The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Well, she did, sort of.” Brian looked away. “I felt bad that I couldn’t . . . you know, ask her to stay here, especially because she sounded so scared.” With a lopsided grin, he added, “But you can see that there’s not a lot of extra room. It would be pretty hard for Casey and me to study—with my mother hanging out here, I mean.”

  “True,” McQuaid agreed. But he thought he understood. Brian believed that his mother—who wasn’t the most liberal person in the world—wouldn’t be able to deal with Casey, which was undoubtedly right. Hell, he thought he was pretty liberal and he wasn’t exactly having an easy time dealing with it.

  Brian ducked his head. “I love Sally, but to tell the truth, Dad, the Juanita thing scares me. I used to sort of like it when Juanita showed up, you know? She was funny. Funny ha-ha, I mean, always clowning around, good for a lot of laughs. Now I know there’s nothing funny about it.”

  Then, watching his son, McQuaid understood something else. Brian was worried that Casey, or maybe he and Casey together, wouldn’t be able to deal with his skitzy mother, whose behavior was totally unpredictable.

  “I’m sorry, son,” McQuaid said, with genuine sympathy. “It’s a tough situation.”

  “Tougher for Sally than for us,” Brian said. “I wish there was something I could do for her. But as long as Juanita’s around, she’s going to go on jumping into the deep end and yelling for somebody to throw her a life preserver.” He sighed. “So there’s no point in feeling guilty about it, I guess.”

  Reassured by what seemed to him to be an entirely adult assessment of the situation, McQuaid put his arm around his son’s shoulders, gave him a warm hug, and said good-bye.

  But as he got in his truck and drove away, he felt a deep regret, wishing he had been able to tell Brian that he had seen him with the girl, wishing that they could have talked about it—what it might mean, where it might go, where it might end.

  All he could think about was the two young people, Brian and Casey, holding each other against the world in a long, deep kiss.

  Chapter Nine

  The Manzanilla is a highly productive olive that originated in Spain many centuries ago and is widely grown in the Middle East and the United States. The trees are moderately resistant to cold weather and begin bearing when they are about five years old. The medium-size olives are primarily used for the table. The stuffed green olives and black olives you buy in the supermarket are most likely Manzanilla. The fragrant oil has a slightly peppery bite.

  The Picual is an early-ripening, cold-tolerant olive cultivar from Spain. Picual olives, which are primarily grown for their oil, account for a quarter of the world’s olive oil production. The oil is known for its floral aroma (you may detect a tomato-leaf note), its complex flavor, and its stability, which gives it a longer shelf life. Extra-virgin oil from Picual olives has a high level of polyphenols, an organic compound which is known to have antioxidant effects. Diets that contain antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables are linked to lower risks for diseases like cancer, heart disease, stroke, cataracts, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and arthritis.

  China Bayles “Virgin Territory” Pecan Springs Enterprise

  It was just after three when Maddie dropped me off at Manzanilla, circled around, and drove back down the lane toward the ranch house. I watched her go, thinking about my question: Do you love Boyd enough to marry him? Yes, I’d been meddling, and she had every right to keep her own counsel.

  But all the same, I thought, she had given me an answer. She might be flattered by his unexpected attention and hopeful that marriage might keep her from losing her trees, but she didn’t love him. Which didn’t mean that she would tell him no. In fact, I had the feeling that she might be all too ready to say yes.

  So now I really wanted to meet the man who had asked her and form my own opinion about him. I also wanted to know what Ruby knew about this potential marriage. Was this why she had brought me out here? To find a way to keep Maddie from marrying this guy?

  At the cabin, I went into the bedroom to wake Ruby from her nap. But her bed was neatly made and empty, and there was a note on the dining table. Pete came by and we’re going for a walk along the river, she wrote. Sofia asked me to remind you to drop in and see her at her cabin this afternoon. She has something she wants to talk to you about—seems pretty urgent.

