Snoop to Nuts (11 page)

Selma Rickles was nowhere to be seen when I ran up the steps and into the store. There were a few shoppers grazing up and down the aisles. One woman was having a loud discussion with her friend over whether to buy the pecan barbecue sauce or the pecan ice cream sauce.

Miss Amelia strode around the big room as usual, despite being warned away. She was filling half-empty tables with bags and gift boxes stuffed with pecans or pecan sandies and bourbon pecan balls and Outhouse Moons. The bigger boxes held Classy Tassies, along with a half-dozen turtles, angel cookies, and pecan date bars. Sometimes she put in pecan pralines. Sometimes oatmeal pecan cookies. Miss Amelia changed up the boxes from time to time, depending on what she felt like baking that month. Every box was tagged with the Blanchard family crest and tied with a big green bow.

“Selma upstairs?” I asked, stopping beside my busy grandmother.

Miss Amelia frowned hard when she looked up. She put a finger to her lips then rolled her eyes toward Ethelred Tomroy sitting in the rocking chair near the front counter. She shook her head. “She called.”

“When’s she coming?”

“That’s the thing. She’s not.”

“What happened? I thought she had something to tell us.”

Miss Amelia looked around then nodded toward the kitchen doors.

“I’d like to show you something I’ve been working on, Lindy,” she said in a loud voice. “Really proud of it. Come on out and tell me what you think.” She headed toward the back of the store. I figured this was the way to impart whatever the message from Selma was without Ethelred’s perked-up ears overhearing.

Miss Amelia leaned in close to whisper. “That woman’s determined to be my protector. She’s making note of who doesn’t come in anymore for their pie and who is really supporting me by buying bags full of pecan boxes. Can’t get rid of her.” She rolled her eyes at me.

I smiled as I tried to get past Ethelred, but the woman had placed the chair strategically so people coming to the counter or to the kitchen had to go around her.

“Now, stop a minute, Lindy.” Ethelred grabbed my arm. “I want you to tell me what you think of this automobile I’m thinking of buying to replace my old Buick.”

“In a minute, Miss Ethelred, okay? I’ve got to—”

“No. I need your advice. Now look here, it’s called a SLK Class—whatever that means? They don’t have nice names like some—you know the Mustang and such. Just this SLK Class.”

“A Mercedes?” That stopped me cold.

“Yeah.” The woman looked up at me as she waved a sleek brochure in my face. “That’s it: Mercedes-Benz.”

“You thinking of buying one?”

“Wouldn’t be looking, young lady, if I didn’t plan on buying.”

I bit my tongue. “Any of them would be fine, Ethelred. Good cars. Now, I’ve got to—”

“Okay, go ahead. Think I’ll take a look at those Porsche cars first anyway.”

“Ethelred, why the heck would you be spending money like that?”

“Might as well spend it while you’re still here,” the woman said and set to rocking hard in her chair, slapping her brochure closed in her lap.

“But . . .” I had a few more things to add but Miss Amelia called me from out in the kitchen.

Once through the door and huddled with Miss Amelia back by the coolers, I asked, “What in the heck’s going on with Ethelred? She’s thinking of buying a Porsche or Mercedes to replace that 1991 Buick of hers?”

Miss Amelia waved a hand in the air. “Pay no attention. She gets like that from time to time. I’m sure she’s not cashing in all her bonds to buy a car.

“Anyway,” she went on, looking over to where Treenie was pulling a batch of cookies from the large oven. “Selma asked us to come over there to the parsonage. She said she wants to show us something she just found.”

“Found? She give you a clue what it is?”

“Not another word, but I’ll tell you something, Lindy. The woman is awfully nervous. Hard for her to get the words out. I told her we’d be there as soon as you got back from wherever you and Hunter got to. You learn anything, the two of you?”

“Nothing but a bunch of folks from the church were touring the building around that time. Milo Froymann—you know him?”

Miss Amelia nodded. “Two special pecan pies a week. I’d worry about him eating so much sugar but he’s out riding every day. Got quite a few head of cattle to take care of.” She shrugged. “Maybe he feeds the pies to his hogs, for all I know.”

“Not much help there. Whole group from the church came that day. He was a little put out because they showed up an hour before they were supposed to. Milo was going to give them a tour of the exhibits, some kind of talk, I guess. Not too happy about it. Seems Marti Floyd acts as some kind of director during the fair and he set it up.”

Miss Amelia nodded as she took off her apron and hung it up on a peg beside the back door. “I know Marti. I’ll call him myself, see who he dealt with at the church and if he ever found out why they came early.”

