Chapter Thirty-three

The next day Hunter and I were sharing a piece of Meemaw’s pie we’d stolen out of the cooler. We were in the kitchen, laughing because I told him I’d seen Ethelred and she was shaking in her shoes after he’d warned her away from her investigation. When Meemaw came in, her stiff face warned us that something was up and it couldn’t be just the stolen pie—though she didn’t like people helping themselves to her valuable stock—“Which I might need on the spur of the moment and here you are, Lindy Blanchard, eating up everything without as much as a ‘by-your-leave.’”

We found out soon enough why Meemaw was mad. And it didn’t have to do with me, for once.

“Hear you warned Ethelred away from her investigation.” She stood next to the table, looking down at our guilty faces. She was talking to Hunter, who knew enough to color up.

“Now maybe you’d like to go out there”—she extended a pointy finger back toward the swinging doors to the store—“and tell her I’m not going to be murdered in my bed because I help the sheriff out from time to time. Poor soul is worried sick I’m going to get myself killed. Think I’m the only one in town who really cares about that silly woman. She knows that and wants me kept alive.”

She stopped and shook that finger at Hunter. “I know you did it just to keep her and Freda quiet, and get their noses out of things. Still, I don’t think I can put up with one more minute—”

Hunter, often the object of Meemaw’s wrath when we were little and dumb, stuttered out an apology then went right into praise for the pie, which quieted her down enough so she pulled out a chair, sat, and calmed herself.

“What else are you two up to this morning?” She looked from our faces to our pie dishes—clean as a whistle.

“Just came to see you.” Hunter wiped filling from his chin. “Sheriff was wanting to know if you’d go along with me over to Ralston. We’re kinda short on men right now.”

“That game ranch where Sally died? That’s the only reason you want me to leave my store and go trekkin’ with you? You’re ‘short on men’?”

Hunter sure knew how to get Meemaw going.

I sat back to watch the fireworks.

“I didn’t put that just right.” Hunter slid down in his chair and frowned. “What I meant to say is, the sheriff really needs me to get over there and he’s got the other deputies busy checking everywhere he can and . . .” His words trailed off, like he was talking to the floor and forgot what he was saying.

Meemaw waved a hand at him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to take out after you, Hunter. That Ethelred’s got me going.”

She smiled over at him the way she used to do. One thing with Meemaw, she never could stay mad at people she loved.

“Okay, now . . . What for? Why do you want me to go with you to Ralston?”

“Sheriff Higsby talked to the sheriff up there. The man said to come on out and go through the file he’s got on Sally Wheatley’s shooting. We can see if there’s a match with the cartridge that killed Eugene or the one that killed Henry Wade. Two different guns. I’m taking both ballistics reports with me. Seems like, if somebody shot Sally on purpose, it’s got to be one or the other of the guns we know about. Too much coincidence, that she was killed just like her husband. Can’t tell me we’ve got that many killers around. The sheriff there in Ralston says he still thinks it was an accident, but the man’s got an open mind. Wants to get it right.”

“You don’t need me to go talk to a sheriff,” Meemaw said.

“Me and Sheriff Higsby thought it might be good to have a woman go along. Kind of look around and see things the way Sally would’ve seen ’em. You know, keep your eyes and ears open.”

“As I told you, I’ve got a store to run, Hunter. Glad to help you out, but I don’t see how I’d be necessary over to Ralston. Can’t help you with guns. I don’t own one. Never will. Can’t help you with ballistics. Can’t help you find the other people on that hunt along with Sally. Can’t question the guide who took them out—you’re better at that than I am. Can’t question people in Ralston if they’ve seen the man around town. You know, take that sketch along. Maybe go into restaurants. Maybe the bank. Maybe a gas station. Places like that where outsiders go. Could try any hotels or motels in the area. But I don’t have the stamina for all that searching. You need somebody younger for that footwork, son.”

“Guess you gave me my playbook right there, Miss Amelia.” Hunter grinned from ear to ear. “Now I’m sorrier than ever you can’t go along.”

I saw Meemaw thinking a minute. She had her grandmother face on. Her “I’m going to fix something for Lindy, who never can seem to fix things right for herself” face.

“I’ll tell you what, take Lindy, here, along. She knows as much as I do about all of this. Let’s see what she thinks. Why were the women there to begin with? I never took Sally for a hunter. What was it they were after that day?”

“Sika deer.”

“There in the hills?”

“Yes, ma’am. Rich man’s hobby. Those deer cost hunters anywhere from fifteen hundred up.”

“Terrain’s hilly?”

“Some rolling country. Lots of big rocks.”

“How many acres? You know?”

“Not exactly. Maybe a couple thousand.”

Meemaw shook her head. “Who’d mistake Sally for a deer? Wasn’t she standing in a group of people?”

Hunter shrugged. “Wild shot. Some of those folks don’t know a shotgun from a hockey stick.”

“I’m glad you’re going. Show that sketch of Henry Wade around at the wildlife ranch, too, while you’re there. See if anybody saw him on the hunt.”

“Showed it to Elizabeth,” Hunter said. “Never saw him before. Didn’t even remember him from the wedding party. Said it must’ve been the caterers she hired brought him along.”

Meemaw shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to ask around Ralston. Maybe he was a hired hand out there at the game ranch.”

“And maybe you should go after all, Meemaw,” I protested. “You’ve got all the questions. I don’t know what I’d even be looking for. And,” I stopped to put in a slight complaint, “maybe I don’t like being second choice.”

