Read Winning Texas Online

Authors: Nancy Stancill

Winning Texas

BOOK: Winning Texas
13.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Winning Texas

Nancy Stancill

Copyright
Nancy Stancill
2016

Published by Black Rose Writing, Publishing at Smashwords

 

 

www.blackrosewriting.com

 

 

 

©
2016 by
Nancy Stancill

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

 

The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

 

First digital version

 

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

Print ISBN: 978-1-61296-683-0

PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING

www.blackrosewriting.com

 

Print edition produced in the United States of America

 

For Len Norman

My husband, my best friend and partner in all things.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

 

The female body slipped into the oily waters of the Houston Ship Channel one night and surfaced early the next morning, floating by the Valero petroleum refinery where it spooked a middle-aged cleaning woman savoring a cigarette.

Annie Price heard about it on news-talk radio as she drank coffee and scanned two newspapers at her kitchen counter. She jumped off the bar stool, scaring Marbles, her cat, who was lurking underneath. She hurried to her bedroom, pulled on a pair of black jeans and a red blouse and twisted her hair into a low bun. Five minutes later, she backed out of her narrow driveway in the Heights neighborhood in her old white Camry, heading east to the ship channel.

She

d half-hoped for a light day filling in for Travis Dunbar, a reporter for the
Houston Times,
who normally covered daytime police. Travis had gone to the Rio Grande Valley to a court hearing for Phil Cantoro, a drug kingpin. As his editor, she made sure police was covered

day and night. Today, she was the only person available in the thinly staffed newsroom to work the early shift.

As she maneuvered through the early-morning traffic east of downtown, she tried to remember when she

d last worked police at the
Times
. Probably in her early thirties, not long after the paper hired her. She

d become an assistant metro editor three years ago, when her prized job of investigative reporter was eliminated. At forty, she might be the oldest reporter at the scene. Would any of her old sources be there to help her out? She wished she

d had time to wash and blow-dry her thick black hair, which she considered her best feature. Not that it would look good for long in this humidity.

A familiar mixture of excitement and anxiety welled up in her chest. She

d never outgrown a reporter

s stage fright, even now as a fairly experienced editor. She was spending too much time at her desk editing other people

s stories. Would she still be able to coax enough details out of the police? Could she frame her story fast enough to be competitive? Would she get all the details right? Timing was everything on the police beat, especially now that Houston

s radio, TV and newspapers all had fiercely competitive websites. She was definitely rusty and she

d always performed better on longer stories with more expansive deadlines. But she knew that once she got to the scene, she

d stop worrying and her skills would take over.

She opened the car window to gauge the heat of the morning and was assailed by the very particular odor of Houston

s eastside. It was acrid and earthy at the same time, the corky burnt smell of the refineries in nearby Pasadena and the funk of heat and humidity with the faint aroma of overripe bananas. She wrinkled her nose, but didn

t mind it as much as outsiders did. The August weather drove hordes of Texans to Colorado or other, cooler mountain retreats, but Annie prided herself on having developed the stoicism of a native. If you outlasted the blast-furnace heat of Houston

s August, you

d be rewarded with balmy temperatures in February.

She pitied whoever had been unlucky enough to meet her fate in the opaque waters of the ship channel. Annie had gone on a Port of Houston tour one time, expecting eye-popping waterway views and insights into the city

s massive shipping industry. But the big tour boat had lumbered along for what seemed like hours, passing rusty hulls of workhorse vessels slung along the sides of the channel like old beached whales. At the tour

s end, she still felt mystified by the workings and the appeal of what resembled an oversized ditch.

Up ahead she spotted a swarm of activity at an industrial marina with a shabby wooden building. She saw the knot of police cars and a few media trucks, so she eased the Toyota into a spot and got out quickly, carrying her old-fashioned leather notebook and straw purse. She scanned the group of uniformed police and rescue workers loading a body bag onto an ambulance. She was happy to see a familiar face, Detective Matt Sharpe. He

d been one of her best sources ten years earlier and apparently was the lead detective at today

s scene.

He stood at the water

s edge, talking and gesturing to the clump of workers. She

d always marveled at the easy manner and unforced leadership with which he commanded everyone

s attention. A few uniformed men took notes and others listened intently, drinking coffee from paper cups they

d gotten at the marina. She walked up and nodded to Sharpe, but stayed about eight feet from the group, knowing he wouldn

t want to be interrupted.

He grinned at her and walked over immediately when he finished, giving her a hug.


Annie Price! Girl, what are you doing here? Aren

t you the big dog editor who stays in the office?

Sharpe drawled in his small-town Texas accent. He was a middle-aged, barrel-chested cop who always looked rumpled, especially after being summoned to a scene at 5 a.m. He moved more slowly than usual, his brown eyes swollen and red around the edges, but he seemed to be in a decent mood.


Sometimes they let me out on good behavior,

Annie said.

So glad to see you, Matt. I

m subbing for Travis Dunbar. He

s working on a story in the valley.


Coffee? There

s a joint a few blocks from here,

Sharpe said.


You always know the best joints,

she said.

That Greek place? Meet you there in ten.

She gathered a few details from the public information officer handling reporters, called the
Times

website editor to bolster the bare-bones story he

d already posted and said she

d be back with him in a while.

Minutes later, she joined Sharpe in a battered orange booth at the ancient caf
é
and both ordered the $5.99 breakfast special

eggs, sausage, grits, biscuits and coffee. Soon they were sipping from steaming brown mugs. Annie stretched her long legs under the table, feeling human again. She badly needed coffee to make up for the half-full cup she

d left on her kitchen counter.

How she

d missed this, she thought, taking in the sight of Sharpe in his navy chinos, short-sleeved shirt and bifocals. He

d been one of her favorite police officials during her reporting years and they

d occasionally enjoyed coffee, diner lunches and dissecting the roiling mysteries that cropped up daily in the big city.

Annie thought about the times she

d sat in similar cafes with news sources. She

d always considered cultivating sources her greatest reporting strength. She

d been born shy, but she enjoyed people and relished getting them to talk and share secrets that she

d parlay into stories

while protecting her sources

confidentiality. She loved flushing out things that the top brass wanted to keep hidden. And while most of her sources were male

men mostly still held the power on the major urban beats

she was friendly without being flirtatious. She thought that her tallness

nearly six feet in her favorite ballet flats

and her looks, more girl-next-door than vamp, helped her in some ways. Her height, a bugaboo as she was growing up, now worked to her advantage. Questioning stubborn men at eye level, standing tall and refusing to go away without answers, was surprisingly effective.

BOOK: Winning Texas
13.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A SEAL's Heart by Winter, Nikki
Limit, The by Cannell, Michael
The Rancher Next Door by Betsy St. Amant
The Reivers by William Faulkner
Dead Life (Book 3) by Schleicher, D. Harrison
Secret Magdalene by Longfellow, Ki
Desh by Kim Kellas
The Last Stoic by Morgan Wade