Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (30 page)

For a moment, I could hear Terry's
uneven breathing. Then there was a click. She had hung up.

The address Mrs. Kendall had given
us—3437-B Pecos Street—was that of a garage apartment behind a large Victorian
house in the older part of Pecan Springs. For years, the residents of this
neighborhood have put up elaborate Christmas decorations, vying with one another
for the honor of being named Christmas House of the Week on the front page of
the
Enterprise.
As we drove through the early dark, we saw a
fantasy wonderland, tiny white lights like ribbons of stars draping the houses
and topiary reindeer glittering on the lawns, while Christmas carols rang out
from hidden loudspeakers. There was no snow, of course— in fact, a chill
drizzle was misting through the air—but it was beginning to look a lot like
Christmas.

Ruby pointed out the number we were
searching for, and we pulled into the drive that led around behind the big
house. We saw a large double garage next to the alley, and above it, an
apartment—but we didn't see Mrs. Kendall's white Plymouth. We parked, got out,
and went around to the stairs at the side, where a light illuminated the
apartment number and under it, on the mailbox, a card bearing the name Victoria
R. Kendall. We climbed the stairs and knocked. No answer. The windows were all
dark and the door, when I turned the knob and pushed, was locked.

"Maybe she's out buying Christmas
presents," Ruby suggested.

"Yeah," I growled. "With our two
hundred dollars." The drizzle was turning into something that felt suspiciously
like sleet. Ruby pulled her coat closer. "What do we do now?" she
asked with a shiver.

I pushed back my
sleeve and peered at my watch. It was after five-thirty. "We do dinner
now," I said. "Brian's eating with a friend tonight, but McQuaid's
expecting to be fed. Let's go to my house and cook a pot of spaghetti. We can
come back in a couple of hours. With any luck, Mrs. K. will be home by
then."

"Sounds like a
plan." Ruby raised a hopeful face to the dark sky. "You don't suppose
it could snow, do you?"

My idea of a quick and scrumptious dinner is a pot
of
al dente
spaghetti dressed lightly with chopped fresh
parsley
and
a full-bodied olive oil and served with tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese, hot
herb bread, and a tossed salad—a meal which takes all of about fifteen minutes
to throw together. By the time the pasta pot was boiling, the home-canned
sauce was bubbling on my old Home Comfort gas range and the air was rich with
the summer fragrance of tomatoes, basil and garlic. Exactly eight minutes
later, I was draining the pasta while Ruby put the finishing touches on a
garden salad and took the foil-wrapped bread out of the oven. McQuaid came in
from his workshop, letting a blast of cold air into the kitchen, and the three
of us took our places, McQuaid at the end of the scarred pine table, Ruby and I
across from each other.

While the food was
going around and Ruby and McQuaid were speculating about how bad the weather
might get before it got any better, I sat, quietly observing. McQuaid and Ruby
are the two people I am closest to and I love them both—love them with a
fierceness that almost surprises me. As a young woman, schooled in the feminist
movement and eager to carve out a career for myself in a male-dominated world,
I thought that the way to success was to be independent, unconnected,
uncommitted—to keep other people at arm's length, so that their messy emotions
didn't spill into my life and complicate it. Over the past half-dozen years,
though, I've learned that we can't live that way, not if we expect to live
fully and deeply. Now I know that you have to love, even when your lover
betrays you. You have to embrace intimacy, even though you fear to lose your
closest and dearest friend. Ten months ago, I had to come to terms with the
realization that I might lose McQuaid. Now, I was sick with worry about Ruby. I
loved them both all the more because I know how fragile we humans are, and how
much we mean to one another— which made me think of Carl Swenson, and wonder
whether he had been loved, and how deeply, and by whom. He had been hated,
too—had that been the reason for his death?

McQuaid forked spaghetti onto his
plate. "Blackie tells me," he said conversationally, "that the
two of you created some excitement out at the Swenson place this morning."

Ruby's glance said,
You're married to him. You handle this.

"A cheap thrill," I replied
with an elaborate shrug. "Nothing we couldn't handle."

McQuaid grunted.
"Almost got yourselves arrested for possession, I hear." He didn't
look up as he spooned tomato sauce onto his spaghetti and passed the bowl to
Ruby.

"Possession of what? A garbage
sack full of mistletoe?" I gave a short, casual laugh. "But while we
were poking around, we just happened to find the truck that killed Carl
Swenson. If we hadn't been there, Captain Talbot might have towed it to
Brownsville."

"Yeah. Heard
that, too. Congratulations." He looked up, his pale eyes glinting with
amusement. "Also heard that when you two got through with Talbot, he was
mad enough to eat a duck."

"Yeah,"
Ruby said gleefully. "And spit feathers."

McQuaid laughed out loud. "Couldn't happen to
a nicer guy," he said. "I gotta hand it to you. You were on the right
track about Swenson." He looked at me. "Was it the Rio condo
brochure?"

"That, and
Corinne Tuttle's remark about a new greenhouse," I said. "And Ruby's
intuition."

"A
lucky guess," Ruby said modestly.

McQuaid frowned.
"Of course, Swenson's pot-growing operation complicates the investigation.
It opens up a whole new series of questions."

"Not really," I said with a sigh.
"At least not yet. The Fletcher sisters are still front and center, I'm
afraid."

"Donna's
confessed," Ruby said.

"No
kidding," McQuaid said. "With pot in the picture, my money was on one
of Swenson's confederates. Tell me about the Fletcher woman."

I had just finished giving him the details of
Donna's confession when Howard Cosell, who had been patiently waiting for his
chance at the sauce bowl, got up and went to the door, growling low in his
throat.

