Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything (12 page)

Honeybelle had gathered Miss Ruffles close to her bosom, cooing to the dog and smiling up at her guest through her eyelashes. “Don't you just love her zest for life?”

She made the question sound naughty. But some instinct told me she had said it to defuse an argument.

At that inopportune moment, they realized I was in the doorway. President Cornfelter must have assumed he was alone in the house with Honeybelle. He turned brick red at the sight of me. If he could have magically made his wedding ring disappear, he'd have done it. But he was caught—a married man smelling of aftershave while standing over a woman whose rose-colored lipstick exactly matched the big lingering smooch mark next to his mouth. On the glass-topped table in front of the sofa stood a vase of flowers that I guessed he had brought for her. Daisies and carnations—a humble bouquet Honeybelle normally would have turned up her nose at, but today she had given them a place of honor. It was a signal that he was either a potential new boyfriend or a man who had come prepared to ask for a big favor. Which probably involved money. And yet there was tension between them.

“Hannibal,” Honeybelle said cordially, “this is my assistant, Sunny McKillip. Sunny, this handsome specimen is President Cornfelter, from the university. Sunny's from Ohio, Han. Would you like to repeat what you just said to me? So she could hear it?”

He made a choking sound, and after a split second of married-man mortification, he handed Honeybelle a glass of wine.

For no reason whatsoever, Miss Ruffles leaped up from Honeybelle's lap and sank her teeth into the university president's hand. Maybe she had heard what he said to Honeybelle.

He screamed, and Miss Ruffles let go, but not before there was blood dripping on the carpet and smearing on the cuff of his white linen suit. Cornfelter shrieked at the horror of his own blood loss. Honeybelle jumped up and began alternately soothing both her visitor and her barking dog.

I got a wet towel to blot the carpet and called for paramedics.

Thing is, although Honeybelle and Cornfelter had been sweet as pie to each other while I was in the room, I sensed I had interrupted something less than friendly. Honeybelle's flirtatious tone hadn't matched the hard light in her eyes. And Cornfelter had been courtly, but I had the impression that was behavior he could put on as easily as a bow tie. I think Miss Ruffles knew something else besides romance was going on between them.

At the alumni office, Miss Ruffles bared her teeth again at President Cornfelter.

He backed up into the closet as if he hoped to climb inside and slam the door. “Keep that animal away from me!”

I had a good grip on the leash. “I've got her. Don't worry.”

“Don't worry! I could have had nerve damage, you know. She did real damage to my hand.” He held out his injured part. A pathetically small Band-Aid covered what was left of his wound. “Well, the first bandage was much larger.”

I said, “Miss Ruffles has had all her shots.”

“I had to get a tetanus booster. It was very painful.” More to himself, he said, “I should have asked Honeybelle to pay for it.”

“You could talk to her lawyer now,” I suggested. “He's taking care of her finances. He might write you a check.”

Cornfelter scrambled out of the closet and stepped to a safe distance. He must have become aware of how ridiculous he was looking to Tammy Jaye. He straightened his Alamo tie. “All that's water over the dam. I'm devastated that dear Honeybelle is no longer with us.”

“I'm sorry you couldn't attend the memorial service.”

“Yes, well, I had a scheduled meeting I couldn't cancel.”

“When did you see Honeybelle last?” I asked while he was still shaken.

He put on a mournful face. “I may have been the last person to see her alive.”

“I heard you saw her the morning she died.”

He came clean. “Yes, I … I was buying a box of pastries to bring to my special fundraising committee that morning. I came out of the bakery, and there she was, looking beautiful in her car. I offered her a doughnut.”

“Did she accept it?”

He stared at me, finally noticing I was asking strange questions. “Why would you want to know…? Look here, I'm very sorry about Honeybelle, but life goes on. I've got to get out to the donors. Tammy Jaye, why don't you just bring an assortment of shirts and hats to my private box? I'll distribute them myself. Before the game starts, please.”

“Of course, sir.”

He bolted out of the office.

