Snoop to Nuts (19 page)

Jeffrey knew he was being snowed. He turned, stomped off across the wooden floorboards, and slammed the front door behind him. I couldn’t help but feel a strong giggle starting down around my belly and working its way up. With everything going on, with putting up with Tyler Perkins, with Pastor Albertson coming in, with poison and more trouble than I could shake a stick at, this one little victory felt so damned good.

The porch was empty. We’d have to call the Chaunceys.

I locked the Nut House door securely behind me and hurried out to my truck, thinking what I always thought when things were going to hell in a hand basket.

“After all . . . tomorrow is another day,” I sighed, using my best heroic, Southern woman voice.

“Yup. Tomorrow’s another day,” I said again then thought how much further downhill another day might take me.

Miss Amelia was sitting at the foot of a sleeping Treenie’s bed. Aldonza, Treenie’s grown daughter, sat near Miss Amelia, tatting lace as the two talked in quiet voices.

The news on Treenie was good. She would make a complete recovery, both women told me.

“Doctor said she didn’t take enough to kill her.” Aldonza smiled a happy smile that changed her whole plain face. “I told her before, don’t go putting things in your mouth you don’t know what it is. But you know my mama. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Stick a fingertip in a jar, stick your tongue out. Tell me, Lindy, who does that, eh?”

I put a hand on one of Aldonza’s blunt hands and smiled down at her.

“You know there’s talk in town about a cult moving in from Dallas.” She looked up at me. “There are people who want to take over the town, is what I hear. Some are saying that’s who killed the parson. He found out about it and tried to stop them. That’s what cults do, you know? They poison people to clear the way . . .”

I made a face at her. “Oh, Aldonza. They’re not really saying things like that, are they?”

Eyes wide, she nodded. “It’s happened in other places.”

“Where?”

She looked perplexed. “I don’t know for sure, but that’s what people are saying.”

“I wouldn’t credit it too much,” I said. “More like somebody we all know. Maybe somebody involved in something illegal. Anyway, the sheriff’s on top of it . . .”

She made a derisive sound. “Sure, by blaming your grandmother. Nobody’s falling for it. That’s how these cults work. They get to the people in power first. Back in Mexico . . .”

Meemaw got up heavily from the bed. I turned to help her as Aldonza’s wild theory died off in her throat.

“I’d better get going now.” Miss Amelia bent to kiss Aldonza lightly on the cheek. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“No, no, no.” Aldonza put up a hand. “You stay home and rest. The doctor said Mama might get out tomorrow anyway.”

She turned back to me. “Nobody’s blaming your grandmother for anything, Lindy. There’s evil in this town, but it has nothing to do with Miss Amelia.”

“Evil often wears a familiar face, Aldonza,” I said as I followed Miss Amelia into the hall. “Just not my grandmother’s face.”

*   *   *

On the way out to the ranch, Meemaw made me call the Chaunceys, who were just getting home. Miranda didn’t get it at first, then she effusively said to bring him. They’d keep the man safe. If she could shoot out the eyes of a rattler at a hundred feet, she sure could shoot a murderer before he got up on the porch.

“Ya know, Lindy, me and Melody been out here on the ranch alone since Daddy died. That was, let me see now, maybe fifty years ago. We’ve been through the worst and the best Texas can throw at a person and we’re still standing. Run this ranch alone—no help except with picking and packing. We’ll take care of your pastor for ya. Just call when he’s on his way.”

Meemaw was pleased. “I’d rather trust Miranda with that gun of hers, than any man I ever knew.”

At home, I helped her pack an overnight bag, explain to Mama why she was going back into town, and though Mama sputtered and got very close to being mad, we were out of there in fifteen minutes, on the way back to the Nut House.

First thing, back at my place, Meemaw was yawning and looking completely done in.

“You get to bed,” I told her. “I’ll be back later.”

“Humph. Of all places, the Barking Coyote. For goodness’ sakes, Lindy. I hope you’re not planning on consuming any alcohol.”

“Meemaw.” I pretended to shock. “Would I—”

She shook a finger at me. “Not a place for a proper lady—”

“Meemaw,” I stopped her. “Wasn’t it just a few months back we went there together?”

“That was different. Amos was dead and we were trying to find out what was going on.”

“And didn’t you and Jefferson Tomlin do a mean line dance together?”

Her face slowly reddened. Her eyes snapped fire. “That’s public relations, Lindy. Goodwill for the store, was all it was. You should know a little about being gracious . . .”

I was gone, certain that, no matter how tired she was, she would be waiting up for me to get home.

The saloon was going strong when I drove in at the half-lit sign of a coyote baying at the moon and down the wash to park behind the saloon, pulling in between two pickups with serious gun racks mounted on the back. The funky old wooden building stood away from the arroyo, settled low as if it had floated there after a particularly tough frog strangler.

Dolly Parton met me at the door, belting out “Baby I’m Burning” on the jukebox. There was the clink of glasses, that yeasty smell of old beer, maybe a bit of something sweet going on under the beer stink, and then—when people saw who’d just entered—from table to table they called out:

“Hunter’s in back, Lindy.”

“Been waiting a long time for ya, girl.”

“Good thing he’s a patient man.”

They thought that was a funny one.

And then:

“Hunter, Lindy’s here!” Table called to table, like they were treetop sentinels.

So much for anonymity and a private place to talk. By the time I stopped to greet everybody, Hunter came up front to lead me beyond the long bar, to a table as big around as a basketball. He had a sweating beer waiting for me and I’ll have to admit—grandmother or no grandmother—that beer looked and then tasted great.

Hunter leaned toward me. We clinked bottles. “It’s for sure,” he said, voice raised against Dolly Parton and women laughing and men singing along with the jukebox. “The poison in that bottle at the Nut House was spotted water hemlock. Seems like our killer’s got a taste for local products.”

