left on her desk, the bell on the front door dinged. Seconds later, a tap came on her office door and Chelsea stepped inside.

  “There’s a couple out there who wants to look at houses,” Chelsea said, her mouth flatlined. She looked down at a piece of paper in her hand. “Martha and Art Springer.”

  “Today?” Shannon asked.

  Chelsea nodded.

  “Call Kelly or Terry to come in. I’m fixing to—”

  Chelsea’s head shook.

  Oh, hell. “They aren’t available? Don’t tell me.”

  The receptionist’s head shook again.

  “Great.” Resigned to the change in her plans, Shannon put out her hand for the note. “Tell them I’ll be right with them. And do me a favor, will you? Call my sister and tell her I won’t need her help. I’m not going out of town after all.”

  Chapter 23

  The Springers were yakkety customers who peppered her with a non-stop barrage of stories and conversation. As the appointment dragged into the evening hours, Shannon worried about Grammy Evelyn at home alone. She barely found an opportunity to call and check on her, much less place a call to Drake. After parting from the Springers at 10:30, she sent him a text message rather than risk waking him. He seemed to be such a hip guy, she couldn’t imagine that he didn’t text.

  Saturday began early and was a repeat of Friday. Worried that Drake might not have gotten her text message, she managed to find a few minutes to call him. He didn’t answer, so she left a voice message.

  Fortunately, the Springers found a home they liked and put in a bid on a $400,000 purchase, to which the seller agreed. The sale wouldn’t close until January, but that was okay. Shannon needed commissions in January, too. And this one, she didn’t have to split with another agent.

  She barely made it to the Camden Realtors’ party. If she hadn’t bought the tickets early and hadn’t promised to take Grammy Evelyn, she wouldn’t have gone at all.

  She awoke Sunday morning exhausted. As she lay staring at the ceiling, she wondered what Drake might be doing at the moment. He was probably mad as hell.

  She dragged herself out of bed and checked her phone for a reply from Drake. Nothing. Yep, he was mad.

  After pulling herself together, she took Grammy Evelyn to church. Colleen and Gavin made cursory conversation before the service. She could tell her sister was dying to ask why Chelsea had called and canceled the need for someone to look after Grammy Evelyn.

  As the preacher droned on, Shannon fought not to doze. Thoughts and memories floated in and out of her half-hypnotized state. It was just as well she hadn’t been able to go to Stone Mountain. Why take on a battle? And she was sure a battle was what it would have been. Him tormenting her with bone-melting sex and her trying to be blasé and not care about him.

  She could already see the not caring part wasn’t working. Because she couldn’t erase him from her thoughts, couldn’t keep from wondering where he was and what he was doing.

  After church, she and Grammy exchanged another short conversation with Gavin and Colleen and some of Grammy’s friends, but the north wind was chilly and no one wanted to stand around outside and chat.

  Grammy had left a pot roast in the Crockpot at home. As Shannon helped with lunch, her thoughts drifted to Drake again and she wondered if Grammy might know the Lockharts. She had been born and raised in Camden, and the Lockhart family had lived in Drinkwell for generations.

  “Grammy, do you know the Lockharts from Drinkwell?” she asked.


  Her grandmother stopped what she was doing and turned. “Oh, lands, yes. Everyone knows them. Why do you ask, dear?”

  Shannon’s pulse quickened. She nearly dropped the silverware she was picking from a drawer. “Oh, no special reason. I just heard something about one of them last week.”

  Her grandmother returned to lifting potatoes out of the Crockpot. “I’m not surprised. There’s always been a lot of talk about that family. Most of it not good.”

  She topped off the bowl of steaming potatoes with steaming carrots and onions and carried the bowl to the table. “My Lloyd and Bill Lockhart Senior were the same age. When they both

  were still alive, Bill Senior bought hay from us. We grew wonderful hay and he would sometimes buy the whole crop.”

  “No kidding,” Shannon said, intrigued that her family had a remote connection to the Lockharts. But then, many probably did. They were the most influential family in the whole area.

  “Bill Senior was a hard man,” Grammy Evelyn continued. “I learned something from doing business with him. Rich people always do what they want to, regardless of the damage they might leave behind them. They have no conscience about trampling daisies.

