“Pardon?”
“You know about Twyman and his other wives?” she asked.
“Well, yes. But mostly from the news.”
“So, meet them in person. Honey, meet Gabriella, Marcie, and Babe.”
Three of the black and white bovines had followed Clover down to the water, including the only one I recognized, the one with the sore eye. Clover followed my eyes. “Babe,” she said.
I grinned. Babe had been Twyman’s last wife. The glamorous Hollywood movie star. This was humor I could understand. “And the Clover cow?” I asked.
Clover smiled back at me with an acceptance that had been missing before. “They’re over there.” She indicated two that had come down the other side of the small gorge.
“Both of them are Clovers?”
“Yep, I was the damned fool who married him twice, remember? And the stupid old fool thought I was up for grabs for a third go round. Some people never learn. But I did. Told him where he could put that ring,” she snorted.
“He asked you to marry him two days ago?” I asked, really trying to sort it all out in my mind.
“Begged me, actually,” she said with a self-satisfied little smirk showing on the left side of her mouth.
“Wow.”
“Ayup. Waited many a year to tell him off. Almost made up for everything. Not quite, but almost. Took me almost a lifetime, but almost made up for …” Her voice trailed off. “This is where we met, you know?”
“Here? On the ranch?”
“The ranch? You thought this was the ranch? Oh, Honey, honey.” Then she added in an afterthought, “Bet you have hell with that name.”
“If you only knew.” I laughed. “But what do you mean? This isn’t the ranch?”
“Oh, lord, no. This is just an old pasture. Well, where I had the first ranch. Doesn’t even connect with mine now. I keep it for sentimental reasons. And for the girls.” She nodded toward the five cows who were elbowing each other to get a sip from the thin stream.
Clover gestured back toward the assortment of rusty bars and gates. “This is where I was, that day when I met Twyman. Had a small herd, was just beginning to crossbreed.” She added modestly, “Beginning to make a small name for myself.
“We were doing inoculations. Yearly vaccinations for the cattle. Had a few cowhands helping me out. Hot, like it is today. Twyman came driving up. Parked there.” She pointed out the same spot where my Plymouth Voyager gleamed in the sun. “Had on a three-piece suit. Didn’t even loosen his tie. He was a tall man, handsome.” She looked to me for affirmation.
“Yes, I could tell,” I agreed. And he had been, too. Despite the extra weight of both pounds and years, I could see where some women would think he held a certain charm.
“Well, sir,” she said, sounding like Bondesky now. “He came wading through those cow pies without a second look down. I’m sure he had to throw away those city shoes afterward. Said he was from the Weatherford paper and wanted to do a local color story on me. Story about the little cowgirl who was making news with breeding. Hell, I was big then.” She glanced at me. “Strong big. Farmgirl type, you know?
“That’s when he ate his first cow treats. I give them to each cow after their shots to make them forget. Don’t know if it does, but it makes me feel better about those big needles. Came and stayed, he did.
“I had arranged a barbecue for the hands. And some neighbors. We all helped each other out back then. Ate his fill, did Twyman. Liked his food.”
I could attest to that.
Clover went on. Like it was a testimonial or eulogy.
“We sat on the bench at the table and he interviewed me. Then we started talking about writing.”
I interrupted. “You’re a writer, too?”
She went on like she hadn’t heard me, but there was a subtle shift in her tone.
“Smooth talker, that Twyman. Yes, sir, good you’re here, Honey. You were with him when he died. It’s proper you’re here now.”
“Excuse me?” I didn’t follow the lead of the conversation.
Clover unzipped the black fanny pack she had around her waist. I hadn’t seen it because of the pellet bag. “The girls and I are glad you’re here today.” And she began to distribute another feed from the waist pack. Only she threw the gray powder into the air, watching as handfuls drifted into the creek.
The girls never missed a lick; their long pink fat tongues lapped up the silty water, ashes and all.
TEN
“Silas,” I fairly screamed into the cell phone as I did my usual get lost maneuvers out of the country; drive a few miles, turn around in the middle of the road and drive the other way until I found another road. It was like a recipe; stir, make wrong turn, add eggs, turn left, add milk, go back the way you came, etc.
