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  “No, they didn’t hurt me. But I have to admit, looking down the barrel of that mean-looking gun did give me the jitters. Sheriff just called, though, and they’ve already got them behind bars. We’re just going down there to sign the papers that they’re actually the ones who attempted armed robbery.”

  Jack knew her well enough to hear the slight difference in her voice. “I’m going to drive you. Come on.”

  “But you are sick,” Roxie argued.

  “I was. This scared the flu right out of me.”

  “Hmmph,” Roxie snorted. “If I’d known that would work, I wouldn’t have spent the day boiling chickens.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” Jack asked as they paraded out to Roxie’s Caddy.

  “I’m fine, honest. It all happened so fast. First they were there, then Roxie pointing that shotgun.”

  “And a good thing,” Roxie said from the driver’s seat. “I was standing on my front porch when I noticed those two getting out of that little low-slung sportscar. Seemed too young to own something that expensive, and then the one reached into the back seat and put on a jacket. Now, there is definitely something wrong with a person who’d wear a jacket in this kind of heat. About that time he stuffed that gun down in his pocket, and the two of them high-fived each other. That’s when I knew there was something going on, and Dee didn’t even know where your grandpa kept that blunderbuss under the counter. So I just grabbed the old shotgun and beat a path right back over there.”

  “And I’m glad you did.” Dee shivered.

  Sheriff Mitchum nodded when they walked into his office. “Afternoon, Roxie, Dee, and Jack. We got ’em. One in each interrogatin’ room. Car was stolen yesterday in Sherman, Texas. Gun was taken from a pawn shop in Gainesville this morning. They hit a convenience store in Durant at noon and one in Dickson just before they stopped by your place. Neither one of them is talkin’ yet and neither one of them has a driver’s license. Fifteen years old. What’s the world comin’ to?”

  “Called their parents yet?” Roxie asked.

  “Yes, they’re on their way up here from Sherman. It’s not the first time they’ve been in trouble with the law. Don’t expect it will be the last. You want to identify them for positive, Dee? You too, Roxie? The driver says this crazy old woman just opened up fire on them when they didn’t have enough cash to pay for their beer.”

  “They called Roxie old and crazy?” Jack stifled a roar.

  “They sure did.” The sheriff nodded. “Follow me and we’ll get this over with. We’ll turn them over to the juvenile authorities when their parents get here. Funny thing, these boys will have to contend with the juvies, but they’ll have closed, clear records when they’re eighteen. If they’d been adults, they would have done hard time for this.”

  “That’s the woman! That’s the crazy old witch who shot at me,” the young boy said when the sheriff threw open the door, letting Roxie and Dee enter the room ahead of him.

  “And this is the young ignorant fool who tried to rob the store.” Roxie placed both hands on the table and looked the boy right in the eye.

  “He held a gun on me and threatened to physically harm me,” Dee said. “He’s the one who had the gun. The other one wasn’t nearly as cocky.”

  “They’re both lying,” the boy said. “We didn’t have a gun in the store at all. We just didn’t have enough money to pay for the beer, and she got all huffy and mad about it. Then that old broad tried to kill us both.”

  Roxie leaned in and whispered. “Honey, you tell it any way you please, but we both know what happened in that store. And you’d better know that if I’d wanted you dead you would be pushin’ up tomato plants in my garden. I shot above your heads to scare you, and it worked. If I’d wanted to shoot the elastic out of your cute little jeans you got ridin’ down on your hips, I could have done that and never even messed up those sweet little checkered boxer shorts. One other thing, I’m not old and I’m not crazy, not yet, but I might get that way so if I was you, I’d steer clear of Buckhorn Corner.”

  “She’s threatening me. What are you going to do about that, Sheriff?” the kid whined.

  “I’d say she’s statin’ facts, child. Roxie, if y’all will come with me, we’ll ID the other suspect. Oh, you’ll be having a few other visitors before dark when we put you in a cell.” He turned back to the boy. “Couple of other places you robbed are sending their clerks up here for ID, and your neighbor whose car you stole, and then there’s the pawnshop owner. I expect they’re all out to get you too.”

