Whisper In The Dark (The McKinnon Legends-- The American Men Book One) Read online

  So given his track record in human relations, no one was surprised when in 1911 news reached Fort Worth that he was found murdered. He was discovered by a hotel staff member in Hot Springs, Arkansas, floating facedown in a mineral bath on the now famous Bathhouse Row. No one was ever brought to trial because there were never any suspects.

  There were probably too many suspects if you got down to it. That was Katherine’s guess.

  Kate tried to imagine how shocked his wife Edith would be upon discovering only forty-two dollars in the bank account where she drew her monthly allowance for household expenditures.

  Boy, do I ever know how that feels, Katherine thought.

  According to bank records, apparently Thaddeus made small deposits weekly keeping just enough in the account for incidentals, never making a secret of his mistrust of the National Banking System, especially after the panic of 1893. He preferred to keep his money elsewhere, and only he had the knowledge of where “elsewhere” happened to be. To this day no one knew where his fortune disappeared, just adding to the legend of treasure hidden on Brandenburg lands.

  As a child she had always imagined a grand and great treasure hunt. Her great-aunt would just smile indulgently, pat her head, and say that treasure is not always currency.

  Well, she could sure use a little of that fortune right about now. She was flat broke by almost anyone’s standards having soon to resort to welfare if she did not hit the jackpot.

  Thaddeus spent a lot of time at the gaming tables in Hot Springs and Saint Louis, and some thought he gambled it away though no one ever saw him lose as often or as grandly as he would have to lose to end up that broke. Others thought he invested poorly and lost it. No one knew at the turn of the century what really happened and no one knew today, she thought.

  Wherever that fortune disappeared was just as much a mystery as how that same fortune was made.

  “So who knows?” she sighed.

  Anything was possible she supposed. It was a mystery full of holes, and there was no one left alive to plug them. Old George had not yet been born when Thaddeus died, so he was no help and very mum on the subject when she had pestered him about it as a child.

  Legend held Thaddeus buried most of his fortune somewhere on Brandenburg land, and this served only to fuel the fire of the legend that there was still a treasure buried somewhere out there on the ranch which had remained intact with the exception of a few thousand acres sold exclusively to their neighbor on the west.

  There was a feasibility it was buried out there, theoretically, but highly unlikely. Katherine was leaning toward the theory of squander on Thaddeus’ part, poor judgment, and too much ego to admit he was bankrupt. He would not be the first or last Brandenburg to fall flat because of pride. All she had to do was look in the mirror to see that fact clear as a bright spring day.

  At any rate, each generation coming after had worked hard to make the land profitable. Each generation had succeeded. Some did better than others. Her father had eked a living from the land. Through mineral royalties and corn he grew for ethanol, he managed to make a living. Growing up she never remembered wanting for anything except her father’s approval and her mother’s presence. Both were always in short supply.

  However, with each successive year things became tighter, and her dad was quick to point out how times had changed from Nathaniel Brandenburg’s 1868 to the present. Her father claimed it was the reason her mother left them when she was four years old. She figured Krystal McLaughlin-Brandenburg, first runner up for Miss Texas, would have left regardless of the finances. Life on the ranch was hard, and Krystal was not cut out to be a rancher’s wife.

  Kyle’s death was just the final blow in a string of events bringing her back to a place she felt she would probably never return. New York had been her home for years. At fourteen, out of the blue, after nine years of total silence, her mother came to get her.

  She remembered it like it was yesterday.

  Her father did not put up a single argument when Krystal came to claim her, as her mother so delicately put it. Katherine shook off the feeling, remembering the way Krystal had phrased it made her feel like a pair of slacks to be picked up from the dry cleaners.

  Here is my claim ticket. Now, bring me my pants.

  Begging her father to let her stay, he had not said a word. Kyle was the one to protest the loudest, stating her mom gave up all her rights the day she walked out on her as a young girl.

  Her mother’s threatening to call the sheriff on him if he ever came close to her again kept him from fighting for her, but she knew Kyle wanted to fight with all his heart. From that point forward until she had turned eighteen, their relationship had been covert using the fruit vendor around the corner from the school where she attended to slip her letters to Kyle.

  Years later she asked her father why he let her mother take her without so much as a word. He said he thought she needed feminine guidance.

  That might have been true, and probably was, but it would have been nice if that influence had come from a woman who had not walked out, stayed gone for years, come back, and then still left her to be raised by others who could not have cared less about her emotional well being.

  Her mother, shortly after divorcing her father, had married a prominent investment banker. Money and influence had never been in short supply for Krystal after leaving Texas behind. Just two short weeks after her mother and she arrived back in New York, her mother and stepfather shipped her off to an elite boarding school.

  Katherine shivered thinking about those years.

  As long as the check for the tuition did not bounce, the good sisters of The Sacred Heart School for Girls were happy to let her reside in their finely gilded establishment designed to refine the elite of New York and New England.

  It wasn’t that they were cruel; they just did not care and finally gave up trying to punish her for unbecoming behavior. They shifted their goal to just getting her graduated.

