A Dead Red Oleander (The Dead Red Mystery series)

by RP Dahlke

  "What about Juan, he can see the children, can't he?"

  "Juan has a good job at the Gallo plant, but he thinks he needs to go out and drink beer with his amigos every night. I warned him. Now he thinks she'll come back if he doesn't give her money." She banged on the counter with a small fist. "I want to slap him silly, the selfish, stupid, foolish boy. I hope the judge gives her half his paycheck. Then he'll be too poor to party. But I will lose those babies."

  She put her apron up to her mouth to cover the cry about to escape. "Señor Bains, I have to go to Mass and pray to the baby Jesus and his sainted mother 'cause I'm gonna need all the help I can get."

  Juanita removed the apron, and in case I wanted to finish the dishes, handed it to me. Then she took her purse off the hook by the kitchen door where she'd left it every day for the last thirty-five years, and left.

  I sank into the chair across from my dad and watched him shovel the last of the burnt pancakes into his mouth. "Aren't you worried?"

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin. "About what?"

  "Haven't you been listening? What if she decides to move to Bakersfield?"

  He pushed back his chair and stood. "Time was, a man could get a decent breakfast around here without any major waterworks from the hired help, but I see that day is done and gone."

  "Well, I'm sorry you've been inconvenienced. But if you haven't figured it out yet, the one person who holds your little world together is having a bit of a crisis."

  Something passed across his faded blue eyes. It might have been regret of the harsh words, or maybe it was heartburn. My dad, never one to dwell on a problem he couldn't control, pressed me on another subject. "How's the new kid, the one Burdell Smith sent us?"

  "Dewey Treat? He's fine, but Mad Dog has issues. I'm not sure they're valid since Mad Dog tends to have a jealous streak. I think it's just a guy thing."

  "I'll be the judge of that. What's Mad Dog say?"

  "Oh, that Dewey's history has gaping holes in it. That he's not as knowledgeable as he seems, and last but not least, that for a seasoned pilot, he doesn't care to hang out at the bars after work." I was thinking of Juanita's son, how his careless ways may lose him his family. And quite selfishly, how my dad would be lost if Juanita quit work and moved to Bakersfield.

  "Yep, sounds like Mad Dog. We've only got a few weeks left on the books you've told him to start looking for work elsewhere, right?"

  "Yes, I did. And I have to say, he took the news graciously."

  "Good. Then I say Dewey Treat's résumé will do as is."

  "Are you going to miss it all, Dad?"

  "You run it now. I'm retired, remember? I let go of it all when I had that triple bypass."

  "Yeah, right. And you spent all your spare time second-guessing the weather man from your Barcalounger and messing with my work orders."

  My remarks sparked a quick twinkle in his eyes. "You needed the push now and again. Besides, I couldn't just leave my old customers out in the cold, just because I wasn't running the show anymore."

  "And now with Mrs. Hosmer to keep you company," I added cheerfully, "I don't have to worry I'm leaving behind an invalid when Caleb and I get married."

  The twinkle disappeared behind a scowl. "You don't need to worry about me and Mrs. Hosmer. None of your business anyway." He turned and thumped off for the stairs and the bedroom he never slept in anymore because he was always at Shirley Hosmer's.

  "Are you and Shirley on the outs again?"

  No answer. Nothing new there, either. They were a couple most of the time, but maybe not this week.

  I'd come home from New York, leaving behind a so-so career in the fashion industry and a disastrous marriage with a philandering, if handsome, Puerto Rican baseball player. And, because I was alone again and miserable, I'd fallen into another marriage, which lasted all of six months before I discovered I was in a repetitious and painful pattern. I swore I was done with men. But then Caleb Stone, my childhood friend and now Sheriff of Stanislaus County, showed me what a good man can do to change a woman's mind.

  All of which reminded me, I was supposed to meet him at Roxanne's Café later this afternoon. We had a wedding to plan in less than a month's time, then a much needed honeymoon. Nothing extravagant, as neither of us could afford a cruise to Hawaii, but we'd penciled in a week in Mendocino because the charming coastal village above San Francisco was always nice in the fall.

