A family secret. A hidden fortune. And a trail that leads back to the railroads of 1935.
When Houston banking executive Sally Beard is called home to Bellville by her ninety-year-old grandfather, she discovers that her family’s past holds secrets she never imagined—and a fortune with roots stretching back sixty years.
Lucy Asks George
The story behind the story.
Lucy: George, Sally first appeared in When the Moon Betrayed Us as this wild, free-spirited young woman in Bellville. What made you decide she deserved another book—and to pick her life up fourteen years later rather than simply continue where the first story ended?
George: In When the Moon Betrayed Us, the more I got to know Sally—which might sound odd coming from the writer—the more interested I became in her.
The basic idea for Tracks of Fortune didn’t include Sally at first. But in a wisp of imagination, she became a natural fit because the railroad story is centered again around the old railyards in Bellville, Texas.
Then I started wondering what this same girl would be like some years later, with a family and a career I always felt she had the talent to achieve. Who would that free-spirited young woman become once she was older and had responsibilities, a husband, children, and a successful career?
Again, she became one of my favorite characters. And I’m really excited about where she goes in the upcoming third installment.
Lucy: One of the interesting things about Sally in Tracks of Fortune is that she’s obviously changed—she’s a successful banking executive, a wife and a mother—but the old Sally is still in there. When you brought her back fourteen years later, what parts of that young woman did you think absolutely had to survive?
George: You said it—the old Sally is still in there. What survived, obviously, are her smarts and her ability to assess situations on the fly and make sound decisions, decisions that involve not only herself but the people around her whom she loves.
She’s older now, and life has given her different responsibilities, but those basic instincts haven’t changed. As her grandfather tells her late that night in the kitchen after Dallas, she’s made of “strong stock.”
And she is.
Lucy: There’s a lot going on in Tracks of Fortune—railroads, money, family history, Galveston connections, and things that happened long before Sally understood any of them. But underneath all of that, what do you think the book is really about?
George: I think—I hope—chuckles—it’s about two hardworking, decent men who find something they know comes from evil, but try to turn it into something good for themselves, their families, and for other people they know and encounter over the course of their lives.
Part of that eventually involves doing a little bit of evil themselves. But they reason that it’s part of the problem, part of the journey that began when they picked it up on that long-ago night.
Then, six decades later, we see the cumulative effect of the decisions they made.
Read Chapter One
The Phone Call
The Lincoln Navigator turned into the dim driveway just as the garage door began to rise, its headlights washing across bicycles, storage shelves, and Tom Beard’s neatly arranged tools along the wall.
From the passenger seat, Sally Beard stifled a yawn and glanced at the dashboard clock.
11:27 PM.
Behind her, Tommy, thirteen, and Charlotte, eleven, were asleep across the back seats in a heap of Astros caps, souvenir cups, and spilled popcorn.
The Astros had won, which mattered more than it should have.
A loss could leave Tom irritable for two days. A win made him expansive, talkative, and easier in his own skin. Baseball still had the power to set the emotional weather inside their house.
As the Navigator rolled into the garage, Sally clapped twice.
“Up now. Let’s go, troops.”
Tommy opened one eye and groaned.
Charlotte muttered something about hating school forever, though it was Thursday night and school was nearing its springtime end.
Tom smiled faintly behind the wheel. Winning softened him.
Ten minutes later, the children had been marched upstairs, faces washed, teeth brushed, complaints heard, blankets adjusted, lights switched off, and parental duty temporarily concluded.
The house settled into late-night silence.
Downstairs, Tom was already in the kitchen preparing their traditional cups of chamomile tea. For the past few years, this had been their ritual.
Tea at day’s end.
Bills, schedules, grocery lists, contractors, school matters, vacation ideas that never happened, small jokes, mild disagreements, and the thousand maintenance items of adult life. Sometimes it felt like intimacy. Sometimes it felt like management.
Tom slid a mug across the counter.
“Oh, by the way,” he said casually, “your grandfather called.”
That caught her attention immediately.
“Poppy?”
Tom nodded. “Said for you to call him as soon as you can.”
She frowned. “Did he sound sick?”
“No.”
“Upset?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Tom shrugged. “Serious, I guess.”
Sally looked toward the stove clock.
11:38 PM.
“Ninety-year-old men shouldn’t be leaving mysterious messages this late.”
Tom chuckled. “Maybe he found oil under the tomato patch.”
She did not laugh.
Because with Poppy, one never entirely knew.
Her grandfather, Emmett Walker, had been born in 1905 and seemed proud of it.
He came from a world of steam locomotives, cash wages, church pews, and men who fixed broken things with their hands before they considered replacing them.
He trusted land more than paper.
Cash more than credit.
Character more than charm.
He distrusted smooth talkers, government promises, chain restaurants, modern music, and any man who smiled too quickly.
He had been retired nearly all of Sally’s life, yet never seemed retired. He was always building something, planting something, repairing something, studying something, or quietly watching others reveal themselves.
