Genny's Ballad: The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series, Book 5 Read online

  Derron shrugged his petite shoulders. Despite his slim build, muscles rippled with the action. The man definitely worked out. “Sure looked that way on camera. And the next week, when you got another call, they were highlighting the upstairs laundry room.”

  “The Valco Elite Wash in brushed stainless, model number J207-3S,” Maddy murmured.

  “What are you, a walking catalog for Valco?” Derron smirked.

  “What are you, a walking time-line for Home Again?”

  Derron sniffed. “As I was saying, that was the episode where you and Cutter were at a ballgame, sharing a plate of nachos. He smeared a little on your cheek and then tried to lick it off. A little racy for a high-school ballgame, but made for good television.”

  “He was just goofing off!”

  “Yeah, but he was wearing that blue paisley cowboy shirt of his. You know the one,” he said, throwing Genny a pointed look.

  Yeah. She definitely knew that shirt. She threw off a layer of covers, just thinking about how Cutter looked in that shirt.

  Derron was on a roll. “The night after the big ‘new possibilities’ episode, the one where they introduced the first Gennecut hashtag, someone set off the alarm at the café. The night of the birthday party, when everyone knew you went with Cutter, someone snooped around your house. The night of the auction, when Cutter dropped five grand just to outbid another suitor, you had a phone call. The next day, they left you a message on the dumpster. Then Tuesday rolled around again and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Genny said. “You think this is about me and Cutter.”

  “Well, he is the hottest stud in town.” He shot an apologetic look toward his employer. “No offense, Brash deCordova is one fine specimen of a man in his own right, but Cutter is closer to my age. And I’ve always found firemen particularly hot.”

  “It makes sense,” Maddy said thoughtfully, chewing on her pen. “Not about you — because, again,” she pointed out, “this isn’t about you— but about Cutter being the catalyst. And since the whole Gennecut thing broke, things have definitely escalated.”

  “You’ve become cruel, dollface,” Derron whined. “Now that you’ve found your knight in shining armor, you forget the rest of us are still out there looking. Except Genesis, of course. I’d say she has definitely found her knight in shining armor. Did you see the way he tenderly brushed the hair out of her face? Gives me goosebumps, just thinking about it.” His slim shoulders shimmied as his blue eyes glazed over.

  Ignoring his theatrics, Genny considered the new possibility. “So this could be someone obsessed with Cutter?”

  “Maybe,” Maddy said. “Or maybe they are obsessed with you, and see Cutter as a threat.”

  “My gut still says Pembrook is behind this.”

  “One thing I’ve learned from working with Murray Archer— and with Brash — is that you should never assume something because it is the most obvious answer.”

  “Granny’s favorite saying,” Genny murmured with a nod.

  “Exactly,” Derron pitched in. “To assume makes an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me.’ No assuming, girlfriends.”

  “So who else could this be?” Maddy asked, studying her notes.

  “Barry?” Genny suggested. “He’s picked up the pace of his insults. He’s mentioned Tommy a few times recently. And of course there was that reference to white trash, the same message that appeared on the trash bin and the burning wreath.”

  “But why would he do such a thing, especially after all these years?”

  “Who knows? The man is mental. He still holds a grudge against you because you come from Juliet Randolph’s lineage, even if not by blood. He comes from Naomi’s side, so in his twisted mind, there should still be a feud between you, even after a hundred years. It stands to reason that he would still hold a grudge against me, twenty years after Tommy’s death.”

  Genny’s eyes fell to the covers she twisted in her hand. Her voice dropped. “He blames me for it, you know.”

  “Like you said, the man is mental. No one in their right mind could possibly blame you for Tommy’s actions, Genny.”

  “Maybe I did give up too easily,” Genny whispered, doubting herself for the millionth time.

  “He knew what his options were,” Maddy reminded her softly. “He knew what he was doing when he drove into the path of that truck.”

  For once, Derron remained silent. His eyes darted back and forth between the two women, following every word, even when he did not follow their meaning.

