Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (36 page)

I could have told
Lucy that Donna was being released and her sister was taking her place in jail,
but she might be more willing to talk if she believed that Donna was in danger.
And she obviously felt much less inhibited when her mother and grandmother
weren't there to boss her around. Maybe she wasn't as taciturn and
uncommunicative as I had thought—just repressed.

"You believe that somebody else might have
wanted to kill him?"

"I don't know
the details about how he died, except what's in the newspaper. But I've been
thinking about it, and yes, there was somebody who didn't like him. Hated him,
even." Her voice grew tighter. "I was out to his place on a Sunday night,
you see, the week before he got killed, and there was this phone call. It made
him pretty uncomfortable. And sad. I don't know that he was scared or anything
like that, but he was sure sad."

I listened with more
attention. "Do you know who called?"

"You mean, do I
know the name? Uh-uh. I happened to pick up the call, but I can't tell you much
about it, really. All Carl said was it was about something he'd paid for
already, and it would be better off forgotten because there was nothing he
could do to change things." Her tone became philosophical. "Life is
like that, you know? Sometimes we do something we wish we hadn't, but we still
have to live with it. I got the idea that Carl had done something he was
really sorry for, but he was putting it behind him and getting on with his life
the best way he could. You know what I mean?"

All I knew was that
if I didn't hurry this along, we could be on the phone all night. "You
said you picked up the call. Maybe you could start there and tell me exactly
what happened."

"That's what I'm doing. Telling you what
happened. You see, he was cooking in the kitchen, making hamburgers, when the
phone rang. I offered to do the burgers, but he said I had to cook all the time
for people, and somebody oughta cook for me once in a while. He wouldn't even
let me make the salad. Wasn't that sweet? You couldn't tell it from looking,
but there was a caring side to Carl, more than you'd guess. Lotta times people
don't show you their secret sides because they're afraid you'll think they're silly
or bad or—"

I cut in, hoping to get her back on track.
"So he was cooking when the phone rang. Then what?"

"So there was
Carl, with a towel tied around him and the burgers in the pan. When the phone
rang, he told me to answer it for him, so I did. The person didn't tell me her
name, but I remember what she sounded like."

I frowned. "What
she sounded like?"

"Sure. Different people talk
different, haven't you ever noticed? This one sounded like that woman who cooks
for you. She comes into the Diner sometimes, like today. I don't like to wait
on her because she's always making fun of our food, like there's something
humorous about okra and black-eyed peas and biscuits. Like maybe we're hillbillies
or something. But I like to listen to the way she talks. It's classy, you know?
Like old British movies." Lucy gave an envious sigh. "Anyway, that's
how the woman on the phone talked. Classy. I bet if I talked like that, people
would listen to me."

A log fell in the fireplace, sending
up a sudden shower of sparks. "This caller," I said slowly, thinking
of Mrs. Kendall. "What did she say that made Carl uncomfortable?"

"I can't tell you exactly," Lucy said,
"because of course I only heard one side of the conversation, and when I
asked Carl about it later, he wouldn't tell me. It was about something that
happened a long time ago. To her cousin or her sister or somebody. Carl didn't
want to talk about it. He said that she—this person who called, I mean—was a
little weird. Like, crazy. She'd called him before, and sent him a letter or
something, and she'd even come out to his place. He said it didn't matter and I
should forget it, but it made him real sad, I could tell. It pretty much
spoiled our evening. We ate the hamburgers, and then he took me home."
She sighed. "I was kinda hoping we might get
...
well, get closer. But it didn't happen. He just took me home,
and that was the last time we were together, except when he brought that
mistletoe into the Diner last week and gave me a big kiss. Made my mom
mad."

"I see," I
said.

She cleared her throat. "I want you to know
that Carl and me, we weren't engaged or anything, China, like my grandmother
says. I don't want to marry anybody. I'm not that kind of person, to get
married and have kids and stuff like that." She gave an awkward little
laugh. "But Carl was good to me, you know? Sort of like I was his sister
or something. I liked being around him. He'd been places and done things and he
knew stuff. Sure, he'd been in trouble with the law, he'd even been in prison,
which is why my mother keeps saying I should forget him." Scorn crept into
her voice. "She thinks I ought to go out with Orville Pen-nyman. But
Orville's not near as
interesting
as Carl."

I didn't doubt that. Orville Pennyman is about as
interesting as a cold potato pancake. "I understand," I said sympathetically.

"Since Carl was killed, I've been kinda blue,
just thinking about things," Lucy said. "Like, maybe it's time for a
change." She stopped. "I just heard Mama upstairs. Hang on a minute,
okay?" There was a longer pause, as if she were checking on something, and
when she spoke again, her voice was lower. "That woman who works for you,
the one that talks classy? Well, she was in the Diner this afternoon. She said
she's leaving town, and there might be an opening in the tearoom, and maybe I'd
be interested."

"What a great idea!" I exclaimed,
thinking how nice it was of Mrs. Kendall to help us look for her replacement.
But Lucy was going on.

"I said I didn't think so, because I want to
do something different from cooking, but what she said got me thinking. It's
time I got me another job. A different line of work, you know? And a different
place to live, away from Mom and Gramma." Lucy's voice became earnest.
"I thought maybe you might have some garden work I could do out at your
place, China. I've always liked working in Gramma's garden, and I'd love to
live in the country. I'm a fast learner and a hard worker. And I'm strong. I'd
do anything you told me to do, and I'd do it without complaining."