  The kid slammed his head down into his hands without answering.

  “Lord, save me from boy kids.” Roxie shook her head in dismay. “I’m glad the pups I had to raise were at least girl kids.”

  Jack slipped his arm around Dee’s shoulders and drew her close. “I’m so so sorry. I’ll never leave you in the store alone again.”

  “Oh, hush. You couldn’t have known. You didn’t plan on getting sick and being robbed the same day.”

  Jack hugged her tighter, trying to erase the tension in her muscles with his touch. Little did he know that it wasn’t the stress of the day that caused most of the tightness in her shoulders or the high pitch to her voice, but the way she felt when he touched her. The breathless feeling she thought she’d never feel again. The emotions tearing at her heart as she fought desperately against them. She wouldn’t let herself rebound into Jack’s arms. She would fight against it with every ounce of willpower she had, because it would destroy their friendship when the end came. And the end would come. A year. Two years. Seven years. Take a look at Mimosa with all her failed marriages. At Tally. At Granny Branson who’d kicked out her philandering husband years and years ago. At her own experience with Ray. And even Roseanna Cahill’s and Stella Branson’s marriages were on the rocks. Statistics were getting them all.

  Dee might have a good marriage, a wonderful one with Jack, just like Roxie had had with Henry Clay Hooper. But it was a chance she wasn’t going to take. She simply was not going to let herself fall in love with her best friend.

  Chapter Six

  Bodine huffed as she sat on the back porch with the rest of the family and Jack while they watched the sun set. Tonight she’d put away her costumes and dressed in khaki capris and an electric-blue T-shirt that matched her eyes. “Well, I don’t think it is one bit fair. I had to go sit at a school desk with yucky boys all around me and you get almost robbed. My life is boredom and yours is Hollywood.”

  “Thank God you were in school.” Tally shuddered to think of her loquacious daughter bursting in on a near robbery. “If it had been you walking in on that robbery, those crazy boys would have shot you just to shut you up.”

  Bodine eyed her grandmother. “I wouldn’t have missed if I’d had the shotgun. I wouldn’t have needed a gun anyway. I could have thrown some of my potion on them. The one that turns them into a quivering mass of jelly when it hits their eyes.”

  Roxie pointed at Bodine. “And I didn’t miss either, Miss Smarty Pants. I wasn’t aiming to shoot either of them, just scare them and make them think twice before they come back to Buckhorn Corner with ideas of robbery.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I was afraid you were getting old.” Bodine smiled impishly.

  Mimosa flipped her blond hair over her shoulder and cocked an ear toward the end of the house. “Wonder who that is? You expecting company, Tally?”

  “No, ma’am. Wish I could say I was. Wish it would be that good-looking professor who teaches my government class. The way he fills out those blue jeans just about gives me a case of the vapors. And boots. I’m a pure sucker for a man in cowboy boots and tight-fittin’ jeans.” Tally all but swooned.

  “You got a new addiction?” Mimosa asked.

  “At least it’s a healthy, normal one, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with a slot machine or a lottery ticket. Don’t sound big enough to be a truck coming to carry you back on the road.” Roxie shot Mimosa a look.

  “I t
old you, I’m retired. I’m going to be a beautician. Set up shop right in Sulphur and bring home all the gossip every night to tell y’all when we sit on the porch after supper,” Mimosa said seriously.

  The sound of a car door slamming echoed through the still evening air. “Guess we’ll know in a little while, won’t we? Bet it’s Miz Etta. She’s not been around in a while for a visit.” Bodine speculated, but no one got up.

  If it were a stranger, they’d hear the doorbell. If it were a friend, they’d know where Roxie was by the setting of the sun. Some things never changed, and Roxie’s evening habit of watching the sun set was more predictable than whether the sun would come up in the east and set in the west every day.

  The doorbell rang. Bodine hopped up and ran in the back door, and through the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room to the front door. She threw it open to indeed find a strange man standing there, a briefcase in one hand, wearing a three-piece black suit.

  “You sellin’ something or talkin’ religion?”

