Mourning Gloria (29 page)

Stu, not Dr. Laughton. But graduate students often call their professors by their first names, especially when they’re away from the classroom. “Counting Gloria, too?”

“That’s right. Counting Gloria.” There was that bitter note again. Sour, jealous. She paused. “Aren’t you going to ask why she went?”

I was feeling a little impatient. All this was about Shannon being jealous of somebody who got to ride along on a field trip? “Okay—why?”

She took a deep breath, as if she were steeling herself. “Because Stu was the bigger fish.”

That stopped me. Cold. “Dr. Laughton?”

“You got it.” She looked directly at me. “It had been going on for a few months, I guess. It was supposed to be a secret, but you know how these things are. Word gets around. People talk.”

Well, no, I didn’t know, actually. That is, not from my own personal experience. Of course, when I was in law school, the occasional rumor went around that some professor was sleeping with this or that student. Faculty members are no different from anyone else. Attraction happens, even when it’s not in the best interests of the people involved, and there were probably other cases that didn’t call enough attention to themselves to rise to the level of departmental gossip. But that was in the days before universities began formulating regulations prohibiting sexual relations between teacher and student. And there’s been enough open discussion among the faculty to raise awareness of the hazards of affairs like these. A spurned student lover who is inclined toward retribution is doubly dangerous. He or she can spin a broken relationship into a sexual harassment suit in a jiffy, and blackmail is a distinct possibility.

But Stuart Laughton? I mean, he’s such an ordinary guy. Flirtatious, yes, sometimes outrageously so—although I’d never taken him seriously. But maybe he just wasn’t my type, so I’d been annoyed when he called me sweetie, not attracted to him. Maybe, if I’d been a young student in one of his classes and he came on to me in that way, I might have felt differently.

And then I remembered that Margie had taken the kids and gone to stay with her mother. Had she done that because her husband was sleeping with a student?

“Gloria was a user,” Shannon repeated darkly. “The affair was her idea. Stu had something she wanted, and she seduced him to get it. When she had what she wanted, she was finished with him. It was all over by Christmas.”

By Christmas? But Margie had left Stu just a few weeks ago. So there had to be another reason for her leaving. Another affair, maybe?

Shannon turned away from my glance, and I wondered if this was the source of her jealousy, if she herself was recently or currently involved with Stuart Laughton and resented Gloria for throwing him over or breaking his heart or whatever. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, I had to admit—but it probably wasn’t important. There were other things I needed to know.

“You mentioned Gloria’s connections,” I said. “What kind of connections are we talking about?”

There it was again, that fear, on her face, in her eyes. She hesitated for so long that I thought she had decided to stop talking. I glanced pointedly at my watch. “If that’s all you’ve got to tell me—”

“What kind do you think?” she blurted out. “Dealer connections. Cartel connections. This was Mexico, wasn’t it?”

I blinked.
Cartel?
“You’re kidding!”

She gave me a bleak look. “I wish. Why do you think we’re out here in the woods, where nobody can hear us? This is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. Gloria’s dead—if that was her in the trailer—and you’re telling me that some newspaper reporter has disappeared, and you think I’m kidding?” She flung out her arms. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you,” she cried dramatically. “You could be one of
them.
You could be about to kill me!”

I ignored her histrionics. “How do you know about the cartel connections?”

She swallowed. “Because Gloria told me. Because I saw the stuff.” She threw me a quickly defensive look. “And don’t go thinking I was involved in what she was doing. I had nothing to do with it. And Stu didn’t either, if that’s what’s on your mind. He doesn’t have a clue.”

That might be true from one point of view, I thought. But if Shannon had known what was going on, she was involved—or somebody, several somebodies, in fact, might think she was. That’s why she was afraid
.

“Involved in what?” I asked, although I thought I was beginning to understand. “What was it you didn’t have anything to do with?”

“Smuggling. Like, you know.” She waved her hand. “The stuff Gloria brought back in the van.”