  “What do you mean, Grammy?”

  “When Lloyd and Bill Senior negotiated for the crop, it looked to me like it always went in Bill Senior’s favor. But Lloyd thought he was fair. I don’t know if he was or not, but I know plenty of people from Treadway County who think he’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Since he owns most of the land in that county, he also owns the officials.”

  Shannon looked up from setting the table, now eager to pick her grandmother’s brain. “Do you know any of the younger family members?”

  Grammy Evelyn was back in the kitchen, lifting the roast out of its gravy. She set it on a platter and picked up a knife.

  Shannon walked over and took the knife from her. “Let me slice it, Grammy,”

  “I never knew any of the other Lockharts,” Grammy Evelyn said. “Bill Senior had only the one son. He and his wife thought they couldn’t have children, you see, so their boy came along when they were older than most starting a family. Some people thought Sarah Lockhart never got pregnant because Bill Senior didn’t spend enough nights at home.”

  Shannon laughed. “Grammy, you wicked thing.”

  “Well, that’s what people said, dear. And when they finally had their son, they called him Bill Junior. People still call him that to this day. Imagine that. Couldn’t even give him his own name.” She shook her head. “So much arrogance.”

  As Shannon carried the platter of sliced roast to the table and set it alongside the bowl of vegetables, her grandmother walked over to the dining room window and looked outside toward the square. Shannon could almost see her memory spinning backward. “Bill Junior was a golden child all right,” Grammy Evelyn said. “The sole heir to the whole Double-Barrel Ranch. The land, the cattle, the oil wells, the cotton farms. And everything else that went with it.”

  “Wow,” Shannon said, imagining the barrier between her and Drake growing higher yet.

  “Bill Senior was ruthless. There was always talk about how he cheated his brother and sisters out of their share of that ranch. He was not an only child, you see. He had a brother and two sisters. I don’t think a one of them still lives in Treadway County.” Grammy Evelyn’s head slowly shook. “There was a lot of bitterness. Even some lawsuits.”

  She sighed and played with the edge of the crocheted curtain that covered the window. “But I lost track of them after Lloyd died and the farm left our family.”

  Grammy Evelyn rarely said anything about the Lloyd farm, which Shannon knew had consisted of hundreds of acres on the banks of what was now Camden Lake. She picked up the salad she had made and carried it to the table. “What happened with the hay? Did they just stop buying it?”

  “There wasn’t any to buy. Lloyd passed away and your daddy and I leased out the farm. And that was just a terrible mistake. The tenants didn’t know much about farming in this area. They didn’t want to grow hay. They tried several other crops, but it didn’t work out. They were so inept they couldn’t have grown weeds, much less good hay. They forfeited on the lease and we had to sue them. With Danny sick, it was a great hardship and very stressful.”

  “I’ve never heard you say you leased the farm,” Shannon said, back in the kitchen and dumping ice cubes into glasses and pouring tea. “If my dad was still alive then, why didn’t he take it over and farm like Grandpa did?”

  “Your daddy never did want to farm, dear. He went to college to be an engineer. He was more interested in his job at the bomber plant in Fort Worth than he was the farm.”

  Shannon thought about her father, Dan Piper. She could scarcely remember him, but everyone who did still talked about how smart he was. And how selfish. He had contracted pancreatic cancer and passed away not long after Shannon’s grandfather’s death. She was fifteen when he died, but her mother had divorced him several years before that.

  “When those tenants finally gave up,” her grandmother continued, “Danny’s doctors weren’t giving him any hope. So with Lloyd already gone and Danny soon to leave me, I just sold the place. We needed the money. We had a big farm auction and got rid of all the equipment. Then I sold the land to those Dallas real estate people.”

  Shannon had to laugh inwardly. Grammy Evelyn always said “those real estate people” as if she had just bitten down on a bug. Shannon was certain that when the tiny elderly woman made remarks like that, she never considered that Shannon was now one of them. “Grammy, don’t forget, you have a good friend who’s a real estate person and I’m one, too.”