  “Neither. I’d like to talk to Dee,” he said.

  “Well, she ain’t interested in buyin’ nothing in that briefcase or listenin’ to you give a sermon neither, and I don’t believe you, Mister. Any fool who’d wear a getup like that on a hot day like this is thinks he’s going to save the world, and we ain’t in no mood for a come-to-Jesus talk tonight.”

  “I’m Ray, her ex-husband, and I would like to speak to Dee, little girl. Now you go get her.”

  Bodine raised her chin. “Don’t you take that tone with me. I could turn you into a frog in a second. I am a witch on some days. It’s just that today I’m a common girl. But I could be a witch in the length of time it takes me to go put on my getup, so you better mind your manners. I guess those who were in the war of northern aggression don’t think they have to be polite and say please and thank you. So now what’s the magic word, Mister Ray?”

  “The magic word is now. I said go get Dee . . . now!” He would like to strangle that child. Hopefully his and Angie’s daughter wouldn’t be a sassy kid like this one.

  Bodine slammed the door in his face and retraced her footsteps to the back porch where she plopped down on the steps with her usual overstated drama.

  “Who was it?” Tally pushed a lock of blond hair back behind her ear and set her empty glass on the table between her and Roxie.

  Bodine put one hand on her forehead. “Some fool selling religion. I told him we were all nuns and unless he wanted to make a donation to our convent, The Mercy of the Red House, then we weren’t interested in his sermon. Oh, dear, it is a hot evening, isn’t it? Do you think Rhett Butler will be coming around the house to see me before that hot sun sets?”

  They all laughed with her.

  “Honey, you must have decided to be Miss Scarlett instead of a common girl after all. You think you need to go get into costume to make it official?” Roxie asked.

  “No, ma’am. I do declare, Dee, if it ain’t the devil himself coming around the end of the house. You watch out now, sugar, that man is plumb rude. Wouldn’t say please or thank you, so I just slammed the door right in his face,” Bodine said in her best Scarlett O’Hara voice and nodded toward Ray, picking his way around the flower beds toward the porch.

  “Dee?” He looked up to see four women, the rude child, and a man on the back porch.

  “Ray, what are you doing here?” Dee asked.

  She waited for the flutters to take up residence in her stomach. To feel like a band of gypsies were dancing around a hot bonfire, turning her insides to a heated furnace, her face into a permanent blush, her mind into mush. None of it happened.

  “I need to talk with you. In private. Could we go inside, or would you rather talk in my rental car?”

  Jack suppressed a groan. There was Ray. Seven years older and dressed in a custom-made Italian suit. The smell of money all over him. Confidence oozing out every pore. He’d come back to tell Dee he’d made a colossal mistake and wanted her back. How could she refuse? Nothing on Buckhorn Corner could compete with what stood before her.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you. Not to the car. Not inside the house. You’ll remember Roxie, I’m sure. This is my mother, Mimosa. My sister, Tally. My niece, Bodine. And this is my best friend, Jack. Whatever you have to say, you can say before these folks or you can march yourself right back around the house and go home,” Dee said.

  Jack nodded toward the man he’d like beat to death with that eel briefcase and feed his flesh and bones to the catfish at Buckhorn Creek. They’d feast well on something that juicy.

  “What I have to say involves you and me, and I’ll do it in private,” Ray said.

  “Then good-bye, Ray. There is no you and me, and you are on my turf now. Speak or leave. It’s all the same to me.”

  “Besides, you are not welcome in my house. Haven’t been since the night you hit Dee,” Roxie said. “So that leaves the car to do your dirty business in, and Dee said she’s not going there. Guess it’s time for you to go.”

  Ray set his jaw in a firm line, the muscles right under his ears doing a little tap dance. “All right then, have it your way.”

  No one else saw it but Dee. Just that small gesture brought her joy. She’d made him as angry as he had made her when he told her their marriage had been dissolved.

  “So what is it that’s so important you’ve come all the way to Oklahoma to see me? Are we really still married and you need me to sign papers so your precious child won’t be illegitimate?”

