Rosemary Remembered - China Bayles 04

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The card dealer affected the Captain Picard look: a completely bald head. He was wearing skintight black pants and a black tee shirt that said, Beam me sideways, Scottie. No one here knows which way is up. He glanced at Brian's picture and shrugged.

  "Maybe yes, maybe no," he said. "Half the kids in town are chasing that card." He moved his head to the left. "Try the corner booth. I heard they had one."

  Three trading card booths later, we found a dealer who had sold Brian a card — not a Mr. Data holgram card, but a Lieutenant Yar 3-D image card.

  "It was around ten, right after I got set up," the dealer said, handing my picture back. He grinned. "Kid's got smarts. Knew the book value on that card. Wouldn't pay a penny more." I wondered how many kids without smarts had paid the dealer's inflated price.

  "Did you see who was with him?" Sheila asked. "A big, heavy man with a snake tattoo on his neck, maybe?"

  He grinned. "There are a lot of guys around here with snake tattoos, but I didn't see anybody with the boy." He glanced from one to the other of us. "What's the matter, d'ya lose him?"

  "Yes," I said soberly. "We think he's been kidnapped. He disappeared last night."

  The man shrugged. "Not to make light of your problem," he said, "but kids play a lot of scams to get to the convention. Last year, one boy stowed away in the back of a delivery van up in Lubbock. Parents like to killed the little rat when they finally caught up with him down here." He grinned comfortingly. "Chances are your boy just climbed out the window and lifted his thumb. You tried the video rooms?"

  The sign outside the third-floor video room announced that it operated twenty-four hours a day. Inside, my eyes took a minute to adjust to the flickering dark. The room contained a dozen mostly empty chairs, a large-screen television and VCR, and three semi-recumbent bodies in various stages of wakefulness. "She was aroused by your power," intoned one odd-looking galactic freak on the screen to a furry humanoid topped by a helmet that might have come from the Third. Reich. "You took her to the edge. What is this ability that you have to attract and hold women? Tell me, so I can have it, too."

  That was enough. There was no Brian in the room, and definitely no reason to hang around. "The Trouble with Tribbles" was showing in the next room, to a much larger audience, but Brian wasn't there, either. Back in the hall, I thumbed frantically through the guide. Where else could he be?

  "How about the game rooms?" Sheila asked. "I saw a sign that said they're on the fifth floor."

  The first game room was filled with intense Storm-troopers, exotic galactic maidens, and a couple of bearded dwarves, gathered by threes and fours around tables filled with cards. A smudgy blackboard on the wall announced that the players were advancing to the third round of Krentl, apparently the name of the game they were playing.

  A man with a badge that said Games Master came up to us. I showed him Brian's picture, and he nodded.

  "Yeah, he was here until a little while ago, as a matter of fact. Did okay in the first round, but got blipped in the second. Second round's the hardest. Krentl's set up that way." He drew his finger down a page of names until he came to Brian's, penciled in Brian's childish hand. I stared at it and swallowed hard. "He clocked in at ten and out at ten-thirty," the games master added.

  "Was he alone?" I asked. "Was there a big, ugly guy with him?"

  The games master shrugged. "Who's to say? There are always spectators. Most of them are big and ugly." His eyes went to a young woman in green body paint, a harem skirt, and a low-cut bodice. "Not all, though."

  "Where else should we look?" Sheila asked.

  "You might try Gurps," the games master said. "Some of the younger players prefer it because it's — "

  "Gurps!" I exclaimed. Sheila's mouth had fallen open. "Yeah. Next door."

  Out in the hall.again, I stared at the sign. There it was, in big red letters crayoned on white cardboard. GURPS. The skin prickled at the back of my neck.

  "That is what the Ouija board said, isn't it? Gurps?"

  Sheila's eyes were slitted, her lips pressed together. She didn't say anything. She just nodded.

  The door to the Gurps game room was open. It, too, was full of round tables, and the tables were full of players, many of them youngsters in the costumes of various galactic cultures. I scanned them quickly, searching for —

  "China!"

  And then I was kneeling with my arms open and he was bounding out of his chair, scattering cards, rushing to me, throwing his arms around my neck and burying his face against my shoulder, sobbing.

