Bittersweet (4 page)

“I suppose,” I conceded. Ah, there was the address of the lady in Michigan, where I'd ordered bittersweet.
American
bittersweet. “Once you've knitted one sock, you've knitted them all. And bombing sounds like a good way to use up your yarn stash.”

“Oh, it's that, all right,” Ruby agreed enthusiastically. “And I've got a ton of yarn, in all colors of the rainbow. Anyway, the other Chix and I thought we could just
do
it—as an art project, I mean. Something to make everybody smile during the holidays, especially the customers who are shopping on Crockett.”

That would be our customers, and customers of the Hobbit House children's bookstore next door, the Craft Emporium on the corner, and the restaurant across the street. Our block of Crockett is host to several attractive venues.

Ruby was continuing. “But then we found out that we had to get a permit at city hall, and when I went to get it, the woman who handles the
permits—Mrs. Dillinger—had never heard of yarn bombing. When I told her about it, she decided it was vandalism.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Or littering. She said she'd never issue a permit for something so adolescent. She was really quite insulting.” She made a face. “That's when I got . . . well, sort of excited. I was rude. I . . . yelled at her.” When Ruby gets excited and yells, she is awesome.

Ruby went on. “The next day, one of the Chix went to the city council and showed them some photos of yarn-bombed fire hydrants in Seattle and park benches and statues in Chicago. The council overruled Mrs. Dillinger and said that yarn bombing isn't vandalism, it's art. They told her to accept our application.” Ruby's shoulders sagged. “I was supposed to get it in by last Friday, but I forgot. And I was . . . well, pretty rude. I'm afraid she's going to hold it against me, personally. She'll use my being late as an excuse to deny the permit.”

“So what you want me to do is—”

“Go over to city hall and talk to her. Apologize for being late. Explain that the Chix are ready to start and we really need that permit. And be very nice, would you? Being nice would go a long way toward easing the situation.”

“I can be nice,” I said, and finished typing my email. It was polite but firm. “Maybe I'd better call first, though, and make sure Mrs. Whatsit is going to be in the office.”

“Dillinger, as in the bank robber. Oh, and tell her that you'll be paying the twenty-five-dollar fee. I'll give you a check.”

“Works for me.” I hit the
Send
button and the email flew off into cyberspace. I was bending over, looking for the phone book under the counter, when I heard the bell over the shop door tinkle. “Sorry, we're
closed today,” I said, without looking up. I must've forgotten to lock the door when I came in.

“It's just me,” a light voice said.

“Oh, hi, Amy,” Ruby chirped brightly. “I thought you'd be at work this morning.”

I straightened up, the phone book in my hand. “Hello, Amy,” I said. “Nice to see you.”

It was Ruby's wild child. Amy, now nearly thirty, is her mother's look-alike, although she isn't quite so tall and has many more piercings than Ruby, and several more tattoos. (Actually, Ruby has only one, a fern and flower tattooed across half her chest, where one breast used to be. She sacrificed it to a mastectomy several years ago.) When she was still a teenager, Ruby gave birth to Amy out of wedlock and—at her own mother's behest—gave the baby up for adoption. But when Amy grew up, she did an adoptive search, located her mother, and came back into Ruby's life.

And that was just the beginning, for it turns out that Amy, an animal activist and active conservationist, never does anything the easy, conventional way. It wasn't long before she surprised us with the announcement that she was pregnant and had decided to keep the baby. Ruby was still coming to terms with the fact that she was about to become a grandmother when Amy declared that she was moving in with her friend and lover, Kate Rodriguez. Wild child indeed.

But Amy's relationship with Kate has settled her down. The three of them—Kate, Amy, and Grace—are a family. Kate owns her own successful accounting business, and Amy works as a veterinary assistant at the Hill Country Animal Clinic. The wild child has grown up.

