Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (8 page)

“I’m Veronica McKinney,” she said, and shifted the hat to her left hand, and then extended her right. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. Hope. Sunny, go play with your dolls.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Sunny said, unfolding her long legs and getting to her feet.

“You should be,” her mother said.

“Nice meeting you,” Sunny said, and crossed the room and went up a flight of stairs leading to the second story of the house.

“I see she’s offered you some refreshment,” Mrs. McKinney said.

“Yes, she has.”

“What
is
that?
Tea
?”

“Yes.”

“God! Oh, well. Don’t you find it hot in here? My daughter keeps turning off the air conditioning and opening every door and window. She has a theory about—well, never mind.” She went back to the front door, closed it, and then adjusted a thermostat on the wall. Her movements, unlike her daughter’s, were liquidly smooth and effortless. Her voice sounded a trifle breathless, not quite the voice of a heavy drinker (which might never have occurred to me if she hadn’t expressed dismay over the tea), but husky nonetheless. She was altogether an entirely beautiful woman, and when she turned to me with a smile on her face, she quite took my breath away.

“The new hand tells me we’ve got a dead cow out on Buzzard’s Roost Hammock,” she said. “I’d like to take a look, mind if we talk while we ride out there?”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Might be a bit muddy, all this rain,” she said. “Too bad you didn’t wear boots.” She looked at my shoes. “Jeep’s out front,” she said, and turned and walked out of the house.

The Jeep was red and marked
M.K
. in black on its side panels. A .22-caliber rifle with a telescopic sight rested on the front seat between us. She started the engine, backed out of the dirt driveway, and said, “That’s our horse barn there. We keep five horses,
don’t need more than that for a ranch this size. We usually figure at least two horses to a cowboy. The small house is where the manager lives, the mobile home is for the new hand and his wife. We’re not a big operation—we run a thousand head, more or less, on four thousand acres. I know a man who runs twenty thousand head, has a ranch as big as the state of Rhode Island, out closer to Ananburg. We’ve got five pastures here, run a herd of two hundred cows on each of them. Buzzard’s Roost is out this way.”

We were driving north on a muddy road flanked with fenced-in pasture land. The Jeep bounced and jostled along the ruts. Brown water splashed up against the side panels as Mrs. McKinney maneuvered the vehicle through the puddles.

“The pastures were already named when my late husband bought the ranch. Historical names, all of them, I have no idea where they originated. Well, Buzzard’s Roost is an easy one. More damn buzzards out there than you can shake a stick at. That’s why I want to see that dead cow. Buzzards are a nuisance. They’ll swoop down to eat the afterbirth whenever one of our cows calves, and sometimes they’ll attack the newborn calf as well. That dead cow out there is going to attract a lot of them. The other pastures—who knows?” she said. “One of them’s called Mosquito Jam, must’ve been a breeding ground for them before the state started its control program. Still got plenty of them there, but that’s native pasture. We’ve got a thousand acres of native, and three thousand improved now. Back in 1943, this was
all
native pasture. Been a long job planting it in Pensacola Bahia, and keeping it up. One of the pastures is called Sheep Run Hammock—somebody must’ve raised sheep there long ago. You know what a hammock is, of course.”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s a sort of canvas bed you hang between two trees.”

“That, too,” she said, smiling. “But the word’s Indian for a copse of trees. Here on the ranch, it’s usually oak. So,” she said. “From what you told me on the phone, I may have to handle whatever nonsense Jack got himself into, is that right?”

“Well, I’m not sure about that yet,” I said. “I checked with Probate this morning, though, and there doesn’t seem to be a will—”

“I wouldn’t guess there was.”

“And I’ve also made some calls around town—Calusa doesn’t have that large a legal community—and none of the attorneys I contacted had drawn a will for him. I didn’t speak to
all
of them, of course—”

“Who gave you the shiners?” she asked.

“Your daughter asked the same question.”

“What answer did you give her?”

“I told her some friends did it.”

She smiled. Her upper lip, I noticed, unlike her daughter’s, seemed perpetually tented so that a small wedge of white teeth always showed. When she smiled, it only widened the wedge, magically and radiantly.

“What color are your eyes?” I asked.

