Muses Unleashed - Possession
MU 6.3.C - Possession
The man who walked into Hsu Financial, on that Monday afternoon, was clearly out of place. In fact, as Cody Jean Lane studied him from the landing of the stairs, it seemed to her he was out of time, as well. His suit was twenty years old, at least, and the bow tie was even older. His thinning hair was grown long, and then combed over the large area that lacked any. He was turning this way and that, taking in the impressive building, so unlike any that he had ever seen. Ronald J. Harkstone, Esquire, was a prominent attorney in Crosby, North Dakota, which was the judicial and government seat of Divide County. Of course, considering that Divide County was the least populated in the state, and one of the most barren counties in the United States, and that Crosby had 1089 people in it, the massive financial empire of Hsu Danmei, aka Robert Grayson, in it’s Zurich headquarters, was more than a bit intimidating to the honest, earnest lawyer. He reminded Cody, to her amusement, of the man in the office building across from them, the one who had watched her with Hsu after her first challenge. That had her grinning, then containing the expression, before she went downstairs.
Her Italian leather pumps clicked on the marble floors as she strode over to the security desk where Mr. Harkstone was sitting in a chair, his battered briefcase perched on his lap. When she stood in front of him, the man withdrew a photograph of a young teen girl from his brown tweed jacket pocket, and peered at it, then Cody, through a different part of his bifocals for each. Cody looked at the photograph, which was taken a few weeks before her grandmother’s death. She was there, laughing, her cousins around her, watching her cousin Crystal blowing out candles on her birthday cake. It struck Cody that she had no photographs of her family, or of herself as a child. She also noticed how thin she was, in the picture, the remnant of a childhood with too little food, and too little care. Her expression, however, gave away nothing, though she vowed that before this man left this building, she would have that photograph.
“Mr. Harkstone.” Cody held out her hand, and the platinum watch on her wrist, trimmed with discreet diamonds, glinted in the lights. Like Hsu, she had learned the power that fine jewelry gave in the initial impression people got. Like her Chanel suit, it was an immediate announcement of strength and confidence. “I’m told that you have traveled a very long way to see me.”
The man stood, fumbling with his briefcase until he had it in one hand, reaching to shake her hand. “Miss Lane, thank you for seeing me without an appointment. This is a very personal and private matter, and I was wondering if we could talk…privately.”
Cody felt, rather than saw, Andy MacDonald come up behind her. Andy leaned up to her ear to murmur that the man was legit, and checked out. Nevertheless, Cody still glanced at his wrist as she shook hands, because old habits die hard. “Of course. We have a conference room right this way.” She led him towards a side room that they used for client meetings, and MacDonald followed them. Inside, she crisply requested coffee for their guest, and waited until a secretary brought the tray. “Would you like cream and sugar, Mr. Harkstone?”
“Cream, please. No sugar.” Harkstone looked over at Andy, who had taken a position against the wall, hands crossed at the wrist. The small town lawyer was all of five foot seven, and didn’t appear to have worked out in at least a decade, maybe two. Despite Andy being shorter than Hsu, he was still a very imposing figure, whether in a suit or fighting gear. “Um, Miss Lane, this is a private matter. A family matter. Could we speak in private?”
“You want to talk to her, you talk in front of me.” Andy was blunt. After the kidnapping, and with the return of Daniel to Hsu, there were no weak spots in security. No one got close to anyone or anything that belonged to Hsu, not even some sweating, nervous, hick lawyer.
“What Mr. MacDonald means, Mr. Harkstone, is that he is a part of my family. There is nothing that you can tell me that he cannot hear.” Cody guided the man into a plush chair, and set his fine white china cup with a saucer in front of him. She was silk, Andy was steel. They actually made a very good pair, in business. Too often, people thought Andy was all muscle. But the man was an extraordinary reader of people, and his brain moved at amazing speeds in processing data. MacDonald was clever, far more so than people gave him credit for. Cody valued his guidance, his wisdom and his friendship more with every passing year of her life.
