Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (38 page)

Donna looked confused. "But she's
a cook. A good one, too. I don't think she'd be the least bit interested."

I shook my head. "I talked to her just last
night. In fact, she's the one who gave me the idea that Mrs. Kendall was
somehow connected with Swenson. Lucy is looking for gardening work, and she
wants to find a new place to live, away from her mother and grandmother. She
said she'd love to live in the country, and she spoke very highly of you. I'll
bet you could work something out."

Donna looked at me, a new hope in her
eyes. "Do you think so? I like Lucy, and I think Aunt Velda would, too. If
she's willing to give it a try, so am I."

The Whiz moved restively in her chair.
"Speaking of the Kendall woman, China, what put you onto her? Was it just
a lucky guess?"

"Maybe," I said. "But Lucy told me
that the voice on Swenson's phone sounded like Mrs. Kendall's voice, and I put
that together with an odd discrepancy. Mrs. K told me once that she had no
living relatives, but when she gave me her resignation, she said she had to
take care of an elderly aunt. I knew something was going on, although I had no
idea what it was—until I found the newspaper clipping about her sister's
death. Swenson was named as the driver who caused the accident."

The Whiz frowned.
"Then it's true that Mrs. Kendall came to Texas from England with the
intention of getting revenge?"

"That's what it
looks like," I said. "She'd been trying to track Swenson down ever
since he was released from prison, and was successful only a few months
ago."

"So she began
calling and threatening him," Ruby said.

"She even bought
a gun," I added. "She had it with her when she drove out there on
Sunday."

"So
Carl's death wasn't an accident," Donna said.

"Not hardly," I replied.
"She told the sheriff that she went out there with the intention of
finding Swenson and shooting him. But instead, she found the track, parked beside
the road where Aunt Velda had left it when she went to look for the cave. Mrs.
Kendall thought it was Swenson's truck, and she was suddenly possessed of the
desire to kill him with it."

"Suddenly and
irrationally possessed?" the Whiz asked, with a gleam in her eye.

"I suppose some
wily defense attorney will try to cop a temporary insanity plea," I
replied dryly. "But don't forget that she'd purchased a gun and she had it
with her, which clearly indicates premeditation."

The Whiz cocked her
head, her eyes narrowing. "Perhaps she intended only to threaten him with
the gun." She leaned forward in her chair. "Perhaps she intended only
to give clear and substantive expression to her quite understandable feelings
of grief and despair over her sister's tragic and untimely death—her beautiful
sister, crushed beyond recognition under the wheels of a drunken driver ten
years before. Ten years, mind you, to the very day!"

"Don't get
carried away, Justine," I cautioned. "This isn't what you—"

"But when my client saw the truck," the
Whiz said, rising dramatically, "she was instantly seized by the maniacal
and irresistible urge to kill."

Donna
looked confused. "I thought I was your client."

"This is just
something that happens occasionally," I said in a stage whisper to Donna.
"She'll get over it."

The Whiz ignored us. "Suddenly
and unexpectedly bereft of her reason, robbed of all normal sense of right and
wrong, Mrs. Kendall leaped into the truck, accelerated cra-zily, and ran down
the man who had run down her sister." She dropped her voice almost to a
whisper. "And when it was all over, this poor woman had no recollection of
what she had done in her crazed state. She—"

"When it was all
over," I said, "Mrs. Kendall left her victim lying beside the road
while she coolly and deliberately wiped her fingerprints off the steering wheel
and the gearshift. Then she abandoned the truck, returned to her car, and
calmly drove home, where she told the landlord that she was vacating her
apartment." I paused, thinking I'd better include the exculpatory fact I
had reported to Blackie. "On the other hand, she
had
been
drinking."

"Drinking!" the Whiz exclaimed. She
smacked her fist against her hand. "Aha! She definitely wasn't in full
pos^ session of her faculties!"

I shook my head. "Nice try, Justine, but that
dog won't hunt. Mrs. Kendall is one cool character, with an extraordinarily
strong sense of fairness. She will never let her attorney portray her as
losing her wits, even for an instant, and she certainly won't admit to being so
drunk that she didn't know what she was doing. No doubt about it—Dutch is going
to go for vehicular homicide on this one, and he'll get it."

The Whiz thought
about this for a minute, then sat back down in her chair. "You're probably
right," she said, in her normal voice. "Anyway, I've got a bigger
case load than I can handle right now." She looked at me. "If you've
got any time to spare, China, I could use some help in the office. And I hate
to see your investigative talents go to waste."

"Thanks," I said, "but
I like what I'm doing. Besides, we just lost our cook. Ruby and I are going to
need some help ourselves."

Ruby tilted her head.
"So what happened next, after Mrs. Kendall drove away?" She turned to
Donna. "How did the truck get into Swenson's tractor shed?"

Donna flushed.
"We're to blame for that," she said. "When Aunt Velda wandered
out of the woods, the truck wasn't where she'd left it. She went looking and
found it up the road, around the corner. She also found Carl, dead. She left
the truck—I guess she figured she didn't want to touch it after that—and walked
home. She gave us this lunatic story about the Klingons borrowing it to take
care of Carl, and that he was dead, or gone, or something. We didn't believe
her, of course. We just figured it was her usual crazy talk. But we needed to
get the truck off the road. It doesn't have any plates."

"So
that's when Terry found the body," I said.

Donna nodded sadly.
"It was dark by that time, and he'd already been dead for a couple of
hours. Terry saw the broken headlight, and the blood on the grille. She thought
Aunt Velda had run Carl down, either accidentally or on purpose."