She grabbed her handbag from under one of the stainless steel tables and we went out the back way, with Miss Amelia giving Treenie a warning to keep an eye on Ethelred since she liked to help herself to the spiced nuts and leave without paying.

“One box, okay,” Miss Amelia called out over her shoulder. “But if she starts loading her purse for relatives, distract her.”

*   *   *

We parked in the parsonage drive since there were no other cars blocking the way this time. The front door opened before we got up on the porch. Selma Rickles stepped out and closed the door quietly behind her. She motioned for us to follow her off to the side of the house, then stopped, waiting for us to catch up. “Sorry about this but something . . . well . . . I’m not sure. Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.”

She walked on ahead, limping down the garden path with me behind her, half admiring the beautifully tended beds all over again and half confused about where we were going.

Miss Amelia trailed behind me, saying nothing, probably feeling the way I was feeling—that maybe this wasn’t the time to be making over a special bloom or two.

Selma didn’t stop at any of the beds. She walked until we could hear the river, a mellow flow of water, then small rushes of sound from whirlpools trapping leaves and branches. I knew the sounds of the Colorado like a separate current running through my life and felt better just for being close.

Where the graveled walkway ended, Selma took a step beyond, off to where the rushes and tall weeds grew.

When she turned to look at us, she bit at her lip, then pointed down beside where she stood, to a wild stand of plants over six feet tall. The tall stems of the thick-growing plants were covered with purple spots. The flower heads were flat and wide, made up of many separate small white flowers. I didn’t need to be told what I was looking at: spotted water hemlock. Responsible for killing animals and men. And one man in particular, Parson Millroy Jenkins.

“Do you know what this is?” Selma asked, her eyes wide, voice breathless.

“Spotted water hemlock,” Miss Amelia said quickly. “Grows all over Texas, Selma, if that’s what’s worrying you. Not just down here near your garden, but out at the Rancho en el Colorado, too. Just about everywhere, wouldn’t you say, Lindy?”

I nodded. “I hope you weren’t thinking, because it’s found here, that anybody would think you’d be the one who—”

Selma was shaking her head. “No, no. That’s not it. Look down there.”

She pointed to the ground, to where the tall stems were pushing out of the damp earth. “You see those holes?”

Miss Amelia and I moved in close, with me getting down on my haunches to look.

“I never noticed them before today,” Selma said.

“Probably wild hogs. Lots of them around here.” I found it was necessary to soothe the distraught woman.

“I’ll bet anything hogs are smart enough not to dig up poisonous roots. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a wild hog problem in Texas.”

“Well, I have to agree with you there,” Miss Amelia put in. “It’s said the most toxic part is the root so I don’t imagine they spend much time digging down around them like that.”

“And if you look close . . .” Now Selma bent to point at where the earth had been disturbed. “You can see where the flat side of a shovel, or a small spade, dug right down and pulled the roots away from the plant. See that? See how you can see some of that yellowish root, where it’s been hacked off?”

We had to agree with her, not just a breaking away, but a distinct cut.

Miss Amelia stood back to look at the ground around where Selma was pointing.

“I don’t see any footprints,” she said. “Nothing to show somebody was down here.”

Selma only sighed. “If it happened last Sunday—that was only a few days ago but the ground’s damp down here. See how some of the earth is already sinking in around the hole where the roots were?”

“What are trying to tell us, Selma?” I came right out and asked.

“That’s the plant that killed Millroy. I’m sure of it. Somebody came here after that root. What I’m saying, Lindy, is that it was done on purpose—the digging, sneaking down here, taking the root home, grinding it up, and putting it into that Texas caviar Millroy ate at the Winners’ Supper.”

“You don’t think I did all that, do you?” Miss Amelia stood as straight as her back would let her and looked fiercely at Selma, who shrank under the look.

“No, ma’am. Sorry, but at your age . . . well . . . I just don’t see you sneaking over here like that. And anyway, you just said yourself, you’ve got plenty of hemlock on the Rancho en el Colorado.”

“I can still dig a root or two, if I have to,” Miss Amelia groused while barely listening and not taking kindly to references to her age and any diminished capacity.

“Well.” She finally got over being put out and folded her arms as she rocked back on her heels. “This does put a different light on things. Any idea who might have done it? How’d they figure to get by you without you seeing them?”

“I can’t see the garden from the house except a little bit of it out the bathroom window.” Selma chewed at her lip. “I’ve got kind of an idea, though. That was what I was going to talk to you about before I even came down here and found this.”

“You want to go up to the house and talk?”

She shook her head. “Not in front of Dora. She’s been through so much. What I’ve got to tell you could just devastate her.”