  I had already sent out announcements to friends and business associates for the informal wedding at Roxanne's Café. I'd also sent an invitation to my father's only remaining kinfolk, his aunt and my namesake, Great-Aunt Eula Mae Bains, and her late in life granddaughter, my second cousin, Pearlie Bains.

  "Dad?" I called up the stairs. "Did you hear back from Aunt Mae or Pearlie about the wedding?"

  Above my head, right where his room was, I heard something fall to the floor, a scuffle of feet, and then he came out to the landing and flapped his arms. "Don't!"

  "Don't what?" I grinned at the sight of my dad, one-half of his face lathered with shaving cream.

  "Don't say that name out loud," he said, pointing his old-fashioned straight-razor at me, "don't even think it! You do and you'll conjure up that old bat, sure as I'm standing here."

  I snickered. "Aunt Eula Mae would be so hurt to hear you say that."

  Outside, I heard the drone of an airplane engine. I cocked my head and listened. So did my dad.

  His shoulders sank. "Too late. They're already here."

  "How the heck would you know? It's only an airplane engine."

  "I'd know that sound anywhere. It's Aunt Mae's Cessna, which means your cousin Pearlie finally passed the test for her pilot's license. Goddammit, why didn't they just fly in on their brooms, and save me the avgas it'll cost me to get rid of them again."

  The sound of the engine changed as it banked to circle our house.

  I giggled, unable to resist the rhetorical question. "If you dislike her so much, why do you always fill her tank with your precious avgas?"

  "Because, as you like to remind me, that old bat is my aunt and I have to be nice to her. Since you sent the invitation, you can go out and welcome them."

  The pitch of the engine changed again as the airplane moved off to line up to a southerly approach for our restricted airstrip.

  I let the kitchen screen door slap behind me and stood on the back porch watching the blue and white Cessna 185 as it smoothly touched down. Then I went to greet the nearest thing I had to a mother in my Great-Aunt Eula Mae.

  I found some chocks for the wheels and tie-downs for the wings, and waited while my cousin shut down the aircraft.

  Seeing Mad Dog and Javier, I waved them over. "It's my Aunt Mae and Cousin Pearlie, and I suspect they will have copious amounts of luggage, so you two might as well make yourselves useful."

  While Javier checked that I'd done a decent job with the tie-downs, Mad Dog went to the passenger side and offered Aunt Mae a hand out.

  Aunt Mae took in the thick ginger curls, the broad shoulders, square jaw, and craggy good looks. With a quick lift of her brows she asked the silent question, "What's this?"

  When he jogged around the plane to help Pearlie disembark, I answered Aunt Mae with a roll of my eyes. Skillful charmer, opportunistic, self-absorbed, petty, narcissistic, and cheap. She nodded. Message received. Not that Aunt Mae would interfere if Pearlie took a shine to Mad Dog, since we all knew Pearlie was a terrible flirt. But Pearlie was also Aunt Mae's only heir, so anything beyond a mild flirtation would require an in-depth security check.

  Since we hadn't seen each other in over five years, Aunt Mae opened her arms, fully expecting me to climb in. And I did, because for one, we were the same height, and for another, there was never any doubt that my great-aunt really loved me, and bereft of a mother at age eleven, I hadn't been all that easy to love.

  Cousin Pearlie was another matter. By the time she came to live with her grandmother, I was no longer a summer visitor to the ranch in Tex
as. But even after all these years there still remained enough of that brittle jealousy in my cousin's baby-blues for me to conclude that best friends was not on the menu.

  Aunt Mae and I walked ahead, while Pearlie kept pace with Mad Dog, who'd insisted he could carry all four suitcases. I resisted the urge to turn and see if Pearlie had taken advantage of occupied hands to feel Mad Dog's biceps.

  Peppering him with questions about flying cropdusters, she didn't seem to get that he couldn't talk and tote at the same time. I could hear Pearlie's breathy voice exclaiming how strong Mad Dog must be, able to carry all those suitcases. "I had to put it on a scale for the trip. Want to bet how much it weighs?"

  I heard Mad Dog mumbling about the possibility that she had packed an elephant or two, and then Pearlie's quick laughter. An irrepressible smile twitched at Aunt Mae's lips. Where my pilot and her granddaughter were concerned, they were on their own.

