Chicken Scratch (The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series Book 1)

by Becki Willis

  “If you know anything about the auction business, you know the hours are completely erratic. The sale starts at noon every Friday. If people bring in three hundred head, the sale is over by two that afternoon. If they bring in three thousand, the sale isn’t over until two the next morning. They often have special sales in the middle of the week or hold cattle over in the pens, so he spends a lot of time at the sale barn. Your uncle has his own ranch to run and Jimmy is the Ag teacher at school, so it’s Curtis’s responsibility to be at the barn most of the time.”

  “Has he been … less attentive to you lately?” Madison phrased her question carefully.

  “What? Oh, you mean… no, no!” A blush stained the other woman’s cheeks, causing a similar shade to invade Madison’s face. “My Curtis is a very amorous man. No change there.”

  “So you are basing your assumption of an affair solely on these few text messages?”

  With a huff, George Gail reached into her purse again. “You obviously won’t take me seriously, not until I’ve paid you. So here.” She slid a bank envelope across the table. “You count it. One thousand dollars, in cold, crisp cash.”

  Madison opened the flap and glanced inside, noting several hundred-dollar bills.

  “Didn’t you see the other messages on there?” George Gail demanded. She scrolled back through the phone, flashing the screen toward Madison with every offending message.

  Like the pink behinds best.

  Work the ride.

  Hope we pull this off.

  “There’s definitely some hanky-panky going on!” she declared. “You’ll take my case, right?”

  “Again, I must caution you that I am not a private investigator.”

  “Can you operate a camera?” George Gail asked in an exasperated tone.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Can you take note of times and dates?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Can you drive a car?”

  “Of course.” She did not technically own one, not since her late night rendezvous with an old pickup truck and a train, but she was driving a loaner from the dealership. As soon as her Uncle Glenn returned from his vacation, she planned to buy it. His return, of course, would mean the end of her job at Cessna Motors, but perhaps he would take the money in this envelope as the down payment.

  “Then I don’t care what you call yourself. I just want you to follow my husband, see where he goes, who he meets at what time, and take photographic proof that he’s cheating on me. Can you or can you not do that?”

  Madison could already think of a dozen things that could go wrong.

  She could also think of a thousand things that could go right.

  Slipping the envelope into her purse, Madison accepted the challenge in the other woman’s blue-shadowed eyes. “I can do that, George Gail,” she said with confidence. “First I’ll need a little more information, and you’ll need to sign this contract.”

  Simple as that, In a Pinch Temporary Services had a new client.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Madison arrived at the three-bedroom house she shared with her grandmother, she saw both the old Buick and the brand-new motor home parked in the driveway. She considered herself lucky to catch the elderly woman home; just because Granny Bert was eighty did not mean she was a homebody. Her grandmother’s recent resignation as mayor of Juliet simply meant she now had more time to run the roads.

  “Granny?”

  Madison made two sweeps through the house before she became concerned and started calling for her grandmother in earnest. “Granny Bert, where are you?”

  She eventually heard the muffled voice from somewhere above her head. “Up here!”

  “In the attic?” She more or less muttered the words in confusion as she made her way to the hallway and the attic’s pull-down staircase. Tugging on the string to open the portal, she called again, “Granny? Are you in the attic?”

  “Come on up,” her grandmother’s voice called from the overhead space. “But be careful. The dad-blamed stairs closed up on me.”

  Madison had not been up to the attic in years. She used caution as she climbed the simple staircase and stepped into the lofty space that had fascinated her as a child. Tugged into odd angles and stretched across the varied corners of the old craftsmen-styled home, the attic was large and rambling, and more crowded than she remembered. She spotted her grandmother beneath the low beam of a dormer, sifting through boxes by light from the window.

  “How long have you been up here? Are you all right?” Madison asked in concern.

  “I’m fine. Been here for quite a while, but I knew you’d be home sooner or later and come looking for me.” Bertha Cessna brushed away her granddaughter’s worry with a casual shrug.

