Spanking Her Highness (7 page)

* * *

Will was about to close the front door behind him when a big, black pickup truck came down his driveway. He didn't recognize the man behind the wheel, but he was obviously a Journey. The resemblance to Leo was unmistakable.

The fellow fitted a buff-colored cowboy hat on his head as he exited the truck and crunched up the driveway and to the front steps of the house, where Will stood waiting.

Unsmiling, Journey offered his hand. "Ace Journey."

Will had to look up a couple of inches, but he wasn't intimidated by the broad and rangy rancher. He looked to be nearing forty, and, while that made him older than Will by five or so years, Will thought the man was aging well. He looked rugged rather than old.

He shook Ace's hand. "Will Mazie. Nice to meet you."

"We have a problem."

Immediately, Will's mind turned to Queenie. He'd been about to go over to Journey's End and see her, but this visit had forestalled him.

He gave the man a tight-lipped smile. "Come in, Ace. We'll talk."

The older man nodded, and followed Will into the house.

They settled in Will's sitting room, taking chairs across from each other. Ace had removed his hat, and it sat in his lap, slightly worn and well broken in.

"How can I help you, Ace? Is this about Queenie?"

A frown formed on Ace's face. "Queenie?"

"Er…I guess not. What's the problem?"

Ace squinted at him, assessing, and Will thought a lesser man would have been intimidated. He wasn't, though. He was worried. This man was his neighbor and problems between them had to be dealt with carefully.

"It's about that easement. We're fixin' to revoke it."

Will's temper flared. "You're what? Why?"

"Pollution. Somethin' you're doin' to the water is poisonin' our cattle."

Stomach acid burned in Will's belly. "I'm not doing anything. I'm taking water
out
, not putting anything in."

"I don't rightly know what you're up to, but I can tell you that since you put in that pond, the water downstream from your ranch has been glistenin' with oil and non-potable for the livestock."

"Oil?"

"Or gasoline. Can't say."

"But that's impossible!"

"The timin' makes it obvious. And we went and looked at the river to the east of your easement. Nothin' wrong there. We're havin' our water tested to find out what the pollution is."

Injustice made Will's hands fist. He wasn't doing anything. Things had been fine before, during and after the contractors had done their job. He'd have noticed if the water was an issue in his bass pond. He'd have liked to throw the revocation back in Ace's face, but the fact was that the Journey's had the right to revoke the agreement on the grounds of compromised environmental conditions. Will had an obligation to keep his leased piece of property, where the pipe was situated, clear of contaminants and dangerous conditions. Failing that, the easement could be revoked.

"Let me check into it before you revoke the agreement."

Ace eyed him for several beats, and Will found keen intelligence in the brown eyes regarding him. This was no country hick to be outfoxed by a city sophisticate. He rather liked that about the man.

"Yeah, okay. I'll give you three days to find the problem and start on fixin' it." He rose and offered his hand again. "Don't make me regret it."

Will bristled at Ace's tone, but he shook his hand. "I'll find out what the problem is."

Ace nodded and made his way out of the house and off the property.

Will came back to his sitting room and sat near a window for a while. The morning sunlight was bright and cheerful, but his thoughts were dark and churning. Maybe the ranching business was too much for him. Maybe he wasn't going to make it and would have to chalk this up to be the first massive failure of his life. It galled him.

No. No, he wasn't going to give up. He'd find out what was polluting the river water downstream and take care of it. He could do this.

Chapter 5

Queenie looked at the test stick in her hand, then up at the bathroom mirror. She didn't look particularly different. Maybe a little tired. But she'd been working her butt off with the Boot Camp groups, and Ace had been too busy dealing with a backlog of ranching stuff to help much.

Her eyes dropped back to the test stick. It had only been seven days since she'd been such a fool. Maybe if she did the test twice?

A few minutes later, she got the same result. Pregnant. She was pregnant. Knocked up. In the family way. Got a bun in the oven. Going to have a baby.

She'd been stupid and grossly irresponsible. Her family would be so disappointed in her.