  Aunt Mae and I kept apace, our long legs striding for the house, chatting about her three-day detour to Las Vegas, how much she won at the slots, and how much Pearlie had dropped on an unfortunate bet in a high-stakes game of Texas Hold'em. On any given day, Aunt Mae's cunning and quick wit won two to one against her granddaughter. But that didn't keep Pearlie from trying. Whether from a genetic obstinacy, or born out of her childhood deprivations, Pearlie loved to gamble. They were as likely to host a Friday night game of poker as place the odd bet on how many Volkswagens were produced in 1975. Thank God, it missed that end of my genetic pool. Holding together a cropdusting business was, in the best of times, a gamble all by itself.

  <><><><>

  Clustered around the kitchen table, we talked menus for the post-wedding dinner. Aunt Mae insisted on flying in the beef, her treat, Bains' Ranch filet mignons. She also tried to muscle her cook into the deal, but I held to our original plan. Roxanne's husband, Leon, would have his feathers bent if he were shoved out of his own kitchen for an outsider.

  Besides, if I knew Aunt Mae, her cook would be honor bound to stick those annoying little wooden signs with her motto, Bains' Best, in the center of each cut.

  Pearlie, all aflutter at the idea of wedding plans, was pushing for a five-layer, pink-iced butter cream wedding cake.

  I was thankful to be able to say that the cake was a done deal. It would be two large chocolate pan cakes with white frosting and the words Why me? scrawled across the top in red. It was our gift from one of the regulars at Roxanne's and winner of the café's pool for when, as opposed to if, Caleb Stone and I got hitched.

  Cousin Pearlie, being the pragmatic sort, accepted defeat on the subject of a pink wedding cake, but spent the next half-hour breathily rhapsodizing on the subject of pink as an appropriate color for my third wedding. "I see pale pink Chanel, a pill-box hat and veil. It's your look, Lalla. Like Jacqueline Kennedy would wear, you know? You certainly have the figure for it."

  In other words, tall and skinny whereas Pearlie thought of herself as the Marilyn Monroe type, only with more boobs and bigger thighs.

  "They have a Neiman Marcus in San Francisco, don't they?" As if San Francisco was a quaint little town that might not have a Needless Markup as good as Dallas.

  I nixed that one, which only backtracked her to the pink wedding cake. I stopped her as she was pulling out her credit card to call her impresario of cakes, the one she kept on retainer for her own, as-yet-to-happen, wedding. Pearlie was, if nothing else, optimistic.

  "Alrighty," I said, looking at my watch. "Guess that about covers it."

  "Not quite, sugah." Aunt Mae consulted her notes. "There's the honeymoon to consider. Now, Pearlie and I were thinking…."

  I stared longingly at the notebook. It was a leather-bound flip-top with lined pages that could easily be torn out, the kind police used to interview witnesses and suspects, the kind I carried until mine was stolen when someone hit me over the head and knocked me out, leaving me for dead.

  "Lalla?" My Aunt Mae and cousin Pearlie were staring.

  "You're a mile away, Lalla Bains," Pearlie said with a note of envy in her voice. "Are you thinking about your honeymoon already?"

  With a face clear of guilty musings, I could honestly say, "Absolutely not."

  Chapter Four:

  I had my head on Caleb's bare chest, my naked skin as close to his as the molecules would allow. With the shades drawn tight against the world, we happily ignored the fact that there were people with jobs and commitments to keep. I told him about Aunt Mae and Cousin Pearlie's attempts to hijack our wedding.

  "So," he said, fingers drifting lightly and sending goose bumps skittering across my skin, "you managed to dodge another bullet, but is your dad happy with those two staying at the ranch?"

  "You forget, Juanita's in Bakersfield begging her daughter-in-law for some grandmother time."

  "Oh."

  "Cousin Pearlie baked him one of her carrot cakes and I haven't heard another word about how I should find them a hotel in town."

  He shifted to his side so that he could face me. "Then you're staying here until the wedding?"

  "Can't. We've still got a season to wrap up, most of which will be finished next week. Wedding plans are all set and the local invites are out. After the wedding, you won't be able to get rid of me." That seemed to please him, but I could tell he was disappointed I wasn't staying.

