Bittersweet

by Susan Wittig Albert

  I put a glass of orange juice in front of Leatha, watching to see how she would respond to her granddaughter’s version of the facts of life. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “What a well-informed young lady you are,” she said, picking up her fork and smiling at Caitie.

  Caitie beamed. “Thank you,” she said modestly, and launched into a lengthy description of her chicken-raising, egg-selling enterprise, which occupied us for the duration of breakfast. After that, my mother was anxious to get off to the hospital, so there was no more opportunity for Sue Ellen and me to talk. I had the uneasy feeling that she had welcomed the interruption. I knew from experience with clients that the trek to the DA’s office can be a scary one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she got cold feet. But I would be sorry. Her knowledge of her husband’s guilt—whatever his crime—could come back to haunt her.

  Before we left, Leatha and Sue Ellen quickly conferred about the food for Thanksgiving dinner—stuffed turkey with the usual trimmings. The pies had been baked the evening before, and Sue Ellen planned to stuff the turkey and get it into the oven in time for dinner shortly after four. The sky had been cloudless when I got up, but by the time we started out, it was drizzling a little, and from the look of the thick gray bank of clouds hanging low over the northern hills, we might get a downpour at any moment. We took Sam’s Impala, but Leatha asked me to drive—an admission, I thought, that she was feeling a little shaky about what we would find when we got to the hospital. We followed 187 north to Utopia, and as we passed the site of Jennie’s Kitchen, the restaurant where Jennie and I would be installing the herb garden the next day, I pointed it out.

  “I hope it’s not raining tomorrow,” I added. “Jennie has some people coming in to help, and it would be good to get all the plants in the ground if we can.” Leatha nodded but didn’t say anything, and I saw that her jaw was clenched tight. Whatever the bad news to come, she was already arming herself against it.

  For once, there were no vehicles parked in front of the Lost Maples Café, which was closed for Thanksgiving. The general store was closed, too, and Main Street was empty—until, that is, we reached the northern outskirts of town. On the right-hand side of the road, a half mile past the library, a half-dozen official trucks and cars were parked cattywampus in the asphalt-paved parking lot in front of the Masters Animal Clinic. The EMS ambulance, followed by a sheriff’s car, was just pulling out. A woman wearing jeans, a green cap, and a green Parks and Wildlife jacket stepped out onto the road in front of us. She raised her hand, stopping us to allow the official vehicles to make their exit. Since the ambulance was running its lights but not its siren and wasn’t flying at warp speed, I guessed that their cargo was bound for the county morgue. And that it wasn’t an animal patient.

  “Oh, look!” Leatha exclaimed, leaning forward. “That woman—that’s Mackenzie! Mackenzie Chambers, our game warden friend.”

  So it was. Mack stepped back to the right-hand shoulder and motioned to us to drive on. I checked the mirror and saw that there weren’t any cars coming up behind us, so I pulled up next to her and hit the button that lowered the passenger-side window.

  “Great to see you, Mack,” I said, leaning on the steering wheel and speaking across my mother. “It’s been too long.” I gestured toward the parking lot. “What’s going on?”

  She bent over to look through the window, did a double take when she saw me, then smiled quickly, showing even, white teeth in a face reddened by the wind. “Oh, hi, China! Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Seven or eight months, at least. Welcome to Utopia.” She put out her hand to my mother. “Hello, Leatha. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “We’re looking forward to seeing you this afternoon,” Leatha said, squeezing her hand briefly and releasing it. “We’ll be at the hospital in Kerrville this morning, but we’re planning dinner sometime after four. Is that still good for you?”

  Mack nodded. “I heard about Sam,” she said soberly. “I’m sorry. I know how difficult this must be for you. He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”

  Leatha lifted her chin. “Sam is going to be fine,” she said with a determined emphasis. “Of course, it may take a while, but he’ll be good as new. And if you’re thinking that dinner might be too much trouble for us or something silly like that, just stop.” She smiled brightly. “Sam insists that we have our holiday as usual, and you’re included. I thought of having a stuffed venison roast, but turkey is really easier.”

