“I’ll do it,” Maggie said.
“Maggie . . .” I started to argue, but then I thought better of it. Emma Lou was her horse, and this was no time to pull rank. “Okay, but I’ll be out here with you.”
“Now the important thing is to keep the mare comfortable,” Doc said. “And don’t rile her up. Let Emma Lou handle it without help, if she can, until I get here.”
“We know what to do, Doc,” Mom said. “We’ve birthed a few foals at the ranch over the years.”
“This time’s different, Nora,” Doc said. “This little one is going to need every bit of luck to make it through.”
That evening, we had a quiet dinner at the picnic table under the corral elm tree, the lights blazing, Mom, Bobby, Strings, Maggie, and I. Afterward, Maggie and I set up our cots outside the shed, and then I went inside to talk to Bobby. I still had work to do, and I found him helping Mom with dishes. She was washing the pans and he was drying.
“I’ve got some questions on the oil business, Bobby,” I said. “Could we sit down and look at some papers together? It’s for a case, and I need your help.”
“Of course, Sarah,” Mom said. “You go now, Bobby. I’m almost through.”
“No, let me help you finish, Nora,” he said. “Only a few more to go.”
“Don’t be silly. Sarah needs your help. I’ll finish these up.”
He kissed her tenderly on the cheek, which made me think of David. I shrugged it off, and Bobby and I sat down on the living room couch, where I put Billie Cox’s file with the Post-it note on the cocktail table in front of us. I didn’t have to say anything. Bobby took his rimless reading glasses out of his pocket and put them on, picked up the file, and started slowly working through it, digesting each page. As he did his smile dissolved, replaced by a scowl, and
pretty soon his brow grew heavy and his eyes formed angry slits. When he finally put the file down, he folded his hands on his lap.
“Explain all this to me,” I said.
“Not much to explain, Sarah,” he said. “But I think you just saved Barker Oil close to fifty million, maybe more.”
“How’d I do that?” I asked.
“Looks like I was about to buy a bunch of dry holes,” he said. “Looks like those oil leases in East Texas aren’t as lucrative as Billie Cox and I were led to believe.”
“Show me,” I said. “I need to understand what I’m looking at.”
“Just a minute,” he said, getting up and walking back to the kitchen. A minute later, he returned with a pad of paper and a pencil, and again sat next to me. He pointed to one line of numbers on the list inside the folder and copied it onto the top sheet of paper. Then he flipped through to the back of the folder and pulled one page out of the stack of colored charts.
“This is well number one-forty-four of the Stanhope Oil Fields,” he explained. “Stanhope is the field Billie and I wanted to acquire in that joint mineral-rights purchase I told you about the other night.”
“I thought that was probably the case,” I said. “Now, tell me what the numbers mean.”
“Well, the first is the number of the well, one-forty-four. The second is the year it last operated, and third the number of barrels per month produced during its final year. The fourth number is the date the well could be operational again, basically how long it would take to get it in working order, and the fifth is the projected number of barrels the well is expected to produce per year. The final is a projection of the number of years before the well plays out.”
“What’s the chart, the colored drawing you pulled out?” I asked.
“That’s part of a study on a section of the field, the section that
includes well number one-forty-four. The company that analyzed this report used that study to predict how much oil was below the ground,” he said.
“Did you know this was being done?” I asked.
“Not a clue,” he said. “My guess? I can’t be certain, but I’d bet Billie had doubts about how much the wells were really worth, some reason to question the figures we’d been supplied. She must have brought someone in to study the wells, to verify the expected profits from the field.”
“And the important thing about all this is?”
Bobby sat back against Mom’s old sofa and resolutely folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t like to say this,” he said. “But it sure looks to me like we were being bamboozled. Must have to Billie, too, based on the note. We’d been given other numbers, much higher ones for this field. These wells, they ought to stay abandoned. No reason to drill, because they’re verging on dry holes.”
“With crude prices so high, why would anyone have to run a scam to make money?” I said. “These days most of us are bleeding money for oil. Every time I go to the pump, gas has gone up. The price for a tank is plumb crazy.”
