A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) (3 page)

Driving in under the high wrought-iron gates, with
RANCHO EN EL COLORADO—1905
worked into the graceful overhead arch, made me happy. This was the place I loved more than any other on earth. Forty-eight acres of tall, stately pecan trees fronting Highway 71, then stretching along the fertile banks of the Colorado River. Perfect area for pecan trees. Except the Colorado was down in its banks this year, and people were talking about a long, hot summer with little rain. Everybody was worried. Still, we went on, the way we’d always kept on: praying and hoping things would work out. Usually things did work out—except for that one terrible year when the buds withered on the trees in April and the ranchers went deep into debt, everybody suffering together. Which left a deep mark on me. I was only twelve then.

My work on developing a drought-tolerant and disease-free tree began in college. Or maybe back in that terrible April when I stood beside my daddy under our trees and saw the delicate blossoms all shrivel and die.

After grad school, I came back to the ranch to work in a small corner of one of the barns; not much room for the new seedlings I started. It wasn’t long before all my grousing about lack of space led Mama to say my work was as important as any other part of the ranch. She saw to it that I got a brand-new greenhouse—big enough to cover a quarter acre of seedlings, and then I got a small office and next came my fenced-in test area behind all of that.

This was my home: Rancho en el Colorado—a safe place where people like my uncle Amos couldn’t get at any of us. This ranch was where people loved me and pushed me to try harder, to excel, to achieve whatever I went after, and I was damned and determined I would pay them back someday.

Miss Amelia, seated in the truck beside me, pulled a neatly folded handkerchief from her purse and wiped hard at her eyes.

The ride home from the Nut House had been a quiet one. I didn’t want to set Miss Amelia off again so I left her to her thoughts.

As we curved up the winding drive to the long, low ranch house sitting on a rise among the very oldest of our pecan trees, Miss Amelia reached over and put her blue-veined hand on my arm.

“Ya know, Lindy. What Ethelred was saying back there?” She turned, snapping pale eyes on me. “Treenie came in, mad as a hornet, one day last week. Said people were spreading stories about me. Somebody even asked her if I was going bonkers.”

I couldn’t help the shocked noise I made. “That’s . . . terrible.”

“Somebody’s telling folks I’ve been going into Columbus in secret. Seeing a psychiatrist there. That person told Treenie she had it on very good authority I was suffering from ‘early onset dementia.’”

“Can’t imagine who’d say a thing like that.” I pulled to the side of the drive to stop and look her straight in the face. “You’re the sharpest woman I know. Always was and always will be.”

“Yer darn right. That’s what I thought, too. This person told Treenie word is my baked goods aren’t what they used to be. That I’m forgetting ingredients.” She ran a hand hard across her tight lips. “You know that’s not true, Lindy. Truth is, though, an empty bucket makes the most noise. People’ll listen. If I get my hands on whoever’s spreading this trash about me . . . why . . . I’ll . . .”

I grabbed Miss Amelia’s shaking hands in both of mine. “You’re better than ever. Top of your game. I . . . don’t believe people who know you could be so mean.” I thought hard awhile. “Who told Treenie all this garbage?”

Miss Amelia shook her head. “Don’t know. I was so shocked, asking who said such a thing flew right out of my mind.”

She hesitated a few minutes. “Back in Dallas I knew a woman who everybody started saying was too old to go on teaching school. One of the best teachers I ever worked with back there. That was before I married your grandfather and quit my job, you understand. Women didn’t go on working back then after they got married, and it was just as well with me. Soon I had your mother and my hands were full. But this woman—her name was Florence Carpenter. She’d been teaching for years even when I got there. All the kids loved her, but one of the new teachers, who came in just before me, started saying how her teaching methods were out of date. Then how the kids were being harmed by someone not up on modern methods. Yeah sure, I’ll tell ya—all that rote teaching they got into when colleges started teaching teachers to dumb down our kids. Well, word got back to Florence. I think she was in her early sixties then. Never had a problem then all of a sudden she was forgetting things. Principal found her in tears one afternoon. She lost her grade book—or someone took it. Not long after that she was gone, retired. Dead in two years because she loved teaching so much and thought maybe she’d been hurting her kids all along. That’s what happens when cruel people set out to destroy a person.” She nodded along with her own thoughts. “That’s what happens.”

“Not to you, Meemaw. Never to you. There’s nobody in town sharper than you. If anybody is saying anything—look behind what they’re saying. Sounds like jealousy to me. And who would be jealous? People like Ethelred, or maybe that gossip, Freda Cromwell. Women who can’t hold a candle to you, can’t beat your pies at the county fair.”

Miss Amelia nodded once and then a second time and then a third time, faster. “You’re right, Lindy. Can’t let it happen, can I? Not giving in to the mean and small-minded. Guess you always gotta look behind what’s happening to you. Who benefits?”

“I think that’s a pretty old question, Meemaw.
Cui bono.
Latin. Think about it.” I took a deep breath, hurting for this special woman in my life. “And while you’re thinking, I’m going to be talking to Treenie. I want to know who she heard it from. I’ll take care of them.”

“Oh, Lindy.” Miss Amelia smiled, but moaned a little, too. “We’ve got so much going on. Now, with Amos back. Please don’t say a single thing to Emma. She’ll be hurt for me.”

I pulled slowly back on to the gravel drive and drove around to park in front of the house, between rows of stately pecan trees.

I turned to Miss Amelia before she got out of my truck. “Just like you said before, nothing stays hidden long. Like trying to keep the news about Amos from you. Best we all face whatever’s ahead and work through it together.”

