A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) (2 page)

Ethelred, along with me, looked up from the mess on the floor. She snapped her lips shut, too shocked, for once, to speak.

Miss Amelia’s hands flew to her cheeks. Her eyes stayed fixed on whoever was standing at the back of the store.

“My pie!”
Ethelred protested, indignation soaring. “Well, for heaven’s sakes, what’s got into you, Amelia Hastings? Maybe you are getting too old for this job, like people are saying around town. Family can’t expect blood outta a turnip, you now . . .”

Miss Tomroy kept talking while I turned to stare hard at the person who had startled my usually unshakable grandmother.

Outlined by pure Texas heat and sunshine coming through the closing front door, a tall, bulky figure in a black cowboy hat hesitated just inside the room. He stood awkwardly a minute then turned and shut the door behind him with a sudden slam, rattling glass and sending baskets of pecans tumbling from one of the back tables.

I wasn’t sure at first . . .

The man’s face was in shadow. But—the size of him . . . that signature black hat . . . a man in his fifties . . .

My stomach gave a couple of turns.

Amos Blanchard. My uncle. My dead father’s younger brother, back after two years away from Riverville. Two quiet years for the Blanchard family. Not anybody I ever wanted to see again in my whole life. Especially not since the night of my daddy’s funeral.

I watched, my head buzzing, as Amos hesitated then strolled slowly up one of the aisles, his old cowboy boots echoing across the uneven floorboards.

He stopped at the counter in front of the three of us—frozen in a kind of stop-motion tableau—and politely touched the crown of his tall hat, dipping his head.

“Lindy,” my uncle said, acknowledging me. I nodded curtly, not willing to give him an inch more attention than I had to. He’d hurt my mother that night. He’d hurt our whole family. Drunk. Mean. Calling my mother names. I wasn’t willing to give him another chance at us. I’d go for his eyes if he started trouble. Southern lady be damned.

My uncle’s face was more worn than I remembered. His
dark hair, sticking out from under the hat he hadn’t bothered to take off, as all Texas men should when talking to ladies, was touched with gray. He looked older, as if he’d gone through a lot since leaving Riverville. There wasn’t an ounce of sympathy in me. Let him be old, and gray, and miserable.

“Miss Amelia.” He bowed his head.

“Amos Blanchard. Well, what do you know? Thought you said all you wanted to say the last time we saw you.” Meemaw pretended to think hard. “Yer own brother’s funeral, wasn’t it? When you attacked my daughter the way you did.”

Her voice was low, with a slight shake to it. I recognized her warning voice, with something of the rattlesnake buried down deep inside.

I moved to Miss Amelia’s side and took her arm.

Ethelred Tomroy, a wicked smile crossing her old face, stood back and crossed her arms over her chest. I guessed she’d forgotten her fallen pie. She frowned hard at Amos Blanchard. “Hope you didn’t come in for something to drink, Amos. You know Miss Amelia’s a teetotaler.”

I watched as she settled her wrinkled hands across her stomach, leaned away, and waited to see what new Blanchard story she’d have to share around town. “Me and Miss Amelia believe people don’t have to be any happier than the Lord made ’em to begin with.”

“I didn’t come here for whiskey.” Amos Blanchard’s words were clipped, a small shiver of disgust moving across his tight lips. He didn’t bother to look at the woman. “And I didn’t come to make trouble, Miss Amelia. Just need to talk to Emma. She around?”

“You’re not getting anywhere near my daughter, Amos. You had your chance. You blew every opportunity to work with us. Why . . .” It hurt to watch tears redden Meemaw’s eyes, but she held on tight, giving Amos back hard stare for hard stare.

I figured it was up to me to get my uncle out of there. Justin, my brother, wasn’t around to take the man on. My mother wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, see him again. Everything that could be offered to Amos had been offered the day of the funeral. He’d called all of us thieves—stealing his ranch from him. He called my mother a crook, a woman after the family’s money—as if she hadn’t been a big part in making Rancho en el Colorado what it was today. The man had cursed and roared drunkenly at everyone until Justin, smaller but feistier and younger than Amos, hit him, knocking him to the floor.

