Ten-Gallon Tensions in Texas: A Kate on Vacation Mystery (The Kate on Vacation Mysteries Book 3) (8 page)

“Grab the blanket.” He nabbed the bag of chili dogs and they climbed out of the car.

Taking her hand, Skip led the way to a narrow path. The temperature dropped ten degrees as they stepped into the shade. Just beyond the edge of the tree line, a battered red bike leaned against a sturdy trunk.

“Somebody might have beat us to my favorite fishin’ hole.”

“You didn’t bring any fishing gear.”

“Wasn’t plannin’ to fish. I just wanted to show it to you. My daddy and I spent a lot of hours out here, catchin’ supper. He used the time to try to teach me about life. Half the stuff he said didn’t make much sense at the time, but now I understand most of it.”

Kate nodded. “My mother used to drop these little pearls of wisdom. I thought at the time that she was babbling to herself.”

Skip was quiet for a moment as they walked along the narrow trail. “It’s always bittersweet comin’ out here to visit. I love Mama, and Suze and her brood, but it reminds me of how much I miss my dad.”

It had been well over a decade since Reginald William Canfield, the second, had passed away. But Kate knew the bond between parent and child was one of the most enduring. She said a silent prayer of thanksgiving that her parents, while in their seventies, were in reasonably good health.

They came to a clearing beside a steep bank. “What river is this?” Kate asked.

Skip put the bag of food on the ground. “Not really a river. Just a creek, off of Lake Livingston, that’s…” He turned around slowly, then pointed off into the woods. “…about twelve miles in that direction.”

They spread the blanket on the ground and sat down in the middle of it.

Skip opened the bag and handed her a chili dog. Despite the dilly bar, Kate’s stomach growled in response to the rich fragrance of meat and tomato sauce as she unwrapped it.

They were quiet for a few minutes as they ate. It didn’t take long to finish off her hot dog. She looked longingly at the third one.

“I’ll split it with you.”

“No, you eat it. I’m full. It just tasted good.” Kate leaned back on her elbows and stared up at the green canopy above them. “What kind of trees are these?”

Skip looked around as he munched on his second dog. He swallowed and pointed to one tree with very dark bark. “That’s a black hickory. Most of these are post oaks. The one we’re under is a live oak.”

Kate was familiar with live oaks from Florida, where her parents lived. They were a member of the oak family, but they were evergreens. They shed some of their small oval leaves twice a year, but those leaves were immediately replaced by new growth.

Something rustled in the tall grass behind them. Kate sat up and twisted around, her heart thumping.

“Don’t worry,” Skip said. “The wild pigs and rattlers are almost as afraid of us as we are of them.”

“Rattlers?” The word came out on a squeak. She nervously looked around again.

Skip laughed. “If one was nearby, he’d have announced himself by now.”

“That is only mildly comforting.”

He smirked as he wiped his fingers with the last of the napkins. “Course, the gators might take exception to our presence.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You are
not
funny.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Relax. I wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t safe.” He put a finger under her chin and turned her head.

He kissed her long and thoroughly, easing her back on the blanket. His hand moved to the top button of her blouse. She heard a giggling sound.

She broke the kiss. “Did you just giggle?”

“Darlin’, real men do
not
giggle.” He kissed her neck and started moving downward as he undid the button.

She closed her eyes and arched her back.

The branches above them shook. Skip’s head snapped up.

Suddenly he was sprawled on top of her, crushing the air from her lungs, one arm wrapped protectively around her head. The patter of something falling against the dry leaves around the blanket, then a hard object struck her foot.

The pattering stopped. Skip rolled off of her and peered up into the branches. He grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet and out from under the tree.

She glanced back. A dead limb lay where her feet had been. She reached for her top button to fasten it.

Loud rustling, a crack and a whooshing sound. A large branch hurtled though the air, landing hard in the middle of the blanket–where they had been lying a moment before.

Skip pulled her around behind the trunk of another tree. Her heart raced and she struggled to catch her breath.

The canopy of the live oak had gone still.

“What the hell is up there?” she whispered. “What kind of creature would rain twigs and branches down on us?”

“A two-legged critter would be my guess,” Skip said in a low voice.

CHAPTER NINE

“We’re not going to wait him out, are we?” The silent woods were creeping Kate out.

