Ten-Gallon Tensions in Texas: A Kate on Vacation Mystery (The Kate on Vacation Mysteries Book 3) (15 page)

Kate found herself clapping her hands. She liked this woman. If they didn’t live fourteen hundred miles apart, she’d like to cultivate her as a friend.

Impulsively, she reached out and took Carolyn’s hand. “I’m sorry I stuck my foot in my mouth and upset you.”

The smile faded. Carolyn’s eyes pooled with tears.

“Oh, no. I did it again,” Kate said. “I’m sorry.”

The woman’s face crumpled. She buried it in her hands and sobbed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Joellen seemed pleasantly surprised to see Skip. He’d apologized for dropping by unannounced but she’d brushed that off and invited him to sit down.

He settled onto the chintz-covered sofa. She sat in a wooden rocking chair and crossed her legs. She was clad in black slacks and a white western shirt, the standard attire of the staff at the steakhouse. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a loose bun.

“I’m not keepin’ you from work?” he said.

“Nah, I’ve got some time yet.”

“I wanted to ask you about a couple things. Some stuff you might have the inside scoop on. I’m trying to help José clear up this mess about Sam’s murder before I leave town on Monday.”

Joellen’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Okay. Ask away.”

“First, do you know what was in Sam’s will?”

“Yeah. There are two trust funds. One for Sammy and one for Sam’s mother.”

“What happens to Beauford Motors?”

“It’s Sammy’s, but I’m his trustee. I’m gonna sell it. There’s some insurance money too, so Sammy’s set for college. I don’t need the headache of another business to run.” She sat forward. “As a matter of fact, I was gonna see if Jimmy was interested in it. I’d lease it to him at first if he doesn’t have the capital to buy it outright.”

“He might be interested. Do you want me to ask him about it?”

“Would you? It’s a little awkward right now, what with him havin’ been accused of Sam’s murder. Not that I ever thought he’d done it.”

Skip remembered Kate mentioning a slight suspicion that Joellen and Jimmy might be fooling around. He’d dismissed it at the time, but…

“Aren’t you and Jimmy friends?” he asked.

Her eyebrows went up. “Not really. We just knew each other from bein’ in some of the same classes in school.” She let out a sound, a cross between a snort and a chuckle. “I wasn’t allowed to speak to him when I was married to Sam.”

“Yeah, somebody else said Sam was really competitive. I guess that’s why he was determined to put Jimmy out of business. What did you ever see in him anyway?”

Joellen rocked her chair back and forth a couple times, staring at the ceiling. “He was hard to resist when he turned on the charm. I let him convince me that he was madly in love with me. But it didn’t take all that long, after we were married, for me to figure out that he wanted me because my daddy was the second richest man in town after him. That meant two things to him. One, I was the only woman around here who, in his eyes, was worthy of him. And two, he could get his hands on that wealth when my father died.”

She stopped the rocker’s movement and brought her gaze to Skip’s face. “But by the time I figured out his real motives, Sammy had come along.”

“What finally broke you up? I’m just being curious here, so tell me to mind my own business if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“When Daddy died…” She paused, swallowed hard. “Sam assumed that he would take over the restaurant. I could see by then that he was a lousy businessman. I wasn’t gonna let all Daddy’s hard work go down the drain so I told him I was gonna run the steakhouse.”

“What’d he say?”

“He blew a gasket. We argued and he ended up slappin’ me. That was it for me. It dawned on me that the only reason he hadn’t hit me before was because he knew my daddy would’ve killed him. I packed up the next day while he was at work and moved into my parents’ house, this house.” She waved her hand in a vague arc around the living room.

Skip suspected Sam had not let her go without a fight, but he decided to drop the subject. “Oh, by the way, another curiosity question. How’d you hear about the sugar in the gas tanks at Jimmy’s place? We’d all agreed to keep that quiet at the time.”

She was silent for a moment. Then she shrugged. “I honestly don’t remember where I heard about it. Were many cars ruined?”

“No. Turns out that’s a myth that sugar ruins the engine. Your brother just had to flush out the fuel systems.”

Her head jerked up. After a beat, she said, “Really? Well, that’s good.”

