Snoop to Nuts (4 page)

Miss Amelia and I ran out into the big room where people were yelling orders at each other while someone knelt on the floor beside a person who had fallen.

People crowded around, demanding to know what was happening. Who was it? Some speculated somebody had a heart attack. “We need a doctor,” a man kneeling on the floor shouted. Word was passed. Soon the crowd parted and a doctor stepped up to lean over a prone body.

I slid around people standing in front of me, trying to see who was in trouble. Miss Amelia followed behind me, holding tight to the back of my shirt.

The head table was empty; only jumbled dishes were left on a cloth that had been pulled almost off at one end. The judges and fair committee folks were on their feet, staring down at the floor behind the table.

“Seizure!” Mike Longway passed the doctor’s words over his shoulder. “Somebody get something to hold down his tongue.”

Miss Amelia, behind me now, gasped. “Is that Pastor Jenkins on the floor?”

I got in as close as I could. I saw a flash of a blue jacket and gray pants. Arms were thrashing. Nothing about what was happening in front of me looked good.

“I think it is. He’s shaking all over.”

“Whatever happened?” Miss Amelia, hands to her cheeks, demanded over the growing noise in the room.

“I hear the ambulance,” I assured her. “They’ll get him right over to the hospital. He’ll be fine.”

The noise in the room quieted as men rushed in with a gurney, made space around them, and huddled over Pastor Jenkins. Soon they had him bundled in white sheets and lifted on to the stretcher.

Dora Jenkins, her face stricken, ran out beside the men. Next to her, Selma hurried as fast as her bad leg would let her.

When the ambulance, with one wild blast of its siren, was off to Riverville Hospital, there was a collective sigh of relief in the room. We looked guiltily around at each other, as if we’d been caught not doing enough for the poor man, or being too enthralled, watching him writhe on the floor. People spoke to each other in low voices as they picked up their things to leave, glancing over their shoulders in bewilderment.

With the fair closed and nowhere else to go with their shock at what happened to Pastor Jenkins, Rivervillians, thunderstruck over the events at the Winners’ Supper, headed, one after the other, to the Nut House, which Miss Amelia insisted on opening, over my strenuous objections.

“People won’t know where else to go,” she explained to me as she pushed the big door wide and hurried inside to set up a container of sweet tea and a stack of paper cups for anybody who needed a nice drink to soothe their nerves.

As the store filled, a fine mist of worry hung in the air around us, along with a lot of speculation. False medical information and a lot of cookie crunching went on as people ate pecan sandies and waited to hear news coming from the hospital. They turned to me pretty quick, knowing of my long friendship with Hunter. I guess they figured I gave them an edge on the news.

“Heart attack. Know one when I see one,” Ethelred Tomroy, blue ribbon still pinned to the front of her dress, announced as she made her way through the crowd to fall heavily into the rocking chair set near the front counter.

“Well, now,” Miranda Chauncey, one of the twins, said. “Looked like something bad. Don’t care what they call it.”

Melody stood beside her sister, hands crossed in front of her. Melody sniffed a loud sniff at her sister’s remarks. Her eyes, surrounded by deep wrinkles, could still stretch wide at some of Miranda’s more outlandish outbursts.

“You ask me”—Miranda leaned back on the counter, arms crossed over her chest—“I’d say it looked like some kind of gastric attack. All that pukin’ and shakin’.”

“Fer the Lord’s sakes, Miranda,” Melody, standing off to one side, chastised. “Will you have a little respect here? The reverend’s over there in that hospital fightin’ for his life, fer all we know. Just keep yer trap shut.”

“Just ’cause you can’t call a spade a spade, Melody, don’t mean I have to pretend everything’s nice as pie right along with you.”

Before the twins really laid into each other, Miss Amelia took the bag of pecan candy from Miranda’s hand, rang it up, then took a rumpled dollar bill from the woman’s wrinkled fist.

