Spanish Dagger

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Ruby took my silence for assent. “Good,” she said firmly. “I’m glad you agree with me. And don’t forget to call me when you’ve found it. I won’t go to sleep until you do.”

  “Ramona!” came a shrill cry from the living room. “Ramona, where are you? Call Ruby right now. Tell her I have to go to the hospital. I’m having a heart attack!”

  “Oh, lordy,” Ruby breathed, letting out a long, weary breath.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said inadequately. I looked up at the clock. It was time I was starting for home. “When do you think you’ll get back to Pecan Springs?”

  “I don’t know. Not tomorrow, that’s for sure. Tomorrow I have to move Mother to the other apartment. Maybe I can come home when Ramona gets here on Sunday. We’ll just have to see how things are.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to go through this right now,” I said.

  “So do I.” Her shoulders slumped. “It’s hell to get old, isn’t it? And it’s hell not to.”

  She closed her eyes, and I knew she was thinking of Colin, who was never going to get any older than he had been the day before yesterday, when somebody had put a knife into his chest.

  Chapter Seven

  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the herb hemp, cultivated for its use as a fiber, oil, and medicine, was also known as neckweed and gallows-grass. A “stretch-hemp” was a person worthy of the gallows, and “to wag hemp” was to be hanged.

  I did not intend to stop at Colin’s shop—at least, that’s what I told myself as I drove back to Pecan Springs. It’s not kosher to barge into an active police investigation, and it definitely isn’t a good idea to make an unauthorized entry into a shop with an armed alarm system. All I had to do was phone Sheila at home and tell her what Ruby had told me. She’d take over from there and the matter would be out of my hands.

  But Sheila was defending her requests for staff positions and body armor at the City Council meeting tonight. She wouldn’t have a chance to search Colin’s shop until tomorrow, unless she had done so already. And Ruby was right about one thing. Once the police were involved, it wasn’t very likely that we’d pick up any information about the progress of the investigation. If I needed proof of that, all I had to do was think back to the way Sheila treated the note under the yucca pot. If I hadn’t peeked, I wouldn’t have known that someone named L wanted urgently to see Colin, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it to Ruby, who would not, therefore, have remembered that a woman named Lucita had insisted on talking to Colin and had even left her phone number.

  With all this running through my mind, I made a bargain with myself. If Sheila and her investigative team had already marked the shop off-limits as a crime scene, I would be a very good girl. I would drive straight home, phone Ruby, and tell her that we were out of luck, because I was disinclined to cross a police barrier. If, on the other hand, there was no crime-scene tape—Well, that was a different story, wasn’t it?

  Before I left Doris’ apartment, Ruby had sent me for takeout sandwiches and salad, and I had made a quick run out to the Fredericksburg Herb Garden, the area’s premier herb emporium, where I bought some lavender oil for Doris. While I was there, I also bought some dried chamomile, skullcap, passionflower, lemon balm, and valerian—sedative herbs that have been used for centuries to ease anxiety, reduce irritability, and settle the nerves. They wouldn’t cure Doris’ dementia—no herb could do that—but they would calm her down so that both she and Ruby could get some sleep.

  When I got back with the food, we set the table and brought Doris in to eat—not a very pleasant meal, since she was stuck in a continuous loop of muttered accusations and confusions between Ruby and the absent Ramona. After we finished, I wrote down directions for using the herbs to make tea and left Ruby at the door, looking so fragile and wounded that I wanted to cry. But I summoned my most cheerful grin, gave her a hug, and assured her that everything would be okay.

  Would it? As I got in my car and drove off, I had my doubts. The prognosis for Doris’ illness probably wasn’t good. Ruby had suffered two terrible tragedies, both at the same time. It was more than anyone could be expected to bear.

