A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) (12 page)

Miss Amelia reached over and touched my tensing arm.

“Why, bless yer heart,” Miss Amelia said with one of her broad, killer smiles. “It’s just that I’d like to thank whoever it was . . .”

“No need for thanks, I’d say. You know me, I don’t like to gossip. I just stay away from people like that most of the time.”

“As well you should,” Miss Amelia called over her shoulder. “As well you should. And the sheriff, too. I’d stay away from him. Never know what can of worms you’re opening. I mean, I remember that dispute you had with some antique store in Columbus. You remember how wrong that store owner was about you not paying what you said you’d pay and Sheriff Higsby had to come out to talk to you?”

“Why, Amelia! How could you—”

“It’s just that I appreciate how much you want to help, Ethelred, but I don’t want you stirring up anything that could bring misery down on all of us.”

Ethelred’s mouth dropped open a good inch. She appeared to be mulling things over in her head. “Well, all right. But I got something else you maybe don’t know about. It was Finula Prentiss, over to the Barking Coyote Saloon, Amos got involved with. Heard she was telling people she was pregnant by Amos. He left town and no baby ever appeared. Which leads you to wonder . . . Anyway, heard her boyfriend wasn’t any too pleased about the whole thing. You against turning the sheriff in that direction, too?”

“Nope. You go right ahead and tell the sheriff. Bet he knows all about it, though. Still, you go right on ahead, Ethelred. More power to you.”

Miss Amelia got in the truck fast and slammed the door shut behind her. I drove around Ethelred’s old Buick station wagon, a cloud of dust flying up behind me.

“She means well.” Miss Amelia looked over at me eventually as I worked my way back toward town.

“At least we know the name of the girlfriend,” I said.

“Yes, we do. Knew it already. Asked Justin yesterday. But Ethelred’s a fount of information, don’t you think? Just a fount of information.”

I did.

A stop at The Squirrel Diner was long overdue. I’d grabbed
a piece of toast and slapped some pecan butter on it that morning. Miss Amelia said she’d had nothing. We were both starving and Cecil Darling, the Englishman who owned The Squirrel, through what process of emigration I couldn’t imagine, was happy to set us up with tall sweet teas and overly large menus that could be exhausting to read.

Our orders were simple, which always disappointed Cecil, who thought little of Rivervillian taste and faced constant disappointment when he pushed the black pudding and coddled eggs. I ordered scrambled eggs and whole-wheat toast. My grandmother asked for a tuna sandwich. Cecil, a tiny man with a small, round face, hid his distaste at our plebian ways but included a free dish of lemon curd with a sugar cookie when he brought our food. “Gratis,” he sniffed at us. “I’m giving all of you a second chance.”

“About Ethelred,” Miss Amelia said over her sandwich, delicately cut into four pieces. “People who think the least about themselves are the first to criticize others. Especially if they can get at you while you’re down. I remember . . .”

I pushed my plate away and settled back to listen.

“There was this one time. It was a Pearl Thompson. Came to me with a story about my husband, Darnell. She said he was having an affair with somebody in the office. Had it on good authority. Her husband, Frank, told her it was Darnell and he was going to put a stop to it. She heard because she got an anonymous note about the woman coming on to any man she saw, especially Darnell.

“Well, I went right to Darnell and he marched me over to Frank’s office, shut the door behind us, and sat me down. Wasn’t long before Frank was crying his eyes out. He didn’t mean to hurt Pearl but she was getting wind of . . . well . . . what he called a ‘dalliance’? He thought that letter, blaming it on somebody else, would put the whole thing to rest.

“Me and Darnell promised to take it no further, if he wouldn’t go blaming Darnell for what he was doing and if he’d get himself out of the affair.

“Never heard another word after that. Pearl was off the warpath and happy how well her marriage was going.

“So you see, Lindy. People in trouble try anything to get themselves out. Maybe Ethelred’s got a couple of sins on her own conscience. Like maybe she’s the one told Freda I was going to that doctor in Columbus when I never did any such thing. Wouldn’t put it past her. And you take this whole problem with Amos dying. I’m beginning to think Amos was on to something he wanted Emma to know about. Then somebody stopped him.”

“Or he coulda been over there to hurt us—like he always said he would. Maybe somebody followed him over there. That makes his death still about somebody mad as hell at him and not me.”

