Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (16 page)

"I'd been courting Lynn for a
couple of weeks," Hark said patiently. "When she finally said yes,
Ruby suggested that Crandall's would be a great place to celebrate. She was
going to join us, but at the last minute she had to go to San Antonio."

I shook my head.
"I can't believe this, Hark," I said numbly. "Lynn Hughes?
When's the big day?"

"Not until the
first of the year. Lynn's got to stay on until Charlie finds a replacement."

"You mean she's
leaving Charlie?" He'd be madder than steamed jackrabbit. He'd put a lot
of effort into training that girl, and he'd bragged over and over about how
great she was. And now she was quitting to get married.

Hark gave me a
strange look. "Well, of course she's leaving Charlie. How else could she
come to work for me?"

My
mouth dropped open.
"Work
for you?"

"What in hell
did you think she was going to do for me? Sign on as my mistress? She's going
to be my assistant." Hark grinned triumphantly. "Charlie-boy is so
mad, he could spit nails. But I did it fair and square. I made her an offer,
took her to lunch a time or two to explain what's involved with the job, and
told her to discuss it with Charlie. I thought maybe he'd up her salary to
where I couldn't compete. But she's got a journalism degree, and even ol'
Charlie has to agree that it's a natural fit, so he let her go." He
grinned widely. "And now she's all mine."

"I see," I
said, feeling abashed. "So Ruby doesn't have any reason to be upset with
you." It was more a statement than a question.

"Why should she?" Hark asked.
"Which doesn't mean she isn't." He leaned back in his chair,
frowning. There was a coffee stain on his loosely knotted green tie and he was
missing a button on his shirt. Otherwise, he looked good. Hark is no movie
star, but he's lost forty pounds over the last year, including two spare chins
and a roll of flab around his waist.

I
sighed. "You too, huh? Join the club."

He raised one eyebrow. "But
you're her best friend. You mean, she's been acting weird with you?"

"Weird to the max, as Brian says. I've been
trying to call her all weekend, with no success. So this morning I stopped at
her house. The place was locked up and her
suitcase
is gone. The house is neat and tidy and so clean you could eat off the floors.
She—"

"Clean?" Hark asked in amazement.
"Neat and tidy?" Both eyebrows shot up. "I don't want to sound
judgmental, but those are not adjectives that I'd use to describe our Ruby's
living quarters—under normal circumstances, anyway. She's wonderfully
creative, but a housekeeper she ain't."

"I know," I said sadly. "The place
looks empty and lonesome. However, while I was there, Wade Wilcox
called."

Lila appeared with a tray and began to shuffle
plates across the table. "Lucy says she don't want you to have her
grad-u-ashun picture," she said grimly. "She says she don't want her
private life splashed all over the newspaper."

Good for Lucy, I thought. Maybe there was hope for
her after all.

Hark looked down at his plate, then over at mine.
"I thought we were getting chicken and dumplings."

Lila was grim-faced. "Lucy's grievin' so much
that she forgot to put the bakin' powder into the dumplin's. But them biscuits
're just as good, even if they are left over from breakfast. Spoon a little
chicken gravy over 'em, and yer mouth won't know the difference."

"I knew I should have gone to Bean's for
chicken-fried," Hark said with a long-suffering look.

"Then you wouldn't of got the scoop on Carl
and Lucy," Lila snapped, "even if you can't have her picture for yer
dirty old rag." She stalked away.

Hark picked up his fork. "So Wilcox called,
huh? What did he want?"

"He wanted to talk to Ruby, but he settled
for me. He says he's worried about her too. He'd like to patch things up."
I was less tentative about saying this now that I knew
that Hark wasn't the source of Ruby's heartache.

Hark began peppering
his chicken. "Yeah, sure," he said sarcastically. "What Wilcox
really wants is to get his greasy hands on Ruby's lottery winnings. You know
what he told her? That she should tell the lottery people to change her payment
schedule. Instead of getting it monthly, like she does now, she should get it
all in one lump sum and give it to him to invest. The guy's got a lotta
nerve." He paused, frowning. "You say her suitcase is gone?"

I
looked straight at him. "Do you know where she is?"

He met my eyes.
"I wish I did," he said quietly. "I wish she trusted me enough
to tell me what's bothering her. I wish—" He swallowed painfully, and his
mouth twisted. "Lord, China, I
love
that woman. I want to marry her,
take care of her. I want to make things good for her."

"Have
you told her this?"

'Told her!" Hark
exploded angrily. "Hell, yes, I've told her. Over and over again. For a
while, I thought she might be on the verge of saying yes, but now she says we
should stop seeing one another. She won't give me an explanation, either."

"It's
not Wade, is it?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Hark
said. "She's made two or three trips to Austin and San Antonio lately, one
of them an overnight." He poked at his biscuit with a fork. "If you
ask me, she's seeing somebody else. A doctor, maybe. I walked in on her when
she was leaving a message for him to call her."

Hark is a great guy and I like him,
although I've never believed that he and Ruby are a perfect match. She loves to
party, and he'd rather stay home and watch CNN. Still, hearing this spontaneous
confession of unrequited love, I felt a wave of sympathy for the man.

"I love her too," I said.
"But I guess there's a limit to how much we can pry. She doesn't have to
tell us everything that goes on in her life."

"Yeah,"
Hark said. "She's entitled to her privacy. Damn

it."

We ate our chicken
and leftover biscuits in a gloomy silence.