I frowned. Smuggling marijuana over the Mexican border is a big business in Texas, but I wouldn’t have thought that Gloria—or anybody else—would have attempted to bring it across in a university van. Most of it is hidden in legitimate shipments of agricultural or manufactured products. But it might have been—

“You’re not going to tell me it was morning glory seeds, are you?” I asked. “Surely there isn’t much of a market in that.”

Her eyebrows went up. “You don’t know much about this stuff, do you? Of course there’s a market
.
Kids’ll buy as much as they can get their hands on.”

I frowned, thinking of Lucy LaFarge, industriously cooking up morning glory seeds in her kitchen. The activity criminalized her and every kid she sold it to, but it was an amateur operation, not something that would interest the big-time drug dealer—or so it seemed to me. Was I missing something?

Shannon was going on. “But we’re not talking morning glories, or marijuana, either—if that’s what you’re thinking. It was pottery. Six pieces, with a primitive look. Tourist pottery, according to Gloria. Cheap. But it wasn’t tourist pottery, and it wasn’t cheap, either. It was worth a fortune.”

I leaned forward, frowning. “You’re not saying she was smuggling antique pots into the country, are you? I can’t believe that Stuart Laughton would allow one of his students—”

She thrust out her chin. “Gloria wasn’t his student. I already told you that.”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe he would allow
anybody
to smuggle cultural antiques out of Mexico. That would be just plain stupid. Anyway, she couldn’t have gotten artifacts through customs. Officials are always on the lookout for that.”

Shannon threw back her head and laughed. “Are you kidding? If you know the right people, you can get anything through customs. Gloria could, anyway. I told you she had connections. She knew people who paid people, and the stuff came through.” She sobered and her mouth tightened. “But who said anything about cultural antiques? It was cocaine.”

I stared at her.
Cocaine!
Of course—and the picture suddenly shifted. We were talking big money here. Big money, dangerous money. And dangerous people. I took a breath. “Made of plaster of Paris and cocaine?”

She nodded. “You’ve heard about this, then?”

As a matter of fact, I had. I had read about somebody—a Chilean, as I remembered it—who was arrested at the Barcelona airport when a drug-sniffing German shepherd alerted police that the plaster cast on his “broken” leg was made with cocaine. And a statue sculpted of plaster and cocaine worth forty thousand dollars had been seized at the El Paso border crossing the year before—I had seen a photograph of it on television. Smugglers were getting creative.

“So she brought the pottery across the border,” I said. “In the van, I guess?”

“Yeah.” She smiled slightly. “The van was kind of a mess, actually. Six of us had been more or less camping in it for a couple of weeks. But the customs people basically just waved us on through, which I thought at the time was a little odd. I figured they’d give us a more serious look, since we were college kids. We fit the profile.”

“No sniffer dogs?”

“Nope.”

“Bribery?”

She nodded. “Gloria’s cartel connection did his job.”

“You know that for certain?”

“That’s what Gloria told me. She bragged about it.” She thought about that for a second, then paled. “That makes me . . . an accessory?”

I nodded curtly. “Did everybody in the van know? What about the other students?” But I was really thinking about Stuart Laughton. How much of this was he involved with?

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Maybe, maybe not. I kinda think maybe Matt knew it. Anyway, when Gloria told me about the bribe, we were in some cruddy restroom on the U.S. side of the border. None of the others heard it.” Bitterly, she added, “She always loved it when she could put something over on somebody. On everybody. She loved making people look like fools.”

“So what happened after she got the pottery across the border?”

“We stopped at a hamburger joint called Smoky’s, not far from Pearsall. Some of us were lined up to get our food orders, and this Hispanic guy came up to Gloria and whispered something. She dropped out of line and the two of them went out to the van. When she came back, Larry asked her what was going on, and she laughed. Said she’d just sold the tourist pottery she had brought into the country.”

