Chill Factor (28 page)

“Had you ever seen Officer Tally visit Art before?” Dixie asked.

Joe shrugged. “It’s not as if we kept track of their visitors.”

“They never
had visitors,”
Carol insisted.

As she rang a doorbell across the street from the Harrises, Dixie asked Marty, “What were you doing in there?”

“Checking out their stuff, looking for clues.”

“What clues? The Clarys aren’t suspects.”

“Why not?”

“I grant you, it’s possible, but Clary didn’t strike me as a coolheaded cop killer. Your average working Joe is rarely a practiced marksman.”

“I felt like a dolt, sitting, doing nothing, you asking all the questions.”

“Then make like a Watson and take notes.”

They tried two other houses, with no luck, then approached a brick bungalow directly east of the Harrises’.

“Nobody’s home,” called a voice from a neighboring yard. Partially hidden by rosebushes, a tall, rawboned woman with close-cropped blond hair and sun-weathered skin wielded a watering hose.

“Do you know where they’ve gone?” Dixie called back. Under her breath she told Marty, “Ring the bell anyway. Nosy neighbors can be wrong.”

“Off to Vegas for the holiday weekend,” the woman said as Dixie strolled closer.

She could be fifty or a well-preserved sixty, Dixie decided. “Gorgeous roses. How do you make them so prolific?”

“Pinch ’em. Soon as the first buds show up, pinch ’em off. For ever blossom pinched, three more grow in its place.”

Dixie recalled Kathleen saying the same thing about mums, and the Flannigan garden always made a spectacular show, when she’d been alive to tend them.

“Gotta keep water off the leaves, or they’ll spot,” the woman added, garden hose directed carefully at the dirt around the bushes. “And never water ’em at night.”

“Maybe you could help us.” Dixie gave the rose lady her business card. “I’m sure you heard about Art Harris.”

“Pretty much all we’ve talked about on this street since Thursday. You’re not aiming to cause that young widow of his any trouble, are you?” She glanced at the card.

“Not at all. We’re—”

“To my notion, that’s what lawyers do, cause trouble.”

Marty’s bell ringing hadn’t brought anyone to the door, so he stepped off the porch, taking out a pen and a palm-size tablet that looked suspiciously like the back of his checkbook.

“Mrs. Harris won’t have any trouble from us,” Dixie assured the woman. “We’re merely looking into Art’s death.”

“Looking into it? What the hell does that mean?”

“We want to find out who killed him.”

“A lawyer?” She looked at Dixie’s card again. “Then what are the cops doing?”

“Ma’am, every law enforcement person in this city wants to find out who killed Officers Harris and Tally. If you knew Art, Ms….?”

“Easton. Janet Easton. Mrs. Divorced.”

“If you knew him, Mrs. Easton, you might answer a few questions for us.”

“You want to know about Art, why don’t you talk to Ann?”

“We plan to, but the more we find out in advance, the less we’ll have to trouble her at such a sad time.”

Janet Easton redirected her watering hose to a row of hibiscus. “Fair enough, then. Ask away.”

“Did you and the Harrises visit often?”

“I stopped in from time to time, when Art was at work, to see if Ann needed anything. Looked after little Peggy ever once in a while, so they could get out to dinner or a movie.”

“Did Ann stop leaving the house after Peggy was born?”

“Never got out
before
that child was born. A lazy lump, if you ask me.”

“Had they been married long?”

“Five years. Soon as Art finished junior college, they married, bought that house over there, he applied to the police academy, and Ann had that baby. Blip, blip, blip, blip. Couples with any sense these days put off childbearing until they’re
both
ready.”

Five years sounded to Dixie like a reasonable period to wait.

“I suppose children can be a burden,” she said. “With Ann not working, the financial responsibility …” She shrugged, hoping Easton would jump in with some useful information.

“Ann might call Peggy a burden, all right, but Art never complained. Wasn’t a better father on this earth than Arthur Harris. Can’t imagine where that child will end up now.” She shook her head gravely. “He worried about Ann not taking to motherhood, worried she might up and leave him.”

“You and Art talked about this?”

“Talked about a lotta things. Sitting on the steps together, Peggy and Ann both asleep, Art and I solved the world’s problems a couple times ever week.”