  “Turkey will be wonderful,” Mack said. “Looking forward to it.”

  “What’s going on?” I repeated, gesturing toward the parking lot. “Looks like a full house, including EMS. Did somebody get hurt?” I didn’t ask why she happened to be there, but I wondered. Game wardens are also peace officers, but you don’t often see them directing traffic.

  Mack’s smile vanished. “Doc Masters,” she said gravely. “He was shot.”

  “Shot!” Leatha’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no! Was it an accident? Is he going to be all right? Phil is such a wonderful, thoughtful man.” Turning to me, she explained, “Phillip Masters is a longtime veterinarian and an old friend of Sam’s. He’s also an expert bird-watcher, and he’s offered to come out next spring and lead bird walks along the river for our guests. He can identify every single bird by the song alone.”

  Mack’s mouth was hard and tight, and I could see the pain in her dark eyes. “I’m afraid he’s dead,” she said, answering my mother’s second question. Then, as Leatha gasped, she answered the first. “And it wasn’t an accident,” she added grimly. “He was murdered. Shot at close range.”

  “Murdered!” Leatha whispered. Her eyes were wide and disbelieving. “You can’t be serious, Mack. Not Phil—and not in Utopia!”

  “Afraid so,” Mack said. Her loose dark hair blew across her face, and she turned her back to the chill wind.

  “Was it a robbery?” I asked. I was remembering that there had been several break-ins at vet hospitals in the Pecan Springs and San Marcos areas. Animal clinics are a tempting target because they stock narcotics—and because some of them don’t have the necessary security. “Somebody after drugs?”

  Mack gave me a glance I couldn’t read. “That’s still under investigation,” she replied, in a carefully neutral tone I recognized from my conversations with police officers who don’t want to let you in on the details. Somehow, though, I got the idea that it might not have been a robbery—or at least, that Mack didn’t think so.

  There was a quick, light tap on a car horn behind us. Straightening, Mack slapped the roof of our car. “Need you to move on now,” she said crisply, and softened it with a smile. “Drive safely. See you at four.”

  I glanced in the mirror. There were several cars behind us, and I quickly drove off, reflecting that there was a gloomy irony here. Bad things could happen anywhere and everywhere, and they did. But when something bad happened in a pretty little town named Utopia, it might seem a great deal worse. Although when you get right down to it, there’s nothing worse than taking a human life—unless it’s taking more than one.

  “I just can’t believe it.” Leatha shook her head despairingly. “Who would do such a terrible thing—and why? Phil could be a bit crusty and abrupt, but once you got to know him, all that disappeared. He didn’t have much use for people who mistreated animals, either, or didn’t take care of the land. But when you became friends, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for you.” She fished in her purse for a tissue and wiped her eyes. “I can’t tell Sam about this, I just can’t. They were boys together. They’ve been friends for life. He’ll be devastated.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. There was nothing else to say, really. Leatha fell silent and turned to look out the window.

  As if the weather were a barometer of our feelings, it began to rain harder. The wind was blowing from the north, bending the roadside grasses and buffeting the car. After my recent introduction to the business of
deer ranching and the problem of exotic species, I found myself paying attention to the eight-foot-high fences that stretched for interminable miles on both sides of the road, with occasional glimpses of herds of deer grazing as peacefully as cattle. I also saw strange-looking sheep with curly horns, an occasional buffalo, and once—quite remarkably, almost as if it were a mythical animal out of a fairy-tale book—a zebra. A zebra? I almost didn’t believe it. Why would anybody want to shoot a zebra, a zebra that had been bred and raised simply to be shot?

  And there were signs, peppered with exclamation points. Trophy White-tails Guaranteed! No Kill, No Pay! Live your dream as a deer hunter! Bag a big buck you can brag about back home! Whatever you might think about the taste of the advertisements or the ethics of canned hunting, it was obviously a burgeoning business. There must be a heckuva lot of money changing hands.

