Hangman's Root (10 page)

"Wait a minute," I said. "He hadn't started that research project yet, had he? How can you call him a murderer?"

She made a vicious noise. "Have you seen those skeletons in his office? Those are animals he killed and stripped himself, for the fun of it. The man was a butcher, I tell you! A sadist!"

I found myself thinking that even if this was my best friend's daughter, I didn't like her. As if she had read my thoughts, she said, in a much calmer voice, "You're going to be at that party at my . . . mother's house tomorrow night?"

I frowned, surprised by her ability to turn her rage off and on so quickly. "Well..."

"Going to hedge on that one, too?"

"I'll be there."

"I'm not sure I will." Her face took on a taut, wary look. "Why is she doing it? Asking all those relatives in to meet me, I mean."

"Because she cares, I guess." I was uncomfortably aware that I wasn't too sure of Ruby's motives. "I've never been a mother. I don't know about these things."

She wasn't going to let me off the hook that easily. "You're a daughter, aren't you? You've got a mother?"

That made me even more uncomfortable. "She wants you to be part of the family," I said.

"But what if I don't want to be a part of the family?" She

turned her face away. "What if I'm happy with the family I've got?"

"Then why did you look her up?"

"Because I wanted—" She stopped. Her slender shoulders were hunched, heaving. "I had to know why."

"She told you?"

The word was flat, without inflection. "Yes."

"And that's enough for you? Just knowing?"

"Yes," just as flat. "It's enough."

"It isn't for her," I said.

She whirled, chin thrust forward. Ruby in the set of her mouth. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I spoke more softly, trying to take the sting out of the words. "Sometimes when we start the ball rolling, it doesn't stop where we want it to. Did you expect to sashay in and say 'Hi, Mom. Why, Mom? 'Bye, Mom' and dance out again?"

The anger was back, overlaid with sullenness. "I didn't expect to be overrun by a hoard of sisters and grandmas and aunts and family friends."

I shrugged. "A couple of hours, big deal. Who knows? You might like us." Us} But I was, after all, the family friend.

She snorted. "Give me a break," she said, and walked off.

I

I was ready when McQuaid showed up at the kitchen door that evening for our house-hunting expedition. I hadn't given any conscious thought to a certain stunning blond person, but I had spent a few extra minutes on myself, even going so far as to put on some makeup and dig out a pair of beige pants and an oversize blue sweater I hadn't worn in a while.

"Hey, nice," McQuaid said. "I like the way youVe got your hair fixed, too."

"Thanks." That's a man for you. Put on a little lipstick, and he likes your hair. Mine is straight and kind of dingy brownish-blond, and there's a wide gray swath down the left side. Short of coloring the gray and getting a perm, there isn't a lot I can do with it. Of course, I could always go blond. "How many houses are we going to see?"

McQuaid's glance at me was uneasy. "I've been thinking about this, China. I really don't want to force you to do something you don't feel is right."

I paused, my hand on the doorknob, wary "Are you getting cold feet?"

He chuckled, an uncomfortable chuckle. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, first you're all hot to get a place together and then you sound lukewarm. Feels like cold feet to me."

''You re the one who's been lukewarm."

I opened the door and stood aside. "Look, McQuaid," I said. "Are we going to fight, or are we going to look for the circus?"

He stepped through the door and I locked it behind us. "The circus?"

"It's the only place I can think of big enough to hold us." We were silent out to the end of the walk. "By the way," I asked, as we got in the truck, "what happened this afternoon after the PSPD showed up?"

"The usual," McQuaid said. "You know the routine." He frowned. "I have to say, though, that Bubba was pretty thorough. Something about the crime scene seemed to bother him."

"Oh, yeah? What was it?"

"It had to do with the pipe Harwick slung the rope over," McQuaid said. He turned the ignition key. "They took the body down and Bubba himself got up on the desk for a look." I was about to ask him what was so interesting about the pipe when he grinned. "Now that was something to see. Bubba Harris's belly at eye level. Up front and personal." It's okay for McQuaid to joke about Bubba, of course. McQuaid may be an ex-cop, but he's still a member of the fraternity, an old boy. I wondered what happened when girls joined the fraternity and how that changed the chemistry of the situation.