“Hush,” was all Meemaw said, giving me one of her narrow-eyed looks that told me she wasn’t going to take any back talk.

I knew what she was doing. I think Hunter knew, too. I pretended to reconsider. We all sat there nodding, acting like we thought it was a great idea for me and Hunter to go off for a day or so together, catching a couple of murderers and righting a few wrongs along the way.

A couple of days. A couple of days alone to talk. I sure was willing to help out. I’d take a look around the game ranch. I’d tell Hunter what I thought and make my grandmother proud. I couldn’t help but think “chip off the old block” and then tried to get the pictures out of my head: Meemaw, like me, with some wild man, riding toward danger in a truck. Staying in a cheap motel with her wild man . . .

“Okay.” Meemaw thumped her hands on the table. “Now, I’ve got a couple more questions. If I’m treading where I shouldn’t be going, you let me know.”

Hunter nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you get fingerprints from Henry Wade’s gun?”

“Yes, ma’am. All of ’em Wade’s.”

“What about that gun expert you brought in to go over Eugene’s collection? He find anything missing?”

Hunter shook his head.

“Anybody help with who could’ve come to that back door to shoot Eugene?”

“Still asking. Trying to find out if somebody was supposed to take a tray out to ’im and if one was sent. Chantal didn’t remember.”

“Maybe there was no tray.”

We all looked at each other.

“But didn’t somebody mention Eugene saying there was a tray coming out to him?”

We let it pass.

“Any follow-up on that stuff Elizabeth was saying? I mean, about Eugene being sorry he’d married Jeannie?” Meemaw asked.

Hunter shook his head. “Just the opposite. Friends I talked to said he was happier than he’s been since Sally died.”

We were all thinking hard.

“Maybe the killer switched guns to make it look like Wade killed Eugene,” Meemaw said after a while. “But with only Wade’s fingerprints on the gun, his body found miles from the boardinghouse, and Lydia Hornbeck hovering around that house of hers, no stranger’s going to get by her dragging a dead body, and no stranger’s gonna wander in and out with a rifle in his hands. I’d say it’s Henry Wade’s gun all right.”

“So we have Eugene’s killer. Wade. Now here comes another killer.”

“Looks like it,” Meemaw said.

“And no clue as to a motive for this whole thing.”

“You’ve got to dig as deep as you can into Wade’s background, Hunter. You talk to the relatives who came for the body?”

“Yes, ma’am. Said he was a bragger. Came back to El Paso from time to time only to show off all the money he had on him. They didn’t know much else—like where the money came from. Told them he was some kind of ‘soldier of fortune’ or something like that. I got the impression nobody liked him much. His brother and uncle came for him. Didn’t see a lot of sadness. We tried to get a photograph of him. Nobody even had one.”

“What I figured,” Meemaw sighed. “Some people choose ugly paths.”

She thought some more. “Soldier of fortune—fancy name for a hired gun. So who would be after the Wheatleys? And why? They’re pretty prominent folks in Texas. Eugene always struck me as a nice man, despite the money. Elizabeth’s too worried about her social standing to do anything that would make her look bad. Who’d want any of them dead, let alone all of them?”

Meemaw shook her head after a while. “’Fraid I’m not much help, Hunter. Got to be tied to whoever killed Henry Wade. Or not. Could be he was just an evil man and somebody else he did dirt to killed him. I suppose you’ve got to take another look at Billy. Hate to say it, but I’ve got to admit—maybe for his sister’s sake he’d do away with Henry Wade. But I just know he had nothing to do with Eugene’s death.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too. At least to rule him out.”

“Tell you something.” Meemaw looked from Hunter to me and back. “This thing is getting to the point where I can’t tell up from down. I’d say, knowing human beings the way I do, if Henry Wade killed Eugene, there was nothing personal about it.”

“Then why didn’t Henry Wade get right out of town? Why hang around, waiting to get shot?” I asked.

“If he was a hired killer, I’d say he was either waiting to get paid or he had another job to do. Sharpshooter, eh. Looks like both killers were that—only a single shot each. Guess it’s gonna take more time and shoe leather. That right, Hunter?” She smiled big at him.

“Right you are, Miss Amelia.”

“So best you two get going over there to Ralston. Get that answer on the bullet. It’s important to know if the same gun that killed Eugene killed Sally. Jeannie wasn’t in the picture when Sally was killed so that lets her whole family out as to being involved. Can’t see Billy—who was incarcerated when Sally was killed, or his mother—who wouldn’t have the money to hire a hit man anyway—doing that. And unless one of ’em’s a fortune-teller, how could they know Eugene would ever marry Jeannie?

“You two get going. See what you can find at the game ranch.”

I ran upstairs and threw a few things into an overnight bag while Hunter went home to do the same. I stopped to look at myself in the bathroom mirror, running a brush through my hair and winding it into a ponytail that came out standing up like a fountain on top—the way little girls wear their hair. I checked my lipstick, wiped a smudge off my teeth, and looked into my eyes. “Maybe this whole thing is dishonest,” I told myself. “You’re not going along to investigate a murder and you know it.”

Myself answered, “So what?”

And I was off.

We took my truck. There wasn’t an extra patrol in town. We tussled over who was going to drive with the loser, me, muttering and promising dire consequences. Hunter said he’d drive until he got tired. A few hours. Be there before noon.

It was already feeling comfortable, the way we always were together. It was almost easy to forget why we were going to Ralston, forget there were murderers in Riverville, and pretend the world was back to being a nice place.