“Silas,” I screamed again. “She cremated him.”
Ever the patient detective, he said, “Yes, well, it was her right to do so, Honey. She claimed the body.”
“But, but … she spread him out right there in front of me. Fed him to the cows.” I shivered with the memory. And rubbed the diamond ring against the seat of the van, trying to remove the powdery fingerprint Clover had left on the surface of the ring when she had said again, “You keep this, Miss Honey.”
I was calming down, especially since I was finally steering toward the distant downtown outline of Fort Worth. “How come Clover got to claim the body? They’re not married anymore.”
Silas Sampson’s voice faded in and out as I drove toward the source of his voice. “Honey, no one else wanted it. There was no next of kin.”
“Okay,” I said, accepting the fact, “but what about dead on Wednesday and flung out on Friday? Seems awfully fast to me.”
“It wasn’t murder, remember, Honey. Natural causes. You said so yourself.”
“Now I’m not so sure.”
“What? Honey, where are you? Can you meet me for a late lunch?”
“I’m at the corner of silver bridge and turn right, Silas. But I’m heading your way.”
He laughed. “What would be your guess for an ETA for a late lunch at Massey’s?”
I saw a sign that said “To I-20”. With probably only two more wrong turns, I figured I could make it in about twenty minutes. We made a date.
Where Silas had poo-pooed my hysteria, Janie gloried in the description of the bucolic cow side ceremony in which I had unwittingly participated. Although she was farther away than Silas, her voice came in loud and clear. “Oh, man. Cool. Wish I had been there.” Sometimes I have trouble remembering Janie is in her fifties.
“Okay, Honey. Give me an educated guess. Could she have done it?”
Knowing exactly what Janie meant, I mused, “She was bitter enough. Does that count?” I added, “And yet there was some sense of loss, like when she told me about their early years. How they met. I’ll have to think about it. Weigh it out.”
Right before I made the correct turn onto I-20, I caught my last glimpse of outback Fort Worth. Silhouetted against the huge sky that belongs to Texas, I saw a man with a plow being pulled by a mule. In this day and age of John Deere, it was an incongruous image, especially since the view from the left window revealed the familiar towers of Fort Worth standing tall against the same vast sky.
I turned toward the city skyline, but my inward eye was burned by the image of a stooped old man with reins slung lightly over his shoulder, tilling the ground of a sun-parched field. The dual images were disturbing. I knew it had something to do with me, my life, but I didn’t know what.
ELEVEN
My mother had not been a good cook. Oh, everything was balanced—starches, protein, green stuff—but they didn’t always make up into appetizing combinations. We ate out a lot. Reckon that’s why I like restaurant food so much.
One of our favorite places to eat was Massey’s over on Eighth Avenue. It broke my heart when they closed last year. Since they reopened a while ago, I hadn’t had a chance to do an expert taste test, so I was glad tha
t was where Silas and I were meeting for lunch. He knows how much I like chicken-fried steak. He ought to. He brought me enough carryouts when I found Steven Miller dead in my living room and wandered through a few days in shock. Silas may not be the sharpest detective in the world, but he was the first person to call on me socially since my parents died. Well, investigating a kinky, threatening phone call might not be considered a social visit by Amy Vanderbilt’s standards, but it sure changed my life.
I could tell right off, when I drove up, that they were back to their previous quality: the parking lot was full of cop cars. They’re better than truckers in giving their nod of approval for good food.
Everything seemed as usual. The place was packed. I could see Silas’s blond head over a booth in the nonsmoking side, so I bypassed the waitress and headed that way. Just in time to hear Silas do a silly imitation of an old Nestlé’s commercial. “Chock-lit,” he croaked to the pretty little waitress. Well, now I knew he was telling her that we wanted chocolate pie for dessert, reserving it before they ran out, but, lord, I didn’t know he flirted with waitresses.
