Witches' Bane (15 page)

“No.” Ruby frowned. “At least, I don’t think so. I never saw any indication that she was.”

Blackie turned to me. “How about you? I understand that you know all about those poison plants of hers. Did she use them in Satanist rituals?”

“She could have, I suppose,” I conceded. “They’ve been used in so-called black magic in the past. Belladonna, henbane, monkshood, jimsonweed—”

“Those are plants she had?”

“Yes, some of them. She also had others.”

“You can identify the black magic plants for me?”

“I can identify those that have a history of magical use,”

“Yesterday, I asked you whether the lady was into Santeria, and you said you didn’t think so. Now I’m asking you about Satanism. Ever see anything that made you think she was a Satanist?”

I thought of the tarot, the plants, the books on Sybil’s shelf, about her black clothing, her jewelry. I could see why Blackie, putting two and two together, would come up with four. But while I couldn’t quarrel with his arithmetic, I still thought he was wrong. Sybil wasn’t the most conventional person in the world. She may even have been on a power trip of some kind. But that didn’t make her a Satanist.

“No,” I said.

Without missing a beat, Blackie turned back to Ruby.

“What about your friend Drake? He a Satanist?”

“Andrew?” Ruby was incredulous. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I take it that’s a no?”

“Yes, definitely.” She frowned. “I mean, no. No, he’s not a Satanist.”

The sheriff jotted a microscopic note. At the rate he was going, he could put Ruby’s life history on card number one. He wouldn’t need card number two. “What about this Order of the Trapezoid? Did he belong?’

Ruby was getting angry. “I just said no, didn’t I? If he’d been a Satanist, I would have picked it up somehow.”

The sheriff pocketed the card, picked up the box, and stood up. “Well, if he’s not a Satanist, how come we found this Satanist bible in his apartment?” His look bore no trace of humor. “Was he studying up on how to turn people into frogs?”

I don’t think he meant for us to laugh. We didn’t.

When we got back to the Honda after leaving our inky fingerprints with the appropriate deputy, the meter was ticking out its expiring minute. Agnes Rhodes, Pecan Springs’ parking cop, was poised beside it, her ticket book in her hand. She grinned when she saw Ruby. “Thought I was going to get you. Another thirty seconds, and I would’ve.” To break the boredom of her route, Agnes makes a game out of it.

Ruby wasn’t playing. Agnes, seeing that nobody was in the mood for fun, stuck her ticket book in her back pocket. “Well, have a good one, what’s left of it,” she said, and walked away.

Ruby turned on the ignition. “Let’s get a beer. I need to wash the taste out of my mouth.”

It was early, and Lillie’s was almost empty. We sat down at the bar and Bob pulled us a Lite and a Lone Star and brought a basket of chips. “Maria hasn’t come in with the salsa yet today,” he said. He squinted at Ruby. “You read the latest?”

Ruby threw a despairing look at the ceiling. “Don’t tell me Constance’s got it in print already!”

“Got what?” Bob asked. “I’m talkin’ about Billy Lee’s newspaper. I’ll go see if I can find it.” He went into the back.

Ruby turned to me. “It was awful, wasn’t it?” she asked. ‘The questioning, I mean.”

“Actually,” I said, “Blackie was pretty cool.” Pretty good, too. He’d played the rhythm of his questioning like an expert bass player, signaling the shifts in melody without giving anything away. “You did fine, Ruby.”

“I didn’t feel fine. I felt like he’d already made up his mind about Andrew. I was just there to confirm.” Ruby took a long swallow of her beer. “It sounds like Black-well’s been digging up all the dirt he can get his grubby hands on. What do you suppose this New Orleans thing is all about?”

“I wonder. Blackie said Andrew had been arrested, but didn’t mention a conviction. Maybe they couldn’t make it stick.”

Ruby put her beer down. “Maybe it was one of those false-arrest things.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I know an assistant D.A. in New Orleans. I’ll call first thing tomorrow and ask her to nose around for us.”

“Are they going to let him out on bail?”

“Wait,” I said. “We don’t know he’s been arrested.”

“But if he has?” Her heart was in the question.