“Well, you think what you want to think. I’m going on human nature. Let’s see who comes out right.”

Church people, lingering over their midday meal, finished eating and came over to express their condolences to us. Most of them had the good grace to look embarrassed by the whole thing and get on their way. A few, the nosy ones, hung around like they’d get a piece of fresh news they could spend the afternoon sharing with others.

We left as soon as we finished eating, getting a curt nod from Cecil Darling because we left the lemon curd untouched though I waved my sugar cookie at him before going out the door.

“Savages,” he called after us.

• • •

I was driving the long, winding dirt road into the Chauncey
twins’ ranch when my phone rang unexpectedly. It surprised me that I got cell service so far out of town. It was Mama.

“I stopped over to see Martin Sanchez last night and he wasn’t home. Jessie said he got a call. Personal business, is what I thought. Though, to tell the truth, Lindy, I was surprised he’d go off like that, what with Justin in jail and the trees needing seeing to. I called back there today, just to see. He’s not home yet. I’m picking up something in Jessie’s voice that’s worrying me.”

“We’re out here at the Chaunceys’ ranch right now, Mama. I’ll call Jessie on the way back. Maybe Martin planned on being away this weekend. Lots of relatives down on the border.”

“You wouldn’t think . . . What with Justin in . . .”

She didn’t have to finish. She was right. The Sanchezes’ house was next on our list.

Before I hung up, I asked how Bethany was doing. She’d been a sad wreck when I saw her that morning, after a phone call from her newscaster, informing her that he and his fiancée were “thinking it over, whether to have the wedding there or not.”

News of Amos’s death was all over Texas, I figured.

“But he didn’t cancel, Lindy,” Mama said. “She’s still got hope he’ll go through with it. You know Bethany—so much drama. All I’m hearing about is those doves . . .”

I narrowed my eyes at Meemaw and mouthed “Bethany” to her. She threw her hands in the air and rolled her eyes heavenward.

“Mama. Know what?” I said. “I’ve heard all I want to hear about those doves. My professional life’s at stake here, you realize. All my trees . . .”

I didn’t go on. Mama had enough on her mind. Bethany was her baby, and new to running the pavilion; with her first big wedding . . .

I hung up and pushed my sweating back against the fabric seat. I took a couple of deep breaths. The wind coming in the window, straight at my face, was hot and dry. I didn’t say a word to Miss Amelia about the Sanchezes. Better to wait. First we had to talk to the Chaunceys. After that, I’d let other worries back into my head.

• • •

I drove through an opening in a fence, where the only
sign posted was on a couple of boards painted with big red letters:

KEEP OUT.
THIS MEANS YOU.
ATTACK COYOTES ON GUARD.

The unpaved road ahead wove through flat, empty land, strung across by bone-dry arroyos. The road ran straight, leading back to a stand of pecan trees ringing a small lake that was way down in its banks. Beyond the ranch were small, rolling hills that seemed to go on forever.

“Creek’s down,” Miss Amelia said, pointing out her window to the creek that fed the lake. “Rain’s gotta come pretty soon.”

“Say that again. No rain. No pecans.”

“Poor Emma. As if her plate wasn’t full enough. Sometimes I wish my daughter would sell the ranch and take life easy for a change.”

I looked over at her, knowing she didn’t mean it. “It’s in our blood.”

“Nuts in our blood and in our head. Terrible hard way to make a living, you ask me.”

“Be easier if I could’ve finished my work with the trees . . .”

“You were getting that close?”

I nodded. “I think so. A new strain I crossed with the old trees. Almost there.”

“Why would anybody want to stop you? Unless there are folks who’d like to see us ranchers fail. Can’t think who that’d be.”

“I’d hate to think it,” I said.

Miss Amelia squinted out the front window then pointed to two elderly women on horseback riding slowly toward us up the dusty road, the bright afternoon sun shimmering like gold dust around them as they bounced in identical cutter saddles.

“Think they got their twenty-twos on them?” I asked as I pulled to the side of the road.

“They’ll know us from rattlers,” Miss Amelia said and opened her door, climbing down to stand in the dirt, hands over her eyes, calling out to the twins approaching cautiously on horseback. “Hello there, Melody and Miranda. It’s me, Amelia Blanchard. Lindy and me come out to see you. How you girls doing on this fine Sunday afternoon?”