“What do you think happened, Lindy?” Jessie Sanchez, town librarian, our foreman’s daughter, and longtime friend, joined me off to one side, eyeing the chattering neighbors. “Have you talked to Hunter?”

I shook my head.

“I hope it’s nothing serious. I feel so bad for Dora. She’s new here and that’s almost enough trouble for anybody, let alone having this happen to her husband right there in front of the whole town.” Jessie’s pretty, dark-skinned face was drawn tight with worry.

People around us murmured sympathy for the reverend’s sweet wife but were soon back to speculation.

“Could be food allergies.” Ethelred, with the rocker going at a fine pace, stuck another of her theories out there. “The man was eatin’ up a storm all afternoon. Nothing in my prize-winning tomato puff to hurt him. Know that for certain. But something else did.”

“Wouldn’t it be awful if it turns out he’s allergic to pecans?” Someone sent a shock wave through the crowd.

Jessie, still beside me, shrugged. “I don’t expect we’ll hear anything too soon. Might not be until tomorrow . . .”

I was grateful when Mama came in to take Miss Amelia home. Meemaw closed the cash register with a final slam, and rolled her eyes at me, letting me know she was on her last nerve and couldn’t take any more.

“Think you might call Hunter?” she asked before she went out the front door. “See if he knows how the pastor’s doing?”

“I was thinking the same thing, Meemaw.” I leaned in to kiss my grandmother on the cheek. Even in her seventies, Miss Amelia usually had more stamina than women half her age. Tonight she looked as if she’d finally met a day that was almost beyond her fine-tuned ability to cope.

I stepped to a quiet corner of the room to call. His private cell rang a long time. I left a message to call me whenever he could.

I’d barely hung up when my phone rang.

Hunter, calling me back.

“It’s bad, Lindy,” was the first thing he said.

I frowned as the worried faces of Miss Amelia and the few stragglers still in the store turned my way.

“What do you mean ‘bad’?”

“I mean the pastor just died.”

“What!”

Miss Amelia tugged at my arm. People gasped and whispered urgently around me. I shook Meemaw off and stuck a finger in my ear so I could hear.

“Dead, Lindy,” Hunter said.

“Heart attack?” I demanded, then looked into Meemaw’s shocked face.

“Afraid not, Lindy. The doctor just came out to talk to the sheriff . . .”

His voice dropped. “Don’t say a word but he’s telling us it could be poison.”

I wasn’t about to add to the shock of the people in the Nut House. I never mentioned the word “poison.” I didn’t hint at anything beyond a sad, natural death. I let them commiserate and decide between them who would stay at the parsonage with Dora and Selma first and who would go over later. They were talking flowers and the eulogy—some opting for a few fellows on the board, one saying Hawley Harvey delivered a good eulogy . . .

When the shocked people were all gone and the store empty, I gratefully made my way up the stairs to my apartment and shut the door behind me.

I walked through my tiny living room, filled with ranch house castoffs, to my alcove kitchen, where I got myself a Coke from the fridge, then made a stop at the bathroom, so tiny it was one step from the toilet to the shower. Drinking from the Coke can instead of getting a glass dirty, I went into my bedroom with its twin bed, small dresser, and wall of bookcases. I kicked off my shoes, dug out an old pair of pajama bottoms and a faded T-shirt, and went back to the living room to sit down at the desk and flip the computer on, hoping to keep my mind busy until Hunter called back as promised.

I looked for a magazine article I’d copied. About a new strain of nut trees a lab in California was developing. Better, they claimed, than anything in existence. Almost totally drought resistant because the trees hoarded water in a wide network of deep roots.

It was the very thing I was after, except I was going for scab and other diseases as well. I leaned back to stretch, then rub at my tired eyes. How important all of that seemed a couple of hours ago. Now there was a dead man, and death sure eclipsed ordinary living.

