Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything

by Nancy Martin

  I sat up. “Change it how? Were you going to pay for the new stadium?”

  Judging by her drawing of Miss Ruffles, I doubted it.

  Had the new stadium been the topic of conversation when I interrupted Cornfelter and Honeybelle? Had he come with wine and flowers to seduce her? Not in the bedroom sense, but in order to get sufficient money to build a football stadium in her beloved husband’s memory? And if so, why had Miss Ruffles bitten the man? Had she sensed how much Honeybelle disliked him, despite her flirtatious behavior? Or was I mistaken and Honeybelle had a mad crush on the university president? Frowning to myself, I put the folder back in the drawer.

  In another folder, I found a list of local businesses. This was a folder I had already seen when I helped her with her checkbook. In an adjacent column, Honeybelle had noted amounts of money. These were the people who had waited behind the church during her memorial service, I guessed, and some of them owed substantial amounts. I paid closer attention to the names on the list. The art gallery owner had received tens of thousands. The local veterinarian had gotten a similar amount to expand his clinic. A grad student at the university had been given money to continue her independent study of Appalachian folk music. Beneath the top sheet of paper came a stack of written agreements, all signed.

  Now that Honeybelle was dead, were those loans forgiven? Or were the borrowers all expected to repay their loans to Honeybelle’s family?

  I said, “I’ll bet at least one of these people is happy that Honeybelle’s dead.”

  The idea made me search for a folder that might contain Honeybelle’s health records. I thought I might find proof that she’d been treated for a heart problem. But no such folder was in the drawer.

  I reached for the ON switch of her computer. Maybe there was more information to be found there.

  But just then the doorbell rang, and I nearly fell out of the chair. I dumped everything back into Honeybelle’s desk and grabbed my shoes. I ran to the kitchen to shut off the faucet. Then I hopped to the front door while trying to slip on my shoes. When I yanked the door open, a young uniformed police officer stood on the front porch.

  “Miss McKillip?” He spoke through the glass door. He was a broad-chested figure in a navy blue short-sleeved shirt with a MULE STOP POLICE patch on one bulky shoulder. His pants rode low on slim hips, and a thick belt was weighed down with an assortment of items, including a gun. But the most apparent characteristic of this cowboy cop was that he was incredibly handsome. He could have starred on a soap opera or appeared on a ten-story billboard advertising men’s undies.

  The overwhelming fragrance of Honeybelle’s roses heightened my first impression that he was a storybook prince who’d just hacked his way through Sleeping Beauty’s thorny prison.

  His dark sunglasses reflected my astonished expression. The metal name badge clipped to his chest read APPLEBY.

  Too late, I realized I still had the lollipop in my mouth. I pulled it out and opened the door, then stepped out onto the porch. “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Miss McKillip, I’m Assistant Deputy Appleby, and it’s my duty to serve you with this here temporary protective order.”

  “This what?” I was still stunned by how gorgeous he was. Chiseled jaw, perfect hair, a mouth like a movie star puckering up to kiss Angelina Jolie.

  “Ma’am,” he said in a very deep voice for a man so young, “by order of the court, y’all are forbidden to have any contact with the family of Henry Junior and Posie Hensley.” Seeing my blank expression, he said, “It’s a restraining order.”

  “What for?” I demanded, my brain finally kicking in.

  “Plain speaking, ma’am, the Hensley family says you are harassing their children, and we can’t have that in a nice town like this, can we? You are to stay away from them, hear, and keep Miss Ruffles away, or we’ll have the right to arrest you, see, and then you go to jail.”

  I realized my mouth was slack with astonishment. “What does Miss Ruffles have to do with anything?”

  “Well, now, I talked to Posie when she came in to request this order. It’s the dog she wants kept away from her kids, but if we got Animal Control involved, they’d have to take Miss Ruffles, and Posie didn’t want that, so we came up with this solution.” He eased the paperwork into my hand and said more kindly, “You can make this easier on everybody by keeping your distance from those children from now on. You and the dog.”

  “Do you—I mean, are you related to Posie somehow, Deputy Appleby?”

