Holly Blues (22 page)

“Makes it hard on you,” McQuaid said.

“Yeah.” Jamison’s mouth tightened. “We’re doin’ all we can, fast as we can, but there’s a limit to what we can follow up on.”

McQuaid knew. This was the sort of crime—if that’s what it was—that gave every policeman a serious headache. Abduction? Amnesia? Staged disappearance? By this time, the Sanders cops would have gone through the house carefully, and just as carefully, they’d have gone through Joyce’s relationships—or they would’ve, if they had the manpower to do it, which maybe they didn’t. This kind of investigation would be out of the usual for them, and the reward would bring out all the crazies. Too many tips, ninety-nine out of a hundred phony.

Jamison cleared his throat. “So you can see why it seems just a little coincidental, you might say. Here’s your ex-wife comin’ back to town and drivin’ Ms. Dillard around in her car. Then here you come, wantin’ to talk with Ms. Dillard and find out what she knows about the Strahorn murders. Unfortunately, Ms. Dillard isn’t around to give you any answers.” He paused, let the silence lengthen. “Get my point?”

McQuaid got it. He was about to answer when the door burst open behind him with a crash.

“Joe!” a girl cried. “Joe, you gotta help us!” It was one of the two girls who had gone out together.

“What is it now, Annie?” Joe asked with infinite patience. “How often I gotta tell you, it’s time for a new batt’ry? We can’t go pushin’ you two kids every time that ol’ clunker won’t start.”

Now, all three of them were looking at the girl. She was covered with melting snow, her boots and pants crusted with snow to the thighs, her hair spilling out from under the hood of her coat.

“It’s not the truck!” she cried, holding out her mittened hands, covered with snow, as if she had been digging with them. “We were headed back toward town when Meg spun out, and we went into the ditch. We were trying to dig ourselves out and we uncovered—” She gulped and closed her eyes.

Jamison got up from his stool and strode toward her. “Uncovered what? What’ve you found?”

“We found her!” the girl cried. “We found Miss Dillard, under the snow.” She burst into noisy tears. “We tried to dig her out, but—but we couldn’t!” The last was a wail.

“You poor thing,” Joe said sympathetically. “You get on over here and have a hot cup of coffee and some pie. You must be half-froze.”

Jamison had his jacket on and McQuaid was reaching for his. The girl sat down at the counter. She stopped crying, sniffled, and swiped her sleeve across her nose.

“Do you think we’ll get the reward?” she asked.

After McQuaid agreed that he would drive down to Sanders and talk to Joyce Dillard, I clicked off, then punched in Justine Wyzinski’s number. McQuaid might be able to dig up the backstory, but if anybody could get Sally out of her current fix, it was Justine.

A couple of centuries ago, Justine and I sat next to each other in first-year criminal law at the University of Texas. Envious law students nicknamed her the Whiz, because she could whip a recalcitrant collection of facts into a comprehensible legal theory and persuade you of its validity while the rest of us were still trying to find our notes. I was wildly jealous of her and worked like hell to keep her from getting too far ahead—which earned me the nickname of Hot Shot. After a couple of years of competitive craziness, the Whiz and I both made Law Review, where our rivalry ripened into wary respect and eventually into friendship, which we continued when we graduated, passed the bar, and went into practice—I in a large Houston firm, Justine in private practice in San Antonio. When I left the law some years later, the Whiz publicly expressed the conviction that I was non compos and ought to be crated and shipped to the loony bin, while I told her that she was certifiably crazy to stay. But we haven’t let that little difference of opinion sabotage our friendship. I have called Justine when I needed her help. She’s asked me for a favor occasionally, too. I keep score. And if my tally was correct, she owed me one.

She recognized my number on her caller ID. “How the hell are you, Hot Shot?”

“Can you spare a minute, Justine?”

“I’m in court and whether I can spare a minute depends on when Judge Paulson shows up. You got something, give it to me quick.” Justine is a speed demon and a specialist in multitasking, but even she has to stop talking and texting once the judge takes the bench. I’d better make it snappy.

“It’s Sally.”

“Ah, yes, the inimitable, incomparable, unrivaled, one and only Sally.” The Whiz chuckled. She has suffered with me through several unfortunate episodes in Sally’s checkered past. “What’s she done this time?”

I was succinct. “She’s a person of interest in her sister’s homicide.”

The Whiz whistled. “That’s a biggie, even for Sally. An elephant on steroids. So tell me about it.”

It didn’t take long, because I was lamentably short on facts. I concluded with “She’s going to need somebody with her during the interview. When they find her, that is.” I looked at my watch. It was nearly two. Where
was
she?

“You don’t need me for an interview,” the Whiz replied. “You can handle this, Hot Shot. Time you got back in the ring, anyway.”

“I can handle it, but I won’t. Sally is Brian’s mother. I’m too close to the situation.”

Justine snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re emotionally involved with this woman.”

“I’m emotionally involved with Brian,” I said. “And if things don’t go well—”

“Sally is Sally, China. Things will not go well. In fact, things will go as badly as it is possible.”

I sighed. The Whiz has a way of putting her finger on the pulse of the problem. “That’s why she needs you, Justine. I need you. Will you?”

Justine sounded reluctant. “My plate is heaped and overflowing right now. ‘When they find her,’ you said. Your local gendarmes haven’t nabbed her, then?”

