Hangman's root : a China Bayles mystery

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  He chuckled. "That's what I like. A woman who knows her own mind."

  It was very dangerous.

  Laurel showed up at the shop at eight the next morning, as I had asked, and after giving me a run-down on the meeting at the Smithsonian and the reception of her pepper paper, went out to the garden to put in an hour of hght housekeeping. It was too early for annual transplants—we can get a frost up to the last week of March—but it was time to clean off the dead leaves and trim the perennials. The comfrey and rue needed cultivating, and the bronze fennel was already sending up licorice-scented plumes. The parsley was up too, prettying the path with its frilly green lace.

  I was giving last-minute instructions to Laurel when I heard the phone ring in the kitchen. I almost let the answering machine take it, but I thought it might be Ruby so I dashed inside. It was Rose Tompkins.

  "They're gone." She was breathless, tense, holding herself in. "The letter, the disk, they're both gone. You've got to help me, China. I'm in trouble.''

  "Somebody broke into the locked filing cabinet?" I asked incredulously.

  "Yes," she said. "They smashed the glass in the office door and opened it. Then they took a screwdriver or something to the file cabinet. The letter's gone from the computer, too." Her voice

  went up a notch. Her control was slipping. "Miss Leeds is at the dentist again this morning. She'll kill me when she finds out. And Dr. Castle— Oh, that'll be worse. He'll fire me!" The last words were a wail.

  She had called me because I knew about the letter. She had called for reassurance. I did what I could. "Of course he won't fire you, Rose. And Miss Leeds won't kill you, either. You didn't steal that letter. You did everything you could to keep it safe." I paused. "Was the file drawer the only one broken into?"

  She sounded calmer. "It was the only one that was locked. But the others were opened and searched."

  "Who knew about the letter?"

  "Just you. And Miss Leeds and Dr. Castle, of course. Miss Leeds told him when he called in for his messages yesterday morning. He was very upset. The idea that one of our employees—" She paused. "Do you think maybe Kevin was the one who broke in?" Then she answered her own question. "No, he couldn't have. He didn't know that the letter had been found."

  Then it hit me, blundering idiot that I was. Of course Kevin knew. I had told Amy yesterday. Kevin could have broken into the office, gone through all the drawers until he located what he was after, and erased the file from the hard disk. There was no way he could know that I had copied the letter into my notebook. Not even Rose knew that.

  "Have you called Campus Security about the break-in?" I asked.

  "Not yet," she said. "I have to wait for Miss Leeds. She'd be upset if I took it on myself to—" She gasped, surprised. "Dr. Castle! We didn't expect you back until tomorrow." She returned hurriedly to me. "Excuse me. I have to go. Dr. Castle's back."

  I hung up, imagining the scene on the other end of the line. No doubt Castle had returned early with the intention of seeing the letter for himself, and now it was gone. I sat staring at the

  phone, cursing myself for an utter fool. If I hadn't been so intent on shaking Kevin loose, I might have foreseen the consequences of telling Amy about the letter. But it was too late for second thoughts. I had to locate Kevin.

  The yellow Camaro was parked in Kevin s driveway, still sporting its bashed-in fender. But it wasn't Kevin who answered the doorbell. It was a young man in his late teens or early twenties. His name, he said, was Lou Keller. He was dark haired and so tall that I had to crane my neck upward to ask him about Kevin.

  "Sorry," he said. "He ain't here." His beard was a dark shadow along his jaw, and his T-shirt was half in, half out of his jeans, his belt unbuckled.

  "When can I catch him?" I asked. "It's important."

  Lou rubbed his jaw. All he lacked was a cigarette in one corner of his full lips and he'd pass for Elvis. Except for the height, of course. He was too tall, too slender.

  "Dunno," he said. "Like he wasn't here last night, either."

  It made sense. If Kevin had stolen the letter and the computer disk, he was probably on the run. "Is he in the habit of not coming home at night.^" I asked.

  Lou grinned and an Elvis-dimple appeared in his unshaven cheek. "Lately he doesn't much. He's got a new girl."

  It wasn't news to me about Amy, although I still found their relationship a little surprising. She was several years older than Kevin, at a time when age matters a lot, and much more self-assured. But maybe she needed somebody to need her. Kevin certainly seemed needy enough.