  “But it could be Barry, hell-bent on settling a grudge,” Genny insisted. “Maybe he sees my relationship with Cutter as an insult to Tommy’s memory. Maybe he thinks if Tommy couldn’t find happiness, neither should I.”

  Madison studied her friend for a long moment. “Is that what Barry might think, or what Genesis might think?”

  In answer, Genny scrunched her eyes and waved off a fresh sting of tears. She very deliberately changed the subject. “So who’s at the café now?”

  Derron looked down at his watch and flew to his feet. “Oops. That would be me. Thelma called in everyone she could think of, but she was still short-handed from noon to two. I told her I would come back in.”

  “Thank you, Derron. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”

  “No problem, girlfriend. It’s sort of fun,” he admitted, dropping a kiss onto her forehead. “Take care of yourself and maybe you won’t have to drink another smoothie.”

  A shudder moved through Genny’s shoulder. “Lordy, I hope not.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You don’t have to stay, you know,” Genny told Maddy. “I can manage on my own.”

  “I’ve seen how you manage, and I’m not going anywhere, thank you very much,” Maddy responded. “When we brought you home from the hospital with smoke inhalation, the doctor told you to stay in bed for five days. Somehow you heard three.”

  “Three, five. Same thing,” Genny shrugged.

  “No, it is not the same thing. Granny said for you to stay off your feet for eight hours, and you still have an hour and a half to go. So you’re stuck with me, at least until then.”

  “Did anyone get any sleep at all last night?”

  “Not much. Cutter finally stretched out beside you and fell asleep, but every time you made a peep, he hovered over you like a mother hen.” Maddy clucked her tongue. “That man has it bad, my friend.”

  “Can you hand me my laptop? I might as well amuse myself while we wait.”

  “Sure. Smooth move, by the way, avoiding my comment just now.”

  “I could use some more water.”

  “Okay, I get the hint. You don’t want to talk about it, not now. But soon, my friend, very soon. And I want details.”

  Genny checked emails and tended to a few business details, but her head still felt a bit light. She answered texts from Cutter and one from his mother, visited with Granny Bert when she came to reapply salve to her feet, ate a light lunch in bed, and took a ten-minute snooze. When Granny extended her downtime by one hour, Genny had nothing else to do but surf the net.

  She was appalled at how many references she found to the hashtag Gennecut. It seemed everyone was talking about the would-be romance. No wonder it had pushed some demented mind over the edge if that was, indeed, what had happened. Genny was feeling a little crazed, just from seeing their names and pictures paired together so often. Imagine the madness if they had been true celebrities!

  She scrolled through her social media, ignoring anything that even hinted at circulating the rumor of her and Cutter. Even though she normally ignored them, she even clicked on a few of those random animal videos, the ones that showed cats surfing and pigs dancing and dogs playing the piano. It twiddled away the minutes, ticking down the time until she was allowed out of bed and back into action.

  She followed another link, something about decorating. She was thinking of sprucing up her bedroom. It still looked a little too much like it had when she lived here as a
teenager. If nothing else, the last few days had reinforced the notion that she wanted as few reminders of that time as possible. She was a grown woman now, and it was time she had a bedroom that reflected as much. Those old photographs needed to come down, especially the ones with Tommy in them. She seldom paid them any attention, but they had always been there, a silent and stoic reminder of a future that might have been.

  One of the links that popped up was a page for ReFresh. Wasn’t that the name of Ellen McDaniel’s business?

  Genny started not to click on it. Ellen was Kayla’s sister, and she definitely wanted to purge all reminders of Kayla from her life. Her finger hovered over the button for a few seconds longer. ReFresh was part of Maddy’s newest case for sweet Mrs. McSwain. Maybe she could find a clue Maddy had missed.

  Genny scanned through the comments and the likes, noting that most people offered positive feedback. Maybe Ellen had a decent business going. Even aside from her connection to Kayla, Genny had never been fond of the woman, but it did not mean she could not do a good job of cleaning houses.