“I’m out of the loop. If they have, they haven’t told me. What I know is that she was supposed to meet me for lunch, and she didn’t show up. Sheila has put out an APB on Brian’s car. That’s what she’s driving.”

“I see. Well, when they find her, phone me, and I’ll let you know whether I can take the case—if it is a case. Which of course it might not be. Maybe they just want to ask her what her sister had for breakfast. In the meantime, dig up the facts, will you? Our friend Sally is like a piñata full of nasty little surprises, bugs and worms and things that bite. I don’t want to do this if I have to jump into it naked.” She paused. “Any chance she did it, China? Knocked her sister off, I mean.”

The word
no
leapt to my lips, but I bit it back. I had seen Sally act rashly, impulsively, angrily. I had hated her for it, and for the disruptions she had caused in Brian’s life. But still, I didn’t believe she had killed Leslie, for the simple reason that over the past couple of days, she had not given a single indication of sadness, guilt, remorse—any of the horrific emotions that would swamp anyone who had killed a member of her family. Would swamp even Sally, who could hold her head above the tides of guilt longer than most people.

But I know the Whiz. I knew that she was much more likely to agree to take Sally’s case if I gave her a different answer. So I lied.

“Yes,” I said. “Sally has an alter ego, somebody named Juanita, who sometimes does crazy things. She was diagnosed a couple of years ago.”

“Aha,” Justine exclaimed, and I pictured her snapping her fingers and coming to full attention, all systems alert. I had punched her Intrigue Me button. “The dissociative identity disorder defense.”

“Exactly,” I said. Justine is always three leaps and a bound ahead of any developing situation. In her mind, she was already reviewing the list of expert witnesses—psychiatrists, mental health authorities—she would call. She was already in front of the jury box, making opening arguments. “Then you’ll do it?”

“Probably,” the Whiz said. “But right now, I gotta do this. Oh, and don’t forget about those facts, China.”

There was a stirring in the background, and I heard the bailiff ’s distant command: “All rise.” In the old days, this was a battle cry that made me leap to my feet, my blood racing and my pulse quickening. Not anymore. I was just glad it was Justine in that courtroom, not me. I’ll settle for Thyme and Seasons, any day.

I said, “Thanks, Justine.” But she had already clicked off.

I sat there for a moment. While I’d been talking to the Whiz, three people had come into the shop. Customers. Not that I wasn’t glad to see them. I was, especially if they had come to buy. But I was here all by myself. Ruby was trying to manage her unmanageable mother, Cass was at the doctor’s, Laurel was unavailable. All of which meant that even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t start digging up facts for Justine. I couldn’t even think where to go or what kind of shovel to use.

And there was more. During my life as a lawyer, I had a very simple rule. I advised potential clients that you never launched an investigation unless you know what you’re going to do with the information you dig up. If you can’t or won’t live with the answers—
all
the answers—forget all about asking the questions. And here I was, promising to look for answers that might not be in Sally’s best interests.

After a flurried fifteen minutes, the shop was empty again, and I had time to think about the matter at hand: Sally. But then there was another little rush, and another, and before I knew it, an hour had flown past, dropping tidy little deposits of fives and tens and even a couple of twenties in Ruby’s register and mine. The phones in both shops hadn’t stopped ringing, either—usually, music to my ears, except that today, I had something else to worry about, and I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get there from here. And then my phone rang again. It was Ruby.

“I’ve just left Castle Oaks,” she said breathlessly. “I got Mom settled again and—”

“Super,” I said. “Then you’re heading back to the shop, I hope?”

Ruby cleared her throat apologetically. “Actually, I’m doing surveillance.”

“Surveillance? Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear this.”

No, wait. Whatever Nancy Drew was up to, I’d better hear it now, before she got herself into some really serious trouble and had to be bailed out.

I gave a resigned sigh. “All right, tell me, Ruby. Who are you surveilling?”

“Not a who, a what. Brian’s blue Ford. The one you loaned to Sally. It’s parked in the First Congregational lot, just off the alley behind McMasters Office Supply.”

Brian’s car? Ruby had located Sally? But I had to register a protest. “I thought I told you not to go looking for—”

“I didn’t go looking for anything. Brownie’s oath, China! I got Mom settled in her room and started back to the shop, and on the way I remembered that we’re nearly out of adding machine tape, so I stopped here at McMasters. While I was at it, I bought some folders and pens and rubber bands and talked to Peaches—you know, Peaches McMasters. Her sister just had twins, two girls, and she had to tell me all about it. They named them Zoe and Zora.”

“I know about Peaches’ sister’s twins,” I said impatiently. “Get to the point, Ruby.”

“Well, the point is that when I finished buying the tape and the folders and pens and rubber bands and talking to Peaches about the twins, I came back to the car. I was getting in when I just happened to glance across the alley, and there it was, on the other side of the hedge. In the First Methodist parking lot. Is, I mean. It’s still there. I’m looking right at it.”

“How do you know it’s Brian’s car? There are lots of blue Fords around.”

“Dented left rear? I remembered that. And here’s the license plate.” She rattled it off. It was the same one I had given Sheila. It was Brian’s car, all right. So where was Sally? Shopping?

Ruby answered my unspoken question. “I’ve been watching for ten minutes or so, and there’s no sign of Sally. She wasn’t in McMasters, and there’s no other shopping or food places nearby. There’s nothing but residential around here.”