Witches' Bane (20 page)

“Then he goes home and types it and hands it over. Voila—no motive, no opportunity, he’s home free, with half the community property. What do you want to bet Sybil’s name is typed on it, not signed?”

“Maybe,” I said, “he didn’t
hire
the killer.”

McQuaid raised both eyebrows. “Oh, yeah? What are you thinking?”

“That maybe he sweet-talked somebody into doing the dirty work. His girlfriend. Jerri Greene.”

“A woman?” McQuaid scratched the scar on his nose. “In all the time I was on Homicide, I never heard of a woman slitting somebody’s throat. Stabbing, yes, slitting, no. It’s just not a woman’s M.O.”

“There’s got to be a first time,” I said. “And Jerri’s certainly got the muscle for it. What’s more, she was bitching just last week that she couldn’t afford to move, and yesterday she tells me that she’s planning to lease some of that pricey space in the mall.”

McQuaid was still doubtful. “Maybe she’s planning to get married and let her husband set her up. C.W. might not be inheriting a couple of million, but half the community property won’t be small change.” He drained another Shiner. “Or maybe C.W. never got around to telling her about Sybil’s financial arrangements, and she thinks he’s going to inherit.”

I pushed back my chair and reached for the check. “Well, we’re not going to figure it out sitting here. Let’s head back.”

McQuaid brought his hand down on mine. “My turn. You bought the night we went out with Ruby and Andrew.”

“Yeah, but you fed me last Sunday. And it was my idea for you to come along.”

McQuaid released my hand with a grin. “You’re pretty convincing, counselor. Anyway, my mother always told me never to argue with a lady with a check.”

The return trip seemed slower, maybe because I was in a hurry to get back. But I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there. Blackie probably wouldn’t show me the note Sybil was supposed to have written, but I was hoping he’d let McQuaid take a look at it, in honor of the brotherhood. Maybe I should have another talk with C.W. Or maybe it would be better to find out what kind of alibi Jerri had for Saturday night. Or maybe ...

“I think we should turn this whole thing over to Blackie, and let him handle it,” McQuaid said, anticipating my third maybe.

I swiveled in the seat, facing him. “He’s already put his nickel on Andrew.”

“You don’t think he’d listen to another theory of the case?”

“Why should he? The fact that the killer was right-handed is certainly compelling. The defense will use it to argue reasonable doubt. But it isn’t conclusive, given the weight of the other evidence. Blackie might be a little more nervous than he was before lunch, but five gets you ten he’ll stick with Andrew. Have you ever seen a cop book one suspect, then go after a totally different one without a major piece of new evidence? And Blackie’s got the county commissioners looking over his shoulder. How’s he going to justify all the man-hours he’d have to commit to a new investigation?”

McQuaid didn’t have an answer, and we fell silent. We were driving along the Backbone about fifteen miles west of Pecan Springs. It was an overcast afternoon, typical November weather. I was watching the scenery and mentally ticking off my questions for Jerri, when I saw a flotilla of turkey vultures sailing in a lazy spiral, six, eight, maybe a dozen of them. Vultures feed on carrion. Something was dead in the depths of the canyon below, a steer maybe, or a deer. Bow season had already started, and archers who don’t get a clean kill sometimes fail to track the wounded deer.

The Devil’s Backbone is good country to lose a deer in. The cliff on my right was maybe fifteen degrees off the vertical, falling sixty, seventy feet to a wide, rocky ledge, then another sixty to a dry creek bed at the bottom. But it wasn’t a dead deer the vultures were celebrating. On the shoulder of the cliff, halfway down, I saw the wreckage of a car, the smudge of a fresh burn like a black halo in the grass around it.

“Hey!” I craned my neck for a better look. “There’s a car down there!”

McQuaid slowed, braked, and pulled over to the side. “Where?”

“Back up. I’ll show you.”

“Must be an old wreck.” He put the truck in reverse and backed along the wide gravel shoulder. “I didn’t see any skid marks.”

I reached into the glove compartment for McQuaid’s bin- oculars. “I don’t think so,” I said as he stopped. “Looks like a fresh burn.” I jumped out and trained the binoculars on the wreckage. The car, a convertible, had landed wheels-down on the ledge, the crumpled hood pointed uphill. The rear end was blackened and scorched. There were three or four vultures working eagerly on something in the driver’s seat, others on the ground and the car, impatiently waiting their turn.

