Die a Yellow Ribbon Read online

  “I guess.”

  Rocky held up a softball-sized pecan coated with gold paint. “So, who do you think will find the golden pecan this year?”

  “I don’t know, but you’d better hide it better than the year you hid it in a tree. This year’s prize is pretty impressive.”

  Libby Loper, who ran a successful dude ranch on the edge of town, donated the grand prize this year, a seven-day cruise leaving out of Galveston. Sun, fun, and a vacation Leo and I desperately needed.

  “Okay. Maybe it was a bad idea to stick it in the Christmas tree.”

  Rocky was referring to the giant pine near the town square we used for a Christmas tree each year. Even without the lights and decorations, it was still called the Christmas tree.

  “It was the shortest treasure hunt in the history of Pecan Bayou,” I laughed. “People didn’t need to follow the clues. They just had to look up, and there it was.”

  Rocky held up a hand. “I accept the blame on that one, but this year, by tying in our failing downtown stores, it’s a win-win.”

  “So, where are you going to hide it?”

  Rocky’s eyes widened. “And why would I tell you? Last I heard you’ve already started packing for that cruise. I’d better not find out you’re shopping for beachwear at the mall.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me?” My stepson Tyler entered from the street lugging in two cases of bottled water on a dolly.

  “This is a surprise,” I said. Out for summer break, I hadn’t seen Tyler get off the couch this early in the day since the last school bell rang.

  “Mr. Butler from the bank called me and asked if I would unload some items for the treasure hunt. He got a discount on a giant order and they parked it all in the alley behind Benny’s Barbecue. I guess he was planning ahead for hurricane season. He wants you guys to store these cases here.”

  “Sure,” Rocky said, then turned to me. “And as for your request on the whereabouts of the golden pecan, no one gets to know but me. You’d have to use torture to get it out of me.” Rocky, ever the dramatic, feigned victimhood with the back of his hand melodramatically stuck to his forehead.

  I gave him a crosswise glance. “My boss. The world master of hyperbole.”

  “Where do you want these?” Tyler asked.

  “Comes in handy in the newspaper business, Betsy.” He focused on the cases of water bottles. “Just set them in the back.” Rocky placed his hands on my shoulders. “You have an article to finish, young lady. I already have two writers late on their deadlines. The whole town is waiting for the bowling scores from Lester, so I can’t disappoint them further with a missing Happy Hinter article. Besides, I need to think. Use the old gray matter.” He tapped his temple and walked away.

  I returned to my computer screen and said to the retreating Rocky, “Yeah, try to think of where to hide the golden pecan that isn’t so obvious.”

  “Not a problem. I figured that out weeks ago,” Rocky answered with a twinkle in his eye.

  Chapter 2

  After visiting with Rocky and finishing my article on recycling plastic bags, I decided to pay a visit to my father over at the Pecan Bayou police station. I was worried about him trying to get ready for the Pecan Bayou Golden Pecan Treasure Hunt, especially after what had happened last year. A few of our less reputable citizens had imbibed before the hunt, and there was an all-out brawl in front of Birdie’s Diner. This year my father planned to set up a perimeter of volunteer deputies to help keep the peace among the treasure hunters. His next problem was trying to get said volunteers. Everybody in town wanted to find that golden pecan.

  As I walked into the one-story tan brick police department that felt like a second home to me, I found my father looking over the shoulder of Mrs. Thatcher, our dispatcher, pointing to the computer screen. This tableau of the two of them set up against the deep brown 1970s paneling was forever locked in my memories.

  “So, if you calculate the area we have to cover, this is going to spread us pretty thin,” my father said.

  “Real thin. Plus, we have to put Beckwith in here to cover the phones.” She nodded to George Beckwith, who was eating a submarine sandwich in the back room while watching something on his cell phone.

  My father heaved a sigh. Mrs. Thatcher was his most valuable and most consistent coworker. “And there’s no way I can change your mind on that?”

