Rosemary Remembered - China Bayles 04

by Susan Wittig Albert

  "You heard what you dad said, Brian. You and I have to stick together until he comes back."

  "Well, then," Brian said, "you could take Arnold and me to the convention. That way, we'd be together."

  Arnold's face was earnest under his formidable Klingon forehead. "There'll be plenty of other mundanes there, so you won't feel too weird."

  I shook my head. "You heard your dad, Brian. If I said you could go, your father would kill me." Probably not, but it took me off the hook.

  Brian gave a heavy sigh. "Well, then, can Arnold come to the shop with us tomorrow?"

  I saved my file, turned off the computer, and stood up. "I'm sorry to keep saying I'm sorry, but the shop is a business."

  There was the expected whine. "But China—"

  I offered the expected compromise. "Why don't you stay for supper and spend the night, Arnold?"

  The boys agreed as long as they could fix armadillo burgers (the recipe for which will definitely not appear in the newsletter). The compromise earned me a relatively pleasant evening, the high point occuring when Arnold came into the kitchen with a grimace of pain on his face and a huge nail through his finger. I had only to glance at it to realize that it must hurt like hell.

  "Omigod!" I babbled. "How did you do that?" Without waiting for an answer, I grabbed my purse. "Come on, Arnold. We've got to get you to the emergency room! Oh, lord, where are my car keys? Brian, have you seen my car keys? Your dad didn't drive off with them, did he? Sit down, Arnold, while I try to find — "

  My ballooning panic was punctured by a loud chorus of guffaws. The nail turned out to be one of those mailorder gotchas, stuck into a flesh-colored plastic sleeve that

  fitted on the finger. With their usual warped adolescent humor, Brian and Arnold thought my alarm was hilarious. When I calmed down and stopped shouting, we made popcorn and hot chocolate and they went to bed happy.

  I sat down with a before-bed brandy and thought how little I knew about the psychology of preadolescent males. My mind went to McQuaid and what happened when he strapped on his gun, and I had to admit that I didn't know very much about male psychology, period. I went to bed remembering our lovemaking earlier that day.

  The other China notwithstanding, it wasn't a cliche. I did miss him.

  Tuesday was more trying. Brian insisted on bringing Einstein to the shop; I, feeling guilty for refusing to admit Arnold, finally agreed. When Brian and Einstein and I got there, the air conditioner was in pieces, a battalion of ants had invaded the former kitchen, and the neighbor's dachshund had dug up my carefully nurtured lemon balm for the second time in a week. I sent Brian out to annoy Harold, bagged the thyme that had been drying in the dehydrator, and replanted and reassured the lemon balm (dropping a chickenwire bonnet over it for extra defense). Then I sprayed the kitchen floor with Raid and flung the doors and windows open to dispel the aromatic evidence of my nonherbal, nonenviromentally-sensitive offense against the ants. When Brian got bored with bugging Harold, he and Einstein came in and bugged customers until 1 assigned him the busywork of inventorying the bookshelf, after which he bugged me with questions about how to write things down.

  For a while, it got mostly quiet. Brian crouched on the floor, muttering titles and numbers over a yellow legal tablet. Ruby opened at ten, as usual, and there was a constant flow of traffic in the shop, which cheered me considerably. The more people there are, the merrier I am when I check out the register at the end of the day.

  At eleven-thirty I left Brian counting cookbooks and went into The Crystal Cave to check with Ruby about lunch. We usually take it in shifts, one of us watching the stores while the other one eats. Today she was costumed in a gauzy red broomstick skirt, a red tunic embroidered with goddess figures, and red satin ballet slippers with ribbon ties. Ruby always looks right at home in the Cave, which is stocked with crystal balls, incense burners in the shape of pregnant goddesses, Tibetan prayer flags, South American rainsticks, and books on Wicca, women's spirituality, alternative medicine, tai chi, meditation, and astrology. Ruby is a wild, wacky, wonderful person who lives on the lunatic fringe, a little far out for Pecan Springs — and yet she was born here. Sometimes these things are difficult to understand.

