Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Jane Wilson has loaned us her Geo until I get the van fixed, and I was on my way to San Antonio for more parts. I saw Swenson lying beside the road. But the body was stone cold by that time. There wasn't a damn thing I could do. I came back here and told Donna, and we decided to act like we didn't know anything about it." She gave me a sullen look. "Anyway, we don't. Our loony old aunt says she parked the truck somewhere, and can't or won't say where. That's all we know."

  "You can stick to that story," I said, "but in all fairness, I have to tell you that there's a problem with it."

  Her glance was apprehensive. "A problem?"

  "Yeah. Your prints are all over that truck. Yours and Donna's. Right?"

  "Well, sure. I mean, I guess they are. We drive it around the place all the time, hauling plants and tools and stuff."

  "Okay. When the truck is located—and it will be, believe me—the sheriff will pull every print he can find, and they'll all be used as evidence. If that Ford was the vehicle that killed Swenson, you could find yourself in some pretty serious trouble. I know this district attorney, a guy named Dutch Doran. He's a grandstander. He just might decide that you and Donna are lying when you say your aunt was driving that truck."

  She frowned. "Lying? Why would we lie?"

  "Come off it, Terry." I gave a dry chuckle. "That old lady is conviction-proof. You'd be a fool not to shift the blame to her. What's more, once the D.A. starts toying with the idea that you or Donna hit Swenson, he might figure that it maybe wasn't an accident. He might think Swenson was run down on purpose. After all, the guy was causing you a lot of grief."

  "Shit," Terry said feelingly.

  "Yeah," I replied. "Big time." I added, with emphasis: "The best thing to do is turn that truck over to the sheriff voluntarily, before he gets a search warrant and comes looking." I paused. "Mind if I talk to your aunt and see if I can get any more out of her?"

  Terry closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. Then she took a couple of deep breaths, opened her eyes and said, flady, "Hell, yes, I mind. But I guess I don't have any choice."

  We found Donna in the small workroom off the kitchen, perched on a stool in front of a wooden easel that supported a large wreath, almost finished. Buckets of dried artemisia, strawflowers, baby's breath, golden yarrow, rosemary, and holly were arranged within reaching distance, and scissors, tweezers, floral pins, wire, and a glue gun lay on a table beside her. A woodstove in the corner radiated heat.

  "Go get Aunt Velda," Terry said brusquely. "We need to have a talk. About the truck."

  Donna's eyes widened. "But I thought you said she wouldn't have to—" She glanced nervously from her sister to me and back again. "I mean, I thought we agreed not to bother her about it, Terry."

  Terry's mouth was set and she wore a poker face. "China says we could get into serious trouble about this. If Aunt Velda hit Swenson and the D.A. thinks we concealed the truck to protect her, he might charge us as accessories. He might even—" She gave Donna a hooded look, as if she were signaling something, and a silent communication seemed to pass between them. "China says he might even

  try to prove that one of us was driving it when Swenson was killed."

  "One of usl" Donna exclaimed. "But that's impossible," she said, very fast. "We were both here, together. All afternoon. How could we—"

  "Go get Aunt Velda," Terry said tersely. Her eyes slid to me to see if Donna's assertion had registered. "I'll fix us some coffee."

  Terry was filling coffee mugs when the old lady limped into the kitchen, followed by Donna. She wore a man's dirty brown corduroy bathrobe over yellow sweatpants and a purple sweatshirt, and ragged moccasins on her feet. Her Klingon badge was pinned to the lapel of her bathrobe. She sat down and reached for her Mister Spock coffee mug.

  "Where's the cookies?" she asked in a whiny voice. "Donna, be a dearie and get me my cookies. My foot's sore."

  From the cupboard, Donna produced a plastic tub of chocolate chip cookies. Aunt Velda pried off the top and popped one into her mouth.

  "I was wondering," I said, "if you'd tell us what happened when the Klingons came after Carl Swenson yesterday afternoon."

  "Yer cookies is better'n yer cake," Aunt Velda said to Donna, taking two more.

  Donna's smile was tremulous. "Thank you. What about yesterday, Aunt Velda? Tell China what you told us." She gave the old lady a pleading look. "What we talked about, remember?"