Tammy Jaye picked up the items he'd left on the floor, shaking her head. “He'd clean out my whole supply if he could carry it all. They call him Hannibal the Animal, you know—always taking more than his fair share.” She caught herself being disloyal. “But you look adorable! Now, how about a new collar for Miss Ruffles? Red and white, of course.”

Of course. Suitably decked out, the two of us were ushered into a golf cart driven by a young man named Cody, who had dimples and a ready smile. He wore a red and white Alamo rodeo-style shirt with white jeans and cowboy boots. The closest he ever got to a horse, I suspected, was the polo player that galloped discreetly across his clothing. He drove our golf cart around the perimeter of the stadium parking lot where the tailgate parties sprawled out.

At other colleges, I had seen plenty of game-day tailgating, but the Texans took this particular American form of entertaining to a totally new level. They had tents and RVs set up with smoking barbecue grills and tables laid with baked beans and cole slaw and plenty of beer in coolers. Plates were piled with chili dogs and red hots and sausages, nachos and tacos, plus ribs people gnawed on with pregame enthusiasm. And did I mention the beer? I discovered an invention I had never heard of before—the Kegerator, which kept multiple kegs of cold beer on tap for drinking, but also for squirting at people. Each party blared country-western music, and the cacophony was impressive.

There were other mascots besides Miss Ruffles, I discovered. Only in Texas would a school feel the need to have three. One was a bespangled cowgirl on an excitable black horse. The other was a boy in a cowboy suit with a huge head and a Texas-sized cowboy hat. He wore a pair of pretend six-shooters that he pulled on unsuspecting fans in the tailgate section of the parking lot.

On the front seat of the golf cart beside Cody, I tried to look inconspicuous, while Miss Ruffles sat on the raised backseat like the homecoming queen. She knew just what to do. When she yipped at the beer-drinking tailgaters, they tossed her bits of meat still hot from the grills. A few students rushed over to pat her, and she panted happily.

We weren't outside for ten minutes before I began to worry about her safety. Was Miss Ruffles going to choke? Be poisoned? Or what if someone in the crowd got too close and grabbed her? Could I chase a drunk student around the whole parking lot to save her? Now that half the town knew she was the heiress to Honeybelle's fortune, she was worth a lot of money. Could I protect her?

Unaware of my growing concern, Cody happily made conversation. The only downside was that he kept calling me “ma'am,” when I couldn't be any more than two or three years older than he was.

“With all this food, ma'am, I used to be afraid Miss Ruffles would get sick in the golf cart. But she has an iron stomach, doesn't she?”

“Just about everything of Miss Ruffles is made of iron.”

“Yes, ma'am, I know. I heard she took a chunk out of President Cornfelter. Were you around for that?”

I was the one who called 911 to summon the ambulance, which was overkill in my view, but Honeybelle had gone all southern belle and made a fuss of President Cornfelter's wound. Instead of answering Cody's question, I said, “Are people allowed to carry beer into the game?”

“Technically, no, ma'am. They're not allowed to carry firearms, either. The administration keeps threatening to start checking for those, too, but you know how it is.”

The marching band led the fans into the stadium, where ponytailed cheerleaders whisked and fluttered their pompoms. The huge crowd already assembled in the stadium seats roared with approval. When our golf cart reached the field, all the players wanted to rub Miss Ruffles on her head before the game. I was surprised that she put up with their affectionate manhandling. Maybe the enormous players reminded her of the cattle she was intended to herd.

On the sidelines, we stayed in the golf cart listening to the steady noise of the crowd while the teams played their game. Miss Ruffles barked at touchdowns no matter who scored. The cowgirl on the black horse took a celebratory gallop up and down the field when Alamo finally kicked a field goal. The pistol-packing cowboy pretended to have showdown gun battles with the opposing team's mascot—some kind of pig.

At halftime when the band took the field, I led Miss Ruffles to the fifty-yard line, as instructed. She barked at the musicians while they played the theme from
Star Wars
and some Michael Jackson tunes and made formations on the turf. She strained at the leash as if she wanted to slip her collar and chase the musicians around until they were herded into a nice, manageable group.