“I'm going in late because I have to work late this evening,” Amy said.
“Listen, Mom—I wonder if you'd mind keeping Grace this weekend? Kate has to drive up to Oklahoma City for Thanksgiving with her mother, and I'd like to see a . . . a friend in San Antonio. I'll be back on Sunday.”

“There's nothing I'd like better, dear.” Ruby spoke without hesitation. “I'll be here at the shop on Saturday, but Grace can come with me. Miss T will be here, and she's always a big help.”

Amy grinned. “I like Miss T. I wonder what color her hair will be this time.” Sharon is quite a character. Her hair has been white since she was in her twenties, and she changes the color almost as often as some people change their minds.

Ruby nodded. “You'll be with us for Thanksgiving, won't you? Shannon and her fiancé are coming, and I'm roasting a turkey for the gang. But for you, dear, I'm baking a vegan Thanksgiving loaf with lentils, millet, and rice. And a very tasty vegan gravy.”

“Of course I'll be there,” Amy said with a grin. She was wearing her favorite bloodred
Meat Is Murder
T-shirt, advertising her animal activism. In fact, I first met her when she was trying to shut down an animal experiment at CTSU, along with other protestors from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “And that lentil loaf sounds terrific,” she added. “Want me to bring anything?”

“Just yourself—and Grace, of course,” Ruby replied. “Who's your friend?” she added in a studiedly offhand tone that didn't quite conceal her curiosity. “The one you're going to see in San Antonio.”

Amy colored. “Oh, just . . . just somebody I met through PETA,” she said vaguely. “Nobody you know.” I got the impression that Amy wasn't anxious to name her friend, but she probably just didn't want to feed her mother's inquisitiveness.

“Well, okay,” Ruby said with a little be-that-way shrug. “So I'll see you
and Grace on Thursday. And I'll keep Grace over the rest of the weekend. We'll have all kinds of fun.”

“Thanks so much, Mom. I really appreciate it. You're a peach.” Amy gave her a quick hug and turned to me. “Will you and Mike and the kids be at Mom's for Thanksgiving?”

I shook my head. “We're going down to the ranch.” I held up the phone. “Right now, I'd better make this call. I'd hate for your mom to be arrested before she can whomp up your vegan loaf.”

“Arrested?” Amy turned to look at Ruby. “Arrested for
what
?”

“Bombing yarn,” I said, and went back to the phone book.

“Yarn bombing,” Ruby corrected me. “Street art,” she said to her daughter. “Grandma graffiti. China is going to get a permit for the Six Chix with Pointy Stix to knit trunk warmers for some of the trees along Crockett Street.”

Amy blinked. “O-kay,” she said slowly. “If you say so.” She headed toward the door. “Have a good one, you guys. And thanks, Mom, for keeping Grace over the weekend.”

“I'm glad to,” Ruby said cheerfully. But when the door had swung shut behind Amy, she turned to me. “I'm not getting good vibes about this, China,” she said uneasily.

“About what?” I asked absently, running my finger down the list of city phone numbers, looking for Mrs. Dillinger, in the yarn-bombing department.

“About Amy's weekend plans. I don't like . . .” She gave me an apprehensive glance. “I don't like this friend. This guy she's going to meet in San Antonio. He's got dangerous ideas. There's going to be trouble. Serious trouble.”

I looked up from the phone book, curious. “How do you know he's a he? Amy didn't say—”

“She didn't have to.” She gave me a long look, as if she might be about to tell me something, but sighed and turned away.

I understood then. Ruby's gift had given her a glimpse of something she didn't want to see, something that she was afraid might happen over the coming weekend.

But I wasn't going to ask her what it was. To tell the truth, I'd rather not
know.

Rifle in hand, Mackenzie Chambers opened the passenger door of her state-issued Ford F-150 and whistled for Molly. Pink tongue lolling, the blue heeler loped from the bushes where she'd been taking care of her early-morning business and jumped eagerly into the truck. An Australian cattle dog bred to keep the herd moving in the right direction, Molly had a heavy-duty sense of responsibility. She knew when it was time to go to work and had to be reminded when it was time to quit—a little bit like herself, Mack reflected ruefully, as she shut the truck door. A personality characteristic that her former husband, Lanny, hadn't liked and one of the reasons they were now divorced.

