Chile Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Edna swung her flashlight around the room. After a moment, she bent over, opened the flaps of one of the boxes, and began spilling papers across the floor, crumpling some of them into loose balls.

  I regarded this odd behavior through a wave of dizziness. "What are you doing?”

  Her voice seemed to echo hollowly, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a well. "Don’t be a fool. I can’t let you go back to town and tell everybody what you know.” She tumbled another box of papers onto the floor.

  Good grief. She sounded exactly like one of Jessica Fletcher’s TV villains.

  "I think you’re too smart to do anything silly,” I said thickly. But just in case I’d misjudged her, I tried easing my left leg forward. If I could get up on one knee, I might be able to get enough leverage to yank— There was a flash of gritty pain, as if the knee joint were full of broken glass. Forget that.

  "Sony, China,” she said shortly. "It was one thing to scrape a few peanuts into a cup of chili. It’s quite another to — ” She stopped and straightened up. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

  "That’s not funny,” I said, with dignity.

  “You’re right,” she said. "I apologize.”

  She left, taking the flashlight. But I had no time to consider any other escape strategies, because she was gone less than thirty seconds. When she stepped back into the storeroom, she was cariying the kerosene lantern she had taken from the wall outside the door, and the tin matchbox. My heart jumped up into my throat.

  “What are you doing?” I croaked, although I knew, perfectly well.

  She put the lantern on the floor, shone the flashlight on it, and turned it until she found the cap to the fuel tank. She unscrewed the cap and tipped the lantern over onto the papers. Nothing came out. It was empty.

  My mouth had gone cottony. My hands were icy. I could feel myself beginning to shake, inside and out. “Out of gas. Too bad. Guess you’ll have to go back to town and get some.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she rose, picked up the lantern and the flashlight, and left again. This time, she was gone for a much longer period—long enough for me to figure out what she was up to. She was getting gasoline from the gas tank on the downhill slope beneath the barn. If that tank was empty, she would siphon it out of one of the ecu's. She would spill gasoline on the floor and the papers, then light the lantern and tip it over. In two minutes, the hay-stuffed barn would be a blazing inferno. I wouldn’t be cold any longer.

  The door opened, and she came back in. This time, I could smell the gasoline.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but my teeth were chattering so that I could scarcely speak. Finally, I managed to get it out. “They’ll know it wasn’t k-k-kero- sene,” I said. "They’ll s-s-suspect s-s-something.” I wasn’t sure this was true, though. Maybe they wouldn’t know. Maybe the fire would be hot enough to destroy all traces of—

  “Actually, this gas is so stale that there’s not a lot of difference between it and kerosene,” she replied, with the authority born of long experience as a ranch manager. She propped the flashlight on a box so she could see what she was doing, then spilled a goodly quantity of gasoline on one of the boxes and more on the heap of papers beside it. She dropped her father’s file on top. "Even if they do notice, they’ll figure it was you. They’ll think you filled the lantern at the gas tank so you could poke around for Velma’s will, and knocked it over when when you went through the floor.” She sighed heavily. “I’m sorry it turned out like this, China. If there had been any other way—”

  Broiled. Grilled. Roasted alive. I clenched my teeth against the wave of nauseating fear. “They’ll know you were here too. Lester will remember that he sent you out here.”

  "HI tell them myself.” She opened the tin matchbox, reached inside, and took out a match. "But by the time I got here, looking for you, it was already too late. The barn was completely engulfed in flames. I saw your car, and I knew you were inside, but there was nothing I could do except watch, horrified.” She struck the match. It broke in her fingers and she stared at it. "That will be the truth,” she whispered.

  I pushed myself up on my forearms, sliding the left knee forward against the pain, desperately trying to pull my right leg out of the jaws of the broken board. A hideous memory came to me of a gray wolf that gnawed off her leg to free herself from a trap. If I could find an ax or a knife—

  She took another match. "I’d knock you out,” she said raggedly, "but I’m not sure I could do it without cracking your skull. And then they’d know.” She paused. "I’m really sorry, China.”

  The match flared and snuffed out. She struck another, cupping it. The flame flickered, steadied.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” I licked my lips.

  "Peanuts in chili—that’s one thing. It might or might not have worked. But to light a funeral pyre and watch while it burns ...”

