by Teresa Trent
“Betsy? Ruby, why didn’t you tell me Betsy was here. What have I missed? Did her daddy find Wade Atwood’s killer yet?”
Ruby turned around. “The case has not been solved, and wife number three is moving in with wife number two. Shut that switch off behind you, sugar. I’ll be there in just a minute. I’ve just about got Betsy back to beautiful here.” She turned back to me. “You’re looking so good you might want to take another picture for the newspaper. I wouldn’t mind if you put that the haircut was courtesy of Ruby Green at the Best Little Hair House in Texas on the bottom of it.”
“Does that mean I’m getting this haircut for free?”
“Now I didn’t say that, darlin’. Don’t be going crazy on me.”
The sensor on the door went off at the Hair House. Ruby had hers reconfigured to sing a couple of bars from Deep in the Heart of Texas. We all looked up at the familiar tune to see Enid Sanford coming in with a brown wicker basket filled to the top with fresh green beans.
“Hello, ladies. I have so many green beans growing in my yard right now, that I brought some for all of you,” she announced to the room. She put the basket in the middle of the round magazine table. When her eyes met Ruby’s, she froze as she realized I was in the room as well.
“Well, now. You just let anybody in here to get their hair cut, don’t you Ruby?”
“This is a surprise, Enid. I don’t have you on the appointment calendar.”
“Nor do you need to have me. I think my hair is looking great right now. So great that it will look wonderful when they take my picture at the Pecan Bayou Gazette as the winner of the gardening contest. I mean, look at my yield. Who has beans like this so early in the year.”
The supermarket? I thought. Could she have bought the beans to fool us? The nerve of this woman. I ground my teeth and tried not to make eye contact. Finally, I couldn’t stand it, and my mouth fired off before my brain.
“It’s easy to win when you cheat.”
Enid turned on a dime, her evil serpent-like eyes boring into me. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ruby took the protective covering off me and started brushing the back of my neck and shoulders. “You’re finished, Betsy.”
I reached down for my purse to pay her when Ruby put a hand on my shoulder. “No. No. This one’s free today. I changed my mind. Be sure and give me credit in the newspaper.” She winked at me. She would never openly go after Enid in front of a shop full of customers, but in her quiet way, she showed support for me. Ruby could always spot a cheater.
CHAPTER 23
After getting my hair cut for free, I decided to run over to the Gazette and have a quick discussion with Nick. If Susie was setting herself up for another fall, I felt it was my obligation to prepare her for it.
“What brings you here today?” Rocky said as I came through the swinging door. “You’re not here to tell me you’re quitting, are you? I know the gardening contest was a little lame and that you got the short end of the stick, but the Happy Hinter has become an important part of our readers’ daily digest of news.”
I hadn’t even thought about quitting the newspaper. I was unhappy with my ousting in the contest, but I never felt it was Rocky’s fault. “I’m not here to quit, but I do want to talk to you about the so-called rules of the contest.”
“And here it comes.”
“Come on, Rocky. I was thrown out of the contest because somebody stomped on my tomato plants.”
“So you say. I’m surprised I have to remind you, but you do have a two-year-old living in your house. How do you know she didn’t get out there and trample your plants?”
“During the night? Seriously, Rocky.”
“And how do you know that the damage happened during the night? It could have happened before your little angel went to bed.”
“Please, Rocky. Your creative mind is getting the best of you. I saw the tomato plants the night before, and they were trampled the next morning. The brutal attack on my tomatoes happened in that twelve-hour period. Coco wasn’t outside during that time. We don’t let her wander around by herself at night.”
Rocky came over and put his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly way as if trying to console a sore loser. I knew he was trying to be kind, but it felt a little patronizing.
“Listen here, Betsy, you admitted to us right up front that you were not a gardener. Your experience in this contest has been a wonderful boon to would-be and wannabe gardeners everywhere. Losing is a valuable experience in life. It teaches you something. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I’ll be sure to stitch it up in a sampler and hang it over my toilet.”
“Again, we here at the Gazette are extremely sorry for what has happened, but look at the bright side. You won’t have to clean your house once a week for the judging.”
His sentiment was supposed to comfort me, but once again the word patronizing came into my head with Rocky’s smiling face stamped all over it.
Nick came in from the back room, dusting off his hands. “Betsy, to what do we owe this pleasure?”
“I’m here to knock around your dad.”
“Feel free. I might take a few rounds myself.”
“As long as I’m here, there is a little something I need to discuss with you.”
Rocky looked relieved I was finished with him and returned to his desk and quickly opened up a newspaper, letting it form a thin barrier between us.
“Did you know that Susie is back in town?”
Nick’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
His answer was part happiness and part caution.
“Yes, really. She showed up at my door wanting to move back in. Seems she can’t get along with her parents now that she’s lived out on her own.”
“Okay,” he said as he waited for me to go on.
“She said some things to me that I think you ought to know. Susie told me that she was very taken by you, and now she could see more of you because she’s living in the same town.”
“Uh oh,” Rocky said from behind his newspaper. “Looks like you’ve got a live one there, boy.”
