Nuts and Buried (2 page)

First to spot me when I entered the high-ceilinged ballroom lined with huge, gold-framed portraits of every last Wheatley, and—I swear—golden chandeliers shedding golden light on the illuminati of Riverville, was my younger sister, Bethany, in her wide red hoopskirt with very tight embroidered bodice. She looked like Scarlett O'Hara to me, but since Scarlett didn't live in Texas, I figured she was some other femme fatale or just all Texas femme fatales because she found the outfit before she thought out who she'd be.

Bethany threw her hands to her cheeks. Her mouth made a bright red oval. The fat blond curls on her head were puffed up larger than normal. She left the much older—bordering on ancient—man she was dancing with to come stand in front of me, wide-eyed, astonished, and unhappy.

“Who the devil you supposed to be, Lindy Blanchard?” she demanded in her best irate voice.

“Bunch of famous dead people,” I hissed back at her.
After all, I was older than she was, a lot smarter, and didn't like feeling dumb right there where other people could see.

“Are you out of your mind? You come to a wonderful party, with wonderful people, to celebrate their wedding—like that?”

“Second wedding. Sally was shot, remember? Remember Sally? I liked Sally.”

“I remember Sally. Loved her clothes. Sad—just a hunting trip over near Austen and then Sally gets a bullet to her head. But that's history now. 'Course Eugene's married again.”

I was finished with Bethany. I didn't need my sister's sibling stuff right then. “Hey, maybe you should go back to that dashing man you've got waiting impatiently there on the dance floor.” I nodded to where the old gentleman stood looking confused, as if Bethany had disappeared on him.

Bethany stuck her tongue out at me, put on a big smile, and clapped to the music as she hurried toward her very old and very oil-rich partner with many friends who might give parties in Bethany's event tent, or could have political cronies needing a space to hold rallies and such. You had to give it to Bethany, since taking over our entertainment business she was never off duty.

Next it was Meemaw who blindsided me. Lady Bird Johnson, I guessed. Dressed in a very neat denim outfit with a cowgirl hat tied under her chin. Personally I thought Meemaw did Mrs. Johnson proud.

“Chipita Rodriguez, right?” Meemaw, as usual, was way ahead of me. Nothing gets by this woman who can look at a man in ragged jeans and an old cowboy hat and figure he's a billionaire. Or look at a fancy cowboy in a ten-gallon hat, best boots ever, and whisper, “All hat. No cattle.” Or look into somebody's eyes and know right away if they were capable of murder.

“Thought that was who you'd be. Maybe not going to
impress any of the men here—as your mama hoped. Not with you looking like something pulled out of a moldy grave. But good for you, taking on somebody like Chipita.”

“Took the Texas legislature over a hundred years to claim she didn't get a fair trial,” I groused as loud as I dared, wanting people around us, staring at me, to get it. “That's famous enough for me.”

“Yeah, well, lot of men hung didn't get that much attention. But I'll tell you, Lindy, I had a friend back in Dallas who swore she saw Chipita's ghost riding the river bottoms over to San Patricio County. Hope you don't stir her ghost up around here.”

Meemaw looked well satisfied, passing on that small fact, and fixing me in her own way.

“Are you mad at me?” I leaned in close to ask because of all the people in the world I never wanted mad at me, Meemaw was at the top of my list. Along with Mama, I suppose, but there's always been something very special between my grandmother and me, like we could look at each other and know what we were thinking.

“Mad at you?” Her faded blue eyes went wide. She rocked back on the heels of her sensible shoes. “How could I be mad at you, Lindy? You got all that feistiness straight from me. Wish I still had some of it. But I've got you. I'm awful grateful for that.”