  It was my first chance to update Ruby on the discovery of the gun and the fingerprints, Rosemary's pregnancy, McQuaid's trip to South Padre, and Harold's confident prediction that the air conditioner would be functioning by three that afternoon. She was asking whether we should say prayers to the air conditioner goddess when Sheila Dawson came in. She was wearing elegant beige slacks, an ivory silk blouse with pearls, and a creamy white jacket.

  "I just came from talking to Bubba," she said without preamble. "The autopsy report on Rosemary is back."

  "What'd it say?" Ruby asked, putting down the smudge pot she was holding.

  "The bullet entered the left lower maxilla and exited the lower right parietal, just above the temporal." This from a woman in a silk blouse and pearls.

  Ruby gave her a questioning look.

  "In the lower left cheek and out on the right side just above the ear," I explained gently.

  Ruby put her hand to her cheek. "Oh," she said in a small voice.

  "Sounds like death would have been instantaneous," I said.

  Sheila nodded. "That's what the Bexar County ME thought, too." "What time?"

  "Bubba says she picked up the furniture at seven, and stopped for fried chicken at the KFC on Buchanan Street. From the stomach contents, the ME says she was killed no later than ten."

  "Then the nine-thirty gunshot report pins it down pretty well."

  "Yeah. But there's more. She wasn't pregnant."

  Ruby shook her head sadly. "She must have had an abortion."

  "Maybe she had a miscarriage," I said. "Or she lied. There's more than one way not to be pregnant."

  Brian spoke from the doorway. "Is somebody pregnant?" He looked at me, interested. Einstein sat on his shoulder, his tongue flickering. "Did Dad make you pregnant, China?"

  "No," I said coloring. Will I ever get used to the forth -rightness of eleven-year-olds? "There's another box of books in the storeroom," I added hastily. "Why don't you go write down all the titles? When you're done, we'll get some lunch."

  "It'd be okay if you were pregnant," he said. "As long as it was a boy." With that cheerful observation, he disappeared.

  "I'm too old for this," I said.

  Ruby sighed. "Why didn't she tell us she was having an abortion? We might have been able to help. You know, support her."

  "She didn't tell us because we hardly knew her," I said crossly. "God, Ruby, just because we're women, it doesn't mean we have to bare the secrets of our souls to every casual acquaintance."

  Ruby looked hurt. "Well, I just thought — " She paused reflectively. "I guess you're right," she said after a minute. "I mean, it's pretty easy to assume you know a lot about somebody, when the actual truth of the matter is that you don't know much more than they tell you or you figure out from looking at them or listening to them. I mean . . ." Her voice trailed off and she looked from one to the other of us. "Don't you think so?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I was still getting used to the idea that she was pregnant. Rosemary didn't exactly strike me as the kind of person who went in for unsafe sex."

  "I wondered that when she told me," Sheila said thoughtfully. "Here she was, all business, bawling me out because I hadn't kept track of my travel, and she'd forgotten her pill. She's the last person you'd think would get pregnant by accident."

  "Do we know enough to say that?" I asked. "We don't know what she was really like, under all that professional stuff."

  Ruby was pacing, her gauzy red skirt billowing around her legs. "Maybe it wasn't Jeff Clark's baby," she said. "Maybe it was Robbins's baby, and he found out she got an abortion and shot her. Or maybe he was beating up on her and there was a struggle and — "

  "The only hard evidence points to Jeff Clark. His prints were all over the gun."

 
Ruby stopped pacing. "I don't understand that. Jeff

  has a temper, but he's not that kind of person, whereas the ex-husband — "

  "It's Ondine I want to hear about," Sheila said impatiently. "How did she know about the gun. Ruby?"

  "Ondine didn't know about the gun," Ruby corrected her. "It was La Que Sabe. You see," she added earnestly, "Ondine is only a channel. The entity who comes through is called La Que Sabe. That's because she knows —"

  "You and Ondine are so full of shit, Ruby," Sheila said. "How can you possibly believe that ridiculous New Age garbage?"

  Ruby gave Sheila a pitying look. "Face it, Smart Cookie. There are more things in heaven and earth than — "

  "Quoting Shakespeare doesn't prove anything," Sheila said disgustedly. "This is reality we're talking about, not something some dead poet dreamed up. Listen here, Ruby. I've got some questions for Ondine, and I want answers."

  "It's too late. She's left already. She went to Austin to stay overnight with a friend. She's driving back to California tomorrow."

