My Soul to Keep Read online

  7

  I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Dupree.” Though Liz Courtney’s secretary had no idea who Bobby was, she could also see this was a man who wasn’t used to being kept waiting. “Ms. Courtney has phoned again and says she should be here in five minutes, ten at the most.”

  “Ma’am, I tell you the truth. If I thought I could get this much work done every day, I’d move my office into your waiting room. You wouldn’t mind that, would you?”

  She almost managed a smile. “I’ll have to get back to you on that, Mr. Dupree.”

  Bobby Dupree laughed far too easily for a man who’d been sitting in the Courtney lobby for almost three hours. “You do that, ma’am.”

  Fiona Bridge, Bobby’s number one assistant, had basically taken over the waiting room area. The coffee table was piled with files and spreadsheets. Her laptop computer was plugged in and linked up. Every ten to fifteen seconds there came another click, noting the arrival of yet more email. She had two cell phones open and a Bluetooth remote fitted in either ear. Bobby Dupree hated the immediacy of modern business. He liked using Fiona as his buffer. When he needed time to think, it was Fiona’s job to isolate and protect. Which meant his staff had come to loathe her. Around Bobby Dupree’s sprawling empire, Fiona was known as Drawbridge.

  Fiona said, “Jerry Orbain is checking in.”

  “I better take that.” He accepted the phone. “How’s tricks, Jerry?”

  “I just got off the phone with Mr. Stark. He’s back in LA and has met with Celia Breach.”

  “I don’t have enough to chew on, Jerry. Give me the full load.”

  “He also met with Candace Chen in Hawaii. She’s a maybe. Brent says she’s coming in to hear more. I’m flying out to meet them in LA.”

  “Well, that’s good news, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose.”

  Bobby Dupree suppressed the sigh and the anger behind it. Jerry’s tone of voice said it all. The man was still sore over not being given the top directorial slot. “Jerry, I want you to think about something. I gave Brent my card and even wrote my direct line on the bottom. I know you remember that because I saw the glare you gave him.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “But it wasn’t me he called, now, was it? Brent Stark did what he set out to do, and then what happened? Who did he phone, Jerry?” Bobby gave that a double beat, then said, “Seems to me the man is bending over backwards, not just to make peace, but to make sure you’re included. So I’m only gonna say this once. We’re not stopping with this one project. If it goes, we’re gonna be building for the future. Which means we need folks who can run their own rig, especially folks we raise up from inside the group. But you’ve got to make this first one work. I hope you’re listening real good, because I don’t aim on ever telling you that again.”

  He tossed back the phone. “I do declare, if I could find a vaccine against sulking, I’d be a kazillionaire.”

  A strong female voice said from over by the elevators, “I got me a passel of folks I’d like to shoot full of that stuff. Or maybe just shoot.” For a lady wearing a skirt, she made swift progress across the reception area. “Liz Courtney. I can’t tell you how sorry I am to keep you waiting.”

  “Bobby Dupree. Don’t give it another thought, Ms. Courtney.”

  “I’m Liz to everybody I know. Especially those I keep waiting.”

  The banker’s secretary said, “Ms. Courtney, I’m terribly sorry.”

  Liz tried to wave her away. “Whoever it is, they have to wait.”

  “Ma’am, it’s our people in Tulsa again.”

  The banker deflated. Her shoulders slumped and all the air sighed away. “God sent these days to test us, isn’t that what they say?”

  “Sounds a lot better at poolside with a lemonade in your hand and the day done and put to bed,” Bobby replied.

  “The biggest deal in my bank’s portfolio is unraveling.” Liz Courtney walked to the secretary’s desk and reached for the phone. “This is Liz.” She listened for a minute, then, “No, Wayne. I can’t just drop everything and go out there. You know how hard it is to get a flight—”

  Bobby broke in, “I got a jet fueled and waiting on the runway.”

  Liz looked over. “Hold on a second, Wayne.”

