Witches' Bane (19 page)

Virginia Forgette’s two-story white frame house sat behind a white wrought-iron fence, a couple of blocks off the main street. During the summer, the roses must have been spectacular, and a few blossoms still clung to the trellis at the end of the porch. When she answered the door, Miss Forgette appeared to be expecting company. She was wearing a white blouse with a lacy jabot, a pink cardigan, pink skirt, and pink-tinted glasses. Her pink-tinted white hair was frozen in glacial ridges, her furrowed cheeks were rouged with pink, and her pink lipstick had bled into the tiny age-cracks around her mouth. She was a tiny woman, not much higher than my shoulder, and her piercing voice was pure N’Awlins.

“Good mornin’,” she said brightly. She glanced up at me and then at McQuaid, who was standing behind me. “Oh, good, you brought a photographer.” She touched one gnarled hand to her hair and giggled. “I’m glad Bellah got such a nice do on my hair. All my friends are just dyin’ to read this article.” She held the door open wider. “Just come on in. You’ll get chilled out there, no more’n you’re wearin’.”

McQuaid looked at me. “Photographer’.’“

“I’m afraid we’re not from the newspaper. Miss Forgette,” I said. “We’re from Pecan Springs. I telephoned last night. Remember?”

She looked confused. “You’re not from the newspaper over there?”

“No. We’ve come to ask you a few questions about your sister.”

“Oh, I see.” She sounded disappointed. “Well, maybe I didn’t hear it right. I thought you were comin’ to do a write-up on my hobby. The paper here did one last week.”

“Your hobby?” I asked. “What’s that?”

She smiled. “Thimbles.”

“Thimbles?” McQuaid asked.

“My Aunt Mildred collects thimbles,” I said. “She has dozens.”

Miss Forgette’s squeaky laugh lorded it over Aunt Mildred’s paltry collection. “Dozens? I’ve got
thousands!
Three thousand and sixteen, to be exact. I counted ‘em last week, ever’ one, just to be sure I got it right for the newspaper.” She led us from the hall into the living room. Two walls of the rose-papered room were filled floor to ceiling with wooden shelves, and the shelves were filled with thimbles—silver and gold ones, china ones, in all colors and with all manner of dainty decoration.

“My goodness,” McQuaid said. “I’m impressed. No wonder the newspaper did a story on you.”

Miss Forgette beamed. “Yes, I’ve been collectin’ thimbles since I was a little girl. My grandmama gave me my first one, this one right here, on the middle shelf.” She pointed. “She gave me the gold one and my sister Georgia the silver one—that’s Georgia’s right beside, you see.”

It was the opening I was waiting for. “Actually, it’s your sister we’ve come to ask about,” I said. “My name is China Bayles, and this is Mike McQuaid. We’re looking into a matter involving a man named Andrew Drake. Do you mind if we sit down for a few minutes?”

“Andrew Drake?” Miss Forgette sat on the edge of the cretonne-covered sofa. “Is there some problem? He’s been making his payments very regular.”

“Payments?” McQuaid asked.

“Ever’ month. Isn’t that what you wanted to ask about? At the rate he’s goin’, the whole thing will be paid off in the next three or four years, even countin’ the interest.”

“The thirty thousand dollars he owed your sister?” I asked.

“That’s right.” She pleated her pink skirt between her fingers, shaking her head. “Poor Georgia, such a sight of trouble she caused, bringin’ that boy up on charges, when the loan was on the up-and-up and he had every intention of payin’ the money back.” Her lips tightened. “I blame that old lady Jackson next door. Such a hypocrite, always findin’ fault. She fed Georgia a mess of stories about handsome young men cheatin’ innocent old ladies out of their money, and Georgia got all fretted and called the police. I told her not to worry, it was bad for her blood pressure, but of course it didn’t do any good for me to talk, not with Miz Jackson pourin’ all that poison in her other ear. I did feel sorry for that poor young man, though. It was a shame for Georgia to go, but at least it saved him from havin’ a black mark against his name.”

“I see,” I said. I did, dimly. “Tell me, Miss Forgette, exactly how did your sister die?”

“Why, didn’t you know?” She pulled a lace handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and dabbed one eyelid with it. I couldn’t see any sign of tears. “It really was the most
terrible
thing. She was ridin’ the streetcar when a garbage truck ran into it at the corner of St. Charles and Prytania. It raised a big stink.”

McQuaid coughed.