“Is that a trick question?” she said.

“I’m curious. They look gray, but gray is for novels.”

“They aren’t
gray
,” she said. “God, no. I don’t know
anyone
who has gray eyes, do you? They’re a pale blue, I suppose. A faded blue. A
washed-out
blue, actually. Is there such a thing as a
mousy
blue? I’ve always hated the color of my eyes. They make me look anemic. What color did Sunny say
her
eyes were?”

“I didn’t ask her.”

“They’re the same as mine, so I guess they’re blue, too,” she said. “Jack’s were brown. Well, you met him, so you know.”

“Anyway,” I said.

“Anyway,” she said.

“—getting back to this matter of a will.”

“I think we can safely assume there was no will, Mr. Hope.”

We were passing a row of—bathtubs?—set out in the pasture on our right, about a dozen in all, spaced some twenty feet apart from each other.

“If you’re wondering whether we come out here to bathe,” she said, “those are for the cows.”

“You
bathe
your
cows
?” I said.

“No, no,” she said, and smiled. “We supplement their feeding, especially during the winter months, when they’re stressed.”

“Stressed?”

“We’ve got plenty of good, tall grass now,” she said, “but during the winter they can eat it off faster than it grows. They get what we call ‘Miss-Meal Fever.’ That isn’t a disease, Mr. Hope, it just means they’re
hungry
. We put out molasses in those tubs. A small tractor-drawn tank comes around and fills them at least once a week, there are hundreds of them all over the place. We buy the molasses from US Sugar in Clewiston. Just now there’s a lot of water lying on top of it—all this rain. Rafe and the hand are kept pretty busy scooping it off.”

“Where do you get the tubs?” I asked.

“Demolition company sells them to us. Do you see that other contraption out there? Over near where those black baldies are grazing?”

I looked out over the pasture. A dozen or more white-faced black cows were standing and eating grass near what looked like a large garbage bin with a cylindrical open top.

“Those are our mineral feeders. We fill them every week with salt, calcium, phosphorus, steamed bone meal, iron—all those goodies,” she said, and smiled. “The cows go to them because of the salt, get their minerals while they’re lapping it up.”

“What kind of cows
are
they?” I asked.

“That particular bunch? A cross between Hereford, Angus, and Brahman. What we raise here in Florida is mostly Braford and Brangus. Those are crossbred cattle. The Braford is what we get when we breed a Brahman cow with a Hereford bull. The Brangus is mixed Brahman and Angus, short-haired and loose-skinned—so they can survive the heat. But you’ll see all kinds out there. Your reds, which are the Santa Gertrudis—three-eighths Brahman and five-eighths Shorthorn—your brindles, your mottled, your yellows, we raise ’em all, or try to, a regular rainbow herd. Here,” she said, “make yourself useful,” and braked the Jeep just this side of an aluminum gate. “There’s no lock on it, all you have to do is unhook the chain.”

I got out of the Jeep and tried to skirt the mud puddles as I walked toward the gate. There was a simple thumb bolt holding the chain fastened. I pulled it back, loosened the chain, and swung the gate wide. Mrs. McKinney drove the Jeep through, and I closed the gate and fastened the chain again. My shoes were covered with mud. I got into the Jeep and pulled the door shut.

“This road we’re turning onto is a better one,” she said. “Those lines overhead are Florida Power and Light. I lease them the right-of-way, and they maintain the road. Buzzard’s Roost is about half a mile east of here.”

We had come into another pasture. The cows here were brown, fifty or more of them, all of them grazing contentedly. Graceful white birds were sitting on their backs.

“Your reds,” she said, “Santa Gertrudis, the first true North American breed. Developed on the King Ranch.”

“What are those little yellow things on their ears?” I asked.

“Fly tags. Like those strips you hang in your kitchen, only these are smaller. They keep the horn flies off. The flies suck
blood, agitate the cows, make general nuisances of themselves. The tags work pretty well.”

“And the white birds?”

