Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (34 page)

I shivered, thinking of the old woman wandering
through the woods on a day when younger, able-bodied people had chosen to stay
indoors.

"The weather out
here is wicked," Terry went on. "Icy rain and bitter cold. Aunt Velda
is a tough old bird, but if she's broken a leg or a hip, she can't last the
night. Can you come out and bring Ruby?"

"The two of us won't be enough. Have you
called the police?" I glanced up at the clock. It was after three o'clock.
In December, the Hill Country is dark by
six.
Given the rugged terrain, it
would take more than the three of us to mount a full-scale search-and-rescue
operation before it was too dark to see. We needed help.

"I don't want to
take the time to explain why, but that's a last resort," Terry said.
"However, if we haven't located her by five, I'm planning to call the
cops. Please don't—"

"We're on our way," I interrupted, and
hung up before she could ask me not to notify the sheriff.

Terry's face darkened when she saw
Blackie's official car pull in behind Ruby's red Toyota in front of the gate.
"I thought I told you—" she began furiously.

I held up my hand.
"The sheriff was already on his way out here when I got your call. He
wants to talk to you, Terry. It has nothing to do with your aunt."

Terry's
eyes suddenly went dead. "He knows, huh?"

Pulling my parka
tighter around me, I replied shortly, "Yes, he knows." I didn't want
to go into it with her. The sheriff gets paid to do that kind of dirty work.

"Where
have you looked for your aunt?" Ruby asked.

"Just about
everywhere," Terry said dully, thrusting her bare hands into the pockets
of her coat. "I'm afraid she's gone to look for that stupid cave she keeps
talking about. Or maybe she's hunting for that blasted spaceship." She
threw a resigned glance at Blackie, who was striding up the path toward us.
"Now that the cops are here, there's no point in delaying the search. Who
do I call?"

"That's been taken care of,"
I said. "The sheriff has put an EMS crew on standby alert and radioed the
volunteer fire department over at Deer Springs. They're only ten miles away, so
they'll be here before too long. In the meantime, Ruby and I can start
looking."

Look where? Beyond
the well-kept fields, past the fences, we were surrounded by thousands of acres
of impenetrable cedar brakes, dense thickets of scrub oak and elbow brush and
unruly wild grapevines, rocky ridges Uttered with stones weathered loose from
the thin caliche soil, steep canyons, eroded slopes, wilderness. The old lady
could be anywhere, everywhere. I shivered in the cruel wind knifing down from
the north. Exposure kills fast in weather like this. She could be dead.

Blackie reached us. His eyes were
watchful and his mouth was firm, but when he spoke his voice was deceptively
mild. "Ms. Fletcher, you and I need to have a little talk about some
unfinished business you've got in California." He paused. "And about
Carl Swenson's death."

Terry sucked in her
breath, straightened her shoulders, and came to life again. "You're not
getting anything out of me," she growled. "I'm not talking until I
get a lawyer." She looked at me. "How about that Wyzinski woman? Will
she represent me?"

"You'll have to
ask her," I said. Justine had been sympathetic toward Donna, but I wasn't
sure how she'd feel about Terry, who'd been willing to let her sister go to
jail in her place. A lawyer doesn't have to like a client in order to represent
her fairly, however. Some of my best work had been on behalf of people I
detested.

"I know you're
concerned about your aunt," Blackie went on, "so we can wait until
the search team arrives and you can give them some idea where to look. I'll
also arrange for someone to let you know as soon as she's found." He
paused. "I suggest, though, that you wait in the car."

Terry lifted her chin. "I'll wait
out here," she said defiantly. "I'm not cold."

"That's not an
option," Blackie said. He took Terry's elbow firmly, steered her down the
path, and locked her into the back seat of the squad car. He opened the front
door and reached for his mike. I knew he was letting the dispatcher know that
he had the suspect in custody.

Ruby and I stood looking after them. I had plenty
of mixed feelings about Terry's arrest—mostly regret for the way things had turned
out and for my part in it, combined with relief that Donna would be cleared,
whether she wanted to be or not. More than anything else, though, I was glad
the whole thing was over. Now if Aunt Velda would just turn up unharmed.

"I wish I could feel sorry for
Terry," Ruby said sadly, "but I don't. It's all very karmic, don't
you think? She messed up her own life by getting involved with drugs, then she
made trouble for her sister, running to her after she escaped from prison. Now
she has to pay for what she did." She made a disgusted noise. "I'll
bet Donna didn't know a thing about the escape. Terry probably told her she got
out early for good behavior."

I drew my wool cap
down over my ears. "You think that's what happened?" "Don't
you?"

"I don't know,"
I said slowly. "It's possible. Terry is pretty coercive. And Donna strikes
me as being the kind of person who invests a lot of herself in taking care of
others, like Aunt Velda, for instance. Maybe Donna felt she needed to take care
of her sister. Maybe she even helped Terry escape." I made a wry face.
"Sounds like I'm describing a couple of dysfunctional co-dependents. I
have no way of knowing whether it's an accurate description."

"It's hard to
know what's really going on with people," Ruby agreed. "Just when you
think you've got them figured out, they show you another side of themselves,
and it changes your whole view." She pulled her hood forward and fastened
it under her chin. "Where do you think we ought to start looking?"

"There's a
spring near the top of that ridge," I said, pointing. "Mistletoe
Spring. Donna and Aunt Velda talked about it when I was here on Saturday. The
area was the source of their disagreement with Swenson. Aunt Velda mentioned
that she'd found some arrowheads there and said she wanted to look for more. I
suppose it's as good a place to start as any."

"Should
we walk?"