That’s when somebody called Hunter Austen, my friend since we were kids. A deputy with the Riverville Police now, Hunter had been in and out of our house since the days when we fished the Colorado together and stole more than a few handfuls of pecans on our way through the groves. I was never happier than when my childhood friend came walking in that night, all neat and official in his blue Riverville Police uniform. He recognized immediately what was going on and got Amos out of our house and off to the city jail on a “drunk and disorderly.”

The next thing we all knew, back two years now, Amos was gone from town. I’d never been sure that his removing himself from our lives was his own doing or something Hunter planted in his head, to get him away for good. But gone he was and peace settled over the ranch.

I cleared my throat, ready to take him dead-on. “My mother wants nothing to do with you, Uncle Amos.”

“I got something I need to talk to her about. It’s important. Want to give her this . . .” He stuck a hand inside the old checked shirt he wore and fumbled around, as if he was searching for something in an inner pocket.

“Oh no. Not again,” I said and put a hand up to stop whatever he was doing. I stepped out in front of Miss Amelia. “If that’s a subpoena, or some other thing you’ve got planned for us, keep it to yourself. You hurt my daddy bad enough when he was alive. I’m not letting you bother my mama now. Just go away and leave us alone.”

“Better listen, Amos,” Miss Amelia chimed in behind me. “Me and Lindy will see to it you don’t cause us any more trouble. Not one more time . . .”

The doorbell chimed again. Somebody coming in from Carya Street. I choked on things I wanted to say. Bad time for a customer wanting a pie and stepping into this Blanchard drama.

The man who strode in stood at the center of the middle aisle and looked down the row toward where the four of us waited, nobody talking.

I squinted against the bright sun streaming in the front windows. A tall, thin man. Blue uniform. I took a deep breath as he removed a stiff blue hat from his buzz-cut head, adjusted his eyes to the cool dark of the store, and walked toward where we stood. Miss Amelia gave a short surprised “Well, well.” Ethelred Tomroy snorted in disappointment. But Uncle Amos said nothing at the sight of my old friend, Deputy Hunter Austen, who seemed to have a habit of riding to the rescue of the Blanchard family.

There wasn’t a noise in the room. Not a creak from the
floor; no laughter from Miss Amelia’s helpers out in the kitchen. Nobody moved a muscle in the Nut House as Hunter Austen made his way up that aisle of ribbon-wrapped pecan gift boxes toward where we stood at the front counter.

“What do you know,” Ethelred said, a satisfied smirk widening her narrow face. “Deputy Austen. Talk about the cavalry . . .”

Hunter Austen dipped his head toward Miss Tomroy. “Ma’am,” he said, no real greeting in that voice.

I watched as Amos’s body stiffened. He reared back and tightened his eyes half-shut before muttering, “Afternoon, Deputy.”

Hunter ignored Amos and greeted Miss Amelia, who looked down at her ruined pie, bit at her lip, then squinted hard at Hunter as if she weren’t sure she knew him.

“Lindy.” He nodded formally though we’d been friends—and maybe even more than friends—since preschool. Hunter pulled back his broad shoulders, looked from one of us to the other, assessed the situation, and seemed ready for whatever was going on here.

“Saw you walking in, Amos,” Hunter turned dead-on to Amos and said in a low, very calm voice. “Thought maybe I’d see what you were up to. We don’t want to be bringing this fine family any more trouble now, do we?”

Amos threw his big hands in the air. “No worry on my account.” He shook his head hard, making his black hat wobble. “Just here to get a message to my sister-in-law . . .”

“Really?” Hunter’s eyebrows soared skyward. “Didn’t you get to say everything you wanted to that last time?”

“Nothing like that . . .”

“You got a subpoena or something under there?” He nodded to where Amos pulled his hand from inside his shirt.

“Nothing to do with you, Deputy. At least not yet. Just something—”

“You been drinking, Amos?”

Amos made a face. “Not a drop. Not in almost two years.”

Hunter took a step closer to the man and looked him straight in the eye. “Heard you were back in town. Working for Harry Conway, is that right? Conway must be a patient man. Lucky anybody from around here gave you a job at all. Maybe you’d better get back on out there to Rancho Conway and leave these good people alone.”

Amos shook his head, thought awhile, then shook it harder. “Can’t do that.”