  "What about your crew—weren't you planning some kind of end-of-business party?"

  "Oh, crap! I knew I was forgetting something. I haven't done a thing about it. I should though, shouldn't I? I mean, some of these guys have been with us for years, and there're all those clients and neighbors, not to mention chemical salesmen. Wait … Aunt Mae and Pearlie. It'll give them something to do, instead of trying to fit me into a pink wedding suit from Needless Markup."

  "Where would you hold a party for that many people?"

  "We'll have it at the ranch. This time of year will be perfect weather for it. Aunt Mae has been dying to send us some of her beef. We'll dig a fire pit, rig up a spit for a side of beef, drink beer, sit around, and tell lies about all the fun we've had over the years."

  "Sounds good to me."

  And with that, another deal was sealed.

  <><><><>

  The day of the party, I went to town with Aunt Mae's shopping list, then I stopped by Roxanne's.

  Roxanne's Truck Café sits on a wide, dusty lot next to Hwy 99, close enough to an on-ramp to keep it busy with truckers and traffic 24/7. A year ago, everyone thought she and Leon were going to sell it to one of those big truck stops, but when that deal fell through we all expelled a big sigh of relief. Roxanne's is a fixture in this small farming community and we liked our fixtures to stay the same. Though she holds a PhD in psychology, Roxanne quit her job with the state and now dispenses advice from behind a counter.

  I rolled through the café, passing out the handful of flyers I'd brought for the barbeque tonight and finally settled on my stool at the counter.

  "Hey, girl," Roxanne said, topping off my coffee.

  I held up the last flyer. "Still don't think you and Leon can get away tonight? You really should meet my great-aunt Mae and Cousin Pearlie before the wedding."

  "Not with the wedding so close."

  With their son still in college I knew every dime counted, but though I'd offered to pay for taking over their establishment for the wedding party, both Roxanne and Leon insisted that this was their gift to me and Caleb.

  "I understand," I said. "My aunt Mae offered to fly in some of her filet mignon beef for the wedding dinner."

  "Oh, no!" she said, holding up her hands in mock horror. "We're all set for baloney roll-ups."

  "If you would let me and Caleb pay for the food—"

  "Oh, please, Lalla. I'm just foolin' with you. We planned on barbequed chicken, but your great-aunt's Texas beef filets?" She rubbed her big brown hands together. "How much do you think she'd be willing to send?"

  "I gave her the list of people who had responded and she said no problem, so if
it's okay with you—"

  Roxanne chuckled and called Leon out of the kitchen.

  He grinned. "Center cut, Texas grass-fed beef? You bet!"

  "Gee," I said, "if things keep going this well, maybe I can relax and quit worrying that this wedding thing is going to be the kind where the bride gets all stressed out from the back-biting, hair-pulling, manipulative family, and friend thing."

  Roxanne looked at me sideways. "You don't have to worry about me, sweetpea. I'll make sure Leon doesn't burn them and we'll do just fine."

  "Oh, thanks, Roxy," I said, grateful my friends weren't insulted.

  "So," she asked, "how are your dad and his Texas relatives getting along?"

  "He didn't want me to invite them, but I'm glad I did. My great-aunt had a lot to do with my formative years. She gave me my first summer job feeding cattle and mucking out horse stalls. Hated every minute of it."

  "Your great-aunt starved and worked you half to death, did she?"

  "Actually, I learned how to ride, shoot, and round up yearlings. I also went on hayrides, turkey shoots, and barn dances. But at sixteen—well, they were all a bunch of hicks and hayseeds, and I thought I should be home where I had no friends, no dates for the prom, and no prospects, either. I must've been thirty before I realized it was the best of my childhood."

  "But you're not so crazy about the cousin?"

  I held my palm out and let it seesaw. "Pearlie and I are polite to each other when we need to be, and avoid each other when we can."

  "Is she married?"

  "Never been, but not for trying. Aunt Mae says she hasn't had much luck with men."

  "Think that's genetic?"

  "What?"

  "Wha'd'ya you think I'm talking about, silly."

  "You mean, me and my two failed marriages? I don't know, but Aunt Mae's four—or has it been five—marriages have made her a tad protective of her granddaughter. Pearlie doesn't have to take it. She can run—like I did."