Witches' Bane (26 page)

Her scheme was a good one, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to thwart it. Rush her? She’d shoot. Try some tricky aikido move? She’d shoot. Anyway, there was an unnerving difference between facing a benign, unarmed opponent in white pajamas and staring down the long barrel of Rita’s very real revolver. Shit.

The door behind Rita’s desk edged open a crack.

“I
said,”
Rita repeated, “go over to the door.”

I groped for the only stall I could think of. “What are you going to do about the car?”

“What car?”

“Your
car. You rode out here with me, remember? What are you going to tell the sheriff—that you hitchhiked? Took a taxi?” I managed a grin. “Of course, you could drive my car back to your place and pick up yours. But that leaves my car at your house. The sheriff would be curious about that.”

She frowned, thinking.

“And since the M.E. can establish time of death pretty precisely, you don’t have a lot of time to play car swap. You might call a cab, but the driver would remember—”

“Shut up and walk to the door. I’ll figure it out later.”

Several things happened at the same time. I took a step backward, Rita took a step forward, and Ruby charged through the back door. With a thundering
“A-ya!”
she grabbed Rita’s right hand and yanked it down. The gun discharged with an ear-ringing crack and went flying. Ruby hooked her left ankle around Rita’s left leg, jerked, and pushed. Rita crashed to the floor.

I scrambled for the gun and stood up. “What
took
you so long?”

“What do you mean, took me so long?” Ruby demanded. “I hurried. After all, I had to change.”

“Had to change! I’m facing a killer, scared shitless, and you’re getting dressed?”

“How am I supposed to know you’re scared? All your note said was ‘Come to C.W.’s office. Back door.’ I thought it was a party. I went home and changed clothes.” She had, too. She was wearing a vampy jade-green dress with spaghetti straps and jade-green spike heels. She looked like somebody’s gun moll.

Rita stirred painfully, moaning. Ruby looked down at her. “How about if we put her in a chair?”

“Fine,” I said. “Then let’s give Blackie a call.”

Ruby helped Rita up and sat her in her chair behind the desk. As she reached for the phone, the front door opened behind me. I swiveled, gun on the door. Rita half stood and Ruby pushed her down again.

“What’s going on here?” C.W. took in the scene at a glance. “What are you doing with that gun?” he asked me. He looked at Ruby, six feet tall and splendid, her ginger hair in a frizzy nimbus, her hand planted firmly on Rita’s shoulder. “Who the hell are
you?”

“I’m the one who’s calling the police,” Ruby said. She picked up the phone and began to dial.

I motioned C.W. to the sofa. “Sit over there, please. You have some explaining to do. Rita’s implicated you in your wife’s murder.”

“No!” Rita wailed. “No! I
didn’t!
Don’t believe her, C.W. I’d never tell, never!”

“Rita,” C.W. said softly, “shut up.” He sat on the sofa and appealed to me. “She’s crazy. Whatever she did, she did entirely on her own hook.”

Rita stared at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. “But you said—”

“I never said anything to you.” He folded his arms. “I was in Atlanta.”

Rita’s look might have flattened him if he hadn’t been sitting down.

“It wouldn’t matter whether you were here or on the moon,” I told him. “An accessory before the fact is somebody who incites, counsels, or orders somebody else to commit a crime—which is what, according to Rita, you did. If she’s guilty of Sybil’s murder, so are you.”

C.W.’s face paled. He sat back and folded his arms. “You can’t prove shit.”

“I don’t have to. That’s the D.A.’s job. But Rita’s just given a voluntary statement, on tape, spelling out the details.”

Rita gasped.

C.W. frowned. “You violated her rights. She’s supposed to have a lawyer present when somebody asks questions about a crime.”

“When the
police
ask questions about a crime,” I corrected him. “What Rita gave me was a voluntary statement about her involvement in a crime. I’m not a law-enforcement officer. I don’t have to play by the Miranda rule.”

