Hangman's Root (20 page)

I shuffled copies. Harwick's transcripts were from Texas A&M, where he earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. His grades were mostly As and Bs, although in two non-consecutive undergraduate semesters he had earned Cs and Ds, even an E I made a note of his student ID and the relevant years and turned to his employment application, which showed that at the time he was applying to CTSU he lived at 202 Mesquite Drive in San Antonio. I did a double-take, and flipped to the previous page in my notebook.

There it was. Anne R. and Charles I. Scott, 204 Mesquite Drive, San Antonio, Texas.

Ten years ago, Miles Harwick and Kevin Scott had been next-door neighbors.

44 4

On the way to Dottie's to meet Ruby and feed flocks of starving animals, I drove by the address Kevin had put down in his personnel file. It was west and south of campus, in a neighborhood that had been developed twenty years ago, when Pecan Springs was first beginning to respond to the growth of CTSU,

the town's largest employer. Most of the houses were the kind you see advertised now as "starter" homes—two-bedroom, one-bath bungalows with detached garages, stucco or lap siding, built on narrow, nondescript lots. There was a smattering of newer duplexes occupied by young families, judging from the tangle of bikes and balls and play equipment that littered the porches and sidewalks. It was past midafternoon, but there wasn't a child to be seen. My generation would have been taking naps. These kids were probably watching Maury Povitch.

There was a "For Sale" sign stuck in the middle of Kevin's front lawn. When I went up to the front door, I noticed several pieces of mail in the mailbox. My hand—a creature of old, inquisitive habits that I haven't quite outgrown—reached out and grabbed them. One was a junk-mail coupon flyer for Kevin. Two were letters addressed to Carl Wendt at the same address. Kevin's roommate, maybe. I tucked the mail back in the box and hit the doorbell. I could hear it ringing. But there wasn't another sound inside, and the closed drapes denied me a look into the living room. After a while I gave it up and went back to my car. I drove down the street, pulled around the block, and parked two doors down from Kevin's, where I sat for a few minutes, watching and thinking. But the front door remained shut, and after five minutes I drove off again, still thinking.

I was mulling over the same subject when I pulled up behind Ruby's Honda in front of Dottie's house. One of my questions had been answered, but the knowledge didn't take me far enough. I was left with at least five more, all of which had to be resolved before I could assure myself that I had arrived at something like the truth.

What was the connection between Kevin's blackmail letter— if it actually was Kevin's letter—and Harwick's death?

Had the man committed suicide or had he been murdered?

Either way, how did Dottie's hair come to be caught in the

knot? How did the rope get into her garage—or out of her garage and around Harwick's neck?

How was Amy involved?

Of all these questions, the second was the most fundamental, and the most troubling. There is no crime as horrible as murder There is nothing any human being can do to another that wreaks more moral havoc and shatters more completely our fragile connections to one another. When one person willfully and maliciously deprives another of life, all of the energies of the law, of society, must focus on justice.

But suicide, while it breaks the social contract just as irrevocably, is a special kind of murder, and we are ambivalent about it. We may mourn the loss of a human life and blame ourselves for not being able to prevent it. We may feel compassion for the individual whose last desperate act was self-annihilation. But there is no justice to be sought, for the killer has acted as judge and jury and pronounced the final sentence. If Harwick had killed himself, there was nothing to be done.

But I was not yet convinced. The answer to this enigma did not lie in the direct evidence, which was ambiguous at best, but in the hearts of those involved. And that took me back to Harwick, and to Kevin, and to Amy.

Amy. I glanced at Ruby's car parked in front of me. Bringing Ruby into this mess when I knew her daughter might be involved had been thoughtless and stupid. I had to find a way to divert Ruby to the periphery of the case, away from the center, away from Kevin and Amy.

I got out of the car and went around the back of Dottie's house. I found Ruby in tight jeans, loose blue chambray shirt, and cowboy boots, dispensing cat food to a hoard of furiously hungry felines. I yelled at her through the fence.

