Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (14 page)

But not today. Today,
nothing wafted, not a sound, not a scent. I raised my voice and shouted Ruby's
name. Nothing. The house was quiet as a tomb—and about as cold as one, too.
The heat wasn't turned on. Looking around, I noticed something else strange.
The kitchen was absolutely immaculate, the counters shining, the towels folded
on the racks, the stove gleaming. And when I walked through the dining room and
into the living room, I saw that these rooms were spotless too—and not just
dusted and vacuumed, but neat. It was an altogether unnerving sight.

I'm afraid this
sounds terribly tacky, but it isn't meant to, believe me. Ruby is an artistic
person who thrives on creative chaos. She is happiest when she is totally surrounded
with clutter. Her sewing machine sits for weeks on the dining room table, there
are untidy heaps of book-marked magazines beside her reading chair, and dust
bun
nies lurk in the corners while last night's dinner
dishes marinate in the dishpan.

Today, however, the sink was empty and
shining, the dining room table was cleared, and there wasn't a dust bunny or a
dirty dish to be seen. The house was picture-perfect, as if it were awaiting a
photographer from
Better Homes
and Gardens,
or a convention of
real estate salesmen. But without Ruby's wonderful messes, the rooms seemed
empty and vacant. It was as if the real Ruby had abandoned ship, moved out,
gone somewhere else, leaving only her memory behind.

I went to the foot of
the stairs, intending to go up and check to make sure that something terrible
hadn't happened. But when I put my foot on the first tread, I hesitated, not
because I was afraid of what I might find (I really did have the sense that the
house was empty) but because I was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that I was
violating my friend's privacy. If she had wanted me to know she was going away,
she would have told me. If she had wanted me to know where she was going, she
would have told me that. And here I was, breaking into her house, poking my
nose into a part of her life that she obviously intended to keep from me. Who
did I think I was? What kind of arrogant, disrespectful person would intrude
where she wasn't wanted?

And
yet—

And yet, Ruby was my friend and my
partner, and what concerned her concerned me. Maybe she was feeling bad about
Hark, or was trying to escape from Wade. Maybe she was in some kind of trouble
and needed me. Maybe she didn't even
know
she needed me, so she couldn't
ask for my help. But I knew, and I wasn't going to let her down. I took a deep
breath, pocketed my apprehensions, and started up the stairs, calling her name.
The weight of the silence told me that there would be no answer.

In Ruby's bathroom,
the towels hung pristinely from the racks, the fixtures polished and shining.
The bedroom, which was usually as cluttered as a teenager's with clothes,
makeup, and books, was as uncharacteristically neat as the downstairs had been,
the bed made with the gorgeous blue comforter she'd bought a couple of months
before, the bedside tables tidied. I went to the closet to check for her suitcase,
which always sits in the corner behind her coat. It was gone.

I was standing there, trying to think what I
should do next, when the brash jangle of the telephone shattered the silence. I
hesitated a moment, then picked it up. The caller might have a clue to Ruby's
whereabouts.

It was Wade Wilcox. "I need to talk to Ruby,
China," he said, after I had identified myself. There was an urgent edge
to his voice. "Where is she?"

"I don't
know," I said truthfully. But even if I had known where Ruby had gone, I
wouldn't have told Wade. Ruby had married him when she was a college sophomore
and divorced him after seventeen years, a daughter named Shannon, and a big
house just off the country club's ninth green. Shannon was out of college now
and working for a computer company in Austin, the big house had been sold to
pay off the big bills, and Ruby had built a successful business and a new life.
Her ex-husband had no right to think he could just waltz back in and claim her
attention.

Wade cleared his throat.
"Something serious is going on with her and I want to know what it
is," he said, sounding genuinely concerned. "I tried calling all day
yesterday, but she wasn't home. And the answering machine is turned off. That's
not like Ruby. Where is she, China?"

"I'm telling you, Wade, I don't
know. I'm as much in the dark as you are." I paused. The only Wade I know
is the handsome, charming, sexy jerk who hurt Ruby so deeply that it's taken
her years to recover—if she has. Given the fact that she's never maintained a
romantic relationship for more than a few months, I've occasionally wondered
whether she was still carrying a torch for him. But I hadn't seen him for a
long while. Maybe he'd grown out of his jerky phase. Maybe he'd cleaned up his
act. "What do you think is going on?" I asked cautiously.

"I can't even hazard a guess," he said.
"We had dinner on Friday evening and she seemed—I don't know. Angry,
maybe. Resentful. Certainly very upset. But she wouldn't give me a clue. She
kept saying that this—whatever it was—was something she had to deal with
herself."

I frowned. Ruby had gone out to dinner with Wade?
Why hadn't she mentioned it to me? But after our argument on Saturday morning,
she probably hadn't been in the mood for girlish confidences about old lovers.

"I was afraid maybe it had something to do
with Shannon," Wade was saying. "That she was sick or in trouble or
something. But Ruby's always been straight with me where Shannon's concerned,
so I don't think it's that." He sighed heavily. "Maybe it's just me.
I guess I couldn't blame her if she was a little ticked off about the way I've
treated her. I haven't exactly been Prince Charming."

I wasn't going to
argue with that. Prince Charming doesn't run off with a young woman barely out
of her teens, or put his wife through an agonizing divorce. But Wade had
brought up something I hadn't thought about. Maybe Ruby's strange behavior had
something to do with Shannon. Or with Amy, the daughter she had borne out of
wedlock before she married Wade and who had re-entered

Ruby's life a couple of years ago. I
doubted whether Wade knew about Amy, so I wasn't going to mention her name. But
it was something I could check into. Amy lives and works in Pecan Springs.

