Wildcat Wine (24 page)

“The Monday after he was killed.”

“So, you were maybe planning on telling me this when?”

“You've been very busy.”

This time I was the one making the long sigh. “You want to tell me what Kenneth was up to?”

Bonita didn't speak. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her turn back to the window. She would either tell me what she knew or she wouldn't. Like most lawyers, I fancied myself persuasive in the utmost, but I also knew from experience that nothing I might say could make Bonita change her mind.

We passed the rest of the trip in silence, but arrived in Oneco in record time. As we walked into the produce store, a display of cactus crowded the entrance.

Bonita stopped and studied the cactus. “I haven't had any fresh
nopales
in a bit,” she said.

“May I help y'all?” A woman with stooped shoulders and thick glasses and a big head of hair that almost balanced out her hips smiled at us.

“Are you, by chance, Mrs. Daniels?” I asked.

“Yep.”

While I struggled for a segue into asking if her recently-made-late husband had anything to do with two other dead bodies and possibly a patent, Bonita began to gingerly pick out some of the cactus.

“You want, ma'am, I got me a boy who'll trim those prickles right off for you. But once they're peeled, you need to fix 'em real soon.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” Bonita said, and handed her sack to the big-haired, big-hipped Mrs. Daniels. “Having the spines cut off would be easier.”

“Yoo-hoo, Jose,” the big-hipped widow called out, and a squat young man, looking more Indian than Spanish, came out of the back and took the sack. He didn't make eye contact with any of us.

I thought Jose looked a bit like Armando and started to say so, but then remembered reading in one of the books Bonita had given me about Mexico that the so-called highborn Mexicans, the Criollos, those of Spanish descent, often do not like being confused with the native Mexicans, that is the meso-American Indians. Though Bonita had never displayed any signs of ethnic or other snobbery, I bit back my comment anyway. Then I stared at Bonita. Nothing Indian about her. Tall, willowy, chocolate-colored eyes, chocolate-colored hair, cream-colored complexion, the very picture of a Spanish woman of class. College educated in California, she had only the trace of an accent. Her children, though looking more Mexican than she, sounded like the average children of the U.S.A.

As I pondered how well they had all acclimated, Bonita spoke to the young man.
“Que le vaya bien.”

Jose nodded and ducked away. Bonita then introduced us to Mrs. Daniels.

“Attorneys, huh? Don't know as I need an attorney,” she said.

Jose brought the sack of de-thorned cactus back and handed it to me. “I'll get these,” I said, and moved toward the check-out line where a man with bug eyes and a weak chin was working his jaw in a way that put me in mind of a pop-eyed goldfish.

“I can afford my own
cacto,
thank you,” Bonita said, and reached for the sack.

“Let me treat, okay?”

While I held on tightly to the sack as Bonita tugged at it, Goldfish Face guy rang up something for a man in front of us and then turned to me. “While you gals make up your mind who's gonna get that, I gotta get this guy some worms, you hear?”

“I'll ring those up for you,” Mrs. Daniels said, and stepped in behind the cash register.

“Could we talk to you a moment? About your late husband?” I asked, molding my face into the shape of a nice person who felt a good deal of sympathy. “We are very sorry about your loss.”

“You knew Mad?”

“No, we didn't have that pleasure. But we, that is, I, knew one of his employers,” I said. “Earl Stallings.”

“Now wasn't that a shame, him getting kilt like that, and on his own tractor.”

“Yes, ma'am, a real shame,” I said, not bothering to point out that technically it was his grape picker that ate him, not his tractor. “And that's part of what we'd like to discuss with you, Mrs. Daniels.”

“Call me Mary Angel,” she said.

“Oh, what a pretty name,” Bonita said.

“Yes'um, I like it.”

Goldfish man came back and I asked Mary Angel, “Could we go somewhere private and just chat a minute?”

“I done already talked with the sheriff's office man. One with that cute little baby, but he ought not to be toting that child around like that.”

No, he shouldn't. But I passed on discussing Tired's problems as a single dad and said, “If we could just go over things again, just the three of us.”

“What's y'all's interest in this?”

“Earl was our client,” I said, and silently dared Bonita to tsk-tsk me.

“Well, what's Earl got to do with me?”

“That's what we'd like to find out.”

“Well, I could use me an iced-tea break. You two want some?”

“Yes, please,” Bonita said.

Me, I wasn't sure, glancing around the produce stand for signs of high hygiene standards and finding none.

We followed Mary Angel back to a hot, tiny office that brought out several of my phobias at once when I saw the clutter, the dust, and the bottles of bug spray.

From a tiny refrigerator, Mary Angel brought out a pitcher of tea that looked like syrup and poured three glasses. I knew I'd never be able to actually drink it, but the glass felt cool in my hands.

“Awright,” Mary Angel said. “Ask me what you want to.”

I did.

Apparently tea and sugar were this woman's version of alcohol, and her words soon poured out like someone on her third vodka and with a story to tell.

Michael Andrews Daniels, aka Mad, had indeed worked for Earl. They were working up models of a new kind of grape picker because the standard models still had a lot of problems. “That picker thing Earl had wouldn't even back up, or was it turn around?” she queried, as if Bonita and I would have a clue. “And tore up them grape plants something terrible.”

“Did Mad and Earl invent a new kind of harvester?” I asked, beginning to figure out that if a patent were at the heart of this mess, it probably wasn't for sulfite-free wine.

“Oh, no. Mad jes' did what he was told to do. Earl was the inventor, but Mad did plenty welding and such,” Mary Angel explained. “I got no patience with men playing with models, so I didn't pay much attention to Mad when he'd explain what they were doing.”