  "I know,” she said thinly. "Jerry Jeff was a bad man. He deserved what he got. But killing you is unforgivable. It will be on my conscience for the rest of my life.” "Then don’t do it,” I said. "Don’t—”

  "Be quiet.” She held out her hand to drop the match. I closed my eyes. I was not going to torture myself by watching the dame crawl across the papers, bloom into a fiery red rose. Eyes squeezed shut, fists clenched against the terror, I heard a step, another, and then a dull, heavy bong, like the ringing of a cracked bell.

  My eyes dew open. Edna was pitching heavily forward, a dead weight, the match and dashlight falling with her, into a pool of gasoline. With my left hand, I reached out and swatted the match. It went out.

  "China?” somebody yelled in the darkness. "China? Are you all right, China?”

  "Ruby!” I cried. "What are you doing here!”

  A foot scraped across the door. A dashlight clicked on. Light fell across me like a blessing.

  "I’m keeping an eye on my business investment,” Ruby said. "What else?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chile Pepper Liniment

  Mix together and use externally as a liniment for sprains, bruises, rheumatism, and neuralgia:

  tincture of capsicum (chile pepper),

  fluid oz.

  extract of lobelia, 2 fluid oz. oil of wormwood, 1 fluid dram oil of rosemary, 1 fluid dram oil of spearmint, 1 fluid dram Alma R. Hutchens A Handbook of Native American Herbv

  “What can I get you?” Ruby asked in a solicitous tone. “Shall I straighten your sheets or plump up your pillow? Would you like a glass of juice? Some ice cream? Shall I rub your—”

  “Oh, quit,” I snapped crossly, pulling away. Out in the hospital hallway, I heard the incessant ding-ding of somebody’s call bell. Why the hell didn’t the nurses come and put the poor sinner out of his misery?

  "She’s going to be a grumpy invalid,” McQuaid said from his wheelchair, parked at the foot of my bed. "You might as well go home; and let her snap at me, Ruby. She’s been doing it ever since she came out of the anesthesia.”I shifted my shoulders. I could feel the hair matted at the back of my head. I needed a bath. But none of this was Ruby’s fault. “No, please don’t go home,” I said wearily. "I’m soriy, Ruby. I’ll do better, I promise. It’s just that everything hurts and—”

  I bit my lip. A tear was running down the side of my face and into my damp and untidy hair. I was whining. I hate whiners. V.I. Warshawski never whines when she gets beat up.

  "I know, dear,” Ruby said, patting the cast on my right leg, which was suspended in midair. “Your leg must hurt terribly.” She used the soft, syrupy voice that mothers use to soothe kids with the measles, that whole, healthy people use to console people with various broken and missing parts. “It’ll be all better. Soon.”

  "Not soon enough,” I said grimly. The doctor was predicting three weeks in this ridiculous rig, a week here in the hospital and two at the Manor, where—irony of ironies— I’d probably get to share McQuaid’s room. Plus another six, at least, in a cast. I looked up at the malev
olent trapeze of ropes and pulleys that cranked my leg in the direction of the ceiling, supposedly holding my broken right femur so it would mend correctly. "To tell the truth,” I added, trying to be objective, "that leg doesn’t hurt, it itches like fury. It’s my left leg that hurt).”

  And no wonder. The left ankle was sprained, the socket bone cracked, and a bundle of ligaments had come unraveled. My rib cage felt as if I’d been on the working end of a medieval battering ram, but miraculously, my ribs were only bruised, not broken. My nose hadn’t been broken, either, just bent a little, but my eyes were puffy and both cheeks were badly abraded. I wasn’t complaining, though, considering how close I had come to being incinerated. If Ruby hadn't showed up, they might be shoveling my ashes out with the rest of the burned rubble. I could have been reduced to clinkers and melted-down gold fillings.

  I reached for Ruby's hand. "Thank you,” I said. "You saved my life. At the risk of sounding cliched, 1 don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

  "According to our partnership agreement, you’ll start repaying me in a year,” Ruby said briskly. "What I did Monday night simply ensured that you’d be around to keep your bargain.” She smoothed the damp hair off my forehead and softened her tone. "Anyway, if I’d been the one stuck in the bam floor, you would have done exactly the same for me.”

