Chapter Six

When the group had settled in front of the air conditioning, Pop spoke. “Get it off your chest, Christie. I can see the wheels turning in your mind.”

“Remember when we went out to eat? I didn’t have my phone with me, so I went out to get it. I heard Hector arguing with someone. Now I think it was Kimberly.”

“Could be.” Trish pulled off her boots, propped her feet up on the sofa close to Christie, and took a sip of her iced tea.

Christie reached over and unconsciously began massaging Trish’s foot. “Oh, my gosh. That’s amazing. Do this one, too!”

“I’m so used to doing this for patients, I guess it’s just a subconscious habit to start rubbing feet.”

“I hope I’m not dying anytime soon.” Trish rapped her knuckles on the worn oak table, “but I’ll take it a foot massage any day.” Christie continued the massage as Trish let out a sigh of relief.

“Anyway, then he peeled out of there, and that’s when you got hurt, Pop.”

He rubbed his arm. “Yes, don’t remind me. Dang kids and their fast cars.”

Christie and Trish glanced at each other and grinned.

“Pop, Hector was our age. He was in his forties.”

“Your point?”

“Um. Nothing.”

A horn honked outside. “That’ll be Jess. As much as I hate to leave while you’re massaging my tootsies, I gotta go.”

“Oh, geez. I didn’t even notice your vehicle and horse trailer gone. I should have helped you with them.”

Trish came around and hugged Christie. “You were a bit busy trying to save a man’s life.”

“I only wish I would have helped him.” She shook her head and sighed. “I could tell he was close to death when we found him.”

“Poor Hector. Not sure what happened there,” Trish replied.

The horn honked again.

“That kid.” She yelled out the door, “Hold yer horses. I’ll be there in a minute.” She turned to face Pop and Christie. “Ugh, teenagers. Gotta love’em, but you can’t kill ‘em.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“You still up for…you know, Christie? Tomorrow morning sometime?”

Pop sat back in his chair. “What are you two young-uns up to?”

“Nothing,” they said in unison.

“Yep. That always means something.”

“Pop, I told Trish I would make you a pecan pie tonight when the weather cools off, and she wanted me to make one for her, too.”

“Now, don’t go fibbing. I know when you two are planning something you don’t want me to know.”

“You’re too smart for us, Pop.” Trish kissed him on the cheek.

“And don’t you forget it.” He smiled.

Christie walked Trish to her truck, where Jess had moved over to the passenger side.

Trish walked toward the truck. The window was rolled down. “Say hello, Jess.”

“Hello, Ms. Taylor.” He slumped in his seat.

Trish turned back to Christie. “What time tomorrow?”

“Hmmm, let me call you. Oh, wait…” Christie thought for a moment.

My phone. Where is it? And who has it?

Even though Christie loved Trish like a sister, the idea of sharing the thought that Cole may have taken her phone was unthinkable. “I guess I’ll be buying a new one tomorrow. Maybe one from this era. Until then, just call Pop’s landline.”

“Okay. Will do.” Trish grinned and swung herself up into the driver’s seat.

Christie waved as the pair drove off. Then, she grabbed her hat and sunglasses and walked down to the overlook. A tow truck was attaching Hector’s vehicle. She rubbed her arms. What had happened to Hector?

She kicked at a clod of dirt. Why take her phone and why text Hector to meet her?

“Oh no.” If Hector died on their property right after he’d caused injury to Pop, that meant someone was trying to point the finger at her if his death wasn’t natural.

