The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

  They left their vehicles parked on Laramie, and he and the others—Blackie, Jocko, and Carlos—climbed the chain-link fence and picked their way through the rows of auto salvage to the metal building where Sally was being held. While McQuaid and Blackie stationed themselves where they could monitor the back door, Jocko and Carlos went around to the front. After a moment, McQuaid heard the sudden crash of breaking glass, then the thump-thump of the M79s. From the inside came several surprised yells, Sally’s screams, and—as the tear gas filled the structure—some high-velocity cursing.

  “Police!” Carlos yelled through the broken front window. “Out the back door, no weapons, hands over your head. Now!”

  Jocko stayed out front, lobbing more CS into the building and keeping an eye on the front door in case somebody thought he had a better idea. Carlos ran around to the north side and skidded in beside McQuaid. After a couple of minutes the rear door was flung open, and a dark-haired man in a dirty red T-shirt stumbled out, coughing, hands clasped over his head. It was Romeo. In thirty seconds, Carlos had him cuffed and secured to a junked auto. One down, two to go.

  The next one out was Lester McGown, blinded by the tear gas and weeping. He tripped and fell before he got more than a couple of yards beyond the door and lay facedown as Carlos cuffed him. Two down, one to go. Mantel was still in the building—with Sally.

  Then, wearing tear-gas masks and carrying weapons, McQuaid and Jocko broke in through the front door, armed. By this time, Mantel couldn’t see, but he fired off a couple of wild shots anyway. McQuaid raised his gun, thinking Five dead who would be alive if I’d made a different choice, and caught Mantel as he hunched over a jammed gun.

  But when he fired, he made the same damn choice again and fired at the gun in Mantel’s hand. A split second later, Jocko brought the man down with a bullet to the thigh. McQuaid snatched up Sally, bound and still screaming, flung her over his shoulder, and pushed out through the rear door.

  The mop-up took much longer than the takedown. Blackie called 911 for Mantel, who was bleeding badly, while Carlos called his boss to report that he and Jocko had taken custody of Max Mantel and request a crime-scene team. Incredulous, Roper at first refused to believe him, but when Carlos sent him a cell-phone photo of the fugitive, propped up against a wrecked SUV, he had to accept the fact. Jocko happily held a gun on the two cuffed prisoners while McQuaid found a hose and helped Sally wash her face. Then he called Harry Royce and told him they had taken Mantel.

  Royce didn’t believe it, either, especially since he thought Mantel was cornered in a lumber warehouse in Houston. “You and who else?” he demanded.

  “Blackie Blackwell and a couple of badges from San Antonio Homicide,” McQuaid said. “You didn’t get my text?”

  “I got it.” Royce sounded disgruntled. “It was so weird that I figured you were off on another of your wild goose chases.”

  “We were.” McQuaid raised his voice as an ambulance pulled into the salvage yard, siren blaring and lights flashing. “Bagged us some geese, too. Mantel’s been shot—probably a shattered femur. The San Antonio cops will maintain custody at the hospital, but you’ll probably want to send somebody to ferry him back to Huntsville.” A squad car slid to a stop with one last, loud burp of the siren. “Lester McGown and Joe Romeo were with him when we picked him up,” McQuaid added. “They’re on their way to SAPD headquarters on South Santa Rosa. Houston will want to send somebody to question them. They may have been involved with the killings over there—McGown, anyway.”

  Royce was sputtering.

  McQuaid grinned. “That’s what’s wrong with us indies. We never know when to quit.” He paused. “By the way, SAPD will be tacking on several more charges. The most significant: kidnapping. Mantel and McGown picked up a hostage.”

  “A hostage?” Royce asked, startled. “Who? How did you—”

  “My ex-wife,” McQuaid said. “I toyed with the idea of letting Mantel keep her. I was kinda hoping maybe he’d take her to Mexico with him and lose her down there somewhere. But she’s my kid’s mother, and I was afraid maybe Brian would hold it against me.”