“That’s why they’re doing it. The price is so high, companies like mine are buying old wells up right and left, planning to use all the new high-tech equipment to recover more oil,” he said. “When oil prices were low, no one could afford to invest enough to pull the hard-to-get-to reserves out of the ground. But with prices sky high, it’s worth the cash, even if the well’s not the gusher it once was.”
“But these particular wells . . . ?” I asked.
“They’re not worth shelling out the investment it would take to try,” he said. “Anyone in the business can look at these figures and tell you this field is played out, probably thirty years ago.”
“Who owns the fields?” I asked. “Who’s running the con?”
“Don’t know,” he said. When I looked skeptical, he explained,
“Mineral rights are complicated, lots of layers of ownership over many generations. We were told that it’s some kind of partnership that wants to remain anonymous, that they bought the rights up years ago when oil was cheap and want to cash in now that it’s high. We were proceeding based on a prospectus presented by their attorney. He’s the one we were dealing with.”
“I need his name,” I said. “And anything else you can tell me about all this.”
Bobby reached into the back pocket of his blue jeans. “By the way, you shouldn’t blame me for the price of gas,” he said, as he rifled through his worn-out black leather wallet. He flipped through a stack of business cards and pulled out one, white with black print.
“Aren’t you oil tycoons the ones making all the big profits?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, with a reluctant shrug. “I guess you could say that.”
“Why wouldn’t I blame the folks cashing in?”
“Most of the oil in the world is owned by nations, like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, not companies or individuals. They’re the ones setting the price and limiting production, not us,” he said. “And you need to talk to the developing nations, like India and China. They’re fueling the demand. Couple that with our own government, that’s blocked drilling in most of the nation. America’s playing in a world market now, Sarah, and we don’t control the action. War in the Middle East, prices climb. Third World needs energy to develop, prices climb. Just last year, no one wanted our oil. The price of a barrel was bargain basement, and we couldn’t afford to invest enough to drill. No profit in it. We couldn’t control the price then and we sure can’t control it now.”
“Okay,” I said, taking the lawyer’s business card from him. “But that’s probably not going to make me any less annoyed next time I hit the gas pumps.”
“Sarah, you are something,” Bobby said, with a guttural laugh.
“Well, I’m not going to tell you oil isn’t making a lot of folks, including me, richer, but it truly is a bunch more complicated than the way it sounds on the evening news.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” I said.
“I’d appreciate that,” he said. “But let’s get back to this Stanhope Field. I’ve got a question to ask.”
“Sure,” I said. “What?”
“We’re talking about all this because now you don’t think Billie Cox killed herself. Billie was murdered, right?”
I paused for a moment, wondering how to answer that. Then figured he needed to know. “Yeah,” I said. “The folks at her office know, so it’ll get out soon, but keep it as quiet as you can for now, okay? I need some working room.”
“Sure,” he said. “So, who killed her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “Could have something to do with this scam, or it might not. It could be totally unrelated, like maybe that married man she was dating. But there is something else you can look at for me.”
I opened the file to the back, where I’d paper-clipped the computer photo. I handed it to Bobby, and asked, “Can you tell me anything about this?”
Bobby eyed the photo, and then flipped through the chart inside. “Well, it’s the Stanhope Field all right. See, the number on the oil well in the picture is on your list. And that’s Clayton Wagner, one of the owners of Century Oil,” he said, pointing to one of the elderly gents. “Crazy old man. Lives larger than life. The guy’s made fortunes and lost them, then made them and lost them again. A real speculator, but he has always had a knack of betting on the wrong horse, if you know what I mean. Until Billie, that company was constantly in the red. She was the best thing that could have happened to that old codger.”
“Who are the other two men?”
“This is Ty Dickson,” he said, pointing at the other man whose face was visible. “Dickson is Wagner’s partner and just as explosive as he is. But I thought he was sick, and that he’d retired. Strange that he’d be involved in any of this.”
“Any ideas on the identity of the man with his back to the camera?” I asked.
Bobby sized up the man, taller than the other two, younger, an awkwardly built man. “Maybe he looks familiar, but from the little I can see, I’m not sure,” Bobby said. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You’ve been a big help.”