“Did he seem worried recently? Besides his concern about Ann.”

Easton moved along the hibiscus row as she considered the question.

“Art worried about not being good enough,” she said finally.

“Good enough for what?”

“Anything. Grew up rough—but I guess you’d know about that, being a lawyer.”

“Not really.”

“Got caught up in some gang doings back in Dallas—that’s where he and Ann lived before moving here. Father deserted ‘em. Mother hopped from one boyfriend to another, looking for one dumb enough to adopt a ready-made family. Gangs take on a surrogate-family role to lost boys, and Art was about as lost as they get.”

“But then he became a cop. So he must’ve left the gang before he landed in any serious trouble.”

“Fights, drugs, weapons, petty theft—all juvenile, but Art said he treaded darn close to serious. A Big Brother turned all that around.”

“Big Brother, as in the organization?”

The woman nodded and moved down the side of the house toward a bed of caladiums. “When Art finally started seeing things straight, he looked back on what a terror he’d been and tried to make up for it. Intended to join the gang task force.”

“Had he applied?”

“Wouldn’t know about that.”

Harris worked out of the Clear Lake station, a high-dollar district. Gang activity might not be obvious there, but it existed. And a cop who tried to influence gang members to drop out would make enemies.

When Janet Easton turned off the water and began rolling up her garden hose, Dixie studied the Harris house: red brick, green shutters, a baby swing hanging from the lowest limb of a live oak tree.

Tackle the tough job, lass.
She’d put off talking to the widow Harris long enough.

Hearing her husband’s shower cease, Kaylynn Banning knocked on the bathroom door. She entered, and found Avery toweling his chest in front of the steamy wall mirror.

Kaylynn liked to linger in bed late on Saturdays, and usually she could convince Avery to linger alongside her, but with Memorial Day less than forty-eight hours away, the Mayor was eager to be downtown.

“Can’t expect people to work enthusiastically,” he’d told her, “when they know the boss is sprawled out, catching an extra forty.”

Now he swiped steam off the mirror and leaned close to scrutinize his face.

“No, you cannot go to the office without shaving,” she said, smiling at him in the mirror.

Fresh from her own shower, auburn hair damp around her ears, she intentionally wore a light dressing gown that hugged her slender curves. A year older than his forty-six, she knew she still looked damned good, and didn’t want Avery to forget it. Kaylynn Welsh Banning came from old money, old politics, and she already had an eye on redecorating the Governor’s mansion.

“How did you guess what I was thinking?”

“Avery, you never shave on Saturdays, if you can avoid it. You think nobody notices.”

“My beard’s so light—”

“It’s not that light.”

“I thought going extra casual might relax the atmosphere around the office today. You know, everybody pitching in—”

“In that case, you’ll have an extra few minutes before you need to leave.” She slipped the dressing gown off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. Sliding her arms around his middle, she pressed her groin to his buttocks.

“Kaylynn, there’s no time—”

“Nobody likes a boss who arrives early. It makes everyone sneaking in late look bad.” Her fingers caressed his testicles; her lips trailed a string of soft kisses over his back.

In the mirror, she saw a calculating glint in his eyes: He couldn’t deny her logic. And he wouldn’t dare deny her what she craved. Mayor Avery Banning might have the entire city—and an impressive old-boy network nationwide—wrapped around his little finger, but Kaylynn controlled the purse strings.

Thirty-seven minutes later, she watched him sort through a rack of sports coats. When he reached for a gray bomber jacket, she pushed his hand aside and selected a navy blazer. She regarded it against his beige slacks and pale blue shirt.

“Perfect,” she murmured.

“No, too dressy.” He chose a tan, loose-weave silk that looked like hopsack and emphasized the faint spray of freckles across his nose.

Reluctantly, she nodded her agreement and thumbed through his tie rack.

“No tie,” he said. “Today, I’m one of the guys … toss my jacket over a chair, roll up my sleeves, do whatever-the-hell job needs doing.”

She nodded again. In some areas, Avery did know best. He could assemble a roomful of drones who’d work until their eyes rolled out of their heads. Whirling from his closet, she went to her own and dressed in her gardening clothes. Their yardman handled the heavy work, but she enjoyed digging around in the beds, coaxing the beds to greater profusion every
year. In the annual “Azalea Trail” tour of Houston homes, theirs always drew oohs and ahs.