Cody walked over, across to the other side of the small, round conference table. She sat, and crossed her ankles, giving the man her full attention. He, in turn, took a sip of his coffee, which was rich and quite good, then set his brown leather case on the table, snapping it open so that he could pull out a file. Harkstone laid the photograph he used to identify her with on the table, and Cody glanced at the photo, then Andy, with a tip of her head. MacDonald stepped forward to pick up the picture, which made Harkstone jump nervously. Andy gave Cody a little grin. “You were cute in here.” Then he handed the photo to Cody, as if to show it to her. Just like that, smoothly, she had the photo in her hands, and it would remain there.
“Miss Lane, I was the attorney for your uncle, Mr. Elmo Bernard Lane, originally from Flat Creek, Kentucky, and then Sacred Horses, North Dakota.” The lawyer was being quite formal, his voice solemn. Cody was distracted by the white spittle in the corner of his mouth. Yuck, she hated that.
“You have an Uncle Elmo?” Andy looked at her, and then returned to his spot against the wall when she gave him a classic ‘shut up’ look.
“Had, actually, would be the more precise word. I regret to inform you, Miss Lane, your uncle, and his only son, Butte, were killed in a terrible accident last month.” The white spittle was waggling, which made Cody frown harder than the news of her barely remembered relatives’ deaths.
“Butte?” Andy couldn’t help that one, though it earned him reproving looks from both Cody and Harkstone.
“What happened?” Cody knew that her aunt had died years before, of breast cancer, and they only had the one son. Aunt Emily had been truly good to her, before they moved to North Dakota after the mines closed. She always wanted a little girl, so she gave all that feminine affection to Cody, who was starved for it. It was Emily who taught Cody how to do embroidery, and sew, and dance the pony, and cook. Elmo was a gruff man, but he was nice, and Butte was a shy, reserved boy six years older than Cody Jean.
“Well, it seems that your cousin was working as a vet for the traveling circus in Denton, and they had a constipated elephant. Butte fed the plugged up pachyderm a bushel of berries, figs, oats and prunes, but it didn’t help. Then he gave him twenty-two doses of animal laxatives, to no avail. Finally, your uncle, who had raised cattle, stepped in to help your cousin administer an enema to the beast. However, the animal unexpectedly…well…let fly with two hundred and thirty pounds of manure that buried the men. The sheer force of the defecation knocked both men to the ground, and they were rendered unconscious, then buried under the waste. Because there was no one else there, they remained unaided for over an hour, and by the time they were found, it was too late for CPR or first aid.” To his credit, the lawyer remained straight faced, and solemn as he recounted the bizarre, freak accident that killed her relatives. “The elephant, thanks to all of the remedies tried before, just kept evacuating his bowels on top of the men, over and over. The handlers said that they had never seen so much…”
“I get the picture. Thank you.” Cody held up her hand, shaking her head at the mental picture. Though she hadn’t seen her uncle and cousin for years, she was horrified at how they died. Andy MacDonald, however, was struggling to maintain a straight face. Cody gave him a look, as she continued. “Mr. Harkstone, I don’t understand why you came all the way to Switzerland to tell me this.”
“Well, Miss Lane, you are the heir to Mr. Lane’s estate.” The lawyer slid a document over to her, and she began to read it as he spoke. “Mr. Lane left you all of his holdings, property and valuables. This includes the township of Sacred Horses, population 27…”
“Township? You mean I own a town?” Cody looked at Andy, then Harkstone, her eyebrows knit together in confusion.
“Yes, miss. The land acreage is over sixty eight hundred acres.” He handed her a map, with her property highlighted in green. “Most of it undeveloped. The residents of the township mostly worked for your uncle in the oil field.”
Now the man had MacDonald’s serious attention. “Oil field?”