  Pete? Oh, yes. Pete Lawrence, the guy I had talked to in the lunch line. Tall and lean, broad shoulders, gingery hair, wide smile, very blue eyes in a pleasant, sun-browned face. A nice guy who managed the ranch’s olive groves. And looked like a cowboy.

  I rolled my eyes. Ruby has a tendency to go off the rails about cowboys, like the bull rider she’d fallen in love with at the rodeo. But the bull rider was last summer, almost a full year ago, and he’d followed the rodeo out of town. She and Hark Hibler, the editor of the Pecan Springs Enterprise, had seemed pretty serious for a while—at least Hark had. The same flame hadn’t seemed to light Ruby’s fire, though. While she and Hark still went out together, they were mostly just friends. And as far as I knew, she hadn’t lost her heart to a cowboy yet this year. She was due, and Pete—who had seemed pretty nice—might just be the one.

  Well, since Ruby was out for the afternoon, I might as well go next door and see what Sofia wanted to talk to me about. Maybe I could get her to tell me something about Boyd. I picked up a pencil and added my own note to Ruby’s.

  Heading next door to see Sofia.

  • • •

  TO the southeast, over the trees, a bank of dark clouds was rising, and the afternoon sunshine was come-and-go, scattering cloud shadows along the lane. I remembered that the previous night’s weather forecast had said something about a storm moving up from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but I’d been busy and hadn’t paid much attention. It was almost oppressively warm, and the still air was heavy with the fragrance of the honeysuckle that clambered up the lattice at one end of Sofia’s porch. The outside of the cabin—Picual, it was called, in honor of another of Eliza’s Spanish olive trees—looked very much like ours: hand-hewn gray logs, metal roof, wide front porch with a time-worn floor. A path lined with large round river rocks led from the lane up to the porch steps. Beside the steps: two large clay pots of bright red geraniums and a shallower pot containing a big mother aloe vera plant and several baby plants—pups, they’re called. The collection looked very pretty.

  But while the interior of our cabin had been remodeled and completely modernized, Picual looked very much as it must have looked when it was first built. I assumed that this was the way Sofia preferred to live: in a single room, about twenty by twenty, with a door in the front and in back, a small cooking and eating area tucked into a corner, a narrow bed pushed against a wall, and a tiny lean-to bathroom built against the back of the cabin. For some, the living space might have been a tight fit. But the bed was covered with a bright woven blanket and heaped with pillows, there were several colorful rugs on the floor, and the space was cozy with painted furniture, a pair of low bookcases, and interesting Mexican and macramé hangings on the walls. There was a cast-iron pot of simmering frijoles on the stove, its rich fragrance wafting through the air. The fireplace, like the one in our cabin, was built of stone, but there was no gas log and what was left of a recent fire was still visible on the hearth.

  The cabin’s small windows didn’t let in much light, and it took a moment or two for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Sofia was sitting in a chair beside the fireplace, her feet resting on an upholstered ottoman, a brightly striped serape spread over her lap.

  “You’ll forgive me for not getting up,” she said. “It’s been a long day already.”

  It was quite warm in the room but the old woman wore a rust-colored knit shawl over her shoulders. The silvery crown of her coiled hair shone in the dim light. When she put out her thin, wrinkled hand to me, her fingers felt like brittle twigs. But her dark eyes were alert and searchin
g, filled with questions. I felt again as I had earlier, that she was looking inside me for something—what, I wasn’t sure, and I felt vaguely uncomfortable.

  “Our tea is waiting for us on the table.” She spoke slowly, not stiffly but with an endearing formality, as though she considered each word, each phrase important enough to choose and arrange it carefully. She gestured toward the square table in the kitchen corner. Covered with a red-checked gingham cloth, it held a bright blue teapot, two green and orange mugs, and a yellow honeypot. “Bring me a mug, please, with honey, and one for yourself. Then come and sit beside me.”

  In a moment I was seated on a low stool, near enough to touch her. The tea was a cheerful mint with a spritely lemon tang—lemongrass, I guessed. We sipped in appreciative silence for a few moments. Then I asked, “You wanted to see me?”