Before she had been relaxed, even while talking about her relationship with her ex-husband. Now she fiddled with an earring, glanced at her watch, patted her hair.

He somehow doubted the sudden nervousness was due to concerns about getting to work. Again, something was nagging at the edge of his brain.

“Did you know anything about Sam’s cocaine habit?” he asked. “They found a good bit of it in his system.”

Her body relaxed. She shook her head. “José asked me about that. I suspected he was usin’ it when we were married, but I have no idea where he was gettin’ it.”

The nagging feeling was stronger, but no less clear. What the hell was he missing here?

“Sammy seemed a little bit more settled today,” he said, to stall more than anything else. “How’s he coping with his daddy’s death now?”

Bringing the subject back around to her son seemed to make Joellen nervous again. She uncrossed her legs, then re-crossed them the other way. The dangling foot jiggled. “He’s doin’ a little better, I guess.”

He looked at that dangling foot, encased in a brand spanking new white sneaker. His mind flashed to the men’s room, the back of someone leaving, the leather jacket and cowboy hat, and the dirty sneakers.

The niggling feeling was stronger. The sneakers? No, the hat. Something about the hat. Kate fiddling with her new hat, not sure whether to take it off or not.

He pushed up from the sofa. “Well, I’ll get out of your hair so you can get to work.”

“Wait.” She jumped up. “I want to show you something.” She left the room.

He waited, wondering what she wanted to show him, and still trying to sort out the nagging feeling about hats.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

José was on the verge of committing police brutality. Sid Collins had been dodging his questions for the last hour–playing dumb, which wasn’t a stretch for Sid.

 Maybe the man really didn’t know anything.

“One last time, Sid. If you want Skip Canfield to drop the assault charges, you need to tell me who was supplyin’ Sam with the cocaine.”

“Honest, Sheriff, I don’t know. And I, uh, think I want my lawyer now.”

“Okay, you can call your lawyer. By the way, who’s payin’ him, now that Sam is dead?”

Sid looked at him, his eyes wide with surprise. “Why his wife, of course.”

“His wife? You mean Joellen?”

“Yeah.”

~~~~~~~~

When Carolyn’s sobbing had shown no signs of letting up, Kate had turned the sign on the door around to
Closed
and flipped the deadbolt.

Finally the woman had calmed down somewhat. Kate dug in her purse and found a tissue.

Carolyn took it and swiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry–”

Kate interrupted her. “Pete is Sam’s son, isn’t he?”

Carolyn nodded mutely and blew her nose into the tissue. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know. Sam found out that he had prostrate cancer. The doctors said it was operable and he’d be fine, but it shook him up. He wanted to know if Pete was his son, demanded that I let him do a DNA test. I told him over my dead body.”

Kate was saddened but not surprised by the knowledge that Carolyn had killed Sam. A mother would do anything to protect her son.

“He somehow got a hold of some of Pete’s hair, and went ahead with the test anyway.” Carolyn looked up and met Kate’s eyes. “I felt so helpless. If those results come back that Pete is Sam’s, even now with Sam dead… it will kill Walt.”

Come back
,
not came back.

DNA results took a long time, especially when they weren’t related to a crime.

Kate froze.

A mother would do anything to protect her son.

She bolted from the shop.

~~~~~~~~

Skip was still thinking about hats, and sneakers.

The feet weren’t all that big.

In his mind’s eye, Joellen fussing with her hair a minute ago. Up in a bun, it could be tucked under a hat.

Joellen came back through the swinging doors from the kitchen.

Men take their hats off inside. Women don’t.

She stared into his eyes. “You know, don’t you?”

“Not until a few seconds ago.” Sadness clogged his throat. “Why, Joellen?”

“He thought Pete, Walt’s son, was his. He said he and Carolyn had sex around the time Pete would’ve been conceived. I didn’t believe him at first. Carolyn wouldn’t have given him the time of day. But then he said he’d sent away for a DNA test. He was gonna change his will if it came back that Pete was….” Her voice broke on a sob as she brought a .38 revolver out from behind her back.

His hand flew instinctively to the small of his own back, where his gun would be in its waistband holster, if he were back in Maryland. But that pistol was locked in a gun safe in his study, fourteen hundred miles away.