  But all this raised a flock of uncomfortable questions in my mind, and I turned them over as we drove along. What went on behind those fences—was it genuine hunting or more like target shooting, more like shooting a pet pig in a pen? When did a big buck—or an exotic sheep or a buffalo or a zebra—stop being a wild animal and become a commercial product, a commodity to be bought and sold?

  I knew that, under Texas law, every deer in the state—wild or farmed—was considered a public resource, which meant that they were all state property. But how did that square with the huge amount of private capital that was invested in these commercialized animals, which—grazing quietly along the fence—looked more like livestock living contentedly on a farm than creatures roaming the wild? There were too many inconsistencies here. And too many inviting and convenient opportunities for criminal activity. The whole business was ugly, top to bottom. Whatever crimes Sue Ellen’s husband and his friends had committed, I’d lay odds that they weren’t the only people who had done so. And who was regulating this industry, anyway? Who was policing it? Game wardens? I made a mental note to ask Mack.

  The rain slowed us down, and the drive to Kerrville took over an hour, the steady whap-whap-whap of the windshield wipers punctuating my darkening thoughts. When we were nearly there, I got a call from McQuaid, telling me that he and Brian had been delayed and were just leaving Pecan Springs on their way to the ranch. I had talked to him late the night before. Now, I told him where Leatha and I were going and brought him up to date on Sam’s situation—as much as we knew, anyway.

  I glanced over at my mother, who had fallen asleep, her head resting against the window. In a lower voice, I added, “Something came up last night, with a young woman who’s going to be working at Bittersweet, helping Leatha and Sam. It has to do with deer smuggling—something like that, anyway.”

  I expected him to chuckle, but he didn’t. “Deer smuggling is serious business,” he said.

  “So I’m beginning to understand.” The rain had stopped, and I turned off the wipers. “You know something about it?”

  “Some, not much. Blackie knows more, although he’s not focusing on smuggling.” Blackie Blackwell is McQuaid’s partner in McQuaid, Blackwell, and Associates, Private Investigators. “He’s involved in an investigation at one of the big trophy-hunting ranches down in South Texas. He’s looking into semen theft.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. “Semen theft?” I asked incredulously. “You’re kidding. You mean, semen as in sex?”

  “Right. Turns out that deer semen is a hot commodity these days. Pricey, too.”

  “Huh?” I frowned. “I’m not understanding something here. I mean, how can they get a buck to . . . ? On command, that is.” I stopped. The mind boggled.

  McQuaid chuckled. “That’s how much you know, kid. The buck is sedated and milked and the semen is stored in straws, frozen.”

  “Sedated? You mean, the poor guy doesn’t get to enjoy any of this?” I wrinkled my nose, thinking how truly awful that was—disrespectful, degrading, undignified. It seemed to me that a magnificent animal deserved to maintain his dignity.

  “Nope. No joy. He’s sound asleep during the whole process,” McQuaid replied. “And here’s something that’s right up your alley: they’re experimenting with rosemary to extend the semen’s viable life.”

  “Rosemary?” My jaw dropped. “Now I know you’re kidding.” Rosemary has been used as a preservative for millennia. The Egyptians even used it in the embalming of mummies, and some of those—the mummies, that is—are still around. But to preserve deer semen?

  “I am telling you a true thing, China. The people who are selling semen do whatever they can to keep it viable as long as possible. Depending on the value of the stud buck—that is, on the size of the rack he wears—it can be worth thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, even.”

  “Stud buck?” I shook my head. “My education has been neglected. I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the situation Blackie has been investigating. And it’s serious, given the current craze for creating big bucks with monster racks. Picture this, babe. Somebody who steals a couple of dozen semen straws at, say, eighty-five hundred a straw, is making off with the equivalent of over two hundred thousand dollars.” He chuckled wryly. “We ain’t talkin’ small change here. People kill for less than that. And the only way to trace it is through a DNA match of the semen or the progeny it produces.”