“Can’t make a man do what he doesn’t want to do, Deputy.” Miss Tomroy stuck in her two cents.

Hunter did one of his well-known slow turns toward the elderly woman. He fixed those deep blue eyes of his on her and didn’t say a word. Miss Tomroy, face reddening, reared back and sniffed once and then twice.

“Could I ask you to do me a big favor, Miss Tomroy?” Hunter asked politely. “This is official business here, and I don’t want trouble. Be better if you left—if you don’t mind.”

Ethelred’s mouth snapped shut. Every loose gray hair on her head quivered with indignation. “Why, Hunter Austen. You’re not talking to a stranger here, you know.”

“Ethelred, you’d better go,” Miss Amelia jumped in.

“But . . . but . . . what about my pie?”

“Come back later. I promise I’ll save one for you.”

I watched as Ethelred thought a minute. “One of those special pies?”

“No such thing.” Miss Amelia, beside me, drew herself up to her full five feet nine inches and folded her arms in front of her.

“I’m asking you to leave, Miss Tomroy,” Hunter said again.

With a final “humph,” Miss Tomroy stomped to the front door and was gone, with even the tinkle of the doorbell sounding aggrieved behind her.

Hunter turned back to Amos. “Now it’s your turn, Amos. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d say you’d better stay at least a couple hundred yards from every one of the Blanchards or I’ll take it personally that you’re trying to bother them again. You’ve had plenty of chances here in town. Sheriff Higsby, like your brother, Jake, and your daddy, too, been lenient with you, let you get away with too much over the years. Not going to happen again.”

“I got no problem with you,” Amos muttered toward his dusty boot tops as he began to make his way sidewise past Hunter, moving toward the door.

Walking backward, eyes on the three of us at the counter, he stopped. “I need to warn Emma about . . . something. Could be trouble . . .”

“Keep going,” Hunter ordered, waving a shooing hand at him.

Amos stumbled back, off balance, and hit a counter filled with gift baskets holding everything from pecan cookies to pecan bars and pecan turtles. He made a grab for one of the falling baskets, his hand shaking. He took his time fumbling the basket back into place on the counter, straightening the others, then kneeling to retrieve one that fell. Uncle Amos stood slowly, looked up at Miss Amelia and me one last, long time, turned, and was gone.

Once the man was out the door, a final blast of heat striking the three of us at the front counter, there were a few minutes of total silence.

Hunter took a breath, bowed his head, and narrowed his eyes at us. “Hope I wasn’t out of line here,” he said. “Saw him and thought about last time—at your house—and didn’t want him causing you more trouble.”

“You kidding?” I demanded. “Anytime you want to play Canadian Mountie and come riding to the rescue, you go right ahead and be my guest, Hunter Austen.”

“I didn’t even know he was back in town.” Miss Amelia leaned forward against the counter, to steady herself. “Oh, what will Justin do when he hears? That boy’s got so many hard feelings toward Amos. I’m just worried . . .” She looked out at Hunter. “You know Justin thinks Amos had something to do with Jake’s death? Nothing he could prove, mind you. Just . . . a feeling.”

“An accident, Miss Amelia.” Hunter shook his head. “Happens around here. Mower turned over on him out there in the grove. Nothing suspicious the sheriff could find.”

Miss Amelia shook her head impatiently. “You tell that to Justin, Hunter. He won’t listen to anybody. With Amos gone, things were calming down. You know, with it being April and the trees out-budding—why, Justin doesn’t have time to get his mind filled with all that old misery. There’s the spraying, drainage ditches to clear, brush to cut . . . one of the busiest times of the year for all of us. Now we got this drought they’re predicting. And here comes Amos. I can’t imagine what Justin will say when he hears—”

“He knows, Meemaw,” I broke in. “We all knew Amos was over at Conway’s.”

“Well, well, and y’all kept me in the dark . . .” Miss Amelia turned her tired, but still pretty, face toward me and I immediately felt guilty. It wasn’t that any of us wanted to keep her in the dark; it just turned into one of those things we didn’t want to talk about.

Amelia made an unhappy face at me. “So tell me, young lady, how’d this keeping secrets from me work out for you?” I knew that stiff voice and figured we’d all be in for a lecture at some time in the future. “Emma know, too?” she added.