  Sheila gave Ruby an accusatory scowl. "She shouldn't have been allowed to leave town."

  Ruby was indignant. "Oh, come on. Sheila! You can't think Ondine had anything to do with — "

  I intervened hastily. "What are we doing about lunch?"

  There was a silence as Ruby and Sheila traded wary looks, trying to decide whether they were really angry with one another, or just momentarily pissed off.

  "How about Bean's Bar and Grill?" Ruby said finally. "I'm in the mood for fajitas."

  "We need to split up," I reminded her. "Somebody has to watch the stores. Brian and I could go across the street to Maggie's and get a quick soup and salad, and then you and Sheila could go to Bean's." Maybe they'd work out their disagreement over a beer.

  "I need to get back to work," Sheila said shortly. Ruby looked hurt, but she only gave a careless shrug.

  "I'd rather go to McDonald's," Brian put in from the doorway.

  I turned to face him. "How long have you been listening?"

  "Long enough to know that the woman who isn't pregnant is the woman who got shot. Do you 'spose she was dealing Mexican dope? Maybe Dad's working undercover for the Feds."

  I was still trying to come up with an answer when he added, "Oh, by the way, there's an old lady with blue hair hangin' around over here. She wants to know if you're goin' to come and wait on customers, or does she have to give her money to me and my lizard."

  I am really too old for this.

  Chapter Eight

  To summon minor devils, burn incense made up of parsley root, coriander, nightshade, hemlock, black poppy juice, sandalwood, and henbane.

  A 16th-century formula, cited in Herbs & Things: Jeanne Rose's Herbal, by Jeanne Rose

  I intended to spend Tuesday evening finishing the newsletter, but things didn't work out that way. I was checking out the register at closing time and feeling grateful to Harold for getting the air conditioner running again, when Ruby stuck her head through the door.

  "Ondine just called," she said. "She wants you and Sheila to come over this evening."

  "I thought Ondine went to Austin," I said, jotting the sales figure in the ledger. For a July day that had been hot as a two-dollar pistol, sales had been pretty good.

  "She did go to Austin. But this afternoon, La Que Sabe told her to drive back here. Actually, it's La Que Sabe who wants you to come tonight." Ruby sounded uncomfortable. "She's got something to say about Rosemary's murder."

  I rolled my eyes.

  "She dd get it right about the gun, China," Ruby pointed out, sounding injured.

  I thought about this for a moment. I wasn't keen on consulting La Que Sabe, but Ruby was right. She had zeroed in on the gun. II Ondine had anything else to oiter, it wouldn't be the first time a psychic had helped with a murder investigation.

  There was Lyle Biggs, for instance, who was struck by lightning during a golf game in 1968 and discovered shortly thereafter that the jolt had gifted him with an unusual ability. He solved a 1982 Harris County murder after the victim's brother brought him a picture of the dead man and a shoe that had belonged to him. Biggs visualized the circumstances of the man's death and the location of the body, which led to the discovery of a grave in a muddy field. The killer turned out to be a neighbor who had already passed a polygraph administered by Houston police. And there's Peggy Simmons, who was picking coin in her Kansas garden when she was hit by a bolt of lightning. The psychic insights awakened by this cosmic intervention are guided by a spirit she calls Samuel. Consulted by baffled police on a missing persons case, Samuel led them unerringly to the mutilated victim, stabbed to death by her boylriend. I reminded myself that the world is lull of enigmas. La Que Sabe might Le another Samuel.

  "I can't speak for Sheila, but I'll come,'' I told Ruby. "I've got to think of something to do about Brian, though. 1 can't leave him home by himself.''

  "Sheila will be there," Ruby said. "If it were only me, I'd tell you to bring Brian along. But I don't know how La Que Sabe feels about kids. She might not come through if he was there." She paused, thinking. "Maybe Maggie could baby-sit for an hour or so."

  Brian came in from the garden carrying enough sage for a couple of big wreaths. Sage grows so fast here that I make four or five cuttings a year.

  I took the sage. I'd hang it for drying tomorrow. "What would you say," I said brightly, "to spending an hour at Maggie's house tonight? You know, the woman who runs the restaurant across the street?" McQuaid couldn't object to my leaving Brian with an ex-nun, for heaven's sake. Anyway, Jacoby hadn't been heard from. The threat was probably a figment of McQuaid's imagination.