“Because the streetcar driver’d been drinkin’, you see,” Miss Forgette said earnestly. “There was garbage all
over
the place.”

“That
was
awful,” I said. “Was your sister killed in the accident?”

“No, only two was killed. But her leg was pretty well scraped up, and when they brought her home from the emergency room her blood pressure was higher’n fireworks on the Fourth and the next day she had a stroke and died.” She waved her hand at the thimbles. “That’s how I come to have so many thimbles, you see. I inherited at least half of ‘em from her. I must say, though, I like mine best.” She pointed to a glass tray of thimbles on the table beside her. “My niece sent me these. This one’s got Charles and Di on it, and their wedding date. And here are the little princes. Aren’t they sweet?” She heaved a mighty sigh. “So
tragic
about that family. How
can
his mother bear it, I don’t know. If I was queen, I’d tell that Charles to stop his shenanigans, and if he didn’t, I’d—”

McQuaid leaned forward. “Was Andrew Drake present when your sister had her stroke?”

“No, just Miz Jackson and me. I swear, that old lady just couldn’t keep her nose out, had to come over and start talkin’ about Andrew. Lord forgive her, if it wasn’t the garbage truck that killed poor Georgia, it was Miz Jackson. But he was a lamb. Right away when he heard about it, he came to see me. He said, ‘You don’t have to worry about a thing, Miss Forgette. I’m a man of my word, and I’m goin’ to see you get every penny of the money I owed your sister.’“ She nodded fervently. “He is a good-hearted young man, I’m proud to say, and he takes care of his debts. Pays ever’ fifteenth of the month, on the nose.”

“Do you know why he borrowed the money?” I asked.

“He was goin’ to start a photography studio over on Carrollton. Nasty business that was, too. Do you know about it?”

I shook my head.

She spoke pityingly. “Well, the way it turned out, his partner ran off with all the money they raised and left him holdin’ the bag. It’s a wonder he’s ever recovered from that blow. He needed Georgia’s money to get goin’ again.”

“Have you heard from him recently?”

“Just the check, regular as clocks. Couple months back, he dropped me a line and said he was openin’ a new place here in Texas, over in Pecan Springs, and I could come over anytime and get my picture taken, free. All I can say is, I wish him better luck this time.”

“Thank you,” I said, as McQuaid and I stood to leave. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“If you see him, tell him I’ll be over someday soon to get my picture made.” She smiled. “There’s a young man who deserves to have things go right.”

“Well,” McQuaid said as we drove down the main street, “are you surprised?”

“To tell the truth, yes,” I said. “I didn’t know Andrew had it in him.” I pointed. “There’s a parking place. In front of the Auslander.”

“Is German food okay?”

I laughed. “In Fredericksburg, do we have a choice? It’s German or Tex-Mex.” I was exaggerating. We could probably find some barbecue if we looked. But like Pecan Springs, Fredericksburg was settled by Germans, and traces of German culture are evident everywhere.

We turned down the outdoor beer garden, with its jukebox and blinking neon Lone Star sign, in favor of the dining room, which was decorated with German travel posters, German wine bottles arranged along the plate rail, a framed collection of beer coasters, and an oil portrait of somebody’s grandfather wearing a green jacket and a green felt Tyrolean hat with a feather. The waitresses wore blue aprons over blue-and-red print smocks and white ruffled blouses, with white sneakers and white socks. I ordered a Reuben. McQuaid got a plate of knockwurst, sauerkraut, and fried potatoes. We both had steins of Shiner Bock.

“Kind of changes the angle on Drake, doesn’t it?” McQuaid asked, slicing off a hunk of knockwurst.

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully, “it does. I guess I’ve been as guilty as the town. I got it into my head that he was using Ruby.”

“Maybe he was. Maybe he was planning to borrow money from her. Does Ruby have any money?”

“Some, from her grandmother. She used part of it to buy the house. And it didn’t help that he was so evasive about his past. Remember the night the four of us had dinner together? I remember thinking men that the only things I knew about him were that he was left-handed, and that he didn’t like talking about himself.”

“But he
was
at the scene of the crime,” McQuaid pointed out. “And there was something going on between him and Sybil. The fact that he’s making good on a loan doesn’t have a lot of bearing on whether he killed Sybil.”

“I know,” I said. “But—” I was about to take a sip of beer when the waitress came around to my right to serve me. We connected, and beer splashed onto the table.

“Sorry,” she said, putting down the plate from my left. “I’m new at this job. I’ve got to remember that everybody else is right-handed.” She wiped up the spilled beer.