  “Well, getting me graduated and doing it without me causing too much damage to the other more ‘gently bred’ girls,” she added the verbal note.

  Gently bred my ass, she thought then snorted.

  Most could have just as easily been “harbor chicks”. They just bothered to hide their baser natures. She, on the other hand, never bothered to hide the fact she couldn’t care less about which way the knife blade was supposed to be turned for a proper place setting. If it took that for a person to accept her, then they probably had no use for her or she for them.

  The sisters, students, and her parents considered her stupid, unsophisticated and beyond redemption. The harder they had tried to mold her, the more she sat down like a stubborn mule. So the quest to turn her into a refined lady had quickly been abandoned for easier obstacles, leaving her to her own designs. It was easier that way for all concerned.

  Looking back, the apathy they showed was just about as damning to a fourteen-year-old girl as any corporal reprimand could possibly have been. However, their indifference had managed one positive thing. Having no friends and nothing to distract her from her studies, she had pushed herself to prove them wrong. She may have been crude, she would concede that much. What could anyone expect? She had been raised by ranch hands. However, what she was not was stupid, and she deeply resented anyone who made the mistake of assuming she was the village idiot.

  It really royally pissed off the crème de la crème when she graduated top of her class and not by just a small margin either. She had blown the competition clear out of the water, and never being one to conform, unless of course it suited her, she added salt to the wound by walking across the stage in full battle dress consisting of boots, spurs, and a cowboy hat. As if that had not been enough, she accessorized the outfit with the four letters of acceptance, all from Ivy League schools, enlarged and glued on poster board which she draped over her shoulders like a billboard advertisement. She had put a caption under it which read: I may be an Ass, but I’m a Smart Ass.

 
Mission accomplished, she thought, smiling, thinking back.

  Her mother had been horrified, gasping for breath and spouting that all their money had been wasted on her.

  Her father had been proud of her accomplishments. He just couldn’t come to see her walk across the stage. Kyle had made a point to come along with a video camera. She had been on the phone the night Kyle showed her father and George the video of her graduation. She heard him laugh which was a rare event. Then he shouted in the background so she could hear in the receiver, “Way to go, Katie! Put those snobbish bastards in their place! See George? She got her mother’s looks, Thaddeus’ balls, and Nathaniel’s brains. That’s my girl!”

  His reference was a compliment. Everyone knew her mother was lovely, Nathaniel Brandenburg was nobody’s fool, and Thaddeus’ balls had been big and brass. It still made her smile to think about it.

  Her father had died only a month later. She never got to see him again.

  From the day her mother picked her up at the ranch until she graduated from Princeton, again top of her class, she saw her mother a whopping twelve days, even less since then. Not that she was missing much, but Krystal was still her mother. It would have been nice to get a call now and again. All Katherine ever reached was the household staff at the upstate New York mansion. It was always the same, “No, sorry, your mother is away on holiday,” or that they were in residence at their winter home in the Bahamas.

  Fifteen years, numerous lawsuits, and one disastrous marriage later, she still had a New York address. It was not that she necessarily enjoyed living there, but New York was where the most lucrative jobs were found. If you were in high finance, you lived in New York. End of discussion.

  However, back on the ranch was not necessarily where she longed to be either, yet here she was, like it or not. Kyle had never married so who else was going to take care of all the details?

  Even if Robert had called her and was a good friend of Kyle’s, he probably had his own affairs to look after. By now, in his late thirties, doubtless he had a family of his own. It was too much to ask of him to take care of the Brandenburg affairs, even if he and Kyle had been as close as any blood.

  Rosa was their housekeeper and, God love her, she had stayed to help Kyle as long as she could. However, even she had left the previous fall after the crops were harvested to join her daughter in San Angelo.

  That just left Old George who was now “Really Old George”. He was well into his late eighties.

  The times she would call and check in with Kyle, George would usually ask to speak to her. She would spend the next thirty minutes listening to him describe how inept his doctors were and how his gout was getting worse. He would then put Kyle back on the phone grumbling about the work not doing itself.

  Turning off the ignition she waited as the dust settled, drifting away on the light April breeze. She absorbed the quiet. All she heard was her own breathing, shallow and ragged.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake just get a grip, you ninny. You live in New York for Christ’s sake. You’ve been mugged twice, once at gunpoint. You will not fall apart. You will not!” she said gaining courage to open the car door.

  Stepping out of the little silver coupe, she shut the car door, breathing in the clean Texas air. Looking out over the pasture, she knew she would need all the courage she could muster. Memories of Kyle were everywhere she looked.

  “They say you can never come home again. Personally, I think you never really left.”

  She heard the gravelly old voice behind her.

  “George!” Katherine turned to see the man who had helped raise her, stooped and leaning heavily on a cane. She ran to hug his neck, hoping her shock did not register on her face. He had aged so much and his eyes were rimmed red. Not that hers were in any better condition. All her make-up was gone from the tears she shed on the flight from JFK to Dallas.

  “It is good to see you,” she said hugging him.

