Where There's Smoke

“Sure you can, sweetie. You can have them back as soon as we get home. But first let’s stop and have a piece of pie with Daddy. I’ve been a perfect grouch all week and want to make it up to y’all, starting now.”

Bowie Cato turned off the highway onto the state road that ran along the north end of The Green Pine Motel, where Darcy was alighting from her late model Cadillac. “ ’S that Mrs. Winston?”

“Yes.” Janellen had turned to wave. “Do you know her?”

“I’ve seen her. Who’s that with her?”

“Her daughter, Heather. She’s about the most popular girl at the high school these days.”

“Pretty,” Bowie commented, glancing back at the two women as they entered the motel lobby.

“Very. She works part-time at the motel for her daddy. I see her whenever we go to the Sunday buffet after church. She’s friendly and sweet and well liked.”

Bowie wondered if the daughter was as “well liked” as the mother. He’d seen Darcy Winston in action plenty of times at The Palm, beginning that night Key Tackett had returned to town and as recently as last night when she’d been playing a rowdy game of billiards with three Shriners who were having a night out on the town without their wives.

Darcy was a tramp, and everybody knew it. Just like everybody knew that Janellen Tackett was a lady. That’s why folks looked askance at them whenever she was with him. They were wondering what Miss Janellen was doing with a no-account ex-con like Bowie Cato.

He’d been wondering that himself. He both thanked and cursed Key for asking him to keep an eye on her. He thanked him because being near Janellen was about as close to a class act as he was ever going to get. He cursed Key because he was beginning to like being near her too well.

He enjoyed seeing her every day and having a good excuse for it. But it was temporary bliss. Sure as God made little green apples, something would happen to put an end to it. Waiting for the inevitable and wondering what disastrous form it would take was driving him nuts. Right now he was living a fairy tale. Trouble was, he didn’t believe in fairy tales. They were for kids and fools. He sure as hell wasn’t a kid, but he was beginning to think he was a fool.

He was letting himself in for a fall. No two ways about it.

Damned if he could stop himself, though. Every chance he got to be with her, he took. Like today. When word reached him that she was going out to take a look at the number seven well, he’d jumped into the truck and driven like a bat out of hell to get to the office before she left.

He caught her just as she was leaving and reminded her that Key didn’t want her to be alone. He also said that the truck was more suited to the well site than her compact car. She’d conceded and climbed into the cab of the truck with him.

But she wasn’t happy about it.

She was as jittery as a chihuahua passing peach pits and wouldn’t look him in the eye. She was probably ashamed to be seen riding around with a convicted felon. Hell, who could blame her?

“It gets pretty rough from here,” he warned.

“I know,” she said acidly. “I’ve driven it myself plenty of times.”

He ignored that and took the turnoff. The dirt track, carved into the earth by tire treads, ran parallel to the highway several hundred yards away. In between was The Green Pine Motel. He’d heard talk of how Jody Tackett, years ago, had swindled Fergus Winston out of his oil lease.

Fergus had come to Eden Pass as a young man, bringing with him a small legacy and big dreams. He bought a patch of land that didn’t look like much on the surface but had highway frontage and rumors of oil underneath.

He met Jody, who at the time was working for Clark Tackett Senior and was already reputed as being a knowledgeable land man. Jody befriended him and offered to let a Tackett Oil geologist check out his lease and give him an expert opinion. After weeks of assessment, she sorrowfully told Fergus that it was doubtful his land had any significant deposit of oil.

Fergus, somewhat in love with her by then, believed her, but he decided he needed a second, bipartisan opinion. He retained the services of another geologist who sadly informed him that horny toads were about the only thing his patch of ground was likely to harvest.

Fergus was disappointed but had come to believe that his future lay not in the competitive oil industry but in providing temporary lodging for the folks who wheeled and dealed in it. Jody, still passing herself off as a concerned friend, told him she hated to see him getting stuck with land that wasn’t good for anything. She offered to buy his lease for Tackett Oil, which could use it as a tax write-off. Fergus would then have enough capital to begin building his motel.

Relieved to be unloading a white elephant and recovering some of his investment, he sold the land and all the mineral rights for next to nothing, keeping only the strip of property that fronted the highway, on which he planned to build his motel.

But Fergus’s white elephant was sitting on top of a black lake of rich crude. Jody knew that, and so did the Tackett Oil geologist, and so did the one Jody bribed to back up the lie of the first. The ink wasn’t dry on the deed before Tackett Oil erected a drilling rig. When the well came in, Fergus was fit to be tied. He accused Jody and the Tacketts of being thieves and liars. When she married Clark Junior, he cursed her even louder. But he never legally pursued his allegations of dirty dealing, so folks discounted his grievances as sour grapes and jealousy because Jody had jilted him in favor of Clark Junior.

Fergus built his motel, and it was profitable almost from its opening day. But even if it had been as fancy as a Ritz-Carlton, he’d never be as rich as Jody Tackett. To this day, he carried a grudge.

Bowie parked the truck outside the chain-link fence that formed a neat square around the pumping well. He alighted and went around to offer assistance to Janellen, but she had already hopped down by the time he reached her. He used his key to unlock the gate.

The motor driving the horse head pump was chugging away. He’d been out hours earlier to check on it, which he did every day except for his days off, when the relief pumper ran the route. He and Janellen weren’t interested in the pump or the storage tanks, but in the meter box where red, green, and blue pens recorded the line pressure, temperature of the gas, and rate of flow onto circular charts that were changed biweekly. Fortunately the meter box for well number seven was located only yards from the well itself. It could have been miles away.

Fifteen minutes later, he was feeling like a damn fool. There seemed to be nothing wrong with well number seven. The meter box was functioning properly. There were no discernible leaks between the well and the meter box. Everything appeared to be in perfect working order.

“I guess you think I’m crazy,” he mumbled.