“Kim’s been researching all the properties and the ownerships,” Terry said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the service station’s already in trouble. It was built in the forties. The state’s bound to be after it for storage tank clean-up.”
Chick dragged his finger across the highway to a smaller cluster of squares on property that had a common boundary with the town of Agua Dulce. “And this is?”
“A motel. Ten units. I slept there a couple of nights while I was scoping out the area.”
“But you don’t own it, either?”
“Right. The owner’s some strange little character who believes in flying saucers.”
Chick looked up from under an arched brow. “For real?”
Terry answered with a shrug. “That’s what he told me.”
“Hm. Takes all kinds I guess. With a new motel opening, I doubt he’ll stay in business.”
“That’s up to him.”
“And the water?” Chick tapped a finger on the blue lined square labeled WELL.
“Good water and plenty of it, as far as I know now. Looks like it has a good storage tank. Too small for my plans, but that’s not a problem. I’ll have to put in a water system to state standards anyway.”
“When I go out, is the motel fit to stay in?”
“Sure, but half the mobiles in the trailer park are vacant. You know you’re welcome to stay in one. They’re furnished. You just need to take some bedding. If you don’t want to cook, I’ll foot the bill for you to eat at the café. Not bad food.”
Terry reached inside his truck for a notepad and wrote the name, Gordon Tubbs. He tore the note from a pad and handed it to his foreman. “Keep this name. This guy’s the manager of the trailer park. He’s an employee who came along with the town. When you’re ready, I’ll call him and tell him you’re coming.”
“I haven’t been to West Texas in years,” Chick said, his eyes taking on a distant look.
Terry couldn’t guess what he might be thinking. He knew Chick had grown up in the small town of Andrews, thirty miles from his own hometown of Odessa.
“What about the ranch?” Chick asked.
“It appears to be what I’m looking for. It’s big and has history. Goes back to the days of the cattle drives north. It’s been owned by one family since the twenties.”
“Well, that’s not a bad thing. And you’re sure he’ll sell.”
Terry grinned. “If the deal’s right, anyone will sell.”
“Okay.” The engineer puffed his cheeks and blew out a long breath, continuing to study the plat. “Big job.”
“When you come out, I’ll rent a plane and a pilot and we’ll fly the whole area. I want your input. I’ve got some old aerial maps, but I’d like to get an eyeball on the landscape.”
Chick laughed. “Uh-oh. I don’t have to jump out, do I?”
Terry laughed, too. “I might, but you don’t have to.”
“Mind a little input right now?”
“Not from you.”
“You’re going out on a real skimpy limb on this one, Terry. Especially if you’re going in debt to buy that ranch. You could lose your ass. West Texas is known for three things these days. Wide open spaces, a lot less oil than there used to be and unemployment. Not retirement.”
Terry laughed. “It’s only money, Chick. Hell, I didn’t have any when I started. If the sub-division doesn’t work out, I can always be a cowboy.”
“But it doesn’t make sense, Terry. We’ve already got houses to build in Rancho Casero. Soon they’ll be selling faster than I can stand ‘em up. The whole sub-division will be sold out in a year or two, max. You’ll make so damn much money you could retire.”
“I’m too young to retire.”
“Maybe so, but this thing in West Texas is more of a long shot than a crippled racehorse. My God, man, if you could get your hands on the mineral rights, you’d be better off drilling for oil.”
“My business is real estate. Wildcatting’s too big a gamble.”
Chick laughed. “It’s all gambling, pal. Whether it’s oil wells or houses and lots.”
Terry laughed, too. “Maybe that’s what makes it fun.”
Chapter 8
Barely awake, Terry basked in his queen-size bed, floating through nebulous memories of his youth--spelunking in Balmorhea’s water caves, climbing the steep rock walls of El Capitan, kayaking the Pecos River at flood stage. God, he loved West Texas. He loved the shifting sand and the ever-present wind touching his face. Even the sulphur gas smell that frequently pervaded the air was more pleasant than the North Central Texas swamp odor to which he had never grown accustomed.
He had returned to Agua Dulce late last night, picked up the key to this mobile home from his RV park manager and opened every window before falling into bed, worn out after the five-hundred mile drive from Fort Worth.
The little mobile home wasn’t bad. Probably eleven-hundred square feet. Solid-feeling floor. Big enough kitchen. Two bedrooms, the master with a queen-size bed. Like a calculator, figures rippled through his head. The mobile home had probably cost a quarter what he would spend putting up a stick-built house of the same square footage.
Insistent knocking on the front door brought him full awake. He could think of no one who should be banging on his door, especially so early in the morning. He pushed himself out of bed, pulled on jeans and padded to the door. Through the peep-hole, he saw...a woman standing on his deck.
Oh, yeah. The good-looking chick from the café. And she was dressed up like Dale Evans—fancy shirt, fringe and all. His memory flashed on the first time he had seen her when she had been wearing loose slacks and a T-shirt.
He combed his fingers through his hair, ran his tongue over his teeth and opened the door. She looked at him with an odd expression.
“Hi,” he said cautiously, rubbing a hand down his bare chest and subtly checking his fly. Sure enough, his top button was undone, but too late to worry about it now.
“I, uh, uh, want to speak to you,” she said.
Her eyes settled on his hand at his fly, setting off a little stir in his jeans. “Um, you got me out of bed. Can it wait a while?”
She looked up and stared him in the eye. Her fists went to her hips, her breasts shifting beneath her snug cowgirl shirt. Among other things, he could see a big no-it-can’t-wait in the gesture. “I don’t have a lot of time,” she said.
Uh-oh. This woman on his deck was a different personality from the weepy one with whom he had danced a few evenings ago in the café.