"So Sheila Dawson is the new Security chief," I said casually, as if the thought had just occurred to me. "Where did she come from?"

"University of Texas, Arlington campus. Academy training, strong street experience. Excellent overall background in law enforcement. Highly recommended."

Yeah. Rave reviews, I'd bet. "What does she think about Harwick?"

"I didn't get a chance to talk to her, actually," McQuaid said. He slid me a glance. "I hung around for a few minutes after you

left, but I had to do a couple of errands." He raised both eyebrows. "Hey, you're not jealous, are you?"

I hooted loudly. Too loudly. "Jealous of a stunning blonde who also happens to be one smart cookie?" I told him about Sheila s maneuver with Bubba and we both laughed. He laughed harder.

"Seriously," he said, sobering. "Are you?"

"We-e-11," I said.

"Don't be." He put his arm around me and pulled me over against him so that we were sitting like a couple of teenagers on a date. "She's engaged."

"She's not wearing a ring." I would have noticed that right away.

"He lives in San Antonio. They're getting married next month. Anyway, Smart Cookie isn't my type. She's pretty tough. And I've never cared for blondes."

I swiveled to look at him. "I'm tough. And Sally's a blonde."

He shook his head. "You're not tough like Sheila's tough— not these days, you're not. And Sally wasn't blond when I married her. That didn't happen until after we were divorced. It was part of her search for the real Sally." He said it with sadness. Even though they aren't married, Sally's psychological troubles have been hard on him. And hard on Brian, too.

I raised myself to look in the rearview mirror, eyeing the gray. "I've sometimes wondered if the real China is blond."

McQuaid pulled me down. "Don't even think it," he growled. "On you, gray is sexy."

We didn't find the circus. The first house was almost okay, but it was located on a busy street and had no yard, which meant that Howard Cosell would have no shrubbery to dig up and Khat would have no trees to climb. The second house had a lovely big yard with bushes for Howard Cosell and trees for Khat and an enormous garage that would accommodate McQuaid's gun hobby—but only two bedrooms and one bath.

"I don't think this will work," I said, picturing the morning traffic jams outside the bathroom.

"Neither do I," he said regretfully, "now that I give it a closer look. But that garage is sure terrific."

The third place had three bedrooms and two baths, there was a large garage, and the yard was lovely, but the lot backed up to 1-35. As we stood on the front porch, the rumble of the traffic was deafening.

"No," I said. A big rig hit its air horn and I put my fingers in my ears.

"Right," McQuaid said with a sigh. He thanked the landlord and we got back in his pickup. "How about going over to Bean's for a beer?" he asked.

I sat back, surrounded by the truck's familiar smells—vinyl seats, basset hound, gun oil, McQuaid's Old Spice. "A beer sounds good," I said. "Bean's sounds good, too. I'm sorry about the houses."

"Me, too," he said, as we drove off. "There were certain things I liked about each of them, but I guess I just didn't put it all together." He turned right onto Cedar. "Should I keep look-ing?"

"How else are we going to find a house?"

"I just meant that. . . You didn't like any of these. I thought maybe—"

''We didn't like any of these," I said. "I wouldn't mind seeing a few more." I glanced at him sideways, liking the rugged look of him in his plaid shirt and jeans and cowboy boots. Not handsome, necessarily, but nice looking, craggy. Definitely sexy. I thought of a certain stunning blond engaged person and half smiled.

His hand slid over mine on the seat. "You're sure you're not just agreeing because you think it's what I want to do?"

"Let's not complicate this," I said. "I'm agreeing because you want to do it and I want to do it and we want to do it. Anyway," I

added practically, "you and Brian need a place to live. And I need more room at the shop. If we can find the right place, it makes sense to do it together." So Fm rational. Does that have to mean I have an issue around intimacy?