“As easy as that?” It wasn’t a question, really. I knew the answer. I’ve lived a quiet life since I came to Pecan Springs, but I saw plenty of trafficking in my earlier incarnation as a defense attorney. Then, though, it was mostly criminals, experienced smugglers. Now, young people—college kids, even high school students living in border towns—were being recruited as carriers, as mules. The cartel was looking for people who didn’t fit the profile, young women who needed money for their children, teenage girls looking for excitement and dollars. They could get the stuff across—sometimes in their bellies, sometimes in their vaginas—when somebody who fit the profile couldn’t. Of course, when corrupt customs officials were added to the mix, all bets were off.

“As easy as that,” Shannon said.

I thought about it. “You said that
some
of you were lined up, getting your orders. Not all of you?”

“Like, I’m supposed to remember something like that?” she scoffed.

“I thought you might,” I said steadily. “You’ve mentioned Larry. What about the other two guys?”

She frowned. “Roger was there, I know, because he and Stu were arguing about whether tulip bulbs are edible. But I don’t think . . .” Her frown deepened. “Matt wasn’t there. He came in with Gloria, when she got back in line.”

“Gloria,” I repeated thoughtfully. “Did she tell you who her connections were? Did she say when she was going to make another trip?”

She shivered. “I didn’t ask about her connections. I didn’t want to know. But I heard her tell somebody else—Larry or Matt—that she was going to Mexico again this summer. I guess that’s not going to happen now.” She closed her eyes briefly. “You don’t . . . you don’t really think I’m in danger, do you?”

“I think the safest thing for you to do is to tell the police what you know. Once you’ve done that, you’ve pulled the plug on whoever wants to harm you.” I gave her a hard look. “Do you understand? They might try to keep you from talking to the cops, but once you’ve told the authorities what you know, you’re no longer a target.”

She nodded uncertainly. “Do I . . . do I need a lawyer?”

“Let me put it this way,” I said. “If you’ve told me all you know— that’s
if
,” I repeated sternly. “If you’ve told me everything, I doubt that there’ll be any charge. If it looks like that’s going to happen, I’ll see that you get the right kind of help.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth. “Who do I—who do I talk to?”

“The county sheriff is handling the investigation into the trailer homicide. I know him—he’s easy to work with.”

She considered. “You really think it will make me safer?”

“Without a doubt.” I thought of Jessica, and wished I could have given her the same advice. If she had shared what she learned as she went along, she might be in a better place right now. I didn’t want to think about where she might really be.

“Okay,” she said in a small, thin voice. “I guess I’d better talk to him.”

I didn’t trust her to do this on her own—she might change her mind before she got there. I phoned Blackie to say that I had found someone I thought he should talk to, and that I was bringing her in for an interview.

On the way to the parking lot with Shannon in tow (and needing a booster shot of encouragement at every other step), I thought of something that might take me off the hook at the shop—and get Ruby the help she needed. I pulled out my phone and punched in Gina Mondello’s number. Gina gave us a hand in the shop during the Christmas rush and helped to organize a team of volunteers to work in the display gardens earlier in the spring. She’s an accountant who works with Kate during tax season, and an herb gardener who has come up with a popular salt-free seasoning blend that includes rosemary and sage, her two favorite herbs, which I have a hard time keeping in stock. She has also taught several dried-flower card-crafting classes for us, so she knows her way around our shops. And best of all, she lives in the neighborhood.

I breathed a thankful sigh when she picked up. “Gina? It’s China. Listen, Ruby and Cass are in a bind at the shop. Lisa didn’t show up this morning and I can’t get there for a little while. It would be a huge help if you could come in for a couple of hours. Are you available?”

“Sure thing, China,” she said. “Oh, and I’ve made another dozen bottles of that salt-free blend. Want me to bring those?”

“Absolutely. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I clicked off, feeling enormously relieved. Gina is a capable person and a calm presence in a crisis. She’d be a big help this morning. I phoned the shop to let Ruby know that she was on her way, and that I’d be there shortly.

“Thank God,” Ruby said in a taut, thin voice. “Things are a little hectic. Do you happen to know if you have any more of that rosemary-mint soap? There’s a customer asking about it. And somebody else wants to know whether you have any fennel.” There was a brief off-line flurry of conversation, and Ruby was back. “Florence fennel, she says.”