A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought ‘subpoena.’ Maybe not. Uncle Amos was kind of quiet this time. Didn’t seem mad at us. I don’t think he was drinking either. Maybe bein’ gone the way he has been, he coulda changed.”
    “Yeah, Lindy. Like a leopard growing stripes. You don’t want to stand around holdin’ your breath, waiting for that to happen. Doubt he’s changed one whit. He’s been stayin’ right next door there, with Harry and Chastity, had plenty of time to call me, if that’s what he wanted. Didn’t say nothing to nobody about wanting to see me and make up for all those bad times. Just nothing—couple weeks now.” She shook her head.
    “But, Mama, you and Daddy already paid him plenty. He still gets money on our gross profits. Why’s he think he deserves more?”
    “You tell me. Could be part of this Blanchard thing we all buy into. You know, pride in what Jake’s daddy and his daddy’s daddy, before him, accomplished here. How much our name means in Riverville. Heck, how much the name means in all of Texas, if it comes to that. Kind of hard to let go of, I suppose. You know, the family pride part.”
    “You gotta earn that pride. That’s what Daddy always told me. You gotta earn it by working the ranch, by standing up for the rest of the family. Uncle Amos never did any of that.”
    “Woulda just killed Jake, all this wrangling with his brother. Looks like Amos figures on being a problem to us for as long as he lives.”
    She looked down at her callused hands. “We all work so hard, Lindy. Just a darn shame. Justin heard he was back and went ballistic on me.”
    No sense going there, I warned myself. “There’s something else I gotta talk to you about . . .” I said it tentatively, but it was eating at me.
    Miss Emma ran a hand through her thick, short hair. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
    “Well, Meemaw said not to tell you, but I’m worried. Treenie told Meemaw somebody in town’s spreading stories about her. And then Ethelred was there, saying people are talking, saying she’s getting too old to run the Nut House.”
    “Somebody’s saying that about Miss Amelia! Nonsense. Not a person in Riverville who doesn’t just love Mama.”
    “Somebody doesn’t. Saying she’s got Alzheimer’s or some such thing. Now there are whispers going around town that her baked goods don’t taste right.”
    “You see anybody not buying her pies? Sales are better than ever. Who’d say such a thing? Can’t imagine a soul . . .” She thought a minute. “Well, Miss Ethelred, that woman’s jealous as can be of Mama. Thinks she’s just as good a baker. Wouldn’t put it past her to spread that story around herself.”
    “I was wondering if Uncle Amos might be doing it. Seems it just got started, maybe since he came back. Like him, to try to hurt all of us.”
    “Amos can be mean as a rattlesnake, but he’s not stupid. We’re still his only source of income. Ruin us, he ruins himself.”
    “Then who?”
    “One of those evil gossips we’ve got here in town. Who knows who’d take pleasure in hurting us? I’ll just bet if we ignore the whole thing, it’ll go away.” Mama yawned. “Don’t know why it pours when it rains,” she said. “I’m about worn out.”
    “I hate to do this . . .” I gave her one of my “sorry” looks again.
    “Lord love a duck, Lindy. How much do you expect me to take on in one day?”
    “Just something . . .”
    “Well, go ahead.”
    “I went back to my apartment this afternoon to get a newspaper article I left there. About a new kind of tree in California. Nuts filled with nutrition. No diseases. I’m thinking of ordering a few, maybe trying a graft on my new cultivars. See what I get.”
    “Go on,” she sat back, sighing.
    “Somebody was up there in my living room. Things were moved on my desk.”
    “You keep yer place locked, don’t you?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, then. Nobody but you was in there. Anyway, I told you, you shoulda stayed right here at