The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Oh, come on, now, I thought. Give me a break. This suit has dragged on through a court hearing, a jury verdict, a reversal, an appeal, a ruling, a second ruling, a stay, and a second appeal—and Boyd is just now “realizing” that this entire affair was his lawyer’s fault? To make amends, he is offering to marry the woman who (he claimed) took advantage of his mentally incompetent aunt, maybe even contributed to her death? And he wants this to happen right away?

  Excuse me, but I wasn’t believing this. It sounded to me like the man had decided to find another way to get his hands on Maddie’s half of the long-divided Last Chance Ranch. He would marry her. It also sounded like Maddie—who would do anything to hold on to her trees—had decided to believe that Boyd was truthful. And trustworthy. But who could blame her? She was probably sick to death of fighting and wanted to get the whole thing over with. Marriage seemed like a way out. Under those circumstances, she might not be ready to listen to arguments from opposing counsel.

  But I had to try. “When did you start talking about getting married? Was this sudden, or had it been going on for a while?”

  She shifted in the seat. “Well, I’ve always kind of had a soft spot in my heart for Boyd, ever since I was a little girl. But he’s so good-looking that I never thought . . .” Unconsciously, her hand went back to her scar. “I had no idea he liked me, really. He never showed it. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, he came over to apologize for what his lawyer had done and tell me how sorry he was about everything. We started talking and . . . well, it just seemed like all of a sudden, both of us realized how much we have in common. When it comes to the land, I mean. We both love the olive trees. And we both think that Eliza would be very happy if the two pieces of the Last Chance could be reunited.”

  “But marriage?” I asked. “That’s a pretty serious step, isn’t it?” She hadn’t answered the question I’d asked a moment before, and I asked it again. “Do you love him, Maddie?” I wanted to ask how she felt about Chet, too, but this wasn’t the time.

  Her fingers went back to her scar. “He says he loves me. He says he’s loved me for a long time and he just didn’t know it.” She turned to me, almost defiantly. “That happens, you know. You can love somebody without knowing it.” Her cheeks had reddened. “I’m . . . I’m still thinking about it,” she said, looking away. “This is all pretty new.”

  Thinking about whether you love him? I opened my mouth to reply but there was a clatter in the back of the truck and a loud woof, and we both turned around to see Bronco, his pink tongue hanging out, grinning at us through the back window of the truck.

  I turned to look at Maddie. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She wasn’t going to answer my question, either. Or maybe she was using her silence to tell me that it was none of my damned business, which I could certainly understand. Love is a very personal, very private matter. It isn’t something you discuss with a perfect stranger. I was meddling in her life, and if she didn’t want to answer my question, well, that was her business.

  I glanced back at the dog. “Looks like Bronco didn’t get that rabbit he wanted.”

  Woof, Bronco said again, apologetically. It was as if he were saying I tried my best, but that blasted rabbit outran me. Outsmarted me, too.

  Maddie turned the key in the ignition and put the truck in gear. “We can’t always get what we want,” she said quietly. “No matter how much we want it. Sometimes we have to compromise.”

  I didn’t think she was talking about Bronco and his rabbit.

  Chapter Eight

  MCQUAID

  Friday Afternoon

  Some months before, McQuaid had installed a hands-free cell phone device in his truck. The system turned the long, empty hours he spent on the road or doing surveillance into productive work time. With the addition of a clever folding keyboard, he was fully equipped. Almost anything he could do in his office, he could do in his truck. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

  The thing was that road time had always been thinking time for McQuaid. There was something about climbing into the truck and getting out on the road. He could turn up the volume on the radio and fill the cab with his favorite country-western music. Or he could turn it off and fill his head with his thoughts. Or he could do both. Listening to music didn’t keep you from thinking. But when you got down to it, time on the road—or time parked along some dark curb, keeping an eye on a house—was time alone, with no intrusions or interruptions from the outside. Hands-free or hand-held, the smart phone let the world into his vehicle when he would rather be alone.