“Bail’s iffy in a murder case, especially with a prior arrest. The judge has a lot of discretion. It’s likely to be in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.”

Ruby paled. “A hundred thousand!”

“Maybe more. Andrew’s new in town. That makes a difference.”

Ruby’s freckles stood out on her face but her eyes were steady on mine. “China, I know you’re not crazy about Andrew, and maybe he’s done a few things that weren’t too smart. Maybe he borrowed money from Sybil. Maybe they were sleeping together. But I
know
he didn’t slit her throat. And I’m not saying that just because I care about him. I’m saying it because I have this gut feeling.”

I’ve known Ruby long enough to respect her gut feelings, but I couldn’t help thinking that she was being deceived by her attraction to Andrew. If love makes you blind, sex can make you deaf and dumb. “I hear you. Ruby,” I said. “But you’ve got to see it from Blackie’s angle, too. He’s developing a cult theory that’s pretty plausible, given what he found at the crime scene and in Andrew’s apartment.”

Ruby shook her head, adamant. “There’s a difference between what’s plausible and what’s probable. Andrew may have been mixed up with her, but somebody else killed her. And if you want to talk cult, there’s plenty going around. Sybil’s murder isn’t the only weird thing that’s happened lately.”

Bob emerged from the back. “Here it is.” He shoved a folded newspaper across the bar. ‘Took me a minute to find it. It’d already gone into the garbage. Where it belongs.”

The newspaper was stained with coffee grounds and catsup, but it was still legible. The front-page banner proclaimed itself
The Community Conscience,
published monthly by the Everlasting Faith Bible Church, Pecan Springs, Texas. Under the banner was the headline, “The Church Takes On the Devil.” Under that was a story about the picketing—what the newspaper, with a rhetorical flourish, called the “divinely blessed campaign of righteousness against the evil rampaging in our midst.” There was another article about the church’s stand on divorce, which apparently ranked right up there with devil worship. And there was a picture of the Reverend in his white suit, his arm around a woman with a Tammy Faye face and a Dolly Parton profile. According to the caption, her name was Barbie. It figured.

“Yuck,” Ruby said distastefully. “Look at those boobs.”

“Look at
this,”
I said, and pointed to an article under the picture. It was headlined “This Month’s Business Boycott,” and the first sentence read, “In the opinion of the editorial board, the following businesses support unholy practices and should be considered anathema.” The list was short. It consisted of the Crystal Cave and Thyme and Seasons Herb Company.

“Damn and blast,” Ruby said.

“Yeah,” Bob said. “Makes you want to puke, don’t it?”

Ruby crumpled up the paper and slam-dunked it into the plastic trash bucket behind the bar. “I thought Pauline told Harbuck to can this stuff.”

“She told him to stop
picketing,”
I reminded her. “She didn’t want the site visit team to see us squabbling. The team will probably never read
The Community Conscience.”

“But it’ll
kill
business,” Ruby wailed.

“That’s what Billy Lee’s after, don’t you reckon?” Bob pulled another couple of beers. “On the house.”

“Thanks, Bob. You’re a peach.” Ruby licked the foam off the top of her beer and turned to me. “Can we sue?”

“We’d have to prove malice,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t think we do much business with the Reverend’s congregation. So what if they boycott?”

Ruby hunched her shoulders. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

Bob began to slice margarita limes into a bowl shaped like a catcher’s mitt. “Ask me, the guy’s a jerk. It’s goin’ to cost a coupla hundred to build a new shed.”

“He’s worse than a jerk,” Ruby said grimly. “He may even be behind Sybil’s murder.”

“Watch it,” I said.

Ruby was defiant. “Well, I mean it.”

“You’re prob’ly right ‘bout that, too,” Bob said, putting the catcher’s mitt on the back of the bar. “Nothin’ but a jerk. Even as a kid. Wasn’t just a car he stole, neither. I asked my brother Dickie this weekend. He said before the car, they ripped off a coupla fillin’ stations. Never got much, just some soda pop money and candy bars and a few cases of beer.” He poured a plate full of salt and put it beside the catcher’s mitt. “Good thing Ma never found out, or Dickie woulda got worse’n a hidin’. He’da got creamed. Dickie says there was a girl, too.”