So much for coming back to a simpler life. Death hadn’t stayed behind but had followed her home.

~~~

As the sun set, Christie pulled ingredients to start work on the pecan pie. Normally, she made the pie crust from scratch, but she’d cheated and bought one from the store. When she’d brought it home, she’d gotten “the look” from her father and stashed it back in the freezer. Maybe she’d use it to make a quiche. Christie set to work making the piecrust. There was one key ingredient to her father’s piecrust, and that was vegetable shortening. Her mother had wanted a large pantry space for all her canned goods and items that wouldn’t do well in the Texas heat, so her father had built a cellar for her. Christie opened the door that led down wooden stairs to the storage space, clicked on the light and made her way down into the cool room. She found the big blue tub and stuck it under her arm to carry upstairs.

Christie’s mind went back to her childhood when the three of them would eat dinner in the small room during the hottest summer nights. Surrounded by canned goods from the harvest, the bounty offered comfort and security at the same time. Often, her folks would trade with others, in case a crop didn’t produce enough for the year. Neighbors always helped neighbors. Times had sure changed in the years since the world had become so encapsulated behind computer screens and locked doors.

She worked her way down the rows to a batch of canned peaches. Eating a peach out of a jar was like taking a bite of summer. Pickled beets, onions, okra, and eggs were often in abundance. Onions hung from the ceiling in old stockings, and cases filled with sand would hold carrots and other root vegetables when they were ready for harvest. Large containers of beans, rice, flour, sugar, and cornmeal, among other staples, took up one wall. The bounty within the room meant that, no matter the state of the economy, they always ate—and ate well.

Christie remembered harvest time and all the work involved in preserving the food. She’d hated spending days peeling peaches or snapping peas. Now, she missed that time of laughter and conversations with the end result being a collection of jars full of nature’s bounty.

The kitchen in the main house had been so small, Pop had built a larger kitchen that could expand in the summer onto a covered patio area where tables sat for preparation and cooling off of the jars. The sound of jar lids popping as they cooled had always brought smiles to faces.

Christie would prep the pie ingredients there, then assemble and cook them in the convection ovens in the outdoor kitchen. That way, it wouldn’t heat the house, which was already struggling to remain cool with the living room window unit.

One year, her father sold off a prized bull to pay for the commercial oven as a Christmas gift for her mother. She had loved it and used it for canning, along with baking pies and cakes for new moms, invalids, and others in need. Then, the cancer had struck. In a few short months, her mother went from a vibrant woman to a shadow of her former self.

Christie struggled to hold back tears that formed from remembering that difficult time. Losing a mother before blossoming into a young woman had forced her to grow up fast. Maybe it had even changed her and made her the independent woman she’d become. She still struggled with leaning on others for support. Her mother’s death had devastated them all, but her father had suffered in silence. Always by his wife’s side, he refused to leave until a hospice nurse had told him that she would ensure he was there if needed. As Christie saw the care the nurse gave to her patient, she’d decided the medical field was what she wanted as her career path. Everyone had always said she should become a therapist due to her listening skills. In some ways, that had come true as patients and family members trusted her with their long-held hopes, dreams, secrets and regrets.

So many years later and the memory felt like it had happened yesterday. Christie gathered other ingredients in a big aluminum bucket and headed out back.

~~~

Pop Taylor’s Texas Pecan Pie Recipe

First Step: Collect Your Ingredients

Second Step: Prepare Your Oven

Heat oven to 350 degrees (176.6 C)

Third Step: Gather Your Tools

Fourth Step: Assemble Your Ingredients

Mix sugar, syrup, salt, vanilla and butter.

Slightly beat eggs to break yolks and incorporate.

Add slightly beaten eggs to mixture and fold together.

Optional Step: Brush melted chocolate lightly over piecrust with pastry brush before filling (Christie’s version)

Place cut pecans into an unbaked pie shell.

Pour the filling over pecans.

Set filled pie pan on middle rack in oven.

Optional: Put piecrust protector shield on piecrust.

Fifth Step: Bake Your Pie

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes (check your oven temp)

Then reduce heat to 325 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes.

Optional: If using piecrust protector shield, remove for first or last 15 minutes.

Optional: Last five-ten minutes brush piecrust with melted butter or egg wash.

Sixth Step: Check Your Pie

Test to see if the pie is done by lightly “shaking” the pie pan. The middle should have some jiggle to it but have a solid consistency, not watery. Conversely, insert a knife can be inserted in the middle of the pie and should come out clean. If done, remove from oven.

Seventh Step: Cool The Pie

Place the pie on a cookie cooling rack or other stand so that the bottom of the pie has circulation under it. Let the pie cool completely before cutting.

Eighth Step: Eat The Pie!

Notes:

Coating the piecrust can provide an added flavor but can also help with soggy piecrust bottoms.

Cut pecans make the pie easier to cut and you get pecans in every bite. The cut halves will surface at the top of the pie just like regular pecans.

In place of vanilla extract, brandy or whisky can be substituted.

