A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) (13 page)

Miranda slowly turned to grin at Melody. “How many men been keeping us our whole life long, I’d like to know? And now you count up the trees we been living off—”

“That’s not a way to look at things. I’d say—”

“Did Amos say anything when he left here? Maybe some small thing?” I interrupted, knowing the girls’ battles could go on for hours and get so entwined nobody knew what anybody was saying.

The two women stopped arguing to think deeply, looking straight into each other’s eyes, as if probing one brain.

Miranda was the first to shake her head. “He just left. We was counting on him and then he was gone. Not a word. And to tell you the truth, we still owe him some back pay. He didn’t wait for the money, takin’ off like he did.”

Melody nodded, making a face. “We went out to the bunkhouse and it was clean as a whistle . . .”

“There was a letter came after he left us,” Miranda put in.

“Oh, that’s right,” Melody agreed. “I remember now. What’d you do with that letter, Miranda?”

“Me!” Miranda stepped back, as if struck by a bolt of lightning. “I didn’t do nothing with it. You said you’d put it away, since he didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

“I did not!”

“Yes, you did.‘Put it in a safe place,’ that’s what you said.”

“Well, Miranda Chauncey, I never said such a thing. The way I remember, you took it out of the mailbox, tucked it in your pants, and that was the last I saw it.”

“You sayin’ I don’t remember right?” An indignant Miranda fell back two more steps. Miss Amelia looked off, at the low, dry hills.

“Not a bit of it. What I’m sayin’ is I never put a hand on that letter . . .”

I had to step in or we’d be there forever. The letter was too important a fact to get lost in one of the girls’ endless arguments. “Could you find it, do you think?”

The women stopped talking to think deeply, frown, look at each other, and then nod in unison.

“Don’t see why not,” Miranda said. “Never threw a thing away in my life. Still got the blanket the stork brought me in. That letter’ll be somewhere in the house. Official looking, as I remember.”

Melody nodded. “Not the IRS or anything like that. Just . . .” She concentrated hard then gave up. “Well now, just give us a little time, we’ll find it for you. Got to be there somewhere.”

“Could you call me?” Miss Amelia asked. “When you find it?”

“’Course.” Miranda nodded, then stepped back and froze, her fierce eyes focused on the ground near my foot. She put one hand on the stock of her gun; the other went up into the air, warning me not to move. “Stay where you are, Lindy. Rattler at two o’clock.”

A single shot rang out, the bullet diving near my feet so I felt the ground shake under me.

Miss Amelia and I held perfectly still until Miranda walked over, bent forward, and stood, holding a dead rattler up by the sides of its mouth.

“Looks like an old guy to me. Been around awhile.” She pointed to its rattles then went back to her whinnying horse to push the dead snake into the canvas bag.

I pulled in a long breath and gave her a very nervous smile. “Thanks, Miss Miranda. Glad you got him.”

Miranda made a face. “Ain’t missed a rattler in seventy-two years.”

“Guess we’ll be getting on back to town.” Miss Amelia started toward the car, a little faster now.

“I’ll find that letter for you,” Melody Chauncey called out, giving a firm nod along with the promise. “Don’t know where on earth Miranda stuck it, but if it’s still in the house, I’ll dig it out all right.”

“I’d appreciate—” Miss Amelia began.

“What do you mean ‘where I stuck it’?” Miranda interrupted as she flung herself up and over the saddle. “Look to yerself first.”

“I’d say we best begin by going through stuff in that crammed full room of yours . . .”

“I wouldn’t go talking about somebody’s room being a mess. If Miss Amelia got a look at that pigsty you call a bedroom, why, she’d just think you were a nutcase.”

Melody put her foot in the stirrup and swung her skinny body up on her horse, as easily as her sister had mounted hers.

“Nutcase, eh?” Miranda reined her horse around and headed back up the road, the way they’d come. Melody was close behind her. “You talk about ‘nutcases,’ I’d say start looking at yourself and all those old romance novels you got stuffed everywhere I look.”