I was too tired to concentrate and snapped off the desk light. For the next hour I paced back and forth, trying late-night TV then giving up and sitting down to stare at my phone.

When it rang, Hunter’s voice was serious, but hesitant. “Lindy? Did I wake you?”

“I couldn’t sleep . . .”

“I’m home now. What do you think about this poison stuff? The parson ate what everybody else was eating, didn’t he?”

“As far as I know. They’re not expecting some mass poisoning, are they? Any others been brought in sick?”

“Nobody. And I have to tell you, the doctor listed the death as suspicious. They’ve already taken the body for autopsy. Sheriff Higsby says they’ll have to run a full toxicology panel. First thing we want to know is what kind of poison we’re talking here.”

“Autopsy! Good Lord! Is that necessary? It will about kill Dora. Why, just the thought . . .”

“Got to tell you, Lindy, Sheriff Higsby’s already talking to people who were there. He’s asking questions. We can’t wait on this.”

“What does ‘suspicious’ mean exactly?”

“Murder, Lindy. Sheriff says it looks like murder, unless the pastor chose the middle of the fair supper to kill himself.”

I fell still, unable to quite grasp what he was talking about. Somebody murdered the parson? The man had been in town for only eight months. How’d he make that kind of enemy in so short a time?

“Looking close at his wife and sister-in-law, too.”

“Dora? Selma? Are you crazy? Those women wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“You ever hear of Lucretia Borgia?”

“That was a few years ago, Hunter. And why would his wife or sister-in-law poison him in a public place when they could take weeks or months to do it slowly at home?”

“That’s another thing. The sheriff thought it might be something that’s been coming on for a long time. Like a little bit of poison here and there. But the doctor says he doesn’t think so. A quick-acting poison from the symptoms.”

“What symptoms?”

“You know, throwing up and spasms and losing his ability to stand and then even to hear.”

“Terrible.”

“He thinks it’s something that works fast, and that brings me to another thing the sheriff was wondering about . . .”

I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

“Thought you should be warned. Sheriff Higsby says . . . well . . . because of the way the judging went . . . geez, I mean . . . he wants to talk to Miss Amelia in the morning.”

“Meemaw?”

“She lost, Lindy. Lost bad. Miss Amelia’s not used to losing.”

“And she killed one of the judges to get even?” My voice went an octave higher as the preposterous suggestion hit me. “You think she keeps a pocketful of poison for losing occasions?”

“She’s one of many people we have to talk to. Knew she had a hard day and didn’t want to push things tonight. I thought maybe you’d warn her and bring her in yourself, about ten.”

“For heaven’s sakes, Hunter. My grandmother? Poison a man over one more blue ribbon?”

“Had to tell you. We’re friends and all. Don’t worry, though, we’ll get it cleared up right away.”

“Friends! Suspecting Meemaw! You buzzard. You, you . . .” I took a deep breath.

“Just wanted to warn you, is all,” he was saying as I hung up.

*   *   *

I drove out to the ranch at 6 a.m. Nobody was up when I let myself in the front door. I wasn’t about to bother anybody. They’d know soon enough that Miss Amelia was under suspicion because of losing a contest to Ethelred Tomroy.

In the kitchen I put a pot of coffee on the stove and sat at the table with the newspaper I’d picked up in the drive. Story about the pastor being hospitalized after the fair was in there, but nothing about his death, and nothing about poison being the cause.

Soon enough everything would be out there for the whole town to wonder at:
Local pastor dead from eating local woman’s losing caviar . . .

I snapped my head back, closed my eyes, and groaned just as Mama walked, bleary-eyed, into the kitchen.

“Thought you were a dumb, noisy burglar, Lindy,” Emma said as she stretched and yawned. “What are you doing here so early?”

“Oh, Mama . . .” I felt my bottom lip start to tremble as it always did around my mother. “Somebody poisoned Pastor Jenkins.”

At first her mouth dropped open. She stared hard at me. “You sure?”