Ruby put down the phone. “I just talked to the dispatcher. A couple of cars are on the way. It may take a while to locate the sheriff, though.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “Where is he?”

Ruby grinned. “He’s giving a talk,” she said. “At the law-enforcement conference, up at the college.”

CHAPTER 20

McQuaid rolled over onto his back with a deep-throated sigh of satisfaction. I flopped onto my stomach and draped my right arm across his chest. The sheets were tangled around us. A room-service tray with a half-empty bottle of champagne and the remains of eggs Benedict for two sat on the floor beside the bed. The drapes were half open, the Sunday morning sunlight painting a golden band across the carpet.

McQuaid and I had taken a vote. It was two-zip against a romantic weekend with my mother, her fiancé, and a bewildering assortment of prospective family members, and in favor of a weekend of R and R alone. I called Leatha and thanked her for the invitation and asked her to tell Sam and the gang that I looked forward to meeting them. Then McQuaid and I drove to San Antonio, dropped Brian off to visit his mother, and checked into the Menger Hotel, across the alley from the Alamo.

The Menger is a far cry from the plastic palaces that have popped up like toadstools along the River Walk. Its history harkens back to the glory days of San Antonio, when cowboys galloped into the city bent on high jinks and high culture, when Teddy Roosevelt recruited Rough Riders in the saloon, and Carrie Nation took her hatchet to the bar. The rooms are luxuriantly opulent, the Victorian furniture is marvelously vulgar, and the lobby rises on Corinthian columns three stories to a glorious stained-glass skylight. It’s the best place in town for a weekend of serious, all-out, no-holds-barred decadence.

By contrast, we’d eaten last night at Johnny’s Mexican Restaurant on New Braunfels Street. Johnny’s gives you real Tex-Mex, paper napkins, no frills. The vinyl tile floor is scuffed, the window air conditioner wheezes, and the phone wears a sign that says “three minute limit.” There’s no limit to the great food. We feasted on cabrito, which Johnny cooks Jalisco-style by simmering a whole goat (no kidding) with bay leaf, oregano, garlic, salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin. The cabrito is then deep-fried and brought to your table by a cheerful waitperson in a pink vest-apron, along with ranchero sauce, rice, beans, guacamole (a little heavy on the garlic), and an endless supply of tortilla chips in plastic baskets. Afterward, we went back to our decadent hotel and made decadent love, last night and again this morning.

McQuaid pulled my hand to his mouth and nibbled my fingers. Last night’s garlic was still seeping out of my pores, but he didn’t seem to mind. “I can’t believe you did it again,” he said.

“It wasn’t exactly
me,”
I said modestly. “At least, not by myself. I kind of thought we did it together. Sex
a deux.”

“No, not that,” McQuaid said. “The other.” He pulled himself up and stuck a pillow behind his head. “Rand and that woman. Rita what’s-her-name.”

“Greene.” I crawled up and cradled my head on his chest. I could hear his heart thump-thumping in my ear. It was a comforting sound, regular, reliable. “Why can’t you believe it? You saw it yourself. The car, I mean, and the burned spot by the road. You said it couldn’t have been an accident. If Blackie had questioned Rita about how Jerri died instead of treating her as a bereaved sister, he’d have known immediately that she was holding something back.”

“That’s exactly my
point,”
McQuaid said. “You should have left it to Blackie. For God’s sake, China, you know you’re not supposed to mess around in an ongoing investigation.”

I sat up too, yanking the sheet around me. “I didn’t mess around,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster, considering the circumstances. “As for the investigation, it was going in the wrong direction. Anyway, you can bet your sweet ass that I
would
have got Blackie out to Lake Winds if I could have. You, too, for that matter. But you cops were talking shop instead of minding the store. Do you think I really wanted to slug it out all alone with—”

He scowled. “And that’s another thing. Going off like that, at night, with some wacko woman you suspected of—”

“I didn’t. At least not then. I knew that Rita had maneuvered Ruby and me into finding the bloody clothes, but I thought Jerri and C.W. had killed Sybil and C.W. had murdered Jerri. I had no idea it was Rita until we were out there.”