“Make it two,” I said as I slipped into my side of the new black booth. I looked around to see what else they had changed. Not much, I was glad to see. Oh, well, unless you count the plastic car seat at the entrance. I always envied the kids who bounced around on that old seat while they waited for a table, but I knew what my mother’s disapproving sniff toward those rowdy kids meant. They do still have the sepia print of the 1940s though: my father’s car is one of those shown parked outside the restaurant—a ’41 Dodge. He used to show it to me every time we ate there.
The girl took her glue-stuck eyes away from Silas and gave me the once over. Not seeing much competition, she just asked me, “And what are y’all having to drink?”
“Me’ll be having iced tea, thank you.”
She sniffed and left.
I sang out the spelling of Nestlé just so Silas would know I had gotten his joke. Big oaf didn’t even have the grace to blush. He very seriously said, “I was afraid they would run out. Would you look at this crowd?”
“You’re looking good, Silas. Noticed on television last night that you had your hair styled.”
Now he blushed.
“My regular barber was out … so …”
“Looks good,” I reassured him as he nervously ran his hand over the full blond sides of his hair.
Did, too. Don’t know why we have never connected.
Silas must have ordered my lunch, too, because when Linda (I sneaked a peek at her nametag) brought us the iced tea, she also juggled two chicken-fried lunch specials on her arms. How do they do that?
Then she brought the mile-high chocolate pies out. That reminded me of Twyman eating his pie first. I put an admonishing hand on Silas’s as his fork reached to scoop out a chocolate bite. “Don’t. Trust me. Don’t.”
He looked puzzled, but only for a second, his fork already moving to cut into the steak. Yep, it’s that tender at Massey’s.
We paid serious attention to our food, pausing only to butter a yeast roll. It took several stuffings of chicken-fried steak mixed with cream gravy and fried potatoes in our mouths before we satisfied our first hunger cravings. Smiling, and waving his fork full of steak around, Silas said, “They’rrrrre baaaaack.”
“Thank God,” I sighed. “I’ve about killed myself all over Texas looking for good chicken-fried steak. I can’t wait to tell Steven Hyatt.” After Mother became so ill, Steven Hyatt used to join Father and me for dinner. I realize now that Father had been looking out for Steven’s welfare, making sure he got enough to eat. The aunt he lived with hadn’t been any better cook than my mother. Funny how you don’t know things when they are going on, just when you’re grown up. I’m trying so hard to grow up. I figure when I reach thirty, I’ll just about know it all.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Hyatt. How is he, anyway?”
“Good. Good. Talked to him yesterday. Tried to tell me it was time I settled down. Quit running around all over Texas.” I stifled a very unladylike snort. “Imagine the nerve. Mr. Tumbleweeds-for-Legs telling me to settle down.”
“Well, he has a point, Honey. Better that than taking up a career chasing after bodies.”
I ignored that statement and asked a question of my own.
“Which reminds me, Silas. Tell me about Twyman.”
“I don’t know why you are so all-fired suspicious of his death, Honey. Cut and dried. Cut and dried.”
“Yeah? How so?”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Big man. Big appetite. Bad heart. Diabetic. Stressful lifestyle.” He repeated, “Cut and dried.”
“Diabetic? I didn’t know that,” I mused. “He should have known better. Ate his pie first, Silas.”
We both looked at the chocolate fantasy waiting for us.
“Cut and dried, hmmm? No autopsy? No inquiry?”
“No reason for it, Honey. Doctor signed the certificate and family didn’t ask for one. Wouldn’t have shown anything different,” he asserted. “You could tell,” he went on, “after they wiped those mashed potatoes off his face. Classic heart attack.”
“What family, Silas? I thought you said he had no next of kin?”
“Well, that was a little sticky,” he agreed. “We had to call all his ex-wives to find one that would claim the body. Went right down the line, backwards, and finally got Clover Medlock to do the right thing.”
“How did they sound? Those ex-wives? When you told them about Twyman dying?” I wanted to know.
He bent his head forward so I knew he was going to tell me something he shouldn’t. “They didn’t give a rat’s ass. Excuse my language. One of them even laughed.”
“Get out of here. Laughed? Which one?”