I nodded.

“That’s terrible, baby girl. Hunter tell you that? No wonder you came home.” Emma leaned down to kiss the top of my head, undoing me completely.

“Oh, Mama,” I blubbered. “The sheriff thinks maybe Meemaw did it because she lost the contest. They want her down to the station in the morning. I was so mad at Hunter for daring to hint that . . .”

“Hint at what, Lindy?” The weary voice came from the other side of the room.

Miss Amelia stood in the open kitchen door in her blue flowered robe and blue slip-ons. “What’s that boy saying to get you mad now? Seems we got enough to think about, what with poor Pastor Jenkins dying.”

Mama and I turned to watch the woman hurry over to turn off the coffeepot, spilling coffee all over the stove. She noticed us watching and got an odd look on her face. “What’s going on? You two know it’s only a little after six o’clock, don’t you? Who needs coffee this early? Justin’s probably gone out with the trees already and Bethany won’t be up for a couple of hours. If you’re thinking that Jeffrey will be needing coffee anytime soon, don’t bother. That slugabed won’t be out here until after lunch.” She yawned and shook her head.

“What’s going on?” She looked straight at Mama and then at me. “Something’s up. You two can’t hide a mouse, let alone an elephant, between you. You hear from Hunter again?”

I nodded.

Mama got up to put a hand on Meemaw’s shoulder. “Hunter told Lindy they think it was murder.”

“Murder? That’s crazy. I didn’t hear a gunshot—everybody in that whole place would’ve been screaming their heads off. Nobody coulda stuck a knife in his back—”

“Poison.”

Miss Amelia set the coffeepot on a hot pad then sat down hard in a chair.

“Poison? Why . . . All I’ve got flashing through my head are those men whose wives do them in. That’s sure not Dora.”

She thought harder. “Or a steer that eats the wrong plant and turns up his heels. That kind of poison?”

“Kind of like that,” I admitted.

“Never get me to believe it of Dora or Selma. Those are two fine ladies.”

“The sheriff thinks it happened right there at the Winners’ Supper.”

Now Miss Amelia was frowning hard. “Then half the people at the supper should be lying dead in the street.”

Miss Amelia thought hard for a long time. “Bet the sheriff wants to talk to me, right? Only thing the parson ate different from everybody else was my caviar, ’cause I wanted him to taste how good it really is. Sheriff want me down there this morning? That what you’re all upset about?”

I nodded. Miss Amelia got up and took the coffeepot to the sink, where she poured the contents down the drain and went about making a fresh pot. More than a subtle hint about my awful coffee, I imagined she just wasn’t thinking straight.

She turned back to Mama and me after leaving the coffeepot on the sink, where she’d set it. “Think I’ll go grab a little more sleep. I’ll be ready at nine o’clock.”

She headed for the kitchen door, then stopped and turned. “Any idea what a woman wears to get interrogated?”

She was gone and I was left alone with Mama to pass the next couple of hours. I called Ben Fordyce’s office at her suggestion. Ben was the family attorney. His office didn’t open until ten so I left a message there and at his home, saying how important it was we speak to him.

Bethany came down looking for breakfast at eight o’clock. I got an even bigger surprise when Jeffrey Coulter, all dressed up and in the kitchen by eight thirty, said he wasn’t hungry and took right off to look at a piece of property up toward Houston.

Bethany pouted when he left without asking her to go with him, which made Mama get her back up and tell her to stop acting like an idiot. “Get that boy right oughtta yer mind,” Mama warned in her best scary voice. “I don’t like him and I’m having a talk with Justin soon as I can. I think it’s time that one moved on.”

I got out of there before I joined the fight for no good reason. Almost nine. Time to hurry Meemaw along to her interrogation and time to get away before the whole family was mad and fighting though nobody knew exactly what they were fighting about. I imagined having your grandmother suspected of being a poisoner would get on just about anybody’s nerves.