Mack walked slowly around the dark green Ford pickup truck, noticing that there was mud on the grill and a big splash on the Texas Parks and Wildlife logo on the driver's door. There'd been rain the previous weekend, and her night patrols had taken her down some sloppy roads. She probably ought to run
the truck through the car wash—Utopia's only car wash, at the Pico convenience store, Utopia's only gas station. After a couple of weeks of unseasonably warm temperatures, the November air had a frosty bite, and the clipped grass of her small front yard was glazed with silver in the last light of the full moon that was setting over the
wooded hills west of town. The thermometer had dropped to just below freezing during the night.

But the weather guy on KSAT-TV in San Antonio, some seventy crow miles away, was forecasting a high in the upper 50s and partly cloudy skies with scattered showers through the rest of the week—good hunting weather. Deer season was three weeks old, and with the Thanksgiving weekend coming up, she would be patrolling the hills and canyons of northern Uvalde County—her third of the county's nearly 1,600 square miles. The other 1,000 square miles were split between wardens Bert Jenkins and Dusty Ross, her comrades-in-arms. Their District Two boss, headquartered in San Antonio, always talked about them as if they were a team, but their patrol areas were so large that there wasn't much chance for teamwork. Most of the time they were on their own. If one of them radioed for backup, they were likely to get the nearest deputy sheriff.

And vice versa. Just after midnight a couple of weeks ago, a Uvalde County deputy had been alerted to a copper theft in progress at a construction site on the Old Leakey Road, east of Garner State Park. He apprehended two of the thieves, but the third fled in an old black pickup. Happening to be on patrol in the area, Mack had picked up the dispatch on her radio, spotted the suspect with a roll of copper wire in the back of his vehicle, and stopped him. He gave her a little trouble, but her martial arts training came in handy, along with the fact that she was trim and fit from jogging and weight training and he was your basic six-pack-a-day couch potato, two-twenty-plus and slow on his feet. She had him on the ground with her knee in his back and was cuffing him as another deputy arrived on the scene. Last she'd heard, two of the thieves had bonded out, but her guy was still in the county jail charged with copper theft, criminal trespass, and resisting arrest.

Mack didn't much like that part of the job, but it came with the territory. In Texas, wardens and sheriffs' deputies alike were peace officers, with similar duties, similar armament and vehicles, and similar training—except that the deputies didn't have to know as much about the state and federal wildlife regs as the wardens did. In addition to the 600-plus hours Mack had put in to get her peace officer certification, her curriculum included another 750 hours of instruction at the Game Warden Training Academy. And all this on top of her undergraduate major in Criminal Justice and a Wildlife Biology minor from Sam Houston State. Texas Parks and Wildlife liked to brag that its game wardens were the best-trained conservation officers in the entire United States. From what Mack had observed of her fellow wardens in the five years since she'd graduated from the Academy, that was pretty much on the mark.

Next door, the rooster who lorded it over her neighbor's flock of hens noticed the first brush of pink in the sky and cheerfully unfurled his dawn song. From the grassy paddock behind the house (one of the reasons she liked this little place), Cheyenne, Mack's paint quarter horse, nickered softly, and a couple of backyards down the block, a neighbor's sorrel mare replied with a pleasant whinny. The two horses often seemed to communicate, Mack had noticed, like friends gossiping across the back fence about what was going on in the neighborhood.
Did you see that Bartlett kid with his BB gun? Deliberately shot out the garage window and claimed it was an accident. And how about Sam Gruber—drunk again on Saturday night. If I were Mrs. Gruber, I'd leave him.
Cheyenne needed exercise, but since hunting season began, there hadn't been time to ride her—and there wouldn't be time until the hoopla was over, at the end of January.