“He was gonna disown Sammy. Said he didn’t need no wuss for a son. Not when he had Pete.”

She sobbed again. “I’m sorry, Skip.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kate considered knocking on the front door and rejected the idea. Instead she ran around to the back of the house. She prayed that Joellen, like most folks in rural America, didn’t bother to lock her back door during the day.

Her prayer was answered.

She slipped quietly through the kitchen. At the swinging doors that led to the front of the house, she stopped and listened.

Someone was sobbing on the other side. She nudged the door open an inch, two inches.

“Why’d you have to come here today? Why couldn’t you let it alone and just go home to Maryland?”

“Hey, Joellen…” Skip’s voice.

Kate nudged the door open a little further and saw her husband holding his hands up in front of him, palms out.

“I hated Sam as much as anybody,” he said. “I’d like to give you a reward, not turn you in.”

Kate tried to judge the distance. Was Joellen close enough?

She’d given the credit to
aikido
before, but the maneuver she used against Willy she’d learned long before she started
aikido
lessons. In a self-defense course decades ago, she’d been taught that a woman’s greatest strength was in her legs.

Joellen took a step back. “I’d like to believe that. I really would, but I can’t risk it. Sammy needs me.”

“I’ve got kids who need me, too,” Skip said, a touch of desperation in his voice.

Kate’s heart stuttered at the thought that she might lose him in the next second.

Joellen stepped back again, raised the gun.

A loud knock on the front door.

Joellen jumped, then froze.

Another knock. “Joellen, it’s Sheriff Gutierrez. I need to talk to you.”

Kate jammed the swinging door forward, hitting the woman’s elbow. The gun discharged, the explosion reverberating off the walls. Kate braced herself in the doorjamb and kicked out at Joellen’s knees.

She howled and went down. Her gun skittered across the floor.

The front door crashed open. José stood in the doorway, his weapon drawn.

Kate frantically looked around. Skip was lying on the floor, partway under the coffee table.

She stopped breathing.
No! Dear God, no!

Skip rose up and lunged forward, covering the gun with his body.

Kate’s knees wobbled. She clutched the doorjamb.

“Don’t move!” José yelled, swinging his gun in an arc, apparently unsure of who had shot at whom.

Joellen Bradley curled into a fetal position on the floor. She clutched her knee and sobbed, “Sammy, oh, Sammy.”

“Mom?” came a voice from the stairwell.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kate and Skip sat three pews back on the left of the Baptist church, a squirming Billy and Edie between them. Kate’s mother-in-law sat on the other side of her son.

The pastor was giving the benediction. He glanced once again at the empty spot in the second pew on the opposite side of the aisle. Kate guessed it was where the Bradleys usually sat.

He’d also given Jimmy Bolton a few penetrating looks during his sermon. Kate couldn’t remember the details but the gist of it was that earthly vices were dangerous to your immortal soul.

When they get to the point of excess, they tend to mess up our mortal lives as well
, she thought.

The pastor once again reminded folks to go on down to the basement for some refreshments and dismissed the congregation.

Feet scraped and clothing rustled as people stood and gathered their things. Conversations buzzed around the sanctuary.

Kate scanned the room, hoping to see Carolyn and Walt Beauford. She wanted to say goodbye, and apologize for abruptly bolting out of Carolyn’s shop the day before. Although by now Carolyn had probably heard about what happened and knew the reason for her rudeness.

She didn’t see the Beaufords, although she spotted Pete’s head above a group of young people in one corner. Two of the boys looked enough like him that they were most likely his brothers.

“Are we going downstairs? The man said there’s cookies,” Billy said in a too loud voice.

“Inside voice, Billy.” Kate figured those words would be engraved on her tombstone. “You may each have one cookie.”

“One?” they yelled in unison, outraged.

Kate sighed. These two were going to be hard to rein in after a week of spoiling by their granny. “Two, but that’s all.”

Her mother-in-law gave her a sideways glance but didn’t say anything.

“They need to sleep well tonight,” Kate said in a low voice. “Not be wound up from sugar. Otherwise, they’ll be miserable on the plane tomorrow.”

The woman chuckled under her breath. “I guess I have turned them into little hellions. Granny’s privilege.”