  Royce gobbled something about wanting to debrief him and McQuaid said, “Yeah, sure. Later. It’s been a long day. I’m going home.” He clicked off the call and went to watch the EMS bundle Mantel onto the gurney and shove him into the ambulance.

  He didn’t feel like celebrating. There were still five dead.

  And this one was alive.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was the middle of Saturday afternoon when Ruby pulled into the driveway of our house on Limekiln Road and turned off the ignition. “How are you feeling?” she asked me.

  “Not bad,” I said evasively. Actually, my shoulders hurt, the goose egg on the side of my head was aching, and my head was itchy where my hair had been singed. I was a mess. I was glad that McQuaid wasn’t here—at least, I didn’t see his truck.

  I frowned. Whose was that beat-up red Ford Fiesta parked in the drive? It looked familiar, but—

  “Come on, sweetie,” Ruby said. “I’ll help you get settled.”

  “Sally,” I said, staring at the car. “That’s Sally’s car.” I could hear my voice rising. “What the devil is she doing here?” I have a short fuse where McQuaid’s first wife is concerned, especially after all we’ve been through with her. And today, of all days, I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Oh, damn,” Ruby said softly. She pressed her lips together and reached for my hand. “Listen, China, you don’t have to deal with her today. Why don’t you come home with me? You can get in the bathtub while I fix us both a nice Bloody Mary and then we can just relax for the rest of the day.”

  “No. Thank you, but no.” I sighed and reached for the door handle. “I might as well get this over with. I just don’t understand why she’s here. And why, if she’s here, McQuaid isn’t. She’s his problem, really, not mine.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true, since Sally had definitely proved to be my problem in the past. I opened the door and got out, then pulled my duffel bag out of the backseat, along with the sack containing the bottles of Last Chance wine and olive oil I’d been given.

  Ruby turned off her engine. “Well, then, I’ll come in and help you—”

  “Bless you,” I said. “I really appreciate it, but there’s no point in both of us getting tied into knots.” Ruby doesn’t like Sally any better than I do. “I’ll simply ignore her. My clothes smell like smoke and I smell worse. I’m planning to jump in the shower and do an olive oil treatment on my hair before McQuaid gets home. Sally can fend for herself.”

  “Okay, dear,” Ruby said, and turned the key in the ignition. “I’m going to drop in at the shops to touch base with Cass. I’ll see you Monday. But you call me if you need me, you hear?”

  “I will,” I said. “And don’t forget to let Pete know that McQuaid and I are expecting you to bring him to dinner as soon as you’re both available.”

  She gave me one of her great Ruby smiles and drove off. A few minutes later, I was standing in my kitchen, which I had left all neat and tidy. But it wasn’t tidy now.

  I gasped and my eyes widened. There was a blue duffel bag and a woman’s purse on the floor. Two of the chairs had been tipped over, and cans and boxes were scattered across the pantry floor. On the counter, the knife rack had been knocked over and the knives were lying every which way. In the sink, my grandmother’s favorite saucer was broken in a gazillion pieces. My flour canister had been knocked over, the lid had come off, and flour was scattered across the floor. Large dark prints of a man’s boot and smaller basset-paw prints and even smaller cat-paw prints tracked through the white flour and around the table and—now white—tracked through the door and into the hall. Winchester was huddled in his basket. There was no sign of Caitie’s cat.

  I dropped my gear and stood, still trying to take it all in. Was that Sally’s duffel? Her purse
? I bent over, pulled out a wallet, and flipped it open. Yes, bad-penny Sally had turned up again—and this time, she had made a total mess of my nice, clean kitchen.

  Furious, I raised my voice. “Sally? Sally, what the hell is going on here?”

  The only answer was a plaintive whine, and Winchester clambered out of his basket. His paws and his nose and the tips of his ears were white with flour.

  “Oh, Winnie,” I crooned, “you poor doggie!” and hurried to give him some fresh water. “Tell me what happened,” I said, as he slurped thirstily. But of course he couldn’t. All he could do was wag his tail to tell me how grateful he was that a grownup with some sense had finally showed up to take charge of things.