  “No, that part of our life is over. Father took care of it so that Angie and I could be married quite legally and within the church. What happened is that Aunt Marjorie died.” He set his briefcase on the porch and snapped it open.

  Dee paled. “Oh, no. When?”

  “About a week after you left,” he said with no emotion.

  Dee’s eyes filled with tears. “Why didn’t you call me? She was my friend. The only one in your family who didn’t think I was a backwoods hillbilly. I loved her. You knew that, Ray. You didn’t call me on purpose.”

  “Why should I? You weren’t part of the family anymore. If you’d come back to the funeral, it would have upset Angie.” He rifled through a sheaf of papers.

  Dee glared at him in disgust.

  “Before she died, unbeknownst to Father or me, she changed her will. She didn’t have much after the last two years in the private, very expensive nursing home where we put her when she broke her hip, but what little she did have, she’s left to you. It’s mostly a few pieces of cheap jewelry. I’ve come for your signature on these papers. Green tabs everywhere you need to sign.”

  She took the pen he held out. “Why did you bring them?”

  “We thought it best. Father and I did.”

  A wind of ill bode swept over Dee. All she had to do was sign the papers and then the little that Aunt Marjorie had left would be hers. Bless the woman’s heart. She’d only produced one son, and he’d been killed in Vietnam. She and Ray’s father had been the sole heirs of the company when their own parents died. But evidently her share had been used up. Dee was numb from the shock of knowing Aunt Marjorie was actually gone. She’d been the only person she felt a need to tell good-bye when she left the state more than three months before. Aunt Marjorie had been sitting in her wheelchair, makeup on, hair fixed in the latest style, dressed in an expensive suit, her mind as sharp as it had been when she was a young woman.

  “Just sign it,” Ray said impatiently.

  “No, I don’t think so. Not until I have my lawyer look at it. I don’t think you are being honest with me.”

  Ray smiled slyly. “It’s just a simple will, Dee. All you need to do is sign it. You don’t have to pay a lawyer to read it for you. That’s just money wasted. Our marriage didn’t work, but I’d be honest with you. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I don’t think I do. So why don’t you just leave and my lawyer will look at these papers and get back to you? Now unless you’ve got some other
lies to tell me, you’d better be going.” Her tone lacked warmth and trust.

  Ray clenched his teeth. The plan had failed. Even a backwoods lawyer could understand what was in those papers. Angie was going to pitch a fit when she heard that Dee had the option of sitting in on every business meeting the company had. That she had enough stock to vote or veto every motion he made. Most of all, that Angie wouldn’t be getting that million dollars’ worth of jewelry locked up in the lawyer’s vault. She’d already planned to wear the rubies to the Christmas party.

  “This is ridiculous, Dee. Sign the papers.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll tell my lawyer to call David Zenowski tomorrow evening. He is still the in-house attorney for the company, isn’t he? Is he the one who told you Aunt Marjorie had made the will solid?”

  “Yes, David is handling the will. Aunt Marjorie used a different lawyer, though, or we would have taken care of it before she died.”

  Roxie pointed toward the end of the house. “I’m sure you would have. Now, I’ve been a patient woman, letting you stand there and state your case without getting my shotgun out for the second time today. But my patience has run plumb out, so get out of here. No more words. No more anything. Dee’s lawyers will be in touch. Go and good riddance. You are ruining my sunset. I don’t allow anything or anyone to ruin my sunsets, most especially someone I don’t like.”

  “Told you we wasn’t buyin’ nothing you had to sell,” Bodine told him.

  Ray knew he’d been beaten, but he hadn’t lost the war just yet. There was one way to get her to sign those papers, and what Angie didn’t know certainly wouldn’t hurt her. He’d do anything to keep his wife happy, keep on his father’s good side, keep his inheritance intact.

  “Good-bye,” he said with a curt smile. The night was still young and his plane didn’t fly out of Dallas until noon the next day. Ray could do a lot in that length of time. And enjoy the doing.

  “So that’s the sorry scoundrel that ruined the family’s good name,” Bodine said when they heard the car back out of the gravel driveway.