by Nancy Martin
As beautiful as the scenery was, I had a hard time picturing someone like Poppy Appleby enjoying her newlywed status in such a wild and remote place.
Across the driveway were several corrals and a pole barn with a very old tractor sitting in its open doorway. In one corral, several horses swished their tails under the shade of another big tree. I recognized Hondo by his spots. Ten’s Jeep was parked in the shadow of the barn.
Out in the pasture sat a livestock trailer with its gate down, as if awaiting an animal.
In another corral, Ten worked a young chestnut horse on a lunge line. The horse reared up on his hind legs and batted at the rope, trying to escape. Ten pulled him down and got him cantering again, but the horse bucked with every few strides and shook his head as if objecting to the exercise. Ten steadily held the line in one hand, and with the other he wielded a long, thin whip with a small flag on its tip, gently flicking it behind the horse to keep him moving. The young horse fought the line, occasionally throwing his weight against it, but Ten coaxed him back into a canter every time.
Ten looked happy to be doing battle with a large, angry animal.
Ten also looked good in his dusty jeans—a thought I tried to wash out of my head as soon as it arrived.
From the backseat, I grabbed the container of Mae Mae’s frozen étouffée. I left the car door open on the off-chance Fred woke up and wanted to take a tour of the place. In the searing sunlight I went over to the fence. I balanced the container on the top of a fence post and climbed up to hang on the top rail to squint into the sun. The ranch smell was different from the smell of farms in Ohio—drier, certainly. The angle of the sun was sharper in Texas, too. But the chirping of swallows in the barn sounded the same. Ten’s voice—quietly reassuring as he talked nonsense to the horse—sounded like every other person who worked well with animals.
After about ten minutes, the chestnut was sweating and calmer. Ten eased up on the line, and the horse immediately slowed to a tired walk. Ten drew him nearer and gave his long neck a rub before unclipping the line and turning him loose. The horse swung his head to bite Ten, but he missed and trotted away to the other side of the corral.
Ten ambled over to me. Wearing those delicious jeans.
Unaware that my impure thoughts were roaming around his pockets, he tucked his sunglasses into his shirt and used his teeth to pull off his gloves. “When are you going to learn to wear a hat?”
I realized my skin was prickling as if more freckles were bursting out before his eyes. “I’ll remember one of these days.” I shaded my eyes with my hand. “You were having a good time out there. You must like animals that can break you into little pieces.”
“I appreciate a challenge,” he agreed with a grin. “Stick around. In a little while I’m going to lure my bull into a trailer.” He pointed at the vehicle parked out in the pasture. “We’ve got the Junior Rodeo later this week, and he’s the main attraction. Getting him loaded up is the ultimate test.”
“You like the danger,” I said.
“Don’t start. I’ve heard all the lectures before.”
“Who’s lecturing?”
“My mom, my dad. Poppy.”
“You look like you know what you’re doing. Here, I brought you some dinner from Mae Mae.”
His eyes lit up, and he reached for the container. He unscrewed the lid and took a peek. “Give Mae Mae a big kiss from me.”
“I’m getting along with her better now, but we haven’t reached that stage.” I threw caution to the wind. “What are the chances Mae Mae could be your fiancée’s next big television star?”
“She sure has the right cooking skills.” Ten screwed the lid back on the container.
“And a big personality, too. Did you mention Mae Mae to her?”
“To Poppy? Not me. She said you brought up the idea. I might have chimed in, that’s all.”
“Well, thanks. Poppy dropped by this morning to propose an audition. I think Mae Mae’s really excited about it.”
“Mae Mae deserves something good.”
“Thank Poppy for me.”
“Thank her yourself.”
Even though Poppy and I seemed to have reached a détente, I said, “It might be heard better, coming from you.”
Ten glanced up at me on the fence, then focused on placing the container carefully back on top of the post. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Listen,” I said after a strange second slipped by, “I appreciate the help on the restraining order thing. I should probably get another lawyer, though, considering you’re already working for the Hensley family, right?”
“You’re right again,” he said. “I know all the lawyers in town. Let me think about who could help you. Somebody will be the right fit.”
“Someone who can put me on a payment plan. I’m not exactly rolling in money.”
“Not yet,” he said, voice loaded.
I had a feeling my inheritance from Honeybelle was in big jeopardy, but I didn’t say so. “I don’t suppose you heard anything from your future in-laws at Sunday supper? About the order against me or Miss Ruffles, that is?”
“It didn’t come up, and I didn’t ask,” Ten said. “There was a lot of wedding talk, which I tend to tune out.”
I smiled. “That’s how you end up wearing a powder blue tuxedo with a ruffled shirt, you know.”
“I trust Poppy to make the right decisions.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “Trust is … nice. You’ve known each other a long time?”
“Since kindergarten.” Ten lifted a loop of rope from the gate and let himself out of the corral. “Junior high trip to Dallas, senior prom, all that. She went off to college out east, though, and I went to A&M, so it wasn’t until these last couple of years that we got together again. She came around when I … when I needed somebody. She was great. Really helped improve my outlook on things so I could get back on my feet.”