  Fastidiously, the old lady brushed the crumbs from the front of her yellow sweatshirt. "Yestiddy? Yestiddy? That wuz a long time ago." She darted a bright glance at me.

  "Where's that nice feller you wuz here with this morning, China? A looker, he wuz."

  "I'll tell him you said that," I replied. "What about yesterday, Aunt Velda?"

  "Yestiddy, today, they're all the same," she said philosophically. "Get to be my age, one day ain't no diff'rent than another. 'Less you're goin' fer a ride around the galaxy, o'course." Her smile was reminiscent. "Now, them days is really diff'rent, b'lieve you me. Lots o' stars to look at, black holes, quasars, stuff like that. And them Klingon ships—they're a real trip." She circled her mug with her hands and hunched over to drink out of it, her chin almost on the table.

  "I understand that the Klingons took Carl Swenson, and that you hid the truck to keep them from taking it too," I said.

  Aunt Velda's eyes opened wide. "Is that right?" she asked in amazement. "I'll be durned." She sighed heavily. "Well, that's whut happens when y'git old. You gals think y'er so smart now, but y'all just wait, it'll be yer turn afore too many more years. Yer mem'ry'll be the first t'go, then yer sex drive." She leered at me. "But you just trot that nice young man back here and see if my sex drive ain't still chuggin' right along. Nothin' wrong with me in that compartment. Not yit, anyhoo."

  I smiled. "If you can't tell me anything about the truck, Aunt Velda, what can you tell me about what went on yesterday afternoon?"

  The old lady pulled down her brows in a ferocious scowl, signifying deep thought. After a moment, she said, "Well, this is gonna get me in a passel o' trouble. But I guess if I gotta tell the truth, I gotta."

  "Please, Aunt." Donna made an anxious sound. 'Tell China what you told us. What we talked about. Remember?"

  Aunt Velda put two cookies in her mouth and munched for a moment She swallowed. "I remember lookin' fer the cave."

  "The cave!" Terry exclaimed. "But that isn't—"

  "Oh, Aunt!" Donna cried. "How could you? You were very, very bad!"

  "Whut'd I tell you?" Aunt Velda said pathetically. "Now they're gonna yell at me."

  "You're damn right we're going to yell at you!" Terry shouted. "It's dangerous for you to go climbing around these ravines. You're too old."

  "Anyway," Donna said, "there isn't any cave. We've looked and looked. If there were a cave, we'd have found it."

  "Well, the Indians sure enough found it," Aunt Velda retorted in a petulant tone, " 'cause there's plenty of arrowheads and skulls and stuff layin' around." Her chin jutted out and she added, with a toss of her head: "I found it once, and I aim to find it again, soon as I remember how."

  "But you don't remember what happened to Carl Swenson?" I asked. "You don't remember hiding the truck, and telling Terry and Donna about it when you came home for supper?"

  The old lady rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Truck, truck, truck," she said. "Is that all you care about?" She yawned. "I think I'll just catch me twenty winks." Her eyelids drooped. A moment later, there was a loud snore.

  Chapter Nine

  Folklore had it that one mistletoe berry down the gullet of a curious child meant almost certain death. But a recent study done by three Denver physicians suggests that mistletoe may have been getting a bad rap. The doctors found that 14 children who ingested mistletoe suffered no serious toxicity. They also analyzed 318 cases of mistletoe ingestion reported to the Food and Drug Administration and found no toxic symptoms or reported deaths.

  D. Eicher "Mistletoe Tale Deflated" Denver P
ost Dec. 15, 1986

  Back on the road again, I had plenty to think about. Before I left the flower farm, Donna and Terry had put the old lady in her room and locked the door. They were going out, they said, to check the three or four places they thought Aunt Velda might have hidden the truck, all of them within a mile or so of the house—close enough that she could have walked back home. I could come with them if I wanted to, or they'd call me as soon as they found it.

  More to the point, I told them, they should call Sheriff Blackwell. I'd done my job. I'd advised them of the legal difficulties they might face if they had helped to conceal the truck. The rest was up to them, and to the sheriff. I completed my obligation by calling Blackie on the cell phone. I didn't have any better luck than I'd had earlier, but this time I left a message, saying that I'd talked to the sisters and they had agreed to look for the truck. I'd be glad to give him my report in person, when he had time to listen. And that was that. I had other things to do, and it was time I did them.

