Mourning Gloria (18 page)

But Sheila understood what I wasn’t quite able to ask. “How? I’ll tell you if you promise never to tell a soul—except Mike, of course. Blackie wants to have a talk with him when he gets back from his trip. He has some ideas for what he’d like to do after he leaves office.”

“Okay, I promise, Smart Cookie,” I said weakly. “Tell me how you decided.”

There was a silence. At last, Sheila said, “We tossed for it.”

“You tossed for it?” I repeated incredulously. “No. No way.” Blackie and Sheila are the most rational people I know. The idea that they would submit their futures to the toss of a coin—

“Honest, China. That’s what happened. We discussed the issue from all sides, but we couldn’t come up with a logical way to decide. We figured the best thing to do was to flip for it. Heads he quit, tails I quit. It came up heads.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Sheila said. “It’s true.” There was a buzz of crowd noises in the background. “The commissioners are finished, China. Blackie’s coming out. I have to go. Good night.”

Shaking my head, I hung up the phone. Blackie Blackwell leaving office? That’s something I would never in the world have predicted. Well, at least I knew one thing for sure. Hark would have a great headline for the next edition of the
Enterprise
: “County Sheriff Turns In Badge, Will Wed Pecan Springs Police Chief.” Even without the coin toss, it was a great story.

But none of this took me any closer to a decision about Jessica. I put on the kettle and spooned some dried mint leaves into a tea ball. A cup of mint tea was what I needed. Might help me think a little more clearly.

While I was waiting for my tea to brew, I sat down and replayed Jessica’s call, listening carefully.

“China, it’s me. Jessica. Listen, I’m in trouble. Really, I mean it. I need help. I—”

Car trouble? Well, maybe. A boyfriend problem? I suppose, although it didn’t quite sound like that. And why had the call been cut off? Jessica had been so determined to get her byline on the story. Surely she wouldn’t let something minor get in the way of making her deadline.

I picked up the phone again and called Hark’s cell. He answered on the third ring. His voice sounded blurry and I could hear music in the background, and the sharp crack of a pool cue. I tried to tell him about the phone call, but he wasn’t listening. He was at Beans’, he said. He had tried calling Jessica several times, both her cell and her home phone. He had even driven over to her house on Santa Fe, in the hills above the campus. She wasn’t there.

“Place is locked up tight as a drum,” he growled. “No lights in the house. No cars in the drive. No story, either. Next time you see that kid, you can tell her from me that she’s fired.” There was a clink and a rattle of glasses, and he shouted, “Hey, Bob—another round over here.” To me, he said, “You got that, China? You see her, you tell her she’s fired. F-I-R-D, fired.” He cut off the call.

I rolled my eyes. Even good guys can occasionally have one beer too many.

I put the phone on the table and picked up my cup, frowning as I sipped my peppermint tea. I was beginning to get the idea that nobody cared about Jessica but me—and that made me feel . . . well, responsible, damn it. She was young and energetic and passionate and impulsive—a combination that had gotten me into trouble more times than I cared to remember. What if Jessica was in some kind of trouble right now?

I picked up a pencil and paper and tried to remember the conversation I’d had with her in the car. Where had she said she was going when she dropped me off after our lunch? After a few moments of frowning concentration, I came up with a list. She was going back to the burned-out trailer, where she planned to take a few more pictures. After that, she was going to stop at the auto parts place and talk to Scott Sheridan. Then the sheriff’s office, to interview him and get a look at the crime scene photos. And then she wanted to talk to . . . who?

Oh, yes, the girl who used to live in the trailer. The one with a name like a B-movie actress. LaFarge. Lucy LaFarge, who had an apartment on North Brazos: 101 North Brazos, Jessica had said, which put it at the corner of Brazos and Matagorda.

I couldn’t do anything about the situation tonight. But tomorrow was another day, and I now had a list of the stops Jessica had planned to make: the burned trailer, A-Plus Auto Parts, the sheriff’s office, Lucy LaFarge. And then home.

And in addition to the list, I had a new determination. Looking for Jessica wasn’t something I could turn over to the police. I needed to follow her trail—the trail she’d given me. I looked at the list and added one more item, off to one side, because I wasn’t sure how it was connected. Terry Fletcher, who hadn’t been seen since before the trailer fire. I put a question mark after her name. Was Terry involved with this, or was her absence just a coincidence? If she was connected, how? Could it have been Terry who burned to death, or Terry who—

My questions were interrupted by a small voice. “Have you asked him yet, Aunt China?”

I turned to see Caitie standing at the door to the kitchen. She was wearing her pink pajamas and her fuzzy pink slippers with the floppy rabbit ears and a black nose on each toe, a gift from McQuaid’s mother.

“Who?” I replied blankly, still puzzling over my questions. “Asked him what?” The orange tabby cat pushed past her legs and came into the kitchen, and I remembered, guiltily.

“Oh. Okay. Let’s call him right now, and you can ask him yourself.” I picked up the cell phone again, and when McQuaid came on the line, I said, “Caitie’s got a question for you, Uncle Mike, and then I have some breaking news. About Blackie.”

