The Ladies Farm (13 page)

“I
wanted to bring you these pictures,” Della said after the clerk had led her back to Tony’s office. If Tony was surprised to see her, he gave no indication, and he smiled his thanks as he took the pictures from her.

“Don’t you want them?” he asked.

“Actually, I was hoping you’d volunteer to have copies made for me and for Robbie. I was going to do it, and I don’t mind dropping them off, but, barring funerals, I might not get back to Fort Worth until next month’s newsletter.”

He nodded, waved a hand to demonstrate his acceptance of the task. “You really like it out there?”

Della nodded. “You would too. It’s quiet, friendly. And I have a river in my backyard.”

He waved a hand at his desk—a platform, really, supported by file cabinets at either end of a windowless wall. “You don’t think this is quiet and friendly?” His eyes were green with dark flecks in them, and they crinkled at the corners but stayed quite round when he smiled.

She noticed he had put on glasses to look at the photographs, but quickly laid them back down on the desk when he finished.

She was about to answer him when the clerk stuck his head in the door. “Here’s your sandwich,” he said, handing over a white paper bag.

“It’s two-thirty,” said Della. “Haven’t you had lunch?”

“I was at the downtown shop,” he explained. “Want half?” He pulled a sub from the bag and set it next to his French fries.

“I’ll just steal these,” she said, taking one of the fries. “Any ketchup?”

They occupied themselves with eating and exchanging bits of news about people they knew. She told him about Hugh Jr. and Melissa’s visit, and he told her about their former next-door neighbors, who were moving to a condominium outside of Austin.

“How’re you and Barbara getting along?”

Della felt her face grow warm. “Barbara? Fine. Why do you ask that?”

He shrugged, put one of the French fries in his mouth. “She’s a little hard to take, isn’t she? She used to hover over Richard like a helicopter. Not that it did her much good.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, come on, you know about Richard.”

“I don’t think I do,” Della muttered.

Tony was silent for a second. “I guess that was mostly after we split up. He used to like to get together for drinks, tell us all about it.”

“Us?” She couldn’t keep the alarm out of her voice.

“Oh, you know: Grant, Hugh, those guys.”

“How come you never told me all this before?”

He looked at her, considering. “You never asked, I guess. I mean, it was after we were divorced, and we haven’t really talked much, except about the … about Robbie.”

He was right. They never spent time together. She didn’t know why she was doing it now. “Did Marjorie Schulkey ever make a pass at you?”

She expected a blank look, and his grin stunned her. “That Barbara’s a talker.”

“How do you know Barbara told me?”

“Because she rescued me,” he said, still grinning. “That woman had me pinned against the wall in the kid’s room.” He held his right hand in the air. “I swear it, she just cornered me.” He shook his head, laughed a little. “I guess she had a little too much to drink. I just hate it when women drink like that. Anyway, she wanted to dance, and I kind of fled, and then, I was coming out of the bathroom, she just grabbed me and tried to kiss me. That’s when Barbara comes down the hall calling ‘Tony! Tony!’ ” He mimicked her in falsetto. “ ‘Tony, I need your help to get these dishes down for me. No one else is tall enough!’ And she just drags me out of that woman’s clutches.”

“Saved by Barbara Morrison,” Della said. “That’s scary.”

Tony nodded, took another bite of his sandwich. Della looked around the office, remembering the times they had used the long table to collate copies, the nights she had puzzled over the mysteries of binding equipment and the terrors of accounts payable. I could’ve just dropped the pictures at the photo place, Della thought, then called Tony and asked if he’d pick them up. Or asked the photo place to hold on to them for a month. Or asked Kat or Rita to get them next time they were in town.

“You ever hear from Suzanne?” she asked finally.

He shook his head no while he finished chewing. “Nah. She wrote me once, asked if I’d mind sending a few things she’d left, that was about it. Adios.” He studied her a second. “You seeing anyone?”

She chuckled. “I don’t know anyone to see. I guess I’ll live out my old age surrounded by women.”

“That’s kind of what I always dreamed about.”

They both laughed and Della stood to go. “I’ve got to be getting back,” she explained. “I’ve got this shopping list, and someone has to keep an eye on Barbara before she kills off someone else.”

He walked her out to the front. “The shop looks good,” she said.

