Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything (29 page)

Ten bent to give him a reassuring stroke. “Where's Miss Ruffles? You could bring her out here to show her some cattle.”

I had been waiting for him to recognize the dog in my company wasn't Miss Ruffles. I wasn't ready to explain my errand yet, though, so I said, “I don't see any cattle. Except the Brahman bull out front. Hellrazor, huh? Is he yours?”

Still smoothing Fred's coat, Ten shot a grin up at me. “He's my nemesis—the bull that near killed me. When he got to be too old for rodeoing, I bought him, gave him a place of honor in the front pasture. This fall, I'm going to use him for some breeding.”

“Do you raise cattle?

“I keep a few to work the horses. They're out in a field.” He waved vaguely past the corrals. “I thought I might try raising some rodeo stock, too. Bulls for riding, steers for roping, that kind of thing. I can't give up on rodeo yet.” He gave Fred one last pat and stood tall again. More firmly than before, he said, “Where's Miss Ruffles?”

There wasn't any use putting it off any longer.

“That's why I'm here.”

I tried to muster my courage, but my hands were suddenly shaking. Now that the time had come to tell the truth, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

Concerned, Ten reached out and pulled me by my elbow into the welcome shade of the tree. On the other side of the fence, the horses dozed, tails occasionally twitching. The air was blessedly cooler there, but it didn't make me feel any better.

“What's going on?” Ten asked. “You look … What's wrong?”

“I should have brought the notes so you could read them yourself.”

“What notes?”

“I didn't tell you Sunday morning because the cop was there, and then your … Poppy, that is, was … Look, this is bad news, so I'm just going to blurt it out. Miss Ruffles has been kidnapped. On Saturday after the football game, after you came to Honeybelle's house, I went outside to get her and found a note—”

“Wait. What? Kidnapped?”

“Dognapped. Whatever you want to call it. It happened late Saturday afternoon. You came over, remember? To check on us. But Miss Ruffles must have—”

His voice cut sharper still. “You mean she's actually been taken? By who?”

“I don't know who. The note said—”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

“Who would kidnap a dog? Let alone Miss Ruffles? Everybody in town knows Miss Ruffles.”

“I don't know who did it exactly. The notes weren't signed. For all I know, it could have been you. You were the last visitor at the house that afternoon, but—”

“Why would I take Miss Ruffles? Why would anybody?” He shook his head as if couldn't get his brain to register what I was telling him. “This doesn't make any sense. What did the note say?”

“The first one said they had taken Miss Ruffles, and she would be safe until Monday when they'd communicate their demands.”

“What kind of demands? How do you know she's safe?”

“I don't. They sent me some of her hair in the envelope. They want ten thousand dollars.”

“Do you think she's still alive?”

I couldn't answer the question. Couldn't find my voice. Something big and horrible welled up inside me, and my vision blurred.

He put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. He calmed himself down, too. “Okay, sorry. Take it easy.”

It took almost a minute for me to pull myself together. Finally I said, “She's got to be alive.”

“I'm sorry I said that. Don't be upset. They can't exchange her for money if she's dead.”

I let out a hiccough that maybe sounded like a sob, and I clapped one hand over my mouth to stop more from coming out. He squeezed me again, and I steadied myself. I said, “I've got to figure a way for them to show me she's alive. A picture with the newspaper or something. That's what they do on TV.”

“We'll figure it out.” His voice was calm and steady again. “Don't worry about that now. Can you tell me everything? Start at the beginning.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay.”

As if suddenly aware of what he was doing, he took his hand away from my neck. More coherently than I thought possible, I told Ten the whole story from the moment I realized Miss Ruffles was gone—hoping like crazy she had been kidnapped as a college prank after the football game, looking for her with Gracie, being followed home by the police Saturday night. I left out only a few details, like the one about Posie's car. I got as far as telling him about Monday morning when the mailman delivered the letter about meeting at the stockyard. At that, I stopped.

“Did you go to the stockyard last night?”