“Anything else?” I took a long swig and relaxed before the beer hit my stomach.

“Sheriff Higsby’s got it in his head it’s some nutcase here in town. More like a serial poisoner than anybody really after the pastor. Right now he’s kind of focusing on Freda Cromwell. You know Freda and her outrage over just about everything.”

“Tell you the truth, I don’t care who he thinks it is, as long as he stays away from Meemaw.”

He nodded.

“You talk to Morton yet?” I asked.

“He’s coming over as soon as he can take a break.”

I looked around the smoke-filled room. “See Finula?”

He nodded over to a small table in the darkest part of the room. Squinting hard, I made out Finula Prentiss at a table with three cowboys. When she looked my way, she waved and I waved back.

I told Hunter about Pastor Albertson coming to town but told him he had to keep it a dark secret.

He nodded. “Let’s see what the man’s got to say. I’m going out with you. You knew I’d insist on that.”

I nodded. “That’s why I’m telling you. Just the three of us—and the Chaunceys. I just can’t figure what he’d be afraid of, can you?”

“Maybe having to eat anything while he’s here? Maybe afraid somebody’ll see him as a threat?”

“I saw Tyler Perkins this afternoon, too. He had a few things to say about Pastor Albertson. Turns out it wasn’t all cozy, the way he and Hawley Harvey said it was. Not just retiring. Something was going on. That’s got to be what the pastor’s coming to talk about.”

Morton Grover made his way through the crowd, two fresh bottles of beer in his hands held high above his head. He plunked the bottles down and smiled at us before bringing a chair over from another table.

“Thanks.” Hunter held the new beer up in salute. “Good thing I’m off duty.”

I looked at the sweating beer in front of me and thought maybe I’d skip this one. As a usual nondrinker, and as tired as my brain felt, I was already light-headed and inclined to want to sit back in my chair and sing along with Dolly.

“You hear about that cult?” Was Morton’s first question. My hopes for anything new dropped. Back into the town’s conspiracy theory.

Hunter didn’t stop him.

“Somebody bought the old Keystone Ranch and is fixing it up. What I hear, it’s an older couple from over near Beaumont. Thing is, they’re not too friendly and they’ve been bringing a bunch of strange kids out there with ’em. I can see where people are putting two and two together.

“That ranch house was pretty run down.” Morton glanced over his shoulder like a spy. “Those groves haven’t been tended in years. Not much value to the pecans. Makes everybody wonder . . .”

“Sheriff went out there,” Hunter said. “First time there was nobody around. Second time the man was there. He had some teenage boys with him. They were working on one of the barns. Sheriff said the house looks really nice—even got a swimming pool at the back.”

“So? What’s he doing here? Finula was saying it’s some kind of cult.”

Hunter shook his head slowly. “Turns out they’re problem kids he hired to help him renovate the place. Gives them a job for the summer and a couple of months away from some pretty bad homes. New program a church in San Antonio started. Nothing suspicious. But tell that to people in Riverville, looking under their beds at night, expecting a mad poisoner to jump out at them.”

“So, no cult?” Morton looked disappointed. “Thought I was bringing you something you ain’t heard of before.”

“No cult, Morton. But I sure do appreciate you bringing me any information you hear in here. One thing I can tell you, you want to spread the word around, what we’re thinking is, because the poison came from roots dug up over near the parsonage, this is no stranger to town. To do that digging and figure they wouldn’t get caught, whoever did it had to know where to find the hemlock and how to get down to the river without anybody seeing ’em. Then they had to know how toxic it was.”

“And to be so blatant about it . . . had to know how the Ag Fair worked and about the Winners’ Supper,” I put in.

“But how’d he know about Miss Amelia’s extra dish?”

“All the women brought an extra dish of their entry, in case they won and had to serve it at the supper,” I said.

“So that means they knew a lot about how the judging worked. But what about knowing which one was Miss Amelia’s? How’d they know that?”

“Our coolers have the Blanchard crest on them.”

He looked disappointed for a moment. He thought a long while. “Then tell me, Lindy. How’d he know Miss Amelia wasn’t going to win and her dish wouldn’t be out on the table with all the others? You think the parson wasn’t the real target and the poison was supposed to get to everybody at the supper?”

“I don’t get what you mean.” I was pretty foggy by this time.

“Sure you do. Miss Amelia almost always wins everything she enters. If she didn’t get first place, you knew, sure as anything, she’d get at least second or third. So how’d they know she wasn’t going to win anything this time? If it was me, I’d be betting the other way.”

Since it wasn’t up to me or Hunter to tell on Miss Amelia, we looked at each other and just kept looking puzzled.

When Finula Prentiss sashayed up to the table to pull Hunter by the hand, drawing him out to the dance floor, where she pasted herself against him, moving like a snake in heat, I started on that second beer after all.

I think Morton Grover saw what was happening and put his hand out to me. I told him I was too tired to dance. Anyway Hunter cut it short with Finula, coming back before the song ended.

“Sorry, Lindy. I—”

I waved it all away. “Finula just being Finula.”

Music I really loved came blaring out across the big, dark and noisy room. Tim McGraw singing, “
I don’t know why I act the way I do . . .”

All I wanted was to shut my eyes and listen, but Hunter was having none of that. He put his hand out and escorted me to the crowded dance floor, where he pulled me so close we only took up room for about a half a couple.

It was after twelve when we left. This time Hunter paid without me giving him a hard time about it. I was so tired I just wanted to get home and fall in bed—or on my sofa—whichever I ended up getting. I kept my fingers crossed that when I got in, Meemaw would be sound asleep.

Turned out she was and, to tell on her, snoring to beat the band.