"From the
evidence, a natural assumption," the Whiz observed.

Donna bit her lip.
"You never can tell about Aunt Velda. Sometimes she's really level-headed,
other times she's just plain goofy. Anyway, when Terry saw the truck, she got
scared. She figured that if we said Aunt Velda ran Carl down, nobody'd believe
us." She shifted position to look at me, and her wooden chair creaked.
"Like you said, China. They'd think we were using her to shield one of us,
because she isn't—well, because any jury could see that she's not all there.
She couldn't really be held responsible."

"So Terry was
afraid the sheriff would suspect one of you," the Whiz said.

"Right,"
Donna said. "He might even think we'd done it on purpose, because we'd
already told China about Carl making all that trouble. And China had heard
Terry threaten to shoot him if he didn't stop." She dropped her eyes.
'Terry also knew that her criminal record would turn up if they did a
background check on her, and they'd find out about California."

"Did you know about that?" Ruby asked
gently. "The escape, I mean."

Donna gave a rueful
sigh. "Yes, but not until after it happened and the California police came
looking for her. The escape wasn't Terry's idea, you know. There were some
other women, and they were all in a prison truck with a bunch of plants they
were supposed to be taking somewhere. One of the women had bribed a guard to
leave a gate open and the driver just went right on through. They drove for a
while; then they all jumped out of the truck and scattered. Terry went with
them. She knew the authorities wouldn't believe she hadn't been in on the
escape."

I wasn't sure I believed it, either, but I could
see that Donna did, so I didn't say anything. Donna took a breath and went on
with her story.

"She hid out for a while so they wouldn't
trace her to us. Then Aunt Velda and I moved to Texas, and she joined us. Aunt
Velda had some money saved up, and we used it for a down payment on Carl's
place. We wanted to, grow flowers, which was what Terry did when she was in
prison." Her smile was twisted. "We figured that California would
give up on her after a while. The prisons are really crowded out there, and
drug users are a dime a dozen."

"So it was Terry who put the truck in
Swenson's shed," Ruby said.

Donna nodded.
"She was scared that the sheriff would show up and start asking questions,
so she knew she couldn't bring it back home. The only thing she could think of
was to drive it to Carl's place, where we could get it when the excitement died
down. So that's what she did. Then she walked home across the ridge."

"Why didn't she
wipe her fingerprints off the truck?" I asked.

Donna gave a little shrug. "I guess she just
didn't think of it. She was pretty panicked. Anyway, she was hoping that no one
would notice, that anybody looking at it would think it belonged to Carl. The
truck didn't have plates, so it wouldn't be easy to trace."

Ruby turned to me.
"Those unidentified fingerprints the sheriff found on the door—I suppose
they'll match Mrs. Kendall's."

"They already
have," I said. Blackie had told me that much.

"Well, I guess
that about wraps it up," the Whiz said decisively. She looked at her
watch. "Where the hell is that paperwork? I have to get back to San
Antonio."

"Hey," I said, "don't you want to
go with us to pick up Aunt Velda at the nursing home?"

"I
think I'll pass," the Whiz said.

"What? And miss a chance to get your picture
in the paper?" Ruby asked. "Hark is going to be there with a
photographer when we check her out." She grinned. "Can't you just
imagine the headlines?
Woman
Finds Long-Lost Bank Loot. Secret Cave on Mistletoe Creek Yields Treasure."

"Aunt Velda is
hot news," I remarked. "Hark says the wire services will jump on this
one."

Donna managed a small smile.
"Aunt Velda's certainly enjoying the attention. I talked to her on the
phone a little while ago. She was getting her hair fixed for the photographer."

"Well, maybe I
should go along after all," the Whiz conceded. "Has she filed a writ
of possession under Chapter

72 of the Property Code? She'll need
to do that in order to ensure her title to the abandoned property."

"Maybe you can
take care of that," I said. "What's your fee for something like
that?"

The Whiz frowned. "The standard commission is
five percent. And I
have
lost some expected income, now
that I've managed to get my client"—she nodded at Donna— "cleared of
all the charges against her." She gestured expansively. "Tell you
what. I'll file the writ and take care of all the paperwork for the standard
commission, and consider it payment for my work on Donna's case."

"Five
percent!" Ruby hooted. "What nerve!" She turned to me.
"China will do the paperwork for nothing. Won't you, China?"

"Oh, yeah,
sure," I said. "Right after I've finished making the party food for
the Christmas Tour." I made a face. "And with no Mrs. Kendall to
help, either."

A broad grin split
Justine's face. "And whose fault is that? You were the one who was in a
big hurry to catch a killer."

As it happened, Lucy offered to cook
for the Christmas Tourists, and that event came off without a hitch. Then
Ruby's friend Janet called and said she was back from Dallas and looking for work,
so we were able to fill Mrs. K's empty place in the kitchen, after all. And
since Mrs. Kendall had so conscientiously prepared the reference guide for her
replacement's use, our customers never knew the difference.

But the big event was Ruby's surgery,
two days after Christmas. Sheila and the Whiz and I, along with Amy and Shannon
and Ruby's mother, sat in the hospital lounge, chewing our nails and drinking
coffee and waiting nervously for the surgeon to tell us that everything was
okay. It took longer than we expected, but at last the word came. The surgery
was successful, Ruby was recovering nicely, and there was every reason to
believe that the cancer would never recur. Relieved and jubilant, we trooped to
Ruby's bedside with armloads of flowers and a bootleg botde of champagne.