I hid my embarrassment at pushing Meemaw to that extreme edge of grandmotherly love by turning to the tall, dark man standing behind me, a tray of barbecued shrimp with lemons heaped into a bowl of ice on his tray. He lowered the tray to within my reach as his dark eyes went over my costume and his nose wrinkled with distaste. Funny that I didn't know the man. Weren't many strangers in Riverville. From the look of him—with his dark curly hair and judgmental eyes, I imagine he'd been brought from Dallas with
the Wheatleys. I'd say some old family retainer except he didn't look old and that insolent stare . . .

Whew. I grabbed a shrimp on a toothpick and turned my back to him.

I was looking around for a place to stash my toothpick when Mama came up fast and mad in her Laura Bush chinos and flowered blouse, short blond hair brushed up pretty and neat. She had one of her big, phony smiles meant for the people around us as she put her hands out and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me into a big hug, then whispering in my ear, “Just what are you supposed to be?”

“Why, Mama! I'm the only woman ever hanged in Texas.”

She leaned back—phony smile stuck in place. She tipped her head to the side and said, around all those white teeth, “Really? Unless you want to be the second one hanged, you'd better ditch that noose pretty fast and get over there and talk to your hosts. If they ask, tell 'em you're the ghost of a dead pecan tree. Don't care what you say—just get over there.”

She smiled again and hugged me and blew on past, leaving me like a battleship on a lake—with no place to hide.

I looked over to where Eugene Wheatley, a man I'd known since high school days, and his new wife, Jeannie, stood. He must've come as some old politician, in his straight black suit and high white collar. Jeannie, well, I didn't know for sure why, but she was wearing a lot of yellow.

The Chauncey twins stood with the Wheatleys. “The girls,” as everybody called Melody and Miranda, were over eighty and tough as nails. They ran their old family pecan ranch by themselves, shot a mess of rattlers just about every day, and were the first people there if a farmhouse burned down or somebody died or a child got sick. Good people, “the girls.”

Miranda, with her arthritic hands, could shoot the eyes
out of a snake at a hundred feet, pick him up, strip him of his rattles, open a screw jar, drop in the rattles, then pull that jar out whenever you saw her, proving how many snakes she got that year, and insisting you take a look at how small the rattles were. “Something up, I'll tell ya,” she'd say. “Bad year for the snakes.”

Every January, Miranda started out new with a little ceremony in the garden behind the Rushing to Calvary Independent Church, where the pastor would bless the jar and both women, then wish them good luck in the coming year.

Melody was into what she called “gentility.” She'd taken, as the girls aged, to upbraiding Miranda for her crude ways with people; the way the ranch house looked when folks came to visit; and for pulling that jar of rattles out of her pocket whenever she had a captive audience.

The girls had come as themselves, far as I could see. Boots that looked a hundred years old. Pants with patches low on the butt, washed-out cotton plaid shirts hanging oddly over their spindly shanks. Their ancient Stetson hats sat far down on their backs. Same outfits they wore every day of their lives except they'd evidently marked this occasion by a trip to Lena's Salon in town. They were a lot curlier, and a lot grayer, than usual, with their hair teased up like two elderly angels. Melody had spots of rouge smeared on her cheeks for the occasion. Miranda, old eyes squinting and looking around from under her bushy white eyebrows, seemed about as ready to bolt as I was.

I knew this pair was going to laugh when they saw me, and tell me I looked like ten miles of bad road or something they found equally funny.

Miranda was going on and on about cottontails and how she was shooting them at a great clip when Eugene looked up and waved, almost begging me to save him from another rabbit story.

Ethelred Tomroy, a cranky old friend of Meemaw's, who
spent most of every day over to the Nut House, was standing beside Melody. I was in no mood for her sniffing and screwing up her mouth and guessing I was dressed as old Texas dirt or something else she hoped was offensive enough.

Trouble was, I didn't have a choice. I joined the circle and nodded to everyone. I hugged Miranda and Melody and gave Ethelred one of Mama's phony smiles. The woman looked like she'd come as the original flour sack, in a down-to-the-floor sprigged dress with a scalloped hem. Had to be homemade. No self-respecting dressmaker would have turned out an outfit like that one.