“Yes, sir. One of the biggest untapped oil reserves found in North America in the last ten years. Real quality crude, flowing and full. The land is in the farthest corner of the state, up by the Canadian border. No real cities for miles and miles. But the oil makes it worth the cold winters, I imagine.”
Cody read the documents, and the specs on the oil production. “The crude is sold to the oil companies. No refinery?”
“No, miss. Your uncle kept it all very simple. To be honest, he could have increased production by twice as much, and still had enough crude to be drilled for the next hundred years. Of course, no one lives that long, but it’s a real good pool of black gold. Additionally, the land has a small black hills gold mine on it, which is not as good as fine gold, but still a moneymaker. In all, your inheritance, after taxes, is valued at ten million in cash and property, but the potential wealth in the oil fields will give you many, many times that in future earnings. You, Miss Lane, are now an heiress. Quite so.” Harkstone was enjoying giving her the news of her new wealth. He traveled a long way to do so. “I do need your signature, here, and I can transfer all of the deeds and titles within the next few days.”
Cody signed the documents, and instructed that the cash, stocks and other liquid assets be transferred into accounts at HSU Financial. The oil wells, land and mineral rights would be in her name, by the end of the week. Cody Jean, who had nothing a few years ago, was now a wealthy, independently wealthy, woman of means. It was a stunning reversal of fortune. After the lawyer left, she took the elevator up to the executive offices, and when the doors opened, she turned right to go to her office, where she could close the door and contemplate the enormity of her new wealth and power. Andy MacDonald turned left, towards his office, where he would be calling Hsu at the ranch to tell him of this interesting development. Cody Jean, the orphaned waif, was now the sole owner of a new oil field, and a vast piece of undeveloped land.
“I’m rich.” She leaned back in her chair, in her tiny, windowless office, and stared at the ceiling. “Mine. Mine, mine, mine. All mine.” She smiled, and spun her small chair around, whooping with glee. Who knew that a tragic pachyderm poop incident could make her independently wealthy? The good Lord works in mysterious ways.
The man who walked into Hsu Financial, on that Monday afternoon, was clearly out of place. In fact, as Cody Jean Lane studied him from the landing of the stairs, it seemed to her he was out of time, as well. His suit was twenty years old, at least, and the bow tie was even older. His thinning hair was grown long, and then combed over the large area that lacked any. He was turning this way and that, taking in the impressive building, so unlike any that he had ever seen. Ronald J. Harkstone, Esquire, was a prominent attorney in Crosby, North Dakota, which was the judicial and government seat of Divide County. Of course, considering that Divide County was the least populated in the state, and one of the most barren counties in the United States, and that Crosby had 1089 people in it, the massive financial empire of Hsu Danmei, aka Robert Grayson, in it’s Zurich headquarters, was more than a bit intimidating to the honest, earnest lawyer. He reminded Cody, to her amusement, of the man in the office building across from them, the one who had watched her with Hsu after her first challenge. That had her grinning, then containing the expression, before she went downstairs.
Her Italian leather pumps clicked on the marble floors as she strode over to the security desk where Mr. Harkstone was sitting in a chair, his battered briefcase perched on his lap. When she stood in front of him, the man withdrew a photograph of a young teen girl from his brown tweed jacket pocket, and peered at it, then Cody, through a different part of his bifocals for each. Cody looked at the photograph, which was taken a few weeks before her grandmother’s death. She was there, laughing, her cousins around her, watching her cousin Crystal blowing out candles on her birthday cake. It struck Cody that she had no photographs of her family, or of herself as a child. She also noticed how thin she was, in the picture, the remnant of a childhood with too little food, and too little care. Her expression, however, gave away nothing, though she vowed that before this man left this building, she would have that photograph.
“Mr. Harkstone.” Cody held out her hand, and the platinum watch on her wrist, trimmed with discreet diamonds, glinted in the lights. Like Hsu, she had learned the power that fine jewelry gave in the initial impression people got. Like her Chanel suit, it was an immediate announcement of strength and confidence. “I’m told that you have traveled a very long way to see me.”