Nick folded an arm across his chest and put his hand under his chin as he took in what I was saying. “There was no denying that we had an attraction between us, and I’ll be the first to admit that I got caught up in the baby delivery and all that, but I didn’t expect her to move here. Is she staying with you?”
“No. She’s going to be staying with Daisy.”
Nick nodded. “Okay.”
“So, you’re all right with this?”
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me just a little uncomfortable, but I can handle it.”
“Attaboy, Nick!” Rocky said, never lowering his paper.
“Oh, and Rocky? No matter what your garden contest rules state, I will find a way to reverse the judge’s decision. If anybody should be disqualified, it should be Enid Sanford, and you can quote me on that.”
“Losing is a life lesson. Don’t forget that when you go to choose the thread for the sampler.”
Sometimes Rocky Whitson could make my blood boil.
I was still angry when I arrived home. I couldn’t believe that Rocky, who cooked up this contest in his head, couldn’t change the rules for me, especially with me being the victim of sabotage. I was all for playing by the rules, except for when they were rigged against me. I was still smoldering when I picked up Coco at Chickadee’s Learning Center. Miss Aileen returned the favor of my mood, and she made it known as I packed Coco’s lunch bag into her backpack.
“I do hope you know that your child bringing a piece of chocolate cake in her lunch will never do. Filling a little one up with sugar and then asking her to take a nap makes it next to impossible for me and my teachers. The next time you pack your daughter’s lunch, I want you to envision how her little body will react to the toxins you are choosing to throw in willy-nilly.”
Toxins? She had a lot of nerve. Aunt Maggie’s chocolate cake was not a toxin but
closer to manna from heaven. I had included a very small piece in Coco’s lunch. It was about the size of half of a brownie. There was more sugar in a snack size bag of fruit snacks.
I grabbed Coco and hustled her out the door before I said anything I would regret later. All I could do was hope that our name was rising on the waiting lists at the two other childcare centers in Pecan Bayou.
When I entered the house, Coco went running in front of me as if being released in the wild, and Tyler’s voice went up from the living room.
“Hey, Betsy. We’re home already. Didn’t want to scare you. Dad had to work late, so we got a ride home with T.J.”
T.J. Ledbetter was not my favorite person. The thought of him behind the wheel with my sons in the same car was a frightening scenario. The boys sat holding video game controllers, their eyes never leaving the screen while flashes of white rivets of gunfire ricocheted around a World War II setting complete with bombed-out buildings.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.
“T.J. was right there, and he didn’t mind doing it.”
“The next time you get stranded, you call me first. I do not want you depending on a newly minted high school driver to get you home safely.”
“Ah, Betsy. You’d better get used to it. I’m going to be driving by myself in three months,” my stepson reminded me.
He seemed to forget the part where he needed an actual car to drive. That was a budget expense that Leo and I hadn’t even come close to discussing.
“What’s for dinner?” Zach asked. Probably the three little words most heard before the police were called. He might as well have dropped a grenade on my toe, his demand stirred up such a response from me.
“I don’t know yet. I just got home.”
“I’m starved,” he said as a barrage of gunfire went off across the screen in front of him. “Whatever you make, just make it fast.”
I was trying, really trying not to let the events of my day overtake me even though Rocky was willing to let me flounder in the seas of injustice. Miss Aileen had put me and my child on the undesirable family list. I could take that. Seriously, who was Miss Aileen to me? She was nothing more than a glorified babysitter. I rattled pans in the kitchen while trying to find yet another inventive way to serve chicken.
“Hey, Bets, I’m home,” Leo said from the doorway. Finally, someone I could talk to! My life mate! My soul mate! The love of my life. I could tell him everything that had brought me to this sorry state today. I plopped some chicken breasts in a roasting pan and looked up, ready to spill my worries. “Man, what a day I’ve had ...”
Leo was no longer in the doorway. He had simply given me a two-second acknowledgment and was out the door. I guess the honeymoon was over between us. Fine. I pulled out a bottle of barbecue sauce and sloshed the liquid onto the frozen meat. My moment of cooking creativity had also ended abruptly. I put water in a saucepan to boil some rice. I continued to storm around while preparing dinner until I was at such a point that when Leo called for me to join him in the upstairs office, I was ready to let him have it with both barrels.
“Betsy, did you hear me?” He had already called once, and I had chosen to ignore him.
“Right now? I’m busy preparing food for your children.”
“Just come up here.”
I stomped up the stairs one at a time so loudly that I heard a break in the battle sounds in the den as the boys listened to my mood playing itself out.
“Killing bugs on those stairs there, Betsy?” Tyler called up the stairs. If you’re ever in a bad mood, having a high school freshman around will almost guarantee it won’t get any better.
When I entered the office, Leo with his glasses perched on the end of his nose, turned his head. The glasses had become part of his life after he admitted he was having trouble staring into the computer screens at the weather bureau while tracking storms headed for Texas.
“What’s up with the stairs?” he asked, giving me a nervous glance.
“Nothing is wrong with the stairs, but I make no promises about the person who is climbing them.”
He gulped. “I’m sorry. Did I miss something?”