  But still, the conversation stayed in my mind, and as I drove, I puzzled over the major ambiguities. Knowing something about the old lady's erratic behavior, I might be able to buy the goofy idea that she'd hidden the truck and forgotten where it was. But if she had really told that story to Terry and Donna, why wasn't she able, or willing, to repeat it to me? Was it sheer orneriness, or a stubborn and knowing refusal to participate in a lie that her nieces had constructed for her? And if it was a lie, what was the ugly truth it was designed to conceal?

  I was equally troubled by the sisters' contradictory alibis. Terry claimed that she and Donna hadn't missed their aunt because each thought the old woman was with the other, but Donna asserted that she and Terry had been together all afternoon. Terry herself had caught that contradiction, and was worried that I might have heard it too. Of course I had. Obviously, one of them was lying. Which one? Why? I didn't envy Blackie the job of sorting the truth out of the tangle of conflicting stories.

  Heading north on Comanche Road, I passed Clyde's disreputable house trailer. A couple of goats had gotten through the fence and were browsing the cedars beside the road. The surly dog was still lying in his oil-drum doghouse, waiting for his master. Nothing else was changed.

  At Corinne's house, the Camaro had not reappeared and the gravel drive was empty. There was a light at the back of the house, and if I'd had more time, I would have been tempted to stop and find out more about Marvin's connection to Carl Swenson. But Brian would be home from school soon, and it was my week to cook. I had to start thinking about dinner.

  I was tempted, however, to learn more about Swenson. I slowed as I passed the place where he'd been killed. His mailbox was about twenty yards ahead on the right, next to a gravel lane that presumably led to his house. A gate was closed across the lane, but while there was a chain and a padlock on the gate, the lock hung open. If it hadn't been so close to dinnertime, I would have opted for a trip down the lane and a look around his place. As it was, I opted for the mailbox.

  Stealing mail is a federal crime, and I've never liked dealing with the feds, who tend not to listen very well. But I wasn't going to steal anything. I only wanted to take a look. I slid over to the passenger side, rolled down the window, and opened the mailbox.

  It wasn't a big haul. Just a single nine-by twelve-inch glossy envelope, a high-class, expensive mailing piece. But the stamps caught my eye—Brazilian—and the return address: Rio de Janeiro. I turned the envelope over. From the photograph and the information printed on the back, it looked like somebody had sent Carl Swenson a brochure for a posh high-rise condominium called the Pousada do Gramado, overlooking Guanabara Bay. I turned the envelope over again and saw that it was addressed to Mr. Charles Seymour, 921 Comanche Road. I glanced at S wen-son's rusty mailbox. It bore the ragged numerals 921.

  Charles Seymour, Carl Swenson. The initials were the same. Coincidence or design?

  I stared at the envelope for a moment, now sorely tempted to break my rule and steal a piece of mail. After all, it was only an advertisement, and it wasn't even addressed to the owner of the mailbox—who wouldn't be going to Rio anytime soon and could hardly file a complaint, in any event. I'm sure that Kinsey Milhone or Sharon MeCone would have stuck the envelope in her bag and driven off without a second thought. But I am basically a law-abiding person, which under some circumstances is a curse. I found an old credit card receipt under the car seat, located a pen, and jotted down the address of the Pou-sada do Gramado and the name Charles Seymour. Then I put the envelope back in the mailbox, slid back under the wheel, and put the truck into first gear. A hot, hearty soup would be nice on this chilly day, with garlic bread and a salad.

  Portuguese sausage soup, maybe. Don't they speak Portuguese in Brazil?

  Dinnertime is Brian's time, when McQuaid and I catch up on our son's daily doings—school, friends, hobbies, pets, and so on. Usually, we restrict the conversation to pleasant topics, since it is my theory that the human body handles digestion better when it isn't stressed. But tonight it was my sad duty to tell Brian that a pair of his lizards had gone for a swim in the washing machine, and that one of them had made a dive down the laundry sink drain.

  "And if there are any more loose lizards," I added sternly, "we are going to have to make some changes in the zoological accommodations." I picked up the ladle. When we're not having company, I put the soup pot on the table and serve directly out of it. "Who's ready for seconds?"

  Beside McQuaid's chair, Howard Cosell thumped the floor urgently with his tail, reminding us that he hadn't had firsts yet.

