Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 Read Online Free PDF

the door and we went into the
kitchen. A gas stove, sink, and refrigerator were arranged along one wall, and
the room was heated by a cast-iron woodstove, which radiated a welcoming
warmth. A gray tabby was curled on a blue braided rug beside the woodbox, which
was piled high with split cedar. A pot of soup simmered on the back of the
woodstove—pea soup with ham, judging from the rich, savory fragrance. Somebody
had put out a few holiday decorations: a dried-flower swag over one doorway; a
ribbon-tied bunch of mistletoe over another; a bowl of oranges, apples, and
pine cones in the middle of the table, garnished with sprigs of fresh green
rosemary.
    "It's cold out
there," Donna said, closing the door against the chill wind and unwinding
her muffler. "Bet it'll drop into the twenties tonight."
    Of course, cold is relative. To a Yankee, today
might seem like Indian summer. But our average December temperature is 50
degrees and we seldom have more than a couple of dozen days below freezing. In
this part of Texas, that's cold enough—especially for those who have to keep
their greenhouses warm.
    I shrugged out of my denim jacket and Donna hung
it on a peg beside her down vest and yellow cap. "Cream or sugar?"
she asked.
    "Both,
please." I glanced around the room while Donna poured coffee and cut two
generous slices of pie. The windows were curtained in red-checked gingham,
there was a red-painted rocking chair beside the woodstove, and several of
Donna's watercolors—she's a talented artist, among other things—hung on one
wall.
    I sat down at the
table and Donna brought the coffee and pie. "Hey, this is super," I
said, when I had tasted it.
    The supreme test of a
Texas cook is her pecan pie, and we all have a favorite recipe that we swear
by. But the real secret is the nuts themselves, the fruit of the state tree of
Texas. Fossilized remains of pecan trees have been found in lower Cretaceous
formations to the north of Adams County, so it's safe to say that the trees and
their nuts have been around for a lot longer than people. Indians gathered and
ground them into a seasoning flour for their gruel and bread, or fermented them
as a ceremonial intoxicant called powcohicoria. With an eye to future
celebrations, they planted pecan groves around their campsites along creeks and
rivers and near springs. By the late 1800's, pecans were worth five times as
much as cotton, and after modern breeding techniques began to improve the size
and quality of the nuts, they became a cash crop worth cultivating.
    I savored the first bites of pie, then said,
"Are you growing pecans for sale?" If they were, it could be a
lucrative sideline business.
    "We're not, but from the size of this year's
harvest, we think we could," Donna said. "These nuts came from the
trees above Mistletoe Spring." She pulled out a chair and sat down across
from me. "The trees must be sixty or seventy years old, but you'd never
believe how many nuts they produce. A couple of hundred pounds a tree."
    Now that she was
sitting at the table, under the overhead lamp, I could see that her tanned skin
had a sallow cast and her brown eyes were shadowed.
    "Is
everything going okay?" I asked casually.
    Donna looked relieved, as if she were glad that I
had opened a difficult subject. "The business is going well," she
said, "but we've got a problem we don't know how to handle." She shifted
uncomfortably. "I wish Terry were here, because she's the one who—"
She stopped. "But I guess I'd better ask you about it. With the holiday
coming up, there might not be another chance."
    "Ask
me what?"
    "Terry and I need some legal
advice. The problem is getting out of hand. Every new day brings a—"
    "I keep tellin'
you," said a cracked voice, "it ain't our problem. It's
Carlos's."
    With those words,
Aunt Velda stumped into the room and lowered herself into a chair at the table.
She was wearing the same thing she'd had on the last time I was at the
Fletchers': patched Army pants and an old