  “Assistant Deputy. Yes, ma’am, she’s my big sister.”

  I let that bit of information settle into my head for a moment. Going to the police for any help whatsoever meant Posie would know everything as soon as she sat down to a family dinner.

  I said, “But we only saw them in church last week. At Honeybelle’s memorial service. And after that, here at this house, on the back porch—”

  The deputy didn’t even try to be stern. He said quite conversationally, “Well, there’s to be no more of that, ma’am. You and Miss Ruffles keep your distance or I’ll have to come back and arrest you. Read the letter.”

  There was nothing to be done with the lollipop but put it back in my mouth. Both hands free again, I opened the envelope and unfolded an official-looking document to try to make sense of it. The handsome young officer kept talking. I read the scrawled signatures on the paper and the stamp in one corner and the words “addressed to the adverse party.” That was me. The “adverse party.”

  Assistant Deputy Appleby was saying, “We had to wait until this morning to get Marcy to open the clerk’s office to make up the order, and then we had to get all the right signatures, which is hard to do on a weekend, especially with our bosses out of town at a big convention—”

  “That’s why you spent the night outside this house?” I asked. “To make sure I didn’t go over to Posie’s house to bother her kids?”

  He stopped talking about his own problems and took off his sunglasses at last. His eyes were more melty-brown than chocolate in a fondue pot. “You have to report to the courthouse in two weeks for a hearing. It’s all there in the paperwork.”

  A hearing. Now I was the kind of person who was summoned to a hearing.

  “Would you like to sit down for a minute, ma’am?”

  I wasn’t feeling too good. And my plan to confront Posie about Miss Ruffles was blown to bits.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  He was sweating like a sinner in church.

  —TEXAS METAPHOR

  One thing about Texas is that it tends to look the same all the time—hot and sunny—but wait five minutes and something unusual happens. Like a herd of cattle moseys through town or a scary policemen turns out to be a handsome, sweet-talking boy. I couldn’t think of anything my mother might have said that would make it all make sense.

  Little black spots danced in front of my eyes. The two rocking chairs Honeybelle kept for show on her front porch looked like a great idea right then, and I allowed Assistant Deputy Appleby to help me totter over to sit in the first one. Once I was down, the black spots evaporated, but I was surprised to find my knees were trembling.

  “May I?” Posie’s little brother asked.

  I must have nodded, because he sat down in the other chair, leaning toward me with concern. It was a little like having a movie star focus all his cinematic attention on me. It took my breath away and made me dizzy all over again.

  He said, “You okay, ma’am?”

  I sat back in the chair and pulled out the lollipop again. “Surprised, that’s all. I hardly know Posie’s kids.”

  “Well, she must have gone to all this trouble for a good reason,” he said.

  While he waited for me to explain myself, I thought about Miss Ruffles and whether or not I should risk mentioning to the police that she was missing.

  It had been awfully smart of Posie to get a restraining order. It prevented me from knocking on her door to look for Honeybelle’s dog.

  I fanned my
self with the envelope.

  My handsome prince said, “You’re not going to faint, are you, ma’am? I have one of those little smelling salts things in the cruiser. They always used to work on my grandma when she was alive.”

  Being compared to his dead grandmother snapped me back to reality, and I sat up straight. “I’m fine.”

  On the street in front of the house, a familiar dusty Jeep rolled up behind the police cruiser and stopped. Behind the wheel was Ten Tennyson in his cowboy hat. Beside him in the passenger seat sat a slender young woman in a sunny yellow dress with a matching wide-brimmed hat, which she pinned to her head with one hand. Even from the front porch, I could see the diamond flashing on her finger. With a stone that size, she could send Morse code messages to the moon.

  Ten got down from the Jeep and sauntered around to the other side to help his passenger to the sidewalk. She had to be Poppy, Posie Hensley’s sister, Ten’s bride-to-be. Her yellow dress was square cut around her collarbones, showing lightly tanned bare shoulders. Her lipstick was pink, her eyes cornflower blue. If Appleby was the handsome prince in this Texas fairy tale, here was his princess sister. Her smile was wide enough to drive a tractor through.