She turned terribly hurt eyes on us. “I know the very thought is just about killing me.”

The church was the quietest and safest place to go. We turned on one overhead light against the growing dark. Miss Amelia and I settled into one pew, Selma in the pew ahead of us, sitting with her arm over the back, looking deeply into our faces before beginning whatever it was she had to tell us.

“I know you’ve noticed my leg,” she said, surprising me since I hadn’t expected her to begin this personally.

We nodded.

“Well, of course you would. I’m not bringing it up for sympathy. It’s just that my leg’s got a lot to do with what I’m going to tell you.”

She took a deep breath then turned to look hard at the front of the church—a bare place with nothing beyond the podium. When she turned back, her chin was high. She seemed buoyed and ready to tell whatever it was that was so hard for her to say.

“It’s about how I got this bad leg,” she said. “My ex-husband, Shorty Temple—we lived in Tupelo—he hit me with our car.”

I stifled a gasp.

Miss Amelia sat still and waited for more.

“Shorty was a drinker.” Selma looked down at her hands. Her limp hair fell forward so it covered one cheek. “Until he got addicted to alcohol, he was a good man. He managed a B&D Sporting Goods store there in Tupelo. He made a good living. We were doing well. I taught school. After the drinking started, he lost his job and then lost his confidence and we lost our house. Everything went wrong. When Shorty had nobody left to blame for the way his life was going, he started blaming me. You’ve heard all of this before, I know. Happens to a lot of people. Thing is, when it’s you, it’s always different.

“Shorty began to take things out on me. At first he’d just holler. Then he started to hit me and one day he hit me so bad I had to have my jaw wired back together.”

She looked down at her hands. “I can see by your faces you’re thinking I should’ve just left. And you’re right. I should’ve. But I didn’t. I remembered the good days and kept thinking, ‘This will pass. He’ll stop drinking.’ Millroy kept telling me I had to get out for my own safety. Dora was in a state. Every day she called to plead with me to get out of there. Well, finally I agreed. I couldn’t take any more so I packed a suitcase and went to stay with Millroy and Dora. I left a note for Shorty that I was leaving him for good. I guess that was the last straw for him. One day, he came after me. I was out walking in the neighborhood and I heard a car coming up behind me pretty fast. By the time I turned around, the car hit me. I flew. I don’t know how far. Straight through the air. Landed on a neighbor’s steps. The car kept on going. The sheriff was there in a couple of minutes, then the ambulance. Something said maybe I broke my back. Guess a bone was sticking out of my leg. The thing was, somebody got the license number and they picked up Shorty in half an hour. He was back, driving through Dora and Millroy’s neighborhood like he was still looking for me to be lying there.

“Shorty went to prison for attempted murder.”

Right then the silence in the church didn’t feel like a good thing. Miss Amelia laid a hand on Selma’s, over the back of the pew.

“Terrible,” Miss Amelia said.

“Shorty never said he was sorry. I got letters from prison saying how he was going to get even for me sending him there. How a wife shouldn’t turn on her husband the way I did. And all kinds of crazy things. Since he was locked up and I was dealing with enough, learning to walk again—I’ve got a steel rod in the leg instead of bone—I never answered him and just threw them away. Then he started writing to Millroy, threatening him for taking me away from our home. Millroy prayed about it for a long time and then went to the police. Shorty was back in court. He got more time. But the letters stopped.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“About seven years ago.”

“How long was Shorty in prison for?”

“He got ten years.”

“And what was the additional sentence?” Miss Amelia asked.

“That was it, all together.”

“So ten years. Doesn’t sound as if he’s anybody to worry about.”

She cleared her throat. “Thing is,” she said. “He came up for parole and the warden said he was well behaved, that he was going to church, and talking to some of the other men about religion.”

I didn’t say anything, suspecting what was coming.

“He got out a year ago. He came to the parsonage in Tupelo, looking for Millroy. We called the police but he left town or something. Anyway, they didn’t find him.”

Miss Amelia sat back and thought awhile. “If I get what you’re saying, you think he followed you here to Riverville?”

She nodded.

“But Selma, the kind of man you’re describing would have come after Millroy with a gun. Maybe a knife. Not poison.”

She lowered her head. “When Shorty was saved in prison, his mind was already half destroyed. When he got religion, he got it all the way. What I heard was that he was a kind of fundamentalist believer. You know, the kind who tells everybody else that what they believe is the wrong thing in order to make themselves important. Poor Shorty, it was a way to feel better about himself and, I guess, feel better about what he did to me.