  "Oh, China, I thought you'd never come! I didn't want to stay. I tried, but I couldn't get away. Please believe me.

  "It's okay, Brian," I whispered, and held him tight. "It's okay, son."

  Sheila's hand was in her purse, her feet wide apart, her shoulders braced for action. She was scanning the room. "Where's Jacoby?" she asked sharply.

  Brian looked up. "Who?"

  "The man who brought you here," I said. I stood up and pulled Brian quickly behind me. "Where is he, Brian?"

  "It wasn't him," he said, "it was —" He suddenly screamed and ran out from behind me. "No! Oh, don't, please!"

  And then I saw the woman and my heart turned over. She had raised the window and was straddling the sill.

  "Stop that woman!" I yelled. "She's jumping!"

  A Romulan commander with patent-leather hair and winged black brows reached out and grabbed the woman's arm. "Stay where you are, lady," he growled. "That's gravity out there."

  Sheila was shaking her head in bewilderment. "Where's Jacoby?" she asked again. "And who the hell is she?"

  "She's my mom," Brian said, and began to cry.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As for Rosmarine, I lett it runne all over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem of our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds.

  Sir Thomas More 1478-1535

  Fifteen minutes later, Blackie, Sheila, and I were sitting in the hotel coffee bar with Brian, having a late lunch and trying to make sense out of what had happened over the past couple of days. Little by little, question by question, the pieces were beginning to fit together.

  Desperate to get to the Star Trek convention and chase down the Mr. Data hologram card, Brian had accepted his mother's offer to pick him up on Thursday evening and take him to Austin so that he could be in the dealer's room the minute it opened Friday morning. They had cooked up the arrangement on the telephone Wednesday evening. Sally would park out on the road and wait, and Brian would simply pick his moment to walk out.

  "I didn't mean to scare you," he said, his freckled face pinched and white. He pushed his hamburger away, half-eaten. "Honest, I didn't, China. I was going to call you the minute we got to the hotel and tell you not to worry."

  "What about the stuff that looked like blood?" Blackie asked. He put both elbows on the table and leaned forward, his voice stern. "It sure looks like you wanted to convince everybody you'd been kidnapped."

  "Blood?" Brian sounded confused.

  "That red stuff that dripped on the drive," I said.

  Brian bit his lip. "It dripped on the drive, too?" He blinked hard, as if he were trying not to cry. "That was an accident. Arnold gave me this stuff he made. Karo syrup with red food coloring and catsup in it. It was in a plastic baggie and I stuck it in my gear bag and forgot about it. I didn't know it was leaking until Mom started yelling at me about getting it all over the seat of her car." He looked at me, anguished. "It was totally fake, China. I never thought it would really foot anybody!"

  Sheila rolled her eyes at me and the corners of Blackie's mouth twitched.

  "Forget the fake blood," I said. "So how come you didn't call?"

  Brian's chin quivered. "Because when we got to the hotel, Mom wouldn't let me." His voice broke and he swallowed. "I asked and asked, and first she said I could
, as soon as room service brought us something to eat. Then after we ate she said I couldn't call because things were going to be different from now on. I was supposed to live with her, because that was the way you and Dad wanted it. Now that you guys were together, I was just in the way. You didn't need me. She needed me a lot more. She did, too. I could see how much she needed me."

  I put my arm around his shoulders. "That's not the way it is, Brian. With us, I mean. You're not in the way."

  "I'm not?" His eyes looked lost in his pale face.

  "No, you're not," I said firmly. I pushed his hamburger back toward him. "What did she say after that?"

  He took a bite of his burger. "She said we weren't going to waste money going to court. We were just going away. California maybe, or Alaska, maybe even Europe. We were going to have different names, and I wasn't supposed to tell anybody who we really were. If I did, everybody would be very upset at her, and they'd put her in jail." He swallowed. "She said before she let that happen, she'd kill herself."

  I tightened my arm around his shoulder. Blackie muttered something under his breath.

  "That must have been pretty tough," Sheila said.