“Well,” Melody Chauncey could be heard objecting as they rode away. “At least I’m into literature. And you, Miranda Chauncey, long as I remember, you ain’t read nothing but the side of the soap powder box . . .”

Their voices faded. Miss Amelia and I exchanged an exasperated look and climbed back into the pickup.

Down the track toward the main road, Miss Amelia sighed. “Not much from the girls. I’d hoped . . .”

I looked over at my meemaw, whose face was drawn and tired. “I know,” I said. “Me, too. I’d hoped they’d have something for us. Maybe just a city where he was heading. Something.”

“There’s that letter.”

I gave her an exasperated look. “You think the Chaunceys will find it?”

Miss Amelia shrugged and pulled her blouse away from where it hugged the sweat across her shoulders. “The girls can surprise you. Always fighting like that, but ask them to do something together and they’re right on it. I still think . . .”

I nodded. “Just gotta give it time . . .”

“Could you put that air-conditioning on, girl? Don’t know why you’re so stubborn . . .”

I was about to answer back, all the while thinking maybe whatever caused the Chaunceys’ constant fighting was catching, when I spotted a tall plume of dust heading up the road toward us. Another car. More company. The Chaunceys wouldn’t be happy.

I watched the cloud of dust move toward us from a half
mile away and had a sinking feeling I knew who was coming. Hunter Austen, right on our heels. He would be following everywhere we went, I supposed. Or getting ahead of us—which was what I really feared. Much as I said out loud I trusted him to be on our side, the reality of it was—I didn’t. I knew Hunter Austen from as far back as before our class in “sandbox,” and even then he was one of those straight-arrow boys who had a hard time with a guilty kid saying, “No, ma’am, wasn’t me.” Like the time I hid candy in my underpants over at Shipley’s 7-Eleven and he turned me in, even though I offered to show him my underpants one more time.

I think I still hold that against him.

So it was no surprise to see his low blue-and-white rolling to a stop next to my pickup. He got out pretty quick and ambled around to my open window, leaned in, pushed up his large sunglasses, and greeted us.

“Lindy,” he said, nodding. “Miss Amelia.”

He stepped back from the car to check out the terrain in all four directions. The armpits of his otherwise crisp blue shirt were damp. Another line of damp ran down his back when he turned to look behind him. His police shirt sported a Riverville Police patch at each shoulder made in the shape of Texas with a wide spreading pecan tree at the center.

“You two paying a visit to the twins?” he asked when he looked around at me.

“Haven’t seen the girls in a long time, Hunter,” Miss Amelia leaned across me to answer.

He nodded. “So right now, with Justin in jail and a murder out at your place, you two take the time to come calling. Is that right, Miss Amelia?”

I looked over at Meemaw. I wanted to see how she got around telling a lie on this one.

“We had a few things to ask them, Hunter,” she said and looked smug about it. “Asking questions against the law all of a sudden?”

Hunter shook his head. The man knew when he was out of his depth. “I just don’t want to be worrying about you two out looking for a killer . . .”

“If we don’t go looking, who do you think will do it?” I asked him.

“What do you think I’m out here for?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? You said you weren’t going to help us . . .”

“Never said that, Lindy. I said I couldn’t share privileged information with you. That’s my job. But I’m sure not out to hurt any one of you Blanchards. Least of all you, Miss Amelia.”

“Anybody hurting a member of my family hurts me, Hunter. You ought to know,” she answered and sat back so she didn’t have to look straight at him.

Hunter’s face grew earnest. He put both hands on the sill of my open window. “I’m not out to hurt Justin, ma’am. He’s been a friend a long time.”

Miss Amelia sighed and stayed turned away from him, talking as if to herself. “I know that, Hunter. It’s not you. It’s this big mess . . . Amos and all. So much trouble. I sure wish you’d see your way to working with us, though. I don’t mind passing anything we come up with along to you. The way I see it, that’s the only way to go. Hope you’re of a mind to help . . .”