Miss Amelia “tsked” a couple of times. “We’d better tell Emma that Amos was in. And that he was looking for her. Can’t you just imagine Ethelred Tomroy spreading the word already? Telling Freda. Freda passing it on that Amos is causing more trouble.” She sighed. “At least it’ll give people something to talk about besides me losing my marbles.

“You know, Lindy?” She stopped after opening the door and preparing to slide, stiff and correct, from the seat of my pickup. “I still got this feeling. It’s like . . . oh, I don’t know. It’s like I can’t bring myself to believe that Amos is as bad as he seems to be. Troubled, sure. I’ll give you that. But I’ve got this way of knowing people; dealing with them every day, the way I do. Coming into the store, sayin’ it’s for a pie or candy when I know they come in just to talk, to be a part of something, to hear news and share stories. It gives me kind of, oh, a way of seeing inside people’s heads. Sure they got bad stuff going on. We all do. But then there’s the rest—the things I sense and give an ear to. That’s all they need. Lindy.” She nodded hard. “I’m not whistling Dixie. I know folks from the inside out.”

I leaned over and kissed her pale cheek. “You are one tough lady, Meemaw. Don’t you worry. Like we always do—we’ll take it on one day at a time. Together. We’ll handle the gossips. Uncle Amos. Whatever’s ahead of us. Why, we can handle anything—two fine specimens of Texas womanhood that we are.”

Miss Amelia made a face. “I hope you’re not pokin’ fun the way you do. There’s nothing stronger than a Texas lady.”

“No such thing,” I teased. “But you do know you can’t use ‘Texas’ and ‘lady’ in the same sentence.”

Meemaw couldn’t help laughing. “You got a lot of me in you, Lindy. And I’m proud to see it,” she said.

• • •

Since Mama wasn’t in the house to talk to, I got Miss Amelia
to lie down in her bedroom, part of the suite Emma had built on specially so Miss Amelia could be a part of the family but still have a little privacy, be where all us kids couldn’t get at her and where people coming to the house with disasters at the store had to go through a couple of layers of Blanchards first.

Miss Amelia’s room looked just like the woman herself, I’d always thought. Calming blue walls and flowers everywhere; good paintings by the best Texas artists: long vistas and iridescent light. These were all the things she’d brought from Dallas after my grandfather died. It was all she had left of a life with a Texas congressman who died much too early.

There was chintz upholstery on the two small sofas in her living room; cornflower blue sheets on her bed; and flowered drapes at her long bedroom windows.

“I think I’m glad you talked me into coming home,” she said, heaving a weary sigh. “Seems like right now every time I stand up, my mind wants to sit down on me.”

I pulled back the top sheet on the bed, fluffed the pillows, and after Miss Amelia lay down decorously—shoes off, feet neatly aligned on the bed, hands crossed over her stomach—I kissed her forehead and left, closing the door quietly behind me.

• • •

Mama was in her office out in the packing barn, where,
in November, the pecans got packed and sent off to buyers around the world. Packing was a flurry of sudden activity—many workers sorting and filling boxes. No time to stop. We all got involved in packing. Everything had to be done when the nuts were ripe and falling from the trees.

Mama, her streaked blond head bent over a desk covered with papers, blue-framed glasses pushed down to the end of her nose, frowned at first when I walked into her sparely furnished office. When her mind was set on something—like finding an error in the figures or fielding a low-ball bid on her pecans—Miss Emma didn’t entertain intrusions lightly. Mama was a pretty woman who was all sweetness and honey one minute and tough as rocks the next. Especially when it came to marketing her pecans for the best price, for finding new markets, and defending her business and her family against all comers.

Miss Emma’s middle-aged face—with life and character written in soft lines—went from bothered to happy in a second. “Lindy,” she greeted me, “you’re a welcome break.”

“You busy?” I asked.

She nodded. “But never too busy for you. Just been hunting for your father’s Pecan Co-op books all morning. Mike Longway called yesterday. He’s the new president and said he wanted to go over the old books, make sure everything was up to date. He said the co-op doesn’t have Jake’s books from back when he was president and wondered if I’d look for them. Trouble is, I can’t find anything. Just his personal check ledgers. Old receipts. Old bills. Nothing directly to do with the co-op. Guess Jake asked Chastity Conway to bring everything up to date when she took over as treasurer, but she says she never got ’em. Next thing Jake was dead and everything was in a mess.”

She stretched her neck back and closed her eyes a minute.

“It’s just that . . . well . . . I’ve been all through Jake’s files, hunted where he threw stuff in that hall closet, checked out the top of wardrobe.” She gave me a knowing look. “You know your daddy wasn’t much of a record keeper. Not until I got after him. If I’d left things to Jake, the IRS and every other government agency would’ve been breathin’ down our necks.”

She pushed her glasses up on her forehead, and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Can I help with anything?” I offered.

“That would make two of us who don’t know what we’re doing.”

She ruffled through a stack of papers on her desk. “Now I’m hung up on Jake’s bills. I thought I’d taken care of everything but I found one . . . Oh well, I’ll go through the check ledgers. Can’t imagine it wasn’t paid. Still . . . odd to find it at all.”

“What’s got Mike Longway worried?” I asked. “Or just the new president rattling his saber?”

She shrugged. “He’s talking about a problem at the bank. I’ll do what I can, but how would I know? It’s been two years.”

I cleared my throat and took a chair opposite Mama, pulling it close to the desk.

Miss Emma leaned back and sighed. “Your daddy never was a man for order—except where the trees were concerned. But you wanted to tell me . . . what?”