To Sally, he had never felt old. He had simply always been Poppy.
When she was a girl in Bellville, summers with him had meant pickup rides, hardware stores, feed stores, diner breakfasts, and stories from the rails. And after her mother had passed away, and since her dad had also worked as a railroad engineer, she spent more than just summers with him. She practically grew up on his farm.
Poppy was always full of entertaining train stories. Mail-car robberies. Gunmen stopping trains at crossings. Babies born aboard passenger coaches that could not reach town in time. Farmers flagging down locomotives with crates of eggs. Snowstorms in Illinois. Heat so fierce in South Texas that men nearly fainted in the cab.
He told these things without drama, as though violence, wonder, and absurdity were ordinary companions in life.
Once he told her, “The world is mostly fools, thieves, and good people trying to get supper.”
At ten, she thought it gloomy.
At thirty-nine, she thought it nearly perfect.
Tom rinsed his mug and set it in the dishwasher. He glanced at his reflection in the dark microwave door before turning away. He always checked mirrors.
Vanity alone never bothered her. His short temper sometimes did.
Not shouting or cruelty.
Just those occasional sharp flashes with their children, workers, waiters, whoever happened to be nearest when frustration struck. Moments brief enough to deny, long enough to remember.
“You calling him now?” Tom asked.
“No. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”
Tom kissed the top of her head and headed upstairs.
She remained at the kitchen table, both hands around the mug. The refrigerator hummed. The dishwasher ticked. A faint springtime wind moved her wind chimes somewhere outside.
And beneath it all, a feeling she did not like.
She thought of the whirlwind summer love affair fourteen years ago that left her with a crushed heart. He was an aspiring law student working at the local radio station. She was a free spirit who mostly won at poker, cruised Main Street until late at night, and had a reputation around Bellville as something of a wild child. Yet beneath it all, she had an uncanny instinct for sizing up a situation and making the right move.
She and this pre-law student had some wonderful times together; they made extra money running poker games in the Bellville Hotel with the local railroaders. She taught him how to deal Blackjack and how to read the other players instead of the cards.
Even then, as always, Sally called the shots — organizing the games, recruiting the players, and hosting the events.
Then one day, he just left—no reason, no goodbyes—and went back to his girlfriend in Galveston. Or so she had always thought.
Broken-hearted, Sally relocated to Houston, where she found work as a bank teller at the Oil and Mercantile Bank of Houston and was eventually trained in banking.
She attended the University of Houston, mostly at night, earned a degree in finance, and over a period of a few years, steadily rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Chief Financial Advisor for the entire corporation.
It was during that period that Sally came to realize that reading the people in the boardroom bore little difference to reading the faces of men holding cards. She found out they tried to run bluffs, tried to hide their emotions, tried to outfox others over deals worth millions of dollars, the same as they had over poker pots worth hundreds.
About the time she first arrived in Houston, her new friends took her out to Gilley’s Nightclub in Pasadena one weekend to help “heal her broken lovesick heart”.
Then she remembered that, for a while afterward, he’d tried to reach out. Sally was never one to be anyone’s second choice, so when he began calling again, she let the phone ring. When he sent letters, she threw them away without opening them.
One Saturday night at Gilley’s, she was asked to dance by Thomas Beard, a construction worker. After a few dances, Tom worked up the courage to ask her for her phone number.
Two months later, they eloped. Six months later, Tom Jr. was born.
Tom was a hard worker, competent and dependable. Sally never thought him conceited, though from the very beginning, he did like one last look in the mirror before bed.
What bothered her more was his occasional short temper with the children, small moments that lingered with her longer than they did with him. He could be moody.
That night, she slept lightly.
At exactly 6:14 AM, the phone rang. She snatched it up before the second ring.
“Poppy?”
“Morning, Babygirl.” His voice was steady. Strong.
She exhaled. “You worried me.”
“Didn’t mean to.”
“What’s wrong?”
A pause.
Emmett Walker never wasted pauses.
“I need you to come to Bellville when you can.”
She sat upright.
“Why?”
Another pause.
“It’s time you learned where all the money came from.”
Sally stared into the dim room.
Downstairs, the coffee maker clicked on.
Outside, birds had just begun.
“Poppy,” she said carefully, “what money?”
His answer came flat and calm.
“All of it.”
Downtown, at the bank, Sally Beard had built a reputation for seeing danger early. She distrusted Enron long before its collapse and had already warned against another glittering stadium proposal no one else wanted to question.
Others in the boardroom saw prestige and profits.
So when her grandfather said, “All of it,” Sally understood two things immediately: whatever waited in Bellville involved money, and money almost always came wrapped in secrets.
She left the office early that afternoon. She stopped by the house to pack an overnight bag and prep the children for the weekend before heading to Bellville. She still did not know that phone call would change everything.
Want to Keep Reading?
Tracks of Fortune is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.