In High Cotton

by Kelsey Browning

  As much as he loved Jenny Cady, and as much as he wanted a weekend of uninterrupted time in her bed, he couldn’t let her mother loose on his town. God only knows what would still be standing when he made it back. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “You’re a stubborn one, Castro.”

  He looped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in for a side hug. “Just like looking in the mirror, Cady.”

  “Since you’re snowed under, I have a proposal for you.”

  Suspicion swarmed over Teague, making his scalp itch like fire ants had built a nest in his hair. But seeing as he planned to make her his mother-in-law at his first opportunity, there was no need to shut her down out of turn. “I’m listening.”

  “Colton was mighty perturbed about that whole sheep incident.”

  Perturbed? The guy was one twitch away from a grand mal seizure. “Perturbed doesn’t begin to define what he was.”

  “What if I could take that little inconvenience off your hands?”

  “Meaning?” Man, he hoped she wasn’t getting ready to tell him she’d sold the thing. Wouldn’t that be just great?

  “Maggie, Sera and I could do some poking around. Figure out what’s going on with that sculpture.”

  Whew. At least she hadn’t taken it. He wouldn’t have put it past her to have thrown it away. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re coming to me asking for permission instead of doing whatever the heck you want and asking for forgiveness later?” Suspicion? Now those fire ants were in full-blown attack mode. He made a show of looking over Abby Ruth’s shoulder. “Tell me where you’ve hidden Abby Ruth Cady’s body.”

  “I may be an old dog, but I can learn a new trick now and again.”

  Teague snorted to himself. Abby Ruth asking instead of just plowing forward? About like an ass suddenly deciding to leave a barn full of hay and take a sightseeing trip into the Grand Canyon. “What’s in this for you?”

  She gave him a glare that would’ve shrunk another man’s balls. Teague’s were made of titanium. Had to be if he planned to have both Cady women around for the rest of his life. “Maybe we just want to do a good deed,” she said.

  “If Sera were the one talking to me, I might buy that. But you? Naw. You always have what us police types like to call motive.”

  She started strolling again. A casual movement he didn’t trust in the least. “Fine. Maggie heard the rumor that Colton was grumbling about firing Jenny.”

  “What?” Damned if that one word didn’t come out an octave higher than it should’ve. But if Jenny lost Colton as a client, it meant more money troubles. And her troubles meant major love life. Love life? Hell, just plain ol’ life problems for Teague. “He can’t do that.”

  “As Summer Shoals’ biggest claim to fame since the first Mrs. Summer tiled the huge fountain in front of Summer Haven, I’d say he can.”

  “I…I need to—”

  “Tadpole, I hate to point this out, but you can’t do a damned thing about this situation. Not really. Only lead we’ve got is down in Palm Beach, which is a few miles outside your jurisdiction. What if folks in Bartell County found out you were spending more time trying to protect Jenny than you are them? Probably wouldn’t go over too well.”

  She had a point. Summer Shoals wasn’t a violent town by any means, but his first duty was to protect the people here. Colton was a resident, but this was art, not life or death. “I don’t know…”

  “Tell you what, if Maggie, Sera and I get this little snafu cleared up right quick, then none of us will have a thing to worry about.”

  How much trouble could Abby Ruth and the others get into tracking down a sheep made out of old junk? Yeah, he probably shouldn’t think that over too hard. “If…if I say okay, it’ll be on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “None of you make a move without telling me about it first.”

  “Tadpole—” she gave him an exaggerated wink that made his head start itching again, “—you have my solemn word.”

  “He actually went for it?” Sera couldn’t believe her ears when Abby Ruth told her and Maggie that Teague had agreed to her scheme. Talk about lovesick. The man was obviously terminal. When Sera had first arrived in Summer Shoals, he’d nearly arrested her for boondocking. He’d been one tough cookie.

  Abby Ruth plunged her hands into her back pockets. “Told y’all not to worry about him. Besides, it makes perfect sense. He’s shorthanded, and we’ve got time on our hands. It’s a win-win.”

