Don't Let It Be True

by Jo Barrett

  He had to devise another plan. Something to help rescue Wyatt. With Felix and his goons on their heels for five hundred thousand dollars, there wasn’t much time.

  Thirty-nine

  Wyatt and Dylan sat on the couch, looking like a pair of schoolboys who’d just gotten caught flinging spitballs.

  Kat stood in front of them, her hands on her hips. She was wearing her “Malibu Is for Lovers” T-shirt, and she wasn’t smiling. “You’ve been summoned,” she said, in an ominous tone.

  “Summoned where?” Wyatt asked.

  Dylan elbowed his brother in the ribs. “Why’d you have to live in Vegas in the first place!”

  “Stop it, Dylan!” Wyatt pushed Dylan on the couch. The two brothers got into a little struggling match, so Kat had to resort to last remedies.

  She began to tap her foot…tap…tap…tap.

  Dylan and Wyatt stopped wrestling, and stopped breathing altogether.

  “Aunt Lucinda wants to see both of you,” Kat said.

  “Oh brother,” Wyatt said.

  “C’mon, Kat,” Dylan pleaded.

  Kat held up her hand. “No ifs, ands, or buts. She wants to see both of you right now. And I told her we’d be on our way.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Wyatt grumbled. He reached out and grabbed a can of Dr Pepper off the coffee table.

  “Me neither,” Dylan said.

  “I don’t care what you want,” Kat said. “You’re going!”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Wyatt said, taking a chug from his soda.

  “Grow up, Wyatt,” Kat said, and then regretted saying it because Wyatt looked stung. He stared up at her from the couch with those beautiful blue eyes of his, reminding her of a sad little puppy.

  It was time to change her tone of voice, and her tactics. “Put your shoes on, Wyatt,” Kat said, picking up Wyatt’s tennis shoes and dropping them at his feet.

  “Lucinda spent all day making you her ribs and special dunking sauce that you love. I don’t think it’s fair to keep her waiting, do you?”

  Wyatt’s ears literally perked up. He bent down and tied his shoes on. “Did you hear that, Dylan? Lucinda’s making her ribs.”

  “It’s a trick,” Dylan replied. He grabbed the key to the condo and held open the door.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” he whispered, as Kat passed by him.

  “You better be,” she snapped.

  Kat knew that Dylan was sorry. She knew that he hadn’t meant to lie. And she knew that Dylan was under pressure to pay off Wyatt’s debt.

  But still. Breaking into Bo Harlan’s office, and risking a felony charge. That was pretty bad.

  Forty

  The three of them piled into the truck and set off for the Cullen King mansion. Dylan steered the truck down Kirby Drive and turned right onto the winding streets of River Oaks. They reached Lazy Lane where the houses were big and set back from the street. These were the types of grand estates surrounded by gates and guard shacks and thick privacy hedges.

  Dylan pulled up to one of the gates and pressed the buzzer. A bevy of landscaping trucks was parked outside, and Dylan watched as the landscapers took to chopping down a dead live oak tree and putting it inside a wood shredder.

  Lucinda’s voice came on the buzzer.

  “Let me guess. It’s Jesse James,” she said, over the microphone.

  Dylan clenched his teeth. This wasn’t going to be fun.

  The gate swung open in a wide arc and Dylan pulled the truck up to the front of the house.

  It was not your typical white colonial, or even your French chateau or Spanish Mediterranean. No. Cullen Davis King had built his home using a renowned architect from Chicago. The house was entirely unique, with sweeping windows and angles that took one’s breath away. It was as if the house did not have a single straight line, but was instead a series of warm flowing curves.

  Aunt Lucinda was standing on the front porch wearing a flowery Hawaiian muumuu. She wore purple sandals, a matching purple necklace, wrist bangles, and dangly earrings that looked like they were crafted from some type of indigenous island shell.

  “Aloha, pretty girl,” she said, grabbing Kathleen by her shoulders and kissing her on the forehead.

  “Well, well, look who we have here,” Lucinda said, crossing her arms over her wide barrel of a chest. Dylan and Wyatt walked cautiously toward her, as if they were afraid she would bite.

  “If it ain’t the Rough Riders,” she said. “Come here, you.” She held her arms out to hug Wyatt.