  She had heard a few people mention the business while in New Beginnings. Some were rather skeptical, saying Ellen was never known for keeping her own spic and span, or for her tastes in decorating, either. But Genny knew that what people did for a living and what they did in their personal lives was sometimes quite different. Look at her: she cooked every meal from scratch at the café, but wasn’t she often guilty of opening a can of soup for her own dinner at home? Sometimes she was simply too tired to cook for herself. Perhaps Ellen was the same way. Just because her own home was messy did not mean she left other people’s homes that way.

  Genny recalled overhearing a conversation between Trudy Cessna and George Gail Burton. George Gail had hired ReFresh to clean for her a few times. She liked their work, but they often moved things around, even without her giving them approval to do so. And there were a few things she simply could not find, no matter where she looked. A gift from Trudy was one of those things. Did her friend remember the large red candle she gave her last Valentines’, the kind with the three flickering bulbs and the battery? Since ReFresh’s last visit, George Gail was unable to find it.

  The women spent most of their meal speculating on what might have happened to the candle. They did not think it was breakable, so accidentally dropping it probably wasn’t the issue. Did the cleaners not realize it was battery-operated? Did they think wax covered the wicks and simply threw the candle away? Had the batteries gone bad and they not realized a fresh set would do the trick? Had they left it in the sunlight and allowed it to melt? There were no signs of its waxy demise, but what else could have happened to the candle? Trudy even admitted she had bought the candle on sale at a discount store, so it had hardly been worth stealing. By the end of the meal, the women still had not solved the mystery of the missing candle.

  Genny looked through the thumbnails of people who ‘liked’ the page, searching for George Gail’s profile picture. She wondered if the woman had left a comment about the service, good or bad. Her name and photo never appeared, but Genny recognized several others.

  She was about to push the ‘back’ button when a photo caught her eye. Burnt orange dominated the entire thumbnail, with a slightly off-center white longhorn logo in the middle. The fan’s profile was registered as Longhorn.Lovers.

  You think? Genny mused. With that as a profile picture, there left little doubt.

  On a whim, Genny clicked on their profile. It took her to a blocked page, fully accessible to only Friends, but she could see enough to know that the couple definitely loved their college sports team. The wife had apparently surprised her husband with a man cave, which she credited ReFresh for helping to create. There wasn’t much else she could see, so Genny clicked off and went back to the main ReFresh page.

  She scrolled down through more comments, until a photo caught her eye. She clicked on the photo and saw it was posted by a Loretta Cahill in Riverton. ‘Love my new mantel decorations by ReFresh!’ the status boasted. ‘Amazing how they found things I never knew I had and assembled them into this gorgeous focal point! Give them a call and let them ReFresh your home, too!’

  Genny made the photo larger so she could see the details. A garland of plastic trailing ivy, artfully arranged along the length of the mantel, and interspersed with a variety of candles. Genny knew enough about decorating to know that the heights of the candles — some in containers, some on candlesticks, some on a protective plate — should be either staggered at random, or in ascending or descending order, depending on the height of the center focal point. These were neither. The arrangement was confusing, detracting from the center candle rather than complimenting it. Still, Genny had no difficulty seeing the large red candle used as the center focal point. Even in the photo, she could tell the flickering flames were not real.

  She immediately thought of George Gail’s missing candle. This photo meant nothing, of course, other than the fact that candles like these were mass-produced. Even with the quote ‘things I never knew I had’, it offered no proof. But it made Genny think.

  With nothing else to do other than to think, Genny went back to Longhorn.Lovers’ profile. She clicked on their friends’ profiles and followed a few dead-ends, until she finally found a friend with a friend she had in common on her own page.