“A girl?” Ruby asked.

“Yeah. Dickie says Billy Lee knocked her up, just before he got sent up to do time for the car.” He fished the crumpled Tammy Faye/Dolly Parton look-alike out of the trash and grinned at it. “Wonder what ol’ Billy Lee’s new wife’d say if she knew about the girl her ol’ man knocked up back in Abilene.”

Ruby made wet rings on the bar with her beer mug. “China,” she said slowly, “do you think—”

“No, Ruby,” I said. “I don’t.”

She swiveled around to face me. “Well, I do. It’s just too coincidental. The Reverend is out to get witches, so he pickets us. Somebody breaks into my shop—”

“And somebody burns down my shed,” Bob put in helpfully. “And didn’t I hear something about a cross?”

“Right,” Ruby said, “and then somebody kills Sybil.” She banged her glass on the bar. “I’m not saying the Reverend actually did the dirty work himself. I’m just saying maybe he psyched up his disciples for a witch-hunt and they got carried away.” She frowned, with that slightly out-of-focus look she always gets halfway through her second beer. “And now here’s the sheriff, putting an innocent man in jail, while the guilty party, excuse me, the
possibly
guilty party, goes around printing up newspapers and telling people to boycott our stores because we’re witches.” She burped.

Bob looked up from the maraschino cherries he was dishing out. “Who’d he put in jail?”

“You mean you haven’t heard?” Ruby was mournful. “Andrew Drake.” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

“Nooo,” Bob said sympathetically. He held her empty glass under the beer tap. “Have another, Ruby. You’ll feel better.”

“Thanks,” I said hastily, standing up. “We’ve got to go. I forgot something I’m supposed to do. Come on, Ruby, I’ll drive you home.”

“It’s all right,” Ruby told Bob. She made a belligerent fist. “I’ll get the sonofabitch. Just wait ‘n’ see.”

“Sure, you will,” Bob said reassuringly. He leaned both elbows on the bar. “Listen, Ruby, you lemme know if I c’n help, okay? I got connections back in Abilene.”

CHAPTER
11

The something I had forgotten was Leatha. I had left for the sheriff’s office early in the afternoon without telling her where I was going, and it was now nearly six. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if she’d fallen off the wagon while she was waiting.

She hadn’t. She was sitting on the batik-print loveseat in the cottage, reading a book and drinking Perrier in a champagne glass. She’d changed into a pale pink sweater and matching pink slacks. Still dressed in the sweats I’d worn all day, I felt heavy and grubby. But I always felt that way around her. Even blitzed out of her mind, my mother managed to be beautiful. I suppose it was another reason for resenting her.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “The sheriff is questioning Ruby’s boyfriend about the murder of Sybil Rand. He questioned Ruby too. She asked me to go with her.”

She looked up, startled. “How
awful
for her. But she’s lucky she has you to turn to. Are you going to represent her friend?”

“No,” I said emphatically. “Listen, do you mind if we just go across the street to eat? I have to see someone at seven thirty, and I don’t want to take the time to cook.”

Walking back from Ruby’s in the chill early twilight, I’d decided to drop in on Judith this evening. I was especially curious about what she’d told the sheriff. I’d called her when I got home. She had agreed to see me, although she hadn’t sounded too thrilled about it.

A disappointed look crossed Leatha’s face, and I remembered how short I’d cut breakfast and lunch. “I won’t be out more than an hour. We can get together after I get back.”

“That’s fine,” Leatha said. “In the meantime, I have a book to occupy me.” She held it up. It was a book for children of alcoholic parents. “Have you read this? It’s very good.”

I shook my head. Ruby had suggested a couple of similar books, but I’d resisted. It was a subject I knew by heart. Why did I need a book?

Leatha stood up. “I’ll give it to you when I’m finished.”

“I really don’t think I—”

“I know,” she said compassionately. “It’s awfully hard to talk about, isn’t it? Until Marietta made me, I simply
refused
to let myself think about how my daddy’s drinkin’ tore me up. You must feel the same way about me, China.”