  Sera wasn’t sure Teague would translate it quite that way, but what the heck. If her own days might be limited here at Summer Haven, then she was all for the chance at solving another big case. “Let’s go negotiate with Colton. I’ll drive.”

  Maggie’s face squinched up like a puff of wind had hit her. “Maybe I should drive.”

  “Or me.”

  Sera quickly pointed out how being around all Colton’s sandblasting and blowtorch activity would ruin their paint, and the other ladies, who adored their trucks, quickly gave in.

  “Here we go,” Sera said. She cranked up the old van and gave the dash a pat as the vehicle sputtered before catching and moving with a little zest.

  In the passenger seat Maggie held Sera’s computer on her lap, and in the back Abby Ruth was cussing up a storm every time Sera hit a pothole.

  Just for the fun of it, Sera swerved hard to the right to bounce through another one.

  “Hell and damnation,” Abby Ruth muttered, rubbing the top of her head. “You have a sixth sense about those things?”

  “Sorry,” Sera said sweetly, “I was trying to miss a…a…possum.”

  Maggie leaned over and whispered, “Nice try, but possums are nocturnal.”

  Would Sera ever get used to the Georgia wildlife? Sure, she’d had a run-in or two with coyotes near her California home, and the Santa Monicas were famous for mountain lions and rattlesnakes. But here in the South? Little critters ran out in the road like they were looking to commit animal-cide.

  When she’d dodged another few almost road kill victims, they made it to Colton’s workshop. Even from outside, the whoosh of a blowtorch was loud. They waited until the sound stopped to make their way inside. The cavernous space was filled to the brim with bicycle carcasses, bent aluminum armchairs and other castoffs.

  Colton might be a bit temperamental, but the man should get an award for his recycling efforts. If only more people would use what they already had instead of buying new. Like Maggie with that slow cooker. She’d wired it right up and the pot roast—or at least the carrots and potatoes Sera had eaten—had been delicious.

  Spying them, Colton paused and shoved his welding helmet to the top of his head, making his sweaty blond hair stick out from his forehead like a shelf. His face was its normal shade of ripe tomato, and sweaty to boot. He was wearing heavy-duty gloves and a thick apron. Sera had never seen the man in anything but tweed clothes and a beret, but it was clear when it came to his art, he worked hard.

  A recycler and a hard worker. She could be friends with someone like that.

  “Ladies.” His tone was polite yet was several thousand degrees cooler than his blowtorch had been. “Come to make a full confession?”

  Abby Ruth elbowed her way through a stack of random lengths of pipe, parts and license plates. “Ellerbee, is your momma still around?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She lives up in Ellijay.”

  “Good, because I’m gonna call her and tell her to jerk a knot in your uppity little tail.”

  For the first time ever, Sera witnessed his florid face dull to turnip purple.

  “That won’t be necessary.” He folded his arms, his eyes careful. Wary, even.

  “You promise to mind your manners?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He clapped his hands and his tone lilted cheerfully. “What can I do for you fine ladies this afternoon?”

  Abby Ruth gave a sharp decisive nod. “That’ll do. Not about how you can help us. It’s about how we c
an help you.” She motioned Sera forward.

  Sera propped her computer on a worktable littered with cut glass doorknobs, a stack of folding rulers, and an old metal watering can. She pulled up the sheep pictures Abby Ruth had saved to the desktop. “Is this the piece you saw online?”

  Colton leaned closer for a better look. “That’s the one. I still can’t believe y’all would—”

  Abby Ruth held up one finger, and he shut up.

  “We want you to look at some close-ups.” Sera enlarged a shot featuring the sheep’s poor little gas-can face. “This look familiar?”

  She scrolled through the handful of pictures Mrs. Caliper had forwarded to them. Then she zoomed in as far as she could. “Here’s a better angle.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly.

  “If only,” Abby Ruth muttered.

  Maggie waved a shooing hand at Abby Ruth. If part of their purpose was to keep Jenny’s job as his agent safe, then Abby Ruth needed to twist a lid on it.