  A few clicks later, and Genny hit pay dirt. That mutual friend had shared a photo by Longhorn.Lovers, of the completed man cave created by ReFresh. In Genny’s opinion, the room was over-kill. The massive amounts of burnt orange made her stomach feel queasy, and it had nothing to do with Granny Bert’s smoothie. The school colors even covered the walls. There were signs and banners scattered across the room, designer lamps and neon clocks, curtains and even rugs, all sporting the beloved longhorn emblem. And right smack in the middle of the room sat a one-of-a-kind recliner, made of burnt orange leather and a hand-stitched decal in its back cushion.

  A few more clicks and Genny knew exactly where to find the recliner.

  “Maddy, come quick!”

  Maddy appeared in a flash, her face worried. “What is it? Are you alright?”

  “Actually, I’m doing great. And it’s thirty minutes past my time-out, so help me take these bandages off so I can get dressed.”

  “Genny, you really shouldn’t go in to work today. Let your staff take care of things. You’ve trained them well, you know. They can handle this.”

  “I know. That’s why you and I are going to Navasota.”

  “Navasota? Whatever for?”

  “To retrieve Mrs. McSwain’s chair, that’s what for.” She turned her computer screen around and said with a bright smile, “Voilà!”

  Maddy gasped. “How did you find that?”

  “The magic of social media. It’s amazing what people will post. I even zoomed in on this photograph and found the guy’s name on that plaque on the wall. Google was kind enough to give me not only his phone number and address, but I even did a Google Earth search and zoomed in on their house. Can you believe their entire house is painted in Longhorn colors? Take about fans. Geesh!”

  “Silly me, I forgot to look through social media. Hey, if you ever get tired of the food industry, you could come to work for me. You are an excellent snoop, my friend. You might be especially helpful if I ever decide to get my private investigator’s license. Between you, me, and Granny Bert, we could catch all the bad guys!” Maddy predicted.

  “Yeah, but I kinda like what I do.”

  “Maybe you could do both. You know, sort of like now, except you’d get paid.”

  “Hey, maybe we could go in business together. Call it Snoop and Soup.”

  Maddy gave her friend a quick hug. “It’s good to see you’re back to your old self, Genny girl. Now let’s get these feet unwrapped and go catch a thief.”

  ***

  “The way we see it,” Maddy explained to Brash, “Ellen McDaniel and crew are taking items from one house and placing them in another house, usua
lly in a different town. They usually only take small things, things that no one bothers to report or, half the time, even give a second thought about. Things like Gail George’s candle. Aunt Trudy paid eight dollars for it.”

  “So, what’s the point? How are they making money off these things?”

  “They have one fee for cleaning, another for ‘ReFreshing.’ They don’t charge much, something like twenty-five dollars plus an hourly fee, but with no overhead, that could really add up over a length of time. The real money is in offering their clients that special piece, something that will really make their room pop.”

  “Such as a hard-to-find custom recliner?”

  “You can bet they charged a pretty penny for that ugly thing. And since they stole it from Mrs. McSwain, it’s pure profit.”

  “I’m sure Ellen thought she could get by with it because of Mrs. McSwain’s mental state,” Genny added. “There was a very real chance that she could have given the chair away and simply didn’t remember it.”

  “And we know for a fact that she didn’t give the chair to Ellen?” Brash asked.

  “When I asked her, she swore she put it in the attic. Even gave me some song and dance about dragging it up there on a rug.”

  “That’s the best way to tell a lie,” Brash nodded. “Make it sound plausible.”

  “She probably learned that technique from her sister,” Genny mumbled darkly.

  “I know you two were all gung-ho on going to retrieve the recliner, but think about it. Those people aren’t going to hand it over to you, just because you say it belongs to some sweet little old lady who taught you in high school. Let me handle this from here. We’ll go through the right legal methods and get that chair back for Mrs. McSwain.”

  “But—But—” Maddy sputtered.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you don’t have any actual proof. Let me handle this. I’ll find the proof we need and get this wrapped up legally and professionally.”

  “How about this?” Maddy countered. “I’ll work with you and find the proof. I’ll let you handle the actual going-in-with-guns-blazing, so to speak, but at least let me be a part of this, Brash. I want to do this for Mrs. McSwain.”