Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (17 page)

"It's too bad about the
accident," I said. "People drive too fast, and they don't pay
attention." I paused. "Did Ms. Turtle say whether she saw it
happen?"

Bonnie initialed my
deposit slip. "Gosh, I don't know. All she said was, the sheriff had
talked to her about it." She filled out the bank's deposit receipt and
pushed it through the window. "If you want to ask, you can probably catch
her at the pharmacy. She said she needed to get a prescription filled."

"I'm not sure I
know Ms. Turtle," I said. "At least, not to recognize her."

"Of course you
do," Bonnie replied. "Don't you remember? Corinne Turtle. She's the
one who always brings that awful lamb casserole to the October herb cookoff."

"Oh,
right," I said. "Corinne. I guess I just didn't remember her last
name." But I remembered her lamb casserole, that's for sure. Two years
ago, I was one of the judges. A dish like that you never forget.

Bonnie put the checks
in her drawer and pushed it shut. "She never gets a prize, poor
thing," she said. "Maybe the judges don't like lamb. You'd think
she'd take the hint and try something else."

Every Christmas, Mr. Hobbs, the
pharmacist, invites the local elementary-school artists to paint his front
window, and today was the day. All the drugstore items had been moved out of
the window and a half-dozen kids were noisily creating an eight by ten picture
of Santa's workshop, staffed with elves working under the supervision of a beaming
Mrs. Claus. They weren't gifted artists, but they were having fun.

In the back of the store, Mr. Hobbs
was handing a white paper sack to a heavyset woman in black slacks and a green
coat with a fake fur collar, carrying a furled black umbrella.

"One every four hours," he said
cheerily. "Should take care of your nerves."

"Oh, I hope so," the woman said. "I
need to get a good-night's sleep."

"Corinne!" I said, when the woman turned
around. "So nice to see you again." When she looked puzzled, I added,
"Maybe you don't remember. I'm China Bayles."

"Of course," she
said, not very cordially.
"You were one of the judges at the herb
cookoff a couple of years ago."

"That's right," I said. "That lamb
casserole of yours missed by that much." I held up my thumb and forefinger
to show how close the casserole had come to—something. Being tossed out, maybe?

"It did?"
Her smile was surprised. "How nice of you to remember. It's my favorite
recipe—and original, too, if I do say so myself. Not something I clipped out of
a magazine."

"I could never forget that casserole," I
said truthfully. I glanced down at the sack. "I couldn't help overhearing.
Have you tried kava for your nerves?"

"Kava?"
She looked doubtful. "What's that?"

"It's an herbal
remedy that reduces anxiety and stress. And St. John's Wort is good for
depression. Neither are addictive, like the chemical alternatives."

Corinne frowned.
"Thanks for the suggestion, but I called Dr. Nichols and he thought I ought
to have this." She was clutching her bag as if it were a life preserver.
"I need something that
works.
My nephew Marvin has been staying
with me since August. He had a job but he quit, and he hangs around the house
all the time. He's driving me crazy. My nerves are a wreck, and I'm not getting
enough sleep."

I nodded
sympathetically. "Kids are like that." I paused. "I understand
you've had some trouble out your way."

"You've heard
about Carl Swenson, then," Corinne said nervously.

"How
did it happen?"

She shifted from one
foot to the other. "All I know is that he was out cutting mistletoe along
the road and somebody hit him."

"How
awful," I said. "Did you see it happen?"

"Oh, no, of
course
not,"
she said quickly. There was a nervous tic at the corner of her eye and her face
had a grayish tinge. "It was drizzly yesterday and I was feeling very low.
I didn't go out the whole day. In fact, I didn't know a thing about it until
the sheriff stopped this morning and told me. It was quite a shock to my
nerves. I'm not a complainer, but I just don't know how much more I can
take."

"I'm sure it's very hard," I said,
wondering if Corinne had happened to mention Marvin to the sheriff. "With
a hit-and-run, they may never find out who did it unless they can find a
witness. Somebody who saw the vehicle."

Up front, where the
painting party was going on, one of the kids squealed, "I'm going to tell
on you!" Corinne gave a startled yelp. Her hand went to her heart and she
began to breathe quickly.

I put my hand on her arm. "Maybe
you ought to sit down, Corinne. Just to catch your breath."

She shook off my hand
and edged toward the door. "No, no, I can't sit. I'm in a hurry. I have to
see about my car."

"I'll walk with
you," I said, following her. Outside, she put up her umbrella, made a
right turn, and quick-stepped along. I pulled up the sheepskin collar on my
jacket and lengthened my stride. "The thing is that you have so little
traffic out there," I went on, taking up where we'd left off. "So the
person who hit Carl Swenson probably lives on that road, don't you think?"
Some instinct made me add, "Or is visiting somebody."

"I
never
have visitors," she replied,
with a quick, dismissive emphasis, and walked faster. She was holding her umbrella
directly over her head, not offering to share it. The water was dripping onto
my shoulder.

"What
about your nephew?"

"Oh, but he's not visiting, he's family. My
sister's son." She frowned. "The man who lives in that trashy old
house trailer, Clyde McNabb? I hate to say it, but he's terribly reckless. He
drinks, too, and he's got a nasty temper. Last year, he got drunk and hit two
of Swenson's goats. They had a big argument over it. I don't suppose it would
be a surprise if—" She broke off and gave me a quick sideways glance to
make sure that I was paying attention. "I wish I'd thought to mention this
to the sheriff. Although of course, I don't for a minute mean to suggest that
Clyde did it."

