Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09

by Susan Wittig Albert

  I pulled on thermal underwear, a flannel shirt, and jeans, and took my unloaded gun out of the locked drawer. I hefted it, frowning. In the years since my father gave me the Beretta, I have developed an attitude about it. It's not the gun's fault, of course—guns are neutral. As Sheila fre-quendy points out, I'd probably feel better about it if I'd shoot it more often, although somehow I haven't quite gotten around to that. As I stood there, thinking these unproductive thoughts, it occurred to me that Ruby might ask how much ammunition I'd brought, and that I'd feel more guilty about lying than I would about carrying the ammo. I took six rounds and went downstairs for coffee. If I couldn't wake McQuaid to tell him where I was going, I could leave a note.

  But I gave it up after a couple of tries. How could I say, in twenty-five straight-faced words or less, that Ruby and I were playing a predawn game of cops and robbers out in the Hill Country? I scrawled, "I'll be in the shop between ten and noon," and pinned the note to the door of the fridge with a rooster magnet. I gulped down my coffee and shrugged into my jacket, the Beretta in one pocket and the ammunition in the other. I grabbed my shoulder bag, gloves, a wool cap, and a muffler and let myself quietly out the door.

  The Pecan Springs Chamber of Commerce probably wants me to tell you a different story, but the truth is that December can get pretty damn cold around here. My Datsun turned over reluctantly a couple of times before she gave an out-of-sorts hiccup and started. I didn't blame her, poor old thing. It was five-fifteen in the morning and the temperature was probably close to fifteen degrees when the wind-chill was factored in. If I wasn't out of sorts myself, it was only because I was warmed by the feeling that I was undertaking this uncomfortable mission on behalf of a very important person: my friend Ruby, who is definitely worth the effort.

  At Ruby's house, I didn't even have to honk. Dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a dark wool coat, cap, and scarf, Ruby was waiting on the front porch. When she saw me pull up at the curb, she ran down the walk and jumped in.

  "You're late," she said breathlessly, dropping her canvas tote bag onto the floor, where it landed with a clunk.

  I turned on the overhead light and looked at my watch. "Three minutes. The car didn't want to start." I peered at the tote bag, which looked heavy. "What did you bring?"

  "Oh, loads of stuff," Ruby said. She opened the bag and began taking things out. "A Thermos of hot chocolate, gra-nola bars, and some raisins."

  "Ah," I said. "The well-provisioned sleuth."

  "Plastic zipper-top bags, pepper spray, some bolt cutters, a lock-pick kit, a—"

  "Wait a minute," I said. The bolt cutters and lock-pick kit I understood, although it wouldn't have occurred to me to bring them. "We won't need the bolt cutters—there's a padlock on the gate but it's hanging open. What are the bags for?"

  Ruby gave me a look that suggested that I should be able to figure this out for myself if I'd take the time to think about it. "The bags are for any evidence we want to collect for Blackie. And even if the gate is open, we might need to get into one of the buildings."

  "I see," I said.

  "I've also brought some money, some powdered sugar, and a few joints." With a flourish, she displayed a thick

  roll of greenbacks, a plastic bag filled with some suspicious-looking white stuff, and a couple of hand-rolled brown-paper cigarettes.

  "Excuse me, Ruby," I said. I tried to keep my voice low and even, but it rose in spite of me. "I know I shouldn't pry into your private affairs, but WHERE IN THE HELL DID YOU GET THAT MARIJUANA?"

  "In my kitchen cabinet," Ruby said. "But it's not what you—"

  I wasn't listening. "I don't care where you got it," I said sternly, "we are getting rid of it this instant. I am not about to get my ass busted for possession, thank you very much."

  Ruby gave me a look of great forbearance. "It's not marijuana, it's oregano," she said. "Here. Smell."

  I sniffed at the joint she held out. By damn, it was oregano. "But why—" I sputtered. "What could you possibly—"

  I stopped suddenly. Wait a minute. I was acting as if this trip we were making was for real, but it wasn't. Blackie was an excellent lawman. If there'd been anything worth investigating at Swenson's place, he would have been out there a couple of days ago. This expedition that Ruby and I were making was a diversion, pure and simple, like one of those murder mystery weekends where people go hunting for planted clues and stumble over live dead bodies and generally make fools of themselves, all in the name of the game. If Ruby was taking it seriously, well and good, but it was only a distraction. And I was here to play along. All the way.