“The foreign one. Gabriella something.”
“Yeah, she was his second wife. Laughed, huh?”
Silas was kind. “Probably just a nervous reaction.” He was into the pie now.
“Still …?” I questioned.
“Happens all the time, Honey. First reaction sometimes. I tell you one thing though: Those women don’t like each other one bit. Each one referred us to the next. That Babe even said, ‘Why don’t you call one of his other cows?’ Now, that’s harsh, Honey.”
I gave him an appropriate grimace, but I was thinking about Clover and the “girls.”
As Silas took the check and a wink from Linda, I said, “Still and all, Silas, I wish there had been an autopsy.”
Silas stood up, growing tall in his official capacity. “It’s over, Honey. I realize it was an unsettling experience for you. And coming so close on the recent deaths in your life, but it’s over. Let it go.”
We made our way to the parking lot, me clutching my carry-home box of pie. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach.
I fingered the ring on my hand. Silas hadn’t even noticed it. Some cop he was. “I hear you, Silas. Yes, I will do that. Let it go.”
“You know,” he said, “Steven Hyatt might be right. You need …”
Waving my hand and giving him a Linda wink, I drove off before he could finish telling me what to do with my life. Or before I told him that Clover had invited me to the real ranch for a visit.
Oh, I would let it go, all right. But, “Cut and dried.” Cut and dried?
Hmmm, I didn’t think so.
TWELVE
I use my father’s old room for my war room. The darkened, knotty pine walls gave me comfort and courage as I planned out my next week’s work—planned out my life, actually.
When my parents died, I had sought solace in my father’s room. Gradually, the walls gave me strength, and I began a plan. A plan of living.
My natural instincts are to drift through life, watching and observing. Mother used to say I was a lot like my Great Aunt Eddie. Aunt Eddie had obviously enjoyed watching others, letting their actions fulfill her needs. She had never married but was an incurable romantic in her way. It was her house I lived in. My parents mov
ed there when Aunt Eddie and her two maiden sisters grew old and dependent. Father had added the third story onto the house for Mother and him to live in, but all the sisters had died before it was fully completed. Now it stood alone in a neighborhood converted into doctors’ offices, the wrought iron “widow’s walk” peaking some repressed fantasy in my father’s life.
Knowing they wouldn’t be around when I was grown, my elderly parents had schooled me daily in discipline and structure. Instead of resenting the restrictions these lessons provided, I carefully listened and learned. One didn’t slide down banisters. One didn’t shout and squeal when one’s mother had the headache. One didn’t daydream her day away.
I sat down at my gunmetal gray desk and began planning my next week. I had everything I needed right there in the war room. A telephone, Rolodex, file cabinets, and wardrobe. Keeping one’s clothes clean and separated by seasons on long metal racks kept one organized. Also, my bible was my Day-Timer; without it, I wouldn’t have made it through the first year after Mother and Father died. I had been at a complete loss of how to live my life without my parents. The Day-Timer told me what to do, hour by hour and day by day, until I began to get a grip on life. But even now, ten years later, I needed that reassurance of order in my life.
Today was Friday. Tomorrow I would pick up the cleaning and begin packing my bag for Houston. My client was actually in Clear Lake—outside of Houston—an independent bookseller, who specialized in the Spanish translations, that carried one of my lines. Sunday, I would wash my hair and give myself a manicure while refreshing myself on the coming week’s itinerary.
I sighed; my life sounded boring, even to me. But once I was on the road, away from the house, it would change. I would change. I would breathe the fresh, hot air of a Texas summer, let the miles take away the responsibility of being responsible. By the time I reached the hill country, I would be smiling, looking forward to Clear Lake and then on to meet Harry.
Harry owned Sandscript, a small bookstore on South Padre Island. A retiree—a very young retiree—from the British Naval Service, Harry was certainly not the first man with whom I had had a relationship. (I had gone through the obligatory boy-girl thing when my parents died. Not at the house, of course.) But it was the most mature and satisfying relationship I had experienced. And, of course, I loved his dog, Bailey.
The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set Page 24