Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray by Diane Kelly

Author:Diane Kelly [Kelly, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cozy
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Outbid

I met my mother and father in the building’s foyer, giving them each a big hug.

My dad was a weatherworn, broad-shouldered man, old-fashioned and no-nonsense. If someone were to be cast as my dad in a movie, the role would have to go to Tommy Lee Jones. Mom, too, was a bit old-fashioned, chestnut-haired and petite like me. Though she was down-to-earth, she appreciated the finer things in life, too. Reba McEntire would be cast in her role.

Dad wore his best pair of cowboy boots, a pair of starched and ironed jeans, and a classic white button-down. Mom had dressed in a blue A-line dress and low heels, sophisticated enough to fit in here in the somewhat pretentious city of Dallas, but comfortable enough for the six-hour roundtrip drive they’d make today. My hometown of Nacogdoches lay three hours to the east, in the piney woods, not far from the Louisiana border.

They’d made the trek for this morning’s government auction, but couldn’t stay the night. Dad had a load of hay to deliver to a horse-breeding facility first thing tomorrow morning.

Mom put a hand on each of my shoulders and squinted at my face. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

“It’s just a sty, Mom. No big deal.”

“It looks horrible.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re not getting enough sleep, are you?”

“I’m sleeping fine.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“You should come home for a nice, long visit. Get some rest.”

“I will,” I promised. “As soon as things slow down.” Heck, I’d love to go home and let Mom take care of me for a few days.

“Put a warm teabag over your eye,” Mom suggested. “That’ll get rid of the sty.”

The last home remedy my mother had suggested was to coat my hair with mayonnaise to get rid of lice I’d contracted from trying on a hat at a thrift shop. While her advice had worked, my greasy hair had induced a large hunting dog to knock me down and lick my head. The beast had nearly given me a concussion.

We made our way out to Dad’s pickup and loaded in. As I had since I was a little girl, I sat between my mother and father, where I’d be both safe and in easy reach should I smart off and need a corrective smack. I’d never actually received the threatened smacks, though I’d had a hostile finger pointed in my face a few times. I was much too old for insincere threats or finger-pointing now, but old habits die hard.

I gave Dad directions to the auction site, which was at the livestock barn on the Dallas fairgrounds. We arrived twenty minutes later and parked. The enormous, permanent Ferris wheel loomed motionless over us as we walked through the lot into the sprawling metal building.

During the annual state fair, the building housed everything from pigs, to cows, to llamas, to ostriches. Today, though, the space housed an assortment of items seized from deadbeats who hadn’t paid their taxes. Though the stalls had been hosed down, the place retained the faint, earthy smell of farm animals.

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