  Colton pressed his face close to the screen. “Yes, those look like my materials, similar. Someone went to some trouble. But that’s not my work.”

  “What is it?” Sera asked Colton.

  “I can promise you that is not my sheep.” Colton sounded almost as apologetic as he did surprised. He strode over to what looked like a band of hungry hyenas with beer-keg bodies, measuring-cup ears, and teeth made of saw blades. “Look at the weld joint on this one’s front hock.”

  “Nice,” Sera said.

  “No, not nice. I don’t do fillet welded tee-joints, and that’s how the sheep is put together.” He upended one of the hyenas. “And take a look here.”

  They all crowded around the hyena’s hindquarters. “See? I sign all my pieces.”

  “Those poor suckers bought a fake!” Abby Ruth clapped Colton on the shoulder. “Well, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Guess this case is solved.”

  “No, it’s not. We still don’t know where the original is, and someone is forging my work.” Colton’s color was back with a vengeance. “That kind of flattery is illegal. I want this…this…forger brought to justice.”

  “And we just got you one step closer to that.”

  “Forward those photos to Sheriff Castro and me. He’ll need that to—”

  “I’ve already had a chat with the good sheriff,” Abby Ruth interrupted, shaking her head. “And that poor man. He’s so darned busy, I’m pretty sure I saw him meeting himself coming and going the other day.”

  “But this is serious business.”

  “Which is why we’ve gotten his approval to help you get this straightened out.”

  “You?” Colton said the word as though he’d found himself mucking through the landfill in bare feet.

  “We have solved several cases in the past few months. We find the forgery, that’ll lead us right to the original.”

  “That does make sense.” Then his left eyebrow lifted. “But in one of those cases, you were the perpetrator.”

  It was true. She’d tried to cover for her grandson’s bad throwing arm when he gave Colton’s sculpture a concussion, and repairing that junkyard Jesus had been no easy task. “But two other times, we caught people who were actually breaking the law. We do have a track record.”

  “Fine,” he grumbled.

  Abby Ruth slapped a hand on her waist and settled into a hipshot pose. “And we’ll only charge you twelve thousand.”

  “Wha…what?” Colton choked out.

  “If that sheep is worth fifteen, you’re still coming out ahead.”

  “Local law enforcement would look into it for free.”

  “Are you really willing to wait? Teague’s got a backlog. And if someone’s forging your work, he might not stop at one. At this rate, you’ll be out fifty grand before the week’s done.” Abby Ruth cocked her head, angling her chin the way she did when she was playing cat-and-mouse. “Especially when they made that chunk of change off the first one.”

  Colton hugged his midsection as though he’d been struck by a sudden case of gastrointestinal distress. “Five,” he said.

  “Ten,” Abby Ruth countered.

  “Seventy-five hundred.”

  “Done.” Abby Ruth’s lip curved, her satisfaction clear. Then she patted Colton on the cheek. “We’ll take cash or check.”

  Colton matched her grin with one of his own. “Not until you fork up the forger, you won’t.”

  Chapter 8

  Lillian stared at the prison cottage’s ceiling. From here on her cot, the popcorn tile on the far left looked a little like Harlan’s face. If she was suddenly imagining her deceased husband was smiling down at her, maybe she was just lonely. Since she’d called and made a deal with Angelina, Lil hadn’t had to pretend she was moping around the prison camp. She felt worse than she could have ever pretended. She’d let Daddy down three ways to Sunday and that was enough to kill her.

  Somehow, early release didn’t hold the appeal it had a week ago. And she felt as though she’d aged a decade in those seven days.

  “Miss H&M,” Martha said, “you’re not looking so good. You starting to believe your own press?”

  For whatever reason, Lil hadn’t shared her latest problem with her roommate. Why, when Martha had been so keen to help her get out of here? “Pretending to be old is hard work.”

  “Maybe you should go to the infirmary for real this time.”