  Wyatt limped over to Aunt Lucinda. She grabbed him in a big bear hug, and they rocked back and forth a moment. Then Lucinda let Wyatt go. She took a good look at him and then gave him a sharp whap across the top of his head.

  “What on earth were you thinking, child?”

  Wyatt stared at his shoes and scuffed his good leg across the pavement. “I dunno,” he said sheepishly.

  “And you!” Lucinda pointed her finger at Dylan. “What have you gotten your brother into?”

  Great, Dylan thought. Here it goes again. As the older brother, he had always borne responsibility for Wyatt. Since they didn’t have much of a father figure growing up, it’d been up to Dylan to care for his younger brother. Now that Wyatt was a grown man, things still hadn’t changed.

  And of course, Wyatt wouldn’t rescue him. He wouldn’t say, Wait a second, I’m the person who moved to Vegas and gambled away a half million bucks.

  Nope. When it came to Aunt Lucinda, the rule was fairly straightforward.

  Every man for himself, Dylan thought.

  Wyatt plunged his hands into his jeans pockets. He looked over at Dylan and shrugged.

  Hmph! Typical.

  Lucinda eyed Dylan. “Come here and show your aunt some love,” she said. Dylan trudged over to her. She grabbed him in a strong bear hug, and shook him back and forth. Aunt Lucinda smelled good, like pie, and her bracelets jangled on her wrist.

  She grabbed Dylan by the shoulders and stared him hard in the eye. “You little devil, you should be ashamed of yo’self,” she said, rapping him on the top of his head, just like she’d rapped Wyatt.

  He knew that was coming.

  “Well, don’t just stand there. Come on in.” Lucinda waved them inside. “Don’t worry. I hid all my jewelry,” she said, as a little joke.

  Kathleen broke into a small smile.

  Dylan came up behind Kat and tried to encircle his arm around her waist, but she smacked his hand away.

  “Body off limits,” she announced.

  Dylan grunted. “You’re being unfair.”

  “Am I?” She swiveled around and stared up into his eyes.

  Dylan glanced at Kat’s hand and saw that she was still wearing the ring. He knew she’d already shown it to Aunt Lucinda because Kat’s former nanny hadn’t made a fuss. And a ring like that wouldn’t go unnoticed by Aunt Lucinda—who noticed everything.

  The interior of the house was just as Dylan remembered it. With the decor chosen by Kat’s mother, who’d been known in Houston circles as having an eye for French antiques. The house was warm, despite the museum-quality furniture, chandeliers, and ornate carpets covering the parquet wood floors.

  Lucinda waved them into a small sunroom off the side of the kitchen. There, Dylan saw that she’d set up a generous spread, Lucinda-style.

  There was barbecue sausage and ribs and chicken along with cole slaw, fresh corn, Caesar salad, and Lucinda’s famous homemade rolls slabbed with warm butter.

  “Wooo eee. Chow time,” Wyatt said, rubbing his palms together.

  “Before we eat, I’d like for Dylan to say the blessing,” Lucinda said, shooting Dylan a stern look.

  Dylan sighed and bit his bottom lip. “If we could all grab hands,” he said. The four of them stood in a circle and held each other’s hands. Dylan took this opportunity to grab on to Kat’s hand and squeeze. She didn’t squeeze back, but she didn’t let go, either.

  “Let’s bow our heads,” Dylan said, and they all bo
wed their heads.

  Dylan closed his eyes. He stood in silence for a moment, and then he blurted out:

  “Dear Lord,

  “Thank you for this food. Thank you for giving us the blessing of each other’s company. And please watch over the children and families in the hospital, especially the children who are struggling. We need a miracle, Lord, so we hope you’re listening. Thank you. Amen.”

  “Amen,” everyone chimed in.

  As Dylan said this last part, he squeezed Kat’s hand. This time, she squeezed back.

  Dylan’s heart swelled in his chest. He bent over and kissed Kat on the top of her head and whispered, “I’m sorry, Kathleen.”

  She stared up into his eyes. “I know.”

  They were back. He knew this. And she’d forgiven him.

  “I guess congratulations are in order,” Aunt Lucinda said, as she dipped out a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes onto Wyatt’s plate.

  Wyatt licked some of Lucinda’s special barbecue sauce off the edge of his thumb. “Delicious, Aunt Lou,” he said.

