Nuts and Buried Read Free

cowboy in a ten-gallon hat, best boots ever, and whisper, “All hat. No cattle.” Or look into somebody’s eyes and know right away if they were capable of murder.
    â€œThought that was who you’d be. Maybe not going toimpress any of the men here—as your mama hoped. Not with you looking like something pulled out of a moldy grave. But good for you, taking on somebody like Chipita.”
    â€œTook the Texas legislature over a hundred years to claim she didn’t get a fair trial,” I groused as loud as I dared, wanting people around us, staring at me, to get it. “That’s famous enough for me.”
    â€œYeah, well, lot of men hung didn’t get that much attention. But I’ll tell you, Lindy, I had a friend back in Dallas who swore she saw Chipita’s ghost riding the river bottoms over to San Patricio County. Hope you don’t stir her ghost up around here.”
    Meemaw looked well satisfied, passing on that small fact, and fixing me in her own way.
    â€œAre you mad at me?” I leaned in close to ask because of all the people in the world I never wanted mad at me, Meemaw was at the top of my list. Along with Mama, I suppose, but there’s always been something very special between my grandmother and me, like we could look at each other and know what we were thinking.
    â€œMad at you?” Her faded blue eyes went wide. She rocked back on the heels of her sensible shoes. “How could I be mad at you, Lindy? You got all that feistiness straight from me. Wish I still had some of it. But I’ve got you. I’m awful grateful for that.”
    I hid my embarrassment at pushing Meemaw to that extreme edge of grandmotherly love by turning to the tall, dark man standing behind me, a tray of barbecued shrimp with lemons heaped into a bowl of ice on his tray. He lowered the tray to within my reach as his dark eyes went over my costume and his nose wrinkled with distaste. Funny that I didn’t know the man. Weren’t many strangers in Riverville. From the look of him—with his dark curly hair and judgmental eyes, I imagine he’d been brought from Dallas withthe Wheatleys. I’d say some old family retainer except he didn’t look old and that insolent stare . . .
    Whew. I grabbed a shrimp on a toothpick and turned my back to him.
    I was looking around for a place to stash my toothpick when Mama came up fast and mad in her Laura Bush chinos and flowered blouse, short blond hair brushed up pretty and neat. She had one of her big, phony smiles meant for the people around us as she put her hands out and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me into a big hug, then whispering in my ear, “Just what are you supposed to be?”
    â€œWhy, Mama! I’m the only woman ever hanged in Texas.”
    She leaned back—phony smile stuck in place. She tipped her head to the side and said, around all those white teeth, “Really? Unless you want to be the second one hanged, you’d better ditch that noose pretty fast and get over there and talk to your hosts. If they ask, tell ’em you’re the ghost of a dead pecan tree. Don’t care what you say—just get over there.”
    She smiled again and hugged me and blew on past, leaving me like a battleship on a lake—with no place to hide.
    I looked over to where Eugene Wheatley, a man I’d known since high school days, and his new wife, Jeannie, stood. He must’ve come as some old politician, in his straight black suit and high white collar. Jeannie, well, I didn’t know for sure why, but she was wearing a lot of yellow.
    The Chauncey twins stood with the Wheatleys. “The girls,” as everybody called Melody and Miranda, were over eighty and tough as nails. They ran their old family pecan ranch by themselves, shot a mess of rattlers just about every day, and were the first people there if a farmhouse burned down or somebody died or a child got sick. Good