The man stood, fumbling with his briefcase until he had it in one hand, reaching to shake her hand. “Miss Lane, thank you for seeing me without an appointment. This is a very personal and private matter, and I was wondering if we could talk…privately.”
Cody felt, rather than saw, Andy MacDonald come up behind her. Andy leaned up to her ear to murmur that the man was legit, and checked out. Nevertheless, Cody still glanced at his wrist as she shook hands, because old habits die hard. “Of course. We have a conference room right this way.” She led him towards a side room that they used for client meetings, and MacDonald followed them. Inside, she crisply requested coffee for their guest, and waited until a secretary brought the tray. “Would you like cream and sugar, Mr. Harkstone?”
“Cream, please. No sugar.” Harkstone looked over at Andy, who had taken a position against the wall, hands crossed at the wrist. The small town lawyer was all of five foot seven, and didn’t appear to have worked out in at least a decade, maybe two. Despite Andy being shorter than Hsu, he was still a very imposing figure, whether in a suit or fighting gear. “Um, Miss Lane, this is a private matter. A family matter. Could we speak in private?”
“You want to talk to her, you talk in front of me.” Andy was blunt. After the kidnapping, and with the return of Daniel to Hsu, there were no weak spots in security. No one got close to anyone or anything that belonged to Hsu, not even some sweating, nervous, hick lawyer.
“What Mr. MacDonald means, Mr. Harkstone, is that he is a part of my family. There is nothing that you can tell me that he cannot hear.” Cody guided the man into a plush chair, and set his fine white china cup with a saucer in front of him. She was silk, Andy was steel. They actually made a very good pair, in business. Too often, people thought Andy was all muscle. But the man was an extraordinary reader of people, and his brain moved at amazing speeds in processing data. MacDonald was clever, far more so than people gave him credit for. Cody valued his guidance, his wisdom and his friendship more with every passing year of her life.
Cody walked over, across to the other side of the small, round conference table. She sat, and crossed her ankles, giving the man her full attention. He, in turn, took a sip of his coffee, which was rich and quite good, then set his brown leather case on the table, snapping it open so that he could pull out a file. Harkstone laid the photograph he used to identify her with on the table, and Cody glanced at the photo, then Andy, with a tip of her head. MacDonald stepped forward to pick up the picture, which made Harkstone jump nervously. Andy gave Cody a little grin. “You were cute in here.” Then he handed the photo to Cody, as if to show it to her. Just like that, smoothly, she had the photo in her hands, and it would remain there.
“Miss Lane, I was the attorney for your uncle, Mr. Elmo Bernard Lane, originally from Flat Creek, Kentucky, and then Sacred Horses, North Dakota.” The lawyer was being quite formal, his voice solemn. Cody was distracted by the white spittle in the corner of his mouth. Yuck, she hated that.
“You have an Uncle Elmo?” Andy looked at her, and then returned to his spot against the wall when she gave him a classic ‘shut up’ look.
“Had, actually, would be the more precise word. I regret to inform you, Miss Lane, your uncle, and his only son, Butte, were killed in a terrible accident last month.” The white spittle was waggling, which made Cody frown harder than the news of her barely remembered relatives’ deaths.
“Butte?” Andy couldn’t help that one, though it earned him reproving looks from both Cody and Harkstone.
“What happened?” Cody knew that her aunt had died years before, of breast cancer, and they only had the one son. Aunt Emily had been truly good to her, before they moved to North Dakota after the mines closed. She always wanted a little girl, so she gave all that feminine affection to Cody, who was starved for it. It was Emily who taught Cody how to do embroidery, and sew, and dance the pony, and cook. Elmo was a gruff man, but he was nice, and Butte was a shy, reserved boy six years older than Cody Jean.
