Miss Ruffles Inherits Everything (10 page)

“Well, if the town is located in a path that's commonly affected by severe weather, my mother would say—”

“I'm sure your mother had many good things to say, Sunny. You know what I mean. Hyperbole is a way of making a point.”

“Yes, ma'am. Are you going to dig up some roses?”

“What?” She looked stricken.

I pointed at her garden. “To make room for your storm cellar.”

“There's a better chance of a new twister drawing the face of Davy Crockett in my front lawn. No, I'm not digging up my roses, and I'm not building any underground storm cellar, either.” She swallowed her exasperation and sighed. “I suppose I should be grateful he's so concerned for my safety. I do like to be taken care of now and then. He rather reminds me of my Hut that way.”

“That's nice.”

“It's not like there are many eligible men in this town. I've run through most of them already. He's the one who's left, so I feel I should give him a chance.”

“He seems very … thoughtful”

Honeybelle's enthusiasm began to fade. “He's no Rhett Butler, and really, the idea of seeing a mortician is a little creepy sometimes, but he's really very … sweet.”

“Clark Gable is dead,” I reminded her.

Honeybelle saw my smile and laughed, happiness restored. “True 'dat!”

Within moments, more passing cars began tooting jauntily at Honeybelle, and more pleasantries were called from car windows. Miss Ruffles went into protection mode each time, and I made sure the dog didn't knock over Honeybelle. Finally, a pair of elderly ladies stopped to tentatively call out a gardening question. I recognized two of the garden club turncoats.

Honeybelle was very gracious to them, despite the resentment she'd confided to me. Her reply made them smile—relief showing—and they drove off.

When their car had disappeared around the corner, though, Honeybelle let her infuriation explode. “Oh, I need to get out of this town!”

“That trip to Dallas couldn't come at a better time.”

“You said it!”

“You never leave Texas,” I said, keeping my head down in case she decided to bite it off. “How come?”

“Oh,” she said, finally sounding unhappy. “I love Texas, I really do. Hut and I planned to travel. But after he died, I just never had the courage to go anywhere else. It sounds silly, doesn't it?”

“You seem like the kind of person who'd enjoy traveling.”

“Do I?” She sounded pleased.

“Sure. Sophisticated. Worldly.”

She looked down at the gloves on her hands. “Sometimes I think it might be nice to visit New York. Or Paris! And those European river cruises all look so pretty, too.”

“So why not go to all those places? You can afford it, right?”

“Well, yes.” As if arguing with me, she said, “I do go to the beach in Galveston once in a while.”

I nodded. “My mother used to say … uhm, I mean, there's research that says people are drawn to blue water. Just being at the ocean causes a drop in our stress hormones.”

“The variety in your education makes me breathless sometimes, Sunny.” More thoughtfully, though, she said, “I wouldn't want to go on a river cruise alone.”

“So ask one of your friends.”

“Lady friends, you mean? Do you think I have any left?”

“Then ask Mr. Gamble,” I said. “Seems like he'd be tickled to death if you invited him to travel with you.”

She looked scandalized. “Oh, I couldn't stay in a hotel room with him! That would be inappropriate! People would think—no, no, no.”

“So get separate rooms. Or take one of your grandsons. Or better yet, see who you meet on the trip. My mom always said the best people were always the ones she found on the way to meet somebody else. You should talk to a travel agent. Get some brochures.”

“That sounds so impulsive.” She smiled a little. “Your mother traveled extensively, didn't she?”

I smiled, too. “She was always going off on adventures. She never made it to Antarctica, but she got everywhere else on her bucket list.”

“A bucket list.” Suddenly Honeybelle was looking off into the distance as if starting her own list that very moment.

Miss Ruffles sat down on the grass and looked up at Honeybelle, head cocked, ears alert.

“Don't worry,” Honeybelle said to her. “I won't leave you alone.”

Miss Ruffles wagged her stub.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

If you hear a Texas woman say, “Oh, hell, no,” it's already too late.