When Eugene introduced me to his new wife, Jeannie, dressed in a very fluffy, very yellow ball gown, I walked up and hugged her hard, welcoming her to Riverville and saying how happy I was to meet her.

“I was just asking who Miz Wheatley was dressed as, in all that yellow.” Ethelred gave me a hard look and sniffed as she rocked back on her black oxfords.

Jeannie looked down at her yellow gown, did a half turn and back, then shrugged. “Just like yellow, I s'pose.” She smiled wide and looked happy.

I knew right away what Ethelred was going after: A new bride in something that yellow and obvious. Yellow roses wound through her yellow hair. Yellow gloves and yellow shoes.

Had to be the Yellow Rose of Texas, though why this new society wife would choose that particular famous Texan was beyond me. The Yellow Rose of Texas, Emily West, was a hero in the Texas War of Independence all right, but the problem was that she kept General Santa Anna busy in bed while Sam Houston attacked San Jacinto. Houston won the battle in eighteen minutes—which I guess said something about Santa Anna in bed and how the man could keep his focus when he was occupied.

Famous Texan, all right, but for a new bride?

Still, who was I (or Ethelred) to judge? Hey, she wasn't dressed in white, pretending to be something she wasn't. I kind of liked this Jeannie Wheatley more, thinking she had a great sense of humor, coming as her own kind of famous Texan.

Eugene looked relieved to get away from rabbits and dry arroyos. “Well, Lindy. Don't remember seeing you since you beat the devil out me that time in high school.”

“Gave you one black eye. You deserved it.”

“All I said was you were pretty.” He leaned back and laughed. “With most girls, that line got me a little better than beat up.”

Jeannie was frowning, then asking me which famous Texan I was supposed to be.

“Looks like somebody got run over out in the road, you ask me.” Miranda leaned back, narrowed her eyes and wiggled her eyebrows.

“Watch yer mouth, Miranda,” Melody chimed in. “I think Lindy looks like some poor soul from the old days. I'm guessing Sully Browne. Seen her headstone out in the cemetery. That right, Lindy?”

I didn't get to answer before the two women set to arguing, in low voices, over who I was. I heard the words “death warmed over” and turned back to Eugene, asking him how he'd been doing since he moved away from Riverville. I felt like asking why he'd come back now but didn't, thinking it wouldn't come out sounding friendly.

“I'm glad you came to the party. Want everybody here in Riverville to get to know my bride,” Eugene said and hugged the yellow lady to him. “We're thinking of settling right here, in this house. 'Course, I need to work out everything in Dallas. Still got my office and business. But Jeannie likes it here and she doesn't like Dallas much. Too big.” He smiled down at his bride. He'd grown from the gawky, gangling kid I knew in high school into a tall, skinny man. I'd lost tract of Eugene after his father sent him off to a private
school in Houston. He wasn't a bad guy. A little too much daddy-money, but how could he help it, with all those wells flowing all over Texas?

I turned to Jeannie. “Are you really the Yellow Rose of Texas?” I asked by way of making conversation. Behind me came a gasp from Ethelred, who was more into dropping hints and slurs than taking anything on directly.

“You like it?” She twirled again. “Elizabeth thought . . .”

I caught on fast that this wasn't a joke. Probably ignorance. My estimation of Jeannie Wheatley dropped a couple of notches. Or maybe it was just Elizabeth's meanness that got me.

“You're the one working on all those new trees?” Jeannie started right in with the information, whoever prepped her for the party, had put in her head. “What a great thing to be doing. Hope I can come over someday and see your greenhouse. I'd love to hear how you do all that experimenting.” She kept smiling. Her round blue eyes smiled, too. I began to warm to our new resident.

Eugene excused himself from the circle of women pretty quick. “Promised the men I'd put out some of my gun collection. Gotta set things up in the gun room.” He smiled over at Jeannie in that way men smile at new wives. A way that made me uncomfortable and not wanting to be in the middle of something between them that should be kept secret.