  “Sally?” I called again, but there was still no answer. I followed the floury footprints into the dining room, where with a sudden heart-stopping stab of fear I saw a bloody handprint on the wall, and my butcher knife on the floor, and more white footprints—a man’s work boots, they looked like—leading to the French doors, and a white tennis shoe on the floor. A woman’s tennis shoe.

  “Sally!” I cried. I flung the doors open and ran out onto the brick patio—just in time to see McQuaid’s truck pulling up the driveway.

  • • •

  FIRST things first.

  It turned out that McQuaid was as badly in need of a shower and change of clothes as I was, so we took care of that little bit of personal business first. Together. Which might have led to a nice little interlude in the bedroom if my shoulders hadn’t been blistered.

  “Sunburn,” I said, to avoid a lengthy explanation.

  “Poor you,” McQuaid said. “Well, then, later. When you’re feeling better.” He kissed me again.

  Then we went downstairs to the kitchen, where we did a quick cleanup of the mess on the floor. Then McQuaid made us a couple of sandwiches and heated some leftover vegetable soup while I poured us each a glass of Last Chance wine.

  While we worked, McQuaid told me his story: how Sally had been ambushed and kidnapped right here in my kitchen; what he had learned from Candy at McGown’s single-wide trailer in New Braunfels; and how events had unfolded at Romeo’s Wrecking Yard in San Antonio—all to the accompaniment of my astonished gasps and little cries. Finally, the story was done. Almost.

  “Where is Sally now?” I asked, pouring us both another glass of wine. “And why was she trying to find a hideout in the first place?”

  “She’s with my folks in Seguin.” He sounded disgusted. “It turns out that she was on the lam from a bill collector—you know Sally. Or rather, Juanita. She says it was Juanita who bought all those clothes. Anyway, this guy was giving her a really hard time. She was trying to get away from him.”

  “What’s she going to do now?”

  “I hope I was able to talk some sense into her,” McQuaid said wearily. “But with Sally, you never know. There are limits to how far debt collectors can go, and sometimes they cross the line. It sounded to me like this one was harassing her. I told her to go home and call the hotline at the Office of Consumer Credit Collection. They’ll tell her how to handle it.”

  I looked around the kitchen. “But how did she end up here?”

  He made a face. “When she couldn’t reach me, she tried to get Brian to let her stay with him for a while. Brian told her that wouldn’t work out, and suggested that she come here. That’s what she did—without asking.”

  “And Mantel came here looking for you?”

  “Not exactly. He was looking for my wife.” McQuaid turned his wineglass in his fingers. “He wanted bait—to lure me. He thought Sally was you.”

  I stared at him. “But I thought you were—”

  “You’re right. I thought I would be the bait. Didn’t work out that way.” McQuaid was still looking pretty smug, though. “However, it did all work out in the end. Mantel is under guard at the hospital and as soon as he’s released, they’ll be taking him back to Huntsville. McGown and Romeo are being questioned by Houston Homicide and will be charged in the murders there as soon as the DA’s office sees the evidence.” He chuckled. “While all this was going down, all I could think of was how glad I was that Caitie was with the folks and that you were safe out there on that ranch, where nothing bad could happen to you.”

  “Ah,” I said thoughtfully, and rubbed the back of my hair, still damp from the shower.

  “I was meaning to ask you,” McQuaid said. “What did you do to your hair? It looks . . . different.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Well, of course,” he said.

  But then, when I had told him, all he could do was shake his head. “So it wasn’t sunburn.”

  “No,” I said. “I did a stupid thing. But I’m glad I did it. Now, Maddie knows the truth about her birth mother. And there’ll be no question about her inheritance.”

  He shook his head again. “I will never understand,” he muttered, “how you and Ruby manage to get yourselves into such trouble.”

  “Listen to the pot calling the kettle black,” I retorted.

  He eyed me. “Any idea what’s going to happen with the arson investigation?”

  “Too soon to tell. It’ll probably be a week or so before Tom Sullivan comes up with enough forensic evidence to make a case.” I got up to refill our soup bowls. “Maybe Pete—he’s Ruby’s new heartthrob—will have some news for us when he comes for dinner.”