  With all the delays, the sun was dropping into the west by the time I left Fredericksburg. It was almost dark an hour later, when I got back to Pecan Springs. During the day, the courthouse square is full of tourists, out for a pleasant hour of shopping in stores where they don’t have to walk a couple of miles of aisle to find a sweet little souvenir for Bitsy and Betsy back home. Vera Hooper, the town docent, leads them on guided tours of the historic buildings around the square. They take pictures of the pink granite courthouse (the oldest in this part of Texas), peek into Mueller’s Antiques and Fine Crafts, and drop in at the Sophie Briggs Historical Museum to gawk at Miss Briggs’ famous collection of ceramic frogs and the boots Burt Reynolds wore in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And on top of the tourist traffic is layered the usual business traffic of a county courthouse, the central hub of Adams County’s affairs. It’s usually hard to find a parking space on the square, and Mae Belle Battersby is kept busy collecting coins from the meters and issuing parking tickets to any soul intrepid enough to double park.

  But come sundown, things change, and tonight—a weekday night—was no exception. Up the hill and a few blocks closer to the Central Texas State campus, the evening was just beginning to get revved up. Down the hill, toward the railroad tracks, the bars and grills and dance halls were kicking into action. And over on I-35, the shopping malls were no doubt jammed with customers. But there were only two or three cars in the Nueces Street Diner parking lot, Krautzeheimer’s German Restaurant had already closed, and the only signs of life on the street were a wandering pair of elderly tourists looking for their lost B&B, and the swarm of Mexican free-tailed bats making their nocturnal exodus from the attic of the old brick building that also houses the town’s Parks and Utilities Department (as good as a cave, as far as the bats are concerned). A typical small-town courthouse square on a warm spring night.

  I made a sedate double loop around the square, slowing to a crawl on the second pass in front of Colin Fowler’s Good Earth Goods. It’s a small store, wedged into the block between Mueller’s Antiques and Bluebonnet Books, with the usual glass display windows full of merchandise on either side of a central door. I looked for the bright yellow crime-scene tape that should be stretched across the front, but it wasn’t there. A Closed sign was hung on the door, and a small bouquet tied with a yellow ribbon was propped on the pavement against it. Colin’s death might not be common knowledge yet, but somebody knew and cared enough to send flowers. Lucita, maybe? I parked, left the car running, and checked to see if there was a card. There wasn’t.

  But just because the cops hadn’t posted the front of the store didn’t mean that the back was clear. I made a right turn onto Crockett, and then another right halfway down the block, into the narrow graveled alley that runs behind the stores. I drove past the back doors and mini-Dumpsters that belong to the Ben Franklin Variety Store, the Bluebonnet Bookstore, and Mueller’s Antiques, counting so that I knew where I was.

  The hand-lettered sign on the fourth door was barely visible in the deepening twilight. It was the rear door of Colin’s shop, and sure enough, there was no yellow tape. Sheila had said it wasn’t high priority. It looked as if the crime-scene team wouldn’t be here until morning.

  Well, heck. There was nothing stopping me from getting that phone number. After all, I had a key, a possibly viable code for the alarm, and explicit permission from Ruby—who had explicit permission from Colin—to enter the building. What more did I want? An invitation? I made a quick left into the empty parking lot next to the First Baptist Church and parked under a large pecan tree, next to a blue Mercury with BOOK 1 vanity plates. Darla McDaniel’s car. Darla, who went to high school with Ruby, owns Bluebonnet Books, on the other side of Colin’s shop.

  I reached under the seat and felt around until I found the flashlight McQuaid insists I kee
p there. Still looking for excuses, I told myself that if the batteries didn’t work, I couldn’t go in. I didn’t want to stumble around in the dark in an unfamiliar store, and I didn’t want to turn on the lights. Somebody walking past the front of the store might think I was a thief and call the cops.

  The flashlight worked. With a sigh, I took it, got out, and locked the car. There were several other cars in the lot and from the direction of the church came the sound of a tinny piano and a warble of high soprano voices singing “Unlock the Gate and Let Me In.” The Baptist choir, under the baton of Mrs. Reedy, practicing for the Sunday service. As invitations go, it sounded pretty explicit to me. But I had to hurry if I intended to get my business done and get out of here before they finished.