“We had to warn her.”

“My poor child. Never a word to me, her own mother. Carrying this all alone . . .” Grandma’s eyes filled with tears. “And Martin Sanchez. What’ll he do? Got our whole place to run with Justin, and here comes Amos again. You know how Martin hates the man . . .”

“Why don’t I take you home, Meemaw,” I offered, to quiet her. Seeing her this upset broke my heart. “That’s enough for one day. It’s almost closing time. I’ll get Treenie out here to take over for the last hour.”

“Gotta clean up my mess first.” Miss Amelia pointed to the stiffening pie on the floor.

“Treenie will do it.”

“I’ve got cookie batters all set to go,” she argued.

“They’ll keep.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. Busiest day in the week.”

“Miss Amelia,” Hunter interrupted. “Lindy’s right. You’ve had a shock and you need to get outta here. Go home, put your feet up. Rest.”

“Rest . . . phooey,” she mumbled back at Hunter. “Never had to rest my whole life long. Lost my husband early. Helped raise Emma’s kids. Never needed to rest. I just hope people aren’t thinking. . . Well, like Ethelred said . . .” She began to fiddle with her apron strings.

Her eyes were shiny with tears when she looked up at us. “You know, what Ethelred said, about me being too old? That’s all wrong.”

She sniffed hard. “I’ll go speak to Treenie. Give me a minute . . .” She stopped when I put up a finger in the air.

“How about a pie for Hunter,” I suggested. “He’s saved our behinds one more time, you know.”

She made a face at the thought of being saved from Amos Blanchard. “Well, certainly, I’ll box one up . . .”

“A ‘special’ pie?”

Meemaw’s face turned bright red. “Now, Lindy. I’m not sure the deputy here would appreciate—”

“Oh, he would,” I countered. “Believe me, I know Hunter. He’d enjoy the heck out of that pie, and say nothing to anybody else.”

“You mean, say nothing to Sheriff Higsby?” Miss Amelia asked, giving me a long look. Deep meaning dripped from her voice. “Or Miss Ethelred Tomroy . . .”

I smiled at her.

“Well, if you’re sure . . .” She looked hard at Hunter, who, to his credit, kept his face blank.

“Then . . . Of course, I’ll just get one ready and be right back. Gotta tell Treenie I’m leaving. She can handle the store and closing up about as good as I can.”

While Miss Amelia was in the kitchen, boxing up the pie for Hunter, I remembered what I’d wanted to talk to her about in the first place. That business up in my apartment. I wasn’t sure about it now. It wasn’t as if there was a big mess or anything. Just things that weren’t right. This wasn’t the time to bring it up, I decided. Not in front of Hunter. Not another thing to upset Miss Amelia. I hated dropping any more Blanchard misery on either of them right then.

I reached out to take one of Hunter’s wide hands in mine. I shook it a couple of times before letting go, teasing him in a way only old friends can tease. “I don’t know what we would do without you, Hunter. I really appreciate you coming in like that.”

Hunter couldn’t help looking pleased with himself. I liked that about him, that he could color up like a kid. “Anytime he comes back around here, or out to the ranch . . . well . . . you call . . .”

“What do you imagine he wanted to give Mama?” I asked, remembering Amos’s gesture toward his shirt pocket.

“Could’ve been nothing. Or a subpoena, like I said. Wouldn’t put it past him. Still trying to get the ranch away from Emma. As if his daddy didn’t give him a million chances to prove himself. And your daddy, too. Always good to Amos.”

Miss Amelia was back, a white pie box in her hands, green apron gone. Her boxy white purse dangled from her arm.

I smiled at Hunter as he accepted the precious pie. “Call me later,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

Hunter’s cheeks reddened up again. “Later,” he agreed.

Out on Carya Street, we all said good-bye again, Hunter bending to kiss Miss Amelia’s cheek. I watched that strong back in his stiffly pressed uniform shirt as he walked away. I felt my own cheeks heating up. Just a little bit.

He was still only the kid who gave me a bow and arrow for my tenth birthday, when I turned around and shot him in the behind with the arrow, paying him back for the time he threw me in the Colorado with my clothes on.

A good, old friend.