by Nancy Martin
“Don’t talk like that.” Mr. Carver puffed up. “Honeybelle never said that word, and you won’t either. Not while I’m in charge of this house.”
Mae Mae sniffed. “Maybe Posie went to college, and maybe she got herself into that pageant and made something of herself by marrying the right man, but she’s still an Appleby, and there’s no telling what any of those people will do.”
“They’re an old Mule Stop family,” Mr. Carver said to me. “And a big one. There are bound to be a few twisted branches on a family tree like theirs. But Miss Posie is a perfectly nice woman, a good mother, a considerate wife.”
Mae Mae snorted and went back into the pantry.
“Our job,” Mr. Carver said solemnly to me, “is not to fuel any more gossip. We’ll keep to ourselves, and say as little as possible.”
“The cat’s out of the bag, Mr. Carver. We could lock ourselves in this house for the next year, but that’s only going to make people talk even more.”
“She’s right,” Mae Mae said from the pantry.
“We’ll do our jobs,” Mr. Carver said stubbornly. “That’s all we can do. It’s what Honeybelle would want us to do.”
As I hung up the leash, it hit me then that Honeybelle would have enjoyed knowing that she had triggered exciting town gossip. It was just the kind of thing that made her laugh. I only hoped she didn’t have any more surprises stored up for us.
CHAPTER EIGHT
All spring and summer she was a classy southern lady. And then football season started.
—TEXAS TRADITION
I continued to take Miss Ruffles for her morning runs. And every morning—no matter how early I started—the black car was sitting outside the gate. Sometimes a second car sat with the first. Sometimes one of the cars followed us.
“Have any thoughts about paying Mr. Postlethwaite?” Mr. Costello asked one morning after rolling down the car window, keeping pace with us on the street.
“Not today!” I replied with a friendly wave before cutting across a playground.
They didn’t get out of their car to approach me. Maybe the Texas heat was too much for them. But they still made me nervous.
The following Saturday, I was scheduled to take Miss Ruffles to the first Alamo football game of the season. Honeybelle had told me Miss Ruffles was an unofficial mascot of the University of the Alamo football team. Coach Hut Hensley had always had a Texas cattle cur on the sideline when he coached, and it was tradition to continue to have a cattle cur at the games. Honeybelle had agreed to honor that tradition by providing the dog. She handed over chaperoning duties to me, citing her sore knee. The last thing she wanted was to break a hip, so I took Miss Ruffles to the game two weeks after her death.
My first mistake was showing up at the alumni office in the wrong clothes.
“Oh, sugar, you can’t wear a yellow shirt in the stadium on the first game day of the season. Or any game day!” The secretary looked horrified. The name plate on her desk said TAMMY JAYE and was decorated with Texas stars. She said, “Alamo colors are red and white.”
“Sorry.”
“No worries!” She leaped up and unlocked a closet with a key, which she tucked into her bra when she was finished with it. “My favorite part of this job is helping outfit Alamo fans. I have to keep all these clothes locked up, though, or they just walk off by themselves. Here’s a hat—perfect.” She handed over a large white cowboy hat with a sequined red hatband and a silver star so big it was a cartoon. “And this belt is so cute! I’ve been waiting for just the right person to come along for this. Oh, and I can give you this vest, too—red and white with silver, see?”
I took the giant white hat and the sequined silver belt, but looked at the spangled red vest with doubt. It had silver tassels. “That’s going to look funny over my yellow shirt.”
“Well,” Tammy Jaye said, and stopped. She bit her lip. She had an impressively large hairdo and a red and white dress that said she’d been to Victoria’s Secret for her underwear. She waited for me to catch on.
It took half a minute for me to realize she meant for me to remove my shirt and wear the vest alone. I shook my head. “I have not lived in Texas long enough to walk into a stadium wearing tassels.”
She understood. “Okay, how about a nice, simple T-shirt?”