"Have you shot Ariella yet?"

"I was hoping you'd do that," Ruby called, stepping out of the

way of a giant Persian making a beeline for a food bowl. Ruby can spend hours getting acupunctured, but the thought of giving a shot makes her want to throw up.

I went into the kitchen, located Ariella's insulin in the refrigerator, filled the syringe with six units, and finally found Ariella asleep on top of the refrigerator. Giving her the injection took less time than finding her. After I put her food down (she has a special diet, of course, being diabetic), I went to talk to Ruby through the cattery fence.

"Did you locate Max Wilde?"

Ruby straightened up, a ten-pound sack of Alley Cat hugged in her arm. Her smile was lyrical. "Oh, yes, I located him. What 2i fascinating man. His woodworking business is called Wilde-Works. Isn't that a clever name? And did you know he lives in a log house?"

"I don't know anything about him, Ruby," I said. "Not a smidgen. That's what you went to find out." Now that I'd connected Kevin and Harwick, Wilde was probably irrelevant. On the other hand, judging from Ruby's reaction, he might be the diversion I needed. Her last boyfriend, a photographer named Andrew Drake, had moved out of town. Max could be helpful, especially if the situation with Amy got out of control.

Ruby shoved a full bowl aside and bent over to fill another one, the outline of her blue-jeaned butt a graceful curve. "A big log house about three miles out of Wimberley," she said. "With a loft. He built it himself, next to Cypress Creek. And it's absolutely crammed with the most fascinating thingsl Chairs and tables and cupboards he's made out of cedar, and bowls and carvings and antique tools and pottery—"

"What about Harwick? Did Wilde know him?"

"And animals!" Ruby snagged the last bowl with her toe and began to fill it. "There are animals all over the place. Peacocks that roost on the porch railing, and ducks and geese. And chickens. He scrambled eggs for lunch, with eggs we found in

the chicken coop. Would you beHeve it? And we had wine that he made himself, from grapes he grows right there on his property."

I refrained from asking whether he had trodden out the grapes barefoot. Instead I asked, "Did Max Wilde know Miles Harwick?"

She straightened up, looked around to see if she had missed any cat bowls, and came toward the gate. "Of course he knew him," she said. "They were business partners."

Great. Now we were getting somewhere. "They were in the furniture business together?"

"Well, sort of." She came through the gate and latched it behind her, shaking it to make sure the catch held. "Harwick didn't have anything to do with making the furniture. Max did all that. All Harwick did was put up some money so Max could build an inventory and put pieces on display in various shops. But that was a while ago." She looked at me. "Have you done the guinea pigs yet?"

"I was waiting for you." We headed toward the room behind the garage where Dottie kept the food and other supplies. "This furniture business—how long ago was it?"

"Four years or so. Max said he didn't like being partners with Harwick, so as soon as he could he paid him off and eased out of the relationship." Ruby opened the door and flicked on the light. There were two buckets of guinea pig food in the corner. She took one and I took the other. "Max says he kept on running into Harwick at Bean's. But he doesn't know much more about him than we do, apparently. He didn't even know Harwick was dead." She grinned. "He doesn't read the newspapers, and he doesn't have a television set."

We went out and closed the door behind us. "That's it?" I asked.

"Not quite," Ruby said. "When I asked him if Harwick had any enemies, he mentioned that there was some guy Harwick absolutely detested. Max even heard Harwick threaten to kill him once. Max thinks the guy had something on Harwick and was

using it to get money or something. Max said when he heard Harwick was dead, this guy was the first one who came to mind."

"Wonderful," I said. We opened the cattery gate and went toward the guinea pig cages. "Maybe you should follow it up. What's the guy's name?"