According to safety standards, pecan pie should be placed (and kept) in the refrigerator within two hours.

~~~

The outdoor kitchen—as they called it—had been closed for a long time. For a while the church ladies had used the kitchen when canning but over the years, it had been used less and less as people modernized their own homes. The space got some use when Christie came home during Thanksgiving and Christmas but that had dwindled in the last few years as work had taken over much of her life.

While enclosed from the elements, it had taken Christie a few days of elbow grease to get rid of all the spiders that had sought its shelter. Now, it shone and was ready for use once again.

Christie ambled out to the building, a large box of supplies in hand. She opened the screen door into the main front room, which was little more than a screened-in porch with shutters all around it for closing it up when not in use. She unlatched the sliding door that separated the appliance area from the outdoor space and flipped on the light switch. The lights illuminated the space while Christie rolled the stainless-steel island out from the cabinet area.

Christie set ceramic mixing bowls that she would need for making the pie filling on the counters. The refrigerator was old but still useable and cold. Now, it mainly held watermelon and other things that couldn’t fit in the smaller indoor fridge. She pulled the piecrust dough she’d made earlier from its interior. An old cassette-tape radio from the eighties stood on top of the fridge, and she turned it on. A nasally twang and a melody of fiddles and mandolin filled the air. Real country music—that’s what Pop called it—crackled through the small speakers. She gathered the ingredients and set to work, humming along to older tunes she recalled from her youth. Christie made quick work of filling the pies after adding in chopped pecans like Pop preferred. As far as she knew, her mother had started chopping the pecans after Pop had complained about having pecans in one bite but not the next one. Ever since then, they’d kept preparing pecan pie that way.

The squeak of a screen door brought her out of her reverie. She looked up to see Pop standing in the door. “Supper’s ready.”

“Perfect timing, Pop. I was just finishing.” She completed loading all the tools back into the box and eyed the various pies cooling on the counters.

He cocked his head, listening for a moment. “I think they’re playing our song, darling. Come on.” He took her hand, and they two-stepped around the tiny space. A fleeting memory of watching her mother and father dance around the area came to her mind. She stifled a sob and rubbed at the tears on her cheeks.

“I miss her, too, darling.” He squeezed her hand. “We can get that box later. Let’s eat.” He’d prepared black-eyed peas with roasted ham, collard greens, and cheesy grits. A plate sat on the table with a tea towel over it.

She smiled. “Oh, please tell me that’s what I think it is.”

“Yep. You’re favorite. Fried green ‘maters. Ain’t nothing in this world…” he sang the familiar tune she’d heard so many times growing up.

“Pop, this is wonderful.” Plates and silverware were already set at their places and in the middle a mason jar held a display of sunflowers and other wildflowers. They filled their plates with the home-cooked spread.

“Um. Hm,” he muttered through a mouth full of buttered cornbread. He wiped his mouth. “Now, I want the truth from you, girl, and I ain’t stopping ‘til I hear it.”

There was no use trying to keep something from her father. It was like he had a sixth sense about these things. She shared about the text to Hector coming from her phone and her suspicions about Cole taking her phone.

“That’s something. I just don’t see that boy doing something he shouldn’t. Nope. Just can’t see it. He’s a good kid. I don’t understand about your phone though.”

“It’s simple, Pop. If it looks like one of us lured Hector out here and then he dies—”

“Like to say one of us was to blame for his death?” Pop shook his head. “I don’t see why someone would do that. Nope, not Cole. I won’t believe it.”

He took a swallow of cold buttermilk. “But that wife of his…never did like her. Whenever all y’all girls were together, I’d hear Ma say to herself, ‘she’s a bad’ un.’ You know your ma, bless her soul, always could read people like that.”

“Yes, I’m not a fan of Kimberly, either, but if she was having an affair with Hector, I can’t see why she’d want to kill him. What would she gain by that?”

Pop began to speak but instead speared a crispy tomato with his fork. “Maybe Hector was going to tell Cole.”

“That’s a possibility. But that would have consequences for him, too. They worked together. I can’t see Emma letting both of them stay on after that announcement.”

“If Hector was going to stay there.” Pa cut a piece of ham and popped it in his mouth.

Christie laid down her fork. “Pop, you know something you’re not telling me.”

“All I’m saying is that maybe Hector decided he wanted to steer his life a different direction. In fact, he may have even been thinking about a new career.”

“Pop, you’re holding something back. What is it?”

“A few months ago Hector visited me. He hated how the Websters were so pushy about getting the Altgelt property and this property. He said it obsessed them. He was frustrated, and he told me that he wouldn’t put it past them to have something to do with Curtis’s barn fire.”

“Really? He told you that?”

“To my face. He did.” He picked up another fried green tomato.

“Wow. That changes everything. If Hector had information the Websters were involved in the fire, that could have potentially destroyed their business and sent them to jail.”

He looked at Christie. “And give them a mighty good reason for Hector to be silenced.”

Christie wiped her mouth with a napkin. “This is getting crazier and crazier. Pop, what’re we going to do?”

He pointed his fork at her. “We ain’t gonna do nothing. Stay out of it. Hug can handle it.”

“But someone has my phone and used it to text Hector. That will not go away.”

He nodded. “That is something. But we got to give it time.”

“Pop, I don’t like you being out here by yourself. If the Websters tried to burn down the barn, who’s to say they won’t try something here?” She took a drink of tea. “Maybe they’re the ones who cut the fence line.”

“What?”

“Oh, in all the commotion, I forgot to tell you. Way out past that grove of cedar and mesquite, someone cut the fence line. That’s probably how Curtis’s heifer got over here.”

“Were there tire tracks?”

“I didn’t notice any, but I didn’t get off the horse and look. There were some other tracks, but I figure they were from animals crossing there. Deer trails, maybe.”

“Tomorrow, I’ve got to go talk to Curtis.”

Christie picked up the dishes and put them over at the sink. “Pop, let me go with you. I have to go with Trish in the morning, but I can take you over in the afternoon after your exercises.”

He sighed. “I hate those exercises. They hurt.”

“You may hate them, but you’ll hate not having the full use of your arm if you don’t do them. You never let me know it was hurting. We’ll go easier. Don’t overdo it, okay?”

“Fine. Now you go on and get them pies inside. I can manage here.”

“You did pretty well on this meal for someone with only one hand.”

“Actually,” he winked, “the church ladies brought this over. I think they forgot you’re here. All I did was fry up the ‘maters.”

“If that’s the case, then what did they bring for dessert?”

He laughed. “Homemade peach ice cream.”

“Then, those pies can wait.” She headed to the freezer.

