Holly Blues (19 page)

“Oh, pooh,” Doris stamped one pink-rabbit-clad foot. “I saw your car outside and I thought you’d take me.”

Ah, I thought. Sheila’s police car. Yes. This visit had nothing to do with Ruby or Ramona. Doris was looking for a ride in a squad car—that was all.

“I’m very sorry. But please let me make sure that you get safely out to the van.” Sheila extended her arm to Doris. “Shall we?”

“Well, since you’re being so kind.” Doris gathered her too-large coat around her, lifted her chin, and accepted the chief’s arm with an imperial smile. Trailed by the orderlies, they left the shop. It was a bizarre parade.

“Thank heavens,” Ruby muttered. She turned to me. “Has Sally shown up?”

“No,” I said. “Not a sign of her.” I took a deep breath. “And something awful has happened, Ruby. Sally’s sister Leslie was killed, up in Lake City where she lives. The Lake City police have named Sally as a person of interest. Sheila is here, looking for her. She hasn’t asked me yet, but I’ll have to tell her that Sally’s driving Brian’s blue Ford. I’m sure they’ll put out an APB on it.”

Ruby paled. “Leslie, dead? Omigod, China, I can’t believe that!” The two of them—Ruby and Leslie—had met several times during Leslie’s visits here. “She’s such a lively young woman, so pretty and—”

“Lively young women can get dead, too,” I said glumly. “It happens all the time.”

“But why are the police interested in
Sally
?” Ruby cried. “They can’t think . . . They couldn’t possibly believe that she would kill her
sister
! Not even Sally would do a thing like that.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Unless—”

“Unless what?”

Ruby’s eyes were huge. “Unless Juanita did it.”

“Ruby, I really don’t think—”

“You don’t know about split personalities? One part of the self can do something that the other part of the self would never even imagine—like pick up a gun and shoot somebody, for instance.”

One of the nursing home orderlies opened the door. “Are you coming back to Castle Oaks, Ms. Wilcox? We’re ready to go.”

“Yes, I’m coming,” Ruby replied in a harried tone. To me, she said, “This is something you need to think about, China. Split personalities are—” She gulped.

“We’ll be in the van,” the orderly said, and left.

“I am so sorry about Leslie.” Ruby hugged me. “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got Mom settled.”

“Better lock her in,” I said and went to get the broom. I had finished sweeping up the pieces and replacing the ornaments on the display when I thought I heard a thump upstairs in the loft. I was about to go and investigate, but Sheila came back at that moment.

“Poor old thing,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “I hope I go before my mind does.”

“You should have seen her in her heyday,” I said, giving one last critical look to the display. “All starched and buttoned up to the chin, spine stiff as a board, voice like a drill sergeant.” The old Doris had no sense of humor, was right about everything, and always had to have the last word. The new Doris is sometimes a little hard on the nerves, but I think I like her better. She has more humanity.

The bell over my door jingled, and Sheila followed me back into my shop, where two older ladies, coiffed in delicate blue white curls, courtesy of the stylists at Bobby Rae’s House of Beauty, had paused to look at the last two of Donna’s wreaths. I recognized them as members of the Pecan Springs Book Club, which meets for lunch on the third Wednesday of the month in the tearoom. The two Bookies (that’s what they call themselves) gave Sheila’s uniform a quick, curious glance, exchanged disapproving looks, then turned their backs.

“I’ve already passed on the information about the Strahorn murders to the Lake City police. Myers’ information, too,” Sheila said in a low voice. “But we need to talk to Sally as soon as possible. Do you know what she’s driving?”

Asked directly, I had to answer. I nodded. “We loaned her the car Blackie sold us for Brian. Dark blue four-door Ford, five years old. Dented left rear.” Minor damage. We’ll probably let Brian drive it as is, on the theory that a few more dings will follow.

“License number?”

Talk to Sally.
What Sheila really meant was that she needed to pick Sally up and park her in one of the PSPD’s interrogation rooms until the Lake City police could get here to question her. I considered telling the chief I didn’t know the license number, but my better angel told me she didn’t think this was such a hot plan. It wasn’t, either. I didn’t like the notion of Sally being apprehended as a person of interest, but I liked the idea of Myers catching up to her even less. If the cops had Sally, at least she’d be safe. And Sheila already knew what the car looked like—she’d ridden in it often enough. They’d pick Sally up, sooner or later. Sooner would be better.

I reached under the counter for my shoulder bag and dug the insurance card out of my wallet.“You’re putting out an APB on the convertible, too, I hope.” I handed her the card.

Without answering, she copied down the tag and handed the card back to me. “If Sally shows up here, give me a call.”

It was a command, not a request, and I muttered something that might have been a yes, might have been a no. I was once again chewing on the phrase “person of interest,” and it didn’t taste good. If I were Sally (thank God I’m not), maybe I’d sit tight until the Lake City police were ready to name me a “material witness,” a “target” of their investigation, or a “suspect.” But those terms aren’t very appetizing, either, so maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe, if I were Sally, I would tell them everything I knew about Myers, so they would turn their attention from me to him, where it belonged. Anyway, the word “cooperating” has such a respectable ring to it.

Sheila put her cap back on, nodded and smiled in the direction of the Bookies, and left. As she went out the door, I remembered that she had asked for Sally’s cell number—that was before Doris interrupted us. I hadn’t given it to her, and she hadn’t asked again. I considered running after her with the information, which I had on a scrap of paper on the counter, but I didn’t. Instead, I picked up the phone and punched in the number. Still no answer. Damn. I left another voice mail message, a much more urgent one this time, telling Sally to call me as soon as possible.