That had to be the understatement of the year. Did he miss something? His wife was in total meltdown in the kitchen and he walked right by to get on his precious computer.
“What do you need?”
He scratched at the back of his hand. “I wanted to tell you something, that’s all. If this isn’t a good time...”
“What?”
“Well, it’s this rash.”
He looked like the nutty professor holding one finger up in the air. He then showed me the backs of both of his hands. There were angry red splotches on his skin.
“Leo, what happened?”
“Looks awful, doesn’t it. I can tell you’ve had a bad day, and I’m sorry for that. I wasn’t there for you in your moment of crisis, and I’m sorry for that too, but I might be able to help you catch your tomato stomper.” He tapped a button on the keyboard, and a picture of my straggling vine came up on the screen.
“What does it say under this picture?” He asked giving just one more scratch to his hand.
“Poison Ivy?” I answered. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never been much of a gardener, but how did I miss that my vine was actually poison ivy? I was suddenly very thankful I had never had time to pull it out of the tomatoes. I would be as miserable as Leo, or worse, what if Cocoa and Anna had gotten into it?
“The good news is whoever was in your planting boxes also got into the poison ivy. Find the scratcher and you have found the tomato stomper.”
“You’re a genius!” I said, going in for a hug and congratulatory kiss. He tried to reciprocate, holding his hands up like a freshly scrubbed surgeon, but it just wasn’t happening.
“Oh, sweetie. Let me get the calamine lotion from the kitchen.”
“Is it the homemade kind or the store bought?” Leo was referring to the homemade calamine lotion recipe I put in the Happy Hinter column once and made half the town break out in hives. Life as the Happy Hinter wasn’t always so happy.
“Store bought, baby. You deserve the expensive stuff.” My bad mood had just dissipated like powdered plant food in a watering can.
Leo’s nose tipped up as he took in a breath. “Is something burning?”
I jumped up. “The rice! Have to go.” I kissed him and ran downstairs. What was a little burned rice when my husband had just solved the mystery of the tomato killer?
CHAPTER 24
That night, with this new information in hand, I had a combination of feelings going through me. I could feel an incredible sense of things being righted. If my tomato stomper wore gloves, the poison ivy wouldn’t have had an effect. I could now prove that I had been sabotaged. I didn’t even care if they let me back in the contest anymore. They had cheaters in the group, and the proof would be in the poison ivy rash.
Just like my overlooking that errant weed, I now realized I had been missing some details in my investigation of Wade Atwood’s murder. The irritation of dealing with Miss Aileen, and then Daisy and Susie stealing my heart with their situation, had taken up too much space in my thoughts. Finally, this whole gardening contest had been unfair from the beginning. Rocky had put me up against women who gardened to prove their self-worth. All of these things had put me off the track. I had started out with Wade Atwood’s murder, but the answers to his murder were buried down deep in the dirt just like my friendly neighborhood polygamist.
One of the items that I hadn’t followed through on was the one phone number on Wade’s phone that I couldn’t identify. After the boys had gone upstairs to do homework, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number that I had scribbled on a piece of paper at the police station.
The phone rang. “Hello?”
From the sound of her voice and the combination of the music in the background, this was possibly a woman in her twenties. I recognized a song that was on one of Tyler’s
playlists. I hoped she wasn’t younger than twenty or Wade might have something else to own up to in his romantic pursuits. It was unbelievable this might be another woman he had been courting.
“Hi. You don’t know me, but I need to ask you a question. Your phone number was found on Wade Atwood’s phone.”
“Wade? Do you know where he is?”
“Yes. I know where he is.”
“Oh, thank God. I’ve been so worried. I was at my grandmother’s house in Victoria for the last month, and I hadn’t heard from him. Can you have him call me?”
Obviously, this woman really wanted to hear from Wade, and I was going to have to be the one to tell her he wouldn’t be calling any day soon. There was no easy way to do this, so I plunged in.
“I’m calling from Pecan Bayou, Texas. Can you tell me where you are?”
“Amarillo. Why are you calling from so far away?”
“Because this is where Wade lives.”
“Oh. I thought he lived in Amarillo.”
How did I tell her that he not only lived there but also called Fredericksburg and Blakely home? “Can I ask how you know Wade?”
There was silence on the other end, and then she said, “I’m sort of his fiancé. I mean, we’ve only been engaged for a couple of months. I met him at the convenience store where I worked until my grandma got sick. He was such a charmer. I just couldn’t resist him. We haven’t told anybody yet. I don’t even have a ring. You’re the first to know.”
Dimple-Boy strikes again! I couldn’t keep stalling. Sometimes you just have to rip off the Band-Aid. “I have some bad news for you. Wade was found dead in my backyard in a pile of dirt.”
“What? Is this some kind of a joke? Are you the woman that called before asking about Wade? This is not funny, you witch.”
“Someone called you before wanting to know about Wade?”
“Sure. You were asking me all about how I knew Wade, just like you’re doing now. Then you hung up on me. Listen, if you used to date Wade, then you need to get over it, or we’ll get a stalker order against you. I don’t know where Wade is right now, but he’s out of your clutches, so get on your broomstick and ride off.”