Skip shook his head. “He’s probably not gonna come down until we leave. And I’m not about to try to climb up there.”

Kate was relieved to hear that. They circled the outer edge of the clearing, trying to stay out of sight of whoever might be in the big live oak.

They hustled along the path out of the woods. When they got to the bike, Skip stopped. He examined it, then pulled it away from the tree and threw a leg over it.

“Are you going to take it?”

“No, just gettin’ a feel for the size of its rider.”

He dismounted and studied the bike again, then leaned it back against the tree. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“What about your mother’s blanket?” Kate felt a slight tug of guilt for not thinking about it sooner. But she didn’t relish the idea of going back into the woods to retrieve it.

“I’ll come back for it later.” He took her hand and started for the car. “With one of José’s deputies,” he added in a grim voice.

Skip dropped her back at his mother’s house and went in search of the sheriff.

As Kate entered the back door, she was greeted by the sight of her children having a snack at the kitchen table with their grandmother.

“Mommy,” Billy yelled when he spotted her. “We went to Buc-ee’s and saw a live beaver and he was huge! Big as a man.”

Kate winced at the volume of his voice.

“That’s ’cause he was a man, dummy,” Edie said.

“Inside voice, Billy, and Edwina Huntington-Canfield, since when do you call your brother names?”

Edie dropped her eyes to the plate of cookies on the table in front of her.

“Was too a real beaver,” Billy said, with no discernible reduction in volume. “He told me he was. He said they grow everything bigger in Texas.”

Kate hid a smile.

“Real beavers can’t talk, du…” Edie glanced at her mother. “…duh.”

Kate opted to accept the last minute substitution. She turned to her mother-in-law. “What is a Bucky’s?”

“It’s B-u-c, dash, double e. It’s a convenience store, Texas style. There’s a whole chain of them in this part of the state.”

Kate gave her a mock glare. “And what sugary snack did you buy them there? In addition to cookies, that is.”

The woman looked a little guilty, but only a little. “Just ice cream cones. But hey, I don’t get to spoil them all that often.”

Kate resisted the temptation to say,
Thank God!

She shook her head at her mother-in-law. “You get to put them to bed tonight.”

The woman broke out a grin so much like her son’s it made Kate smile back despite her annoyance.

“That isn’t exactly a hardship, daughter-in-law.” She turned to the kids. “We’ll have a story-time marathon.”

Kate rolled her eyes and headed for the guest room to change out of her disheveled clothes. Looking in the mirror over the dresser, she realized she had several leaves stuck in her curls. She was surprised her mother-in-law hadn’t noticed.

More likely she had noticed and had made certain assumptions as to how they got there.

“If only,” Kate muttered under her breath. She yanked a comb through the unruly mess.

~~~~~~~~

José himself returned with Skip to the clearing. They stood under the tree, staring at the empty blanket. The branch was gone.

And of course, the bike had been gone as well when they’d arrived.

The sheriff took his Stetson off and scratched his head, then replaced the hat. “You’d think whoever dropped the branch on y’all would’ve just climbed down after you left and skedaddled, not taken the time to move it. Let’s see if we can find it.”

They split up and circled the edge of the clearing. Skip stopped at a spot where the grass was bent down, like something had been dragged over it. “Over here.”

José joined him. “Hmm, can you see the branch?”

Skip pointed.

“Stay here.” José trudged through the underbrush a few feet over from the bent down grass. When he got to the branch, he took out his cell phone and took several pictures of it.

He carefully retraced his steps, taking pictures of the bent down grass as he went.

“It’s positioned under a tree, to look like it fell there. Unfortunately, the grass and dead leaves are too thick for footprints.”

“You think the branch was hurled at us on purpose?” Skip said.

“Could be. The wood’s not rotted but it isn’t thick enough to hold the weight of a teenager or an adult. Someone might’ve misjudged it.” He paused. “Or bounced on it on purpose to make it break.”

“While hanging on to a branch above them,” Skip said.

José nodded. Skip retrieved his mother’s blanket and they walked in silence back to the sheriff’s cruiser.

Once settled in the car, José turned in the seat to face Skip. “Guy who lives behind Jimmy’s car lot found a wooden baseball bat in his yard this mornin’. I’m guessin’ it’s what was used on those windshields.”

Skip was silent, digesting that.

“I’ll get my forensic guy to look at it,” José said.

Skip gestured toward the woods. “Kate thought she heard giggling, just before stuff started raining down on us.”

José pondered that for a moment. “Don’t think a girl’d be heavy enough to break that branch. Might’ve been a boy whose voice ain’t done changin’ yet.”

“Or Willy Carlton,” Skip said. “Remember he used to giggle like a girl when he got excited.”

José gave him a small grin. “Yeah, but that was before
his
voice had finished changin’.”