“Yes,” I said. “It didn't go well. A man rode up on an ATV and—”

“An ATV? Like a four-wheeler?”

“Yes. I didn't know him. He … he chased me, lassoed me, and knocked me down. He threatened me. But he didn't give Miss Ruffles back.”

Stone-voiced, Ten said, “He hurt you? Are you all right?”

Unconsciously, I touched the Band-Aid on my cheek. “I'm okay now. Mae Mae helped me. I was … it was scary, that's all.”

“Okay, back up.” Ten took a closer look at my Band-Aid and made a visible effort to control his temper. He asked, “Why didn't you tell Bubba that Miss Ruffles was missing when he went to Honeybelle's house on Sunday morning? If you had told the police then, you wouldn't have been knocked around by some stupid cowboy on a—”

“The first note told me not to contact the police,” I reminded him, “or they'd kill Miss Ruffles. I couldn't risk telling any policeman.”

“I'll do it,” Ten said. “I'll talk to him now, get the cops working on this while—”

“Hang on. There's more,” I said. “A lot more.”

He scanned my face and saw I hadn't gotten to the tough part yet. He waited.

I pulled myself together and said, “When the man on the ATV knocked me down, he told me to stop asking questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I assumed he meant about Honeybelle. About her death. I've been … Okay, I might have asked around town about the circumstances of her death.”

The breeze whispered between us, and Fred sat down in the dust.

“Ten,” I said, “I don't think Honeybelle died of a heart attack.”

Ten said nothing and didn't move, but he was very much alert and listening.

“I think something happened to her. Something terrible. And whoever did it took Miss Ruffles, too.”

Still Ten didn't speak. But he watched my face, listening to the tone of my voice as well as my words.

I said, “When Honeybelle died, her nurse drove her straight to Mr. Gamble, who declared her dead and cremated her body right away—in the blink of an eye, really. The family had a quick, private funeral, and that would have been it until the garden club decided they wanted to have a public memorial service. Honeybelle was gone so fast—it was crazy how fast all of it happened. But since then, I've remembered several strange things—things Honeybelle said before she died, about people and her money and her family. And things people said to me. In the crowd outside the church, someone made a remark—a crack, really, that some folks wanted to … to bump her off. It just all jumbled around in my head, so I started getting curious.”

“And?”

“For one thing, I wonder about Honeybelle's will. In it, she specified we should take care of Miss Ruffles for a year, and you said during that time all the people who hoped to get money or whatever from Honeybelle had to wait. If Miss Ruffles was out of the way, though, they'd have their money right away.”

“You mentioned this before. You think Miss Ruffles was taken because…?”

“Because everybody gets what they want if she's gone. I know you don't believe that. But I … I think somebody killed Honeybelle, then grabbed Miss Ruffles when they realized they wouldn't get their share of her money for a year.”

“Like who?”

“Like the university, for one thing. President Cornfelter was trying to get Honeybelle to pay for a new stadium.”

“Every college in Texas wants a new stadium.”

“But she didn't want to pay for this one. She only wanted to pay naming rights on the old one. Unless her will … What does her will say about funding the stadium?”

Automatically, he said, “I can't tell you what the will says.”

“Okay, don't tell me. But think about it for yourself. Does the possibility of a new stadium make a motive for murder?”

Grimly, Ten looked off into the scrub. At last, he said, “In Texas? A new football stadium makes a motive for just about anything.”

“Okay, then. Maybe lots of other people want their share now, too. Not just business people around town, but … well, Hut Junior for one.”

“Hold on.” Ten stared at me, incredulous. “You think Hut killed his own mother? Then kidnapped Miss Ruffles to get what's coming to him?”

“Makes sense, right?”

“No, it doesn't make sense. No sense at all. Hut's a nice guy. I've known him all my life. He loved his mother. He was broken up about her death.”

“He's also angry that he isn't going to run Hensley Oil and Gas.”

Ten didn't argue with me. He looked away again, though, and took off his hat and ran his hand across his short hair.