  I put on a humble look. "I think I'm missing the point, Sherlock. Please tell me why we are carrying a wad of money, a bag of powdered sugar, and a couple of oregano joints."

  Ruby put the powdered sugar and the joints back into her bag. "When people practice espionage, they have a cover story. This is our cover. We don't have any idea who we might run into out there, so you and I have our own little stash of cocaine and grass. Just-pretend, of course."

  Oh boy. "That's not just-pretend money," I said. "Jeez, Ruby, that's enough to bankroll the next City Council election."

  "It only looks like a lot," Ruby said, putting the money into her pocket. "Actually, it's just a couple of fifties rolled around a big bunch of ones." She patted my arm with a smile. "It'll be fine, China. Trust me."

  Over the years, I've learned that when Ruby gets enthused about something, I might as well quit arguing and go along for the ride. Anyway, in this instance, there wasn't any particular harm in acting like a pair of idiots, because we weren't going to have an audience. The only live critter we were likely to encounter would have four feet and horns and smell like a goat.

  I turned off the overhead light and started the Datsun. "Buckle up, babe," I said, in my best Bogart. "We're outta here."

  The sky overhead was still as dark as the inside of a cow when we reached the turnoff to Swenson's house thirty minutes later. I pulled over to the far left as we approached the mailbox. "Let's take another look at that envelope," I said. "Maybe you'll see something I missed."

  I rolled down my window, letting in the chill, cedar-scented air. But when I opened the mailbox and reached inside, it was empty. Frowning, I rolled up the window. "I guess the sheriff took it already," I said. Which was odd. When I'd talked to Blackie the night before, he hadn't seemed in any great hurry to send somebody to pick up the brochure.

  "He must have decided that it was a clue to the man's intentions." Ruby said. "I hope he hasn't beaten us to it."

  I was still thinking about the empty mailbox. "Beaten us to what?"

  'To the greenhouse, what else?" Ruby replied. She peered through the windshield. "I thought you said the gate was unlocked."

  "It is. The padlock is hanging open."

  "It isn't," she said. "I can see from here. But it's no problem." She reached into her canvas bag and pulled out the bolt cutters. "I told you these would come in handy." She hopped out, slammed the door, and began attacking the rusty chain that fastened the gate.

  Up to this point, Ruby would have to bear her share of blame for what happened that morning. But from here on out, in all fairness, I have to say that it was my fault. If I had jumped out, snatched those bolt cutters, dragged her back to the car, and driven to the Diner for jelly doughnuts and fresh hot coffee, none of the other events would have happened. But I wasn't paying the right kind of attention to what Ruby was doing. Instead, I was trying to puzzle out the significance of the locked gate.

  It had been unlocked when I stopped at the mailbox yesterday evening.

  Who had locked it?

  Why?

  Was there any connection between the locked gate and the missing brochure?

  What was going on here?

  I was still puzzling when the door opened and Ruby slid into the car, triumphantly brandishing her bolt cutters. "I've done it!" she said. "Now we can drive through."

  I blinked. "Do what?"

/>   "Drive, China," Ruby said, with exaggerated patience. "Make a left turn through the gate and onto that lane. Go, girl!"

  With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I went. But I was no longer so cheery about our little adventure. Driving onto private property through an unlocked gate is one thing. You can always argue that you took a wrong turn. But cutting a chain in order to enter private property is something else altogether. It is spelled t-r-e-s-p-a-s-s. In Texas, this is taken very seriously, and has on more than one occasion been used as the basis of a justifiable-homicide defense.

  Ruby, however, was plagued by none of these sobering thoughts. She was thoroughly preoccupied with the game, and that was worth a great deal. I swallowed my apprehensions and began paying attention to the road.

