Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (12 page)

"Aunt
Velda," Donna said desperately, "please watch your language. This is
Sheriff Blackwell." She leaned closer, trying to command her aunt's
attention. "He's come to tell us that Mr. Swenson is—"

"They got ol'
Carlos, that's all I care about," Aunt Velda said in a celebratory tone.
"Bully for them, is whut I say!" She banged her fist on the table.
"Where's my coffee, girl? How come I ain't got no coffee?"

Wordlessly, her face
as white as the tablecloth, Donna got up to pour another cup of coffee. It was
clear that she had wanted to get Swenson's death on the record before the old
lady had a chance to say something she shouldn't. But Aunt Velda had beaten her
to the punch.

Blackie leaned
forward, intent.
"They
got ol' Carlos?" he repeated.

The old lady clapped
her gnarled hands. "See there!" she crowed. "This feller's a
smart'un. He knows all about 'em."

She hoisted her bootied foot, which seemed to have
been injured, onto a chair. "While you're up, girl, why don't you cut us a
piece of that chocolate cake? You cain't make pie worth a durn, but your cakes
ain't bad."

"They
are
the Klingons," I said quietly to Blackie, and pointed to the plastic badge
on Aunt Velda's knit cap. "Their spaceship is parked upstairs. They've
been waiting to snatch Carlos—er, Carl Swenson. Aunt Velda knows about this
because she has been a guest on the ship herself. They took her on an extended
intergalactic voyage."

Blackie nodded, and I
could see him processing the information. When he leaned forward again, his
voice was casual, interested. "How do you know the Klingons got Mr.
Swenson?" he asked. "Did you see it happen?"

Aunt Velda shut her
eyes. "Well, not quite. But they borrowed the truck and—"

There
was a loud crash and a cry. Donna had droppedthe coffeepot into the sink,
splashing hot coffee over her right forearm from wrist to elbow. Blackie jumped
up, turned on the tap, and held her arm under the cold water. She resisted at
first, but then stood quiedy, biting her lip.

"That's a bad burn," he
said, after several minutes. He turned off the tap. "You'd better get
medical attention."

Donna shook her head and reached for the aloe
plant on the windowsill. "I'll put some of this on it," she said, and
broke off a fat, succulent leaf. "It'll hurt for a while, but it'll be
okay."

I took the leaf from
her, stripped off the tough outer skin, and smeared the gel on the burn. I
worked as gently as I could, but she still winced at the touch, and made a little
sound. The burn wasn't as bad or as extensive as it had seemed from her
reaction, I thought.

Blackie had gone back to his chair. "I was
asking whether you had seen them take Mr. Swenson," he said to Aunt Velda,
"and you were saying—"

But the old woman had closed her eyes,
her chin had dropped onto her chest, and she was snoring, her bootied foot
still propped on the chair.

"She falls asleep like that all the
time," Donna said, sitting down at the table again. Her tone was at once
relieved and embarrassed. "You can't tell when she'll wake up, or what
she'll say when she does." She looked straight at Blackie. "You can't
believe a word she tells you, about Carl Swenson or anything else. She's
crazy."

"What is your
aunt's name?" Blackie asked, picking up his pen.

"Velda
Fletcher."

"Her
age?"

"Seventy-five.
Before she came to live with us she left her apartment and wandered around lost
for several days.

She couldn't be trusted to live alone
any longer, so we take care of her."

"When
was the last time she was out of the house?"

"The last
time?" Donna said quickly. "Oh, it must have been a couple of months
ago. That was to go to the doctor." Her smile was small and tight.
"We can't allow her to go out, Sheriff. We have to watch her all the time
to keep her from wandering off and getting hurt. You can see for yourself that
she's not mentally competent."

I looked up quickly.
Aunt Velda was a couple of bricks shy of a load, as we say here in Texas, but I
didn't believe she was as disabled as Donna made her appear. On Saturday, the
old girl had been eager to claim the credit for discovering the arrowhead cache
up at the spring and
was
proud of herself for helping her
nieces haul out the debris in the farm truck.

The farm truck. I
pulled in my breath. Aunt Velda's old red Ford that couldn't be driven on the
highway because it didn't have current plates. But the old lady was allowed to
drive it around the farm, to make her feel she was doing something useful. Had
she driven it yesterday?

"What is her social worker's name?"
Blackie was asking.

"I'll get her
card," Donna said. Cradling her burned arm, she got up and opened a
cabinet drawer, fished for a moment, then came back to the table. "Here
it is," she said. "Shirley Cowan. You ask her, Sheriff, she'll tell
you that Aunt Velda is delusional. A couple of years ago, she got up one
morning claiming that she'd been abducted by the Klingons. Since then, she sees
an alien behind every bush." She laughed a httle, sadly. "She even
sees them watching her through the windows and stealing her underwear. She's
convinced that they set a trap for our dog, and she thinks they intend to
capture Mr. Swenson." She appealed to me for confirmation. "You heard
her talking about that just a couple of days ago, didn't you, China?"

"When I was here on Saturday," I said
slowly. If I was going to say something about that damn truck, now was the
time.

Blackie finished
copying the information from the card into his notebook. "So your aunt
didn't leave the house yesterday?"

"Oh,
no, sir," Donna said. "Absolutely not."

"And
your sister?" Blackie asked.

"We were all
three right here together, all day and evening. If you don't believe me, you
can ask Terry." She laughed a little. "In fact, we can't go anywhere
until she gets the van working again. Our friend was nice enough to loan us her
little white Geo. We don't want to abuse the privilege."

