The Cowboy's Texas Heart by E. Elizabeth Watson

Author:E. Elizabeth Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781957748061
Publisher: Tule Publishing Group, LLC
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Tyler typed in the final cell of the spreadsheet and jotted notes on his legal pad. He’d slogged his way through every single bank statement. His grandparents should have hired an accountant, because even though Gramps could build just about anything, he’d had only a sixth-grade education, and it showed. The farm’s financials had been a wreck when Tyler had inherited. He’d spent weeks with his accountant combing the books, the expenses, the milk production costs, residual farm costs, and realized his grandparents would have had more disposable income and might never have needed oil royalties in the first place if they’d only managed the books better.

His eyes landed on a sum in the statement. The check deposit—a paper check because Gramps hadn’t known how to deposit checks online. Similar deposits over the past decades had also been made, congruent with matching financials from Fossyl indicating a payout. And they were far from consistent. There were no checks in the ’80s and ’90s.

But he remembered seeing the pump-jacks pumping when he was a tween, out on those back hills hunting for fossils with his cousins. Premonition filtered through his gut, leaving a sour feeling. The bank statements didn’t add up. What Fossyl’s records had indicated they’d paid out, was a tad more than what his grandparents had deposited. The bankers that would have worked for his grandparents defunct bank had passed away, so he couldn’t reach out to them to clarify the discrepancy.

Something was amiss. The original contract for the mineral lease in the ’60s had stated Josiah and Mathilda McClintock would receive sixty-one dollars per acre as a one-time signing bonus. There were eighty acres that fell under the contracted subsurface mineral rights. That should have been 4,880 dollars up-front. He scanned through his spreadsheet and isolated the year 1961. There had been a signing bonus paid for 4,819. No indication of any fees or taxes. Why hadn’t it been the full amount they’d been promised in the contract?

He slid the copy of the original contract that his granddad had signed fifty-eight years ago, that Tyler’d had to jump through legal hoops to get, because his grandpa’s filing system had consisted of stacks of milk crates filled with old farm supply warranties and expired Folgers coupons, no rhyme or reason, but no copy of the contract. Again, he read through the legal speak, flipping each page, combing through each section. Clear as day, it stated eighty acres leased. There was no noted fee that the company stated they would withhold.

The deposited bonus was sixty-one dollars short of the total sum it should have been.

Sliding his phone across the desk, he opened his calculator to verify his mental math. He then checked the financials of payments Fossyl had sent him. The amount mailed via check to his grandparents was redacted. He harrumphed. Of course it was. But still. The bank statements weren’t redacted. And his grandparents had been stiffed one acre’s amount of signing bonus.

“I’ll be damned.” He shook his head.

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