  But right now, he was glad to have it. He needed to check with Sheila on the situation in Houston and find out from Harry Royce whether Mantel had any relatives in the area. He had an appointment with that Austin attorney in forty minutes, so there wasn’t time to sit in the parking lot and talk on the phone. He swung out onto Nueces, took LBJ Drive to I-35, made a left onto the onramp, slid into the fast-moving northbound traffic, and called Sheila for an update. He got Connie.

  “I’ve checked out a Taser for you, sir,” Connie said. “It’s here at my desk when you need it.”

  “Thanks,” he said, grateful that Connie seemed to consider him an adjunct PSPD officer. “I’m on my way to Austin. How late will you be in the office?”

  “Way past when I should be at home.” Connie sighed. “I’m working on the budget. It has to go to the council on Monday, and I still don’t have enough in there for the body cams we need. And that’s assuming we get the federal grant, which I haven’t written yet.”

  “About as much fun as wrestling grizzlies,” McQuaid said with genuine sympathy. He had enjoyed his stint as acting chief, except for that budget crap. The council wanted the police department to fight crime but they hated like hell to pay for it. McQuaid had felt that they took a special delight in seeing him grovel for every nickel. The price of body cams had come down, but they were still selling for seven or eight hundred dollars. Getting the money to buy them for all the patrol officers wouldn’t be easy. And then there were the policy issues to decide. Did the officers initiate the recording, or should the cams run continuously? Who in the department would be authorized to view the footage, tag it, and archive it? How would open records requests be met? People thought it was a simple matter—just pin a camera on every cop and turn it on. But there were lots of issues to deal with, big issues that took serious thought.

  “Looks like the boss is still on the other line,” Connie said. “Do you want to hold?”

  “Yeah.” McQuaid glanced out the truck window. He was just crossing the Blanco River, between San Marcos and Kyle. You couldn’t see the damage from the highway bridge, but the Blanco—long known to meteorologists as “Flash Flood Alley”—had been the site of a devastating Memorial Day flood. A six-inch rainstorm twenty miles upstream of Wimberley had produced a killer flood that swept down the river, taking a dozen lives, destroying more than a thousand homes, and knocking out roads and bridges, some of which hadn’t yet been rebuilt. The day after the disaster, McQuaid was supposed to attend a meeting in Austin. But water was still flowing over this very bridge and he had to use a roundabout detour. The flood was a reminder, if anybody needed one, of the impact of extreme weather. It had forced FEMA to redraw its outdated floodplain maps.

  Sheila came on the line, her voice flat, matter-of-fact. “I was just talking with Ian Abbott. The DA’s office got a tip that there was a body in one of the gravel dumps at the Turkey Bend Wharf, on Buffalo Bayou. You know the place?”

  “I do,” McQuaid said. It wouldn’t be the first time that area had been used to dispose of a body. “Another one of the witnesses in the Mantel case?”

  “Yes. They’ve ID’d her as . . .” Sheila rustled a paper. “Karen Kingsley.”

  Kingsley. McQuaid felt his gut tighten. The girl had been fifteen at the time of the trial, but she’d had the look of a lost child barely out of elementary school. She’d be—what? Mi
d-twenties, now? But now she wasn’t. Now she was dead. He felt the weight on his shoulders again. This made five. Five people who would still be alive if he had pulled the trigger. “Time of death?”

  “It’s still a rough guess. Abbott says they’re putting it at about the same time as Kennedy’s. Sunday, maybe Monday. Multiple gunshots. They’ll know more after both autopsies, but there’s apparently some evidence that the two women were killed together, or at least around the same time. Abbott didn’t go into specifics.”

  “Sunday, Monday. Before Mantel escaped,” McQuaid muttered. But then, they already knew that he had to be working with somebody, or several somebodies. It didn’t change anything. Just reminded him that they needed to watch for at least two people at the park tomorrow. And that they had a photo only of Mantel. They had no idea what the other man looked like. Or men. Or men and women.