With a nod, he pointed out a field where a patch of grass had been blackened by a bonfire. It looked like the kind of spot where he dragged branches and scrap wood to burn; a brush pile was stacked there, ready for a match. The wood leaned against the frame of a wheelchair. Its seat was burned away, and the rubber wheels were long gone, but the structure of the chair had been left to hold the wood for fires. To me, it looked like an act of rage had first parked the wheelchair there, and someone took satisfaction in seeing it in the center of many bonfires thereafter.
It was a kind of monument to his recovery from whatever bull-riding accident had injured him so badly. I didn’t say that, however.
Instead, I climbed down from the fence and faced him. “So you were friends first. That’s supposed to be good for a marriage.”
“We were never friends,” he said in a tone that surprised me. “Maybe that will change once she moves out here.”
“She’s moving here?” I glanced at the ramshackle house, thinking back to when I overheard Posie talking to Hut about her plans to move into Honeybelle’s mansion and to pass her own home along to Poppy and her new husband.
“Sure she’s coming here,” Ten said. “After the wedding.”
Over by the house, Fred jumped down from the car and stretched stiffly. Awake from his nap, he spotted us and waddled over to me with the slow gait of an old animal with a bad case of arthritis. I gave him a pat, and he stretched his neck to touch his nose to Ten’s knee for a tentative sniff. I held my breath.
Ten bent to give him a reassuring stroke. “Where’s Miss Ruffles? You could bring her out here to show her some cattle.”
I had been waiting for him to recognize the dog in my company wasn’t Miss Ruffles. I wasn’t ready to explain my errand yet, though, so I said, “I don’t see any cattle. Except the Brahman bull out front. Hellrazor, huh? Is he yours?”
Still smoothing Fred’s coat, Ten shot a grin up at me. “He’s my nemesis—the bull that near killed me. When he got to be too old for rodeoing, I bought him, gave him a place of honor in the front pasture.
This fall, I’m going to use him for some breeding.”
“Do you raise cattle?
“I keep a few to work the horses. They’re out in a field.” He waved vaguely past the corrals. “I thought I might try raising some rodeo stock, too. Bulls for riding, steers for roping, that kind of thing. I can’t give up on rodeo yet.” He gave Fred one last pat and stood tall again. More firmly than before, he said, “Where’s Miss Ruffles?”
There wasn’t any use putting it off any longer.
“That’s why I’m here.”
I tried to muster my courage, but my hands were suddenly shaking. Now that the time had come to tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Concerned, Ten reached out and pulled me by my elbow into the welcome shade of the tree. On the other side of the fence, the horses dozed, tails occasionally twitching. The air was blessedly cooler there, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
“What’s going on?” Ten asked. “You look … What’s wrong?”
“I should have brought the notes so you could read them yourself.”
“What notes?”
“I didn’t tell you Sunday morning because the cop was there, and then your … Poppy, that is, was … Look, this is bad news, so I’m just going to blurt it out. Miss Ruffles has been kidnapped. On Saturday after the football game, after you came to Honeybelle’s house, I went outside to get her and found a note—”
“Wait. What? Kidnapped?”
“Dognapped. Whatever you want to call it. It happened late Saturday afternoon. You came over, remember? To check on us. But Miss Ruffles must have—”
His voice cut sharper still. “You mean she’s actually been taken? By who?”
“I don’t know who. The note said—”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Who would kidnap a dog? Let alone Miss Ruffles? Everybody in town knows Miss Ruffles.”
“I don’t know who did it exactly. The notes weren’t signed. For all I know, it could have been you. You were the last visitor at the house that afternoon, but—”
“Why would I take Miss Ruffles? Why would anybody?” He shook his head as if couldn’t get his brain to register what I was telling him. “This doesn’t make any sense. What did the note say?”
“The first one said they had taken Miss Ruffles, and she would be safe until Monday when they’d communicate their demands.”
“What kind of demands? How do you know she’s safe?”
“I don’t. They sent me some of her hair in the envelope. They want ten thousand dollars.”
“Do you think she’s still alive?”
I couldn’t answer the question. Couldn’t find my voice. Something big and horrible welled up inside me, and my vision blurred.
He put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. He calmed himself down, too. “Okay, sorry. Take it easy.”
It took almost a minute for me to pull myself together. Finally I said, “She’s got to be alive.”
“I’m sorry I said that. Don’t be upset. They can’t exchange her for money if she’s dead.”
I let out a hiccough that maybe sounded like a sob, and I clapped one hand over my mouth to stop more from coming out. He squeezed me again, and I steadied myself. I said, “I’ve got to figure a way for them to show me she’s alive. A picture with the newspaper or something. That’s what they do on TV.”
“We’ll figure it out.” His voice was calm and steady again. “Don’t worry about that now. Can you tell me everything? Start at the beginning.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay.”
As if suddenly aware of what he was doing, he took his hand away from my neck. More coherently than I thought possible, I told Ten the whole story from the moment I realized Miss Ruffles was gone—hoping like crazy she had been kidnapped as a college prank after the football game, looking for her with Gracie, being followed home by the police Saturday night. I left out only a few details, like the one about Posie’s car. I got as far as telling him about Monday morning when the mailman delivered the letter about meeting at the stockyard. At that, I stopped.