Mack set her coffee mug into the truck's cup holder. Then she paused
beside the open passenger door to do a quick equipment check. The dash-mounted GPS, light-control switch box, and radio were in working order. The console held her log and map folder, spotting scope, binoculars, and flashlight, along with a digital camera, mini-cassette recorder, and first-aid and evidence kits. Her rain gear and highway flares were under the seat, along with a spare flashlight, extra batteries, and a basic truck tool kit. Her AR-15 was already locked into the cab ceiling rack. Like all wardens, she spent most of her waking hours in her truck. She tried to keep stuff stowed neatly and the trash shoveled out.

She opened the door of the rear cab and dropped her insulated lunch pack and thermos of hot chocolate on the floor. Designed to transport prisoners, the truck's rear cab was separated from the front by a sturdy cage-wire panel and a bullet-proof sliding glass pane, and the doors couldn't be opened from the inside. She straightened up and checked her duty belt: her holstered .40 caliber 15-round Glock 22, handcuffs, pepper spray, Maglite, disposable gloves, and handy multi-tool—the Leatherman that had belonged to her father.

Satisfied that she hadn't forgotten anything, she slid onto the seat, flipped open her patrol log, and noted the date (11/22), time (0500), and weather (clear, 30F). She'd gotten into the habit of recording the weather after she discovered that it helped her to remember incidents more clearly when it came time to write up the full report on the computer back in her office, the second bedroom of her tiny, two-bedroom house.

“Ready to hit the road, Molly?” She smiled at the dog perched on the passenger seat. In answer, Molly wagged her butt—like most ranch dogs, her tail had been docked so it wouldn't get stepped on by a cow or a horse or caught in a gate. In this kind of weather, Molly got to do ride-alongs several
times a week. Summer was a different story. It was against regulations to leave the truck and the AC running when she made a stop, and the temp in the cab could reach triple digits in a matter of minutes. In the summer, Molly had to stay home.

Mack started the truck and backed out of the driveway. She drove up Oak Street, then turned onto Lee and then onto Main, automatically slowing as she drove past the general store. She noticed the three battered pickups lined up fender to fender in front and guessed that Cal, Jerky, and Butch—three old-timers who started every day but Sunday with a companionable cup of java—were already gathered around the coffeepot in the back of the store, where she could see a faint light.

A couple of doors down, though, the Lost Maples Café was still dark, and there were no vehicles parked in front. In fact, the street was deserted, although in another hour, the café would be doing a land-office business—rightfully so, for the breakfast tacos were pretty good, especially the taco called “The Kitchen Sink.” The Sink had everything—generous helpings of eggs, potatoes, cheese, onions, ham, sausage, bacon, and jalapeños, wrapped neatly in a flour tortilla about as big as the hubcap on her truck and served with a salsa that was hot enough to melt the fillings in your teeth. But it was the pie that most folks came for—homemade cherry pie, buttermilk pie, banana cream pie, and more. The laminated legend on the napkin holder said “Pie fixes everything,” and Mack agreed.

Mack also agreed with the village motto, “Utopia Is a Paradise: Let's Keep It Nice.” It was only a couple of hundred souls. The county seat, Uvalde, was forty-five miles to the southwest, and the nearest city, Kerrville, was sixty miles to the northeast, both on hilly, winding two-lanes. But Mack had no complaints. She had never been a lover of crowded
urban-suburban areas, especially after spending several years in Adams County, which was sliced by I-35 and studded with shopping malls and strip centers.

Not coincidentally, the assignment to Uvalde County came the week after her divorce from Lanny and the sale of their condo some seven months before, so moving from Pecan Springs to Utopia had brought a new beginning in more ways than one. She was working in the prettiest county in the whole state (in her opinion), and living in a sweet little rental house, although she'd be the first to admit that she hadn't had time to get proper furniture or even hang curtains at the windows. She'd gotten Cheyenne, her first horse since the gelding she'd shared with her father and two younger brothers. And she'd adopted Molly. (Lanny had been mauled by a neighbor's bulldog as a kid and refused to have a dog in the house.)