  "You think I can catch him at her house?"

  "Maybe," Lou allowed. He looked at his watch and corrected himself. "Like maybe if you hurry. He's got class in an hour."

  "You wouldn't happen to know where she Hves, would you?" I was already kicking myself for not finding out that crucial information from Amy herself.

  He frowned. "I think her address is around here somewhere," he said. "Like, well, lemme see." When he came back he was carrying a junk-mail envelope with something scrawled on it. "First place I looked," he said, pleased with himself. "Which was the wall by the phone. I copied it for you."

  I took the envelope. "Thanks," I said. I turned to go. "Oh, by the way, is that Kevin s Camaro? I saw him driving it last week."

  "Nope," he said. "Mine. Like his car's been in the shop and I been lettin' him drive it." He frowned. "Hey, you see him, you tell him the rent was due like yesterday, huh?"

  "Fll tell him," I said. "When I see him."

  Which might be, like, well, never.

  I located the address Lou gave me on a quiet street between the campus and downtown. It was a small, rectangular tract house sided with rusty red cedar shakes, with a dirty gray roof, peeling black shutters, and screens with ragged holes. The garage door was stuck halfway open. There was no doorbell, and nobody answered my knock. I went around to the back and opened the sagging gate. Amy's underpants and bra hung on a clothesline, still wet. I hadn't missed her and Kevin by much.

  When I came back down the cracked concrete drive, I was nearly run over by a small girl of five or six on a pink-and-yellow plastic tractor. Her braids stuck out like fat yellow pencils, and her ripped red corduroys showed Shirley Temple knees.

  "Beep beep," she said cheerfully.

  I knelt down, putting myself at her level. "The person who lives there," I said, pointing to the house. "Do you know where she's gone?"

  "Her'n Kevin went somewhere," the Httle girl said. Her irises were Hght blue, ringed with a darker blue.

  "You know Kevin?"

  "Yeah, he's nice. He brings me gummy bears." She glanced speculatively at my pockets. "You got'ny gummy bears?"

  "Sorry," I said. I stood up. "Fresh out of gummy bears."

  "Beep beep," the little girl replied, and drove her tractor over my foot.

  I had struck out in my effort to locate Kevin. My foot hurt. My heart hurt when I thought of what Amy's involvement in this business was going to mean to Ruby. I got in the car. I had already planned to see Kevin's parents this morning. Now that errand felt a lot more urgent.

  «« 4

  I like a lot of things about San Antonio, but the freeway system is not one of them. The city is like a medieval town ringed with a wall—only the wall is a freeway, drawn in a circle around a piece of history: The Alamo, where Travis and Bowie and Crockett and a hundred and eighty-odd men held out against a Mexican army for thirteen days. After Santa Anna took the fort and shot everybody who was still alive, he marched east and massacred three hundred men at Goliad, then pushed on to San Jacinto, where he camped in a bend in the river—probably the only place within a hundred miles where he could be trapped and defeated. All this bloodshed led to independence from Mexico, then to statehood, the Confederacy, and finally the freeway system, stretches of which have been under construction for my lifetime.

  Mesquite Drive was northwest, south of De Zavalla Road and not far from UTSA campus, a neighborhood
of winding streets, wide lawns, and tidy two-story split-levels with brick facing and wrought-iron fancy work on the windows and doors. Mailboxes built to resemble ships or flower baskets or little houses studded

  the curbs, like rivals in a clever-mailbox contest. It had been a mild winter and the Saint Augustine was a thick green carpet, although I suspected it was pumped up with Chem-Lawn.

  The property at 204 Mesquite sported a mailbox shaped like a red barn with a black and white cow painted on one side and a pink pig on the other, under a banner that read "The Scotts." The large live oak in the middle of the lawn was beginning to shed last year's leaves onto the clipped turf. In this part of Texas, live oak leaves hang tight until early spring, when they finally turn brown and are ejected by the new leaves, light green and shiny. In the morning sunshine, the tree glittered as if it were hung with bits of green foil.