Of course she had meant to suggest it.
Which suggested to me that she was hiding something, maybe something to do with
her nephew—the one who wasn't a visitor, but family. The one who got on her
nerves so badly.

Corinne made a sharp
right at the corner and I stayed with her. "I understand that the Swenson
family has owned that land for quite a while," I said. "But somebody
told me that Carl moved away after high school."

"Moved away,
joined the Army, got himself into trouble, and ended up in prison."
Corinne sniffed. "His father died just about the time he got out, so he
came back here and took over the ranch. Not that he does what you'd call ranching.
Just a few hundred goats. They're always getting out through the fence. They
got in my garden this summer and ate all my sweet corn."

"I
wonder why he went to prison."

"I never
heard." She seemed more willing to talk now that the conversation had
shifted to Swenson. "He didn't have a job, you know. But he didn't appear
to need one. He sold two hundred acres to those two women who turned it into a
flower farm, so he must have been getting regular payments from them. Every
month or so, he'd drive off with a load of goats. And there was the mistletoe."

"It's amazing how little money
some people can get by on," I remarked.

"He didn't seem to want for anything,
though," Corinne went on, half to herself. "I overheard Marvin
telling somebody on the phone that he'd just finished building a greenhouse.
I guess Swenson saw how well those women were doing and decided he'd go into
the flower business."

I frowned,
remembering Donna's story about the argument over the ownership of Mistletoe
Spring. Maybe Swenson had counted on his own spring for irrigation. And maybe,
after the sisters took possession of Mistletoe Spring and cleaned it out, he'd
decided to force them off the land and take over their established fields.

Corinne
stopped. "This is as far as I go."

I looked up. We were
in front of Gus's Body and Paint Shop. "Oh," I said. "Having
some work done on your car?"

"An
estimate." She gave a nervous little laugh. "Marvin hit a deer last
week and smashed the fender."

"Just the
fender?" I pushed my hands into my pockets. "You're lucky. I know a
guy who totaled his brand new SUV when he ran into a big buck."

"The fender is bad enough,"
she said with a sigh. "I'm afraid it will cost more than I can
afford." She managed a shaky smile. "I've enjoyed talking to you,
China. Come out sometime and I'll cook that lamb casserole you like so
much."

"That would be
wonderful," I lied.

What in the world did we do before the
cell phone was invented? Now there's no more standing out in the rain to use a
pay phone, or darting into a convenience store and yelling over the noise of
video games. Back at the truck, I turned on the ignition, flipped the heater to
high, and called the sheriff's office to give Blackie the information about the
smashed fender on Corinne Turtle's maroon Mercury, which seemed to me to be top
priority—and urgent. Gus often had a backlog and couldn't get to a repair job
for a couple of days. On the other hand, if the customer slipped him a little
something extra to go to the top of the list, he could be agreeable. But when
the dispatcher said that Blackie couldn't be reached, I elected to call home
rather than leave a message. McQuaid picked up the phone on the first ring.

"McQuaid
here," he growled. "Who is it?"

"Uh-oh,"
I said. "Writer's block?"

"How'd you guess?" He
sighed. "I never should have started this damn book. If I tell the truth,
none of my Ranger buddies will ever speak to me again. If I don't tell the
truth—"

"—there's
no point in writing the book."

"Exactly."
McQuaid sighed again. "Hell's bells. I'd a whole lot rather crawl around
that crime scene than face this stuff."

"Did you guys
turn up anything useful?"

"The usual
roadside litter. Nothing that really stood out, other than the paint chips and
glass fragments. If you're on your way home, bring a six-pack. When Hemingway
hit a dry spot, he'd tie one on."

"You'll have to
get it yourself, Ernest. I'm headed for the flower farm. Blackie wants me to
see if I can get any more information out of Donna and Terry."

"I'll
go with you," McQuaid offered quickly.

"I'm afraid this
is a girl thing. They're more likely to be straight if they're talking just to
me. But there's another angle you could check out, if you don't have anything
better to do."

"Oh, yeah?" He sounded eager.
"What's that?" "I ran into Corinne Turtle at the pharmacy a
little while ago."

"Who? Turtle?
Oh, yeah. The neighbor. Blackie's already interviewed her. She didn't see
anything."

"Right," I
said dryly. "Well, it turns out that she's taken her car—a maroon
Mercury—to Gus's Body Shop. Her story is that her nephew Marvin hit a
deer."

"A deer, huh?" McQuaid gave a low
whistle. "And Tut-tle told Blackie that she lived alone. She didn't say
anything about a nephew."

"I wonder
why."

"Yeah, me too.
You know, I've been meaning to ask Gus to take a look at the back bumper on the
van. It's been rattling something fierce."

"It might be a
good idea to do that pretty quick, before he does any work on the Turtle
vehicle." I didn't say "before he destroys any potential
evidence," but McQuaid got the point.

"I'm on my way." He paused.
"But there's something I was supposed to—Oh, yeah. Amy called. She wants
you to call her at work."

"Amy!"
Ruby's older daughter. Maybe she was calling with a message from her mother.
"Did she leave a number?" The one I'd copied from the Rolodex was
her home phone.

"Yeah. Here it
is." He gave it to me and I jotted it down on the corner of an advertising
flyer. "I'll call when I've finished at Gus's," he added, sounding
much happier than he had at the beginning of our conversation. "Have I
told you today that I love you?"