Nuts and Buried (16 page)

After I met Hunter and Chantal at the sheriff's office the next morning and argued back and forth about what the man looked like, we came up with a pretty good drawing of him. Looked right to me. Chantal wasn't sure, changing her mind about the thick eyebrows, making them thinner at the last minute, then arguing with me about whether his hair was parted on the right side, the way I thought. She thought the left. Despite all of that, the woman artist came up with a good likeness and I was out of there, back to the ranch and checking in with Martin about the trees. There'd been a problem with one of the irrigation lines in the greenhouse, but he'd called the company and a man was on his way to fix it. I walked through my test grove, stopping to look at the three-year-old trees I was banking my reputation on—the three GraKing cultivars grafted with the Elliott I'd been able to fortify with a different genome. I would write my article based on these three trees, looking just a little droopy that morning, which
made my heart leap up and down a little—or whatever happens in your chest when you get scared that you've inflated your importance as a scientist and are about to be proven wrong.

At my desk I started looking for the book on the GraKing/Elliott experiments. I would base everything on what I did, how I did it, compare this set to other cultivars I've used, the timetable, watering schedule or lack of watering, even about that first scare—that they were dying. Then their resurrection, their growth rate—all preliminary to the first budding, and to an eventual crop of pecans. But that would be another paper. I hoped so hard that last paper would be the one about the complete success: drought resistant, scab resistant, a perfect crop every two years, and a time of prosperity for the pecan farmers. Not like the bad years my daddy and his daddy went through. When spring buds withered from lack of rain or when the nuts inside the shells turned black from fungus. Those were years when money was tight. When families lost their farms. When neighbors sold the groves for what they could get and moved away. All of that made a big impact on me. Going to see a friend, Lucy Kordes, for the last time. The tears running down her mother's face. Her daddy's grim smile and hard handshake before they climbed in their truck and drove away. And my own daddy, the year of a terrible drought, when it hadn't rained more than a half-inch all spring. I stood out in the groves with him and watched the sad, drooping trees with no blossoms.

I'd vowed then to do something about it if I could. I was little, didn't know what on earth I was talking about—until I got to Texas A&M and found that maybe there was something I could do. Found that men and women scientists were working on all kinds of projects to make farming easier. I felt, that first year, like I'd found a brave new world, right
there in Texas. I wanted in. I changed my major to bioengineering and genome research and never looked back.

I usually kept my record book in the files. Sometimes it was out on my desk—if I was working on it. I checked both places. Nothing. Martin never touched my files, or even looked at my record books on the various experiments. Couldn't have been him, taking it out of the greenhouse. Me again. Maybe back in my apartment. I sometimes worked from there when I didn't get enough done during the day. One thing I half agreed with Mama about: That I had no business moving into town when my work was at the ranch. What Mama didn't understand was that though I came back home instead of taking a job in a lab somewhere, I still wanted at least the feeling of independence. I would be thirty in a few years. Something about living at home and working at home smacked of being an old maid and that wasn't something I wanted to have to think about.

Before I headed back into town to get the book, I went into the locked test grove to check on my latest successes. The little trees, barely more than a few feet tall, were just as I'd left them. Still doing well. I thought I could see new budding along the stems. I checked the water gauge. Martin had added a little more water. Another month and we'd reduce the amount again, see when and if they could withstand drought and still thrive.

I felt at peace for the first time in days, listening to the late morning wind in the trees beyond my wooden fence. I felt the dry heat on my face. Everything was as it always was and always would be. Not like that outer world where terrible things like murder and anger kept coming at me. Out there, people hated one another and worried about squirreling away as much money as they could, and even killed for money. Out there people turned on old friends and new relatives because they got funny ideas in their heads.
Fear and jealousy, most of it. Then I thought about Sally again. A funny woman. The best kind of new friend. Loved to hear about my work. She was thinking about using some of the Wheatley money to fund projects that would make the lives of pecan farmers better. She talked to Eugene and he was all for it, starting with scholarships for kids. I felt the hole in my life all over again. Grieved for the kind of friends we could have been. Maybe that was why her sister, Diana, felt someone shot her deliberately, wanted her dead. Just because she missed her so much.

That face in the sketch came back at me. Why was he hanging around town? Maybe a mental case, not stalking me at all. Not really dangerous. Be creepy, to know someone was out there taking a strange interest in me the way Meemaw and Hunter thought.

That's where I was in my head when my cell rang.

I checked the ID. Hunter.

Well, that was a good start, I told myself, and felt pretty happy at that moment. Maybe we'd go somewhere for dinner—not The Squirrel. Maybe we'd talk for hours—the way we used to. I made my voice bright when I answered.

“Lindy?” he asked as if he hadn't heard my voice since he was a little squirt, just a little bigger than I was.

“You know it's me, Hunter. What's going on?”

“We found him.”

“Who? You mean the dark man?”

“Yup. Found him this morning. Got a call from George Watson, out at the KB Ranch.”

“He was staying with George? I don't get it.”

“No, Lindy. George found the man in a front ditch. Shot through the back. Very dead, Lindy. Guess you don't have to be afraid anymore.”

I was speechless.

