Free The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews Page B

that.”
    “Now, Miss Ella Kate,” Tee started. “We’ve been over this already. Dempsey’s father is Mitch Killebrew. He’s Norbert’s great-nephew. Remember Mitch?”
    “Little pissant,” the old lady retorted. “Pulled the cat’s tail. If he’d a been mine, I woulda wore his britches out.”
    “I’m sure he regrets bothering your cat,” Tee said soothingly, still inching his way toward her, with me in tow. “That was a long time ago. He was just a little boy back then. He’s a grown man now. And this is his daughter, Dempsey.”
    “Hi.” I gave her a friendly little finger wave, keeping my eyes on the shotgun.
    “You were in my house,” she said flatly. “I seen you. You and that other girl.”
    I hesitated. This was no time to argue property rights. Not with an old lady who had both a firearm and a mean dog on her side.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I rang the doorbell and knocked. And the door was open. I didn’t realize anybody was living here. It’s a, uh, beautiful old home.” Surely God would forgive me for lying to an old lady.
    “It’s a mess!” Ella Kate said sharply. “It’s a mess. And I’m a mess.” Her face crumpled. She turned and fled inside the house, leaving the dog sitting on the porch, eyeing us warily.
    “Now what?”
    Tee walked haltingly up to the dog, his right hand extended, palm up. “Hey, Shorty,” he crooned. “Good old Shorty. How ya doing tonight, Shorty?”
    The dog eyed Tee suspiciously. He backed away an inch, and then stopped. Tee got a little closer, then dropped down on his knees, at eye level with the dog. He kept his hand held out, and after a moment, the dog began licking it.
    “Good boy,” Tee murmured, scratching the dog’s ears tenderly. “Good old Shorty. You like ol’ Tee, don’t you?” The dog wriggled, then flopped onto his back, rolling deliriously back and forth as Tee scratched his belly.
    “How do you think Shorty feels about Yankees?” I asked, still keeping my distance.
    Tee looked up. “Oh, I don’t think it’s Yankees he hates. If he’s anything like Ella Kate, it’s the Killebrews he hates.”
    Despite the warning, I bent down and gave Shorty my hand to consider. He gave it a friendly lick.
    Tee stood up. “Come on, then,” he told me, holding the kitchen door open. “She didn’t shoot you and Shorty didn’t bite you. That’s about as warm a welcome as you’re apt to get tonight.”

12
    “E lla Kate?” I peered around the dimly lit room to make sure she wasn’t standing there, about to brain me with a frying pan. But the room was empty. And bone-chillingly cold.
    “Damn,” Tee said, closing the door behind us and fumbling around for a light switch. He took a step, stumbled over something, swore, fumbled some more. He made his way to the far wall and turned on the light.
    What I saw made me want to run right back out the door. The kitchen was like something out of a movie. A horror movie. The walls were painted a dingy hospital green. There was a wall of cabinets—sagging wooden cabinets with peeling white paint. The wall closest to the kitchen door held another cabinet, with a gargantuan chipped white porcelain sink—the old-fashioned kind with the built-in drainboard. The countertops were of faded yellow Formica, the floor of cracked green linoleum tiles. There was a stove, roughly the size of an aircraft carrier, and a refrigerator—in an incongruous pale pink—crouched like a dejected pig, in a corner of the room. The overhead fixture was another naked lightbulb, which showed, all too clearly, a room that apparently hadn’t been cleaned—or modernized—since the Nixon administration.
    “Oh my,” Tee said, looking around at the battered saucepans stacked on top of the counters.
    Shorty whined, as though in sad agreement.
    I walked over to the opposite wall and opened the door to what turned out to be a broom closet. I found one dog-eared broom, a dustpan, and an enamelware bucket. And what looked