My mouth was suddenly dry. “Jesus, McQuaid, the driver’s still down there!”

McQuaid snatched the binoculars. “Not moving. Listen, China. You take the truck and bust ass to that Fina station up the road. Call the D.P.S. Tell them we’ve got a red Mustang down here and that the driver—-”

“A red Mustang?” I grabbed the binoculars back and refocused them on the buzzards feasting on the huddled shape in the front seat. “That’s Jerri Greene’s car!”

“Well, if that’s Jerri Greene down there,” McQuaid said grimly, “she’s not a live suspect any longer.”

When I got back from the Fina station, I clambered down the incline to join McQuaid. He was right. Jerri was dead. Head lolling loose, eye sockets empty, the flesh hanging in bloody gobbets from her once-pretty face and arms, meat stripped from bone by greedy vultures. The scene reminded me of pictures of airplane crashes where the victims were found still strapped in their seats, smashed like plastic dolls. Falling off that road up there must have been like falling out of the sky.

“Looks like a broken neck,” McQuaid guessed. He glanced back up the cliff. “Probably flipped a time or two and rolled. That’s why the car’s pointing uphill. Must’ve been here all day at least, judging from the damage those vultures have done. Maybe happened last night—everything’s cold.” He took off his jacket and put it over what was left of Jerri.

I turned away with a shudder. My knees felt rubbery, my palms clammy. The animated, energetic young woman I remembered,
tsuyoki,
full of
ki,
brimming with life and driven by ambition and the urge to get somewhere,
be
somebody—that person was gone. All that was left was a broken body, soft flesh ribboned by beaks and talons.

McQuaid looked at me. “You okay, China? You look kind of green. Maybe you’d better find a rock to sit on.”

I wanted to sit, but I couldn’t. It was better, now that Jerri’s face was covered. I walked around the car. The hood was smashed shut, the windshield totally gone, the right front caved in. The rear end was less heavily smashed, but it was blackened from fire. The fire had spread behind the car and down the hill, charring the short grass for a dozen yards.

The Mustang was an automatic, with the shift on the console between the seats, an empty Gordon’s gin bottle wedged in beside it. Vulture droppings crusted the seat.

“Car’s in gear and the ignitions on,” McQuaid said. “It must have stalled out when it crashed. That’s why there’s almost no fire damage up front. The gas tank’s probably ruptured.”

“And the car’s on an incline, so the gas ran out behind and caused the grass fire?”

“Yeah,” McQuaid said. “Lucky the whole thing didn’t go up. But a lot of the fuel was absorbed by this porous caliche soil. And it’s pretty hard to catch a car on fire unless it’s sitting in a puddle of gas.”

“She must have gone over at a high speed,” I said, reconstructing the scene in my mind. “She finished off the gin bottle, was drunk out of her mind, and didn’t make that curve up there.”

McQuaid frowned. “Let’s go back up. I want to check on something.”

On the road, McQuaid walked for thirty yards in both directions, looking carefully at the blacktop and the gravel on both sides. I walked beside him, bent into the chilly wind, trying to figure out what he was looking for.

“I don’t see anything,” I said finally.

“That’s because there’s nothing to see. No skid marks, no tire marks on the shoulder, nothing to show where she left the road.”

“She must have been really flying.”

“I don’t think so.” McQuaid turned to look back and down at the car. “If she’d been heading west, she’d have gone off somewhere around here. But there’re no tire marks.”

“What if she was coming the other way, toward Pecan Springs?”

“There’d still be tire marks. But there aren’t any. No skid marks, no broken bushes or underbrush, no nothing.”

I walked back down the road another twenty yards and noticed a small patch of scorched grass and weeds. “Look at this,” I called to McQuaid.

McQuaid joined me. “Could have been a match or a cigarette, started a little fire.” He paused. “Did Jerri smoke?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“I was wondering if she parked here and had a last cigarette to go with her last drink.”

I huddled into my green sweater, shivering. “You mean, she drove off the road
deliberately!”

“That’s how it looks to me, China. There’s no evidence that she lost control and went off the road—and there should be, if that’s what happened. So what’s left? Suicide makes sense.”