  As I got out of the car and started up the drive, a man in a yellow polo shirt, yellow-and-brown-checked polyester slacks, and yellow canvas shoes came out of the front door. He saw me at the foot of the drive and called, "Mind bringing the paper with you?"

  I scooped up the Express-News and carried it to him. "I was sorry to see the old Light fold," he said, taking it. "Better to have two papers. That way, you get both sides." He sighed. "But these days, I guess two papers are more than anybody can hope for."

  The man was probably in his mid-sixties, older than I had expected, given that Kevin was only nineteen or twenty. He had the look of a happily retired man on his way to a morning tee time. His white hair was thin on top, showing a freckled scalp, and his face was round and jolly, a summer Santa. I looked for a resemblance to thin, nervous Kevin and could see none.

  "Charles Scott?" I asked.

  "You got it," the man said cheerfully. He tucked the newspaper under his arm. "And you are . . . ?"

  "China Bayles," I said, handing him Justine's card with my name and phone number written in the corner.

  "Interesting name, China," he mused, looking at the card. "Don't believe I ever heard it before." His shrewd glance assessed

  my gray skirt, white blouse, navy blazer, low-heeled navy pumps. I wouldn't wow 'em on Fifth Avenue, but I looked professional. "You a lawyer?"

  I nodded. I had already decided what I was going to tell him. "Ms. Wyzinski has asked me to do a background check on a former neighbor of yours, a Dr. Miles Harwick. I wonder if you could give me some information."

  Charles Scott's jolly face darkened and spots of color appeared along his jaws. "Why are you asking.^"

  I gave him a level glance. I've done inquiries that called for an elaborate cover story, and those where I've come straight out with it. Instinct told me that this was a good time for the truth— some of it, anyway. I wanted to hold off mentioning Kevin as long as I could.

  "Dr. Harwick was found hanging in his office at Central Texas State University last week," I said. "His death raises some questions. I'm hoping you might be able to help."

  I was surprised by his reaction. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, and when he opened them again, they held an unmistakable look of exaltation. He clenched his fist and punched the air with a jubilant gesture.

  "Sonofabitch," he shouted. "Son-of-a-bitch!" He wheeled, strode to the front door, and smacked it open with the flat of his hand. "Annie," he yelled. "Annie! Get down here! You gotta hear this!" He turned to me, opening the door wide. "Come on in, Ms. Bayles," he said cordially. "You just come on m."

  Perplexed, I followed Charles Scott down the hall toward the back of the house. He didn't exactly skip, but there was an almost gleeful jauntiness in his walk. The hall opened into a sunny family room that was divided by a counter from a generous kitchen, its ceiling hung with copper-bottomed pans, braids of garlic and ropes of peppers, and various cooking implements, most of them decorative, all of them expensive. There was a Cuisinart on the

  counter and a charcoal cooktop built into the Jenn-Air range, under the arch of a brick hearth that concealed an exhaust hood. He motioned me to a stool at the counter and headed for the coffee maker, which was recessed under a cupboard.

  "Hold off on the details until my wife gets here," he instructed, with the air of a man who is used to giving orders. "Decaf okay?"

  "Fine," I said, sitting down on the stool.

  Anne Scott came in as I was taking my first sip. She was younger than her husband by perhaps ten years, a plump but attractive woman made more attractive with judicious makeup, her clear olive complexion and dark eyes set off by the red sweats she was wearing. I couldn't see any resemblance to Kevin there, either.

  "Well?" She stood in the doorway, raised brows quizzical. Her dark curly hair was damp, as if she'd just showered. "What's all the shouting about? I thought you had a ten-thirty tee time, Charlie."

  Scott went to his wife and put both arms around her. "Har-wick's dead, Annie." Exuberance charged his voice. He might have been announcing that they had won the lottery. "Bastard hung himself."

  "Oh!" Anne Scott gave a long, low cry—almost, I thought, a cry of triumph—and buried her face against her husband's shirt. They stood holding on to one another as if the earth were rocking under their feet. I stared at them. Whatever response I might have expected to the announcement of Harwick's death, this wasn't it. They reminded me of the way a victim's relatives sometimes act in the courtroom after the jury brings in a guilty verdict.