  Sofia’s voice was soft and I found myself leaning forward to catch her words. “Ruby tells me that you understand about Maddie’s inheritance.”

  I spoke carefully. “I understand that Eliza left the ranch to Maddie and that Boyd—or rather, Boyd’s lawyer—has challenged the will in court. There was a ruling, then an appeal, and another ruling.”

  She put her mug down on the small round table beside her, next to an intricately carved wooden box about the size of a hardcover book. She pulled her dark brows together, watching me, and again I saw the canny intelligence in her eyes.

  “Jimmy Bob Elliott is a silly old fool,” she said sharply. “But he’s not enough of a fool to act on his own account, especially where Boyd Butler is involved. It was Boyd who challenged Eliza’s will.”

  “Speaking on behalf of lawyers, I’m glad to hear that.” I smiled. “It’s a very bad idea for an attorney to go around filing suits that his client hasn’t explicitly approved.”

  “Yes.” Sofia pursed her lips. “The legal actions were all Boyd’s, despite his lies to Maddie.” She slid a glance at me. “Sarita has told me that Boyd and Jimmy Bob Elliott have had many long conversations about how to get Eliza’s will set aside so that Boyd can inherit.”

  I raised my eyebrows. The words his lies had been spoken with severe contempt, and she had checked with a glance to be sure I understood her point. But I wanted to know more about her informant, whom both Ruby and Maddie had mentioned.

  “Sarita—she’s your niece, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. She is the daughter of my sister. Sarita knows very well what goes on in Boyd’s house, and she tells me.” Sofia smiled, obviously pleased with Sarita’s private communications. “She has worked there for many years, as his cook and housekeeper. Her husband, Manuel, oversaw his father’s olive groves. Now it is her son Mateo who manages the trees and produces the oil. Sarita knows what Boyd is up to.”

  Sarita was also the person who, according to Maddie, had told Eliza about the adulterated olive oil. Boyd seemed to have blamed Mateo for the so-called mix-up in the labels, which would have been a natural and very sufficient reason for Sarita to come to her aunt, protesting the innocence of her son. This back-channel communications between the households wasn’t at all surprising. Skilled employment in outlying ranches is often a family affair, and the families of neighboring ranches tend to intermarry. And of course there is always a lot of gossip and tittle-tattle back and forth, just as there is in every extended family.

  But there might be something else going on here, something more purposeful and well, underhanded. Or if not underhanded, at least, not quite aboveboard. Sofia might look like somebody’s sweet little grandmother, but she struck me as a shrewd old lady who knew exactly what she was doing—and what everybody else was doing, too. I wouldn’t put it past her to use her niece as a spy, and perhaps to spin her report just a little.

  Or a lot. Was Boyd the villain that he was being painted? Chet certainly had a reason to bad-mouth him. And what about Sarita? Had she been honest? Had she told the truth? Or had she come to Sofia with an invented story she thought her aunt might be glad to hear? When it came to tale-telling, the truth is often the first victim.

  “And you’ve told all this to Maddie?” I asked. “What Sarita told you, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course.” She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “I love Maddie like a daughter, but I am sorry to say that the girl is not listening to me, or to her head. She stupidly chooses to believe Boyd’s explanations—not just about Jimmy Bob Elliott challenging the will but about the labels on the olive oil.” She gave two sharp clucks of disapproval. “The bad olive oil. You know about that?”

  I nodded.

  She was silent for a moment, staring down at her hands. When she lifted her head to speak, her expression was profoundly dark. “And about Eliza? You heard how she died?”

  “I know that Eliza drowned.” I gave her a probing look. “Is there something else to know?”

  She returned my look, straight and direct. “Not to know, if you are talking about proof. But I am very sure in my heart”—she pressed both hands together over her chest—“that it was Boyd’s doing. In her last days, Eliza was terrified of the dark. She insisted that the curtains be drawn against the night, and she slept with the light on beside her bed and in her bathroom. She would never have gone out into the dark by herself. Never. But she would have gone with her nephew, especially if he gave her some sort of convincing explanation.” Her voice quavered, intense. “And he was here that night, you know. He could have unlocked the side door before he left and come back later. Sarita has said that he did not return home until very late that night, which seems suspicious to me.” She sighed. “But the authorities could find no proof.”

