A Tough Nut to Kill (Nut House Mystery Series) by Elizabeth Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

out into the aisle.
    I pulled away as far as I could get before he reached out and grabbed me.
    But the arm didn’t move. It lay very still.
    The man was face up, his dark head turned away, arms spread wide; feet, in well-used cowboy boots, splayed in opposite directions.
    He wore a washed-out plaid shirt and washed-out jeans. Near my right hand, a black cowboy hat trembled on its crown.
    Uncle Amos . . .
    I crawled toward the body.
    Uncle Amos . . . with one of my green metal plant stakes, number tag moving gently, sticking up from the very center of his chest.

Chapter Six

    Somewhere in my head I heard a siren, and then the clang of a fire truck, but I couldn’t move. Not now. I knelt beside my dead uncle, hands at my mouth, until I heard Hunter’s voice, first from the open doorway to the office, then as he pounded across the greenhouse, heading toward me, yelling my name.
    When he rounded the end of the row of tables where I knelt, I could only shake my head at him.
    “Holy . . .” Hunter stopped dead, then made his way around Amos’s body, to take me by the shoulders and lift me up beside him. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed the clean white square to my chin, where blood still dripped down to the front of my shirt. “Lord’s sakes, Lindy. I guess you had to stop him, but . . .”
    Everything after that was a blur: Hunter leading me back outside, taking me to my truck, opening the door, and pushing me up to sit on the front seat, then leaving to hurry to the sheriff’s car just pulling in beside mine.
    I watched the swirl of firemen running in and then out of my office. Time passed and the fire trucks pulled away and more police cars and a white van pulled in.
    Sheriff Higsby came over to take a look at me, stopping to tip his hat. “Lindy.” He frowned as he took in the blood down the front of my blue shirt and my injured face.
    “Terrible thing in there.” He looked off, squinting up into the late-day sun, over toward the ruined grove. “Suppose that was the only way to stop him.”
    “No!” I shook my head. “He was like that. I was running to the trees I had left and fell over him.”
    The sheriff drew in a long, slow breath and let it out as he shook his head. “Doesn’t look good. Everybody knows how you Blanchards hated Amos. Not that anybody blamed you. But not this, Lindy. Not even Blanchards can up and kill a man.”
    “Sheriff, it was like that when I got here. All of it. I saw my trees first, then called Hunter. There was smoke in my office. I ran in and put out the fire. I had to check the greenhouse. It was all I had left . . .”
    “So you found him knocking over your trees and . . .”
    I shook my head hard enough to start my chin bleeding again. Blood fell on my hand. I pressed Hunter’s handkerchief to my face and held it there for comfort. “I told you. He was already dead. Sheriff, somebody destroyed my work. I would have said that it had to be Uncle Amos. Who else hates us this much? But there he is, dead. And it wasn’t me who did it.”
    Sheriff shook his head. He seemed sad. “You gotta look at it from my point of view, Lindy. The mess in there was stopped halfway through. Fire was already set. You come in, catch him, and drop him the only way open to you—a stake through the heart. Come to think of it, seems kind of fitting . . .”
    “Sheriff . . .” I moaned. “You’ve known me since I was born. Do you think I could do that to anybody? Even Uncle Amos?”
    He rubbed at his upper lip, sniffed hard, and looked off into the distance, over the truck door. “Anybody can kill, Lindy. Given the right circumstances. Anybody.” He hesitated, thought awhile, then said, “Justin wasn’t here with you, was he? I know he thought Amos there had a hand in your daddy’s accident. If Justin was with you and he came on yer uncle doing what he was doing . . . no question what he would’ve done. Any man, feeling the way he did about