  “What are you doing up here, anyway?”

  “Looking for some papers.”

  “Do you need help?” Madison offered, ducking under a rafter to come closer.

  “Oh, I found what I needed an hour or two ago. I’ve just been visiting old memories. Seeing some of this stuff again is like discovering an old friend all over again.”

  Madison understood what her grandmother meant when she glanced around and her eyes fell on a familiar object. “You used to let me play with the hats in that old trunk,” she remembered with a smile. “I would pose in front of that antique mirror and pretend I was somebody important.”

  “You’ve always been somebody important, girl.”

  Little words of encouragement such as those had helped Madison through many hard times. Granny Bert might be crusty—and certainly unconventional—but Madison knew she had her undying love and support. Even when she could not depend on her flighty parents, she could always depend on her grandmother.

  “So what’s that box you’re digging in?” she asked conversationally. “Would you like me to carry it down so you can look through it in better light?”

  “Are you implying I’m too old and feeble to carry it down myself?”

  Madison laughed at the fiery comeback. “No, I figured you would have your hands full with whatever you came looking for to begin with.”

  Granny Bert’s only reply was to nod toward the box she pilfered through. “These are pictures of the Big House, back in the day.”

  That was what locals called Juliet Randolph Blakely’s old estate. It dominated an entire city block and sat in a prominent location off Second and Main, a grand three-story structure that always reminded Madison of a wedding cake.

  “I’m sure it was really something back then,” she murmured. After one hundred years, it was in sad need of new paint and some major updating.

  “Oh, it was. And it will make a fine home for you and the twins.”

  “Granny, I told you I can’t afford to buy the Big House, even if I wanted to.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t want to live there?”

  “I didn’t say that. Not exactly. But you have to admit, it needs a lot of repair. That kitchen lay-out is a nightmare.”

  “It was designed for the times, back before microwaves and dishwashers and pot-fillers. It still has a wood stove and an icebox, mind you. Back then, room to roll out biscuits was more important than saving steps between the stove and refrigerator. But all that can be remodeled, you know. You have to look at the potential. There’s plenty of room in that house for you and your young’uns.”

  “Plenty of bedrooms and common rooms, yes, but very few bathrooms,” Madison grumbled.

  “It’s a grand house, Maddy, if you just give it a chance. I’ve always loved that old house, and it would make me pleased as punch to see you living there.”

  “Why me?” Madison asked, not for the first time.

  “I told you, everyone else is all settled. Except for your father with his chronic sense of wanderlust, all my boys have homes of their own. Same thing for my other grandchildren. But you need a house and the Big House needs an owner. More importantly, it needs a family to live in it. Seems like a perfect fit to me, even if s
ome of the pieces have a few odd shapes.”

  Still unconvinced, Madison chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t know…”

  Granny Bert ignored the negativity and continued. “Mama used to take me to work with her and let me play in the kitchen, or on that long covered porch out back. While she whipped up dishes for Miss Juliet’s dinner parties and afternoon teas, I would slip off and traipse all over that mansion. It has more than one hidden passage, you know.” Her old eyes twinkled with the memory. “Your great-uncle Jubal and I would get into a mess of trouble hiding in some of those places, trying to spy on the grown-ups. A time or two, we heard things not intended for young ears, and one time I plumb near got stuck in a narrow spot beside the library fireplace!”

  Enchanted by her grandmother’s story, Madison forgot her misgivings about the house. “Did Miss Juliet ever catch you?”

  “No, but it’s a wonder she didn’t hear us giggling from behind the walls. We thought we were awfully smart, slipping through all those secret places.”

  “So why did she have secret passages? I know they did that sort of thing back in Civil War days, but she built the Big House fifty years later. What—or who—did she have to hide?”