“Sheriff’s got me in charge on this one. He’d knock my head off, he hears I’m sharing . . . things . . .”

“What about the evidence they say they got connecting Justin to him? You know what that is? Seems like we gotta know or we’re out here fighting a ghost. Can’t fight what you don’t know,” I said. If friends were true friends—like they said they were for years and years—well, they didn’t try to hurt you behind your back. That’s how I had friendship worked out in my head.

Hunter took his time answering. “Won’t lie to you, Lindy. I know what it is. State’s evidence. I’m just not at liberty—”

“That’s what I thought.” I gunned the motor. I didn’t see any sense in wasting more time with him.

Hunter patted the side of the truck then gave me a long, sad look. I could see how torn he was. Awful to add to it, but Justin’s life was at stake here. I put the truck in gear.

“I will tell you one thing, Lindy,” he said fast, almost as if he was trying to keep me there. “I know you were over to Amos’s room at the Conways’. You see that blue book, the AA book?”

I nodded, admitting both to being there and to seeing the book.

“I think that’s significant. If Amos was getting help, what the heck did he come back for? If it was to make amends with all of you, like Alcoholics Anonymous wants members to do, then why didn’t he get on with it?”

“Do you know where he went to meetings?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Tried. That one ‘A’ stands for anonymous and that’s what they are. Called their offices in Fort Worth and Houston. No information. No records. Nothing. And no way of knowing where he was living before he came back to Riverville. Even checked our local AA chapter. Got more of nothing.”

He cleared his throat, rugged face drawing into a frown. “The Chaunceys able to tell you anything? Something from back before he left?”

I shook my head slowly. “Not a thing.”

“Didn’t leave anything behind, did he? Didn’t say where he was going? How about sending his mail on—they have an address?”

Again I shook my head, well aware of lying but not able to trust my old friend any more than he could trust me.

“By the way, you know anything about Martin Sanchez? I stopped by their house a while ago and his wife says he’s not around. Doesn’t know where he got to. Juanita’s not saying much but the woman looks scared, you ask me. I know the man would do anything for you Blanchards. You know anything about his whereabouts?”

We both said no. We said we hadn’t seen Martin, but when we did, we’d have him call.

He smacked the side of my truck again. “Let’s keep in touch on this. If you hear anything—anything at all—you let me know. Don’t go keeping secrets, Lindy. Won’t help Justin or anybody else.”

“You do the same, Hunter.” I wrinkled my nose at him and rolled up my window. I let off the brake and drove away a little faster than I should have, shooting a cloud of dust behind the pickup, enveloping Hunter and making him invisible.

“Well.” Miss Amelia relaxed back beside me on the seat. “Guess we better get used to lying to the police . . .”

“And how about threatening friends like you did to Ethelred, bringing up that antique store thing?”

Miss Amelia reddened. “She deserved it.”

“How about stealing things that don’t belong to us?”

Miss Amelia’s face drew in tight. “If you’re talking about that letter from Amos’s room, well, I say there are times in life that call for desperate measures, and this is one of those times. I don’t consider what we’re doing immoral or anything like that. We’re saving a life, I’d say. And righting a wrong.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Shame on you, Lindy. I’m not sure I like the tone of your voice. Me—the widow of a good politician, and you, one of those magna cum laudies.”

She was into sniffing moral outrage, and I tuned her out until she sat back and, after thinking awhile, said, “Ethelred went to the police anyway, I suppose. Why else would Hunter be out there?”

“Only what he’d have to do.”

“Then where’s Martin? If he’s truly missing, Juanita and Jessie must be in a fine state.”

We thought awhile as we turned on to the main highway and headed back toward the ranch. After a while, Miss Amelia turned to me. “You don’t think it
was
Martin, do you? That he’s the one who killed Amos?”

“And destroyed my trees? I don’t think so.”

“But if he caught Amos doing that? The way he hated him, because of jilting Jessie, and seeing him hurt you so bad—who knows? Like the sheriff said before. Anybody can kill. If the circumstances are right.”