Read McKettricks of Texas: Tate for Free Online Page A

every inch of it, inside and out, to make sure.
    “Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous?” he asked. “An obscene display of conspicuous consumption?”
    “The plastic is all recycled,” Garrett avowed, all but reaching around to pat himself on the back.
    Tate rolled his eyes and walked away, leaving Garrett and Esperanza and the girls to admire McKettrick Court and returning to the trailer to unload poor old Bamboozle. He settled the pony in his stall, gave him hay and a little grain, and moved to the corral fence to look out over the land, where the horses and cattle grazed in their separate pastures.
    At least there was one consolation, he thought; Austin hadn’t sent the elephant.
    The sound of an arriving rig made him turn around, looktoward the driveway. It was a truck, pulling a gleaming trailer behind it.
    A headache thrummed between Tate’s temples. Maybe he’d been too quick to dismiss the pachyderm possibility.
    Audrey and Ava, having heard the arrival, came bounding around the house, their shiny tassels trailing in the blue beginnings of twilight. Both of them were glitter-dappled from the pointed hats.
    Tate and his daughters collided just as the driver was getting down out of the truck cab. A stocky older man, balding, the fella grinned and consulted his clipboard with a ceremonious flourish bordering on the theatrical.
    “I’m looking for Miss Audrey and Miss Ava McKettrick,” he announced. Tate almost expected him to unfurl a scroll or blow a long brass horn with a velvet flag hanging from it.
    Tate was already heading for the back of the trailer, his headache getting steadily worse.
    Somehow, despite his bulk, the driver beat him there, blocked him bodily from opening the door and taking a look inside.
    By God, Tate thought, if Austin had sent his kids an elephant…
    “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr.—?” the driver said. His name, stitched on his khaki workshirt, was “George.”
    “McKettrick,” Tate replied, through his teeth.
    “The order specifically says I’m to deliver the contents of this trailer to the recipients and no one else.”
    Tate swore under his breath, stepped back and, with a sweeping motion of one arm, invited George to do the honors.
    “Who placed this order,” Tate asked, with exaggerated politeness, “if that information isn’t privileged or anything?”
    George lowered a ramp, then climbed it to fling up the trailer’s rolling door.
    No elephant appeared in the gap.
    The suspense heightened—Audrey and Ava were huddled close to Tate on either side by then, fascinated—as George duly checked his clipboard.
    “Says here, it was an A. McKettrick. Internet order. We don’t get many of those, given the nature of the—er—items.”
    The twins were practically jumping up and down now, and Esperanza and Garrett had come up behind, hovering, to watch the latest drama unfold.
    George disappeared into the shadowy depths, and a familiar clomping sound solved the mystery before two matching Palomino ponies materialized out of the darkness, shining like a pair of golden flames. Their manes and tails were cream-colored, brushed to a blinding shimmer, and each sported a bridle, a saddle and a bright pink bow the size of a basketball.
    “Damn,” Garrett muttered, “the bastard one-upped me.”
    “Yeah?” Tate replied, after pulling the girls back out of the way so George could unload the wonder horses. “Wait till you see what I got them.”
     
    L IBBY HAD EATEN SUPPER —salad and soup—watched the evening news, checked her e-mail, brought the newspaper in from its plastic box by the front gate and done two loads of laundry when the telephone rang.
    Damn, she hoped it wasn’t the manager at Poplar Bend, the town’s one and only condominium complex, calling to complain that Marva was playing her CDs at top volume again, and refused to turn down the music.
    In the six months since their mother had suddenly turnedup in Blue River in a chauffeur-driven limo