  She tucked her hand into Ten’s elbow and bumped her cheek against his shoulder.

  Seeing her do that suddenly made me want to be the one to drive a tractor through her big, shiny teeth.

  Appleby and I stood up. I pulled out the lollipop and held it behind my back.

  “Why, Little Bubba,” she said when they approached the porch. Her honeyed drawl was playful. “Look how sweet you look in your new uniform.”

  “Hey, Poppy.” The assistant deputy’s face morphed into an adoring-little-brother smile. “You’re looking real pretty. Y’all just come from church?”

  “Why, thank you. Yes, Ten took me out to the Cowboy Church this morning, and the service was real nice. Lots of singing. I just love big, tough cowboys singing about Jesus. They’re so sweet. But look at you in your uniform! I guess the town council decided to forget about you shooting the windows out of the Dairy Queen?”

  He blushed adorably. “Well, you know I was just eleven at the time, so that didn’t stick on my record.”

  She went on teasing him. “It was all over town your first arrest was Granddaddy. How did that go?”

  His grin turned silly. “I called for backup first. Is the TV station still treating you right?”

  “I love it more than strawberry ice cream.”

  Ten shook Appleby’s hand. “Hey, Bubba. Congratulations on passing your exam.”

  “Yeah, it only took four times, but I finally managed.”

  Poppy said, “What’s that you’re carrying on your hip? An old-fashioned revolver? Didn’t Wyatt Earp carry one of those antiques?”

  He blushed all over again. “Well, it’s standard issue for rookie deputies in Mule Stop. Nothing fancy. The taxpayers keep a tight lid on the budget.”

  Poppy opened her purse. “You know, I still carry Grandma’s old-fashioned peashooter myself. See?”

  She waved a tiny pistol around, and I ducked instinctively behind Appleby.

  The three of them looked at me as if I’d grown another head.

  “Sorry.” I straightened up again. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a different world.”

  Ten nodded in sympathy. “I know what you mean. Poppy and I went to New York City in the spring.”

  “All that noise,” Poppy said. “And everybody in such a rush. But Phantom of the Opera was really exciting.” She tucked her peashooter back into her purse and turned expectantly to me, smile still bright, waiting for an introduction.

  Ten had begun to frown at me from beneath the brim of his hat, clearly sensing there was something fishy going on between me and the small-town cop, especially with me holding a large, official-looking envelope. But his good manners kicked in. “Poppy, this is Sunny McKillip. Sunny worked for Honeybelle before she passed. Sunny, this is Poppy Appleby.”

  If Poppy had heard anything negative about me from her sister, she was a very good actress. She fixed me with her complete attention and put out her slim hand for me to shake. On her wrist she wore several thin gold bracelets and a slender, expensive watch. “Why, hello. You must still be new in town. I haven’t met you yet. What an interesting name, McKillip. Are you from Austin? I had a sorority sister from Austin who—no, come to think of it, her name was McKellan. What an interesting shade of lipstick.”

  I tried answering most of her questions. “No. Thank you. I’m from Ohio.”

  “What a shame you made such a big life change for nothing. We’re all heartbroken by Honeybelle’s passing. I was going to ask her to host a show. I’m trying to be a producer at KTXX, after working on-air in Oklahoma City. Honeybelle would have been perfect.”

  “What kind of show?” I asked, making conversation just to get the impenetrable expression off Ten’s face.

  “I hadn’t decided yet. Home decorating or entertaining, something that highlighted her personality. I wish she had been a cook, since cooking shows are always a hit. Her lifestyle was fabulous, though, wasn’t it? Her charity work, community spirit, and gardening, of course. She was a winning combination. And she was so photogenic, even at her age. I’m simply heartbroken,” Poppy said again.

  “You should do a show yourself, Pop.” Appleby was still wearing that goofy smile. To me, he said, “Nobody’s more photogenic than our Poppy.”

