Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (24 page)

"Absolutely,"
Ruby said. "And I'll bring my chile-pepper spray. That stuff'
11
knock the socks off a grizzly bear. If
somebody jumps us, he'll be sorry." The lines were disappearing from
Ruby's face, and she looked lively and eager. My harebrained diversionary
scheme was working.

"What
time do you want me to pick you up?" I asked.

"How
about five-thirty?"

I blinked. "Why don't we make it
a little later? It's pretty cold at five-thirty in the morning. And very, very
dark. The sun doesn't come up before seven, you know."

"I say five-thirty.
We want to be there before any of Swenson's cronies show up to clean the place
out—if they haven't done it already. We probably should have gone out there
tonight, instead of sitting here talking about it." Ruby looked at her
watch. "Gosh, China, it's after ten. I'd better get home and get some
stuff together." She gave me a grin. "Hey, you know, I haven't
thought about my boob for a whole fifteen minutes?" Her grin went crooked.
"Until just now, that is."

"That's okay, Ruby," I said.
"This expedition will be so exciting that you'll forget about your boob
for hours at a stretch."

Little
did I know.

Chapter
Eleven

It is not a new
opinion that the Golden Bough [that Aeneas carried into the underworld] was the
mistletoe. True, Virgil does not identify but only compares it with mistletoe.
But this may be only a poetical device to cast a mystic glamour over the
humble plant. Or, more probably, his description was based on a popular
superstition that at certain times the mistletoe blazed out into a supernatural
golden glory.

Sir James George Frazer
The Golden Bough

I didn't intend to go dashing off to
Swenson's place before dawn on that Tuesday morning without letting my husband
know, but I'm afraid that's what happened. McQuaid must have gotten involved
with his research, because he didn't get in until late—what time, I'm not sure,
because I was already sound asleep. When I tried to rouse him at quarter to
five, all I got was a muttered "Whazzat? Whozzit?" and a resonant
snore.

What the heck, I
decided. Let him sleep. If I woke him up to tell him where I was going, I'd
have to tell him why, which would mean telling him about Ruby's cancer. The
news would hit him as hard as it had me. It could wait until this evening, when
we'd have time to talk it through.

I pulled on thermal underwear, a flannel shirt,
and jeans, and took my unloaded gun out of the locked drawer. I hefted it,
frowning. In the years since my father gave me the Beretta, I have developed an
attitude about it. It's not the gun's fault, of course—guns are neutral. As
Sheila fre-quendy points out, I'd probably feel better about it if I'd shoot it
more often, although somehow I haven't quite gotten around to that. As I stood
there, thinking these unproductive thoughts, it occurred to me that Ruby might
ask how much ammunition I'd brought, and that I'd feel more guilty about lying
than I would about carrying the ammo. I took six rounds and went downstairs for
coffee. If I couldn't wake McQuaid to tell him where I was going, I could leave
a note.

But I gave it up after a couple of tries. How
could I say, in twenty-five straight-faced words or less, that Ruby and I were
playing a predawn game of cops and robbers out in the Hill Country? I scrawled,
"I'll be in the shop between ten and noon," and pinned the note to
the door of the fridge with a rooster magnet. I gulped down my coffee and
shrugged into my jacket, the Beretta in one pocket and the ammunition in the
other. I grabbed my shoulder bag, gloves, a wool cap, and a muffler and let
myself quietly out the door.

The Pecan Springs Chamber of Commerce probably
wants me to tell you a different story, but the truth is that December can get
pretty damn cold around here. My Datsun turned over reluctantly a couple of
times before she gave an out-of-sorts hiccup and started. I didn't blame her,
poor old thing. It was five-fifteen in the morning and the temperature was
probably close to fifteen degrees when the wind-chill was factored in. If I
wasn't out of sorts myself, it was only because I was warmed by the feeling
that I was undertaking this uncomfortable mission on behalf of a very important
person: my friend Ruby, who is definitely worth the effort.

At Ruby's house, I
didn't even have to honk. Dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a dark wool coat,
cap, and scarf, Ruby was waiting on the front porch. When she saw me pull up at
the curb, she ran down the walk and jumped in.

"You're
late," she said breathlessly, dropping her canvas tote bag onto the floor,
where it landed with a clunk.

I turned on the
overhead light and looked at my watch. "Three minutes. The car didn't want
to start." I peered at the tote bag, which looked heavy. "What did
you bring?"

"Oh,
loads
of
stuff," Ruby said. She opened the bag and began taking things out. "A
Thermos of hot chocolate, gra-nola bars, and some raisins."

"Ah,"
I said. "The well-provisioned sleuth."

"Plastic zipper-top bags, pepper spray, some
bolt cutters, a lock-pick kit, a—"

"Wait a minute," I said. The bolt
cutters and lock-pick kit I understood, although it wouldn't have occurred to
me to bring them. "We won't need the bolt cutters—there's a padlock on the
gate but it's hanging open. What are the bags for?"

Ruby gave me a look
that suggested that I should be able to figure this out for myself if I'd take
the time to think about it. "The bags are for any evidence we want to
collect for Blackie. And even if the gate is open, we might need to get into
one of the buildings."

"I
see," I said.

"I've also brought some money,
some powdered sugar, and a few joints." With a flourish, she displayed a
thick

roll of greenbacks, a plastic bag
filled with some suspicious-looking white stuff, and a couple of hand-rolled
brown-paper cigarettes.

"Excuse me, Ruby," I said. I tried to
keep my voice low and even, but it rose in spite
of
me. "I know I shouldn't pry into your private affairs,
but WHERE IN THE HELL DID YOU GET THAT MARIJUANA?"