~~~~~~~~   

Over breakfast Monday morning, Skip’s mother announced that she was taking all the grandkids on an excursion. “All but Junior. He’s gonna help his mama at the car lot, so I’ll take Frankie and Sherry with us. You remember Shelly and Ben Watson, Skip?”

“Sure do, Mama.”

“I’m takin’ the kids out to their ranch. They’ve got a nice docile mare that Edie can ride, and Ben’s gonna show Billy some rope tricks.”

The kids’ eyes sparkled with excitement as they scarfed down pancakes soaked in syrup.

“Sounds like fun. You want me to go with you?” Kate said, knowing that her mother-in-law was likely to turn her down.

“Nah, you get this boy of mine to take you out to lunch.”

Skip took a final bite of pancake and slid back his chair. “I’m gonna check in with José.”

His mother’s smile faded, but she quickly rallied. “Come on, kids. Go wash your faces and hands and let’s get your cousins and get goin’.”

Edie and Billy jumped up and left the room, the latter whooping at the top of his lungs.

Kate winced.

Her mother-in-law turned back to them. “See if you can get him to let Jimmy go. José oughta know he couldn’t kill nobody, not in cold blood like that. Bash his head in during a fight maybe, but shoot the man while he’s sittin’ on the john….” She shook her head, then headed out of the room to herd her grandchildren into her truck.

“Come on,” Skip said. “After we talk to José, maybe we can find someplace other than that old fishing spot to have some ‘lunch.’” He made quote marks in the air, the gold flecks in his hazel eyes dancing.

She grinned at him. “You find someplace with four walls and a roof and you might just get lucky, cowboy.”

At the sheriff’s department, José was in his office, wading through a stack of paperwork.

He sat back as they came through the door. “Thank you, Lord. I’ve been prayin’ for something or someone to interrupt me. If I’d known about all the paperwork involved in this job, I would’ve thought twice before throwin’ my hat in the ring.”

He and Skip exchanged a handshake. “How’s it goin’, José?”

“It’s goin’. My forensic guy’s been busy. That gun finally dried out enough he could fire it. It’s not a match for the bullet that killed Beauford.”

Kate blew out a sigh of relief.

“Yeah, I’m glad for that but it leaves me back at square one with the murder. I let Jimmy go ’bout an hour ago. He didn’t look too good.”

Kate’s hand flew to her mouth as she realized why. “As heavy as he’s been drinking, it was kind of dangerous for him to go cold turkey for that long.”

“Yeah,” José said. “I guess I should’ve thought of that. But I can’t exactly serve him whiskey with his meals in here.” He turned to Skip. “That branch didn’t tell us much. But my man found some prints on the baseball bat I was tellin’ you about. You’ll never guess whose they were.”

After a beat of silence, Skip said, “So tell us already.”

“Bobby Joe Bradley, and his sister’s prints too. But they weren’t on the handle. There were just smudges there. The good prints were on the other end of the bat.”

“So did you talk to them about it?” Skip asked.

“Not yet. I was waitin’ until after nine, when Bobby Joe’d be at the car lot.”

Skip looked at his watch. “It’s nine now. Can I go with you?”

José hesitated, then said, “Sure, come on.”

Kate was still worried about her brother-in-law’s sudden withdrawal from alcohol. “I’m gonna go check on Jimmy.”

Skip nodded and gave her a peck on the cheek.

~~~~~~~~

“You’re crazy, Canfield. I wasn’t anywhere near that shindig Friday night. And I certainly didn’t take a bat to my own employer’s cars.”

“I saw you in the men’s room,” Skip said again. “Maybe an hour before I found the body.”