“Same difference. It was a killer, either way.” McQuaid touched my face, gently, his eyes holding mine. “What are you trying to do, Bayles? Get yourself wasted by some maniac so you can get off the hook with me?”

I took his hand and put it on my bare breast. “Well, no,” I murmured. “It wasn’t that complicated. I didn’t want Andrew to get to the grand jury, that’s all. After that, it’s harder to call off the dogs.”

McQuaid sighed heavily. “Yeah. But I worry about you, damn it. I love you, China. I’d hate for you to get your fool head blasted off.” He pulled me against him, searching for my mouth.

We were about to be decadent again when the phone rang. And rang. Finally, I reached for it. “Hello,” I said blurrily.

“Hi,” Ruby chirped. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

I looked up at McQuaid. “Ruby hopes she’s not interrupting anything.”

McQuaid made a rude noise, rolled over on his side, and pulled the pillow over his head.

“Uh-oh,” Ruby said. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but I have some news.”

“There was a jailbreak,” I guessed, “and Rita and C.W. stole a car and took off for Vegas.”

The pillow came up. “Vegas?” McQuaid asked, alarmed.

“Not. I made that up. Joke.”

“Well, I’m not joking,” Ruby said. “Andrew says to tell you thanks.”

‘Tell him you’re welcome. You interrupted us for
that?
Andrew can be grateful tomorrow.”

“He’s grateful today. If you don’t have anything better to do, you might drop in at the River Walk Gallery and see his exhibit. It’s still hanging, but every photo has sold. That’s where Andrew got the money to pay Sybil back.”

“If we don’t have anything better to do. Is that it?”

“I just talked to Becky Ellen.”

“Becky Ellen?” I shivered. The pillow was off. McQuaid was tracing my breast with one finger and kissing my throat.

“The wife of the Reverend.”

McQuaid moved his hand further down and kissed my mouth. When I could speak, I said, “I thought her name was Barbie. Wasn’t that her in the church newspaper?” I looked at McQuaid. “We’re talking about Billy Lee.”

McQuaid moved his hand again. He didn’t answer.

“Her
name’s Barbie,” Ruby said. “The one with the boobs. I’m talking about his
other
wife. The one up in Abilene.”

I was getting confused, but maybe it was because I wasn’t paying attention. McQuaid was kissing my belly. “You mean his former wife?”

“I didn’t know Billy Lee was divorced,” McQuaid murmured, licking my bare skin. “Isn’t that immoral?”

Ruby chortled. “I mean his
present
wife. The jerk never bothered to get a divorce. He’s married to both women!”

“He’s a bigamist?” I asked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

McQuaid raised his head. “A
bigamist?”

“It’s the truth,” Ruby said, “so help me God and hope to die if I should ever tell a lie.” She was laughing so hard she could hardly talk. “Here’s his holiness, preaching that we’re witches and not fit to wipe his boots on, and he’s got two wives! That turkey is in it up to his eyebrows.”

McQuaid put his head back down. “Yeah,” I said, somewhat distracted. “Listen, Ruby, is that all?”

“Is that
all?
Isn’t that enough?”

I looked down at McQuaid’s dark head. “Enough? No, not hardly.” I hung up the phone.

A little while later McQuaid poured us each another glass of champagne. “I really meant it,” he said, poking around on the tray to see what else he could find to eat.

“Meant what?” I sipped my champagne and let myself feel simply, deliciously wonderful.

McQuaid sat up and reached for the phone. “How about lunch?” he asked. “I’m hungry again.”

“Fine,” I said lazily. I took another sip of champagne and drew my finger along his bare arm. “Meant what?”

“I’ll have to keep a closer eye on you.”

I gave him a vampy smile. “Just how do you propose to do that?”

He peeled off the sheet and looked the length of my body. Then he pulled it back up. “Why don’t we move in together?”

“We can’t,” I said. “Howard Cosell hates cats.”