"In my kitchen
cabinet," Ruby said. "But it's not what you—"

I wasn't listening.
"I
don't care where you got it," I said sternly,
"we are getting rid of it this instant. I am not about to get my ass
busted for possession, thank you very much."

Ruby gave me a look
of great forbearance. "It's not marijuana, it's oregano," she said.
"Here. Smell."

I sniffed at the joint she held out. By damn, it
was
oregano.
"But why—" I sputtered. "What could you possibly—"

I stopped suddenly. Wait a minute. I was acting as
if this trip we were making was for real, but it wasn't. Blackie was an
excellent lawman. If there'd been anything worth investigating at Swenson's
place, he would have been out there a couple of days ago. This expedition that
Ruby and I were making was a diversion, pure and simple, like one of those
murder mystery weekends where people go hunting for planted clues and stumble
over live dead bodies and generally make fools of themselves, all in the name
of the game. If Ruby was taking it seriously, well and good, but it
was
only
a distraction. And I was here to play along. All the way.

I put on a humble look. "I think I'm missing
the point, Sherlock. Please tell me why we are carrying a wad of money, a bag
of powdered sugar, and a couple of oregano joints."

Ruby put the powdered sugar and the
joints back into her bag. "When people practice espionage, they have a
cover story. This is our cover. We don't have any idea who we might run into
out there, so you and I have our own little stash of cocaine and grass.
Just-pretend, of course."

Oh boy. "That's not just-pretend money,"
I said. "Jeez, Ruby, that's enough to bankroll the next City Council election."

"It only
looks
like
a lot," Ruby said, putting the money into her pocket. "Actually, it's
just a couple of fifties rolled around a big bunch of ones." She patted my
arm with a smile. "It'll be fine, China. Trust me."

Over the years, I've
learned that when Ruby gets enthused about something, I might as well quit
arguing and go along for the ride. Anyway, in this instance, there wasn't any
particular harm in acting like a pair of idiots, because we weren't going to
have an audience. The only live critter we were likely to encounter would have
four feet and horns and smell like a goat.

I turned off the
overhead light and started the Datsun. "Buckle up, babe," I said, in
my best Bogart. "We're outta here."

The sky overhead was still as dark as
the inside of a cow when we reached the turnoff to Swenson's house thirty
minutes later. I pulled over to the far left as we approached the mailbox.
"Let's take another look at that envelope," I said. "Maybe
you'll see something I missed."

I rolled down my
window, letting in the chill, cedar-scented air. But when I opened the mailbox
and reached inside, it was empty. Frowning, I rolled up the window. "I guess
the sheriff took it already," I said. Which was odd. When I'd talked to
Blackie the night before, he hadn't seemed in any great hurry to send somebody
to pick up the brochure.

"He must have
decided that it was a clue to the man's intentions." Ruby said. "I
hope he hasn't beaten us to it."

I was still thinking
about the empty mailbox. "Beaten us to what?"

'To the greenhouse,
what else?" Ruby replied. She peered through the windshield. "I
thought you said the gate was unlocked."

"It
is. The padlock is hanging open."

"It isn't,"
she said. "I can see from here. But it's no problem." She reached
into her canvas bag and pulled out the bolt cutters. "I told you these
would come in handy." She hopped out, slammed the door, and began
attacking the rusty chain that fastened the gate.

Up to this point, Ruby would have to bear her
share of blame for what happened that morning. But from here on out, in all
fairness, I have to say that it was my fault. If I had jumped out, snatched
those bolt cutters, dragged her back to the car, and driven to the Diner for
jelly doughnuts and fresh hot coffee, none of the other events would have
happened. But I wasn't paying the right kind of attention to what Ruby was
doing. Instead, I was trying to puzzle out the significance of the locked gate.

It had been unlocked
when I stopped at the mailbox yesterday evening.

Who
had locked it?

Why?

Was there any
connection between the locked gate and the missing brochure?

What was going on
here?

I was still puzzling
when the door opened and Ruby slid into the car, triumphantly brandishing her
bolt cutters. "I've done it!" she said. "Now we can drive
through."

I
blinked. "Do what?"

"Drive, China," Ruby said, with
exaggerated patience. "Make a left turn through the gate and onto that
lane. Go, girl!"

With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I went. But
I was no longer so cheery about our little adventure. Driving onto private
property through an unlocked gate is one thing. You can always argue that you
took a wrong turn. But cutting a chain in order to enter private property is
something else altogether. It is spelled t-r-e-s-p-a-s-s. In Texas, this is
taken very seriously, and has on more than one occasion been used as the basis
of a justifiable-homicide defense.

Ruby, however, was
plagued by none of these sobering thoughts. She was thoroughly preoccupied with
the game, and that was worth a great deal. I swallowed my apprehensions and
began paying attention to the road.

Most people who live in the Hill Country locate
their houses within easy reach of a highway, to cut down on the cost of
building and maintaining a road. But not Swenson. The pot-holed trail we were
following—two gravel tracks with a strip of brown weeds down the middle—looped
through a rock-strewn meadow, followed a limestone ridge for about a mile, then
dipped down the lip of a cedar-filled ravine, at something like a 15-degree
grade. The Datsun gasped and so did I, and Ruby grabbed for the door handle
with a muttered "Whup!" But after a moment we straightened out, more
or less, climbed the other side of the ravine, and emerged onto another meadow.
I let out the breath I'd been holding and Ruby let go of the door handle.