Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (31 page)

"But there's no
way he can connect the flower farm and Swenson's operation," Ruby
protested.

I nodded. "Not even Dutch would be dumb
enough to try that."

"Dumb is Doran's middle name," Justine
said. She frowned. "But you're sure there's no connection?"

"Good question," McQuaid said, looking
at me. "How do you know the sisters aren't growing marijuana in one of
their greenhouses? Maybe that story they gave you about the survey boundaries
was just a bunch of cock and bull. Maybe they've been growing pot and Swenson
decided to muscle in on their business."

"That's
nonsense," I said sharply. "Whatever those women are up to, marijuana
has nothing to do with it."

McQuaid gave me a
skeptical look. "Oh, yeah? How do you know?"

Slowly, thoughtfully, Justine took
another helping of spaghetti. "How long have these women lived here?"
"Six or seven years," I said.

"Where were they before?" I
shook my head. I'd never bothered to ask. "California," Ruby said.
"That's what Donna told me, anyway."

Justine wound
spaghetti around her fork. "Has either of them been in trouble with the
law? Possession, maybe? Or dealing?"

"Not that I know of," I
said. I frowned. "What are you getting at, Justine?"

Justine rolled her
eyes. "Come on, China. You can figure it out for yourself."

And then I saw it. "Of course," I said,
and made a face. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're too close to the
situation," Justine said. "These people are friends of yours, or at
least friendly acquaintances. You'd like to believe that they are who they say
they are." She regarded me thoughtfully. "Which is hardly ever the
case—as you'll recall if you'll cast your mind back to your legal career.
People are almost never who they pretend to be. They always have something to
hide."

Ruby put down her
glass with a thump. "What are they hiding?" She frowned. "What
are you two talking about?"

"A possible
motive for Donna to protect her sister," McQuaid explained.

Justine reached for her wine and
leaned back. "If the defendant has a record of prior prosecutions, a court
is likely to assess a higher penalty than it would in the event the defendant
had never before been charged with a crime."

Ruby blinked.

"In other
words," I said, "somebody who's clean gets off easier than somebody
with a criminal record. Justine is suggesting that Terry has been arrested
before, and that this

is a possible motive for Donna to take the
rap." "Oh, dear," Ruby said sadly.

"A
possible
motive,"
I repeated, with a glance at Justine. "We don't know that's what
happened."

McQuaid pushed back his chair and stood up.
"I'll put in a call to Blackie. He would've automatically run a check on
Donna, but he probably won't think to see if the other sister's got a record."
He gave Justine an inquiring look. "Got any problem with that,
Counselor?"

Justine shook her head.
"Absolutely not," she said emphatically. "If my client is
innocent, let's get her the hell out of jail."

When Justine had gone, Ruby and I put
the dishes in the dishwasher, got back in the Datsun, and navigated through the
icy rain to Mrs. Kendall's apartment. This time I drove through the alley,
thinking that there might be a light in the back of the apartment. There was a
second stair that looked like it might lead to the kitchen, but no light, and
no sign of the Plymouth.

"Maybe
she's skipped town," Ruby said glumly.

"Maybe
it's time we talked to her landlord," I said.

We drove around to the street, parked,
and knocked at the Victorian house at the front of the lot. The door was opened
by a thirty-something man wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and holding a
paintbrush in one hand. Behind him, through the open door, we could see that he
was painting the hallway, with the help of a little girl who looked to be about
four years old. She was happily smearing yellow paint on the wall he was about
to cover. Upstairs, a baby was crying.

"I understand that you have a
garage apartment," I said.

He nodded. "It's rented right
now, but our tenant just gave notice. Are you looking for a place?" He
glanced from me to Ruby. "It's kind of small for two people."

I started to speak,
but Ruby interrupted me. "We know somebody who is," she said.
"When is your tenant moving out?"

"Daddy,"
the little girl said, "look at the flower I painted."

"Early next
week," the man said. "I'll need a day or so after she's out—got to
fix the hot water heater and replace the bathroom faucet." He cocked his
head. "I might even knock a little off the first month's rent, since I
wouldn't have to go to the expense of advertising."

"Daddy!"

The man turned. "I'll look at it in a minute,
Taffy. I'm talking to these people right now."

"What's
the rent?" Ruby asked.

The man turned back
to us. "Four-seventy-five a month. All bills paid. We let our current
tenant go month-to-month because she wasn't sure how long she'd be in the
United States. But we'd rather have a lease." He grinned. "You know
how it is in a college town."

"Sounds
great," Ruby said enthusiastically. "What's your phone number?"
He told her, and she jotted it down on a piece of paper from her handbag.
"Thanks," she said. "If things work out, I'll be in touch in the
next day or two."

We thanked the man and went back to
the car. "So Mrs. K is leaving town!" Ruby exclaimed, climbing in.

"I guess that
settles it," I said. "I suppose she needed the two hundred dollars
for travel expenses."

Ruby wrapped her arms around herself,
shivering. "Are we going to stake the place out and wait until she comes
home?"

"On a night like
this?" I put the key in the ignition and started the car. "Anyway, we
were up at five this morning, and it's been a long, hard day. I'd rather go
home and make myself a hot toddy and fall into a bubble bath."

"But
what about Mrs. K—and our two hundred dollars?"