“Thanks.” They stood for a second, letting the clerk watch them. Customers milled around the card displays and the self-serve copiers,
and along one side several people sat at the computer stations. Della wondered if Tony would have had the fury to expand this business if Jamie had lived, but it was far too treacherous to consider.

“You take it easy,” she said, and she felt herself leaning toward him.

He moved a little, pulling her into a clumsy hug. “Take care, Della,” Tony told her. Then they pulled away from each other and she walked out.

She went to the grocery, then proceeded home, stopping only at Dave’s to fill the tank. “How you holding up?” Dave asked.

“Oh, we have our good days and our bad.” Della signed for the gas and tried to think of something sarcastic to say about his cemetery romp, but her sarcasm failed her. The convenience store smelled like gas and oil and Dave, in his coveralls, looked odd behind a counter featuring fountain drinks and sandwiches. Still, his resourcefulness impressed her.

He changes with the times, she thought.

She tried to explain that to Rita when she got home, but Rita was preoccupied with the news that Melissa was coming back to get her hair cut.

“Her hair cut?”

“Here we go again,” muttered Kat. “Melissa is getting a haircut. What is so earth-shattering?”

“Her hair’s like Pauline’s,” Della made an attempt at explanation.

“It’s an odd time to be preoccupied with your appearance,” Kat acknowledged.

“It’s downright unnatural,” Rita declared. “Not that that girl couldn’t use a fresh look. That long, straight, bouncy stuff with the Farrah Fawcett fluff on top went out with … well, Farrah Fawcett.”

“It’s a way for her to visit us,” Barbara said.

Della started. What was it that made her forget Barbara’s presence until she spoke?

“What do you mean?” Kat asked. “You think she’s cutting off the hair she’s been growing her whole life because she needs an excuse to come to the Ladies Farm?”

The color rose in Barbara’s face, but she stayed calm. “I think when someone … when we lose someone, we just want to try to stay close to them in any way. Maybe she just wants to be where her mother was. Where she remembers her mother being.”

Well, that sure chilled the conversation, Della thought as the room grew silent. They were in the big office, with Rita draped over the loveseat and Barbara perched on the typist’s chair. Kat was at her own desk and Della remained in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost.

“It’s just a haircut,” Kat said finally. “If it’s a mistake, she can let it grow back. Did you know they’re mining gravel at Castleburg’s?”

She directed the last at Della, who caught the doorpost to steady herself. “Gravel?” She recalled the equipment up on the hill.

“The appraiser mentioned it.”

Della shrugged. “I guess we’ll have a few more trucks through here.”

“I hate those heavy old things,” Rita grumbled. “We can close every window in the house and we’ll still all be covered with dust. How long’s it take to get all that gravel out?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’ll be over quickly,” Kat said. Then to Della, “He was asking who owned the mineral rights here.”

Della frowned. “I’m sure Pauline and Hugh did,” but she wasn’t sure at all. “Why wouldn’t they? Nobody’s ever worried about mineral rights around here.”

“Well, now, that’s not really true,” Rita countered. “Mrs. Myerhoff is friends with Dave’s great-aunt, Gladys Hutto, and she says old Gladys ’bout killed that husband of hers, Ray, when she found out Ray gave away … and I mean gave … the rights to this nephew of his, Earl, who wanted to get in the gravel business. And of course
they’ve got that big old place, nearly as big as Castleburg’s if you count where the warehouse is, and all those cows and sheep, and that nephew just starts digging up everything, holes everywhere and never finds a thing. And it’s a good thing, too, because Mrs. Myerhoff says old Gladys might just have shot Ray if that nephew had come up with something and Ray had signed it all away.” Rita finished with an expansive wave of her arm in the air before her as if encompassing the vastness of the presumed Hutto mineral empire.

“We own the mineral rights,” Barbara said evenly. They turned to look at her. “When Hugh and Pauline bought the place, Hugh asked Richard to go over the papers with him before settlement, and Richard made Hugh have the deed changed to convey the mineral rights specifically.”

Kat looked thoughtful. “That’s good to hear.”

“Well, not that it matters,” Della said. “We’re not mining gravel at the Ladies Farm.”

“I doubt there is any,” Rita said. “If there wasn’t any at Hutto’s, just across the river, there isn’t any here.”

“There is,” Barbara said. “Hugh knew there was when they bought the place, it’s just that it’s such small acreage it wasn’t worth digging up.”