  “What can I tell you,” Bobby said. “I’m a man who likes his toys.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Wouldn’t offer if I didn’t.”

  Liz said, “Wayne, I’ll meet you at the Tulsa airport in two hours.”

  Bobby Dupree was born without a father or a middle name. His mother worked nights at a Union 76 truck stop outside Memphis. She loved truckers, gamblers, honky-tonks, and the sort of good times that left her forgetful of her boy. Bobby was saved from going seriously bad by a missionary pastor tending the truck stop chapel. The preacher was like many of his parishioners: a bearded, tattooed man with the jagged features and sawdust voice of a true hard timer. The only differences between this man and the ones who stole Bobby’s mother away for a night or a week were the light in his eyes, how he used the Lord’s name, and the way he taught Bobby that it truly was okay to hurt and to care. When Bobby’s mom finally vanished for good, the pastor formally adopted the boy who already lived more with him than in the empty trailer home.

  Bobby read voraciously, topped his school in all math competitions, and spent his summers on the road with his missionarytrucker dad. Bobby graduated from high school two years early. He got a job as a dispatcher at his dad’s trucking company, the largest in Tennessee. Nights he enrolled at the local community college, taking all the business and accounting classes they had to offer. Six years later, after his latest promotion landed him an office with Vice President on the door, Bobby married a schoolteacher studying for her master’s at the same college. Two years after that, the trucking company’s four directors were sent to prison. Bobby Dupree put together a group of local businessmen to salvage the almost bankrupt company. He was twenty-four.

  Bobby had an infectious optimism, a bear trap of a brain, and an energy level that drove his team to exhaustion. Why anybody would want to sleep more than four hours a night baffled him. He was soft-spoken, hated the limelight, made his donations through blind charities and his local church, and quietly gobbled up company after company. By the age of thirty-seven, Bobby Dupree’s net worth topped a quarter of a billion dollars.

  He was also, in his own words, bored out of his tiny mind.

  “What am I gonna do for the rest of my life?” he’d asked his wife the previous winter. “Buy more companies and make more money? Been there, done that. I can’t spend what I already got.”

  Darlene Dupree was the sort of country lady whose exterior calm hid a core of solid steel. She still ran the church preschool because she felt called to the duty. “You’ll work it out.”

  When Bobby was at home and worried and pacing, his speech returned to the patterns of his early days. “I been talking to God like you told me. How come He don’t say nothing?”

  “He will. In His own good time.”

  “You’re so all-fired sure about that?”

  Darlene looked up from the papers she was sorting through. “Don’t you go picking a fight with me, Mr. Dupree.”

  “I was just saying—”

  “You know who’s gonna win that one. Nobody.”

  He sank down in the chair across from her worktable. “There’s got to be more to life than making money.”

  “Have you ever thought God is the one putting this screw to your brain?”

  Bobby opened his mouth and shut it. Twice. Because no, to be honest, he hadn’t. “You mean, like Paul’s got that thorn?”

  “Possibly, honey. But I doubt it.” She set down her pen. “You’re already too busy. You’ve got people begging for every scrap of time you can throw them. But here you are, hunting hard as you know how for something else.”

  “Something more,” Bobby agreed.

  “Did it ever occur to you how bles
sed we are to be sitting here having this discussion?”

  Bobby rose from his chair. “There you go. Adding guilt to the cauldron.”

  It was not until five months later that the head of Nashville’s teaching hospital introduced him to Christian Round Table. CRT was not so much secretive as cautious. The group had been founded forty-two years earlier in Baton Rouge, hardly a hotbed of moral living, a fact that was not influenced in the least by the town’s ratio of one church for every fifty-six inhabitants. CRT did not seek new members, yet it grew steadily, until by the time Bobby was invited to a session it had groups in all fifty states and nineteen foreign countries. There was no political affiliation, though many members were deeply involved in politics of both parties. It had no religious affiliation, though most of its members were elders or deacons or lay leaders—right across the spectrum of contemporary Christian churches. Nor was race or gender an issue. A third of the group were women, a quarter came from various minorities.