  There was a single dim security light in the church lot, but the alley itself was shadowed. I jumped and caught my breath when an orange tabby cat leaped from a garbage can, knocking off the lid with a noisy clatter. I reached the back door of Colin’s shop and took the key out of the pocket of my jeans. I stuck it into the door and stopped, remembering the alarm. What was the code? Oh, yes: 1963—or maybe 1962. I punched in the numbers, then turned the key, holding my breath. I felt a surge of pure relief as the door swung open into a chill darkness. There was no clanging alarm. All that could be heard were the opening strains of “Nearer My God to Thee.” I hoped it was not an omen.

  I stepped into the back room, locked the door behind me, and turned on the flashlight, shining it around to get my bearings. The small stockroom was filled with shelves stacked with merchandise and cardboard boxes piled everywhere. In one corner was a table, topped with a computer and monitor, a green light glowing eerily. I shivered. Colin had been the last person to operate that computer, and he was dead. But like the house, this place seemed to harbor no ghosts, restless or otherwise. It was chilly and dark, but the shadows that lurked in the corners belonged there.

  Opposite the alley door was the door to the front of the store. I went to it, turned off the flashlight, and opened it cautiously.

  There was a small security light in the wall above the cash register, but the front part of the store was palely lit by the streetlight that shone through the shop windows. The shop looked pretty much as it had when I was last here with Ruby. It was filled with merchandise designed to appeal to environmentally aware consumers and to the college kids at CTSU. There were books about how to save the environment, neat displays of environmentally friendly lightbulbs, recycled rubber and plastic stuff, nontoxic cleaners, biodegradable detergents, and racks of chic hemp clothing, as well as hemp bags and backpacks, hemp hats and sandals, hemp twine and yarns, hemp bath and body products, and hemp foods: hemp coffee, hemp pasta, even (swear to God) hemp brownie mix.

  There is an irony here, of course. You can legally sell all of these hemp products in the United States, but you’d better not try to grow the stuff to produce them. Hemp was criminalized, along with marijuana, back in the 1940s. It can be grown in many countries, including Canada, but if you try to grow it in your herb garden, the DEA can come along and pop a pair of handcuffs on your gardening gloves.

  I thought about this irony as I made my way behind the counter, keeping to the shadows, and an uncomfortable idea began to take shape in my mind. Hemp and marijuana—both of them called Cannabis sativa—are siblings. When I first met him, Colin was already an active member of the local Legalize Hemp movement, which picked up steam a couple of years ago. For decades, would-be hemp growers have tried to get the plant decriminalized, and Legalize Hemp organizations have sprouted all over the country, hoping to achieve what Canadian growers achieved some years back: the right to grow the plant legally and harvest the benefits thereof.

  Cannabis sativa—hemp—might not be on the list of all-time favorites for those who think of herbs as lovable little plants that add flavor, fragrance, and spice to our lives. Hemp is a multi-use herb, an environmentally benign plant whose fibers, oils, leaves, and seeds have been used by humans for many thousands of years. Hemp ropes made commerce possible, and hemp sails and rigging took ships across trackless oceans. Hemp paper is stronger than paper made from trees and can be farmed more sustainably and profitably than forests. Hemp has been turned into long-wearing carpets, fine textiles, nutritious cooking oil, durable motor oil, sturdy construction materials, nontoxic paints, and more. And if the truth be told, the pressure to continue criminalizing hemp comes mostly from the companies whose products it might supplant, for it has been scientifically demonstrated that this branch of the Cannabis family doesn’t contain enough THC—the psychoactive chemical in marijuana—to get anybody high. You can smoke industrial hemp from now until next Sunday and you’ll still see the world in the same old boring way.

  But now I had to wonder whether Colin’s support of hemp might have had something to do with his death. Had he made some powerful enemies in the movement, or outside of it? Or maybe hemp wasn’t the only Cannabis that interested him. As Dan Reid, he had certainly been involved with drug distribution networks. In fact, he’d been convicted for alerting a drug dealer who was about to be arrested. Maybe Reid had served his time, gotten out of jail, and decided to cash in on what he knew by becoming a dealer himself. It was an unpleasant thought, especially because of Ruby. I pushed it to the back of my mind as I got on with what I had come to do, but I had to admit the possibility.

