Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin's Press ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

 

For Edith Ellen Christopher, Texas born

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With many, grateful thanks to scientists Kerry Kilburn and Lila Shaara for timely scientific input. To Deborah Coonts, my Texas friend with a writer's keen eye for details. To Tom Christopher, whose book
In Seach of Lost Roses
inspired me years before we became part of the same family. To Deb Dunton, for her double duty as Browning Road's Critter Control and our Madame President. Also to Ramona Long, Meredith Mileti, Kathy Miller Haines, Nicole Peeler, Barbara Aikman, and Cassie Martin Christopher. Couldn't have done it without you! Meg Ruley and Christina Hogrebe are the best in the biz and I'm glad they've got my back. And the Minotaur team—I love you all! Special thanks to Kelley Ragland, Elizabeth Lacks, and India Cooper.

 

CHAPTER ONE

You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.

—DAVID CROCKETT

When I first arrived in the town of Mule Stop, Texas, I developed a theory that Texans are always polite to each other because they figure everybody else is packing a gun. The checkout girl at the Tejas grocery store proudly told me she was descended from Bonnie Parker and carried a replica of the same .38 revolver Bonnie used in her shootout alongside Clyde Barrow—a fact the young lady disclosed at the same moment she handed me a brochure for the Cowboy Church, her place of worship, which was located at a former drive-in theater. Parishioners were invited to bring folding chairs if they didn't want to sit on their horses or tailgates for the worship service.

I felt as if I'd landed from another planet. I still do. Texas has that effect on people.

Honeybelle Hensley's memorial did not take place at the Cowboy Church, but rather at First Methodist, where the leading citizens of Mule Stop came early and packed the pews shoulder to shoulder to send the famously rich Honeybelle off to the Promised Land. When I hauled open the creaky oak door at the back of the sanctuary, every man and woman suddenly craned around with one thought in mind—that maybe it was all a big mistake and Honeybelle was showing up for her own funeral. They probably hoped she might drive that white Lexus convertible of hers right up the steps, tossing rose petals in her wake—or maybe silver dollars. Yes, big, shiny Texas silver dollars were more Honeybelle's style.

But it was only me. Me, Ohio-born Sunny McKillip, hopelessly out of place, holding a rhinestone leash with Miss Ruffles at the end of it.

The sight of Miss Ruffles triggered a collective gasp.

At my side, Miss Ruffles growled deep in her throat. Softly at first, then with growing menace. Her body vibrated with barely suppressed rage. I knew what she was saying—that no puffed-up garden club lady in a hat from Dillard's Easter collection was going to stop her from attending the service of the woman she loved more than anybody.

Posie Hensley marched up the aisle toward us, hat hiding her furrowed brow, but we held our ground.

Posie stopped short and in a hissed whisper, said, “You better not be here to make fools of us with that dog.”

“Miss Ruffles belongs here as much as anybody else.” My Yankee voice carried farther than I expected in the church, so I lowered it fast. “Maybe more.”

Posie blocked our way. She was Honeybelle's very own daughter-in-law, an ex–Miss Texas finalist, thin as a lizard and just about as appealing. Even her peplum skirt had the look of a scorpion's tail.

The whole congregation held their breath and leaned closer to hear her response.

She frowned and considered her social standing. Posie stood the biggest chance of stepping into Honeybelle's role as beloved community leader and power broker—a despot with a drawl who made councilmen tremble—but only if she inherited Honeybelle's considerable charm as well as her money. Aware that several hundred people could hear, she finally uttered the immortal words used in just about any tricky situation south of the Mason-Dixon.

With a sugary tone, she said to me, “Well, bless your heart.”

To those seated in the pews, she probably sounded like she was trying to stop a crazy northerner from making a fool of herself. And maybe she was right. The accompanying look in her eye made me think she'd rather boot me out the door and down the steps—with the dog, too.

If she could, Miss Ruffles would have rolled her eyes at such fakery. Instead, she lunged with a ferocious bark that echoed to the rafters. I barely held her back with the leash. To save herself, Posie jumped out of our way.

According to the American Kennel Club committee currently appraising the breed's pending application, Miss Ruffles was a Texas cattle cur—a small but powerful dog with the speed and temperament for driving cows over a cliff, if need be. She stood about knee high, with a tough, brindle gray coat that bristled over her compact body. At one end, her tail was an ugly stub; at the other, her muzzle narrowed to a foxy point. The wide space between her pricked ears—one was floppy, the other constantly erect—made room for a quick, cunning brain. At home in Honeybelle's mansion, she didn't match the Chinese porcelain or the silk-upholstered furniture. In fact, she was often caught chewing the chairs. But Miss Ruffles had a habit of grinning when she panted, and her intelligent eyes conveyed more personality than most people. She liked to have fun, and she didn't care who she annoyed to get it.