~~~

It was late when Christie finally stuck the pecan pies in the pie safe, but it was okay with her. She enjoyed the quiet of the evenings. From her spot on the glider under the trees, she could see the flicker of the television set as her father watched a classic western feature. She stood and stretched, deciding to walk down to the barn. Checking the water in the trough, the horses ambled up to her. She stroked the mare’s side. “What do you say, old girl? Too many questions and not enough answers?”

The horse neighed.

“Yep, exactly what I was thinking.”

That night, Christie tossed and turned, sleep evading her.

Was Hector having an affair with Kimberly? Had he called it off, and she’d gotten mad? Or was their argument about him telling Cole? Or something else entirely? It was possible that his death could be from natural causes or heatstroke. But then, why would he have driven out to their place if he felt so ill?

Another thought intruded. Kimberly cheating on Cole…where did she fit in the picture? She would have wanted to stop Hector from telling Cole about it but Hector coming to their place didn’t fit.

Cole had been out on the property. He could have picked up her phone and texted Hector to come out, then confronted Hector. But Hector hadn’t been attacked, so that made little sense. Maybe he wanted to find out if Hector was having an affair with Kimberly but decided against confronting him and simply didn’t show up. Yet he had been adamant that they take the money offered by the Websters for Pop’s accident.

Christie laid on her back and wiggled her fingers on her hand that had fallen asleep. She sighed. The fact remained that the people who had the most to gain would be the Websters.

They had a lot to lose if Hector implicated them in the Altgelt fire. They would lose everything. People have killed for much less. But again, nothing pointed to Hector dying from anything other than natural causes—either heatstroke or—. Christie shot up in bed. The electrolyte drinks. Both Cole and Hector were drinking it and Cole had complained of a stomach-ache.

“Ugh. Stop it. You’re making things up.” Christie flipped her pillow to the cool side and punched it down. She turned over and faced toward the back of the sofa. She needed to sleep in a real bed. The couch had been comfortable enough for a day or two, but after that, Christie struggled to get comfortable and her back was starting to complain. She needed to talk to Pop about a different arrangement when she visited.

She thought of her father. At his age he couldn’t handle this place much longer on his own. She’d noticed him having lapses with his memory and had caught him sleeping on the porch with a lit cigar close by. It was a vice he’d tried to give up for years, but he had taken it back up when her mother died. Christie always knew when Pop’s stress levels increased because he caved into smoking. Thankfully, she’d noticed him going back to it less while she’d been back home. But his injury hadn’t helped. He knew she disapproved so he’d often do it while she was away from home.

She struggled with the thoughts of her father’s growing need for help. It may be that she would need to consider coming back home to care for her father. She would, of course. In an instant. But she couldn’t live here. Christie sighed deeply and took deep breaths. Maybe tomorrow they’d get some answers.