All he had on was a pair of jeans and he didn’t usually invite women he didn’t know into his quarters when he was half naked and only half awake, but there didn’t seem to be a better choice. Having met her before and having let her cry in his arms, he felt as if he did know her. “Okay. You want to talk standing on the porch or you want to come inside?”
She looked away, then looked back, jaw tight, red lips pursed. “I’ll come in.”
He stepped back from the doorway and gave her entrance. “Want to sit down?” He gestured toward both the dining table and the sofa a few feet away in the living room area.
She looked around. “Wow. This place looks like new.”
It did. The manager had apparently followed orders. New vinyl on the kitchen and bathroom floors and new carpeting in the living room and the two bedrooms. The odor of “new” and some kind of cleaning product filled the whole mobile home.
She crossed in front of him, adding yet another scent to the mix, something musky and appealing. He felt that little stir in his jeans again. She took a seat at the dining table and crossed her forearms on the tabletop. Whatever she had to say, she meant business.
“You know,” he said, seeking to lessen both the tension that seemed to be coming off her in waves and the uneasiness he felt himself, “I talk better after I’ve had a cup of coffee.”
He had already spotted a new coffee maker on the kitchen counter. He went to the cupboard and began opening doors, searching for a can of coffee and hoping the park manager had also followed his instructions to get some food into the place. “Now it probably won’t be as good as your coffee, but—”
“You came into my café. Why didn’t you identify yourself? Why didn’t you say you had bought our town?”
His ears pricked. Our town?
His assistant Kim had done a cursory profile on all of the citizens of Agua Dulce. This one had to be Raylene Rutherford who had run the flea market and café for over thirty years. Kim must have made an error. The woman sitting at his table would have been a little kid thirty years ago.
He found a new can of Maxwell House and a small jar of phony cream on a cupboard shelf, then filled the coffee pot with tap water. Lifting it to eye-level, he looked into it and found it clear. “I hear there’s good water here. Guess you’d know about that, huh?”
A safe topic. Why he was concerned about calming her and why her attitude was making him nervous he didn’t know, because this real estate belonged to him. He had just walked into a Fort Worth lawyer’s office a week earlier and handed over a check for a million dollars.
“It’s fresh well water,” she said. “Untreated with chemicals. And it doesn’t have a lot of mineral.”
Good news. And different from much of the water in West Texas. While saturated with oil, this part of Texas, the great Permian Basin, was almost without potable water. As he filled the coffee pot’s reservoir he decided to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more from someone who might know the answer to some of his questions. He braced a hand on the counter while he waited for the coffee to brew. “I understand everyone in town uses the well water, right?”
Her brow knit into a frown. “Of course. Where else would we get water?”
“What about the motel and the service station across the highway? Do they pay for the water?” He thought he already knew the answer because Kim, in her research, had found that they did use the water, but she had been unable to find that they paid for it.
“I don’t know. Clyde Campbell owned the well. He didn’t discuss his business with me. What difference does it make?”
“Their property isn’t part of the town. They really don’t have any right to the water unless the well’s owner gives it to them, either for free or for a fee.”
“Clyde had the first nickel he ever made. Knowing him, if there was a buck to be made by selling water, he probably made it. But I don’t recall hearing of anyone paying him for water.”
“You’re saying Campbell was stingy?” Terry couldn’t keep from giving her a hard look. “Ma’am, if those two property owners have been using the well water gratis all these years, I’d say that was pretty generous of Mr. Campbell. Maybe the guy wasn’t as stingy as you think.”
She huffed and looked away, obviously annoyed. “I’d be amazed to hear he was generous when it came to money. The water system was set up a long time ago, even before he owned the town. It was probably cheaper for him to just leave it alone than to try and change it.”
“In any event, the system’s in violation of state regulations. With so many families using it, it’s subject to being monitored by the state.”
“We don’t need the state. We’ve never had a problem with the water.”
In the heat of her bristling attitude, this conversation was turning into something Terry felt a need to take control of. Being half dressed weakened that possibility and his bladder was full. He preferred conducting power conversations standing, fully clothed and without the urgent need to pee. “Listen, do you mind if I step back into the bedroom and put on a shirt?”
“Please do.”
He made for the bathroom. Soon he returned to the kitchen, his upper body covered by a T-shirt, and saw the coffee finished. He pulled two ceramic mugs from the cupboard. “I’m sure the well isn’t what you came to talk about so early in the morning.”
“It isn’t early. It’s nine o’clock. I came to speak to you about Gordon.”
Belligerent, for sure. “Who?”
“Gordon Tubbs. The manager of this trailer park. Your employee. Or haven’t you noticed him?”
Yep, definite hostility. A side of her he hadn’t seen the first time they met. He looked at her with a wary squint. “And?”
“He’s afraid he’s going to be laid off from his job.”
Terry hesitated, wondering what can of worms was about to be opened regarding his only known Agua Dulce employee. “That’s possible. If I don’t have an operating RV park, I won’t be needing an RV park manager.” He offered the jar of cream to her. “Uh, cream? Sugar?”
The heat in her eye said she wasn’t interested in hospitality. “I don’t suppose you’ve thought about, or care, how losing his job will affect him.”
“And how is this your business, Miss--what’s your name again?”
“Gordon’s been a friend of mine for years. And I have other friends living in the trailer park.”
“That would be who?”
“Jake Shepherd and his wife Tanya. And Ben Seagrave. They lease mobile homes here.”
“Ah. The cowboy and the drunk.” He carried the two mugs of coffee to the dining table.
She ignored the coffee. “You shouldn’t belittle them. Ben’s lived here since I was a little kid. And Jake and his wife and Gordon are all good people. Gordon can’t help it if he’s sick.”