Chapter
Seven

Many cultures were
awed by the fact that mistletoe berries ripened in late autumn and persisted
through the winter. In some countries, the plant was worshipped as the
fertilizing dew of the supreme spirit and the berries were thought to be drops
of the gods' semen. As such, they were believed to have extraordinary powers,
and used to enhance fertility.

China Bayles "Mistletoe
Magic"

When I got back to the truck, I
checked the cell phone and found a message from Blackie, letting me know that
he had interviewed Mrs. Turtle, who said she'd been indoors all Sunday and couldn't
provide any information. He'd also drawn a blank at the house trailer, where
there was no one at home. He added that the crime scene work was finished. He
was heading back to town and would drop McQuaid off at the house. "And
don't forget that you agreed to talk to the Fletcher sisters again," he
said. "I sure would like to be able to get a look at that truck."

"Okay, okay," I muttered, stowing the
phone. "But first the deposit." I was carrying around several days'
worth of checks and cash receipts from the shop and getting them to the bank
would only take a minute. I pulled the blue plastic deposit bag out from under
the truck seat and ran across the street, dodging the raindrops.

When you visit Pecan
Springs, Ranchers State Bank is one attraction you won't want to miss. It isn't
just that the building is a fine old example of Main Street architecture
(although it is), or that the fixtures—pressed-tin ceilings, glass-topped oak
tables with green-shaded lamps, pink marble counters and polished brass
tellers' cages—are original and in beautiful condition. No, the bank has other
claims to historical fame. One muggy July day in 1878, famous Texas outlaw Sam
Bass sauntered in, glanced around, and spotted the sheriff leaning against one
of the tellers' cages. The sheriff looked up and recognized him, and Sam beat
an unceremonious retreat to his horse. Outdistancing pursuit, he rode fifty
miles north, intending to rob the bank in Round Rock. Instead, he ran into
seven armed lawmen and a hailstorm of bullets. So it was Round Rock and not
Pecan Springs that went into the history books as the site of the death of the
notorious Sam Bass.

The bank was not quite so lucky one
winter weekend in the early twenties, when the three Newton boys—Willis, Joe,
and Jess—came to town, fresh from robbing the San Marcos and New Braunfels
banks. They blew the door off the safe with nitroglycerin and vamoosed with
fifty thousand dollars in gold, more or less. According to local legend, the
boys went in different directions after the heist, Willis and Joe heading south
for a rendezvous on the other side of the border. But Jess, who was carrying
the stolen money, stopped to see a girlfriend in New Braunfels. He got to
drinking, rode out into the Hill Country, and stashed the gold under a rock.
When he sobered up, he discovered that one rock looked pretty much like
another, and he
couldn't remember where he'd hid it. Like most
bank-robber tales, this one probably isn't true. Or if it is, Willis and Joe
never told it, although they didn't keep much to themselves. Jess died early,
but his two brothers lived to be nearly ninety, cashing in on their outlaw
reputations by giving occasional interviews. They even appeared on the Johnny
Carson show in 1980.

I like all of the
bank's tellers, but my favorite is Bonnie Roth, who is a member of the Myra
Merryweather Herb Guild and a frequent customer at the shop. She was wearing a
sprig of holly tucked behind her name tag and a pair of Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer earrings. I unzipped the deposit bag, took out the cash and the
checks, and slid them over to her.

I let her count the cash in silence, then asked,
"What's new?" as she put a rubber thimble on her left thumb and began
running a tape on the checks.

"Well, I suppose
you're terribly busy decorating for the Christmas Tour," she said, the
fingers of her right hand flying over the calculator keys. "Rowena is
thrilled that you've allowed your house to be included." She lifted her
head and smiled at me. "You're quite a celebrity in this town, you
know."

"Oh, come now," I said
modestly, wondering which of my talents was being singled out. My expertise in
herbs? My acute business sense? Or was it my role in helping to solve the
murder of a local real estate developer?

"Don't try to
deny it, silly," Bonnie said with a bright little laugh. Her fingers
paused for a moment. "You're married to our former acting chief of
police, aren't you? Everybody thinks Mike McQuaid is just the sweetest guy.
You're awfully lucky." While I was biting my tongue, she added,

"I can't wait to see your
decorations, China. I'm sure they'll be spectacular."

I took a deep breath
and said in an offhand tone, "Actually, I'm not doing anything special
for the Tour. It's just our usual Texas-style Christmas."

Still clicking the
calculator, Bonnie smiled. "Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it will be
terribly creative. I'm lucky just to get the tree to stand up straight."
She missed a check, peered at the tape, added it in and went on. "Speaking
of Christmas, you buy your mistletoe from Carl Swenson, don't you? Did you know
he got killed yesterday? Somebody ran him down."

"My stars," I said, feigning amazement.
"Where'd you hear that?"

"Mrs. Turtle was
in here just a minute ago," Bonnie replied, her fingers still zipping over
the keys. "She was at Cindy Sue's window, though, and I was busy with Mr.
Dooley's deposit and didn't get to hear all the details. Just that he got hit,
and the driver didn't stop. Mrs. Turtle lives across the road, which is how she
knew about it, I guess." She shook her head. "It's really too
bad."

"Did
you know him?"

"No, but my husband did. They
were in the same class at Pecan Springs High."

"Swenson grew up
here, then?" Somehow I'd assumed that he was a recent arrival.

"That's right.
On that place where he lives now. But he left after high school and was gone
for quite a while. Somebody told me he'd been in prison."

I
was taken aback. "In prison!"

Bonnie nodded. "Surprised me,
too. But of course, you can't always believe what people tell you." She
tapped the checks into a neat stack and deftly clipped them together.