And she had met Derek Mitford, a good-looking man with a quirky eyebrow, dark hair that fell over his forehead, and a deep cleft in his chin. His wife, he said, had died of cancer several years ago. He and his daughters had come from a suburb of St. Louis, where he'd worked in an investment bank. They'd just moved into the new house he'd built on a small ranch outside of town.

Mack and Derek had been introduced by Jack Krause at the café several weeks before. A broad-shouldered man with thick, curly brown hair, Jack was the assistant foreman at Three Gates Game Ranch. He had given Mack, the new game warden, the grand tour of Three Gates the month before, showing her the ranch's deer-breeding facilities and the feeding stations and the air-conditioned blinds. The visit was a duty call and Mack was not impressed. She disliked the whole idea of breeding trophy white-tails and charging wealthy hunters thousands of dollars to sit in a
blind and shoot them when they showed up at the feeder. She disliked Jack, too, although she couldn't put her finger on why, except that he reminded her of a bully who had given her a hard time back in seventh grade.

But she liked Derek. He might look like a dude rancher in his suede vest and Tony Lama Boots, but he seemed to have an enormous appreciation for the town and everybody in it. “Utopia,” he'd mused, after Jack had gone off and they found themselves sitting with coffee and pie (pecan fudge for him and chocolate meringue for her) at the booth in the corner of the café. “I picked this place because of the name. Utopia. Came down here, looked around, and loved it. Perfect name for a perfect little town. Nice to be in a place where everybody's got roots, don't you think? And where everybody knows all about everybody else and all their relatives.”

“I like the idea of roots,” Mack agreed cautiously, although she was less sure about everybody knowing all about everybody else. She liked her privacy. And while she liked Utopia, she didn't for a moment think it was perfect.

“I couldn't make it way out here in the boonies if it weren't for the Internet, though,” Derek had added, picking up his Green Bay Packers coffee mug. Mack's mug was red and said “Shh, there's beer in here.” The mugs at the café, like the vintage fifties tables and chairs, were gleefully mismatched. “I've got my office set up so I can be in touch with the financial markets all day long, the way I was in St. Louis. And then I come into this place”—he gestured around the café—“and it's like going back to the 1940s. Best of both worlds.” He pointed to the little sign on the table. “Maybe pie really does fix everything,” he said with a laugh.

She noticed that his hands and nails were nicely cared for—city hands, she thought. Self-consciously, she hid hers, which were not city
hands, by any stretch. And when he asked what she did for a living, she said casually, “I work with Texas Parks and Wildlife.” It was her day off, and she was wearing jeans and a yellow plaid shirt instead of her uniform, and her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, instead of skinned back into a ponytail as it was when she was working. Somebody had interrupted them, then, and he hadn't asked for details.

She thought she would probably see him again—Utopia wasn't the kind of place where you could completely lose track of somebody. And sure enough, a few days later they'd bumped into each other at the post office. She'd been in uniform that time, which necessitated an explanation of what exactly she did for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Derek cast a startled glance at the Glock on her hip, and she'd figured that was the end of an interesting beginning.

But to her surprise, he had phoned the next Sunday with a casual invitation to an impromptu afternoon hike along the river with him and his two daughters, aged thirteen and fifteen. It wasn't exactly a comfortable outing, for she'd had a difficult time hiding her surprise at the upscale contemporary luxury of Derek's architect-designed glass-and-stone ranch house, which reminded her uneasily of the world she and Lanny had lived in. The girls were . . . well, they were probably typical teenagers, she thought. They wore tight pants and shirts that showed a lot of skin and shape, and they were far more interested in their smartphones than in the lovely autumn woods along the river. What's more, they made it clear that they didn't like Mack's intrusion into their weekend. She hadn't expected Derek to call after that.