“That’s okay,” I said. “No damage done.” When she’d gone, I sat there, staring thoughtfully at the pickled chile that was impaled on my Reuben with a toothpick.

McQuaid looked up, his mouth full of knockwurst. “What’s the matter? A beer-soaked Reuben doesn’t appeal to you?”

“Did you say the autopsy report would be out today?”

“Blackie was expecting it. Matter of fact, I wondered why he charged Drake before it came in. I guess he figured he had probable cause, what with the fingerprints and the eyewitness testimony.”

I stood up. “Back in a minute.” I took my purse and headed for the pay phone in the beer garden. I dialed information, got the number, and dialed again. Blossom answered.

“We-II, I don’t know,” she said in reply to my question. “The sheriff sure hates to be bothered while he’s eatin’ his lunch.”

“Why don’t
you
ask him for me. He probably won’t mind the interruption nearly so much if you do it.”

“I guess,” she said, resigned. “What do you want to know?”

I told her. She was back in less than a minute with the answer.

“Sheriff said to tell you that the killer was right-handed. According to the Travis medical examiner, anyway,” she added. “The report came in just a little bit ago.”

“No kidding?” I said, drawling it out. “Listen, maybe you could do me one more favor. Tell the sheriff that Andrew Drake is a southpaw. And then tell me what he says.”

This time, the answer came back in thirty seconds. “He said—” Blossom hesitated. “Actually, you don’t want to hear what he said. It wasn’t too nice.”

“I can imagine. Hey, thanks, Blossom.”

She sighed. “Does this mean I did all that paperwork for nothing?”

CHAPTER
15

Back at the table, McQuaid blinked when I told him about the autopsy report. “Well, if it wasn’t Drake,” he said, “who the hell
was
it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe Ruby’s right. Maybe it was the Reverend.”

“Billy Lee? Oh, come on now. The guy’s a jerk, but I don’t think he’s up to killing somebody.”

“Yeah, but who’s left? The husband was better off with Sybil alive than dead. The note proves that he knew he’d been cut out of her will.”

“That note,” McQuaid said. He finished his knockwurst. “It seems familiar, somehow.”

“You too? The trouble is, I can’t quite place it.”

“Some case or another, a couple of years ago,” McQuaid said, staring into his empty beer stein. “But it wasn’t something I—” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! It was an article in
Texas Monthly.
This woman was accused of poisoning her estranged husband for his insurance. The trouble was, a few months before he died, he changed the beneficiary on the policy.”

“Yeah, that’s it!” I was so excited I slopped my beer. “At the trial, the defense introduced a letter the husband was supposed to have typed and sent to his wife, to the effect that he’d made the policy over to his brother. If the letter was genuine, it meant she had no reason to kill him. But the prosecution dug up a witness who testified that the husband couldn’t type, and a handwriting expert said the signature was a forgery. The jury figured that a wife who could forge a bogus note to clear herself could also do in her husband.”

“You read the same article I did, huh?”

“No, I heard about the case from a friend who was on the defense team. But C.W. could have read about it.” I snapped my fingers. “There’s a bunch of magazines on the coffee table in his office. What do you want to bet there are some old
Texas Monthlys!”

“If he read the article, he probably wouldn’t make the same mistake in forging the note. Sybil typed, I suppose?”

“Yes. When I was there on Saturday, she was typing a plant list on the typewriter in the kitchen.”

McQuaid nodded. “Okay. Then suppose that C.W.
doesn’t
know about the divorce and the new will. Suppose he pays somebody to kill Sybil while he’s out of town. He comes home and the job’s been done. So far so good. But then he finds out from Blackie that she was planning to get a divorce, and she’s cut him out of her will.”

I stared at him. “You don’t really think the sheriff would be dumb enough to just
give
him that information?”

“It’s not a matter of smart or dumb. You’re closeted with a suspect for three or four hours, and you aren’t Perry Mason. You don’t have a scriptwriter feeding you a bunch of great lines. Sometimes things just...” He left it with an eloquent shrug.

I nodded, understanding. I’d committed my share of bloopers. “So Blackie—or maybe a deputy—says something careless, like ‘When did you find out your wife was leaving you a big divorce settlement but cutting you out of her will?’ And C.W. pops up with ‘Why, before I went to Atlanta, of course.’ He remembers the article in
Texas Monthly
and offers to confirm it by digging up the note.”