  Mrs. Thatcher lowered her bifocals. “Not a chance. My husband, Josiah, and I have been planning to do the hunt together this year. Besides that, even though he’s been studying past treasure hunts like a history major before finals, he can’t even find his socks in the morning. We never had a cruise offered before. You think I’m going to trust something as important as this to him alone?”

  My dad patted her shoulder. “And you deserve it. I’m just worried that we’ll have a brawl start again. Years and years of driving around rescuing people’s cats and making sure that their neighbors’ TVs are turned down on summer nights must not count for much.”

  “Not when you’re talking seven days of fun and sun starting from glorious Galveston.” She made her rhyme sing at the end like a commercial on KNUT, home of the nuttiest country music in Texas.

  “Good morning, Dad,” I said.

  “Morning, Betsy.” His eyebrows rose slightly. “You wouldn’t want to volunteer to be my deputy, would you?”

  “Not really.”

  “How about that husband of yours?”

  “I don’t know how formidable a weatherman would be. Besides, we want to hunt for the pecan. The kids do, too. What about Art Rivera?”

  “Art is giving up his duties as coroner for the weekend and going on a fishing trip without me. Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping myself busy making sure the fools of Pecan Bayou don’t conk each other over the head when they find that stupid plastic pecan. Now our lovely dispatcher here tells me she and her husband are leaving me to join the fray.”

  “I don’t think you understand the seriousness of the situation, Judd,” Mrs. Thatcher said. “Now that the prize is a cruise, Josiah has taken the spare bedroom as his command center. He has flowcharts, street maps with pins in them, and strategies typed up on his computer. It’s more than a cruise to him. He thinks of it as his job now that he’s retired. A reason to get up in the morning.”

  “Well, I appreciate a man with a plan. I just wish I had a better one.” Dad ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, leaving a few strands sticking up on top.

  “Excuse me.” The president of Pecan Bayou’s only bank, Vic Butler, had quietly walked in behind me. “Good morning, all,” he said in a booming voice. Vic was well-loved in our town, not only as a former rodeo cowboy but when a rancher needed a loan, he was willing to give them a listen. “Sorry to interrupt. Glad to hear you talking about our treasured golden pecan.”

  My father reached out and shook Vic’s hand. “If you’re here to check out the security, I have bad news, Vic. Our workforce will be running very thin on the night of the treasure hunt. I don’t know if we will have anybody in the early morning hours.”

  Pecan Bayou’s fun family event was ridiculously long and went on for twenty-four hours, putting a strain on even the strongest families. Rocky had become so adept at hiding that little plastic pecan (with the exception of the Christmas tree year) that sometimes it took an entire day to find it. We even had a year where no one found it, and they had to put everybody’s names in a bag and draw for the prize. A well-hidden golden pecan meant there could be people wandering around the streets of Pecan Bayou at two and three in the morning. Then there would also be the people who had just come out of the bar, who were not so much as wandering around as stumbling.

  “I have complete confidence in you, Judd, but I’m actually here about something else. Could you tell me how one takes out a restraining order?”

  Mrs. Thatcher tilted her head slightly. “Is somebody bothering you, Vic?”

  “It’s a little embarrassing,” he stammered.

  “Wou
ld you like to go into my office and tell me?” my father urged.

  He sighed. “At this point it seems like a wasted effort. You all might know already. It’s not for me. It’s for my wife. Bunny Donaldson keeps hounding her.”

  Now this was beginning to ring a bell. Rocky and I had just listened to Bunny rant about how much she hated Sarah Butler.

  “How is she bothering her? Is she making threats? Do you feel like Sarah isn’t safe or that Bunny might commit physical violence against your wife?”

  “I’m not sure. Bunny is making life miserable for my sweet Sarah. She keeps accusing her of terrible things. That crazy woman makes her sound like a trollop. I’m afraid people will start to believe her.”

  My father crossed his arms and tapped his chin. “I can keep Bunny away from her, but I can’t keep her quiet. Even if we did get a restraining order, she could still go around town bad-mouthing her. Is there any chance her comments would qualify as slander?”