  Probably not a bad idea. It had been gray and bleak here the past few days, and not just inside Lil’s heart. Maybe the nurse could put one of those blue mood light contraptions on her. That might perk her right up.

  Lord, it was bad enough she was bamboozling all the people in Summer Shoals about where she’d been for months. Now she was trying to fool herself too.

  “If nothing else, the walk’ll do you good,” Martha cajoled.

  Why not? At minimum, she could ask for a little vitamin C. After all, the only cafeteria food holding any appeal for her these days was a cinnamon roll, and she was pretty sure there wasn’t one good vitamin or nutrient in those half-cooked balls of dough and white sugar.

  Martha kept her company on the stroll to the main building. As Lil peeled off to head to the infirmary, Martha laid her hand on Lil’s shoulder. “You’re going to be okay, ol’ gal.”

  Lil wasn’t quite as certain that was the case.

  She scribbled her inmate code on the form at the front window of the infirmary and sat on one of the cold metal chairs. Even though she sat there alone, voices in her head taunted that she’d failed the Summer family.

  “Inmate Fairview,” the nurse said, “I didn’t expect you back so quickly. Didn’t the cream help with your arthritis pain?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m doing much bet…” For goodness sake, what was she supposed to say? Continue with the lies or admit she’d been faking everything? She was just so darned tired and confused. “I’m a little achy since weeding flowerbeds.”

  “You don’t look well today. Maybe we need to switch you to work that’s not so manual in nature for the time being.”

  Lillian loved working out in the courtyard, but if she had to give it up to get back to Summer Haven faster, so be it.

  “Hop up here.” The nurse patted an exam table. “Let me take a look.”

  It seemed to take all of Lil’s energy to lift herself up onto the paper-covered table. The nurse finally gave her a little boost and then kept a hand on her back as if steadying her.

  The crinkling of the paper under Lil’s butt reminded her of how thin and crepe-y her skin felt lately. Heck, she wasn’t playing at being old. She was old.

  The nurse checked Lil’s mouth, nose, pulse and breathing. Then she asked, “Are you having difficulty with finding words?”

  “No. Well, maybe.”

  “Trouble with motor functions or getting lost?”

  “How would I get lost? You don’t let me get thirty feet out of a guard’s sight. What kind of question is that?”

  “
So you’ve been a bit agitated, I see.”

  “I am not agitated. I’m…I…I don’t know what I am. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.”

  “Why don’t you lie down, and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Probably going to fix a shot of vitamin C, D, K and any other letters of the alphabet.

  But a few short minutes later, in strode Warden Proctor, her mouth drawn down. “Inmate Fairview,” she said, “the nurse tells me you’re exhibiting symptoms of severe depression.”

  What in the world? Lil had been blue a few days since coming to prison, but severe depression? Well, that was serious. “I’m not—” She tried to sit up, but the warden placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t tax yourself. Your physical health is already fragile, and your state of mind surely isn’t helping anything. You’ll be staying here in the infirmary until we make other arrangements for you.”

  Lil’s heart rate climbed, yet her stomach felt as though she’d gorged on too much kettle corn, achy and tight. “What do you mean, other arrangements?”

  “It means—” the warden smiled, a strangely sad smile, “—I’m calling the Bureau of Prisons to push for your compassionate release immediately.”

  In order to earn the money Maggie desperately needed to fix the Tucker and then give their full attention to finding whoever was behind forging Colton’s sculpture, Sera had decided they needed to put Hollis’ case of the missing trash to bed once and for all. She was driving to the landfill while Maggie and Abby Ruth rode along, only this time they were well aware it would be closed. After all, even she didn’t drop off her recycling at midnight.

  Sera pulled the VW Van to the backside of the landfill and hid it behind a couple of dumpsters so it wouldn’t be visible from the road. She cut the engine, then grabbed her hemp tote bag from the back and hoisted it over her shoulder.

  Abby Ruth pointed to a rise overlooking the fenced-in area. “We should be able to keep an eye on everything from up there.”