I scuffed at the gravel, thinking. “It adds up. Maybe things didn’t work out the way she planned. She killed Sybil to marry C.W., but maybe he had different ideas. Or maybe C.W. talked her into doing it, then she had an attack of remorse and decided to end it all.” I bent over to look at a worn-out Nike, a few feet from the burned patch. A Coors can lay a foot away, along with a McDonald’s bag and an empty Salem pack. The “Don’t Mess with Texas” campaign only works part of the time. I straightened up as a Department of Public Safety black-and-white skidded to a stop and a gray-uniformed trooper climbed out.

“What we got here?” he asked. He was a stocky, mustached man with a pockmarked face and a jutting chin. He wore a broad-brimmed Stetson, standard wraparound sunglasses, and a holstered .357 on his hip.

“Hey, Callaghan,” McQuaid said. “How’re things on the hubcap patrol?”

The trooper grinned, showing crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. “Say, buddy. Goin’ great. How’s life in the ivory tower?”

“Couldn’t be better,” McQuaid said. I wondered if they would give one another a high five, but they only shook hands. I wasn’t a member of the fraternity. McQuaid didn’t bother to introduce me. “Fatality,” he said, nodding in the direction of the wreck.

The trooper walked to the incline and peered into the canyon. “Shee-it,” he said disgustedly. “This makes three in the last month. Folks get high and drive this road like they’re ridin’ the Rattler at Fiesta Texas. You been down to the car?”

“Yeah. That’s my jacket on the body. Vultures were after her. They already had breakfast and lunch, working on dinner.” I shivered. McQuaid has always seemed to me a gentle man. Was this gritty nonchalance a cover-up for feeling or a cop’s working style?

Callaghan nodded. “Any sign of booze?”

“Empty gin bottle.”

“Figgers. The others were D.W.I.’s, too.” The trooper turned to go to his car, brushing past me as if I were invisible. “I’ll put in a call to E.M.S. You don’t need to hang around, McQuaid. I’ll see you get your coat back.”

“‘Predate it,” McQuaid said. We got into the pickup and drove off.

I huddled into my sweater. “You didn’t mention the thing about no tire marks. Or the burned patch by the road.”

“Me, trespass on Callaghan’s turf?” McQuaid flipped on the heater. “Hey, he’s a friend. I’d like to keep it that way. He’s got eyes, he’ll dope it out.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

McQuaid shrugged. “Then it’ll go down in the record book as one more D.W.I. She’s dead, China. Suicide or accident, it’s all the same to her. Callaghan’s paid to handle it. Let it go, or it’ll eat you up.”

I leaned my head on the back of the seat, suddenly tired, feeling the weight of the gray afternoon, the dead thing in the rocky ravine. Maybe McQuaid was right. If Jerri had killed Sybil, maybe it was just as well that she’d taken care of things this way. And maybe it would be better for Rita and the rest of Jerri’s family if her death was treated as an accident.

But that left Andrew, still in jail for Sybil’s murder. And with Jerri dead, the chances of finding out whether or not she’d killed Sybil were very remote.

Suddenly the bleak afternoon seemed even bleaker.

Coming out of the raw, chill wind, the shop seemed cozy and inviting, fragrant with spices and warm with the colors of dried flowers and autumn wreaths. Laurel told me that we’d had a halfway decent day. The wreaths were going fast, and we’d sold out of the new line of herbal soaps I was trying. I phoned a reorder, and while I was at it asked for some samples of bath herbs and sachets—comforting things to think about after what I’d seen in the wrecked car. I closed out the register and locked up the shop. I went to my kitchen, put on the kettle, and fixed myself a cup of hot mint tea. I had just finished it and was still sitting at the table, thinking wearily about Jerri, Sybil, and C.W., when Ruby knocked at the door.

‘Tea?” I asked.

“Sherry,” she countered, and pulled a bottle out of her jacket. “What did you find out?”

“About Andrew?” Had it only been this morning I’d talked to Virginia Forgette about her sister? It seemed like a century ago. I got out glasses and Ruby poured. “Georgia Forgette died after her streetcar got rammed by a garbage truck,” I said. “Andrew’s been paying back the money he borrowed, a little bit at a time. To the sister, who says he’s a conscientious young man.”

Her breath came out in a big rush. “So he’s innocent!”

“He didn’t kill the woman in New Orleans, if that’s what you mean.” The sherry was warm inside me. “And I doubt very seriously that he killed Sybil. The autopsy report came out this morning. The killer was right-handed.”