  “Who knew?” I murmured. Two hundred thousand. I thought of my conversation with Sue Ellen. She’d said that her husband was stealing from his employer, and she had implied that whatever he was doing was significant enough to warrant a charge of first degree grand theft. He worked at Three Gates, which was a big game ranch. Was it possible that he was stealing—

  But I was getting ahead of myself. I didn’t know enough to pursue that line of thought. I looked over at my mother, still sleeping, and kept my voice low. “But there’s more, I’m afraid. The local vet—a friend of Leatha’s and Sam’s—was shot to death at his animal hospital last night, or maybe this morning. EMS was taking the body away when we drove past.”

  “Damn,” McQuaid said. “Drug theft?”

  “Mackenzie Chambers was at the scene. She seemed to think it was . . . something else.”

  “Mack? I guess in a small town, anybody with a badge gets involved when there’s a serious crime,” McQuaid said thoughtfully. “Even game wardens. Mack is savvy. I wonder why she thinks—”

  “She’s joining us for dinner at the ranch,” I said. We were coming up to the intersection where I had to turn, and I needed to pay attention to the traffic. “We can ask her about it then. Drive safely, sweetie. Oh, and call me in a couple of hours, and I’ll update you on Sam’s situation.”

  We said good-bye and I clicked off the phone. Deer semen? I wanted to laugh. But McQuaid had sounded dead serious. It was something to think about.

  • • •

  WHEN we got to the hospital, we were shown to a small room where we waited—an interminable time, it seemed, but it was really only eight or ten minutes—until a white-coated doctor came in, a stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard in his hand. Leatha introduced him to me as Dr. Mendelsohn, a cardiologist. He was a tall man, stooped, with silver-framed glasses perched on a beak of a nose. He greeted us, then began without preamble, in that businesslike way doctors have when they want to get on with things.” Sam’s recovery from the stent insertion is going better than expected.” He paused to let that sink in, and Leatha and I exchanged relieved grins.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” she breathed, letting out a long sigh. “When the hospital called this morning, I thought— Well, I was afraid that . . .” Her voice trailed off. I took her hand. The Queen of Denial had worried unnecessarily because she hadn’t asked for details.

  The doctor took a ballpoint pen out of his breast pocket and ticked something off on the clipboard. “Well, then. After consultation, Dr. Madison and I think it would be a good idea to go ahead and repair the abdominal aneurysm I told yo
u about. Do you remember?”

  Leatha nodded vaguely.

  “Good. Sam has agreed. We’ve scheduled surgery in—” He looked at his watch. “Forty-five minutes.”

  I was surprised. Leatha gulped and her fingers tightened on mine. “You have to do this today?”

  “We think it’s a good idea,” Dr. Mendelsohn repeated. “Sam is an excellent candidate for endovascular surgery.” He described what they would be doing and added, “We have every expectation that the procedure will go quickly and well, and that he’ll have a full recovery.” Tucking his ballpoint back in his pocket, he gave us a reassuring smile. “He’s still awake. You can both go in and see him now.”

  I was heartened by the words “full recovery” but shocked nearly speechless by Sam’s appearance. When I had seen him the previous summer, he had been robust and strong, brimming over with energy and plans for the future. Today, he was frail and shrunken, his face lined and gray, and I thought again, almost despairingly, of the challenges that lay ahead for him and Leatha. Even a “full recovery” seemed a fragile hope. Would he ever get back to his old self? How in the world were they going to manage?

  But his eyes lit up with pleasure when he saw my mother, and he grinned and held out his hand to me.

  “Hey, here are my girls,” he said in a thin, weak voice. “You’re not supposed to worry about any of this. You can’t keep a good man down, you know. I’ll be back at the ranch before anybody realizes I’ve been gone.”

  “I know you will, dear,” Leatha said. She took his other hand and held it tightly until they wheeled him away from us. When he was gone, she turned to me. “I’m wondering what’s behind this hurry-up surgery—on a holiday. Is there a reason they have to do this now? Is there something they’re not telling us?”

  I was already asking those same questions, and I didn’t have any answers. But the procedure went quickly, and by one o’clock, Sam was in the ICU. He had weathered the surgery in what the doctor said was “better-than-expected shape,” and Leatha sagged with relief when she heard it.