“Then,” Kat said thoughtfully. “It wasn’t worth digging up then. What about now?”

They all turned to Barbara, who shook her head. “I don’t know. All I know was what Richard said: That the only mineral worth worrying about on the place was gravel and there wasn’t much of it.”

Della looked to Kat, whose eyes warned her to stay quiet and restrain her urge to lunge for Barbara’s throat. She said she wasn’t interested in even bidding for the place, Della reminded herself. But the rumble of the backhoe belied Barbara’s demur. Gravel, Della thought. It could all go for gravel.

“Well, if we’re not going after gravel,” Rita interrupted the nightmare, “I’ve got to go sharpen my scissors for Melissa.”

Della blinked, forced herself to stay both calm and in the present.

“She’ll be here bright and early tomorrow morning,” Rita reminded them. Then she rose and stretched, her knit top riding up to reveal the waistband of her lavender jeans.

“I’m not gonna be here for dinner,” Rita called back over her shoulder as she squeezed past Della in the doorway. “Darlene’s going out and she asked me to come over and mind the kid again. I’ll be back tonight, though. I told her she better be home by midnight or I’m taking Tiffany home with me.”

Kat shook her head at Della, but Della only laughed as she made her way over to the loveseat. “The appraiser say when he’d have his report to us?”

“It doesn’t go to us, actually. It goes to the estate, meaning Hugh Junior and Melissa. But Hugh Junior told him to go ahead and bring us a copy.”

“When?”

“Next week some time. Won’t take long. Don’t forget, they just appraised the thing for the loan to remodel the barn.”

“Yeah.” The loan was another item Della wanted to forget. It had been Kat’s idea, as a way of freeing two rooms in the house for guests and letting Pauline expand her crafts. It had also given them a place to install a spa and a mirrored room for aerobics.

But even with the schedule of freelance instructors in place and the steady flow of participants down the newly paved walk, Della doubted they were breaking even on the loan. She supposed the big selling point had been expansion of their programs, but what programs would they expand without Pauline?

Barbara shifted on her chair and the thing rolled a tiny bit before she steadied it by bracing a toe against the desk. “Shouldn’t we be starting dinner?” she asked. “We checked in two more today.”

“You checked them in?” Kat asked.

“Yes. They’re in Oveta Culp Hobby.”

“Did you get them signed for programs?”

“Well, they’re only staying two days, so—”

“You didn’t sign them up for any programs?”

“They’re only staying for two days, so I thought they’d like the short-term things, so they each took a day of beauty and then,” she glanced at Della, “that journal program.”

“Students!” Della laughed. “At last.” They had restructured the “Journal Writing as a Spiritual Journey” program to a series of self-contained afternoons to fit both locals and those who were just passing through. The locals, however, seemed less impressed than when Pauline was actually helping them write entries every day and sharing them in class.

“The need for self-expression is endless,” Kat cracked.

“Well, it’s what people like,” Barbara defended herself. After Kat’s cross-examination, she reminded Della of a wounded puppy.

“
Circus of the Stars
and the
National Enquirer
are what people like,” Kat snapped.

“I’ve got to change before I start cooking,” Barbara said, looking only at Della. “I’ll be back down in just a few minutes. Meet you in the kitchen?”

“Sure,” said Della, though she too had to change before she started dinner. “What’s with you?” she asked Kat as soon as Barbara was out of earshot.

“Nothing. Why?”

“Nothing?” Della stood and motioned with her hands. “What’s with you and Barbara?”

“Believe me, there’s nothing with that woman and me.” Kat ruffled her own hair with a manicured hand.

“Don’t you think you at least should be civil, considering she’s co-owner of the Ladies Farm? And could still make a bid on the whole place if she wants.”

“Please do not ask me to be kind to Richard’s widow,” Kat said, pronouncing every word precisely and separately.

“I’m not asking you to be kind,” Della said. “Merely civil.”

“I’ll be civil,” Kat said sullenly. She frowned. “But I think it’s real interesting that she never said anything about the gravel.”

“Well,” Della pointed out, trying to be fair, “no one ever asked about it before. I think the best thing’s just to try to get this whole thing settled quickly, so try not to piss her off. I’ll grant her this,” Della said, thinking about
Silver Quest
, “she’s smarter than she looks.”