  “If this group ever adopts a motto,” Bobby’s sponsor told him after his first meeting, “we could do worse than ‘It’s lonely at the top.”’

  The rules suited him right to his bones. No solicitations. No business or personal agendas of any kind. No judgment of any member based upon the stand they took, politically or socially or otherwise.

  The creed was six words long. Prayer. Discipleship. Study. Accountability. Service. Support.

  The night after his second meeting, Bobby told his wife, “I do believe God was listening after all.”

  Liz Courtney was having a hard time not being impressed. Which was why, when the co-pilot sealed the door and the pilot swung Bobby’s jet onto the runway, Bobby said, ”First time I sat in this thing, I worried if I’d forget to keep my feet planted on the rock. My wife told me not to fret, that was her job.”

  Soon as they hit level flying, Fiona set out a linen tablecloth, silverware, crystal, and a cold plate of salads and sliced filet mignon. Liz smiled genuine thanks. “If it were my decision, I’d give you that interest-free loan you’re obviously after. But that’s why God gave us a board of directors.”

  “I ain’t after your money, Mrs. Courtney.”

  “Call me Liz.”

  “But I do need your help.”

  While they ate, Bobby Dupree told her the story. About the prayer time. And the mission. Liz Courtney patted her lips, nodded thanks when he refilled her cup, and said, “You all had the same impression?”

  “Impression’s too weak a word. But vision don’t work. And nobody I know of actually heard God speak out loud. But we all knew it was Him just the same.”

  “He said for you to go start a film company.”

  “I tell you what it was like. One minute I was sitting in the meeting room, listening to that evening’s leader. The next, I felt God’s call. Felt it like a divine weight placed on my destiny.”

  “Is that what the others saw?”

  “Saw, heard, felt, smelled. Call it what you like, none of the words fit all that well. And the answer is, more or less. I called around. Some of them said they’d been feeling that way for a while. Others said it first came to them in a dream. Others in prayer time. But they all felt another impact that same night as me. So yeah, I suppose you could say it hit us all pretty much at the same moment.”

  She stared at the passing clouds. “How many of you are there?”

  “Couldn’t say, and even if I knew, I’d be wrong to talk about it. We’re not after numbers. We’re after brothers and sisters in Jesus. People who walk the road with us. There to help, there to pray.”

  She felt her own internal walls crumble. “Do they take people like me?”

  “As in people of the female variety? You bet.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To ask me to join?”

  Bobby grinned. “Could be. That ain’t why I came, but hey, God’s got His own agenda sometimes.”

  She turned back to the window. “My husband died five years ago. He’d been ill for some time. The bank was more than just a company. It was his life. As his energy slipped I helped him run things. Gradually I took over more of the day-to-day. When he passed, most of Austin sat back and waited for me to fail.” Her jaw came forward. “Our turnover is up fifty percent. We’re opening three new branches a year. And we turn down an offer from the nationals about twice a week.”

  Bobby understood what was not being said. “But being right don’t make the lonelies disappear, do they. Or explain why God left you down here when half your life is already up in heaven.”

  Liz Courtney studied the clouds for a long moment, then, “What is it you wanted from me?”

  “A handle on Brent Stark.”

  “He’s as fine a man as I know.”

  “That’d work fine if all I wanted was a pal. But I’m about to trust that man with God’s mission. And I need to know if I’m doing the right thing.”

  She nodded slowly. “I’ll tell you what I know, and then what I think.”

  “Couldn’t ask for more than that.”

  “Brent came out of prison a broken man, rebuilt by the strength of his faith. When I fronted him the money and called some friends to find him clients, I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d last six months. He’s proved himself to be so solid, I’ve begged him to let me move him into something bigger. But his life is on the stage. He knows if he accepted more responsibility from me, it would mean less time for acting. And that’s what he lives for. He can’t get back in front of the camera. So he takes whatever role he’s offered and he throws himself into it. And he shines.”