She handed over a sleeveless red and white University of Alamo T-shirt with sequins surrounding a picture of the Alamo cowgirl. “Gaudy” wasn’t a word that began to describe it. I was grateful that at least the outfit didn’t have a battery pack and lights. When I went into the bathroom to wrestle it on, I discovered it was too small—more like a size Miss Ruffles could fit into. If I’d had another cup size or two, I’d have passed for a stripper. When I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink, I caught Miss Ruffles looking as if she didn’t recognize me anymore.
When we came out of the bathroom, I nearly ran smack into President Cornfelter, who was standing in front of the closet, pulling out Alamo hats, shirts, and sweaters as if to save them from a fire. Tammy Jaye had sucked in a dismayed breath to see her supply being ravaged.
Cornfelter swung around and caught sight of me. And Miss Ruffles. He dropped his armload of booty.
The first time I’d seen President Cornfelter, he’d been pulling the cork on a bottle of Honeybelle’s favorite chardonnay in her pastel living room. In that room she sometimes closed the pocket doors for privacy so the household couldn’t hear what was going on. Whether holding a social occasion or a business meeting, Honeybelle preferred to keep some secrets. That day, the doors were open just an inch.
At the time of his visit, I’d been outside with Miss Ruffles, throwing the ball for her in the yard. Not knowing Honeybelle was entertaining, I’d let the dog into the house, and Miss Ruffles had gone barreling through the rooms in search of her mistress. She nosed open the pocket doors and dashed into the room. With a happy yip, she took a flying leap into the tufted silk cushions of the sofa and nuzzled Honeybelle with affectionate whines.
Honeybelle had gathered Miss Ruffles close to her bosom, cooing to the dog and smiling up at her guest through her eyelashes. “Don’t you just love her zest for life?”
She made the question sound naughty. But some instinct told me she had said it to defuse an argument.
At that inopportune moment, they realized I was in the doorway. President Cornfelter must have assumed he was alone in the house with Honeybelle. He turned brick red at the sight of me. If he could have magically made his wedding ring disappear, he’d have done it. But he was caught—a married man smelling of aftershave while standing over a woman whose rose-colored lipstick exactly matched the big lingering smooch mark next to his mouth. On the glass-topped table in front of the sofa stood a vase of flowers that I guessed he had brought for her. Daisies and carnations—a humble bouquet Honeybelle normally would have turned up her nose at, but today she had given them a place of honor. It was a signal that he was either a potential new boyfriend or a man who had come prepared to ask for a big favor. Which probably involved money. And yet there was tension between them.
“Hannibal,” Honeybelle said cordially, “this is my assistant, Sunny McKillip. Sunny, this handsome specimen is President Cornfelter, from the university. Sunny’s from Ohio, Han. Would you like to repeat what you just said to me? So she could hear it?”
He made a choking sound, and after a split second of married-man mortification, he handed Honeybelle a glass of wine.
For no reason whatsoever, Miss Ruffles leaped up from Honeybelle’s lap and sank her teeth into the university president’s hand. Maybe she had heard what he said to Honeybelle.
He screamed, and Miss Ruffles let go, but not before there was blood dripping on the carpet and smearing on the cuff of his white linen suit. Cornfelter shrieked at the horror of his own blood loss. Honeybelle jumped up and began alternately soothing both her visitor and her barking dog.
I got a wet towel to blot the carpet and called for paramedics.
; Thing is, although Honeybelle and Cornfelter had been sweet as pie to each other while I was in the room, I sensed I had interrupted something less than friendly. Honeybelle’s flirtatious tone hadn’t matched the hard light in her eyes. And Cornfelter had been courtly, but I had the impression that was behavior he could put on as easily as a bow tie. I think Miss Ruffles knew something else besides romance was going on between them.
At the alumni office, Miss Ruffles bared her teeth again at President Cornfelter.
He backed up into the closet as if he hoped to climb inside and slam the door. “Keep that animal away from me!”
I had a good grip on the leash. “I’ve got her. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry! I could have had nerve damage, you know. She did real damage to my hand.” He held out his injured part. A pathetically small Band-Aid covered what was left of his wound. “Well, the first bandage was much larger.”
I said, “Miss Ruffles has had all her shots.”