At the end of the halftime show, I took Miss Ruffles back to the golf cart, and the young man from the alumni office said, “Ma'am, when Coach Hensley was alive, they had a Texas cattle cur that chased a Frisbee out on the field during halftime. It did tricks and ran around the band. You seem to have a way with Miss Ruffles. Any chance she could learn to do that?”

Chasing a ball in the fenced backyard was one thing, but turning Miss Ruffles loose in a stadium full of drunk football fans sounded like a catastrophe in the making. But I said, “I'll work on it.”

“Mrs. Hensley always wanted Miss Ruffles to do the Frisbee act, but she couldn't teach her.”

“Miss Ruffles is headstrong.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Cody said. Then, “It's too bad Honeybelle passed before she got the stadium thing done.”

“The stadium thing?” I said.

“Yeah, she wanted the university to name the stadium after her husband, Coach Hut. Hut Hensley Stadium. I drove her around all last year, and I got the idea she was working on talking the board into it. All it took was money—that's what she said.”

“Why didn't they name it for him?”

“President Cornfelter said we need a whole new stadium. This one's getting too old. Honeybelle didn't want to pay for a new one, though, just to fix this one up. So they were working out a deal, I guess.”

“Who's they?” I asked, thinking of the scene I had interrupted in Honeybelle's house. “President Cornfelter and Honeybelle?”

“Well, them and others. When she rode around with me last year, Honeybelle talked about the naming rights with a bunch of people. Board members. Alumni donors. But they were on Cornfelter's side, all trying to sweet-talk her into building a new one. She wasn't backing down, though. She was one tough customer.”

“Yes, she was.” I thought to myself that although she hadn't backed down, she hadn't won the battle either. Lately, she had been suffering a lot of setbacks. The stadium issue, the garden club debacle, the biting incident, the family squabble about the wedding Posie wanted to throw.

Cody sighed. “It's a darn shame she passed before it came together.”

I wondered if Honeybelle's will had anything to say about a new stadium. All I knew for sure was that nothing could happen for the year we were supposed to take care of Miss Ruffles.

Judging by the first half of the game, it looked as if Alamo was going to lose their opener by an embarrassing margin.

I said to my escort, “Do Miss Ruffles and I need to stay until the end of the game? I mean, what's the crowd like when the game's over?” Worrying about her safety had started to wear on me.

Cody scanned the stadium with the eye of an expert. “It's not a bad idea for you to get out of here before Hades breaks loose.”

I decided to take Cody's advice. Miss Ruffles and I slipped out through the team entrance and headed for home. I was greatly relieved to have her safely out of there.

We passed Crazy Mary on the corner outside the stadium. The street musician had a violin today, and she whipped her bow in a lively fiddle tune. She played even though nobody was around to listen.

Miss Ruffles yipped at the music, but we kept going. Trouble was, the afternoon had turned very hot, and even the shortcut across campus and through the sacred burial site of Coach Hut Hensley wasn't going to be a pleasant walk. We lingered in the shade of the trees by his tomb, and I noted there were red and white roses planted around the giant monument. Honeybelle had obviously put them there, under the stone that had been cut to the approximate shape of Coach Hensley's gruff face. Miss Ruffles rooted around in the bushes but was amenable when I urged her to walk again. I could feel the freckles popping on my arms and sighed at the thought of another sunburn. I should have arranged for a ride home, I realized.

Although I was wilting, Miss Ruffles looked perfectly fine in the heat. I knew she was thirsty, though. We took a break at a Jiffy Stop, and I bought a bottle of water for Miss Ruffles and a blueberry slushie for me. She slurped the water from a paper cup. I ate the slushie with a plastic spoon while we walked, then pitched the cup into a trash can at the Valero station.

On a side street, a dusty, noisy Jeep with no doors caught up with me. A set of Jurassic cow horns decorated the Jeep's hood, and the radio was blaring something twangy. Ten Tennyson was behind the wheel. He pulled over to the sidewalk and slowed to a crawl. He turned down the radio but kept his aviator sunglasses on.

His friendly grin was long gone. “Nice hat.”

I continued to walk. The floppy brim of the Alamo hat provided a little shade, but not enough. “They gave it to me for the football game. I feel like I'm supposed to sell used cars.”