“He went back to writing letters to Millroy before he got out. Nothing threatening. Millroy thought it was an answered prayer at first when Millroy said he’d been saved and started quoting the Bible. Millroy even answered a couple of them. Until Shorty began saying things like Millroy had to get straight with the Lord, stop preaching some of the things he was preaching, and only use the Bible for his homilies.”

I made a face. “What did he mean by that?”

“He started saying that the Lord was going to test Millroy and find him wanting.” She held very still. “Millroy showed me one of the letters he got after Shorty was released. Shorty was saying that Millroy needed testing, to see if he was preaching the true word. This time he quoted Mark 16:18. You know that one?” She looked to me. I shook my head, then threw in a shrug.

“It’s about the snake handling,” Miss Amelia said. “Can’t quote it, though.”

Selma nodded. “The verse goes:
They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well
.”

If a feather had fluttered to the floor at that moment, it would have made a crack in that thick silence.

“What did the pastor do after that?” Miss Amelia finally asked.

“Millroy went back to the police. Shorty was warned but the letters didn’t stop until a couple of months before we left Tupelo.”

“Why do you think he stopped writing?”

“Maybe because he had to stay out of trouble or face going back to jail. By then we were all spooked. Dora was frightened. She insisted Millroy look for a job someplace else, where Shorty couldn’t find us. Millroy hated leaving Tupelo. He was happy there, but for Dora, and I suppose for me, he found this position here.”

“Has anyone seen Shorty here in Riverville?” I asked.

“Nobody but us would know him.”

“Have you seen him?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t seen him, but after we moved here, Millroy got a letter one day. Shorty’s return address in Tupelo was on it. Said he was going to come talk to Millroy. Millroy tried to hide it from me and Dora, but Dora found it on Millroy’s desk and was in a tizzy, afraid he’d come and hurt him. Got so bad, Millroy was even thinking about moving again. But no more letters arrived.”

“What did that last letter say?” Miss Amelia asked.

Selma shrugged. “Just said he was thinking of coming to Riverville. That there were things they had to talk out between them. Knowing Shorty’s history, Millroy was almost ready to go see the sheriff. He was mad this time. He said Shorty’d taken up all the space in his life he was going to get. That was the week before the fair closed.”

“Why didn’t he talk to Sheriff Higsby?” Miss Amelia asked.

Selma shrugged. “I don’t know. Something else seemed to be on his mind that last week. Something different worrying him.”

“Did Dora notice?”

“We both did. She said he wouldn’t talk about it. Just that he was prayin’ on it and would act when the time was right. Dora didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything, but I think we were both afraid it was something to do with Shorty again.”

“So you divorced the man.”

She nodded. “Right after he went to prison. I filed papers then took my maiden name back.”

“So what you’re saying is you think Shorty did this.”

Selma looked down at her hands. “I can’t help but think it. I’ve been going half crazy since it happened. I mean, I can’t say anything to Dora—she’s in a terrible state as it is—but I’m afraid she’s thinking the same thing.”

I waited a minute, then said, “Whoever did this, Selma, had to know about Meemaw pretty well. I mean her always winning. How she brought two bowls with her. What our cooler looked like. How would a stranger, like Shorty, ever get that kind of information? And know who to try to blame it on?”

She shrugged. “Only thing I can say is Miss Amelia’s pretty famous here in Riverville. You know how men meet in the beer tent, always gossiping about one thing or the other—leastwise that’s what I hear. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to find somebody he could put the blame on.”

I wanted to cringe. Of course Meemaw was well known in Riverville. Of course she’d been winning for years. A few questions about the fair, about who was likely to win—anybody could learn anything about her. She was just Meemaw to me. To Riverville, Meemaw was famous.

Selma looked over at Miss Amelia with a lot of pity. “If it weren’t for hoping you did it, Miss Amelia, I don’t know how me and Dora would’ve gotten through the last few days. It’s like, as long as maybe Miss Amelia was getting even for being judged out of the competition, then it can’t be anything from the past. It can’t be anybody who can hurt us even more. Dora’s watched me suffer through all of this and she’s my sister. She’d do anything to spare me more grief. But I don’t want to be spared. I don’t want you accused, Miss Amelia. I just want the truth to come out once and for all.”

I felt as if my brain were going to burst. Too much. People with so many reasons for wanting to believe in lies—no matter who got hurt. I didn’t know who to get angry at first. I wanted to ask if Shorty was still in Tupelo and if Selma had an address, but there was the sound of a door opening behind us, and when I turned, Hawley Harvey stood there, slick black hair sticking out from under his big hat. His mouth dropped open when he saw us all together.