Of course, this early in the process, the test could still be wrong. The box said it was only about 60% effective. But, if you thought about the way the test worked, testing for the presence of a particular hormone, it seemed unlikely that the test would give a false positive. False negative, yes, but false positive was much less likely.

So…now what was she to do?

She looked up in the mirror again and saw tears streaming down her face. Where had those come from? Queenie wanted to be calm, cool. Able to handle this. She wasn't a teenager or a rape victim. She'd done this to herself. Well…with help from Will. It was his fault, too. They'd both been stupid.

The first person to tell would be Consuela. She'd been like a second mother to Queenie for the last twenty years. She'd understand and be sympathetic, even though Queenie had truly screwed up this time.

Queenie wiped her face and squared her shoulders, making her way through the house as she looked for the older woman. She finally found her in the family room, dusting off the fireplace mantle.

"Good morning, Connie."

Consuela's smile was genuine and she paused for a moment to share it with Queenie. "Queenie. Good morning! How are you today?"

"Oh, okay. Pregnant."

A lock of gray hair fell over Consuela's brow, she straightened up so fast. "Qué? What did you say?"

Queenie felt guilty for the worried crinkles around Consuela's eyes. "That was abrupt. I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to tell folks, though. Maybe I should have asked y'all to sit down or somethin'. Isn't that what they do in the movies?"

"Sit down, Queenie." She took a seat on the sofa and patted the spot next to her, putting her dust rag down nearby.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you really pregnant?"

"Yeah."

"Dios!" Consuela's lips tightened. "Who is the father?"

Compelled to tell the truth, Queenie squirmed with discomfort. "Will Mazie."

"My, my, my. He works fast, I'll say that for him."

"It's my fault as well as his. I'm a grown-up."

Consuela patted her hand, her face softening. "You are, si."

"Daddy's gonna kill me."

Leo walked into the room. "Why would I kill you?"

Queenie nearly leapt off the sofa. "Daddy!"

"Buenos dias," Consuela said smoothly.

They exchanged a few considerate words in Spanish.

"Sit down, Leo," Consuela told him at the end of their exchange.

He eyed his housekeeper and then Queenie. "I'm not gonna like this, am I?"

Consuela shook her head, and Queenie sank down in the cushions, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Leo sighed and sat in a leather wing-back chair. "What's got y'all riled up?"

The women exchanged a look, and Queenie knew it was now or never. "I'm pregnant, Daddy."

His shoulders relaxed as relief spread on his face. "Well, this is hardly the way I expected my first grandbaby, but I'll take it."

"Daddy? You're not mad?"

Leo shook his head. "Other kinds of difficult news would have been much worse, so, although I'm disappointed in you, Queenie, I'm not mad."

She hurried over to him and bent to hug him. "Thank you, Daddy."

He squeezed her back. "I ain't gonna endorse this behavior, young lady. You'll be getting' married."

"I haven't even told Will yet! And I don't want to get married!"

"Will Mazie, you mean?"

"Yeah. I uh…it was…"

He held up a hand. "I don't want the details, thank you. So long as the father ain't Harry Tatum, nearly anyone else would do. But I'm not too happy with Will right now. We have some issues to work out."

"About the baby? I'm fully capable of workin' this out myself."

He gave her a direct stare that said,
yeah, just like you did so far.
But he didn't say it aloud. Instead, he said, "There's more to it than that, daughter." He rose from his chair. "Leave it to me."

"No, Daddy! I want to come to grips with this first. I'm not sure I even want Will to know."

Leo scowled.

"I mean, maybe I should go to Nashville, or somewhere else. Maybe Aunt Pearl's in Cincinnati. I could start over. Make a life for my baby and me."

"Runnin' away is never the right answer, Q, and the baby will need a father."

"But Will didn't ask for this. And, he's so high-handed. He's sure to want to run my life once he knows."

Consuela added her opinion. "Seems to me that maybe your life could use a little structure. And, he has a right to know. He also has to live up to his responsibilities."

Queenie looked between the two of them. They were probably right, but she wasn't ready for this. Wasn't ready to tell him. She needed a little while, maybe a week…maybe longer. She dreaded the look on his face. He was gonna be madder than a half-drowned cat.