“And Andrew’s left-handed!” Ruby lifted her sherry glass in a triumphant toast. “I
knew
it! I knew he didn’t kill her! Has he been released yet?”

“Released?” I downed my sherry and poured another. “Ruby, I said I don’t think he killed Sybil. I have no idea what the sheriff thinks.”

“Oh, but he—” She stopped. “Won’t he?”

“Blackie’s the only one who can answer that question.”

Khat came in from the bedroom and jumped up on my lap, kneading at my green corduroy skirt and purring his approval. Corduroy is his favorite. “There’s more. On the way back, about fifteen miles west along Devil’s Backbone, McQuaid and I found Jerri Greene’s car in the canyon. She was dead.”

Ruby caught her lower lip between her teeth, her green eyes wide with surprise. “Dead? Dear Jesus. How did it happen?”

“When I left, the D.P.S. trooper had all but decided she was D.W.I. There was a gin bottle in the front seat.”

Ruby ran her fingers through her orange tangles. “You don’t agree?”

“No skid marks, no sign she went over at high speed. McQuaid says maybe she
drove
over. Deliberately.” Having permitted me to stroke him, Khat jumped down and sauntered over to his bowl. When he discovered it was empty, he sat down, put one paw in it, and stared at me, unblinking.

Ruby shook her head wonderingly. “She committed suicide?” Her voice was hushed, awed. “But
why?’

I went to the refrigerator and found the gourmet dainty that Khat had agreed to eat this week. As a connoisseur of kitty food, he’s as finicky as Imelda Marcos trying to decide which pair of shoes to wear. “If Andrew didn’t kill Sybil, who did? We know that C.W. and Jerri were having an affair, which makes her the Other Woman. And when you and I talked to Jerri last week, she was moaning about not having any money to fix up her gym. Remember?”

Khat removed his paw from his dish, permitted me to fill it, and then sniffed the food suspiciously, with the air of a cat who thought someone was trying to put something over on him. Satisfied, he settled down and began tucking into his meal with feline gusto.

“Yeah, I remember,” Ruby said. “She said it was a dump, which surprised me a little. I mean, it’s not the Taj Mahal, but I didn’t think it was bad, as gyms go.”

I sat down again. “Yeah, well, when I saw her yesterday, she was talking about moving over to the mall and buying new equipment.”

Ruby’s coppery eyebrows shot up under her hair. “That space costs an arm and a leg. Where was she getting the money?”

“Maybe she was expecting to marry it.”

“You think she killed Sybil so C.W. could have Sybil’s money and she could have C.W.?”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

Ruby frowned. “But she’d gotten away with it. The sheriff charged Andrew with the murder. So why would she kill herself?”

“I don’t know. Remorse, maybe.” But the woman I’d talked to only hours before her death hadn’t seemed remorseful. She’d been excited about leasing new space, buying new equipment. She’d looked like a woman for whom the world was a golden oyster, and she was poised, knife in hand, eager to open it. What had happened?

Ruby considered. “Maybe she was wrong about C.W. wanting to marry her. Or maybe he found out she’d killed Sybil and got cold feet.” She shuddered. “What man in his right mind would marry a woman who’d slit his wife’s throat?”

“It’s possible,” I said slowly, although I couldn’t help thinking that Jerri knew how to get what she wanted. If she’d been determined enough to kill Sybil, she wouldn’t have taken no for an answer from C.W.

Ruby reached for the sherry bottle and began to pour. “If Jerri killed Sybil, and Jerri’s dead in an accident, and nobody figures her for the killer, what’ll happen to Andrew?” She looked at me. The glass was full and she was still pouring. “I’m not asking because I’m emotionally committed to him, China. I’m just asking as a... well, as a friend.” She looked down at the puddle of sherry on the table. “Shit,” she said. “Why did I do that?”

I got a sponge and wiped up the spill. “You were thinking. It’s hard to think and pour at the same time.”

“Have they got enough on him to get an indictment?”

I tossed the sponge in the sink. I couldn’t pretend optimism. “Probably. Fingerprints, eyewitness testimony putting him at the crime scene, Andrew’s statement that he was there, which he never should have made. It’s probably even enough to get a guilty verdict, if the prosecution plays its cards right.” I paused. “Hell, even if they
don’t
play their cards right. That damn Satanic bible is pretty potent. In a jury’s mind, it’ll be sure proof that Andrew’s sold his soul to the devil.”