  Exactly. No proof. Nothing but inference, hints, insinuation. There wasn’t even enough here to construct a circumstantial case.

  “So you and Sarita have talked about this,” I said. “Who else have you discussed it with?”

  “Only Maddie.” A pause. “And you.”

  I heard the emphasis on the last two words. “And why me?”

  But she only shook her head. I gave her a moment to answer the question and then I said, “Maddie tells me that she and Boyd are discussing marriage. She seems to be considering it seriously. Do you think she really wants to marry him?”

  “No!” Sofia spit out the word. “I do not believe she wants to marry him, no! But she is afraid of losing the trees. Maddie is like Eliza in that way, you see. The trees, the trees, always the trees—you would think they are the only things in this world that matter.” She raised her hands and let them fall back into her lap. “The trees are what she worries about. She thinks marriage might be the easiest way to solve her problem. To keep the trees.”

  I chuckled wryly. “If that’s her whole reason, she’s likely to be disappointed. Marriage—especially under these circumstances—can create a great many problems, rather than resolve them.”

  “And there’s something else.” Sofia put her hand on my arm and leaned toward me. Her voice was urgent. It held a quaver that seemed almost exaggerated. “Maddie is in danger, you see. I believe Boyd killed his aunt because he expected to inherit her half of the Last Chance Ranch, and more. Now, he wishes to marry Maddie and then he will—”

  “Hold on.” I pulled my arm away from her. “Inherit . . . more? What more do you mean?”

  “It’s not the ranch. Why should Boyd want more land when he can’t manage what he has? And he isn’t interested in the trees, either.” She gave me a knowing glance. “It’s the Butler oil land in West Texas. In Pecos County. When the probate judge—Tinker Tyson—gave his second ruling, he said that Maddie can keep that property, and the income from it, as long as she lives. That’s when Boyd decided he must marry Maddie. He wants—he needs—that money.”

  I frowned. This wasn’t making a lot of sense. “But Boyd must know there’s no income from that land. Ruby says that the oil has been depleted.” In fact, when Chet told me that the probate judge gave that land to Maddie, I ha
d assumed that it was the kind of award that might look good on paper but was in reality a meaningless consolation prize.

  “It is true that the land has produced no income in over two decades,” Sofia said. “But the drillers have found a new way to get oil out of the ground. The Butler leases are due to expire before the end of the year, all of them. There will be a great deal of money to be made when they are renewed or sold.” She gave a wry chuckle. “Boyd understands that Tinker Tyson made a mistake. He should never have given that land to Maddie. But now it is done and Tinker says he cannot undo it.”

  “Ah,” I said slowly. “I see.” I had read recently about the West Texas oil boom—quick profits, high returns—created by the new hydraulic fracking technologies. The boom would last only as long as the drillers were able to get oil out of the ground, and then it would be over and the land would be fit only for grazing again. Or, because fracking is an even greater polluter than drilling, the soil and groundwater could be so contaminated that cattle couldn’t graze on it. But Sofia was right. Until the oil ran out or prices took a tumble, whoever owned that property stood to make a substantial amount of money. The leases in Maddie’s pocket were a compelling dowry.

  “Yes, exactly,” Sophia said, as if she had followed my thought. “And Boyd, I am sorry to say, needs money. His father lost most of his share of the Butler oil land through drink and bad management. Boyd has gambled away what was left of it.” She added reproachfully, “He has even mortgaged his half of the Last Chance.”

  I wondered whether the information about the gambling was more of Sarita’s back-channel communications to her aunt, or whether it was locally common knowledge. But if it was true, Boyd wasn’t exactly a safe marriage bet.

  “Does Maddie know about the gambling? And the mortgage?” Surely that would give her second thoughts.

  “She has heard of both from her lawyer, Clarence Cooper. Boyd has told her that the mortgage has been paid.”