  I considered for a moment. "Actually,” I said, "if you’d been stuck and I'd been hovering on the outskirts, I believe I would have given you a signal. I’m not criticizing, mind you—just saying that I might have managed to give you some teensy, tiny hint to relieve your anxiety and let you know that you weren’t all alone in a dark bam with a crazy woman who was planning to charbroil you.”

  “I did give you a signal,” Ruby said. "I hooted.” McQuaid’s eyebrows went up. "You booted?"

  "Three times.”

  And then I remembered. The mouse scratching in the shadowy corner, the rustle of rattlesnakes, the great homed owl hooting from a nearby tree. But it hadn’t been an owl after all. It had been Ruby—which would have made me feel much less anxious, had I but known.

  “Yes, you did hoot,” I said. "I suppose I wasn’t paying sufficient attention. But it was a very little hoot. And you did sound veiy much like an owl.”

  Ruby looked defensive. "So what was I supposed to do? Send up flares?”

  McQuaid began to laugh, then to roar. I started to giggle. But giggling hurt my battered ribs, and I started to ciy. The tears got inside my nose and made me cough. Coughing rattled the ribs, and I cried harder. Making loud soothing sounds, Ruby jumped up and rushed to the bathroom for a wet washcloth. Charlie Lipman, bearing a giant-sized pizza in a cardboard box and a cold six-pack in a shopping bag, walked into the middle of this cacoph-. ony. The cause of the merriment had to be explained to him, which kicked off the uproar all over again. It also brought a starched white nurse, who looked at us disapprovingly over her glasses and put a finger to her lips.

  “This place is full of sick people,” she said.

  "I’m glad I’m not one of them,” I said under my breath—not too loudly, just in case she was the one who would shortly reappear with a needle.

  When we had all simmered down, Charlie put the pizza on the rolling table at the foot of my hospital bed and opened the box, filling the room with the heady aroma of mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. Ruby pulled the pizza slices apart and handed them around on napkins. McQuaid popped the can tabs. Charlie took off his suit jacket, took off his shoes, and put his feet up on the arm of McQuaid’s chair. He was wearing one brown sock and one blue one. The blue one had a hole in the heel. He looked at Ruby.

  "Well?” he asked. "Are you going to tell me how you ferreted out the ferocious peanut poisoner and foiled a dastardly attempt to barbecue our China? Hark’s stoiy in this morning’s paper gave a good general impression but was wanting in substantive detail.”

  I smiled at the mention of Hark. He’d been veiy sweet when he heard what happened and had even promised that I could turn in my chile pepper stoiy whenever I felt like typing it up. But he had also hinted that I might want to make a real story out of it, sort of a true crime piece, with recipes.

  “China can tell the first part, about solving the mystery,” Ruby said helpfully. “I’ll do the bit about the barbecue.”

  So, between bites of the best pizza I had ever tasted and sips of the most incredible beer ever brewed (it’s interesting how a little threat of dying can hone your taste buds), I told what had happened, to the point where Ruby arrived on the scene, snatched up the rusty shovel, and whacked Edna Lund over the head.

  Charlie gave Ruby an admiring look. “Great presence of mind,” he said. "A strong woman, game and plucky. The sort I lust after. Why haven’t we ever been to bed together?”

  Ruby ignored his lechery. “I wasn’t strong. I was scared to death.” She shuddered. "That lantern was like a Molotov cocktail. And China was seriously stuck. It took two volunteer firemen with crowbars to rip up the floorboards and free her. I could never have gotten her out of there by myself, especially if Edna had managed to set the place on fire.”

  "We could have hacked off my leg,” I offered. "I was definitely considering it.”

  Ruby blanched. "I probably should have slugged Edna a lot sooner than I did. But I couldn't bring myself to do it until I knew she really meant to torch the bam. Violence does terrible things to your karma.”

  “Torching would have done terrible things to China,” McQuaid remarked. He looked at me. "I prefer her the way she is—rare.”

  Charlie picked a piece of pepperoni off his tie, leaving a smear of tomato paste. "What karma took you there in the first place, Ruby? ”

  "I followed Edna,” Ruby explained. "You see, I went to the soccer match to talk to Lulu Burkhart, because McQuaid told me that China thought that Lulu might have a motive to kill Jerry Jeff, and—”

  "Excuse me?” Charlie said, surprised. He looked at me questioningly. “You thought Lulu had a motive?”