  Most people who live in the Hill Country locate their houses within easy reach of a highway, to cut down on the cost of building and maintaining a road. But not Swenson. The pot-holed trail we were following—two gravel tracks with a strip of brown weeds down the middle—looped through a rock-strewn meadow, followed a limestone ridge for about a mile, then dipped down the lip of a cedar-filled ravine, at something like a 15-degree grade. The Datsun gasped and so did I, and Ruby grabbed for the door handle with a muttered "Whup!" But after a moment we straightened out, more or less, climbed the other side of the ravine, and emerged onto another meadow. I let out the breath I'd been holding and Ruby let go of the door handle.

  "I'm dying to find out what Swenson has been up to in this godforsaken place," she said. "Drugs may not be the half of it, China. For all we know, there's a bunch of dead bodies buried out here. You know, like serial murders. Or maybe buried treasure."

  The Datsun dropped its left front wheel into a hole the size of Canyon Lake and I nearly bit my tongue in two. "Serial murders?" I muttered.

  "Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but you've got to admit that it's the perfect spot for skullduggery. You could get lost out here and nobody would find you for weeks and weeks. Maybe months." She shuddered. "Maybe years."

  The sky was turning shell-pink in the east and there was enough light to see that the day was not going to be one of Texas's finest. Angry gray clouds scudded overhead on a stiff north breeze. The rugged, rocky landscape was barricaded by fierce-looking prickly pear cactus and fortified by sentinels of Western red cedar, standing at attention in the pale dawn light. This was deserted country, starkly and severely beautiful, deceptive and treacherous and full of unpleasant surprises. If we had an accident or car trouble, it'd be a long hike back to the road. Surreptitiously, I reached under the driver's seat to make sure the cell phone was there, and came up empty-handed. Damn. It was still in the truck. The one piece of equipment we really needed, and I'd forgotten to bring it along. But I wouldn't mention it to Ruby. It might jar her faith in me.

  We drove another half mile in silence. Just when I was ready to quit and turn back, the lane dipped and rose again and crossed a small open meadow. We had found Carl Swenson's house.

  I stopped a little distance from the house and turned off the ignition. In the gray predawn light, we could see that there was no sign of a car, and the graveled area between the outbuildings and the house was empty. The house itself was a large, well-kept, two-story affair with a cedar-shingled roof and a wide porch across the front. A neatly mowed lawn extended around the house, and the whole area was landscaped with native shrubs, yaupon and agarito and cenizo. The place had a prosperous look.

  "Interesting," Ruby said softly. "Swenson didn't pay for this with his mistletoe money."

  "It's been here for a while," I said. "Swenson inherited the land from his family." Still, I was surprised. I had expected something more along the lines of Clyde's hovel, with surly dogs lounging in the dooryard and goats and pigs eating garbage out back. This place had three or four bedrooms plus a couple of living areas and had been recendy renovated—or so I guessed—with skylights and glass gables. Sited as it was, almost at the top of a ridge, it commanded a sweeping view of hills and trees.

  I thought again about the locked gate. "Do you still want to have a look around?" I asked nervously. "Maybe we just ought to bag it and go home."

  "What do you mean, bag it?" Ruby was indignant. "We came to take a look and we're taking a look. Let's go."

  With a sigh, I started the car again, drove into the parking area, and stopped. Ruby fished in her bag, retrieved her pepper spray, and pocketed it. Then she stripped off her wool cap and yanked a black ski mask over her face.

  "Is that really necessary?" I asked doubtfully.

  "Yep," Ruby said, pulling her cap back on. The black mask muffled her voice and gave her a malevolent, sinister look, like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "Here's one for you." She thrust a red wool mask into my hand. "Don't argue, China. Just put it on." She began tugging a pair of black leather gloves on her hands.

  "I hate these things," I muttered, pulling the mask over my head. "They make me feel like an Egyptian mummy."

  Ruby picked up her canvas bag and slung it over her shoulder. "I'm ready. Are you?"

  I opened the door and got out, swiveling my head to check for loose rottweilers. If I lived this far out in the country, I'd keep at least two. Maybe a half dozen. If I were really paranoid, I'd probably arrange a few booby traps in convenient places. As I was wondering how paranoid Carl Swenson had been, a gust of icy wind lifted dust from the parking area and flung it into my face, and I realized that the ski mask hadn't been such a bad idea after all. It limited visibility to what was directly in front of me, but I was glad for its protection.