"Company,
Howard?" I asked.

"On a night like
this?" McQuaid said, surprised.

Howard's rumbling
growl was drowned out by a heavy-knuckled rap-rap-rap at the kitchen door.
Before I could push back my chair, it came again, louder and more impatient.

"It's
the Whiz," Ruby said.

McQuaid
raised his eyebrows. "Another intuition?"

"Nope," I
said. "There's only one person in the entire world who knocks like
that."

It was indeed the Whiz, standing on the back porch
with an umbrella and a bottle of red wine, waiting impatiently for me to open
the door.

"When you get to
heaven," I said, letting her in, "you'd better knock with a little
more finesse. You might find yourself locked out." I closed the door
against the sleety rain and relieved her of the dripping umbrella, the wine,
and her coat.

"Who's going to
heaven?" Justine said, running her hands through her damp hair. "Not me,
that's for sure." She nodded at Ruby. "Hey, Ruby. How ya doin'?"
Without waiting for an answer, she went on. "I'd get bored sitting around
with a harp all day. I need action." She smacked her fist against her
palm. "Gotta keep the blood pumping, the body moving. Gotta outrun Father
Time."

"Have
you tried aerobics?" McQuaid wanted to know.

"Ha ha,"
the Whiz said. She rubbed her hands together, eyeing the table with pleasure.
"Just in time for dinner, I see. Hey, look at that spaghetti! Good thing I
brought burgundy."

When Justine Wyzinsky
and I were in law school together, she whipped the pants off all the
competition—including me—to get to the top of the class. Now, twenty-odd years
later, she's still just as competitive and a lot more experienced. But Justine
is still every bit as untidy as she was in her student days. She's short and
stout, with broad hips and shoulders to match, and her clothes always look like
she's just returned from a cross-continental trip on the Trans-Siberian
railway. Tonight, there was a coffee stain on the lapel of her wrinkled gray
jacket, a splash of mud on the hem of her crooked skirt, and if she'd combed
her brown hair and put on lipstick since she got up this morning, there was no
sign of it.

I set another plate at the table and handed
McQuaid the wine and a corkscrew. "You got my message, I assume," I
said, getting out the wineglasses. "Have you seen Donna yet?"

"Yes to the
message and yes to the client." Justine sat down and used her napkin to
polish the water off her plastic-rimmed eyeglasses. "Although I must say
that she didn't seem overly enthusiastic when I offered my services. I got the
impression she'd just as soon hang out in her cell as talk to me, and that she
intended to plead guilty and go straight to prison without the formality of a
trial. In fact, she as much as told me she didn't want to be bailed." The
Whiz put her glasses back on, pushed them up on her nose, and pursed her lips.
"Odd, wouldn't you say? Most people facing arraignment are delighted when
somebody shows up with a key." She looked at me. "Makes me think
there's something going on here."

"There is,"
I said, as McQuaid poured the wine. I took a sip. The burgundy was robust, a
perfect foil to the spaghetti sauce. "Very nice wine, Justine. Thanks."
I put down my glass. "I think she's covering for somebody."

"Probably
her sister," Ruby put in.

"Her
sister?" McQuaid asked, surprised. "Yesterday, Blackie seemed to
think it was the old lady."

"That was before
we located the vehicle," I said. "It's possible that Aunt Velda was
driving the truck, but not likely that she hid it. It's only a mile across the
ridge between Swenson's place and the flower farm, but the terrain is up and
down, mostly up. Aunt Velda is spry enough to walk a mile on level ground, but
it would've been hard for her to cross that rocky ridge."

Justine helped
herself to spaghetti. "Pardon moi, but none of this makes a dime's worth
of sense. I need the whole story, start to finish. What you know and what you
surmise."

It took a few minutes to sketch out the situation,
starting from the time Swenson's body was discovered, ending with Donna's trip
to the jail, and including a heavily edited sketch of the drug bust at
Swenson's place. While I talked, Justine dispatched one helping of spaghetti
and started on another.

"Let's see if I've got this straight,"
she said, wiping spaghetti sauce off her chin with her napkin.
"Initially, both sisters claim that the old lady drove off with the truck
and came back without it. They deny any knowledge of the hit-and-run or the
whereabouts of the truck. When the vehicle is discovered in the victim's shed,
Donna abruptly changes her story. She says she accidentally hit Swenson, then
hid the truck at his place." She paused, frowning. "What does Terry say?"

"She'll say whatever Donna
says," I replied wryly. "If there's a cover, she's in on it."

"Maybe they're all three
guilty," Ruby ventured. "Maybe Aunt Velda drove the truck, and both
of the sisters hid it."

Justine made a face.
"What a can of worms," she said disgustedly. "I hate cases like
this. There's no good hook to hang a defense on. The jury will be
cross-eyed." She brightened. "But we're only talking accidental
death. At the worst, failure to lend assistance, maybe obstruction. If Donna's
willing to plead, we can bargain. I can probably get her off with two years,
and she'll be out in half that time."

"It might not be
as easy as that," I said. "Swenson and the sisters had a disagreement
over property. They were convinced that he was behind some vandalism at their
place, and Terry was sitting up nights with her shotgun, all set to blow him
away. Dutch Doran may not let Donna plead to the lesser charge. He might try to
bump this up to vehicular homicide."

"Your district
attorney is an idiot," the Whiz snapped. Justine and Dutch have been
acquainted for years, since they both worked in the San Antonio D.A.'s office.
"He doesn't have the brains to spit downwind."

"And there's the pot-farm
angle," McQuaid put in. "Dutch ran for office on a get-tough-on-pot
platform. He'll be on it like a hound on a ham bone—and he won't let go-"