The Bookies had finally decided that they would take both wreaths. They brought them to the counter, where they argued for a moment more about which of them was buying the wreath as a Christmas present for the other. They finally settled the matter by agreeing that each Bookie would buy one wreath and then give it to the other Bookie. (You’d be surprised at how often this happens when two people are shopping together.)

“I suppose some of your customers might be glad to see that law enforcement is watching out for them,” the first Bookie remarked to me, adding, “although I personally find it a little . . . well, nerve-wracking to try to shop with the police looking over your shoulder, watching your every move, as if you were a common shoplifter.”

The other Bookie was shaking her head. “I wonder what her mother thinks. A beautiful woman like that, and she’s a policeman.” She sniffed. “I’m surprised that she can’t find some other line of work.”

“Police
woman
,” I corrected cheerfully, handing the credit cards back. “And her mother thinks it’s just great, actually.”

“Oh, really?” Bookie Number One did not quite believe me.

I nodded. My better angel had abandoned me, and my worst instincts were about to take over. “They’re in the same business, you see,” I added confidentially. “Sort of.”

Bookie Number Two frowned. “What sort of business is her mother in?”

“She’s the director of the state penitentiary at Huntsville,” I said. I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “She runs Death Row.”

Both Bookies’ eyes grew round as saucers, and one of them raised her hand to her mouth. I repented of my folly immediately.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Just joking.”

“If that was a joke,” Bookie Number Two reprimanded me sharply, “it wasn’t in very good taste.”

“Not at all,” Bookie Number One agreed wrathfully, taking her wreath. She didn’t say,
You ought to be ashamed of yourself,
but she looked it.

“You’re right,” I said humbly. “I don’t know what got into me. I apologize.”

But I knew very well. I had been standing behind the counter all day, and I wasn’t going to get a break anytime soon. I was irritated at Smart Cookie and ticked off at the Lake City police. I was seriously ticked off at Sally, too, but I was also seriously worried about her. As a result, I had alienated two customers, who would probably go straight home to their telephones (Bookies are not the sort to use cell phones or the Internet) and tell all the other Bookies that they’d been insulted by one of the owners of the tearoom and that they should find another place to meet for their monthly lunch.

The minute the two Bookies were out of the shop, I reached for the phone. There was no point in trying Sally again. She had either turned off her phone or . . . I didn’t want to think of the other possibilities.

But there was somebody else I needed to talk to. McQuaid had to know that Leslie was dead and that the police had named Sally a person of interest.

And after that, I had another call to make. I was calling a lawyer.

McQuaid pulled up next to the black-and-white police cruiser in the parking lot of the hamburger joint outside of Sanders and unclenched his hands from the steering wheel. He flexed his stiff, cadaverlike fingers and sucked in a ragged breath. The drive from Omaha had taken over four hours, twice as long as it should have. The snow had never stopped, blinding white, blowing, flying, pinging pellet-hard against the car windows, clogging the windshield wipers, a blizzard if there ever was one. It had been a slick trip, too, hazardous and nerve-wrenching. Interstate 29 had been plowed, all right, but the snow was coming so furiously that the plows didn’t have a prayer.

The blowing pellets were mesmerizing, and he had driven mostly by focusing on the taillights of the vehicle ahead of him, hoping there wouldn’t be some sort of pileup and they’d all end up in one huge bumper-to-bumper chain collision. That hadn’t happened, luckily, but otherwise it was bad enough. Cars and trucks were swerving and fishtailing all over the place, especially on the icy overpasses, where they executed elephantine 360s, like Sumo wrestlers on ice skates. A couple of eighteen-wheelers had jackknifed across two lanes, and another skidded onto the median and flipped onto its side, right in front of him.

But if the interstate heading south had been a skating rink, Route 36 heading west was a helluva lot worse, with only one lane plowed and the visibility deteriorating as the twilight deepened, so that by the time he’d reached the turnoff, he was barely creeping, the car rocking with every blast of the crosswind. The rented Chevy didn’t have snow tires or chains, so he was pretty much at the mercy of the blizzard, which wasn’t showing any mercy at all. It was after six o’clock now, and dark, and if he hadn’t spotted the red neon sign, Joe’s Feed Lot, bleeding blood-red onto the snow, he’d have missed the narrow Sanders turnoff altogether. Joe’s Feed Lot. Any port in a storm, although as ports went, Joe’s was better than some.

Wearily, he switched off the ignition. He had not planned to make this trip. He had meant it when he’d told Sally that he was going to pick up a couple of good books, a bag of snacks and a few beers, and head for the motel, where he could turn up the heat, stretch out on the bed, make a couple of phone calls, and spend the next twenty-four hours reading and snoozing and getting pleasantly blitzed.

That was the plan, anyway. He’d already gotten as far as the books, the snacks, and the beer. He’d even put in a call to Joyce Dillard. No answer, which took him off the hook until the evening, when she’d more likely be home. After the call, he picked up one of the books and settled himself on the bed to read, with the television tuned to a NASCAR race rerun on ESPN. And then the rest of the plan got deep-sixed in a hurry, because China had called with the staggering news that Leslie Strahorn was dead, a homicide, and the Lake City cops were looking for Sally as a person of interest.

Leslie’s death was a sucker punch in the belly, knocking the wind out of him, and it had taken him a minute to get his breath. He could picture her, pert, perky, sweet. He remembered kissing her once, months after the divorce. They’d just been playing around, but the kiss had delivered such an unexpected wallop that he’d decided he wouldn’t do it again unless he was looking for something serious, which he wasn’t and couldn’t, as long as Sally was in the picture. And then there was China, who was even more of what he was looking for, so Leslie had become more of what she had always been: Brian’s favorite aunt, his own friend, even sometimes—when things with Sally were at their worst—his confidant.