“Did you go to the stockyard last night?”
“Yes,” I said. “It didn’t go well. A man rode up on an ATV and—”
“An ATV? Like a four-wheeler?”
“Yes. I didn’t know him. He … he chased me, lassoed me, and knocked me down. He threatened me. But he didn’t give Miss Ruffles back.”
Stone-voiced, Ten said, “He hurt you? Are you all right?”
Unconsciously, I touched the Band-Aid on my cheek. “I’m okay now. Mae Mae helped me. I was … it was scary, that’s all.”
“Okay, back up.” Ten took a closer look at my Band-Aid and made a visible effort to control his temper. He asked, “Why didn’t you tell Bubba that Miss Ruffles was missing when he went to Honeybelle’s house on Sunday morning? If you had told the police then, you wouldn’t have been knocked around by some stupid cowboy on a—”
“The first note told me not to contact the police,” I reminded him, “or they’d kill Miss Ruffles. I couldn’t risk telling any policeman.”
“I’ll do it,” Ten said. “I’ll talk to him now, get the cops working on this while—”
“Hang on. There’s more,” I said. “A lot more.”
He scanned my face and saw I hadn’t gotten to the tough part yet. He waited.
I pulled myself together and said, “When the man on the ATV knocked me down, he told me to stop asking questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I assumed he meant about Honeybelle. About her death. I’ve been … Okay, I might have asked around town about the circumstances of her death.”
The breeze whispered between us, and Fred sat down in the dust.
“Ten,” I said, “I don’t think Honeybelle died of a heart attack.”
Ten said nothing and didn’t move, but he was very much alert and listening.
“I think something happened to her. Something terrible. And whoever did it took Miss Ruffles, too.”
Still Ten didn’t speak. But he watched my face, listening to the tone of my voice as well as my words.
I said, “When Honeybelle died, her nurse drove her straight to Mr. Gamble, who declared her dead and cremated her body right away—in the blink of an eye, really. The family had a quick, private funeral, and that would have been it until the garden club decided they wanted to have a public memorial service. Honeybelle was gone so fast—it was crazy how fast all of it happened. But since then, I’ve remembered several strange things—things Honeybelle said before she died, about people and her money and her family. And things people said to me. In the crowd outside the church, someone made a remark—a crack, really, that some folks wanted to … to bump her off. It just all jumbled around in my head, so I started getting curious.”
“And?”
“For one thing, I wonder about Honeybelle’s will. In it, she specified we should take care of Miss Ruffles for a year, and you said during that time all the people who hoped to get money or whatever from Honeybelle had to wait. If Miss Ruffles was out of the way, though, they’d have their money right away.”
“You mentioned this before. You think Miss Ruffles was taken because…?”
“Because everybody gets what they want if she’s gone. I know you don’t believe that. But I … I think somebody killed Honeybelle, then grabbed Miss Ruffles when they realized they wouldn’t get their share of her money for a year.”
“Like who?”
“Like the university, for one thing. President Cornfelter was trying to get Honeybelle to pay for a new stadium.”
“Every college in Texas wants a new stadium.”
“But she didn’t want to pay for this one. She only wanted to pay naming rights on the old one. Unless her will … What does her will say about funding the stadium?”
Automatically, he said, “I can’t tell you what the will says.”
/> “Okay, don’t tell me. But think about it for yourself. Does the possibility of a new stadium make a motive for murder?”
Grimly, Ten looked off into the scrub. At last, he said, “In Texas? A new football stadium makes a motive for just about anything.”
“Okay, then. Maybe lots of other people want their share now, too. Not just business people around town, but … well, Hut Junior for one.”
“Hold on.” Ten stared at me, incredulous. “You think Hut killed his own mother? Then kidnapped Miss Ruffles to get what’s coming to him?”
“Makes sense, right?”
“No, it doesn’t make sense. No sense at all. Hut’s a nice guy. I’ve known him all my life. He loved his mother. He was broken up about her death.”
“He’s also angry that he isn’t going to run Hensley Oil and Gas.”
Ten didn’t argue with me. He looked away again, though, and took off his hat and ran his hand across his short hair.
I said, “What doesn’t make sense is how Honeybelle died. She couldn’t have had a heart attack, but she might have been poisoned or … or medicated somehow. And afterward—you said yourself you couldn’t get a death certificate. It’s unusual not to find the death certificate, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. I stopped at Gamble’s again today, but his nephew didn’t know where to find it either. Come to think of it, Honeybelle’s will pays off the mortgage on his funeral home.” He caught himself. “You didn’t hear that from me, got it?”
“Got it.”
Ten let out a sigh of exasperation. “This is all … I hate not knowing how everything works. If my dad was here—if he would at least answer his phone messages—things would be different.”
“He doesn’t answer his phone?”
“They’re in Greece. My mom booked a cruise, and they’re spending a week on some island. I got a postcard from them,” he said with a twinge of bitterness, “but they don’t answer any of my calls. And my grandfather is somewhere in Mexico where there aren’t any phones.”