The laugh lines crinkled at the corners of McQuaid's eyes. "Yeah," he said. "It makes sense. I'll start over again tomorrow. There must h^ someplace we can live." He turned onto Guadalupe. "Fm hungry. How about some fajitas to go with that beer?"

Bean's Bar & Grill, which is located on Guadalupe between the railroad track and Purley's Tire Company, used to be called Lillie's Place. It's a down-home Texas eating and drinking hangout with a pool hall in the back. Plastic baskets of tortilla chips and crockery mugs of fiery salsa are plunked down without ceremony on plain wooden tables. A chandelier made out of a real wagon wheel wound with lights shaped like red and green jalapeno peppers hangs from the ceiling, and a fake cigar-store Indian stands in the corner with a politically correct sign in one hand, requesting that people refer to him as a Native American. The restroom doors are labeled "Bulls" and "Heifers," and favorites on the jukebox are "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" and "Your Cheatin' Heart."

Bob Godwin, the owner of Bean's, was behind the bar, where he usually is at this hour of the evening. When McQuaid and I sat down, he came over to the table, bringing a pitcher of Lone Star and two mugs. We do this so often that he doesn't need to ask what we want to drink.

"What're ya eatin' tonight?" Bob is paunchy and snaggle-toothed, with thinning red hair, a spider tattoo on his forearm, and a stained white apron tied over his jeans. He and one of his Vietnam buddies bought the bar a couple of years back. The buddy was killed in a hunting accident, and Bob inherited his share.

"Fajitas for me," McQuaid said, filling our mugs. "Chicken." The menu is written in hieroglyphics on a chalkboard, under a hand-lettered sign that says "7-Course Dinner = A Six-Pack and

a Possum." We don't need to consult a menu. We always have fa-jitas. Unless we're having enchiladas or chicken-fried steak.

Bob grinned at me. "Hey, don't you look purty tonight, China. Big date?"

"Been house hunting," McQuaid said, casually. My head jerked up. I wasn't sure I was ready to go public just yet.

"No kiddin'," Bob said incredulously. "You two?"

I frowned. "Does that strike you as odd?"

"Hey, no offense." Bob flapped his apron at a fly. "I just meant that ya'll seem kinda, well, not romantic enough. If you know what I mean." His shoulders were apologetic.

"Is romance the only reason for two people to live together?" I asked crisply.

"No, ma'am." Bob grinned, showing a broken tooth. "If you ain't got romance, a little sex'll do just fine." He lifted his order book. "What're you havin' tonight, China?"

"Fajitas," I said. "Beef."

"Guacamole's extra good." Bob waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "How about a double order?"

McQuaid looked at me and we both shrugged. Bob, who's skilled at reading the small signals people send one another over the table, said, "Guarantee you won't be sorry. Organic avocados."

"Okay," McQuaid said, deciding for us both.

"What's an organic avocado?" I asked, but a George Strait song overpowered me, and anyway. Bob had already pocketed his order book and headed for the kitchen. At the table beside us, a family was trading jokes in rapid-fire Spanish, punctuated by laughter. At the table on the other side, two men in suits and cowboy boots were bent earnestly over a calculator, copying numbers onto their napkins—a business deal in progress. At the end of the bar, a group of guys were throwing darts at a poster of the governor in a white cowboy outfit, astride a white motorcycle—a blowup of the cover of a recent Texas Monthly. The governor, too.

has been known to stop in from time to time. Last month the Enterprise ran a picture of her throwing darts at herself and her white motorcycle. Bean s draws all kinds.

Another George Strait and two Willies later, Bob was back, loaded with plates of chicken and beef, tortillas, sour cream, cheese, onions, refried beans, and rice, and a huge red pottery bowl of guacamole—all balanced on his forearms. Bob scorns trays. He says that wearing an apron is bad enough; carrying a tray makes him feel like a butler.

"Hear ya'll had a little excitement up to th' college this afternoon," he said to McQuaid, setting down a bowl of grilled chicken for the make-it-yourself fajitas.