I said, “What doesn't make sense is how Honeybelle died. She couldn't have had a heart attack, but she might have been poisoned or … or medicated somehow. And afterward—you said yourself you couldn't get a death certificate. It's unusual not to find the death certificate, isn't it?”

“Yes, but maybe I don't know what I'm doing. I stopped at Gamble's again today, but his nephew didn't know where to find it either. Come to think of it, Honeybelle's will pays off the mortgage on his funeral home.” He caught himself. “You didn't hear that from me, got it?”

“Got it.”

Ten let out a sigh of exasperation. “This is all … I hate not knowing how everything works. If my dad was here—if he would at least answer his phone messages—things would be different.”

“He doesn't answer his phone?”

“They're in Greece. My mom booked a cruise, and they're spending a week on some island. I got a postcard from them,” he said with a twinge of bitterness, “but they don't answer any of my calls. And my grandfather is somewhere in Mexico where there aren't any phones.”

“Are you worried about them?”

“Worried? No. Exasperated? Yes. My parents do this every couple of years, take a trip, radio silence. They have a ball together.” Ten frowned for a while and said, “But Gramps—he doesn't usually go away at the same time Mom and Dad do. And none of them leave town during football season. They're all crazy Alamo football fans. I can't remember them ever missing a game.”

“They left you here to mind the store.”

“Yes,” he said uneasily.

“They must trust you.”

“That could be misplaced trust.”

“I'm not saying they were part of something nefarious—”

“Good,” he snapped.

“—but doesn't it seem strange that all these odd circumstances are happening around Honeybelle's sudden death?”

At our feet, Fred suddenly let out a woof. He scrambled upright and glared into the distance. Ten and I followed his stare and saw Hellrazor ambling across the front pasture. The bull stopped and sniffed the wind. Then he started plodding toward a bucket placed on the ground beside the trailer. As he walked, he bobbed his head like a tired plow horse.

Ten and I watched the bull approach, both of us silent and thinking until Ten said, “I put some corn in the bucket to lure him in. That's what he smells.”

Suddenly Fred took off like a rocket.

“Fred!”

“What's he…? That bull will stomp him into little pieces! Call him back!”

“Fred! Fred!”

We ran after him, but Fred bolted under the fence and raced toward the bull, barking with wild delight. I started to duck between the fence rails to chase him, but Ten grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back. “Don't! He might be old, but that bull will kill you.”

“Fred!” I cried.

Fred zoomed in a tight circle around the bull. Hellrazor stopped dead and jerked up his head as if amazed that any creature dared disrupt his afternoon stroll. As Fred went roaring around him a second time, the bull lowered his head and snorted. He dug threateningly at the dirt with his fore hoof. Fred was undaunted. He darted close and snapped at Hellrazor's hind leg. The bull let out a bellow and swung a kick at Fred, but missed. He spun laboriously around, but by the time he was ready to face the dog, Fred had already dashed around again and nipped the bull's other hind leg. Hellrazor finally gathered his energy and let out an enraged roar. With more speed than I thought possible, he charged at Fred. Except Fred wasn't there anymore. The dog ran around and around the bull until Hellrazor was dizzily flummoxed.

The bull planted his feet and let out another furious bawl as if demanding Fred stop and face him head-on. Fred barked a taunt back. Hellrazor finally blew a snort and began reluctantly moving in our direction. Not fast enough for Fred, though. Fred leaped and nipped at Hellrazor's heels until the bull picked up speed. He was soon trotting toward us with the inexorable momentum of a freight train.

“Fred! Stop that!”

My shout only seemed to strengthen Fred's determination to drive the bull toward us.

Ten cursed and pulled me back from the fence just in case Hellrazor decided to smash through it.

But as he chased Hellrazor toward us, Fred realized his mistake, and with renewed joy he herded the bull back out into the pasture. He romped, barking with delight while Hellrazor's mood went from rage through resentful to surrender and back again. But the bull kept moving, going exactly where Fred wanted him to go.