“So Sarah, one more question,” Bobby said, peering at me over the tops of his glasses. I realized that he looked worried. “If someone did murder Billie over these wells, and I was her bidding partner, am I in danger? Since Billie died, I’m in negotiations to buy this field solo. The deal’s supposed to go through late next week.”
Perhaps I should have thought of that, but I hadn’t.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “If Billie died because of this scam, I think it’s because she figured it out. The best advice I can give you is not to say anything about any of this to anyone.”
“But I’ve gotta pull out of the Stanhope deal, and maybe the Century Oil buyout,” Bobby said, alarmed. “If Wagner’s involved in all this, I’m dealing with a crook, maybe even a murderer.”
“Don’t pull out. Stall,” I suggested. “Say you’re running into some issues at Barker Oil, freeing up the cash. Make something up. Delay but stay in the deal, so no one guesses that you know what’s going on. At least until I have Billie’s murder sorted out.”
“Okay, I can do that,” Bobby said. He considered it all for a moment, and then slapped his palms on his knees and stood up. “Now I’m going to see if that beautiful mother of yours needs any more help with those dishes.”
_____
Before long, Bobby had left for his home in Houston, while Mom got ready for bed. Meanwhile, Maggie and I got wrapped up in our sleeping bags on the cots. It was a cool night, predicted to drop into the high forties by morning, but our gear was thick and warm, and we wore our clothes inside. At ten, as they do every night, the corral lights clicked off, and the night turned a rich dark with the stars piercing brightly overhead. The world was quiet, while inside the shed all was ready. Emma Lou had fresh straw and everything needed in place for the delivery. Now, all we could do was listen and wait.
“Mom, are you seeing Mr. Garrity again?” Maggie asked, as I flirted with sleep.
It took me a moment to answer, mostly because I wasn’t expecting the question. “No, I’m not,” I said. “We’re just working a case together. Why?”
“Do you want to see him, like date him?”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“No reason,” she said. “I was just thinking that you used to act like you liked him. Sometimes, you looked pretty happy when you were with him.”
It’s amazing how easily a kid sees through a parent. Poor Maggie. She had Emma Lou to worry about, but she was still trying to figure out David and me, a relationship even I couldn’t make sense of. I unzipped my sleeping bag, and pulled my legs back out, got up and stood over her. Squatting on my haunches, I looked into her hazel eyes, so much like Bill’s. I briefly wondered what she’d look like in thirty years, if she’d have crow’s feet around those eyes. I had a hard time remembering being so young.
“Let’s not worry about anything tonight, Magpie. Emma Lou’s peaceful, and it’s beautiful out here. Look up at the stars, say your prayers, and sleep,” I said, giving her a soft kiss. I pushed her sleeping bag in tight around her, the way I swaddled her in blankets
when she was a baby. “I’ll be right here with you, listening for Emma Lou if she needs us.”
“Okay, Mom,” she said. “But about Mr. Garrity, I—”
“Shush now, Maggie,” I ordered. It had been a long day, and we both needed sleep. “There’s no reason to be concerned about David Garrity. I don’t want to talk any more about him. Right now, all I want to hear is you sleeping.”
Maggie still looked worried, but I gave her a hug, and she nodded. Fifteen minutes later, she slept softly, and I stared up at the canopy of stars above me, closed my own eyes, and drifted to sleep.
A
t first, I wasn’t sure where I was. I woke in the darkness, to the sound of Emma Lou stirring in the shed. I found her lying on the straw, restless and agitated. She stood up, then immediately lumbered her bulging body back down. Contractions rippling her belly, the horse got back on her feet and stomped at the floor. This wasn’t good.
I shook Maggie, and when her eyes opened, handed her my cell phone. “Call Doc and wake Gram,” I said. “Emma Lou’s foaling.”
“Now?” Maggie said, her voice rising.
“Calm down,” I warned. “The worst thing you can do is spook that mare.”
Eyes wide, Maggie nodded.
While Maggie ran to the house, I slipped a blue nylon halter and lead on the horse, and then walked her toward the yard, talking softly, soothing her. Mom and Maggie rushed out, but slowed before reaching us.