  “There’s no telling what she was thinking. Her Daddy had the house built for her, an exact replica of the one he was building for Naomi across the railroad tracks. But rumor has it that both girls made a few modifications, no doubt trying to make her own house more special than the other. Miss Juliet was all about show, always concerned about appearances; she probably put in secret hallways so the servants wouldn’t be seen carrying her dirty underwear!”

  Madison laughed along with her grandmother, imagining uniformed maids carrying bundles of bloomers and old-fashioned corsets. Rose Hamilton, Granny Bert’s mother, was the main cook at the mansion. Did she ever have to carry dirty dishes through those hidden halls?

  Shaking the visuals from her mind, Madison cocked her head. “So I’ve always wondered, Granny. Why did Miss Juliet leave the Big House and almost everything else she owned to you?”

  “She left some money and property to my three brothers,” Granny Bert was quick to point out.

  “Very little, compared to what she left you. She practically gave you her town.”

  A look of sympathy flooded her grandmother’s wrinkled face. “For all her airs and fancy ways, Miss Juliet was a lonely old woman. She wanted children so badly, but her husband died just a few weeks after they were married. I was just a baby when Mama first brought me along to work, and I think Miss Juliet liked to imagine I was her little girl. She would invite me to have tea with her and she would show me her books. She loved to read, you know. I think it was her escape from a sad, miserable life. Even after I married your grandfather and started a family of my own, I would visit her at least once a week. Sometimes, I think she may have lived her life through me.”

  “Maybe that explains why she left everything to you, even though you are so different from her. Maybe you were brave enough to live the life she couldn’t bring herself to live.” Blake, Madison’s teenage son, made a similar observation when she told him Granny Bert was heiress to the town. “And maybe she knew if her town was going to survive, it needed a new direction, one with strong leadership.”

  “If you’re trying to say I’m pushy and uncouth, you may have a point.” She grinned as if the attributes were favorable.

  “You married the love of your life, raised four sons, have seven grandchildren and a slew of great-grandchildren, you’ve been Mayor of Juliet, a River County elected official, you love to travel and do new things, you have friends from all walks of life, and Willie Nelson wrote a song about you. You have to admit, you are about as different from Miss Juliet as you can be.”

  “Don’t forget the motorcycle and bungee jump.”

  Madison laughed. “Yes, you drove a motorcycle for years before you wrecked it racing my father, and for your seventy-fifth birthday party you took everyone bungee-jumping. I’m sure the most daring thing Miss Juliet ever did was serve red wine with fish. You know she had to admire your enthusiasm for life.”

  “She didn’t have it easy, you know.” Granny Bert could not help but defend her friend and benefactor. “Her mother died when she and Naomi were babies, and their father spoiled them so. There was just the two of them, but they never could get along. Their Daddy had to give them each their own house and their very own town, because the older they got, the bigger the rivalry.”

  Familiar with the old story, Madison nodded in empathy. With no son to inherit his cotton plantation, cotton king Bertram Randolph divided his dynasty into three distinct entities. Each daughter received plats to a town she could develop and manage to her own liking; upon his death, the rich farmland went to his oldest and most trusted employee, Andrew deCordova. It was a blessing Bertram Randolph never knew the final fate of his beloved daughters.

  “And then their father got sick, and they both fell in love with his new doctor,” Madison recalled the sad legend.

  “They say Darwin Blakely was a real looker. Had some fancy doctoring degree from Philadelphia. Trouble is, the man couldn’t make a decision without seeing which way his pecker blew.”

  “Granny!”

  “Oh, don’t act so scandalized,” her grandmother chided. “You sound about like Miss Juliet. She pretended she’d never heard a dirty word in her life, but I traveled those secret halls enough to know better. She was known to cuss up a blue streak once in a while, when she thought no one was around to hear. Most of the time the words were directed at her own sister and poor little niece.”

  Madison could certainly empathize with her. “Can you imagine how humiliated she was, a new widow who discovers another woman is carrying her late husband’s child? Her very own sister, no less?”