  Vic paused for a moment. “My job is to bring in commerce to the town, and I’ll admit, I don’t always succeed. People don’t always like me when I can’t give them a loan, and they don’t mince words about it, but when it comes to my Sarah, it’s different. With the mall pulling sales away from downtown, my position at the chamber may be precarious. They only gave me that job because I’m also president of the bank. Sometimes I wonder if our citizens might want more of a go-getter kind of person.”

  My father rested his hands on his police belt. “I’ll keep an eye on Bunny and have a few words with her about what she’s been doing. That can be our first step toward keeping the peace.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate that. You can see how difficult this is.”

  “Well, Bunny has never been right since her sister died. I think we’ve all tried to cut her some slack because of that. Such a strange accident.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Vic said as he began to back out of the office. “Thanks. Sometimes we think we are all living in Mayberry, but that’s a myth. People like Bunny do seem to keep us grounded.”

  I glanced at my phone. I needed to get back. “I’d better get going. I just dropped by to say hello. Don’t let all this golden pecan stuff wear you out, Dad.” I grabbed my bag to leave.

  “No more than it usually does.”

  As I strolled down the street, I spotted Mark Valencia standing outside Maximum Muscle. Next to him was a man even bigger than Mark, with his hand planted firmly on the fitness store owner’s shoulder. I slowed down but could easily overhear their conversation.

  “I don’t care what you think,” Mark said. “I’m not paying that price. What you sell is garbage compared to what I’m shipping in from San Antonio. Face it. Our little working relationship has come to a sad and sorry end.”

  “You can’t mean that. I have an entire shipment of the stuff I have to pay for. You made a promise.”

  “Only a verbal agreement.”

  “I don’t care what you call it. You broke your word.” Big man’s face was reddening.

  “Sorry. I guess I don’t know what came over me. Oh wait, I do know. A better deal.” Mark smirked at the angry man. Would they begin a fight right there in the street? I backed up, ready to return to the police station if need be.

  Instead, the bigger man cursed and stomped down the street. Mark Valencia straightened his shirt and darted into his store.

  We were experiencing a record-breaking heatwave this summer, and between this encounter and Bunny Donaldson threatening Sarah, tempers were rising as fast as the thermometer.

  Chapter 3

  “A restraining order against Bunny? She seems pretty harmless to me.” Aunt Maggie placed a plate of freshly baked cookies in front of me. “Try these. I just got the recipe from Libby.”

  I took a bite, and a mixture of pecan and cream cheese played on my tongue. “These are delicious. What are they called?”

  “Cheesecake cookies. I think I’ll send some to Danny’s day habilitation center. They love any excuse for a party over there.”

  My cousin Danny grabbed a cookie. “Don’t take them all to day hab, Mama. I might not get enough.”

  “You’ve already had enough, baby,” Maggie answered.

  I reached for a second cookie. “Vic said Bunny is saying terrible things about Sarah, but he didn’t go into much detail.”

  Maggie scowled. “Well, I’m not one to gossip—”

  “Gossip is the devil’s telephone,” Danny said in rote fashion. He’d heard that cautionary warning before.

  “You are so right.” Maggie smiled at Danny then turned back to me. “But I heard Sarah was very seductive.”

  “How seductive?” I asked.

  “Very.” Maggie winked.

  “Very.” Danny repeated and winked. I doubted my cousin understood what seductive meant, but he was never one to be left out of a conversation.

  Maggie blew out a sigh and changed the subject. “I tell you, with all of this insanity going on about finding that golden pecan I almost want to sit back and watch everybody else run around after the fool thing. Ruby is fairly driving me crazy. She says she has a battle plan of some sort.”

  Ruby had a battle plan, and Josiah Thatcher had built a Pecan Bayou Golden Pecan command center. People seemed to be going all-out this year.

  “Do you think Ruby would mind if I let her have all the fun and I stayed home in the air conditioning?” Maggie asked. “Besides that, Danny doesn’t have anywhere to go that day. His center for disabled adults isn’t open on Saturday.”