“Well, it seems that your cousin was working as a vet for the traveling circus in Denton, and they had a constipated elephant. Butte fed the plugged up pachyderm a bushel of berries, figs, oats and prunes, but it didn’t help. Then he gave him twenty-two doses of animal laxatives, to no avail. Finally, your uncle, who had raised cattle, stepped in to help your cousin administer an enema to the beast. However, the animal unexpectedly…well…let fly with two hundred and thirty pounds of manure that buried the men. The sheer force of the defecation knocked both men to the ground, and they were rendered unconscious, then buried under the waste. Because there was no one else there, they remained unaided for over an hour, and by the time they were found, it was too late for CPR or first aid.” To his credit, the lawyer remained straight faced, and solemn as he recounted the bizarre, freak accident that killed her relatives. “The elephant, thanks to all of the remedies tried before, just kept evacuating his bowels on top of the men, over and over. The handlers said that they had never seen so much…”
“I get the picture. Thank you.” Cody held up her hand, shaking her head at the mental picture. Though she hadn’t seen her uncle and cousin for years, she was horrified at how they died. Andy MacDonald, however, was struggling to maintain a straight face. Cody gave him a look, as she continued. “Mr. Harkstone, I don’t understand why you came all the way to Switzerland to tell me this.”
“Well, Miss Lane, you are the heir to Mr. Lane’s estate.” The lawyer slid a document over to her, and she began to read it as he spoke. “Mr. Lane left you all of his holdings, property and valuables. This includes the township of Sacred Horses, population 27…”
“Township? You mean I own a town?” Cody looked at Andy, then Harkstone, her eyebrows knit together in confusion.
“Yes, miss. The land acreage is over sixty eight hundred acres.” He handed her a map, with her property highlighted in green. “Most of it undeveloped. The residents of the township mostly worked for your uncle in the oil field.”
Now the man had MacDonald’s serious attention. “Oil field?”
“Yes, sir. One of the biggest untapped oil reserves found in North America in the last ten years. Real quality crude, flowing and full. The land is in the farthest corner of the state, up by the Canadian border. No real cities for miles and miles. But the oil makes it worth the cold winters, I imagine.”
Cody read the documents, and the specs on the oil production. “The crude is sold to the oil companies. No refinery?”
“No, miss. Your uncle kept it all very simple. To be honest, he could have increased production by twice as much, and still had enough crude to be drilled for the next hundred years. Of course, no one lives that long, but it’s a real good pool of black gold. Additionally, the land has a small black hills gold mine on it, which is not as good as fine gold, but still a moneymaker. In all, your inheritance, after taxes, is valued at ten million in cash and property, but the potential wealth in the oil fields will give you many, many times that in future earnings. You, Miss Lane, are now an heiress. Quite so.” Harkstone was enjoying giving her the news of her new wealth. He traveled a long way to do so. “I do need your signature, here, and I can transfer all of the deeds and titles within the next few days.”
Cody signed the documents, and instructed that the cash, stocks and other liquid assets be transferred into accounts at HSU Financial. The oil wells, land and mineral rights would be in her name, by the end of the week. Cody Jean, who had nothing a few years ago, was now a wealthy, independently wealthy, woman of means. It was a stunning reversal of fortune. After the lawyer left, she took the elevator up to the executive offices, and when the doors opened, she turned right to go to her office, where she could close the door and contemplate the enormity of her new wealth and power. Andy MacDonald turned left, towards his office, where he would be calling Hsu at the ranch to tell him of this interesting development. Cody Jean, the orphaned waif, was now the sole owner of a new oil field, and a vast piece of undeveloped land.
“I’m rich.” She leaned back in her chair, in her tiny, windowless office, and stared at the ceiling. “Mine. Mine, mine, mine. All mine.” She smiled, and spun her small chair around, whooping with glee. Who knew that a tragic pachyderm poop incident could make her independently wealthy? The good Lord works in mysterious ways.