Later, in the living room, Kaylynn sorted through a handful of mail.

“A letter came for you.” She held it up to the light. Anything really important usually went to his office.

“Who from?”

“Doesn’t say. An invitation, maybe. Nice paper.”

“Someone begging a donation. Go ahead, open it.”

She slit the top with a crystal-handled letter knife and unfolded a single page. Her stomach tightened as she read.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A crank letter. Probably nothing.” She handed it to him.

A shadow darkened his eyes as he scanned the message she’d already seen:
You see what poor management causes, Mayor? This will be the only warning you receive. Unless your resignation is announced within 36 hours, and unless every man responsible for killing Lucy Aaron Ames and Edna Lou Pine is relieved of duty, with no chance of reassignment to a law enforcement agency, you are all hereby sentenced to death.
It was signed,
The People.

Avery scrutinized the emblem embossed at the top of the page. Apparently, it meant as little to him as it had to her. He turned the letter over. Nothing there.

“Let me see that envelope.” He snatched it from her, passed his thumb over the address. “Typed, not laser-printed. Downtown postmark. No return.”

The same emblem was embossed and foil-stamped on the heavy cream-colored paper. Not cheap.

“You don’t think it’s a crank letter?” she asked quietly.

He shook his head. “At the press conference last night, I never mentioned Tally was involved in the Pine shooting, or that idiot Harris—who was supposed to be on desk duty after the Ames fiasco—pulled a Rambo and somehow ended up right alongside Tally. No one outside Chief Wanamaker, the FBI task force, and the officers at the two scenes had access to that information.”

“The reporters guessed,” Kaylynn argued. She’d heard them
ask.
Mayor Banning, could the assassination of these officers have anything to do with the recent bank robberies and the women who were killed?

“That possibility is being investigated,” Avery had told them. “The task force will follow every conceivable avenue of investigation until the killer is caught.”

Now, seeing the fear on her husband’s face, Kaylynn knew this letter was no prank. “Avery, you should cancel the Memorial Day celebration.”

“I can’t. My press secretary worked up a speech addendum specifically commemorating the two cops. The city expects it. Anyway, we can’t feed this assassin’s ego.”

“According to the letter, you’re not dealing with a lone assassin. Who are The People, Avery?”

He looked down at the letter and shook his head. But he knew—or suspected—more than he was telling. In their two years of marriage, Kaylynn had never seen her husband frightened. What she saw now was genuine terror.

Police Chief Edward Wanamaker glared at his phone. The kind of calls he’d been getting, if it rang once more he might shoot the damn thing.

Late Saturday morning, and here he was at his desk instead of lazing in the backyard, Mira yapping about the shutters needed painting. Ed did his honey-dos on Saturday mornings, but he liked working at his own pace, which drove Mira nuts, her bean-counter side coming out, wanting him to make a list, be first in line at the Home Depot, then hustle to finish the list in a day. Ed liked tackling a chore only after he’d deliberated on it a while, feet on the picnic table next to an ice chest filled with cold Coors, reading the sports pages.

His office door opened.

“Some letters to sign, Chief.”

“Can’t they wait till Monday?”

His assistant laid a neat stack on his desk pad.

“Not the ones you dictated yesterday. I put those on top.” She took his pen from a brass holder attached to a slab of gray
plastic and held it patiently until he accepted it. “Mira phoned, Chief. Told me to remind you to be home by two o’clock to dress for the funeral services.”

Ed nodded, and she left the room.

Burying both officers at the same service had seemed appropriate. The men attended the police academy together, fought for the same cause, and almost certainly died by the same hand. Arthur Harris’ wife and Theodore Tally’s parents seemed to find comfort in holding a joint service. Ed hoped they’d feel the same afterward, not feel that either man had been slighted.

He glanced at the magazine in his top drawer, open to a piece on Oprah, tucked down low so he could read it without anyone noticing. Took his mind off the bitter phone calls. Let ‘em rattle on in his ear while he read Oprah’s latest inspiration. Today, however, nothing distracted him from his own thoughts.