“And you explained this to Officer Johnson? You know, the officer with the infant?”

“That's right, and to some other guy named Stan. I liked that deputy with the baby, he was nice to me.”

“Did Mad ever go to a lawyer?”

“What'd he need a lawyer for?” Mary Angel asked. “He was nothing but a welder and a machinist and a man went out to the swamp and had the bad luck to step on a rattler. Why y'all trying to make such a fuss over bad luck's beyond me.”

Maybe she didn't know that someone had chased Mad's car into a ditch before Mad abandoned the car and ran into the swamp?

“Did he ever mention a Kenneth Mallory?” Bonita asked.

“That does seem to ring a bell somehow,” Mary Angel agreed.

But despite further questioning, Mary Angel couldn't place why Kenneth's name sounded familiar.

“Didn't like that tea much, did you?” Mary Angel asked, looking at me with the sound of finishing up in her voice.

“Diabetic,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Well, you should've said, I had me some bottled water in there.”

Suddenly thirsty, I waited for the offer. But when it didn't arrive, I figured I could buy a bottle on the way out and we made our thank-yous and left Mary Angel's office.

On the drive back, we ran the new information around a bit but arrived at no firm conclusions beyond the obvious need to pursue the potential Mad-Kenneth link further.

Once at Smith, O'Leary, and Stanley, I left Bonita and tracked Cristal back to her desk outside Kenneth's office. “Finished at the front for the day?” I asked, showing modest personal concern for her before I pestered her to give me all of Kenneth's appointment books for the last year. Then I boldly strode into the law library like someone with billable materials and dumped the appointment books on the first hapless law clerk who looked up.

“What's your name?” I asked, but didn't bother to listen.

“Look, this is important and I promise you a promotion to associate if you find the name M. A. Daniels, or Mike, or Michael Daniels anywhere in these appointment books.”

“That's all?”

“That's all.”

“Can do.” The boy beamed with the belief that he'd be an associate within a week, not knowing I didn't have that authority. Young man wants to be a lawyer, he needs to learn early on not to be so gullible, I thought, feeling no guilt at all as I left the library.

As I walked back to my office, Edith's voice came over our intercom. Sounding more wrath-of-God than office manager, she said, “Paging Jackson. We need you up front. There's a sheriff's deputy with a warrant to search the whole building.”

I understood instantly that this was Edith's warning, giving each of us a modest head start, and I imagined that the sound of shredders and flushing toilets would rise up around me in seconds. Rather sanctimoniously, I concluded that there was nothing I needed to shred or flush and sauntered back to my office amid the scurry of attorneys toward their own hidden stashes of whatever.

Then I happened to remember I had stuffed Kenneth's laptop in my back credenza. After stealing it out of his house, I had opened it at home to find his hard drive completely blank. Given the glossy initials “KUM”—like I'd put that on my laptop—Kenneth had had embossed on the case, I had concluded that the laptop was all for show. Not wanting it to collect dust in my house, I had brought it back to the law firm to slide into Kenneth's office at the first chance. But every time I tried to do just that, Cristal was guarding the golden gates and I didn't want her knowing I had Kenneth's laptop because that invited speculation as to exactly how I had gotten it, and as a general principle I thought it best not to let my new hobby—breaking and entering—become the fodder of office gossip. So Kenneth's laptop had been sitting in my credenza until Edith's warning made me remember I had stolen merchandise in my office. Highly motivated, I practically knocked down the rat-faced law clerk with the earring as I sprinted for that credenza.

Dashing past Bonita, I rushed into my office. Flustered as I was, I heard the sound of Bonita's chair sliding back as she rose to follow me in. Panic drew her like honey.

I ripped open my credenza door. The laptop was gone.

And a cardboard box of 158-grain roundnose bullets with the letters “JEB” scribbled on the side sat neatly in the space that Kenneth's purloined computer had recently occupied.

“Shit,” I screamed, not even bothering with the more poetic sounding
mierda
that Benny had taught me so I wouldn't sound crude.

Crude was the least of my worries.

“The laptop. Kenneth's laptop, where is it? Who's been in my office?”

Bonita shook her head. “I haven't touched it since you put it there. And to my knowledge, no one but you and I have been in your office.”

No time for further cross-examination. I snatched up the bullets, but not before Bonita had a good look too. Throwing my gray jacket over the box, I bolted out the back door and aimed straight for my ancient Honda. Once inside my car, I sped away, darting briefly the wrong way down the one-way Morrill Street behind our office building and out into the relative safety of the traffic and confusion on the Tamiami Trail.

I made it home in record time and sprinted for the cool, clean sanctuary of my own house.

But once inside, I realized keeping those bullets in
my
house was not a good idea. Being freaky about paper in my personal space, a definite problem for a lawyer, I didn't have any gift-wrapping paper inside. So I ran outside to my newspaper recycling bin, pulled out the Sunday funnies, and trotted back inside where I wrapped up the box of bullets in the funnies, drew a bow on it with a red Magic Marker, jogged next door, and rang Grandmom's bell. She answered in a flounce and a hurry, Redfish gurgling happily in her arms.

“Can I hide this present at your house? Just until the birthday party?” I smiled so forcibly my jaw made cracking noises.

“Well, hello there,” Grandmom said.

“Hello there,” I backed up and said.

“Of course you may,” Grandmom said. “Please come in.” Then she eyed the present. “Don't you even know how to wrap a gift?”

Her consistent disappointment in me made me think it was kind of like having a real mother. My own mother didn't pay enough attention to me to be disappointed.