Caitie reached for the phone. “We have a new kitty, Uncle Mike!”

It took her less than five minutes to negotiate the terms of Pumpkin’s admission to the family (she had to feed him, clean his kitty litter tray, make sure he didn’t snack on Brian’s lizards, and so on). Meanwhile I located a can of Khat’s food that hadn’t found its way from our cupboard to the shop. I opened it and Pumpkin demonstrated that the saucer of milk had barely taken the edge off. He was hungry for the real thing, and lots of it, if you don’t mind.

“So Pumpkin is a keeper?” I asked McQuaid, when Caitie handed me the phone, her eyes shining, her smile a joy to see. Carrying the phone, I went to the cookie jar and took out two for her. “Pour yourself a glass of milk, honey,” I added, and she went to the fridge.

“I’ve already got a beer,” McQuaid said with a chuckle. “But yeah, I’m okay with the cat if you’re okay. What does Howard say? If I remember right, cats are on his do-not-call list.”

“Howard votes yes,” I said, “the dirty double-crosser.” The cat had finished his cat food and was climbing, with purposeful deliberation, into Howard Cosell’s basset basket beside the kitchen stove, where Howard was already curled up. “You’d never believe what I’m looking at,” I added. “Howard just allowed the cat to get into his basket with him. Looks to me like they’ve adopted each other.” Which was nice, I supposed. Now that Brian is growing up, Howard often seems lonely. Lizards are not very good company.

“Will wonders never cease,” McQuaid said. “So what’s Blackie’s breaking news?”

“He turned in his resignation tonight. Effective at the end of his term. July.”

McQuaid sucked in his breath. “He
what
?”

It took a few minutes to tell the story. When I got to the part about the coin toss, he whistled incredulously.

“I never would’ve believed it,” he said. “Flipping a coin for his job? Blackie Blackwell? He actually did
that
?”

“Yep. Smart Cookie told me herself. But we’re not supposed to tell anybody else how they decided.” I paused and added significantly, “My guess is that he won’t be retired long. You know Blackie. He can’t stand having nothing to do.”

Caitie finished her milk and gave me a hug. “Bedtime for you, sweetie,” I said. “I’ll be up to kiss you good night in a little bit.”

She smiled and went toward the door. “Come on, Pumpkin.”

Pumpkin, obviously aware that he owed his happy home to this girlchild in pink pajamas and rabbit ear slippers, jumped out of Howard’s bed and pattered after her. Howard, not wanting to be left out, clambered to his feet and followed.

“You’re right about Blackie needing something to do,” McQuaid said thoughtfully. “I’m finished here, China. I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon. Let’s talk about it tomorrow night.”

“You’re wondering whether he might want to go into the P.I. business with you?” I asked.

“Yeah. What would you think about that?”

“If it works for you, it works for me,” I said. In fact, it sounded to me like a good idea. McQuaid was still teaching, which meant that he had turned down a couple of cases. If he and Blackie teamed up, the firm could take on more work, in a wider range.

“Good. If you see him, tell him I’d like to talk to him.”

“Sure thing.” I hesitated, thinking again about Jessica and wondering how much I should tell him about her phone call. I decided against telling him anything, because I knew exactly what he would say. He would tell me (as he always did) to let somebody else handle it, and not get involved. And anyway, Smart Cookie was probably right. Jessica was having car trouble, or a boyfriend problem. Nothing to worry about. Probably.

But after McQuaid and I did our ritual kissy-over-the-phone thing and said good night, I called Ruby and asked her if she’d mind opening the shop for me in the morning.

“No problem,” she said. “What’s up?”

“It’s Jessica Nelson,” I said, and told her what had happened.

“Gosh,” she breathed. “That sounds serious. Do you think she might really be in danger?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “All I know is that if I don’t try to check up on her and it turns out that something is wrong, I’m going to feel pretty awful.”

“Do what you need to do,” Ruby said in a comforting tone. “Cass and I will hold down the fort tomorrow.”

I said a grateful, “Hey, thanks,” and headed upstairs to kiss Caitie good night. I paused at the door of her room. She was already in bed, with Pumpkin curled up beside her and Howard sprawled across her feet.

And for the first time in recorded history, Howard didn’t claim his half of my empty bed.

Jessie opened her eyes and tried to look around—without turning her head, which hurt abominably. But even if she could have moved, there wasn’t anything to see. Wherever she was, it was absolutely pitch-black. Or maybe she couldn’t see anything because she’d been cracked hard on the head with something pretty solid, and the blow had blinded her. That was a definite possibility, considering the thudding, pounding pain in her head, which seemed to worsen if she moved it even an inch.

In which case . . .

In which case she might as well close her eyes.

She did.

I was up early the next morning, putting on khakis, a sleeveless red-and-brown-plaid blouse, tucked in, and leather sandals. While I was warming up breakfast tacos in the microwave and pouring orange juice and getting out bananas for Caitie and me, I made a call to Jessica’s cell phone and another to her house, thinking—hoping, really—that she had showed up at home overnight.