  “Come inside, Girl. I expected you an hour ago. Supper’s getting cold,” he said just as if he had seen her that morning for breakfast, when in reality the span of a decade actually was more realistic.

  “I’m sorry, George. I should have called. My luggage was delayed and did not arrive until the next flight. I stayed rather than have it delivered,” Katherine said pulling her rolling bag out of the trunk along with her computer case.

  “That is why I say, ‘if I can’t carry it on my back it don’t get packed.’ Good advice, Katie Bug. Might think about that next time,” he said already back inside the house.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she smiled.

  Maybe she could come home again. After all, what had she really left behind in New York?

  Chapter 2

  After a light supper Katherine washed, dried, and put the dishes away. George excused himself for the evening, retiring to his quarters in the old bunkhouse leaving her alone inside the mansion.

  The house was empty, yet alive from the life force and energy traces left behind by a hundred and fifty years of Brandenburg descendents. She had forgotten the feeling. Wrapping it around her was a comfort, one she really missed feeling.

  Walking into the living room, she listened to the heavy silence as the antique clock ticked beating out a steady rhythm just as it always did, day after day, year after year. From her apartment in New York, there were constant sounds from the city drifting through the windows. The city really doesn’t sleep and often times she did not either. In the early days of her living in the Big Apple, there were times when the noise chafed her as she longed for the quiet of the ranch and a cool, cloudless, winter night where she could see the stars going on forever.

  She ran her hand over the smooth wooden mantle coming to rest on the old faded photo of Kyle and his friend Robert McKinnon. They were both leaning against her father’s 1962 Chevy truck, arms crossed with chests bare and tanned from the summer. Robert and Kyle had been inseparable until Robert went off to college. She thought she remembered Kyle saying Robert had won a baseball scholarship to Texas A & M. Gaining his masters from Vanderbilt earned him a prestigious slot in the Secret Service on presidential detail. Kyle had stayed behind going to community college when crops would allow. Even before Robert called her, she knew he and Kyle had managed to stay close through the years.

  Since moving to New York she had come home only once, and if Robert had been at her father’s funeral she did not recall seeing him. She had been eighteen at the time.

  Had it already been ten years? The question rolled around in her mind.

  Robert owned the ranch butting up to Brandenburg land. His great-grandfather, Silas McKinnon, had purchased a two thousand acre track of land from Thaddeus’ widow, using it for raising horses for the cavalry in World War I. Once Robert, his younger brothers Chase and Mason, and Kyle were old enough to cross the pasture, Kyle and Robert had become fast friends and she never remembered a time that Robert, Mason, and Chase were not around. Rosa’s homemade bread and chocolate chip cookies were as much to blame for his being a constant fixture as his love for Kyle.

  At Brandenburg expense, Robert had expanded that original tract of land he inherited from his grandfather’s purchase. Kyle, in an act of desperation, sold two thousand more acres to him several years ago to make the mortgage on the farm equipment after a failed crop. If anyone else had purchased that parcel of land, she would have resented it. However, she remembered tagging along as a kid, more of an annoyance than either boy would have liked, but neither ever really pushed her away. Perhaps, if someone had to get a piece of Brandenburg history, Robert was the best choice. He had given Kyle fair market value, unlike Dallas Langston, who was constantly on Kyle to sell the ranch for other darker motives. If she were really honest with herself, she was grateful Kyle had the sense to go to Robert and not let Dallas get his hooks into the Golden Circle.

  Setting the photo frame back on the credenza, she noticed a candid shot of much happier times. She remembered the day the shot was taken as if it
were yesterday. She took home first place in the Junior National Rodeo, winning the barrel racing competition on a painted filly named Sapphire. It had been one of the McKinnon horses from Robert’s own personal stock. He had given her Sapphire as a gift on her eleventh birthday. Robert, Kyle, George, and her father had all been there to see her win. It was the only time she ever remembered her father actually saying the words he was proud of her.

  She looked at the young girl smiling back at her proudly holding the trophy that was almost as tall as she was at the time.

  As she remembered, it was Robert who had been behind the camera. It was the only shot she knew of in existence of her father, Kyle, George and herself together.

  That had only been days before her mother’s arrival.

  If she had only known what was coming. Had she known, she would have jumped on her horse and just kept riding out onto the ranch lands. She felt sure if she were not handy for her mother to snatch up, Krystal would have lost interest quickly, finding another flavor of the week to acquire. She just happened to be the one her mother wanted at that moment in time.

  Sighing, Katherine placed the photo back in its place.

  The light breeze drifting through the screen door brought with it the soothing sounds of the spring night. Pushing open the door, she walked out onto the front porch gently closing the rusty screen behind her.

  The old porch swing was still there just as she remembered it, gently swaying in the evening breeze as if a ghost of some past Brandenburg was pushing it back and forth. Sitting down and placing her feet on the top railing of the porch she rocked gently, listening to the chains creak and the old wooden slats of the seat pop in rhythm.

  Leaning her head back she closed her eyes having not slept since getting the call of Kyle’s death. She was coming to grips with the tragedy now that the shock had passed and she realized how exhausted she actually was, feeling her body ache to her marrow.