Lucy's request for
work was one of the most straightforward and wholehearted I had ever heard,
and I was im-

pressed. But if she wasn't interested
in working in the tearoom, I couldn't offer her anything.

"I'm glad to hear you're looking for
something different," I said. "But there won't be much to do in the
garden for another six weeks or so. Even then it'll be part-time work. But I'll
keep my ears open and let you know if I hear of something. One of the local
nurseries might be hiring after the holidays."

Before Lucy could
reply there was a click on the line, and an acrid voice demanded, "Lucy,
it's after nine. Who you talkin' to all this time?" The voice sweetened.
"That you, Orville? You and your mama got lights over on your
street?"

"No, it's not
Orville, Mama," Lucy said quickly, before I could speak. "Talk to you
later, Charlene. 'Night, now." The line went dead.

I sat for a while in
the darkness, watching the firelight flickering across the ceiling and
listening to the storm sounds outside—the hiss of the sleety rain against the
window, the pop and crackle of breaking limbs. I thought about the afternoon
that Carl Swenson was killed, and the various stories that Aunt Velda and Donna
and Terry had told about what happened, and where they were and what they were
doing that afternoon.

And then I thought of something else,
and I began to turn the pages of the notebook that Mrs. Kendall had assembled:
recipes, menu ideas, procedures, shopping lists— all neatly written out in her
careful block handwriting on sheets of paper inserted into plastic sleeves.
Some of the sleeves also held menus collected from English tearooms and several
held sample paint chips and swatches of cloth labled as tablecloths, napkins,
and curtains. Perhaps, once upon a time, Mrs. Kendall had had her own tearoom,
or dreamed of it. Perhaps she had come to us in the hope of realizing her
dream. Perhaps—

And then, at the very
back of the binder, loose between two pages, I found a newspaper clipping, old
and yellowed and much folded. It caught my eye because it didn't seem to
belong. And then I realized that it
didn't
belong—that Mrs. Kendall had
inadvertently left it in the notebook. I glanced over it quickly, thinking I
should return it to her. And then I read it more slowly, twice, three times.

And then I sat back and thought some more about
Sunday afternoon, and possibilities I hadn't considered before. And about the
way people are never who they seem to be, and how hard it is to know what's
going on inside someone else. I thought about Mrs. Kendall's classy voice, and
the call to Carl. Finally, I sat up straight and punched Ruby's number into the
cell phone and told her what I'd been thinking. Then I hung up and went to the
kitchen to consult with McQuaid.

"I don't believe this," Ruby
said, when she got into the car a little while later. "It's incredible,
that's what it is."

"I agree," I said. "The scenario
seems unlikely, and there's no proof. My idea could be way off the mark."

That had been the trouble with this hit-and-run
killing from the very beginning. There was no proof of anything, just one
conflicting story after another, created to explain something totally inexplicable.
If my implausible conjecture held any validity, not even the fingerprints on
the truck proved what they seemed to prove. But there was still that
unidentified set on the door of the truck. Maybe—

"We went off
half-cocked about the money that was missing from the cash register," Ruby
said, frowning.

"What makes you
think we're not going off half-cocked now?"

"Here," I
said, handing her the clipping I'd found. "Read it." I turned on the
dome light so Ruby could see.

She read the clipping
slowly, her eyes widening. "Oh, God," she whispered, aghast. "So
that's
what happened to her sister! No wonder she felt so
bad about it."

"It
suggests a motive," I said. "A very strong one."

Ruby let out her breath in a puff. "What do
you intend to do?"

"Talk. Ask
questions. Listen." I paused. "Look. I wanted you to read that
clipping, but you don't have to come if you don't want to. It's late, and you
must be tired. And if I'm wrong, this session might get a little
uncomfortable." I made a face. "Hell. If I'm right, it could get a
lot
uncomfortable."

"Of course I'm coming," Ruby said.
"You're not going off half-cocked without me." She pulled back her
sleeve to look at her watch. "Anyway, it's not even ten o'clock yet. It
just
seems
like midnight—probably because my power has been
off ever since I got home."

I shifted into first gear and accelerated slowly,
trying to keep the Datsun from fishtailing. The glazed streets and sidewalks
were so eerily empty it might have been four in the morning. Along a few blocks
in the center of town, the street lights and Christmas lights shone brightly,
but the rest of Pecan Springs was pitch-black. When we turned the corner onto
Pecos Street, the power was off there too, and there wasn't a glittering Santa
or reindeer to be seen. I made a right turn off Pecos and another right into
the alley, and spotted the car I was looking for. Where the alley crossed the
next street, I made another right, then another back onto Pecos. I swung into
the drive and parked next to Mrs. Kendall's white Plymouth.

A moment later, Ruby
and I were climbing the stairs to her apartment, where we could see a faint
golden glow through the window. The Duchess was still up, and burning a candle.

I rapped at the door,
waited a moment, and rapped again. A low voice demanded, "Who is it?"

"It's us, Mrs. Kendall," Ruby replied
loudly. "Ruby and China. We're sorry to bother you at this hour, but we'd
like to visit for a few minutes."

The door opened
slowly, on its chain, and Mrs. Kendall, wrapped in a floral dressing gown and
holding a candle, peered out. "My gracious," she exclaimed crossly.
"What are you two doing out on such a dreadful night?"

"We
need to talk to you," I said. "It's important."

"It must be, to
bring you out on such a wretched night." Reluctandy, she unhooked the
chain and opened the door. "Although I dare say this visit could wait
until morning. As you can see, I am quite busy with my preparations for departure."