Cardwell Ranch Trespasser(26)

“Didn’t die. Were murdered.” She shook her head. “What do you want with Thelma?”

“I have some news about her nephew.”

“There isn’t any news she’d want to hear except that he’s six feet under,” the woman snapped.

“Then I guess I have some good news for her.”

* * *

HILDE TRIED NOT to go down to the shop the next day, but Ronnie called to say there was a problem with the new sewing machine invoice and the deliveryman wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do.

“I’ll be right there.” She was thankful for the call. Sitting around waiting to hear from Colt was making her all the more anxious. She was also thankful that the sewing machines hadn’t arrived before Dee vandalized the shop.

Once at the shop after taking care of the problem, Hilde showed Ronnie some of the ideas she had for quilting classes, and they began to work on a wall hanging for the sewing room.

Hilde loved the way the shop was coming together. She’d long dreamed of a place where anyone who wanted to learn to quilt could come and sew with others of like mind. Quilting was a restful and yet creative hobby at any age. She had great plans for the future and was so excited about them that she’d almost picked up the phone and called Dana to tell her.

Dana still had money invested in Needles and Pins. Hilde realized that might change now. She should consider buying her out if their friendship went any further south. The thought made her sad. If only they could prove that Dee wasn’t her cousin.

She was mentally kicking herself for not thinking to take Dana’s toothbrush as well as Dee’s, when the bell over the door jangled and she turned to see Dana walk into the shop.

Hilde felt her face light up—until she saw Dana’s expression. Her stomach fell with the memory of what had happened yesterday. Dana must be horrified. But how could her once best friend not realize that Hilde could never beat up anyone?

She felt a spark of anger, which she quickly tamped down as Dana stepped into the shop. Letting her temper flare was a surefire way to make herself look more guilty.

“Could we talk alone?” Dana asked quietly.

“Ronnie, would you mind watching the counter for a few minutes?” Hilde called. Ronnie said she’d be happy to. Hilde led Dana into the break room and closed the door. She didn’t want Ronnie hearing this. But the news was probably all over town anyway. The shop had been unusually slow today.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Dana said.

Hilde stepped to the coffeepot, fingers trembling as she took two clean glass cups and filled each with coffee. She handed one to Dana, then sat down, ready for a lecture.

Dana seemed to hesitate before she sat down. Hilde didn’t help her by denying anything. Instead she waited, relieved when Dana finally took a drink of the coffee and seemed to calm down some.

“How long have we known each other?” Hilde asked.

Dana looked up from her cup in surprise. “Since you came to town about...six years ago. But you know that.”

“So for six years we’ve been close friends. Some might even have said best friends.”

Dana’s eyes suddenly shone with tears.

“Would you have said you knew me well?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Remember that spider in my kitchen that time? I couldn’t squish it. You had to do it.”

“You can’t compare killing a spider to—”

“Dana, what if Dee wasn’t your cousin?”

“That’s ridiculous because she is my cousin.”

Hilde wasn’t going to argue that. Not right now anyway. “What if she was just some stranger who ended up on your doorstep and things began happening and the next thing you knew you and I were...” She couldn’t bring herself to say where they were. “Would you take a stranger’s word over mine?”

Dana put down her cup. “She said you would say you didn’t attack her.”

Hilde sighed and put down her own cup. “That you came here today makes me believe that there is some doubt in your mind. I hope that’s true, because it might save your life.”

“It’s talk like that, Hilde, that makes me think you’ve lost your mind,” Dana said, getting to her feet. “Why would Dee want to hurt me?”

“So she could have Hud.”

Dana shook her head. “Hud loves me.”

“But if you were gone...”

Dana reached into her jeans pocket and took out a piece of paper. Hilde recognized it as a sheet from the notepad Dana kept by the phone. “I called around. This is the name of a doctor everyone said was very good.” When Hilde didn’t reach for the note, Dana laid it on the table. “I think you need help, Hilde.” Her voice broke with emotion.

“She doesn’t just want you out of the way, Dana. Your children will have to go, too.”

Dana’s gaze came up to meet hers.

Hilde saw fear. “Trust me. Trust the friendship we had. You’re in trouble. So are your babies.”

A tear trailed down Dana’s cheek. She brushed at it. “I have to go.” She hurried out, leaving Hilde alone in the break room.

The moment she heard the bell jangle, Hilde got up, took a plastic bag from the drawer and carefully bagged Dana’s coffee cup.

“What are you doing?”

She turned in surprise to find Dana standing in the doorway. She must have started to leave, but then changed her mind.

“I asked you what you were doing.”

Hilde knew there was no reason to lie even if she could have thought of one Dana might believe. “I need your DNA to check it against Dee’s.”

The shocked look on Dana’s face said it all. That and what she said before turning and really leaving this time: “Oh, Hilde.”

* * *

COLT DROVE OUT of Tuttle, took the third right and pulled down a narrow two-track toward a stand of live oak. He hadn’t been in the South in years. Oklahoma wasn’t considered the South to people from Georgia or Alabama, but anywhere that cotton grew along the road was the South to him.

He followed the directions the woman at the grocery and gas station had given him until the road played out, ending in front of a weathered, stooped old house that was much like the elderly woman who came out on the porch.

He parked and climbed out. Thelma Peters was Richard and Camilla Northland’s aunt on their mother’s side of the family, PJ Harris had told him.

“Everyone’s called me PJ since I was a girl,” the elderly woman at the store had told him. “Not because it has anything to do with my name, which by the way is Charlotte Elizabeth. No, I got PJ because that’s what I was usually wearing when I would come down here, to this very store, in the morning so my father could make me breakfast. My mother had died when I was a baby, you see. He’d pour me a bowl of cereal, ask me if I wanted berries. I always said no, then he’d pour on some thick cream.” Her eyes had lit at the memory. “I can still taste that cream. Can’t buy anything like it anymore.”

He’d finally managed to turn her back to Richard and Camilla’s aunt.

“Thelma Peters. She’s an old maid. I can see where having those two in her house turned her against ever having any of her own children.” PJ had studied him again then. “Don’t be surprised if she comes out on her porch with a shotgun. Don’t take it personally. Just make sure she knows you aren’t that no-count nephew of hers. I’d hate to see you get shot.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he’d promised.

“I’m here with some good news,” Colt called out now to the elderly old maid holding the shotgun.

“If you’re preaching the Gospel, I’ve already found the Lord. You wasted your gas coming out here,” she called back.

“I’m a deputy marshal from Montana,” he called to her. A slight exaggeration at the moment. He saw the change in her as if she was bracing herself for whatever bad news he was bringing. “Your nephew Richard has been killed.”

Thelma Peters nodded, then took a step back and sat down hard in an old wooden chair on her porch. The barrel end of the shotgun banged against the worn wood flooring at her feet, but she held on to the gun as she motioned him to come closer.

Colt walked up to the house, shielding his eyes against the sun. The yard was a dust bowl. The weeds that had survived were baked dead. “I’m sorry to bring you the news.”

She looked up then and, from rheumy but intelligent blue eyes, considered him for a long moment. “You certainly came a long way to give it to me.”

“I need to ask you about Camilla.”

Thelma let out a cough of a laugh. “You cross her path, too? Best say your prayers.”

“I don’t know if I’ve crossed her path or not. Do you happen to have a picture of her?”

The woman looked at him as if he was crazy. “Not one I keep out, I can tell you that.”