  "Fannie Couch told me about the rumors that have been going around the grapevine," I said. "About Lulu Burkhart and Jerry Jeff.”

  Charlie grunted. "Fannie Couch ought to be ashamed of herself. Lulu and Jerry Jeff may have been seen together a time or two, but it was because I was using her as an intermediaiy. In that messy deal between Cody and Burkhart, Lulu was the only one who had a lick of sense. I asked her to sit down with Jerry Jeff and see if they couldn’t reach some sort of settlement. But Jerry Jeff was a horse’s ass, as usual, and the case went to trial.”

  "That’s okay, China,” Ruby said, patting my hand. "It’s good that you suspected Lulu. If you hadn’t, I might not have talked to her so soon. While I was asking her about what she had been doing during the judging at the chili cookoff, she told me me what she saw. Kind of as an aside.” She stopped to bite the tip off her second slice of pizza.

  "You know what they say about police work,” McQuaid remarked, sipping his beer. "Ninety-nine percent of it is a waste of time. It’s that lucky one-in-a- hundred shot that pays off.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” I said. "It was Ruby's skill in questioning a witness.”

  "It wasn’t skill, either,” Ruby retorted. "It was the Universe, pointing me in the right direction, so that you wouldn’t get roasted to death.”

  "Hey,” Charlie said. "Cut the suspense and tell already. What exactly did Lulu see?”

  “She saw Edna Lund," Ruby said, "tapping chopped peanuts off the top of a cookie and into one of the chili samples. Lulu said she thought it was weird, and she started to ask Edna why she was doing it. But something else distracted her attention. And then Jerry Jeff died—of a heart attack, she thought—and that distracted everybody a attention. She didn’t know the real cause of Jerry Jeff’s death until I told her, and she remembered what she had seen. I knew in a flash that Edna Lund was the killer—although I had no idea why she had done it.”

  "Blessings on you, Miss Marple,” I murmured. "I shudder to think of where I’d be right now
if you hadn’t read so many murder mysteries."

  McQuaid took a swig of beer and addressed himself to Charlie. “When Ruby realized that it was Edna we were after, she called me, very excited. I told her that Edna had just left here, on her way to the Battersby house to see if she could help China find Miss Velma’s will.”

  "I got to the Battersby place just as Edna was driving away,” Ruby said. “I figured she must be on China’s trail, so I decided to stay with her.”

  “That must not have been easy,” I said. "How did you keep her from seeing you?”

  "I had to hang back quite a way,” Ruby replied, "especially after she got to the turnoff at Stassney Junction and started down that unpaved road. But she was driving like a bat out of hell. I’ll bet she didn’t even bother to look in the rearview mirror. I could see her lights on the side of the hill, and when she switched them off, I figured she’d got where she was going. So I parked and hiked the rest of the way.”

  "Well done, Ruby,” McQuaid said approvingly. "You saved China’s bacon.”

  “Good grief,” I groaned, as Ruby and Charlie laughed. "You could have gone all week without saying that.”

  “He might have said, ‘You pulled China's chestnuts out of the fire,’” Charlie remarked wickedly.

  "How about ‘You pulled her fat out of the fire?’” McQuaid said.

  I held up my hand, where McQuaid’s grandmother’s garnet ring glinted on my third finger. "Would you like your ring back?” I asked pointedly. "It’s not too late to call the wedding off.”

  "I’d like to see you tiy it,” McQuaid said fiercely. Ruby snickered.

  “I just got back from visiting Jerry Jeffs stash,” Charlie remarked, in a mediatoiy tone. "Would you like to hear what I found? Besides the money, that is.”

  “Was the money all there?” McQuaid asked. “Had Roxanne made a withdrawal?”

  “The money was there,” Charlie said. "Roxanne hadn’t touched a dime. In fact, I’ve talked with her about the situation, and she’s asked me to represent her with the IRS.” He tipped the can back and drank, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m sure we can work out some sort of deal. It’ll be complicated, though. Some of the money may have come from Pokey’s side of the business. But well let the feds straighten it out when they do their audit.”