"Let me handle it. Please."

Leo nodded slowly. "For a time, Queenie. Then I'll do it for you. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Standing, Consuela gave them both a gentle smile. "I think it's about time we had a new Journey around here. Seemed like it was never gonna happen."

A deep-throated laugh carried Leo out of the room. "Yeah," he called over his shoulder. "I'm gettin' too old to be waitin' much longer."

Consuela laughed, and went back to her dusting.

Queenie stood there, a little non-plussed. What had just happened? They accepted her devastating news with little more than a scolding. Now, if only she could accept it so easily.

* * *

Will wasn't sure the Journeys would believe him. His investigation had hardly been conclusive. Rather a failure, actually. But he was confident he knew what was going on. He didn't know who was behind it, though, and that was the biggest problem.

He'd contacted a guy he'd met in Hollywood—an environmental consultant who'd been a subject expert on the TV show Will worked on. For a price, the fellow was willing to come out and take a few water samples.

The results had come in, two days into Ace Journey's ultimatum. The water was clear upstream, but there was a strong concentration of crude oil further to the west. It flowed from Will's easement, right down the river to Journey's End. It wasn't strong enough to leave black tar on the riverbank, but it was strong enough to make the water hazardous to the cattle. It was no wonder the Journeys were ticked off. Will would be, too.

He was, in fact. He knew the contractors couldn't have done this. There was a much higher concentration of chemicals than they could have possibly used to lubricate or power their equipment. This was sabotage, pure and simple.

There were a lot of tire tracks down at the river's edge by the easement. A light rain had made the soil muddy, but the hot sun afterward had dried the muddy tracks into clear, clay patterns.

This morning, Will followed some of those tracks and mostly met a dead end. The deepest tracks, however, led to an oil tanker truck. It was a mid-sized one, parked in a little pinewood grove off the local Farm-to-Market road. He called the sheriff and reported his discovery.

"So, y'all think that someone is purposely poisoning the water from your pipeline?"

"Downstream from my line, Sheriff. I think it's oil from this tanker."

"You sure you ain't doin' somethin' to cause this chemical spill your own self?"

"I'm sure."

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. "I ain't got no other complaints about the river water."

"The Journeys have mentioned the problem to me, which is why I investigated."

"Investigation is my job, son. You let me do that kind of work, 'k?"

Will realized he was getting nowhere. He had to rely on his own capabilities, and the experience he had writing and solving mysteries for TV. It wasn't much to work with—Will fully realized that real life wasn't much like TV—but it was all he had.

Nonetheless, Will had done what needed to be done with the information he'd gleaned.

It made him that much more suspicious of Reno Casteneda, however. The man knew about driving trucks. If he had any connection to the oil truck, Will would have his saboteur.

In several ways, it made sense. Casteneda had been passed over for the foreman's job, simply on the basis of Ralph Caswell's scribbled notes about each of his hands. Will hadn't even interviewed the fellow, turning right to Marco, who was clearly the more experienced of all the hands. One conversation with Marco and Will knew they'd deal well together. Maybe he should have interviewed more of the men. Maybe it made him seem like an interloper to swan in and mess with the hierarchy. But why hadn't Casteneda quit when he hadn't got the job?

He thought about it as he drove back, directly to Journey's End. Ace Journey had imposed a deadline, and Will didn't want his easement revoked. Although the culprit hadn't been caught, Will was determined to do whatever it took to make the situation work out. He only hoped the Journeys would be satisfied with his methods thus far.

Reaching Journey's End, he found both Ace and Leo standing on the front porch, enjoying the early morning cool before the August heat set in for the day.

Without much greeting, they showed him into Leo's office. This time, Leo sat behind the desk. Will realized what kind of conversation it was going to be.

"I'll get right to the point," he told them. "I know what's poisoning the river."

"So do we," Ace responded.

"Crude oil."

Will nodded at Leo, acknowledging the information. "Right. And, I hope it's obvious to you that I don't have access to crude oil."