  “Before Mantel escaped,” Sheila repeated, with emphasis. She added, “By the way, Abbott is royally pissed at you. He saw your photo with Mantel’s on the noon television news over there in Houston. The DA’s office was trying to keep a lid on this thing. They didn’t want the media to make a connection between Mantel’s escape and the shooting of the DA and his wife—at least, not right away. Your neat little media trick blew that effort, and now the reporters are banging on their doors. Abbott wants to know what the hell is going on with you and Mantel.”

  “I’ll bet he does.” McQuaid checked the mirror, then pulled to the left to pass a slow-moving Postal Service eighteen-wheeler with We Deliver For You painted on the side. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. That information has to come from the Rangers. If Royce thinks the DA’s office needs to be cued in to what we’re working on over here, he’ll tell Abbott. If he doesn’t, he won’t.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was less tense. “What have you heard from China? I imagine she’s having a quieter day than you are. Maybe she’s even having fun.”

  “Haven’t heard, but yes, I’m sure she is. Fun, that is. What kind of trouble could she and Ruby get into out there at that olive ranch?”

  Sheila chuckled. “Better not ask.” There was a silence. “Connie says you’re picking up a Taser.”

  “Right. I’m on my way to Austin now. I’ll stop for the Taser when I get back to Pecan Springs. Connie promised to keep a light on for me if I’m late.”

  “We’ll both be here,” Sheila said. “I’m working on that damn budget, too.”

  The traffic was picking up now, but all three northbound lanes were moving well. He had just passed Kyle, twenty-two miles south of Austin. The village had begun as a railroad depot on the International and Great Northern Railroad’s route from Austin to San Antonio and was until recently a sleepy little town. At the turn of the millennium, it had boasted some fifty-three hundred citizens. The latest headcount put it at over twenty-eight thousand, one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas. Kyle straddled the freeway, its growing subdivisions pushing east across the rich blackland prairie and west into the Hill Country.

  McQuaid had one more call to make. Harry Royce opened the conversation with “Ian Abbott is out to get you, man. He’s mad enough to spit nails.”

  “He is?” McQuaid played dumb. “What about?”

  “He saw you on the noon news. What’s more, he specifically recalls telling you that the DA’s office didn’t want the media to connect any dots until after his office could tell the public that Mantel was back under lock and key. He thinks you set him up.”

  “I set him up?” McQuaid grunted. “If it’s all the same to you, Harry, I’ll let the apology wait until after you’ve made the arrest.”

  A flashy red Porsche 911 with the top down was coming up behind him fast, and he moved back into the right lane to let the car shoot past him. The blonde driving the Porsche, her hair flying, must have been doing upwards of ninety, and McQuaid saw, with a flare of irritation, that she was holding a cell phone to her ear. As he watched, she dodged into the far left lane, cutting in front of a pickup pulling a travel trailer.

  “Damn,” he muttered, as she whipped back out of the left lane and into the middle lane, just ahead of a motorcycle.

  “Sorry,” Royce said. “Didn’t quite get that.”

  McQuaid raised his voice. “I don’t suppose you happened to tell Abbott that you knew about that little media play before the networks picked it up.”

  “You suppose right,” Royce replied. “Abbott’s not in my line of command. If he’s pissed, it’s no skin off my nose. Yours, either. You’re an independent.” He paused. “If you want to know the truth, McQuaid, I didn’t think you’d pull it off. That you’d get the media to put that story where Mantel could see it, I mean.”

  “So now you know the story’s out there, are you going to put a couple more guys in Pecan Springs tomorrow?”

  Royce was cautious. “I’d like to have some evidence that Mantel is headed in your direction—something more than that voice mail message he left on your phone. Anyway, your local constabulary seems to be on the job. Dawson said she’s calling in some off-duty guys to keep an eye on things.”

  McQuaid glanced into the mirror. A black-and-white was looming behind him, light bar flashing, siren sounding. He looked down at his speedometer. Sixty-five. The trooper wasn’t after him. “Did Abbott tell you about finding another body?”