Ruby put down her bucket. "Max didn't know. All he knows is that the guy lives in New Braunfels. But he shouldn't be too hard to find. He has dogs." She pointed to a cage. "Oh, China, look! Another litter of babies! Aren't they absolutely precious?"

"What do you mean, easy to find?" I asked crossly. "New Braunfels isfull of people with dogs." I counted the downy bodies nestled against the mama guinea, who already looked harassed. "Twelve," I muttered. "Good God."

Ruby began dipping dry food out of her bucket into the feeders on the cages. "I don't think it'll be too hard to locate these dogs," she said. "Max says they're greyhounds. Retired from the race track."

I looked at her with a new interest. "Dottie mentioned that a man with a greyhound used to visit Harwick. Must be the same

guy."

"I can check him out," Ruby offered helpfully. "I used to know a woman who adopted a greyhound. Most of them come through the Greyhound Rescue people in Houston. They must have some kind of registry. I'll call and find out."

I began to dip pellets into a feeder while the animals in the cage chattered happily, anticipating dinner. "I'm following up another lead."

"We must be making progress," Ruby said. "What kind of lead?"

I quickly scanned my answer for obvious connections to Amy. There didn't seem to be any, so I gave it to her. "The stu-

dent who took care of Harwick's animals sent him a blackmail letter a couple of weeks ago, threatening to reveal something terrible that Harwick was supposed to have done ten years ago. When I checked it out, I learned that the student's parents live in San Antonio, next door to where Harwick lived when he applied to CTSU"

Ruby looked up, eyes widening. "Hey, that's great! It sounds like you're really onto something! What does Bubba have to say about the letter? Doesn't it practically destroy his case against Dottie?"

"He doesn't know about it yet," I said, moving to another cage. "The biology secretary discovered the letter in the computer. She's the type who doesn't make a move without checking it out with the boss. She'll show it to the police after Castle sees it. That won't be until tomorrow, I guess."

"So we're going to San Antonio this evening?"

"/'w going to San Antonio," I said. "But it can wait until morning. Tonight McQuaid and I are going to look at a house."

"Have you found something you like?"

"Maybe. But it's too big, it costs too much money, and the lease is too long."

Ruby's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln?"

"Don't be tacky," I said. "Are you available for investigative work tomorrow?"

"Just try to keep me out of it!" Ruby said. "I'll have to find somebody to mind the shop, though."

"I've already asked Laurel. If she can't handle it alone, she'll get her sister to help. I want you to chase down that guy in New Braunfels. When you've located him, we'll go talk to him." Tracing the greyhound owner would keep her busy for a good part of the day, while I resolved the other, stickier business involving Kevin—and Amy.

Ruby smiled and began on another cage. "Sounds fine to me," she said. "But I have to be back by six o'clock tomorrow night."

"What's happening at six o'clock tomorrow night?"

She smiled happily. "I'm having dinner with Max Wilde."

I stopped at Kevin's once again after I left Dottie's, but there was no answer to my ring. Someone had been there, however. The closed drapes were now open and I could see into a living room that looked exactly as you would expect if it were regularly occupied by two males in late adolescence. Laundry was piled on the sofa, newspapers littered the floor, and beer cans, potato chip sacks, and McDonald's sacks spilled off every flat surface.

It was a few minutes after six when I got home. Amy was sitting on my kitchen stoop, her arms clasped around her knees. The unpredictable spring sky had turned a pearly gray and a chill breeze blew out of the north, where snow lingered in the Panhandle. Amy was shivering in thin gray sweats.

"Sorry to be late," I said, unlocking the door. "My errand took longer than I thought." Just to see her reaction, I considered telling her that I had dropped by Kevin s, but discarded the idea. No need to let her know that I had located him.

The kitchen was warm and cozy against the outdoor chill. "Sit down," I said. "I'll make us some tea. Would you like a sandwich?"

"I don't want to sit." Amy's voice was truculent. "I don't want to eat, either I'm in a hurry. I just want to say what I have to say and get it over with."