  Aunt Lucinda waved her hand as if to say, It ain’t nothin’, honey.

  Wyatt plopped down at the table and dug into his food. “When are you two lovebirds tying the knot?” he asked. “I assume I’ve got best man duties.”

  Dylan reached over and grabbed Kathleen’s hand. “We have some planning to do,” he said.

  Kat stuck a fork into the side of Lucinda’s homemade peach cobbler. “Aunt Lucinda and I have been discussing it,” she said, “and we thought we could have the wedding right here. In Pa Pa’s house.”

  Aunt Lucinda clapped her large hands and squealed. “It will be the most beautiful wedding ever, child!” She turned to Dylan. “What do you think, Jesse James?”

  Dylan set his fork down. “Here? In this house?”

  Lucinda swiveled around in her chair. “And what’s wrong with this house?” she boomed.

  “Nothing, Lou. It’s just that…I don’t know. I guess I’ve always felt…” Dylan trailed off.

  Now Lucinda was standing up and leaning over the table. She was lopping a heaping spoonful of ham and peas onto Wyatt’s plate, and her bangles jingled on her wrist.

  “What happened? Devil got your tongue? Out with it,” Lucinda commanded, heaving back down into her chair.

  An awkward silence descended over the sunroom, and even Wyatt stopped chewing his rib midway through.

  “You’ve always felt what?” Kat said, softly.

  Terrific, Dylan thought. He’d stepped in it now. How could he explain that even in death, Cullen Davis King was still larger than life, an iconic figure in Texas history and the oil business that Dylan had tried so hard to break into.

  How could he explain that a wedding in the very home of Cullen Davis King would attract so many bystanders, so many curious folks who wanted to see where the King himself had lived, breathed, and died.

  Hell. He didn’t want to turn his wedding to Kathleen into a damned sporting event. But he couldn’t say this, could he? So Dylan chose the next best thing.

  “I’ve always felt…like a guest.”

  “I’ve got a solution,” Lucinda said, slapping her palms on the table and causing everyone to jump. “Why don’t you take your new fiancé for a tour of your granddaddy’s house, child?”

  “Good idea. Come on!” Kat said.

  Dylan stood from his chair and Kat grabbed on to his hand and began to tug him toward the living room. “You coming?” he asked Wyatt.

  His brother looked up from his plate, his face covered in barbecue sauce. “I’m eating,” he said.

  “Good boy,” Lucinda said, nodding her approval, and rubbing Wyatt on his shoulder.

  Kat dragged Dylan into the living room, the dining room, the den, and the master bedroom where Cullen Davis King had died—and which still remained unlived in—as Lucinda preferred to sleep in the nanny’s quarters where she’d spent forty years.

  Dylan had seen the house before, but this was back when Cullen King was alive. And he’d been a young man on pins and needles. Now that Lucinda lived there alone, whenever Dylan and Kat visited, they usually stayed inside the sunroom or the kitchen. There had never been any reason to stray from the areas that Lucinda considered her home.

  It was almost as if Lucinda kept the other areas cordoned off just as they’d been when Kathleen’s grandfather was alive, in tribute to him.

  “You’re gonna love Pa Pa’s study,” Kat said, pulling Dylan into a beautiful room adorned with an ornately carved desk, a Tiffany lamp, and chairs. The entire room was paneled in a golden-hued wood, including the ceiling—in the center of which was painted a fresco, like the kind you see in Italian churches.

  There was a fireplace and lots of books on the shelves, and English paintings of horses and fox hunts on the walls.

  “Wow,” Dylan said, under his breath.

  Kat squeezed his hand. “This is where Pa Pa spent most of his time when he was home. We knew not to disturb him when he was in here working. Even Mother knew not to cross that threshold,” Kat said, pointing to the doorway that led into Cullen Davis King’s private study.

  Dylan surveyed the framed photos on the bookshelves and on the massive desk. They showed Cullen Davis King in his element. Out in the oil fields of Texas, grinning broadly with his rig men, his geologists, his land men. All of them covered in dust and grease and looking as if they owned the damned world.

  Something stirred inside Dylan. He realized that it wasn’t envy, or greed, or any of the other ills that plagued young men of ambition. No. What Dylan felt was awe. Genuine awe.