  "I wonder where the greenhouse is," Ruby said, her voice low.

  I glanced around, getting my bearings. The house was on a grassy knoll and the outbuildings—a double garage; a tin-roofed shed that sheltered a tractor, an old truck, and some farm equipment; and a substantial gray metal building, maybe thirty by sixty, with twelve-foot double doors— were off to the east, fifty yards or so away. All the buildings except for the house looked as if they'd been constructed in the last couple of years. Well-constructed, too, not a tumbledown shanty among them.

  I turned back, squinting, my attention belatedly caught by the truck in the tractor shed. It was dark under the tin roof and difficult to tell at a glance, but I was getting that twitchy feeling that tells me I'm onto something important. I strode toward the shed, Ruby running to catch up.

  "I said, I don't see the greenhouse," she repeated. "Where do you think it is?"

  We reached the shed. The truck was wedged, nose in, between the tractor and a couple of pieces of farm equipment, both new. The truck wasn't new. It was red, it sagged in the right rear, and the right-side window was covered with ratty-looking cardboard. It was a Ford.

  "By damn," I said softly. "We've found Aunt Velda's truck."

  "The truck?" Ruby made an excited noise. "But what's it doing here? Who put it here? What—"

  "I have no idea," I said. "Stay put. There's only room for one person in there."

  I squeezed between the truck and the tractor, stepped around the front, and took a look. What I saw sobered me. The right front headlight was broken and there were spatters of something that looked like blood on the grille. I walked back around to the passenger side, stood on tiptoe, and peered through the window. The key was still in the ignition.

  I rejoined Ruby. She'd wrapped her arms around herself and was jiggling up and down, trying to keep warm.

  "Well?" she asked. "Is it what you thought?"

  "It is," I said grimly. "There's blood on the grille and the right front headlight is broken." I was wishing like hell for my cell phone. Some smart investigators we were. We'd brought props and costumes—and no means of communication. I glanced toward the house. There had to be a phone inside. "This changes everything, Ruby. We're not playing a game. We need to get Blackie out here. Right away."

  "I don't get it, China," Ruby said, puzzled. "Why would Aunt Velda have hidden the truck here? You'd think it's the last place she'd p
ut it."

  "Because she's completely loony, that's why," I replied crossly. "Because the Klingons told her to do it. Because—"

  I stopped. "Because it's the last place anybody would think to look," I said softly. Which was not so loony, after all.

  "Do you really think that old lady could have driven it here and then walked all the way back to the flower farm? It's an awfully long way back to the mailbox, and from there, it must be three or four miles to the farm."

  I glanced up, assessing where we were. "I'll bet it's not as far as that. We drove quite a distance to the south, but Comanche Road loops back, and the flower farm is on this side of it. For all we know, the Fletcher place is just over the next hill."

  That made sense, actually. Donna had said that their house used to belong to the ranch manager. Surely the manager wouldn't live a couple of hours' horseback ride from the main house. Still, Ruby had a point. The terrain was pretty rugged, not easy for an old lady to hike across.

  "But maybe Aunt Velda didn't actually do it," Ruby said, thinking out loud. "Maybe somebody took her truck, ran Swenson down, and then drove it here. Somebody like, well, Marvin."

  "If he did, his prints will be on it." I turned toward the house. "Come on. Let's see if we can find a phone. We need to get Blackie out here."

  Ruby grabbed my arm. "Before you go calling the cops, I think we ought to check out that big metal building over there." She pointed. "If it was me growing grass, I'd put my greenhouse indoors, under lights and a metal roof. That way, nobody could see what I was up to." She headed off in the direction of the metal building.

  I have to give it to Ruby. When she gets an idea, she sticks with it. And for all I knew, she was right. I've cultivated a lot of herbs in my life, but Cannabis sativa is not one of them. While I am not one of those who condemn the plant outright—after all, it enjoyed a long and honorable history as a fiber and medicinal plant long before we criminalized it—my distaste for spending time in jail has overcome my desire to have a plant or two in my own personal collection. And even though my previous job required me to defend my share of users and dealers, I don't keep up on recent advances in commercial pot culture.