"I'm sure we'll never see her
again, or the money, either. I vote that we write her a termination letter
first thing in the morning and send it by registered mail."

Ruby sighed.
"Sounds like a good idea. Anyway, I need to call Shannon and Amy. I'm
going to have both of them over for dinner later this week and tell them about
my surgery." She didn't sound as if she was looking forward to it.

I put the car in
gear. "What was all that stuff about renting the apartment?" I asked
with a frown. "The landlord seemed like a nice guy who's trying to make
his mortgage by renting out the rooms over the garage. It wasn't very nice to
mislead him."

"I wasn't
misleading him," Ruby replied. "Amy's been looking for a place to live.
I'm going to tell her about this one. It's a nice neighborhood, and the rent is
less than she's paying now." She pushed her hands into her pockets.
"Except that I forgot to ask about pets. Amy has cats. I'd better call
him back and check before I get her hopes up."

"Good
luck," I said, and turned the corner onto Nueces. I thought of Mrs. K and
sighed. "Unfortunately, Justine was right. People aren't always who they
pretend to be. Who would have guessed that the Duchess would stoop to stealing
money?"

Ruby turned to look
at me. "With Mrs. K gone, we'll have to make some immediate plans. Which
of us is cooking tomorrow?"

I stopped at the light at Nueces and
Rio Grande and

reached into my coat pocket.
"We'll flip for it," I said, handing her a quarter. "Heads you
cook, tails I cook."

Ruby flipped the coin and caught it on the back of
her hand. She peered at it. "It's tails," she announced.

"Oh, goody," I said.
"Guess I'll go in early and make sure I know what I'm doing. Do you think we
have enough supplies? Do you suppose Mrs. K wrote down her recipes? Maybe we
should change the menu. I'm really good at spaghetti."

Ruby looked at me.
"Maybe we should put an ad in the paper right away."

Chapter
Fifteen

On Midsummer Eve
people in Sweden make divining rods of mistletoe, or of four different kinds of
wood, one of which must be mistletoe. The treasure-seeker places the rod on the
ground after sundown, and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod begins
to move as if it were alive.

Sir James George Frazer
The Golden Bough

I parked the car in front of the Diner
and got out, shivering in the cold, crisp morning air. The temperature was just
below freezing, which was worrisome. The weather forecast for the
day—Wednesday—included precipitation. That might mean rain, which isn't much of
a problem, or it might mean ice, which nobody in the Hill Country likes to
think about. We can handle 100-degree days, two-year droughts, and six-inch
gully-washers, but a half-inch of ice can bring down century-old oaks, knock
out all the utilities, and glaze every road in the county. When there's ice,
all we can do is shut down for the duration.

It was almost seven, and the Diner was empty
except for a couple of construction workers sitting at the booth in the far
corner, tucking into heaping plates of eggs and bacon with grits and gravy.
Docia was in the kitchen and Lucy was out front, which was just fine with me.
If Lucy was still grieving for Carl Swenson, there was no telling what she
might do to the biscuits.

Anyway, I wanted to talk to her. Belatedly, I had
remembered Lila's cryptic remark that Swenson's death hadn't been an accident
and that Lucy knew something about it. The conversation was probably a waste of
time— without a doubt, it was the old Ford that had killed Swenson, and the
vehicle belonged to the Fletcher sisters. But I wanted to tidy up all the loose
ends, and Lucy was a loose end. Unlike her grandmother, though, she's usually
reserved and uncommunicative. I didn't think I'd get much out of her.

"Mornin',
China," she said in her laconic voice, as I sat down at the counter. Under
her white bibbed apron, she was wearing jeans and a navy shirt that made her
olive complexion look even more sallow. "Coffee?"

"Please. And I'd like scrambled eggs, a small
bowl of grits and gravy, and orange juice."

Lucy wrote this down,
pushed the order through the wide pass-through to her mother, and turned back
with the pot to pour my coffee. Her lank, stringy hair was tied back in a
ponytail. It needed a wash.

"Your
grandmother said yesterday that you and Carl Swenson were close," I
remarked. "I'm sorry about his death. It must have been a shock to
you."

Lucy bit her lip.
"Yeah." She pushed the cup toward me and went to the juice machine.
She put a glass under it and pulled the handle. The juice foamed over the rim
of the glass. She wasn't looking at me.

"I understand
from your grandmother that you don't think his death was an accident," I
said quietly.

Lucy's
head jerked up and she looked directly at me, startled out of her reserve.
"Gramma told you
that?"

I added cream and
sugar and stirred my coffee. "If it's true, I'd like to hear about
it."

She put the juice in
front of me, her dark eyebrows pulled together in a frown. There was a pimple
on her chin. "Is this about
...
I
mean, is your husband
..."
The
frown became a scowl. "But he's not the chief now. So how come you're
asking?"

I kept wishing that
Lucy would meet my eyes. "I'm asking because Donna Fletcher has been
arrested for running him down. I want to help her, if I can. If there's any
reason to believe that somebody else wanted Carl Swenson dead—"

Lucy's head came up. "Donna's been
arrested?" she asked, disbelieving. She was looking straight at me, her
dark eyes wide.
"Donna?"

"Lucy,"
Docia called sharply. "Them eggs is sittin' out here gittin' cold. Come
and git 'em."