  Dylan wanted to be this man. He wanted to be as great as this man had been. Or else his life wasn’t worth living.

  Suddenly he was ashamed. Ashamed of how he’d behaved. Ashamed of trying to break into Bo Harlan’s office to steal seismic data.

  This wasn’t how great men became great. This was how mediocre men got by.

  Dylan realized that he would have to take risks. But not the types of risks that led to possible criminal charges and jail time. He’d have to take calculated risks, just as Cullen Davis King had done.

  “I need a moment alone, hon,” he whispered.

  Kathleen nodded as if she understood. She left Dylan standing inside her grandfather’s study. He heard her footsteps clicking down the hallway, back to the sunroom where Lucinda and Wyatt were surely starting in on dessert.

  Dylan walked around to the desk and sat down. In the very chair where Cullen Davis King had sat. He stared across the room and considered his destiny.

  He knew enough about the oil business to stake his own claim. He’d grown up around oilmen. He’d gone to law school, taken all the oil and gas classes that were offered, and passed the Texas State Bar exam. Before taking his fateful job at Enron, Dylan had interviewed with a bunch of firms. But the jobs at the big energy companies were not easy to get, and no one would hire the son of Butch Grant. Dylan had already tried that humiliating routine.

  Dylan ran his hand across the top of the desk. The wood felt smooth under his palm, as if it had been freshly oiled.

  Without thinking, he tugged open the middle desk drawer. He wasn’t being nosy; it just felt like habit. Inside the drawer lay a few pens, some paper clips, a blank pad of paper, some loose pocket change, and a photograph.

  Dylan picked up the photo and stared down at it.

  It showed just a single thing—a stake that had been hammered into the ground. Dylan turned the photo over in his hand, and as he read the handwriting on the back, the hair on his arms stood up. In Cullen Davis King’s own scrawl, it said: “Tangled Spur Mineral Interests, #1.”

  Dylan sucked in his breath. It couldn’t be true, could it?

  Here. In this photograph. In front of Dylan’s eyes…was what he’d always suspected.

  Forty-one

  “Round up the troops,” Dylan ordered Wyatt. Ever since finding the photograph inside Cullen King’s desk, he’d spent the past three weeks po
ring over data inside the offices of the Texas Railroad Commission.

  Every single oil well in Texas was regulated and had to be recorded at the commission. And in order to penetrate the reams of data, you had to know what you were looking for. While he was in law school, Dylan had spent a few summers working for a land man out in Brazos County. So the maps and oil logs and well permitting inside the offices didn’t look like mumbo-jumbo to him.

  After two hundred hours of digging through dusty files, Dylan had hit pay dirt. Cullen Davis King had recorded a well that he’d platted on August 27. This meant that he’d staked an area for the hole, and intended to drill it.

  Except he never had.

  Dylan remembered back to the funeral. It had been early September. Aunt Lucinda had woken up one day and found Kathleen’s grandfather dead in his bed. The doctors ruled that he’d suffered a massive heart attack. The stink of it was…no one knew whether Lucinda had actually woken up beside the aging oil magnate, but this was the rumor.

  Kathleen wanted to believe that her grandfather had gone out with a bang. She wanted it to be true that Lucinda was sleeping next to him when he died. She couldn’t bear to think that he’d been alone. And everyone knew that Lucinda had been madly in love with Cullen Davis King for years. Since even before Kathleen had been born.

  Dylan figured that Cullen King had died before telling anyone about the drill site. And the reason the secret had been kept for so long—the reason Cullen King hadn’t told his usual business partners—was that this well had been on his own land. He’d wanted to drill it himself, with his own crew, as a matter of pride.

  Dylan hummed quietly to himself as Wyatt made the phone calls to summon the troops.

  An hour later, C. Todd Hartwell was behind the wheel of his Hummer. Dylan was in the passenger seat, and Wyatt and Steve were in the back.

  They were headed to Tangled Spur, and each of them had packed their ranch necessities. Dylan had brought binoculars. Wyatt had packed his deer rifle to take down a wild boar. C. Todd Hartwell had brought a cooler full of beer, two bottles of whiskey, ice, and a bunch of plastic cups. Steve had brought sunscreen and an Evian spritzer for his face.