  “We are talking about the same woman, aren’t we? The last time Ruby cut my hair she talked the whole time about the cruise the two of you would be going on if you won. Something about the two most eligible ladies hooking up with some cruise ship Romeos?”

  Maggie smiled and shook her head. “Yes. She said that to me too, and then she explained what hooking up meant.”

  “I’m glad she did. I sure didn’t want to explain it to you,” I said.

  “Baby girl, I’ve been around a while. I might not know the current terminology, but I still know what Ruby had in mind. Not sure I’m crazy about the new term—makes the act of a man and woman becoming intimate sound like Velcro.”

  “And what would you do if you found the golden pecan and won the cruise?”

  Maggie laughed and pushed Danny’s hand away from the plate. “I don’t rightly know. I know that there’s the option of cashing it out, and as much as I used to watch The Love Boat, I would probably take the cash. It’s always a good idea to pad your retirement account.”

  “Mama. We need to go on the boat,” Danny said.

  “You don’t like boats. You don’t like being on the water. When Uncle Judd took you fishing, you pestered him until he put you back on dry land.”

  “But I would like it this time.”

  “Yoo-hoo.” Ruby Green stuck her head through the unlocked door. Normally, Aunt Maggie would have the door open and the breeze coming through the screen door, but today the only thing that was creeping in was the insufferable heat. “Anybody home?”

  Ruby was our town’s beautician, and because she lived her life helping other people look beautiful, or in some cases merely passable, she applied her talents to creating some very individual looks on herself. Today she was decked out in a frog theme with a silk frog-patterned scarf highlighting a lime green tailored shirt and green striped capri pants. Tiny frogs dangled from her ears, and they bounced each time she moved, making me think of Mark Twain’s famous story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

  “Aren’t you usually at the salon this time of day?” I asked. The Best Little Hairhouse in Texas was the most popular salon in town since it was the only beauty parlor within a thirty-mile radius.

  “Nah. Business is slow. People don’t have their minds on hairdos right now. We’re all plotting for a way to get that gold pecan. I closed down for the day. In search of a bigger financial nut, you might say. Today we’re meeting to finali
ze on a foolproof plan to find the prize. Maggie and I are going to go on this cruise together and check out the singles scene down in Me-hee-co.”

  Aunt Maggie pushed at the air with her hand. “Go on with yourself, Ruby. I have no desire whatsoever to check out the singles scene. I’m long past that. There’s no replacing the love of my life, God rest his soul, so I don’t even want to try.”

  “And that’s where you’re making a mistake,” Ruby said. “Look at you. You’re young. You’re vibrant. You deserve to have a life. You can’t wear those widow’s weeds forever.”

  “I think you’ve sucked in too much Final Net. Didn’t they teach you in that beauty school not to inhale? Besides that, what man is going to want to date either of us? We aren’t sexy chicks hanging out on the lido deck in our polka-dot bikinis. Now, if the singles’ scene is at the bingo table between the polyester grandmas and Botox divorcees, we’d at least get some attention.”

  Ruby didn’t flinch. “You’d be surprised at my allure. Why, I caught Lester Jibbets giving me the eye in church last week.”

  “It’s called astigmatism.”

  “Nevertheless, there was contact made of the flirting kind.”

  “And what would you do if Lester actually asked you out?” Maggie asked.

  “Ooh.” Ruby looked appalled. “I hadn’t thought of that. The fun is in the chase, not the capture.”

  “Exactly. So what in the world would we be doing on a cruise? Yes, I’m alone, but I’m not lonely. I’m happy. I’m not looking for a new man in my life.”

  “She has a man in her life,” Danny professed.

  “That’s right,” Maggie agreed.

  “I don’t mean like that, Danny.” Ruby tugged at her silk scarf, looking discouraged. I loved Ruby and her outlook on life. She was always in the middle of sparking joy, and Aunt Maggie was seriously raining on her parade.

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” I said in my most encouraging voice. “If you want to go on a cruise, then why not? I know you’ll have fun.”