  Brian nodded, struggling against the tears. "I tried to call home last night, but the line was busy. When I finally got hold of you, she caught me. She went out on the balcony and started to climb over the railing. That's why I hung up."

  "She probably didn't really mean to jump," Sheila said. "She was just trying to scare you."

  "I figured that." He put the burger down and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jersey. "She wasn't, like, well, thinking straight. I mean, I didn't think we could do all the stuff she said. Mom isn't... well, I just couldn't see her in Alaska, with the snow and the bears and everything. I thought I ought to go with her, just to keep her from freezing to death or getting eaten by a polar bear."

  So it isn't just dads and moms who have a hard time drawing the line between holding on and letting go.

  "So what did you say to her?" I asked gently.

  "Well, I said I'd go, and she said we should check out. But I said I wanted to play the games first. I was hoping you'd figure out where I was and come for me."

  "For a kid, you have a lot of courage," I said. I hugged him. "I love you very much."

  He leaned his head against me. "What's going to happen to her?" He looked at Blackie. "Will she have to go to jail?"

  "Your father will have to decide whether to press charges," Blackie said. "Right now, the Austin police have her in custody. A doctor will talk to her, too, and maybe put her in the hospital for a day or two. She was a little upset."

  That was an understatement. Sally had smashed the Romulan in the face with a Coke bottle, pushed a small purple elf off a chair, and tipped over a table. She might have gone on creating general havoc, but she was collared by an impassive young Vulcan and a beefy Boraalan in a silver jumpsuit. Somebody called hotel security, and a few minutes later a security officer had come, with Blackie and the Austin cops right behind.

  Brian looked up at me. "Will she be all right, China?"

  "I don't know," I said honestly. "It depends, I guess. On a lot of things." I could see that some good might come from what had happened in the last couple of days. No judge would turn a child over to an emotionally unbalanced woman who had kidnapped her child and held him by threatening suicide. Under the circumstances, Sally's lawyer would advise her to drop the suit. And she would be forced to get counseling.

  I touched his face. "The important thing right now is that you're safe. Have you had enough adventure for one weekend?"

  He managed a smile. "I guess. But I still didn't get my Mr. Data hologram card." He looked across the table at Sheila. "It's a very big hotel. How did you guys know to look for me in the Gurps room?"

  Sheila cleared her throat. "Superior detective work," she said. Ruby, no doubt, would have another explanation.

  At that moment, a man came over to the table. He was dressed in a Next Generation tee shirt with a dragon stick-on tattoo on one cheek. He gave Brian a questioning look. "You the kid who was looking for the Mr. Data card?"

  "Yeah," Brian said eagerly. "You got one?"

  "Matter of fact, I have," the man said, "back in the dealers' room. Just picked it up not half an hour ago. Thirty-five bucks."

  "Thirty," Brian said.

  The man scowled. "Thirty-two."

  "I gotta see it first," Brian said. He looked at me. "Can I?"

  "Have you got thirty dollars?"

  His face fell. "Not anymore, I guess."

  "How much do you need?" I asked with a sigh. I opened my wallet. "Will twelve dollars do it? That's all I have."

  "That's great," he said. "Thanks!" I gave him the money and stood up to let him out. "Ten minutes," I said. "And then beam yourself back here." He hugged me and was gone.

  Blackie laughed as I sat down. "All's well that ends well, I guess."

  "It hasn't ended yet," I said.

  "Right," Sheila said meaningfully. "You'd better tell him about Carol's phone call."

  It took me five minutes. At a certain point in the narrative, I handed him the photograph of the crooked rosemary bush I had stuck in my purse. He stared at it, incredulous. "Say that again," he demanded.

  I repeated what Carol had told me, added my interpretation, and described what needed to be done. When I finished, there was a silence. Finally he gave a long, low whistle.

  "Puts a whole new face on things, doesn't it?" Sheila asked.

  "You bet," he said grimly, handing back my photograph. "Does Bubba know?"

  "Not yet," I replied. "I guess that's the next step. That, and having a face-to-face talk with Carol." I glanced at Sheila. "That's a job for Sheila and me, though. Bubba wouldn't get to first base."

  Blackie gave me a crooked grin. "Better leave Bubba to me."

