Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            The preacher had read a poem and the Twenty-Third Psalm at the graveside service, and a few church members showed up along with the girls in her band. Three months later, Angel had mortgaged the property and drilled a gusher. From there, she’d taken one giant step after another, until today she was the major stockholder and president of her own oil company, based in Denison, with branch offices in Oklahoma and Louisiana.

            Angel closed her eyes. She had all the money she could spend in a lifetime…all the excitement of unexpected success…all the peacefulness of a country home to enjoy for the rest of her life…but none of it would ever ease the cold, blue loneliness in her heart.





Chapter 3


            The next Friday night, Clancy parked his Ford Bronco a comfortable distance away from the big, black bus sitting in the crowded parking lot of the Twisted Spur Honky Tonk, just off I-35 south of Davis. He could hear the thump, thump, thump of the music every time the doors opened and someone went in or came back out.

            He wanted to pay the cover charge and go inside to listen to Angel sing, to watch her move with that sexy confidence she hadn’t had in high school, to breathe in the essence of her that sent his senses reeling, but he didn’t want her to know he was there. He had thought at first that he would simply wait beside the bus and try to talk to her when she finished the gig.

            Whether she liked it or not, he was going to find out what really happened after he went away to college. It occurred to him that he didn’t deserve to know after the way he’d treated her, but perhaps she’d forgiven him. They were adults, now, after all, and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be at peace until he knew the whole story.

            The doors opened, but it wasn’t the band members who came out. A big man dressed in black jeans and cowboy boots with silver tips on the pointed toes stumbled out with his arm around a skinny, hard-looking blond wearing a denim miniskirt and red cowboy boots. Then another couple staggered forth, giggling as they held each other up long enough to get the car door open and drive away. Angel finally came out of the honky-tonk with her band members and started loading equipment. The lady she’d introduced as Patty, the rhythm guitar player, sat down in the driver’s seat and revved up the motor.

            The bus pulled into the parking lot of an all-night convenience store across the highway from the honky-tonk. Patty went inside and came out carrying a big bag of chips and a brown bag full of what Clancy supposed was junk food. As he followed the bus, she made a sharp turn at the overpass bridge and headed south on the interstate.

            Traffic was sparse at that time of night, so Clancy lingered a quarter of a mile behind them. They crossed the Red River into Texas. The bus made a quick stop in Whitesboro, and one of the girls got out. Allie, the drummer, waved and hopped into a new-model red minivan and drove north. Then the bus went on to Denison.

            Clancy managed to keep the taillights in view as the bus stopped and started through town, finally going down an alley and disappearing through huge garage doors in the bottom floor of an enormous building. He eased into a parking place reserved for banking customers only in the lot across the alley and studied the sign, which was lit up with overhead bulbs.

            “Conrad Oil Enterprises?” he said aloud. “Holy cow. Angel must have a rich uncle.” He wondered why she had never mentioned anyone in her family having money.

            The garage doors opened again and four vehicles drove out of the building’s garage. The first one was a dark Lincoln with the window rolled down, driven by Bonnie, the steel guitar player. A red Cadillac followed her, and Susan, the girl who’d played the fiddle, waved to the car behind her as she pulled out onto the road and went south. The third car was a black convertible with Mindy behind the wheel. The last one was a white pickup, and although Clancy could tell there was only one person in the truck, he didn’t know if it was Patty or Angel. Just as he turned the key to start up the engine, he caught a glimpse of Angel, still wearing her sequined vest, standing beside the bus and watching the doors of the garage close.

            Clancy slid down in the seat and waited an hour. Finally, just after dawn, a black Jaguar rolled out of the garage and turned north. He followed it out of the alley, down the side street, and onto Main Street where she turned right and almost lost him. Angel drove faster than the speed limit and crossed the railroad tracks as if they weren’t even there. When he hit the tracks, he bounced around like a puppet inside a rain barrel, but he managed to hold on to the wheel and keep the back end of her car in sight. The road they were traveling had to have more doglegs in it than the city pound, twisting this way and that, and Angel never seemed to even tap the brakes.

            Then her car made an abrupt left turn. He was sure that she glanced up in the rearview mirror and spotted him, but evidently, she hadn’t, because she squealed the tires and took off across a bridge. The sides were so short that he could see the Red River down below, looking like a small creek rather than a river. Clancy hated heights. He didn’t mind bridges that had something over the top or even tall sides, but this one looked like he could practically drive right over the edge of that short side. When he peered over the edge as he drove across, his heart did a flip-flop. Anything higher than a two-foot stepladder made him nervous. He shuddered again but didn’t look down at the muddy water. Why in the devil would Angel want to take this route to her house when there had to be a perfectly good road somewhere else? Maybe she remembered he was afraid of heights and was torturing him.