“Actually, I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”
Liar.
It had been on my mind for years. Why did it embarrass me to hear her say it?

Leatha smiled. “Well, you’re not the only one in denial, honey. Everybody’s simply smothered under it, tons and tons of it. Marietta says it’s the first thing we’ve got to flush out of our systems.”

We set out for dinner.

Maggie’s Magnolia Kitchen is a long room with white walls and strategically placed panels of green and white lattice, draped with climbing vines—real ones—and hung with pots of cheerful red geraniums. The ceiling is the original pressed tin, probably worth more on the antique market than the rest of the restaurant. It’s painted forest green to match the painted wood floor. The tables are white, the chairs are green. On each table there is a clay pot of herb plants, thyme and marjoram and different varieties of basil. If you watch, you’ll catch people surreptitiously rubbing and sniffing. I have a theory that herbs love to be rubbed as much as people love to rub, as long as they don’t pinch.

It was Monday night, early, and business was slow. The room was mostly empty, except for a half-dozen women gathered around the round table in the back. They had the look of nuns—dark skirts, white blouses, short hair, sensible shoes. Maggie, sitting with them, gave us a wave and stood up. As I waved back, I wondered if they missed her cooking at the convent.

Leatha and I took a table near the front. Maggie, menus under her arm and glasses of water in her hands, came to greet us. She’d met Leatha at lunchtime, and she sat down a minute to talk. Maggie is short and stocky, with farmworker hands and arms. Her graying hair is razored short over her ears, her square face is beautifully plain, and there’s not an inch of artifice in her. With Maggie, what you see is what you get, a woman who knows herself and invites you to know her too. She was wearing a plain gray shirtwaist, a white bib apron hand painted in green with her logo and a larger-than-life magnolia, and black crepe-soled oxfords.

“How’s it going?” she asked me.

I made a noncommittal sound. It’s hard to trade polite social lies with Maggie. Her eyes challenge you to tell the truth, and I wasn’t up to it.

“China’s involved in a murder,” Leatha volunteered.

I rolled my eyes.

“Sybil Rand?” Maggie asked, then answered her own question. “Has to be. It’s the only murder in town.” She sighed. “A sad business.”

“Actually, I’m not involved,” I said. “The sheriff is questioning a friend of Ruby’s.”

“I heard.” Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know which is worse, to think she was killed by a cult, or by somebody who hated her.” Her gray eyes showed genuine concern. “How’s Ruby?”

“Bearing up.” I picked up the menu. “What are you cooking tonight?”

Maggie understood, bless her. “The quiche just came out of the oven,” she said briskly, and stood up. For Leatha’s benefit, she added, “It’s sage and onion. China and I planted the sage, out on the patio.”

We ordered spinach salad and the quiche. I was ready for a glass of wine, but I wasn’t sure about the etiquette of it. Or the morality. Are you supposed to drink in front of a recovering alcoholic?

“Get wine if you like,” Leatha said, taking the decision out of my hands. “I’ll have coffee,” she told Maggie.

Maggie gathered our menus. “Tell Ruby I’ll pray for her,” she said. “And for her friend.”

I smiled. When Maggie says she’ll pray, she means it. “Thanks. Ruby will be grateful.” It wasn’t a social lie.

We started on the homemade bread, which came on a round wooden breadboard. Leatha sliced two pieces. It was hot and fragrant with flecks of garden herbs.

“Can I finish what I started to tell you at lunch?” Leatha asked.

“Fine,” I said absently. My mind was on Ruby. I’d left her at home, pacing up and down the living room, frantic about a man who, if I believed Blackie’s theory, could be a murderer. Did I believe it? I did and I didn’t. There were Andrew’s fingerprints and the Satanist bible—hard evidence. The eyewitness testimony of the neighbor and the security guard. The prior arrest. I could see where Blackie was coming from. If I were a cop looking for a killer, Andrew would have to be high on the list.

But Blackie’s wasn’t the only interpretation that could be drawn from the evidence. I didn’t like Andrew and I didn’t trust him. I hated to see Ruby hand over her heart to somebody who might hurt her. But Andrew could be a two-timing louse without being a murderer. He could be—

“I’ve decided to get married,” Leatha said.