  But Brian saw through my subterfuge in a flash. "I'm eleven," he said indignantly. "Baby-sitters are for babies, not for me."

  I turned to Ruby. "You're a mom. How would you handle this?" Ruby is a mom twice over. One daughter, Shannon, is a junior at UT. The other. Amy, is a graduate student in journalism at CTSU. Therein lies a tale, too long to tell at the moment.

  "Girls are easier to raise than boys," Ruby said. "Anyway, I had mine before children's rights. Back then, you could whack their butts and not get sued." She went back into her shop and shut the door.

  I sighed. There must be options other than butt-whacking. Luckily, I thought of one. "If Arnold's parents plan to be home tonight, how would you like to spend the evening there? I'll take you and pick you up." McQuaid might not be too happy with the idea, but I didn't see the harm.

  "All right" Brian exclaimed, his eyes bright.

  "Call Arnold and confirm," I instructed, "while I finish closing."

  We were headed out the door around five-thirty when the phone shrilled. I was going to let it ring, but on a hunch, went back to pick it up. It was McQuaid, calling from the border town of Brownsville, a half-hour's drive from South Padre Island. I'd been too busy during the day to think much about him, but hearing his voice, I realized I'd missed him. Missed him quite a lot, actually.

  "How's it going?" I asked. "Have you found Jeff?"

  "Ask him if he's cracked the dope ring yet," Brian said loudly. I made shushing noises and shooing gestures, and he went to sit on the step.

  "He didn't go fishing," McQuaid said. "I've turned up the Fiat. At the Brownsville airport."

  "I'm sorry, McQuaid," I said with genuine sympathy. Brownsville is the jumping-off point for travel to Mexico City and points south.

  His "Me, too" held the bitter betrayal of a kid whose best friend has just stolen his girl. "God, China, I didn't figure him doing this."

  He bad been betrayed. Jeff Clark wasn't the kind of person who'd run off to Mexico for the weekend—unless he was running from something. From a murder charge. And finding him wouldn't be a piece of cake. Safe houses are for rent cheap, and the local gendarmes don't take much of an interest in norte americanos on the lam. If they do, it doesn't cost much to convince them to forget about it.

  McQuaid cleared his throat. "I've got some information fo
r Bubba and Matt. You got a pencil?"

  I fished for a pen and paper, settling for the back of a paper bag. "Okay," I said. "Shoot."

  His flat monotone held no hint of feeling. "Item one: The Fiat was unlocked. The parking ticket in the car indicates that it was driven onto the lot at eleven-fifty-four on Saturday morning, July 7. Item two: According to the American Airlines computer, Jeff used his Visa card to purchase a ticket on Flight three seventeen to Mexico City, departing Saturday at thirteen hundred hours."

  "Wait," I said, scribbling to catch up. "Okay. Item three?"

  "Item three: In the car was an unsealed number ten white envelope with Matt Monroe's name typed on it. The envelope has the printed return address of The Springs Hotel." He paused. "Got that?"

  "Yes. What's in the envelope?"

  "A sheet of white paper on which is typed a quit claim, by means of which Jeffrey P. Clark gives and conveys his interest in The Springs Hotel to Matthew L. Monroe, in consideration of services rendered. The document is dated July 7 and bears both the typed and the handwritten name Jeffrey Clark. It was notarized in Brownsville."

  "Christ," I said.

  "Amen." McQuaid's voice had gone from flat to gruff. "Get all that to Bubba first, then Matt. Tell Bubba the Brownsville PD is faxing the quit claim and the airport parking ticket. They're also towing the Fiat to the impound lot where they'll go over it for prints. Bubba can call them for a report." He paused. "And one more thing. When you report to Matt, tell him first thing tomorrow to get in touch with the bank or banks that service Jeffs credit cards and ask them to notify him of all charges, as they are made. If Jeff s used the card again, they should be able to trace it. Matt can let you know, and you can pass it on to me."

  "Jeff won't use the card if he's serious about hiding out," I said.

  "Yeah, but it won't hurt to check." He paused. "I guess that does it from here, babe. Any sign of Jacoby? Anything new on the case?"