  “Yes. Number five. Makes it pretty clear that Mantel is working with somebody.” Harry paused. “That siren I’m hearing. He isn’t pulling you over, is he?”

  “Nah,” McQuaid said as the black-and-white sped past. “He’s probably after the blonde in the Porsche who’s doing ninety while she’s holding her cell phone to her ear.” He thought of Blackie’s suggestion for getting a line on Mantel’s local connections. “Listen, Harry, if somebody hasn’t done this already, how about getting Huntsville to pull the names and addresses of the people who visited Mantel in the past five or six months?” He hesitated. This was an unofficial request, and Royce would probably tell him to forget it. On the other hand, he might just be so short of field personnel that he’d agree. “Also, maybe dig into his file and see whether he has any family or friends over this way. San Marcos, Kyle, New Braunfels, San Antonio. Ex-wives, women friends, buddies. If there are any locals, I could do some checking for you. Ask around, see whether anybody’s heard from him.”

  “Well,” Royce said slowly. He paused, then: “Seeing that it’s you asking, and that you led the original arrest team, I guess I can do that. If we find anything that looks useful, how do you want it? How fast?”

  “You can email it to my phone,” McQuaid said, and gave him the address. “Quick as you can find it would be nice.”

  “If we can dig it up, you’ll have it by quitting time,” Royce said.

  “Quitting time.” McQuaid grunted. “That’s for you guys drawing a state paycheck. Us indies, we don’t know what quitting time is.”

  “Maybe so,” Royce said. “But I’m stuck here in this office. I don’t even have a window. You guys out there on the road are the ones having fun.”

  McQuaid looked ahead, down the highway. He was gratified to see that the trooper had caught up with the blonde in the Porsche and pulled her over.

  “You got it, man.” He grinned as he moved into the center lane to pass the trooper and the woman who was about to get a ticket. On this stretch, if she was clocked at ninety, she’d be paying five hundred plus another hundred in court costs. He gave the trooper a wave. “Some of us, anyway.”

  Royce barked a sarcastic laugh. “Say, do you ever wish you’d just blown Mantel’s head off when you had the chance? When you were making the arrest, I mean. Would have saved the state a bundle of money and a lot of grief.” He paused. “And five lives.”

  Five lives. Five. McQuaid took a breath. He had to face the truth. The painful truth. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, Harry. I sometimes wish that
.”

  • • •

  THE large legal firm that was interested in hiring McQuaid, Blackwell, and Associates had an office near the state capitol. McQuaid ran into the usual traffic tie-up on East Twelfth, and by the time he finally located a parking space and made his way to the seventh floor of the building, he was late. Blackie was already there, thumbing through a magazine, one blue-jeaned leg crossed over the other, his black Stetson—a Blackwell trademark—perched on the chair beside him.

  “Thought maybe I was going to have to do this alone,” he said, when McQuaid came into the reception room.

  “Traffic,” McQuaid replied. “Should have given myself more time.” He sat down, glancing at the thick pale gray carpet, the tastefully upholstered furniture, the glossy blond receptionist at a desk near a window that framed the capitol building. “Impressive. Why don’t we find ourselves something plush like this up here in Austin, instead of hanging out in that fleabag down in Pecan Springs?” Their little strip-center place of business was a standing joke between them, although both of them rather enjoyed its noir-ish ambiance.

  Blackie dropped his magazine—Texas Fish & Game—on the table. “Because we’re country boys, that’s why. We wouldn’t know how to behave in a place with a view of the capitol. It’d feel like Big Brother was looking over our shoulders.” He paused. “Did you check with your Ranger pal on Mantel’s local contacts?”

  “I did. Royce says he’ll try to pull that information, plus the names of people who visited Mantel in prison. If he’s got anything, I should have it this afternoon.” He leaned closer to Blackie and lowered his voice. “They found another body. One of the witnesses, a young woman. The DA’s office was tipped to look in a gravel dump at a wharf on Buffalo Bayou.”