“I had to get a tetanus booster. It was very painful.” More to himself, he said, “I should have asked Honeybelle to pay for it.”
“You could talk to her lawyer now,” I suggested. “He’s taking care of her finances. He might write you a check.”
Cornfelter scrambled out of the closet and stepped to a safe distance. He must have become aware of how ridiculous he was looking to Tammy Jaye. He straightened his Alamo tie. “All that’s water over the dam. I’m devastated that dear Honeybelle is no longer with us.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t attend the memorial service.”
“Yes, well, I had a scheduled meeting I couldn’t cancel.”
“When did you see Honeybelle last?” I asked while he was still shaken.
He put on a mournful face. “I may have been the last person to see her alive.”
“I heard you saw her the morning she died.”
He came clean. “Yes, I … I was buying a box of pastries to bring to my special fundraising committee that morning. I came out of the bakery, and there she was, looking beautiful in her car. I offered her a doughnut.”
“Did she accept it?”
He stared at me, finally noticing I was asking strange questions. “Why would you want to know…? Look here, I’m very sorry about Honeybelle, but life goes on. I’ve got to get out to the donors. Tammy Jaye, why don’t you just bring an assortment of shirts and hats to my private box? I’ll distribute them myself. Before the game starts, please.”
“Of course, sir.”
He bolted out of the office.
Tammy Jaye picked up the items he’d left on the floor, shaking her head. “He’d clean out my whole supply if he could carry it all. They call him Hannibal the Animal, you know—always taking more than his fair share.” She caught herself being disloyal. “But you look adorable! Now, how about a new collar for Miss Ruffles? Red and white, of course.”
Of course. Suitably decked out, the two of us were ushered into a golf cart driven by a young man named Cody, who had dimples and a ready smile. He wore a red and white Alamo rodeo-style shirt with white jeans and cowboy boots. The closest he ever got to a horse, I suspected, was the polo player that galloped discreetly across his clothing. He drove our golf cart around the perimeter of the stadium parking lot where the tailgate parties sprawled out.
At other colleges, I had seen plenty of game-day tailgating, but the Texans took this particular American form of entertaining to a totally new level. They had tents and RVs set up with smoking barbecue grills and tables laid with baked beans and cole slaw and plenty of beer in coolers. Plates were piled with chili dogs and red hots and sausages, nachos and tacos, plus ribs people gnawed on with pregame enthusiasm. And did I mention the beer? I discovered an invention I had never heard of before—the Kegerator, which kept multiple kegs of cold beer on tap for drinking, but also for squirting at people. Each party blared country-western music, and the cacophony was impressive.
There were other mascots besides Miss Ruffles, I discovered. Only in Texas would a school feel the need to have three. One was a bespangled cowgirl on an excitable black horse. The other was a boy in a cowboy suit with a huge head and a Texas-sized cowboy hat. He wore a pair of pretend six-shooters that he pulled on unsuspecting fans in the tailgate section of the parking lot.
On the front seat of the golf cart beside Cody, I tried to look inconspicuous, while Miss Ruffles sat on the raised backseat like the homecoming queen. She knew just what to do. When she yipped at the beer-drinking tailgaters, they tossed her bits of meat still hot from the grills. A few students rushed over to pat her, and she panted happily.
We weren’t outside for ten minutes before I began to worry about her safety. Was Miss Ruffles going to choke? Be poisoned? Or what if someone in the crowd got too close and grabbed her? Could I chase a drunk student around the whole parking lot to save her? Now that half the town knew she was the heiress to Honeybelle’s fortune, she was worth a lot of money. Could I protect her?
Unaware of my growing concern, Cody happily made conversation. The only downside was that he kept calling me “ma’am,” when I couldn’t be any more than two or three years older than he was.
“With all this food, ma’am, I used to be afraid Miss Ruffles would get sick in the golf cart. But she has an iron stomach, doesn’t she?”
“Just about everything of Miss Ruffles is made of iron.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. I heard she took a chunk out of President Cornfelter. Were you around for that?”