The Chauncey sisters, both in their late eighties, reined in their horses and stopped next to where we stood in the road.

Melody, who looked exactly like her twin sister in her faded plaid shirt and buckskin pants, wore a Stetson hat about as old as she was. Her old, scarred boots had only a little life left in them. Both women’s faces were wizened from eighty and more years of looking up into the brutal Texas sun, and the way they stared out from under the brims of their hats was awfully close to Clint Eastwood, squinting down at a man he was about to shoot.

Melody leaned down from her horse to take Miss Amelia’s hand and give it a shake.

“Well, what do you know? Ain’t seen you in a coon’s age, ’Melia.”

Miranda Chauncey, a little quieter than her sister, a little grumpier, stayed up on her horse, too, twenty-two rifle held in one hand. She bent down to stare hard at us, her plain face unsmiling. “You, too, Lindy. What brings you out this far?”

“Not that we ain’t glad to see the both of you,” Melody Chauncey hurried to add, fearing her sister wasn’t hospitable enough. She shot Miranda a dark look then slipped easily from her horse’s back. “Don’t want the women thinking we don’t want company, Miranda.”

“I didn’t say we didn’t, Melody. Don’t have to go jumping on me for asking . . .”

“Well, it’s your manners, Miranda. And no need to go snapping at people just for pointing out . . .”

The women got caught up in their ages-old bickering. They’d been going at it since they were little girls living in the handmade, low-roofed house their father built a hundred years before. The house was as worn and weathered as the land around them. Worn and weathered as the girls themselves.

They wound down their argument, then let it slip away like an old story with no ending.

“What you think about rain?” Lindy asked to get the conversation going.

Miranda shrugged and squinted skyward. “Don’t know. Ain’t had a turd floater since maybe last year sometime. Emma worried about the pecans?”

“’Course she’s worried.” Melody jumped on her sister. “Drought’s drought. We’re all going to suffer from it.”

In unison, the girls looked off at the rising horizon. Melody toed the dry earth.

“Bet you’re here to talk to us about Amos.” Miranda gave Miss Amelia a one-eyed look.

“We heard what happened there at your ranch.” She reached down to awkwardly pat Miss Amelia’s back, pulling her horse around fast before he stepped on my grandmother’s foot.

“Miranda’s got no sense when to bring a thing up,” Melody complained. “Sorry for your trouble, is what she means to say.”

“Know what I’m saying. Word gets around fast.”

“Awful about Amos,” Melody added.

“Awful about Justin, I’d say,” Miranda put in. “Amos. Liked him all right, but when he was drinkin’, had a mouth on him could scare a water moccasin.”

“Well, of course,” Melody sniffed. “But Amos is the dead one. Don’t you think that’s a sad thing.” She turned to Miss Amelia and me. “I mean, being dead’s forever, you know, and Justin, well, anybody with a brain knows he didn’t kill his uncle and he’ll be out of jail before you know it.”

“Terrible, you ask me,” Miranda put in, her tone more querulous. “Not meaning any disrespect for the dead but you take Amos now. There was a man looking for trouble since he was a boy.”

“That’s why we came out to see you,” Miss Amelia said, shuffling her feet in the dry dirt. “About Amos.”

“You don’t say?” Miranda, intrigued now, slid easily from her horse and wrapped the reins around one leather-gloved hand. She stood in the road with her legs spread, as if she were still astride her horse. She’d lifted her rifle in the air as she slipped off the horse. A canvas bag, tied to the saddle, hung loose at the horse’s side. “But we ain’t seen Amos in about two years. Just up and left. Right when we were spreading fertilizer. Nothing from him since.”

“He tell you where he was going?” Miss Amelia asked. “That’s what we’re after right now: where he got to after leaving here, where he was going and why.”

“You thinking somebody from wherever he went came back to kill him?” Melody asked, catching on fast.

Miss Amelia shrugged. “Could be.”

“Heard your trees got destroyed.” Miranda turned to scowl at me. “I can see killing a man, he do you enough harm. But hurting trees? Why, there’s no call for a thing like that.”

I shrugged, agreeing with Miranda—somewhat.

“Not being too Christian, are you.” Melody was shocked at her sister. “Like a man’s life ain’t as important as a tree. Fer heaven’s sakes, Miranda. Watch what yer sayin’.”