Chapter Ten

Martin Sanchez came into my office as I settled down to work, record books piled in boxes around me. Five years of them.

My office isn’t a place anybody would envy. The floor is gray cement. The ceiling is high—with red pipes running across it, pipes that sometimes dropped sweat on my head. But I did have a metal desk and a corner with a small kitchen so I could make tea in the morning or have a cold Coke-Cola in the afternoon. And rows of file cabinets. One for each year since I’d started keeping track of the experimental cultivars.

“Wanted to show you something out in the test lot,” Martin said, his dark and well-lined face crunched up from coming into the shade of my greenhouse after the bright sun outside.

I immediately felt guilty—the way I always did. Something was wrong, I told myself. Because I hadn’t been watching the way I should have been, the trees had been attacked by some awful virus. Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

I followed Martin outside and over to my fenced test grove—an acre set up in the sunniest place we could find. The gate to the grove was always kept locked—to keep out curious ranchers and jealous destroyers—one had actually broken in and tried to ruin my work, but that one was in prison now.

This was truly God’s Little Acre. Just opening that gate and stepping inside, looking down the perfect rows of trees—some fairly tall, some barely more than seedlings—made my heart thump. Each little tree had its own bucket watering system. A mound of soil ringed each with gauges stuck in to monitor acidity, the level of dampness, even temperature. I knew everything about each specimen.

Martin led me to the last row where we’d put in a cultivar that was really experimental. This was a rare and very old pecan cultivar combined with a genome I’d never worked with before. I had a lot of hope for drought resistance with this new seedling.

Martin pointed to a row of tiny trees I’d set out about a month before. At first they’d been disappointing—the few leaves on each turning yellow and dropping immediately.

“I stopped watering, the way you told me to. Figured they were a total loss,” Martin said. “Now look.”

The trees were about two feet tall. Not just sticks anymore, but showing full leaf budding. They’d come back from the dead. A few of the buds were swelled to bursting.

I looked back at Martin, mouth hanging open. “Same ones?”

He nodded.

“But we gave ’em up for dead.”

He smiled and nodded again.

“No extra water?”

“None at all. I quit with the irrigation when I saw they were dead.”

“Must have been early dormancy—and here they are. Oh, Martin. This might be what we’ve been waiting for. This could be the centerpiece of my work.”

He smiled from ear to ear, this wonderful Mexican man who came to the farm as a young boy, under my grandfather, and was still here, now with his wife and daughter.

He lifted and dropped his heavy eyebrows a few times—the closest thing I’d ever seen to celebration in this stoic, hardworking man.

I could have hugged him, but it wouldn’t have been seemly. Instead we shuffled around, looked at each other, and smiled a few dozen times.

It was only the sound of voices on the other side of the gate that broke our happy spell and wiped the goofy grin right off my face.

I walked from the garden and shut the gate tightly behind me. When I turned, not knowing who to expect, I saw Peter Franklin, with Elizabeth Wheatley sailing behind, her sturdy, made-up face set and ready and aimed straight at me.

Elizabeth Wheatley was as different from most of the women in Riverville as an ostrich is from a robin. I’d always kind of admired her—all that attention to how she dressed and how her hair was fixed and how she applied her makeup. Today she wore white pants and a pink flowing top with a lot of gold at her ears, wrists, and around her neck. From the wide smile on Elizabeth’s face, you would have thought she’d never said a single unkind word to anybody on the face of this earth, let alone me.

“There you are, Lindy. Your mama said she didn’t think you were out here. Maybe she was just trying to fool me.”

I smiled one of those half-frozen smiles I smile when forced to be nice. “She knows I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m working.”

Elizabeth waved a hand at me. “Peter said you two are having dinner together tonight so I thought you must be friendly enough not to mind us barging in on you.”

She was wrong. It was a mark against Peter. And another one against her.

“Anyway, I’m not here to see a bunch of little trees. How on earth you keep them straight—one from the other—I’ll never know. What I do want to know is where you’ve taken my sister-in-law. The servants said it was you who drove away with her. I know she’s probably distraught, but we do have things to discuss. Urgent things. There is the matter of the family trust, you understand. Eugene’s will is tied up in that. Never changed, as my attorney informed me. Jeannie and I really have to talk.” She stopped to look around. “So? Is she back up at the house?”

None of your business, was what I wanted to say. This was going to be a knock-down, drag-out battle, I figured. I made no offer to take them inside the much cooler greenhouse. Be easier to get rid of her out here when she starts to melt.

She waited, one eyebrow tilted up. “Well? Are you going to answer me or do I have to go speak to your mother?”

“She’s not here.” I leaned back, crossed my arms in front of me, and drew a long breath. “Jeannie’s very upset. She says the two of you got into it over Eugene’s death and she wasn’t ready for a thing like that. I’m not taking sides, mind you, Elizabeth. I just figured the poor woman’s going through a lot and could use a couple days off by herself.”

“Where is that?” she demanded, nose headed into the stratosphere. “Where’d she go, ‘off by herself’? You shouldn’t have interfered. Jeannie comes from a very different background than the Wheatleys, hope you recognize that. Eugene married her knowing there were things . . . well, unsavory things about her family. She has no idea of the protocol surrounding the death of a wealthy man. She needs to come back and hold up her end of this memorial, as his wife. People are calling to express their condolences from as far away as New York City, and here she is, nowhere to be found.”

“When she’s ready, she’ll be back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t wait for that. Will you please give her this card and tell her to call him today?” She dug in the huge straw handbag hanging from her shoulder. “He is our attorney. He needs to hear from her. She’s going to be unhappily surprised with what’s due her. I understand that. But I’m prepared to be generous anyway—you, know, to honor Eugene’s memory. I can only imagine that mother of hers going through the roof and causing her trouble. And that brother . . . well, I understand he’s out of prison now. Second-degree murder, I heard. I’ve passed that bit of news on to Sheriff Higsby. If he’s looking for suspects, that’s the place to begin, I told him.”

I took the business card she handed me and stuck it in the pocket of my jeans.

She turned and left, stepping high across my rutted parking lot.

Peter Franklin cleared his throat. He didn’t follow her but stood, squinting into the sun, watching as she made her way to a black Mercedes.

“I’ll be back later.” He turned to me, his face unhappy. “Sorry about this. She demanded that I bring her out.”

We left it at that. I wanted to get inside fast and call out to the Chaunceys’ ranch, pass on my news, see how things were going, and maybe go there, give Jeannie that lawyer’s card, and tell her what Elizabeth was saying. She had to know where she stood and what Elizabeth planned for her.