  “The man finally made a decision and chose Juliet, but it was little consolation once he died and Love was born.”

  “Do you think Miss Naomi named her baby that on purpose, to further humiliate her sister?”

  “With those two, you never know. But you forget; in that day and age, the humiliation was on Naomi, having a child out of wedlock.”

  “You knew Love, didn’t you?”

  Granny Bert nodded. “My Mama never was one to put on airs or snub another soul. She didn’t cotton to the notion of not being able to talk to neighbors, just because they lived in the town of Naomi when she lived in Juliet. She was good as gold to everyone she met and she encouraged me to make friends on both sides of the track. But the one person I wasn’t allowed to talk to was Love Randolph. She felt she owed Miss Juliet that much.”

  “What about later, when you were an adult?” Madison wondered.

  “By then, it didn’t matter. Love married Hugh Redmond and died giving birth to their second child.”

  Madison remembered going to school with some Redmond kids. Even though they had the money to buy nice clothes and nice cars and make-believe friends, they were never quite part of the “in” crowd at school. Back then, old prejudices still ran deep.

  “I’d like to think the towns have finally evolved, have finally learned to be more tolerant of one another. What does it matter that a hundred years ago, someone’s great-grandmother was born out of wedlock? What does it matter which side of the track you live on, what town your mail is addressed to? We share the same schools and public utilities. But I met with a new client today, and she is convinced that if her husband is having an affair, it’s with a trollop from Naomi. That’s where all the trollops live, according to her.”

  Granny Bert gave an unflattering grunt. “She must not know Sheree Blackburn, Angie Jones or Lana Kopetsky,” she mumbled, only half under her breath. Louder, she asked, “Who’s your new client?”

  Madison hesitated. Granny Bert could be an invaluable source of information, but she could also be an undeniable gossip. “I-I’m not sure I’m at liberty to say.”

  Her grandmother merely snickered. “I understand. Customer confidentiality and
all that. And you’re probably undercover again, right?”

  Madison squirmed uncomfortably, answering the question without saying a word.

  “Okay, so I won’t go around blabbing that you have a new client. I can be discreet. Who do you want to know about this time?”

  Again, Madison hesitated. She needed to follow Curtis Burton without being seen. Her only hope of catching him with his mistress was to catch him unaware, and that would be impossible if he heard about her surveillance through the grapevine. She warred with her options for a moment longer, before taking advantage of Granny Bert’s uncanny knowledge of everything that went on in The Sisters.

  “What do you know about Curtis Burton?” she finally asked.

  “A fine, God-fearing, church-going man. Good father and husband. Your Uncle Joe Bert’s best friend and business partner at The Sisters Livestock Auction. Practically raised that boy myself, he was in and out of the house so much. He was friends with your own Daddy; all my boys, in fact.” Granny Bert peered at her over the top of the opened box. “You can’t seriously be mentioning the name ‘Curtis Burton’ and ‘trollop’ in the same sentence. That man is as faithful as the sunrise. He dotes on George Gail, crazy makeup and all.”

  “Granny Bert, you have to promise me that what I am about to say to you does not go beyond these walls.” Madison stressed the words with a piercing gaze.

  “Scout’s Honor.”

  “You weren’t a Scout. And don’t bother with crossing yourself, either,” she warned, seeing her grandmother’s hand movements. “We aren’t Catholic.”

  “Just tell me what you know, girl,” Granny Bert said impatiently.

  “Not until you promise.”

  “I promise.” She made the oath, but her nose wrinkled in distaste.

  “George Gail found text messages between Curtis and some unknown woman. I have to admit, they look pretty incriminating.”

  “Who was the other woman?”

  “She doesn’t know. And the phone number was blocked. She’s hired me to follow her husband and find out where he goes and who he’s seeing. But remember, Granny, you mustn’t say one word about this to anyone, especially not to Aunt Trudy! George Gail is too ashamed for even her best friend to know about this.”