I wanted to believe
her but I was finding it difficult— and of course, if we asked Terry to
confirm, we'd get the same story, true or false. Belatedly, I opened my mouth
to ask about the farm truck, but Blackie was closing his notebook and standing
up.

"Thank you, Miss
Fletcher," he said. "I think that's all the questions I have for you
at the moment." He glanced at Aunt Velda, snoozing comfortably in her
chair. I knew he'd like to wake her up and ask her what she had seen. But it
was clear that he wasn't going to get any more information out of her just
now, and if he did, it wouldn't be reliable. She might know something, but it
would take a lot of perseverance—and luck—to dig it out of her confused
memory.

"Oh, there is one more
thing," Blackie added, as if it were an afterthought. "Do you mind if
I take a look at your van?"

"Of
course," Donna said, with so much alacrity that I knew we wouldn't see anything
out of the ordinary. She shrugged into her down vest, clearly anxious to get us
out of the house before Aunt Velda woke up.

"What about that burn?" Blackie asked.
"Shouldn't you bandage it?"

Donna gave him a
brave smile. "It'll be all right," she said. "That aloe works
wonders."

Leaving the old woman snoring at the table, we
went back outdoors and down the path to the barn. I looked for the red Ford
pickup, hoping it would be parked where I had last seen it, beside the van. The
space was empty. Both vehicles were gone.

But the van was in the barn, just as Donna had
said, its essential parts spread out on a canvas tarp on the dirt floor, both
headlights intact. A couple of Rhode Island Reds were roosting on the roof of
the van and Max crawled out from under it, wagging his tail, happy to have
company. Donna lifted the lid off a metal garbage can and took out a handful of
corn for the chickens, while Blackie walked around the van, inspecting it. I
scanned the barn for Aunt Velda's truck, but it wasn't there.

Blackie came around
the van. "Thank you, Miss Fletcher," he said, putting out his hand to
Donna. "Please tell your sister that I may have some questions for her. If
I need any more help, I'll call."

And that was it. We said our goodbyes,
climbed into McQuaid's truck, and drove off.

I had swung out of
the lane and was headed back down the gravel road toward Swenson's place when
Blackie put his hand on the wheel. "Pull over," he said.

When the sheriff
speaks to you in that tone of voice, you pull over, immediately. "What's
up?" I asked.

"You
tell me," Blackie said. "Cough it up, China."

I sat for a moment, wrestling with my conscience.
On the one hand, I liked and admired the Fletcher sisters for their guts and
determination. They had put their hearts into their flower farm and I wanted
them to succeed. I was also glad that Carl Swenson was no longer going to make
their lives difficult, although I would have preferred him to back off
voluntarily. I liked Aunt Velda too. She wasn't a whole lot nuttier than the
thousands of Trekkies who show up at the Star Trek conventions outfitted in
bizarre galactic masks and costumes.

On the other hand, I liked and admired Blackie.
And not for nothing had I been educated and trained to respect the law. In this
case, Blackie was The Law, and I had an obligation to tell him what I knew. I
also had an obligation to the truth, whatever that meant.

"They own
another vehicle," I said. "A beat-up old red Ford pickup with the
right side smashed in. It's not tagged or inspected, so they don't take it off
the place. They let Aunt Velda drive it around." I made a face, not liking
to give him this information. "In fact, she drove it when they were
cleaning out the spring, not very long ago."

He took that in,
obviously measuring it against Donna's statement that the old woman hadn't been
out of the house for a couple of months. "Where is this truck? Have you
seen it?"

"When I was out
here on Saturday, it was parked beside the barn, next to the van. It's not
there now, though. I looked. It's not in the barn, either."

"The old girl is a half-quart
low," Blackie said musingly,

"but she might have seen
something yesterday. Or done something."

"You think she
might have been involved in Swenson's death?"

"That boy got took yestiddy,"
Blackie quoted. I frowned. "That doesn't
necessarily mean—" "Come on, China." Blackie gave me an
impatient look. "You know what it means as well as I do. The old woman
knew Swenson was dead. And what's more, her niece knew it too. Before we got
there. That oh-dear-I'm-so-shocked act didn't fool me. Neither did that little
business with the coffeepot."

I had to agree.
Donna's imitation of surprise hadn't been very convincing. "So what do you
think happened yesterday?"

Blackie slid down in the seat and tipped his
Stetson over his eyes. "Could've been an accident. Say the old lady hops
in her Ford and goes out for an illicit Sunday-afternoon spin. Say that Swenson
is standing beside the road when she comes around the curve and she knocks him
a good wallop. What happens next?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to think
about it. After a moment I opened my eyes and said, unhappily: "I suppose
she goes home and tells Terry and Donna what she's done." I frowned.
"No, I don't think so. I think maybe she tells them that their problems
are over, that the Klingons have beamed Carlos Swenson up into their spaceship.
That she saw him being snatched, just the way she predicted." I
remembered something else Aunt Velda had said. "Or that the Klingons
borrowed the truck and ran him down."

"Whatever.
Doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," I said sharply.
"It goes to competence. If Aunt Velda struck him with the truck but believes
that he was abducted by aliens, she's incompetent. She can't be charged with
his death."

The brim of Blackie's hat was riding on the tip of
his nose. "You lawyers make it so damn difficult to get a conviction,"
he growled.

"That's the way
it's supposed to work. It's not called an adversarial system for nothing."