Dixie Browning - Her Passionate Plan B

At least she did now.

The wonder was that they hadn’t already added Egbert to their list of candidates. His wife had been dead almost a year now.

When the phone rang inside the house, Daisy groaned and got up to answer it, muttering about what she would do if one more salesman tried to sell her anything.

The moment she left, Sasha and Marty started talking in hushed tones. “Dammit, I told you she was depressed! She can’t even keep track of what we’re talking about—she just stares out there as if she’s lost her last friend,” Sasha hissed.

“Well, they were close. He was sort of a grandfather figure, especially once she moved in with him.”

“Big mistake. I told you so at the time, remember?”

“Yes, well, spilt milk and all that.” Marty looked around for her glasses. They were on top of her head.

“Anyhow, she said Faylene’s coming over this evening, so we need to get her to find out what she likes and doesn’t like in a man.”

“What who likes, Daisy or Faylene?”

“Both. Either. Oh, you know what I mean. The trouble with Gus is he lives over that garage of his. Even if things work out, can you see him toting Faylene up those stairs to get her across the threshold?”

Marty pursed her lips. Sasha had told her more than once that if she’d just get a few collagen injections, she could pass for Julia Roberts, only with bigger eyes. “He could always use the lift—that thingee he uses to get cars hoisted up so he can see all the whatchamadoodles underneath.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that for a former bookstore owner, your vocabulary is lamentably lacking?”

Before Marty could come up with a suitably erudite response, Daisy was back.

“That was Egbert—Mr. Blalock,” she said. “I’ve been routinely referring calls to his office since Harvey’s lawyer died last fall. He said a man showed up this morning who claims to be a relative.”

“Of Harvey’s? I thought he didn’t have any family,” Marty said.

“I don’t think he did, at least no one close enough to count. But Egbert—that is, Mr. Blalock’s been going over some records since the service this morning and he thinks this one might warrant checking out. He said the man had even insisted on going to the funeral.”

Daisy’s eyes suddenly widened. Please, not the cowboy! If that’s who was claiming to be a relative, she was out of here. Vamoosed. Whatever. All she knew was that she couldn’t deal with anyone that distracting. Besides, he hadn’t looked anything at all like Harvey.

After a sleepless night and an endless day she looked like something the cat dragged in.

Not that it mattered, she told herself as she hurried to the bathroom to do something about her hair.

Kell Magee neared the house where he was all but certain his father had spent his first sixteen years. If he’d learned one thing over a wildly erratic thirty-nine years, it was to keep his expectations realistic. That was one of the things he tried to pass on to kids who usually preferred to talk about his short career as a starting pitcher. The first thing most of them wanted to know was how much money he’d made, his stock answer being, “Not as much as Greg Maddux or Randy Johnson, but a lot more than I ever expected.”

It was late that evening when Kell pulled into the driveway under a row of big pecan trees, taking care to avoid parking under any of several dangling limbs. He checked his notes again. Oh, man, he mused, gazing up at a house that looked like a wedding cake that had been left out in a hard rain. Just to be sure he hadn’t made a mistake, he climbed out of the Porsche and walked back to recheck the name on the mailbox.

H. Snow. The small, stick-on letters were starting to peel off.

It was when he turned back toward the three-story house with all the gables, the stained-glass windows and the dangling gutter that he saw the woman standing in the doorway. Even with the sun glaring in his eyes he recognized her as the same woman he’d seen at the cemetery that morning. Something about the way she was standing looked familiar, even though she was considerably drier now and minus the raincoat.

Squaring his shoulders—that bed last night hadn’t done his back any favors—Kell ambled toward the front porch. “Hi there,” he greeted once he was in range. “You left before Blalock could introduce us this morning, but he probably told you I’d be along.” The way she confronted him with her arms crossed over her breast wasn’t exactly welcoming. “You must be Ms. Hunter. The nurse?”

She waited to speak until he got close enough to see the spattering of freckles across her cheeks. “May I see some identification?”

At the bottom of the steps he froze. “Sure…” He had the usual stack of stuff crammed into his wallet. He’d left copies of most of it with Blalock. Why the hell hadn’t the guy warned her that he’d be coming out to see the place? “Name’s Kelland Magee,” he said, reaching toward his hip pocket. “I guess Blalock at the bank told you we’re pretty sure Harvey Snow was my uncle? Half uncle, at least.”

By now Kell was all but certain of the relationship, even though Blalock insisted on reserving final judgment—probably waiting for a DNA comparison.

Propping a foot on the bottom step, he adjusted his outward attitude, shooting for friendly and nonthreatening, but with subtle overtones of authority. “Did he tell you my dad’s mother married a man named Snow from this neck of the woods after her first husband died?” Shuffling through his credentials, he moved up another two steps. Once he reached the porch he stopped and held out a driver’s license and his social security card, which he knew better than to use as identification, but at this point he was getting a little desperate. Without moving a muscle, the lady was messing with his mind. This time her ankles had nothing to do with it.

While she studied his credentials, Kell pretended to take in the littered lawn while his excellent peripheral vision roamed over her streaky blond hair and a pair of steel-gray eyes that were about as warm as a walk-in freezer. Early to midthirties, he estimated. Nice mouth. If she ever relaxed so far as to smile, it’d probably be in a class with her ankles.

He waited for her to invite him inside. Finally she looked up, nailing him with a chilly stare. “What did Mr. Blalock tell you?”

“About what?” He scrambled through his two brief meetings with the banker, trying to recall everything that had been said while he’d attempted to convince the man to let him at least look over the place where his father had allegedly grown up.

“About—well, about Mr. Snow.” Her voice was soft but firm, and if that was an oxymoron, then so were all those mattress ads. “You said he might have been your uncle. How do I know you’re not a—a dealer of some sort.”

“Come again?”

Still guarding the doorway, she handed him back his documents and recrossed her arms. And then for no apparent reason, she seemed to drop her guard. “Oh, all right. You might as well come inside, but I’m warning you, if you try to sell me anything, or want to buy anything, you’re out of here, is that understood?”

Well, hell. In other words, look but don’t touch. “Yes, ma’am.”

Kell followed her inside, unable to keep his eyes from widening. The entire place, at least what he could see from the front hall, was crammed with stuff that looked like it all belonged in a museum. In his stellar, if somewhat abbreviated, career as a major league pitcher, Kell had stayed in some fine hotels. He had run with the kind of folks who had money to burn. In fact, for a while he’d burned his share, too—that is, until he’d wised up and started putting it to a better use.