  So that's how it was decided. Blackie would take Brian back to Pecan Springs and drop the boy off at the county jail before he went to talk to Bubba. Sheila and I would talk to Carol. After that —

  "Hey, I got it!" Brian said, coming toward us, waving a trading card.

  "Terrific," I said. "You ready to go?"

  "Yeah," he said. He looked up at me shyly. "Thanks for the twelve bucks, Mom."

  Sheila and I spent the next hour in Nancy's kitchen, talking to Carol over cups of coffee and butterscotch rolls left from the kids' lunch. After a while, Nancy came to join us, with her baby at her full, heavy breast.

  Carol didn't want to do what we asked. "I'm afraid," she said. "If it doesn't work — "

  Nancy broke in. "You have to," she said. "You'll never have any peace in your heart until you've told it."

  "I have told it," Carol objected. "I told her." She pointed at me.

  Sheila leaned forward. "That's not good enough," she said. "You've got to tell the police."

  "Okay," she said finally, red-eyed. "I'll do it."

  I stood up, feeling sticky from too many butterscotch rolls. "I need to make a couple of phone calls," I said.

  We caravanned down to Pecan Springs in two vehicles and went directly to Judge Porterfield's house, where Nancy and the kids waited in the van while Sheila and I took Carol inside. I introduced Carol to Judge Porterfield and Bubba Harris, who arrived just as we did. She told them what she had seen, and I showed them my photograph. Bubba looked as if he didn't believe us, in spite of having already heard most of the story from the sheriff, but the judge didn't have any problem. She thought about it for, oh, maybe all of thirty seconds before she signed the search warrant.

  So that's how Sheila and Bubba Harris happened to be standing on either side of Matt Monroe in the herb garden at the hotel later that evening, with Judge Porterfield and me. All of us were watching Hector Gomez dig up the crooked rosemary bush. It was still very hot, but the newly installed fountain played a cooling melody of cascading water and the sun was sinking into a rosy puddle of clouds on the western edge of the Edwards Plateau. At the edge of the lake a fro
g harrumphed hollowly, and somewhere in the cedars and live oaks a rain crow chuckled a sardonic greeting.

  "I still don't understand what all this is about," Matt said with nervous bravado. He glanced at Gomez, who was lifting the rosemary, its burlap root wrap still intact around the unopened ball of soil. "You guys are crazy as fucking bullbats. I'll fix your wagon. I'll sue your asses!"

  Judge Porterfield looked sternly at Matt. The red silk rose trembled at the throat of her white dress. "You cut that out, Mr. Monroe." She wagged her finger at him like a third-grade teacher at a recalcitrant small boy. "It's hot an' we got work to do, an'you're not makin' it any easier with your foul mouth. Now you hush up."

  Hector Gomez, sweating from his exertion, continued to dig. After a few minutes, he straightened up.

  "Mebbe you'd better check this out, chief," he said, and stepped out of the hole. Bubba squatted down and studied something intently. Then he dug at the loose dirt with his fingers. In a minute, he got out a pocket knife, worked a little longer, then stood up.

  "Have a look, judge," he said loudly, into Miss Porterfield's good ear.

  "What is it?" the judge asked, bending forward to peer into the hole. "What am I lookin' at?"

  "It's not a what," Bubba said. "It's a who."

  I stepped forward. The sweetish odor of decomposing human flesh told me I had been right. Bubba had cut open the plastic garbage bag that wrapped the body of Jeff Clark.

  "I still don't see what you're tryin' to prove," Matt Monroe said desperately. Sheila had her hand on his arm.

  The judge wheeled on him. "Mr. Monroe, you have been slicker than a slop jar. But you had just better shut your mouth, because anything you say can be held against you in a court of law. You got that?"

  The rain crow gave one last bitter chuckle and fell silent.

  But the excitement wasn't over. Late that afternoon, I had picked up The Beast, no longer an official crime scene, and driven to the county jail to bail out Brian. Then, feeling like a mother on car pool duty, I had driven him to Ruby's, where I dropped him off. Now, I went to pick him up and sketch out for Ruby the details of what had happened.