  She turned away from the window and planted a skinny hand on one hip, defiance showing in her eyes. “Well, I hope you aren’t like them. They nagged Lloyd for years. We had several miles of frontage on the highway through town on one side, you know, and the lake on the other. They were pushy enough when he was alive, but after he went, they were like starving dogs after a big bone. I’ve always believed they took advantage of me.”

  “Sit down and let’s eat,” Shannon said, eager for her grandmother to keep talking. She knew so little of her family’s history.

  “I was so weak then,” Grammy Evelyn said, taking a seat at the table. “All I could think of was trying to get Danny well. I wasn’t very smart either. Lloyd always took care of our business.” A wistful expression crossed her face as she spread her napkin in her lap.“We had beautiful land. Such bountiful peach trees and pecan trees. Big ancient live oaks. Those real estate rascals were just itching to get their hands on it so they could put buildings on it. And now look at what they’ve done to it.”

  Camden’s only strip mall sat on part of what had been the Piper farm. So did several big box retail stores, as well as smaller businesses. At some point, Grammy Evelyn must have been paid a lot of money for such valuable real estate. But now, she had nothing but the roof over her head and wouldn’t even have that if it weren’t for Shannon. “If it made you unhappy, I’m sorry it worked out that way, Grammy.”

  “Your daddy’s passing showed me how short life is, Shannon. He was only forty years old. You probably don’t remember those days. Your mother wasn’t speaking to us and she didn’t allow you to come around us. She thought we were backward old farmers. Hicks, she called us.”

  Shannon recalled hearing those very words, among others, about Lloyd and Evelyn Piper from her mother. During her years growing up, she’d had almost no acquaintance with the Pipers. After she became an adult, she had learned that much of what her mother had told her about her father’s family wasn’t true.

  Now that Grammy Evelyn had started talking, she didn’t appear to want to stop. “Danny’s treatment cost us so much. The insurance we had didn’t begin to cover it. I took him everywhere, trying to save him. After he passed, I tried to make some of the money back with investments. I lost so much money. I didn’t know how to invest. I didn’t know where to go to get advice.
In those days, there weren’t any smart financial people in Camden. I gave up being an investor before I lost everything. I took what was left and tried to enjoy life.”

  As Shannon recalled, she had indeed enjoyed life and had little contact with her only two grandchildren. She traveled everywhere, bought expensive clothing and jewelry, went on luxury cruises. And that was what Shannon was aware of. She couldn’t guess what Grammy Evelyn had done that no one knew about. There had been times when Shannon barely had enough money for food, but all she had heard from her grandmother was that she had gone to the Mediterranean or New Zealand or some other exotic place.

  Still, Shannon held no resentment. After all, the money belonged to her grandmother to spend as she wanted to. She reached over and covered her grandmother’s aged hand with her own. “I hope you did enjoy it, Grammy.”

  A little old lady heh-heh-heh erupted. “Oh, I did, dear. I surely did. Unfortunately, I’ve outlived the money. And now you’re having to take care of me.”

  “I’m not complaining. This is as close to home as I’ve ever had.”

  Grammy Evelyn gave her a direct look. “I like hearing you say that, Shannon, but I know I didn’t do right by you and Colleen when we were all younger. After Lloyd, then Danny, passed so close together, I was a lost person for a long time. I lived in a fog of grief. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. And now, taking me on is keeping you from enjoying your life. You work so hard. You have no social life. You should have a man in your life while you’re still young.”

  “No time,” Shannon said. “Maybe I’ll get around to that later.”

  And after hearing about the Lockhart family, it would be much later. She no longer felt so guilty about not making it to Stone Mountain Lodge.

  ****

  Mid-afternoon, Drake stopped at Stone Mountain Lodge’s registration desk and arranged to be driven to the airstrip where the family’s Gulfstream awaited him.

  The driver said little, leaving Drake alone with his black thoughts. He had checked his cell phone for messages this morning for the first time since Friday, and seen two from Shannon. She had sent him a text message last night and a voice mail this morning. When he keyed into the voice mail box, he heard a rushed message: “Hi. Sorry, but I couldn’t make it. I got tied up.” Then the line went dead.