  Brian frowned. "It went down the drain! Why didn't you stop it?"

  "I'll take some more," McQuaid said, handing me his bowl.

  I smiled at McQuaid and frowned at Brian. "Give me a break, kid. I was trying to rescue lizard number two from drowning in soap suds. I wasn't keeping tabs on lizard number one." I filled McQuaid's bowl and passed it back to him. "Anyway, those lizards should have been in their lizard hotel, not lurking in a towel on your bathroom floor."

  "Was it the horny toads or the green anoles?" Brian asked.

  "Not the horny toads," I said. "But they weren't green, either. Tannish brown, sort of. We didn't introduce ourselves." My favorite among Brian's animals is a fat and lazy tarantula named Ivan the Hairible, who fits neatly into the palm of one's hand—not my hand, though. I admire Ivan from a distance.

  "The green anoles change color," Brian said. "Like chameleons. Their real name is Anoles carolinensis, if you want to know. They were probably in the bathroom hunting for crickets."

  "It's a little late in the year for crickets," I said. "I'm sorry about the drain, Brian, but if they'd been where they were supposed to be, it wouldn't have happened."

  "We could take the pipe apart," Brian said to his father. "Like we did that time your girlfriend lost her diamond earring in the bathroom sink. He's probably still in that elbow thing."

  "What girlfriend?" I asked. "What diamond earring?"

  "That was a long time ago," McQuaid said. "Before you and I got serious." He looked at Brian. "If the lizard went down the drain, he probably drowned. The elbow is full of water."

  "Drowned!" Brian pushed back his chair. "Can I go look? Maybe he climbed out of the sink and is hiding somewhere."

  Howard Cosell clambered expectantly to his feet, hoping that Brian was going to put his soup bowl on the floor for a lick.

  "Don't beg, Howard," I said. "Okay, Brian, you can go look, but don't get your hopes up." I raised my voice as Brian dashed out of the room. "And put the other one in the terrarium, where he belongs."

  McQuaid glanced up from his bowl. "Good soup," he said. "What's in it?"

  "Sausage. A couple of onions, lots of garlic, a can of chopped tomatoes, etcetera." I didn't tell him that it also included two cleverly camouflaged zucchini. McQuaid will not eat squash of any description. "Why would Carl Swenson be getting mail under the name of Charles Seymour?"

  "I'll have some more of that garl
ic bread," McQuaid said. "How do you know what names he's getting mail under?"

  "Because I looked in his mailbox." I handed him the bread basket, which contained only three more slices. Garlic bread goes fast at our table. "The only thing in it was an expensive advertising brochure."

  "Junk mail," McQuaid said dismissively. He tore off a chunk of the bread and dropped it on the floor. Howard

  Cosell put his paw on it to keep it from getting away, then began to lick it. Garlic is one of his favorite herbs, or maybe it's the butter he likes. "It could have been sent to the wrong address. Or maybe this Seymour guy used to live there."

  "It was the right address," I said. "And it wasn't junk mail. It looked more like a real estate sales solicitation. From an expensive condominium unit in Rio de Janeiro. With a view of Guanabara Bay."

  That got McQuaid's attention. "Rio de Janeiro?"

  "Yeah. Charles Seymour, Carl Swenson. Same initials. I don't think it's a coincidence. I'd bet—"

  There was a loud crash upstairs. "Brian!" McQuaid and I yelled in one voice.

  "It's okay," Brian called. "I caught him!"

  "I'd better go see what that noise was," I said, standing up.

  "Brazil, huh?" McQuaid remarked thoughtfully. "No extradition."

  "No problem," Brian called again. "Don't bother to come upstairs."

  Hearing no more noises, I sat back down. "It looked like a very expensive place," I said. "I'll bet you couldn't buy a condo in that unit for less than a quarter-million dollars."

  "Maybe Swenson was thinking of renting," McQuaid said with a straight face.

  "A couple of thou a week, easy," I said. "More, with maid service. You don't pick up money like that selling a few goats. I wonder—"

  Brian loped triumphantly into the kitchen, a lizard in each hand. "See? I found both of them! They were in the laundry hamper."

  "Wonderful," I said with enthusiasm, relieved to know that I hadn't drowned my son's favorite lizard. "What was that crash?"