Out in the church parking lot, the marching band of the University of the Alamo struck up the first stirring bars of the school's fight song. In farewell to the university's biggest donor, they blared their music loud enough to rattle the church's stained glass windows. To the blasts of their rousing tune, Miss Ruffles yanked me down the center aisle with the momentum of a marauding rhino. She headed straight for the only seats left in the whole church—in the front pew.

No bride could have drawn as much attention as Miss Ruffles did. No casket carried by a platoon of pallbearers could have instilled more feelings of doom, either. She had recently bitten the president of the University of the Alamo, and the whole town knew it. The VIPs sitting on either side of us visibly edged out of range of Miss Ruffles's teeth. The garden club ladies—all wearing pastel ensembles with matching yellow corsages—were careful not to meet the dog's malevolent eye. Their men, in summer suits with bolo ties and hand-tooled cowboy boots, held still as terrified deer until we passed them by.

Halfway down the aisle, Miss Ruffles almost wrenched my arm out of its socket. She dragged me over to a line of big men squished together with their hats in their hands and smelling strongly of hickory smoke. They were the proprietors of Bum Steer Barbecue, Honeybelle's favorite lunch to serve on football game day. They sat still and frightened as Miss Ruffles gave them all a thorough sniffing before catching wind of the men sitting across the aisle—the pitmasters of Low 'N' Slow, the competing barbecue joint that had been the choice of Honeybelle's late husband, “Hut” Hensley. The pitmasters nervously eyed Miss Ruffles, so I tugged her away before she decided to sink her teeth into an innocent someone's brisket-dripped boots.

Then Miss Ruffles caught sight of the easel at the front of the sanctuary. She stopped growling and dragged me forward until we stood before an enlarged, smiling photo of Honeybelle placed beside an Egyptian-style urn containing her ashes. The display was surrounded by enough flowers for a royal wedding.

For a long moment, Miss Ruffles stared up at the photo. Then she snuffled the bottom of the urn as if trying to recognize something of Honeybelle in her remains. I maintained a death grip on the leash—afraid she might seize the urn in her jaws and make a run for it. But she gazed up at Honeybelle's likeness again, still and contemplative.

In the photo, Honeybelle smiled down on us with her distinctively beautiful twinkle. In life, she had been a woman to be noticed, to be passionately loved, to be reckoned with wherever she went. Probably dressed for an afternoon football game, she wore a cocked white Stetson with a yellow satin ribbon hatband, big white pearls, and diamond earrings the size of pinto beans. A corsage of yellow roses bristled on the lapel of her St. John suit. Her coquettishly raised eyebrow assured us all that she had successfully sashayed through the Pearly Gates and was sitting pretty, ready for her champagne cocktail. I was sure she was already holding court in heaven alongside Robert E. Lee, Clark Gable, and Dale Earnhardt. And probably Elvis, too.

I had arrived in Texas several months earlier to become the administrative assistant to the new dean of the local college. I was floored when he was suddenly fired—for falsifying his professional vita—and it just so happened I desperately needed a job at the same time Honeybelle decided she desperately needed a personal secretary. We shook hands on it, and the job morphed into a variety of duties until the next thing I knew I was really a personal secretary to Honeybelle's dog. Honeybelle rarely went anywhere without Miss Ruffles, so one of my tasks was to bring both the dog and Honeybelle's official presidential notebooks to the garden club's annual election meeting in the church's social annex. Which meant I was present at the showdown that broke her spirit.

And maybe killed her.

During the election portion of the meeting, Posie Hensley—yes, the very same daughter-in-law who appointed herself bouncer at the memorial service—stood up to make her pitch to become president of the club. Nobody took her bid for office seriously until in a clear voice she made a campaign promise to abolish the annual Lady Bird Johnson Bluebonnet Festival.

The club members sucked in a collective breath of shock at such a suggestion. Honeybelle had been sitting on the dais with her ankles neatly crossed and an expression that said her mind was confidently elsewhere, but at that moment, her face froze. Everybody knew the former first lady was Honeybelle's idol. (Lady Bird came first. The late governor Ann Richards was a close second.) For decades Honeybelle had organized a festival in Lady Bird's honor, railroading the whole club into creating bluebonnet centerpieces, giving away bluebonnet nosegays on a downtown street corner in the blazing heat, and showcasing Honeybelle herself in a bluebonnet aromatherapy workshop, public welcome.