  This was why Bobby had taken the time to come down here. So he could sit here with his fancy leather seat swiveled around and study below the surface. Liz Courtney did not speak because she thought this was what he wanted to hear, or out of some misplaced loyalty for a handsome young man she might have a hankering after. She spoke out of conviction. She spoke because she cared.

  “The only problem I have with Brent is he won’t give himself a chance. He’s turned down two offers to direct pieces.”

  “He’s afraid of letting people down?”

  “Probably. Either that or he’s just …”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d go ahead and say it, ma’am.”

  “I think he’s ashamed. Of who he was. Of what he’s done. And the result is he won’t let himself have another chance.”

  The co-pilot opened the door and said, “We’re beginning our descent into Tulsa, Mr. Dupree.”

  Bobby thanked the man and waited for the door to shut again. “Is that all you were going to say about what you think?”

  “No.” Liz Courtney closed the distance between them. “Brent has no idea how strong he is, or how good. He’s ready for this chance. Been ready for over a year, in my opinion. He’s been treading water. Running his little business, helping raise the quality of our local theater groups by a quantum level or two, praying hard, trying to pretend this is all he ever wants from life. All he ever deserves.”

  “You like the man.”

  “I couldn’t be prouder of him if he was my own son.”

  Bobby hesitated over the next question. “What about women?”

  “I’ve wondered about that. Because he doesn’t go out. And a guy that handsome, he could be a serial murderer and still have chances. But he’s a nice guy, he’s intelligent, and he’s open about his mistakes. Half the single women in church have tried to wrangle a date and the other half wish they had the nerve. The theater group has been a lot more direct, and a lot more diverse, if you get my meaning.”

  “He just says no.”

  “In a nice enough way to keep most of them from getting upset.”

  “Hard to do.”

  “I think it’s because he’s so sad when he says it. Like there’s something there, the one bad thing that is so big and so raw he can’t talk about.”

  “Maybe it’s not bad.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I keep hoping. But I’ve wondered ab
out this. I’d be lying to tell you otherwise. The guy lives like a monk.”

  Bobby waited for the wheels to touch down and the motors to rev through the braking process, then asked, “Why do you figure he went off to Hawaii to start on this project of mine?”

  She pondered that while the co-pilot opened the jet’s door and extended the stairs. “Did you tell him you felt God call you to do this?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He’d take that very seriously.”

  Back in the days when sniffing out a new company had been the high point of his year, Bobby had occasionally known a thrill so strong his blood actually created music in his head. He knew it was crazy. Probably nothing more than a sign of dangerous blood pressure. But he’d loved it then. And he loved it now. This very moment. Because Bobby felt his blood sing a little. Not a full-blown symphony. But a quiet little hum. A real good sign.

  Bobby asked, “So this feeling of mine that God is behind the project might push Brent to put aside his fears?”

  “Maybe, if he thought he was doing this for God instead of for himself.” But saying the words turned her sad. “Where did you say you’d sent him?”

  “First Hawaii and now LA. But I didn’t send him anywhere. He asked to go. Insisted on making the trips all on his lonesome.”

  The news only made Liz Courtney sadder still. “Maybe he traveled out there planning to fail.”

  8

  Shari Khan had never felt so completely out of place in her life. And considering some of the situations she’d landed in since coming to LA, that was saying a lot.

  The AA meeting was exactly where her tame detective had described. The church was two blocks off Sunset, in a section of Hollywood that was downshifting from rough to creepy. As soon as she entered the room, Shari recognized Brent Stark. She didn’t need to consult the photograph stowed in her purse. The former star was seated in the third row, doing his best to blend in. But even here, in a loser’s dungeon of a church basement, the man held a visceral force. Shari saw other people glance at Brent and knew she was not imagining things.