“Cattle egrets. They eat the insects the cows disturb with their hooves, sit up on their backs to get a better view of the ground. The cows don’t mind them at—damn,
look
at them!” she said suddenly and braked the Jeep and reached for the rifle between us. I looked off toward the sky, following her gaze. A dozen or more big birds were hovering on the air. One of them swooped down to the ground an instant before Mrs. McKinney brought the rifle to her shoulder. A sharp crack sounded on the air. The buzzard—I assumed it was a buzzard—toppled over and the other birds flew off at once, flapping their wings, climbing higher.

“There’s the dead cow, all right,” she said, putting the rifle down between us again. “Don’t tell anyone I shot that buzzard, it’s against the law. They look too much like eagles, and a lot of mistakes are made. Eagles are protected, you know, an endangered species. We’ll have to haul that carcass away, I don’t want them coming down after any new calves.”

“Is this where the cows give birth?” I asked. “Right here on the pasture?”

“Oh, sure. Unassisted, it’s not like with racehorses. We lose some of them when they’re calving, but not many. They’re pretty good at it,” she said, and smiled. “You plan on going into the cattle business, Mr. Hope?”

“All my questions, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“It’s another world to me, forgive me. Am I being too curious?”

“Not at all. But you’d do better in the money market, if you’re looking for an investment. My
son
was going into real estate, is that right?” she asked, abruptly shifting the topic. Or perhaps the word “investment” had triggered the association.

“Yes,” I said. “Tell me, first, was he actually twenty years old? He showed me his driver’s license, but—”

“Twenty, yes,” she said, “
just
. And I’m fifty-seven. Was that going to be your next question?”

I blinked.

“An elderly person,” she said, and smiled.

“Hardly,” I said.

“I sometimes feel like a
hundred
and fifty-seven.”

“You look much younger.”

“Than a hundred and fifty-seven?”

“Than—whatever you said you were, which I’ve already forgotten.”

“I thank you, sir,” she said, and nodded curtly.

“In any case,” I said.

“In any case,” she said.

“If your son was twenty, then the contract he signed is legally binding. And, I’m sorry to tell you, it’s legally binding on his estate as well. I understand you’re a widow—”

“Yes. My husband died two years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He was very ill for a very long time. Cancer,” she said flatly. “You mentioned on the phone that Jack had bought this piece of land, was in the
process
of buying the land—”

“Yes, a farm. Not very far from here, actually. A bit farther east, toward Ananburg.”

“A farm,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What the hell would he want with a farm?”

“It’s a snapbean farm.”

“My son, the bean farmer,” she said.

“Apparently he—”

“Apparently he was a jerk,” Mrs. McKinney said. “How much was this farm costing him?”

“Forty thousand dollars.”

“What!” she said.

“Yes.”

“Where did he plan to—forty
thousand
, did you say?”

“Yes.”

“That’s impossible. No,” she said, and shook her head. “Are you sure about that figure?”

“I drew the contract myself, Mrs. McKinney. That was the purchase price. Forty thousand dollars.”

“I can’t imagine it,” she said.

“He put down a deposit of four thousand,” I said.

“He gave you four thousand dollars?”

“For the bank to hold in escrow, yes. Until the closing.”

“Then his check was no good. I know for a fact that Jack—”

“It wasn’t a check. It was cash.”

“Cash!” Her eyes opened wide again. They did, in fact, look gray, no matter what she said their actual color was. “How could Jack...? This is all unbelievable. Where would he...?” She was shaking her head again. “Jack simply did not have that kind of money.”

“He was renting a condo on Stone Crab,” I said. “And from what I understand—”

“
I
was paying for that condo, Mr. Hope. Mama McKinney. My son Jack barely squeaked through high school with a C-minus average. Even if any college in the United States would have been crazy enough to accept him, he wouldn’t have gone. I kicked him off the ranch because he couldn’t even learn to brand a calf properly, much less sit a horse. Tennis is what he loved, my son Jack. Big tennis player. Could ace you out of your mind, my Jack.” She
sighed heavily. “I figured it was better to have him out of my hair on Stone Crab someplace. Pay for the apartment, give him a little spending money every month...” She shook her head again. “But four thousand
dollars
? In
cash
? Impossible. No.”

“It’s what he gave me, Mrs. McKinney. It’s still in escrow with the Tricity Bank in Calusa. If you like, I can show you—”