I nodded. "There
must be some kind of a road, but I have no idea what shape it's in. I don't
want to drive on it." I glanced at my watch. It was almost a quarter past
four. "We'd better get started. It'll be dark in less than two
hours."

I had brought a
knife, two flashlights, and a couple of wool blankets, tightly rolled and
lashed with a bungee cord. I had considered bringing other equipment—a rope,
first-aid supplies, and so on—but decided it would be better not to load
ourselves down. If we found Aunt Velda, one of us could stay with her while the
other went back for help.

I fastened the rolled
blankets over my shoulder and we stuck the flashlights in our pockets. We left
Blackie and Terry to wait for the search-and-rescue crew and headed off down
the narrow gravel lane that ran beside Mistletoe Creek, calling Aunt Velda's
name every few minutes and stopping to listen for an answering cry. The arctic
wind flung flecks of stinging sleet in our faces and numbed our hands and feet.
Ice was already beginning to embrace the exposed tree branches and twigs, and
the rocks underfoot were treacherous. It was one of the coldest days I could
remember. Terry had said that Aunt Velda had worn her coat and boots, but that
wouldn't be enough to save her from hypothermia.

Despite the body warmth generated by
the exercise, I was bone-cold before we had hiked half a mile. Ruby was
shivering and out of breath, and her nose was as red as a berry. I gave her a
concerned look.

"You
sure you should be doing this?"

"I'm sure,"
she said emphatically. "I keep telling you, China, I am
not
sick.
There's nothing wrong with me that a little surgery won't cure." She threw
me a sidelong look. "You sure you know where we're going?"

"We're headed in
the right direction," I said, stopping to adjust the blankets I was
carrying. "The spring has to be up this way, because the creek is down
that way." I pointed.
"Way
down."

In the last few minutes, the road—twin tire tracks
in the frost-killed grass—had angled diagonally upward across the densely
wooded shoulder of the ridge. Mistletoe Creek, on our right, was now at the
bottom of a ravine that was probably sixty feet deep, lined with cedar trees
and tumbled limestone boulders.

Ruby stopped, put her hands around her mouth, and
called Aunt Velda's name again. We paused to listen, but all we could hear was
the sound of the wind and the brittle rattling of the live-oak leaves.

"Let's keep going," Ruby
said determinedly. "We've got to be close to the top of the ridge."
She frowned. "What did you say Aunt Velda might be looking for up
here?"

"Arrowheads.
Donna and Terry were cleaning out the spring, and Aunt Velda found a cache of them.
She claims she found a cave, too, with arrowheads and skulls, stuff like
that."

I stopped, cupped my
hands, and gave another loud yell. A flock of twittering robins, migrants from
an even colder north, flew up from the creek bottom, and somewhere a tree
branch crashed with a splintering sound. At the rate the ice was forming, there
would be a great many more downed limbs by morning.

We started walking
again. "A cave," Ruby said thoughtfully. "There's a big one on
the other side of Austin—Inner Space Cavern or something like that. But I've
never heard of one around here."

"The ones in this part of the
Edwards Plateau are pretty small," I said, "mostly sinkholes. The
bedrock is limestone, formed from ocean deposits. Like this—see?" I picked
up a pitted piece and showed it to her. "Wherever rainwater runs into a
crack, the stone dissolves. What you get over time is a honeycomb of fissures
and holes." I tossed the rock into the ravine and watched it bounce all
the way down to the creek. "Underneath all these trees and bushes, the
limestone probably looks like a piece of Swiss cheese."

We stopped and the
both of us called out together. After a moment, we moved forward again. To our
right, the ravine fell away steeply; to our left, the ground rose to the top
of the ridge, maybe fifty feet higher than the old road. The spring must not be
far ahead.

"There's a big
cave over near Marble Falls," I went on. "Longhorn Cavern. When the
area was first settled, some Comanches kidnapped a girl and took her there.
Three Texas Rangers came after them, and there was a fight. The Rangers got
away with the girl. She married one of them."

"How
romantic," Ruby said with a grin.

"There's more,
only not so romantic. During the Civil War, the Confederates used the cave as a
gunpowder factory. They dug up bat guano from the cave floor to make
saltpeter, and stored their munitions in some of the back rooms. Sam Bass hung
out there too, in the 1870's. You know, the guy who almost robbed the Pecan
Springs Bank."

"Sounds like a busy place." Ruby stopped
and called for Aunt Velda. All we heard was the crash of another icy limb.

"There's even
more," I said, when we were moving again. "In the twenties—"

But Ruby, head
cocked, wasn't listening to me. Somewhere in the woods we suddenly heard a
yelp, wild thrashing sounds, and loud cursing.

We
yelled. There was a wavering call in reply.

"China?
That you, China Bayles?"

"It's Aunt Velda!" Ruby
cried excitedly. "We've found her!"

A silence, then more
furious thrashing. "Goldurn grapevines! Stupid-ass, piss-ant grapevines!
Tie up a person's feet so's she cain't walk."

"Keep
talking," I called. "Where are you?"

"I'm
in the clutches of these goddamn vines, that's where I am," Aunt Velda
replied bitterly. "Git the hell up here and cut me loose!"

We found her a few minutes later, just below the
top of the ridge. She was sitting on a large hunk of weathered limestone,
wearing purple sweatpants, old leather Army boots, a dirty red jacket with a
torn sleeve, and a yellow wool cap. Her gray hair straggled around her face,
her cheeks were scratched and filthy, and her feet and legs were hopelessly
tangled in a snarl of wild grapevines.

"Oh, you poor
thing," Ruby gasped, as I took out my knife and knelt down to cut the
vines. "You must be freezing!"