I was the one who called 911 to summon the ambulance, which was overkill in my view, but Honeybelle had gone all southern belle and made a fuss of President Cornfelter’s wound. Instead of answering Cody’s question, I said, “Are people allowed to carry beer into the game?”
“Technically, no, ma’am. They’re not allowed to carry firearms, either. The administration keeps threatening to start checking for those, too, but you know how it is.”
The marching band led the fans into the stadium, where ponytailed cheerleaders whisked and fluttered their pompoms. The huge crowd already assembled in the stadium seats roared with approval. When our golf cart reached the field, all the players wanted to rub Miss Ruffles on her head before the game. I was surprised that she put up with their affectionate manhandling. Maybe the enormous players reminded her of the cattle she was intended to herd.
On the sidelines, we stayed in the golf cart listening to the steady noise of the crowd while the teams played their game. Miss Ruffles barked at touchdowns no matter who scored. The cowgirl on the black horse took a celebratory gallop up and down the field when Alamo finally kicked a field goal. The pistol-packing cowboy pretended to have showdown gun battles with the opposing team’s mascot—some kind of pig.
At halftime when the band took the field, I led Miss Ruffles to the fifty-yard line, as instructed. She barked at the musicians while they played the theme from Star Wars and some Michael Jackson tunes and made formations on the turf. She strained at the leash as if she wanted to slip her collar and chase the musicians around until they were herded into a nice, manageable group.
At the end of the halftime show, I took Miss Ruffles back to the golf cart, and the young man from the alumni office said, “Ma’am, when Coach Hensley was alive, they had a Texas cattle cur that chased a Frisbee out on the field during halftime. It did tricks and ran around the band. You seem to have a way with Miss Ruffles. Any chance she could learn to do that?”
Chasing a ball in the fenced backyard was one thing, but turning Miss Ruffles loose in a stadium full of drunk football fans sounded like a catastrophe in the making. But I said, “I’ll work on it.”
“Mrs. Hensley always wanted Miss Ruffles to do the Frisbee act, but she couldn’t teach her.”
“Miss Ruffles is headstrong.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cody said. Then, “It’s too bad Honeybelle passed before she got the stadium thing done.”
“The stadium thing?” I said.
“Yeah, she wanted the univer
sity to name the stadium after her husband, Coach Hut. Hut Hensley Stadium. I drove her around all last year, and I got the idea she was working on talking the board into it. All it took was money—that’s what she said.”
“Why didn’t they name it for him?”
“President Cornfelter said we need a whole new stadium. This one’s getting too old. Honeybelle didn’t want to pay for a new one, though, just to fix this one up. So they were working out a deal, I guess.”
“Who’s they?” I asked, thinking of the scene I had interrupted in Honeybelle’s house. “President Cornfelter and Honeybelle?”
“Well, them and others. When she rode around with me last year, Honeybelle talked about the naming rights with a bunch of people. Board members. Alumni donors. But they were on Cornfelter’s side, all trying to sweet-talk her into building a new one. She wasn’t backing down, though. She was one tough customer.”
“Yes, she was.” I thought to myself that although she hadn’t backed down, she hadn’t won the battle either. Lately, she had been suffering a lot of setbacks. The stadium issue, the garden club debacle, the biting incident, the family squabble about the wedding Posie wanted to throw.
Cody sighed. “It’s a darn shame she passed before it came together.”
I wondered if Honeybelle’s will had anything to say about a new stadium. All I knew for sure was that nothing could happen for the year we were supposed to take care of Miss Ruffles.
Judging by the first half of the game, it looked as if Alamo was going to lose their opener by an embarrassing margin.
I said to my escort, “Do Miss Ruffles and I need to stay until the end of the game? I mean, what’s the crowd like when the game’s over?” Worrying about her safety had started to wear on me.
Cody scanned the stadium with the eye of an expert. “It’s not a bad idea for you to get out of here before Hades breaks loose.”
I decided to take Cody’s advice. Miss Ruffles and I slipped out through the team entrance and headed for home. I was greatly relieved to have her safely out of there.