“Lindy? You there?” Hunter sounded as if he was in a
hurry, which wasn't going to allow time for me to grasp another death.

“You're the only one who really knows what he looked like. Outside of Chantal. Think you could meet me at the ME's office? Identify him for us?”

I agreed, even though I was in a kind of shock. Another murder. If Diana Richards was right, this was number three.

There was nothing pleasant about looking at a dead man closer than I liked looking at dead men. At least the dark man's face was intact, which was better than what my imagination had been flashing at me.

I did turn a funny shade of gray, I guess. At least that's what Hunter said when he led me out of the morgue.

“You need to sit down?” he asked.

We went to The Squirrel to have a cup of Cecil's coffee, which tasted like swamp mud warmed up a few times—with a few grounds on the bottom thrown in for good measure—great for setting people back on their feet.

Cecil Darling, the little man of little sympathies, made the snide remark that at least I ordered something, after coming in and walking out the last few times. “As if my wonderful little restaurant weren't good enough for a Blanchard.” Of course there was a sniff to go with that, but Hunter gave him a look that sent him running to annoy other customers.

“The sheriff gave the story to the newspaper this morning, along with that sketch you came up with. It's going on TV at noon. We're hoping to get some calls. Somebody in town has to know him. He had to stay somewhere close, since he was hanging around. I've got the feeling finding out who he was will push this thing along.”

He stopped to look over the menu, since it was close to noon. “Might as well have dinner here as anywhere, I guess,” Hunter said. He put a hand up to call Cecil, who was much more congenial now that he'd seen us both taking in his menu.

“What's kedgeree?” Hunter asked, pointing to one of the daily handwritten items.

“A fine fish dish, made with fish and cream and rice and all of those wonderful things.” Cecil was ecstatic as he shaped the dish in the air above our heads.

We ordered it. A kind of apology for upsetting him. Cecil seemed to accept the apology, even breaking into a rare smile. When the plates came, filled with bits of fish and hard-boiled egg and rice and cream, it was a surprise. We both liked it and told Cecil, then called over to people we both knew to try the kedgeree. After the strange but good dish, we settled down with sweet tea and crumpets as Hunter checked his watch.

“Be on TV by now. Hope we hear something soon.”

Full and happy to be back with the man who made me more comfortable than anybody in the world, except Meemaw, I figured it was time to start figuring things out. So much going on.

“You know that lets the dark man out as Eugene's killer,” I said. “Or we've got two of them.”

“Could be. Can't cut out anything, Lindy. But if this Curly turns out to be Eugene's murderer, then I'm taking another look at Billy for killing Curly.”

“Why? I like Billy. Look what he did yesterday, at the
memorial. He stood up to that awful mother of theirs. Carried her out as if she were a stray cat. Seemed like a hero to me, not a murderer.”

“Think about it. Billy really loves his sister, standing up to that mother of his the way he did. If he found out who killed Eugene—who made Jeannie so sad, and a widow—don't you think he'd go after the man? Sure wouldn't come to me.” He took the measure of what I was thinking, looking closely at my face.

“Or if we go back to ‘who benefits,'” he went on, “like your grandmother keeps saying, all I see is Jeannie and her family. Elizabeth's not losing anything with her brother dead. In fact, from what I hear, she will get everything and Jeannie gets nothing. Some kind of family trust.”

“Okay. So, you're saying Billy killed Curly. And you're saying Billy killed Eugene, too, for the money.”

He took a couple of nervous swallows. “I'm thinking. Maybe Curly knew about Billy. Saw something there at the party and was blackmailing him, or his mother, or Jeannie. That's why he was hangin' around town.”

“But Jeannie might not get anything now. So what did they gain?”

He shrugged. “Maybe they didn't realize there wasn't a new will in her favor.”

I came back at him. “I don't think Jeannie had any part in this. I just won't believe it.”

He shrugged again. “Believe what you want to. I'm going where likelihood takes me.”

Cecil came to clear our dishes and offer dessert, which we turned down. We waited for him to move on before talking.

“Did you get a bullet from Curly's body?”

“We did. They're comparing it to the bullet that killed Eugene right now. If they come from the same gun, we've got the same killer.” He blew his lips out in exasperation. “Billy.”

“But what about Sally? Could her death have any connection to Eugene's?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No idea.”

“Seems like too much coincidence, the two of them shot like that.”

When his phone rang, he slid from the booth to take it outside where others couldn't hear. It was almost a relief to have him gone a minute. My head was aching from trying to sort through things. All I could think of was Meemaw. She had a way of laying facts straight and making a single picture out of a mess of uneven sticks.

“Things are moving,” he said, excited, when he came back into the restaurant and slid in across from me. “Got two calls. I'll tell you outside.”

“You want to go share all of this with Meemaw? She has this way of—”

Hunter smiled and reached out to take my hand. “Don't have to tell me. She's been straightening things out for me since I was a kid trying to find where I was going to fit in life.”

“And she told you to be a cop?” I know I looked incredulous.

He shook his head. “Nope. She told me to be a rancher. But I don't like cows. There was something else she told me: ‘Don't listen to anybody
.
Be your own man.' That's what did it. That's one smart woman.”

Next stop was the Nut House.