  McQuaid looked down. “Speaking of news,” he said, “I dropped in at Brian’s when I was in Austin yesterday. And . . .” He paused.

  “And?” I prompted. “I hope he likes his new roommate.”

  “I’m pretty sure he does,” McQuaid said quietly. He lifted his eyes to mine. “Her name is Casey.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That is news.”

  McQuaid reached for my hand. “There’s more,” he said, and told me.

  I sat there for a moment, taking it in. And then I said, “We’ll have to have them for dinner. How about next weekend? I’ll email Brian and invite them.”

  McQuaid cocked his head. “I’m glad you’re okay with it. I have to confess that it took me a bit to get used to the idea.”

  I thought of everything that had happened over the past couple of days, about the many ways that love could go wrong, and how good it felt when love was right. I smiled.

  “Of course I’m okay,” I said. “Brian just needs to know that his folks love him and back him all the way, whatever his choices. He can work out the rest on his own.”

  McQuaid picked up my hand and kissed it. Then he glanced at his watch. “Omigod, look at the time! I’m supposed to be at the park, helping Blackie with the Lion’s Club barbecue!”

  Life goes on.

  • • •

  IT was two weeks before we could get the gang out to our house for a Saturday night supper under the live oak trees in the backyard. Caitie covered the picnic table with a yellow cloth, filled a red ceramic pitcher with wildflowers and put it in the middle of the table, then set eight places with our favorite plastic picnic plates and yellow paper napkins. Ruby brought an old-fashioned potato salad. Caitie proudly deviled a dozen of her girls’ largest and most beautiful eggs. I made a pot of baked beans and baked a rosemary focaccia, my favorite herb flatbread. McQuaid grilled three chickens (not Caitie’s girls, of course). Cass brought dessert: a sumptuous apple-pecan crisp made with olive oil. Pete brought several bottles of Last Chance wine and a very nice bottle of Last Chance olive oil.

  And Brian brought Casey.

  I had to agree with McQuaid: she was a very pretty girl, her dark hair sleekly cornrowed, her chocolate skin flawless, her large brown eyes expressive. She was athletic—she and Brian set up the volleyball net in the yard and she proceeded to whip the daylights out of him. And she was doing well, she told me, in her pre-med studies.

  “I want to be a GP
, not a specialist,” she said, in her soft Louisiana accent. “I’m going back home and working with my people.”

  Brian looked smitten, and confided to me that he’d been nervous about bringing her to the picnic and was relieved that everybody was so welcoming.

  “Of course we are,” I said. “Your friends are our friends, always.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said, and my heart warmed.

  As it turned out, Pete did have news, and plenty of it. Sofia had recovered and, after several days in the hospital, was back at the Last Chance, where Maddie had moved her into the ranch house and given her Eliza’s bedroom. Sofia had reported to the sheriff that Boyd had come to visit her the night of the fire. She’d told him that Maddie was Eliza’s daughter and that marriage between them was impossible. To prove it, she had showed him Maddie’s birth certificate. Furious, he had stormed out of the cabin. That was the last she had seen of him.

  With this information, the sheriff named Boyd a suspect in the arson investigation, and when the results of the forensic analysis revealed his DNA on the jeans used to start the fire, he was charged with attempted murder and arson. He was in jail, with a bail hearing scheduled for the next week.

  “And Maddie?” I asked. “What’s happening with her appeal to the probate judge’s ruling?”

  Pete chuckled. “Tinker Tyson took one look at the birth certificate you rescued from the fire and reversed himself. Maddie is now the undisputed owner of the Last Chance Olive Ranch.”

  “Do you suppose,” Ruby wondered, “that Maddie and Chet will get together at last?”

  With a laugh, Pete cocked his head. “Chet’s already made his move. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear an announcement any day now.”

  That was all I needed to know. I lifted my glass.

  “Here’s to the Last Chance.” I caught McQuaid’s eye and smiled. “To those who take chances.” I glanced around the table. “And to family and good friends.”

  “To family and good friends,” we all said, and raised our glasses.