—SEEN ON A T-SHIRT (IN RHINESTONES)

The day after Ten Tennyson read Honeybelle's will and turned our lives upside down, I took Miss Ruffles for her usual run … with a lot more apprehension than when Honeybelle was alive. I was exercising a millionaire dog.

“Is it safe to take her out of the yard?” Mr. Carver asked me as I snapped on the leash by the back gate. He had picked up the newspaper from the driveway where it had been thrown by the delivery boy.

“She needs her exercise,” I said. “Otherwise, you know she'll chew the furniture.”

Mr. Carver looked anxious. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

No, I wasn't. But I said, “If we make her a prisoner, her behavior is only going to get worse.”

“I see. Just … be careful, Sunny.”

“I'll do my best. Shall I bring back doughnuts?”

His eyes lit up. Mr. Carver had a sweet tooth that Mae Mae rarely satisfied. “Oh, yes, that would be very nice.”

I'd taken Miss Ruffles out every day since moving into Honeybelle's house. It hadn't gotten any easier. We jogged three blocks before Miss Ruffles made a U-turn, tripped me with the leash, and dragged me across a lawn to the edge of someone's driveway where a trash can sat oozing a disgusting liquid onto the ground. I practically had to strangle Miss Ruffles with the leash to prevent her from lapping up whatever the goo was.

On the next block, she spotted the Siamese cat that always sat tauntingly in someone's front window. Miss Ruffles tried to throw herself against the window, but I was ready. I managed to divert her with a Milk-Bone.

We'd gotten as far as the next corner when a black car pulled up beside me. It didn't stop but kept pace with us, and the passenger window rolled down. I was close enough to be hit by a blast of air-conditioning.

A man in dark sunglasses said, “Hey, there, young lady, could you give us some directions?”

I stopped running. The car angled in front of me and braked. The passenger popped his door open, and a heartbeat later the driver's door opened, too. Two men stepped out and adjusted their sunglasses against the intense glare of the early morning sun. They both wore dark business suits—one with a tie, one not—and even without an anthropologist around to confirm my opinion, I knew they were from somewhere other than Mule Stop.

The first thought that popped into my head was
The Blues Brothers go to Texas.

“Miss McKillip? Sunny McKillip?”

Maybe I should have taken off at a run. But I wasn't thinking about the safety of Miss Ruffles or myself. No, immediately, I flashed back to the day a man came to tell me my mother was dead. I stopped on the sidewalk with Miss Ruffles at my side, and my brain tried to process all the possible bad things that could have happened. Whatever it was, the Blues Brothers must have shown up to break the news, I thought. So I was momentarily struck silent.

The men took up position on either side of me and stepped closer until the moment Miss Ruffles flattened her ears and let out one of her most threatening growls. They stopped dead, giving me a chance for a second impression. They could have been brothers, all right. Besides dressing alike, both were heavyset, with lots of curly dark hair, and both with a certain element of menace in their postures.

“Nice doggie,” said the driver, sounding unconvinced. A splotch of his breakfast stained the front of his shirt—something yellow and something red. Probably eggs with salsa, a local favorite.

“Miss McKillip?” said the other. He was buttoned up tight, all business. I could see my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. He tapped a meaty thumb against his chest. “My name's Costello.”

When I could gather my breath, I said, “What's wrong?”

“Hey, nothin's wrong.” Costello raised his hands in the universal I-surrender gesture. “Take it easy, there. We're just talkin'.”

He wasn't from Texas by any means. I guessed East Coast by his accent. New York or New Jersey, maybe.

“We just want to have a conversation,” said his partner. “You're Sunny McKillip, right?”

“R-right.”

“Your mom was Rachel McKillip? The lady scientist who died?”

“Yes.” I was breathless, wondering what new catastrophe could have occurred.

“We're sorry for your loss. We hear she was a nice lady. Pretty, too. Just like you.”

“What's going on?” My sanity was returning, and I felt stronger. It helped to have Miss Ruffles beside me, growling softly, ready to spring if needed. “Who are you?”

Costello came closer, and Miss Ruffles swung on him. He stopped. He said, “We were sent to look you up. Sent by a gentleman who financed one of your mom's, y'know, big science trips to Mexico. Mr. Postlethwaite.”