“Wonderful,” I said, reaching for the butter. I froze. “You
what?”

Leatha shifted in her chair. “There was just no easy way to tell you, honey. Both Marietta and Dr. Neely thought I just ought to say it straight out, without tryin’ to prepare you.”

“Get married?” I asked blankly. “Who to?”

“Sam Conners. He owns a ranch near Kerrville.”

“But... but... How long have you known him?”

“Just a few months,” Leatha said. Her cheeks were pink and she actually giggled. “But it feels like forever.”

The wine came and I reached for it. I guess I hadn’t considered the possibility of her marrying again. She’d been married to her liquor. And of course, she wasn’t hurting for money. Dad had left her with plenty. But maybe I should have considered it. Maybe I should have worried. She was certainly an attractive target for some fortune-hunter.

Leatha leaned forward and lowered her voice, serious now. “Your daddy’s been dead ten years, China. We never were happy together, except maybe for the first little bit, before Robert got so involved with his practice. Life was pure and simple hell while you were growin’ up. I wanted us to be a family. But he was never home, an’ when he was, he was cold, like an iceberg. Like my daddy.” She twisted off another slice of bread, not looking at me. “I’m still workin’ on that old stuff. There’s a lot about my daddy I don’t want to remember. Marietta says I need to, though, so I’m tryin’. But it hurts.”

I stared at her. In all the years I had known Leatha, she had never shown negative feelings. She’d always been perfectly compliant, perfectly agreeable, perfectly perfect. Even when she drank, she drank quietly until she passed out. I couldn’t remember a single argument, a single critical word from her against my father. Not that he didn’t deserve it. I had watched him practice cruelties, large and small, always calculating exactly how much he could hurt her. I had seen her turn to the only comfort she knew and hated her for not being strong enough to stand up to him, to defend herself. And what was this about
her
father? I remembered the photograph of Leatha as a deb, her eyes shining into her father’s eyes, his arm protectively around her, his smile proud as a young bridegroom’s. I shivered. What was it she didn’t want to remember?

Leatha’s mouth was set in an expression I’d never seen. “Maybe you don’t think I should say things about your daddy and him not here to defend himself. But Marietta says I have to stop sweepin’ all the old bad stuff under the rug. I have to face it. Your daddy was abusive—words, mostly, but his condescension and sarcasm hurt just as much as if it was the other kind. I just wish I’d’ve had the strength to stand up to him. I should have left him. For your sake, if not for my own.”

I was still staring, feeling a sharp, clear pain as I realized that for all these years I had hated my mother for not doing something she couldn’t possibly have done. Where he was concerned, “yes” was the only word she knew. It was a word she had been taught by her father, by her aunt, by her whole world. How could I have hated her for
that!

Maggie came with the quiche. Plates were set down, silver rearranged, water glasses refilled. I tried to cope with my enlightenment. Finally, I asked, “Who is he? This man, I mean.”

“Sam’s a widower. He has an apartment in Houston, because he comes for business. But mostly he lives at the ranch. That’s where we’re going to live.”

“A...
ranch?’
To my knowledge, the closest Leatha had come to animals was organizing charity affairs for the zoo.

She laughed her trilling laugh. “Isn’t it just too funny for words? Me, on a ranch? But it’s not a regular ranch. Sam keeps exotic game. You know, deer and antelope from Africa, weird things from Asia, from China.” She picked up her fork. “He’ll explain it to you, dear. It’ll be a while before I know what I’m talking about. But of course, he’ll teach me, and his children are around to help.”

I was way out of my depth. “Children?”

“Sam Junior’s the eldest. He manages the ranch and his wife Becky Sue does the bookkeepin’. They live in the big house with Sam. They have two children, Jack and Allie, just the
sweetest
little things. It’s not goin’ to be a bit hard to be a grandmother. Then there’re the twins, Steve and Sara. Steve is a doctor in San Antonio and Sara is the president of a bank in Houston. Sara is awfully nice. We go to lunch every week. She’s sort of adopted me.” She began on her quiche with gusto. “I think she misses her mother. Neither she nor Steve are married. Brenda Lee—she’s the baby— got married this summer, right after she finished nursin’ school.”