  I was standing beside the cash register, and there was enough light to see that the calendar Ruby had described was not on the counter. Rats. I had made all this effort for nothing. I knelt down, turned on the flashlight, and began to search the shelves under the counter. Finally, just as I was ready to call it quits, I found the darn thing, pushed behind some empty plastic bank bags. I sat cross-legged on the floor with the flashlight in my hand and the calendar on my lap and began turning the pages.

  Last Friday, nothing. Two Fridays ago, nothing. And then, three Fridays ago, I found it: the name Lucita and a local phone number, written in Ruby’s scrawly handwriting. I tore out the page for December 25—Colin wouldn’t be here for Christmas—found a pencil, and copied it down.

  I was putting the calendar back where I’d found it when I heard the sound of the back door opening. Someone—someone who had a key and knew the alarm code—had just come into the back of the store. My breath caught, my blood ran cold, and the hair rose on my arms. I couldn’t get to the front door without being spotted, and the unknown intruder—the person who had killed Colin?—was blocking the back door. I had to find someplace to hide, and fast. I thrust the calendar page into the pocket of my jeans, turned off the flashlight, and made for the nearest refuge: a rack of hemp shirts and pants hanging at the far end of the counter, near the front door. Breathless, I sank down on the floor behind the rack and pushed the garments apart just enough to see who was coming through the door to the back room.

  But whoever it was—a slender figure, dressed in black—did the same thing I had done: opened the door and slid along the wall silently, keeping to the shadows. The figure reached the counter, stepped behind it, came as far as the cash register, and stopped, reaching for something on the shelf. Then the figure did something to the register, hit several keys, and the cash drawer came open with a metallic ping. A hand went into the till. I was caught between wanting to stop the thief and not wanting to be discovered—or tackle somebody who was better armed than I.

  But then a car passed by on the street and its headlights flickered across the thief’s face. A girl’s face. A girl still in her teens.

  I stood, pushed the clothes apart, and stepped forward, shining my flashlight full on her face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, in my deepest, meanest, most threatening voice.

  It had the desired effect. She gasped, shrieked, and threw a dozen bills into the air. “Don’t shoot!” she cried, putting up her hands and backing against the wall. “Oh, please! Don’t shoot!”

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, stealing out of the register,” I growled. “Ho
w did you get in?”

  “I…I used my key,” the girl whimpered. She had a bouncy blond ponytail, plastic-rimmed glasses, and a bad case of acne on her forehead. Skinny as a rail, she couldn’t have been any more than eighteen or nineteen. “And I’m not stealing, honest, I’m not! Mr. Fowler owes me for two full Saturdays and a Monday night. Twenty hours. Somebody told me he got killed and I…I didn’t know how to…” She swallowed. “I’ve found another job, but I really need the money. I was afraid that if I didn’t get over here, I wouldn’t be able to get it.”

  I should have guessed. The college student who worked for Colin. “What’s your name?”

  “Marcy,” she said breathlessly. “Marcy Windsor…I’ve worked here for the last three months. I didn’t punch a clock or anything like that, and Mr. Fowler always paid me out of the register, instead of writing me a check. So I was afraid I couldn’t…” Her voice trailed away.

  Out of the register, huh? Which meant that Colin wasn’t withholding taxes or Social Security. Oh, well. It’s a common enough evasion among small businesses, and it didn’t involve a large amount of money. The girl was right. If she went through the usual channels, she’d end up without a dime. I had to admire her for having the gumption to come looking for her money, but I wasn’t about to let her know that.

  “So you thought you’d just help yourself,” I said with a dry chuckle.

  “He owes me, doesn’t he?” she demanded defensively. “But there aren’t any records, and I can’t prove it. So I thought—” She frowned and held up her hand, shielding her eyes from the light. “Hey, just a darn minute. Who are you? What are you doing here, in the dark? Are you a cop? Why were you hiding behind—”

  “How much does Mr. Fowler owe you?”