  Charles Scott was the first to break the embrace. "Let's hear the story, huh?" he asked softly. He smoothed his wife's hair, kissed her forehead, stepped back. "I'll get you some coffee."

  Over his shoulder, he added, "This is China Bayles. She's with some lawyer's office here in town. She's the one who told me."

  Anne Scott went into the family room and sat down in a black-and-white upholstered chair on one side of a brick fireplace. Following her, I carried my mug to the white sofa that faced the fireplace and sat down. The fireplace was hung with brass-plated fire implements; beside it a stack of cedar was ready for the next fire. The mantel was a gallery of family photos.

  Anne Scott leaned forward eagerly. "He's really dead?" Her dark eyes glittered and her voice was hoarse. "This isn't some kind of joke?"

  "He died last Wednesday evening, in his office at CTSU," I said.

  "He hung himself?" The intensity of her joy, juxtaposed to the starkness of her words, was startling. "He actually hung himself?"

  "He died by hanging," I said carefully. If Kevin's mother and father could be so openly, so unabashedly elated by Harwick's death, how had Kevin felt? "I'm here because I understand that he was once your neighbor."

  "He lived next door, but he was no neighbor," Charles Scott said, making an emphatic distinction. He put two mugs of coffee on the coffee table and sat on the arm of his wife's chair, his left hand protectively on her shoulder.

  "It's a good thing he moved," Anne Scott said thinly. She stopped talking and pressed her lips together tight. Her chin quivered while she struggled to get control of her voice. After a moment she swallowed and went on. "If he hadn't, if we'd had to look at him day after day, I really think Charlie would have killed him. Or I would have." She felt upward to her right shoulder for her husband's hand. "Or both of us. Without a shred of remorse."

  Charles Scott sucked in a ragged breath. "You bet your ass rd've killed him," he growled. "And hanging is exactly how

  FdVe done it, too. What I want to know is why it took the bastard so long to get around to it."

  I put my cup down on the coffee table. "Mr. and Mrs. Scott," I said quietly, "it seems clear that Dr. Harwick was the source of some terrible unhappiness for you. Our discussion might be less painful if you would simply tell me if this is true and briefly describe what happened. I cannot promise to hold your information in confidence, but I can promise not to reveal it unless it becomes germane to the issues." I hadn't said what issues, but I honestly didn't think they cared.

  I was right. Anne Scott threw back her head and laughed, showing several gold-crowned
molars. It was not a pretty laugh. "Go ahead," she said fiercely. "Tell as many people as you like. Put it in the newspaper if you want. Tell the whole world what that sadist did!"

  I stared at her. Sadist? That had been Amy's term.

  Charles Scott squeezed his wife's hand once more, released it, then leaned forward to pick up his coffee. "It doesn't take long to tell," he said. His voice was carefully flat, expressionless, but the hand that held the coffee mug was shaking so hard that he spilled coffee on his yellow-and-brown plaid slacks. He didn't notice. "Miles Harwick was a child molester."

  Anne Scott made a small, choked noise and turned her head to the left, covering her mouth with her left hand. Charles Scott gave up trying to drink his coffee and set the mug on the table, hard, the contents sloshing over.

  "Harwick abused our youngest son. Tad," he said. "The boy was eight when it started, and it went on for about six months."

  Anne Scott turned toward me again. Her eyes were blazing, her voice thick with outrage and pain. "The man was our friend. We invited him into our home. We even let Tad stay with him weekends when we were gone! We had no idea what kind of horrible person he was!"

  Scott's face was a taut mask. "I was a civil engineer before I retired," he said in a low voice. "The last couple of years, I had a big job going on the West Coast. It seemed like a good time for Annie and me to get in some long weekends. The two other kids—our daughter and our son—were busy with their friends. Harwick was always around. He told us he'd like to have Tad stay with him."

  Anne Scott was beginning to cry softly. "That's what made it so bad," she said, choking out the words. "If I'd just stayed home, if I'd paid more attention to what was going on—"

  Her husband pulled her against him, resting his cheek against her hair. "Don't, Annie," he whispered. "It's been over for a long time. You can't keep on raking yourself over the coals." Still holding her, he said to me, "We didn't find out what was going on until a couple of weeks after Harwick moved. Tad told us."