“I don't know him.”

“Really? He's very big in waste management. Revolutionized the industry. Made a boatload of money. You really don't know him?”

I knew who he was, of course. Just didn't know him personally. Because how many people really knew an eccentric millionaire who popped up on television and in magazines to trumpet news about the environment and climate change? Trumpeting in a very peculiar voice and using the kind of shouty talk that only turned people against whatever views he espoused? I said, “Sorry, no.”

Costello looked surprised and exchanged glances with his partner. “Well, he knows about you.”

Miss Ruffles jumped in front of me and let out her sharp warning bark. Both men froze again. I had stopped in a tiny patch of shade from a lone tree, but they were stuck in full sun. The heat was already building to intense.

Costello loosened his tie an iota. “Mr. Postlethwaite, see, he's like a whattayacallit, philatelist. Gives money to good causes. He paid your mom a whole lotta cash, see. He was happy to do it. He loves bugs, 'specially butterflies. You should see his collection—he's got drawers and drawers fulla bugs. And your mom said when she finally grabbed that new butterfly she was chasing, deal was, she'd name it after him.”

Uh-oh. I knew all about the elusive butterfly my mother had pursued. For years, she claimed there was an undocumented species out there, and she wanted to find it. She had held out that butterfly like a carrot to many investors.

Miss Ruffles must have sensed a change in the dynamic, because she looked up at my face and tried to read my emotions. I rested my hand on the top of her head.

“Trouble is,” Costello continued, “the butterfly don't exist. Turns out, she made it up.”

“She just ran out of time,” I began.

“That don't make things right,” Costello said. “Mr. Postlethwaite, he feels cheated. Which is understandable, know what I'm sayin'? He feels like he poured a lotta dough down a rat hole, is what he feels. Boy, it gets hot around here, doesn't it?”

“What is there to talk about?” I asked, regaining some of my courage. “My mother is dead.”

“Yeah, like I said, we're real sorry about that,” Costello said. “But Mr. Postlethwaite, he thinks he ought to get some of his money back.”

“From whom?” I asked.

“Whom, huh?” Costello had a wide smile, and he shared it with his cohort. “What a smart girl. That could work in your favor. We don't really want to make trouble for you. But Mr. Postlethwaite asked us to come down here and talk to you about his money.”

“I don't have it. She spent it,” I said. “She always worked under a tight budget, but there was never any profit in—”

“So if she was good with a budget, maybe there's some left over. Maybe you got a tidy little bank account, and you could see your way clear to writing a check back to Mr. Postlethwaite.”

My mother's scientific trips were her greatest joy, but the cost for a full-blown expedition included travel by air for herself and grad students, wages for local helpers, and equipment that had to be shipped and maintained, not to mention weeks of stay in a foreign country. She often raised a hundred thousand dollars and much more for such an undertaking. The reason every college had reluctantly let her go was that she ran through research money faster than fraternities consumed beer. At the end of her career, she'd been reduced to being hired on a course-by-course basis and relied on grants from less than kosher sources to fund her trips. I'd been left with barely enough money to bury her and buy a plane ticket to Texas.

“Look,” I said, trying not to panic. “I'm sure Mr. Postlethwaite is disappointed. I completely understand. But honestly, I am flat broke. I'm very sorry you came all this way for nothing, but you might as well go back and tell your boss that I'm not able to accommodate him.”

“Accommodate. You're real smart, aren't you?”

“Who are you two, exactly?” I wound up the leash, preparing to continue our run. “A couple of wiseguys for hire?”

He smiled, pleased. “Something like that. Look, we heard a rumor about you.”

“What kind of rumor?”

“That you just inherited a million bucks.”

I had been about to dash off, but I forgot about running and faced the two of them again. “Who told you that?”

“It's all over town. We heard it in the … whattayacallit, the restaurant with the wagon wheel out front. Everybody was talking about you at the ice cream machine, while they were putting chocolate and peanuts on their sundaes. Somebody said they heard about you getting a lot of dough from somebody named Moneybelle.”