  Playfully, she slapped his arm. “Well, I do the weather now, but I want to build a career that will last longer than my looks. I may take off a few years to raise a family.” She sent a warm smile up at Ten. “But I’ll want to come back to work someday, and producing is just the thing.”

  Appleby complimented his sister again, but I stopped listening to them. So did Ten. He gave me a raised eyebrow that asked what was going on, and I returned his look with a quick shake of my head, which only intensified his glare. This morning, he wore another of his yoked Western shirts with clean jeans and what I had come to recognize as “dress” cowboy boots made of polished, tooled leather that had not seen a stirrup but looked capable of kicking me in the butt for being annoying. Today’s belt buckle was the size of a paperback book.

  Poppy turned on me again. “Honeybelle had such an eye for beautiful things, didn’t she? Gardens, art, decorating—everything. When my sister thought of having our wedding here, I was over the moon! All of us Appleby girls are named after flowers, see. Posie and I have a cousin Heather and a Daisy and a Ginger—she’s the barrel racer—and Ivy.”

  “And Lily,” Bubba added. “Don’t forget cousin Lily.”

  “Well, sometimes we do,” Poppy said with a roll of her eyes. “She moved to London, and now she talks like one of the Beatles.”

  To Bubba, I said, “What’s your given name?”

  Another blush, this one all the way to the tips of his ears. “Well, ma’am, I was going to be named Achillea, but our daddy put his foot down, thank the good Lord, and they settled on Allium. Our parents thought I could be called Al for short, but that didn’t take, so now I’m just Bubba. Daddy says every family in Texas needs a Bubba.”

  “Anyway,” Poppy said to me, “as you can tell, flowers are a big thing in our family. Why, if Ten and I exchanged our vows by Honeybelle’s roses, we’d be charmed for life. Her rose collection is practically a national treasure.” With a sigh of pleasure, she gazed at the pastel swells and rolls of Honeybelle’s garden. “I’ve never seen it before. Why, it’s just magnificent!”

  I said, “I’m surprised you haven’t had a tour.”

  “Honeybelle was such a perfectionist, she probably wanted to make her flowers perfect before showing them off. Although all these bushes certainly look perfect to me. The family rumor is she has one from my great-grandma Appleby. A real pretty yellow one that came all the way from England on a boat in 1799, and—”

  Ten said, “Let’s not get started on that yellow rose again. Seems it starts a big fight every
time it comes up.”

  “Well,” Poppy continued, “then I heard there’s also a gazebo out back that’s real pretty. So Ten said we could drop by after church to take a peek before we decide.”

  “So you’re having the wedding here after all?” I asked.

  “Why not?” Her voice sounded like sweet tea, but something in her gaze changed as she met mine—a quick hardening of her eyes, maybe—that told me I had no business exchanging glances of any kind with her fiancé. I had mistaken her for an empty-headed piece of fluff, but I suddenly realized Poppy might be every bit the barracuda her sister was.

  Ten said, “Why don’t you go have a look at the gazebo out back, Pop?”

  She curled her hand around his arm again. “Come on. Your opinion counts, too.”

  He disengaged her hand. “I need to talk to Bubba for a minute. Business.”

  She sighed. “Okay, but you can’t complain if the wedding isn’t what you wanted.”

  “I won’t complain,” he promised with a smile.

  She stood up on tiptoe and gave him a kiss. “I love you a bushel and a peck.”

  He smiled. “Run along.”

  I opened the front door of Honeybelle’s house. “Nobody’s home but me. Go straight through to the kitchen to the back door.” I pointed down the marble foyer. “Maybe you’ll like what you smell. Mae Mae is the kind of cook you need for your show.”

  Poppy blinked at me. “Mae Mae can cook? I thought she only made old-lady finger sandwiches.”

  Ten gave her a gentle push. “Check it out, Miss Producer.”

  The tantalizing scent of the gumbo Mae Mae had left simmering wafted out to us, so Poppy followed her nose. As she stepped over the threshold, though, her cell phone rang, and she pulled it out of the handbag on her arm. “Poppy Appleby speaking!” Her voice was friendly but instantly businesslike. We heard her heels click on the marble floor as she walked away.