"My husband told
me you were back in town," I said evenly. "You're going into business
here?"

"I'm planning to
open a financial consulting office," Wade said. "You know, advice on
stocks, bonds, mutual funds, insurance—that sort of thing." His voice got
slick, smiling, and I could picture him sitting back, putting his feet up,
sticking a cigar in his mouth. The big man. The high roller. "Maybe we
could get together and talk about your financial future, China. Every business
owner ought to have a retirement plan."

"Thanks," I
said dryly, thinking that Wade Wilcox, with his affinity for the baccarat
tables at Vegas, was hardly the man I'd choose to help me with my investments.
"But I'm afraid my funds are tied up just now."

"Yeah, Ruby told
me that you and she had gone into business together. Some sort of lunchroom,
something like that?"

"A
tearoom," I said emphatically.

"I thought everybody in this town
drank Lone Star. You sure you gals know what you're doing?"

"You
bet we do," I growled.

"Well, you don't need to bite my
head off," he said, offended. He was silent for a minute, then his voice
changed again, became softer, more personal. "Listen, China. I know you're
Ruby's best friend, so I don't mind telling you what's on my mind. I've been
hoping that maybe she and I could
...
well, you know." He laughed awkwardly. "Second time around."

Second time around! I nearly snorted.
If you asked me, the only reason Wade Wilcox was interested in Ruby was
because he'd heard that she'd won the lottery
and he hoped he could get a piece of the action.
The guy had some nerve. If he'd handed her that line of bull, I wasn't
surprised that she'd seemed angry and resentful.

"I've always
cared for her, you know," he went on. His voice had taken on a velvety sound,
like a forties' crooner singing his favorite song. "I always respected her
right to do what she chose, to make her own decisions, even when I felt that
she was making a mistake. And deep in my heart of hearts, I've never stopped
loving her. We were good together once, I know we could make it happen again.
And now that we're a little older, a little wiser, I bet it'll be better than
ever. I've talked to Shannon about this and she thinks it
would be wonderful."

Talked to Shannon! I
was indignant. What business did Wade have dragging her into this? And what
daughter wouldn't want her parents to get back together again? If Shannon had
called her mother and pressured her to go back to Wade, I wasn't surprised that
Ruby had packed up and fled.

Wade was warming to
his subject "China, I'll bet you could help. How about if you talk to
Ruby? She always listens to you. You could tell her how much I—"

Horsefeathers.
"Wade," I said, interrupting, "I can't help you. Ruby hasn't
confided in me. I don't know what her feelings are, and I feel uncomfortable
talking like this behind her back." On her phone. In her bedroom. In her
absence. I looked around at the neat, quiet room, feeling a sudden panic.
Where the hell
was
she?

"Well, I can
certainly understand how you feel." Wade made one more effort to sound
like the concerned ex-husband. "But I tell you, China, I'm worried about
her. If you find out what's going on, will you let me know?"

"Probably not," I said
fiercely, and hung up the phone. I hadn't accomplished a single thing by coming
here, except to get trapped in an unwelcome, thoroughly unpleasant
conversation. I might as well leave—through the door, this time.

But before I went, maybe it would be a
good idea to look for Shannon's and Amy's phone numbers. I could call them and
ask if they had any idea what was going on with their mother. There was a small
writing desk by the window, overlooking the bleak and wintry garden at the
back of the house. On the desk was a telephone and a Rolodex. I flipped to
Wilcox—nothing but a phone number for Wade, with a Denver area code. I went
back to the beginning and began to leaf through all the cards. I found the
numbers I wanted filed under
G
—for girls, probably. I'd call them this evening.
But I wouldn't tell them that I had gotten their numbers by breaking into their
mother's house.

When I got back to the truck, I
realized that my surreptitious activities had made me hungry. I put the truck
in gear and drove to the Nueces Street Diner, thinking that it was a good day
for a hot meatloaf plate. And since it wasn't quite noon yet, my chances were
good. If you get to the Diner at the tail end of the lunch hour rush, you can't
count on the meatloaf.

The Nueces Street
Diner ("Best Down-Home Cookin' in Texas!") belongs to Lila Jennings
and her daughter Docia, who take turns cooking and waiting the counter. A few
years back, Lila and her husband, Ralph, bought an old Missouri and Pacific
dining car and hauled it to the vacant lot kitty-cornered across from the bank.
Ralph always said that he parked it there so the bank could see what he was
doing with its money. He died before the note was paid off, but Lila and Docia
have soldiered on, with the help of Docia's daughter Lucy. They've done well
enough to add a larger kitchen on the back and an entryway on the front and
spiff up the old diner with a red Formica counter and fifties-style
chrome-and-red tables and chairs. The walls are covered with Texas memorabilia.
(My favorite is the framed clipping from the
Dallas Morning News
announcing that three women lawyers had just been
appointed to a special Texas Supreme Court—the first all-women high court in
the United States. It is dated January 1, 192S, the same month that Ma
Ferguson, Texas's first woman governor, was inaugurated.)

There were three or four regulars at the long
counter, but the tables were still mostly empty when I walked in and hung my
coat on the peg by the door. Somebody had put up a miniature artificial tree
and a lifesize cardboard cutout of Santa Claus, and "I'm Dreaming of a
White Christmas" was playing over the loudspeaker. A large clump of
mistletoe, one of the prettiest I'd seen, hung over the swinging door that led
to the kitchen, and red and green paper streamers were draped around the glass
pie shelves. Lila and Docia had gone in for Christmas in a big way.