“Have you, uh, set a date yet?” I asked, when I could find my voice.

“Sam wants to meet you, of course, and have you out to the ranch for a long weekend before we announce anything. And he’s tryin’ to wrap up this big business deal before we get married, so we can have a real honeymoon, maybe a cruise. Then there’s the problem of gettin’ the children all together. Maybe summer.” She put down her fork and leaned forward, dropping her voice confidentially. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re taking it this way, China. I was worried that maybe you’d be ... well, difficult.”

Maggie’s quiche was perfect, as usual, but I had lost my appetite. I was trying to make conversation with a mother I didn’t know, a mother newly sober, newly shrunk and self-actualized, newly feminized, and newly engaged. Having gone to a fair amount of effort to maintain my own simple, uncluttered life, free of emotional obligations and responsibilities, I was now about to become a member of a very extended family: a step-father plus (if I counted right) four step-brothers and sisters and various spouses, in addition to a step-niece and step-nephew. A cast of thousands.

I hoped Leatha could handle it. I wasn’t sure I could.

Judith had raked out the spot on the lawn where the cross had burned, but I could still see the charred grass. She came to the door barefooted, in black stirrup pants and a cranberry-red sweater, hair piled loosely on top of her head. She led me to the living room at the back of her house. The room was as spare and ascetic as Judith, with bare floors, a minimum of furniture, a few oriental drawings, and a waist-high sitting Buddha, eyes cast down, mouth eternally fixed in an inscrutable smile. The room overlooked the ravine at the back of the house. I could see the angular shapes of bony trees, backlit by the streetlight on the next street. The drapes were pulled back and there was nothing to prevent someone on the other side of the ravine from looking in. I wondered what a Peeping Tom might make of Judith’s Buddha, and whether that had anything to do with the cross-burning.

I sat down on a small black leather sofa. “The sheriff questioned Ruby this afternoon,” I said without preamble. “He said you think Sybil and Andrew were having an affair.”

Judith sat on a small blue rug in front of the window and tucked herself easily into a full lotus, Buddha-like. There was only one light on, and the planes of her angular cheekbones were shadowed. “She never actually told me so.” Her voice was cool, a little distant, and I realized that I didn’t know her very well. She was closer to Ruby than to me. “It was something I just picked up on. Why are you asking?”

“Because Andrew Drake is involved, which means that Ruby is involved. She doesn’t think Andrew did it.”

“You’re trying to get Andrew off?”

I tried not to feel defensive. “I’m helping Ruby figure out what happened, and it’s hard because Sybil’s such a mystery. Do you mind talking about her?”

She tilted her head and rotated it as if she were exercising her neck. “I’m not sure how much I can help. Sybil was a very private person.”

“How long did you know her?”

“She and C.W. moved here from Dallas about three years ago, when C.W. took over as managing partner at the resort. She heard about my yoga class and enrolled. She was a good student, very disciplined, very serious about her practice. We’ve been friends ever since, as much as Sybil would allow. We weren’t close.”

“What about her husband? What’s he like?”

Judith looked past me at the Buddha. “C.W.? He likes to impress. His business was real-estate development—until the bottom dropped out. But from things Sybil said, I gathered the bust was just a trigger for a trap of his own design.” Her eyes came back to me, her voice almost amused. “Sybil didn’t have a very high opinion of C.W.’s business abilities. She said once that he was a little shark who kept on swimming with the big sharks even after they chewed his tail off.”

It sounded like something Sybil might say. “If he was in trouble, how’d he get into Lake Winds? Buying into the partnership must have cost plenty, not to mention the quarter of a million or so they spent on that house.”

“It was
Sybil’s
house, and her money that bought into the partnership. Oil money. She inherited it from an aunt before she and C.W. were married. It was her separate property, and she kept it very well shielded from C.W.’s creditors, and from C.W. himself. Every now and then she’d make him a loan or an outright gift that would keep him going.” Judith straightened her legs and opened them wide, clasping her right leg at the calf and bringing her forehead to her knee.