by Kaye George
“Do you have any butterkuchen left?” Jackson asked.
She did, and she left to get coffee and a slice of the rich, buttermilk pie for them to share.
“Can I pick one up?” Tally pointed to the stones.
“You already have, so go ahead.”
Tally picked up one of them. “It’s a pretty color, dark green.”
“And translucent,” Jackson said. “That’s a good quality, I’ve been told. I’ll phone my uncle tonight. I’ll have to take this. If these are being smuggled, we’ll have to look into it.” He took a few more napkins and wrapped the stones.
“Smuggled? In the Whoopie Pie?”
Jackson gave a chuckle. “Looks like it. Whoopie Pie jade.”
“You called it Burma jade. Lily ordered these from what she thought was a local business, but they came in a box that said Myanmar on it. That’s Burma, right? So, you think that’s why Yolanda’s window was broken? To steal these and get the jade?”
“Makes a lot more sense than stealing plastic Whoopie Pies, Mary Janes, and Mallomars, doesn’t it? This is a crazy way to smuggle jade into the US, though, through you and Yolanda.”
Tally had to admit he was right.
He grinned at her. “Is there something I don’t know about you two? Do you have a nefarious other side?”
She laughed, knowing he was kidding. But this was getting bizarre.
The server put a plate of butterkuchen—buttermilk pie—next to the ruined plastic Whoopie Pie, along with two steaming cups of fragrant coffee, and Tally and Jackson picked up their forks, leaving behind thoughts, for the moment, of smuggling and nefarious dark sides.
* * * *
Jackson walked Tally home, the clamor of Main Street receding after they turned toward her house. Her tummy was even more satisfied than it had been after her dinner with Yolanda. Eating with someone special made food taste so much better. She liked going out with Yolanda, but eating with Detective Jackson Rogers made even the water taste good.
“Anything interesting happening at work for you today?” she asked him. His police job continually fascinated her. It was something different almost every day. “Besides our window?”
“Your broken window is the most interesting thing that is going on right now, but there was a wreck just outside town the night before that. It was kind of weird.”
“How so?” She enjoyed the sound of his voice, no matter what he was saying. She always wanted him to go on talking. He was often so reticent.
Some of the rays of light from the streetlights made their way through the trees to highlight his face and shoulders briefly here and there.
“A big truck, a semi, ran into a pickup. The troopers were pretty sure the semi driver fell asleep at the wheel.”
That didn’t sound unusual. Not good, but not uncommon. Or weird. “Was anyone hurt?”
“The pickup driver was. He went to the hospital. Looked like his leg was broken, smashed. But here’s what struck me. The pickup driver was yelling at the semi driver when I got there.”
“I might have done that, too.”
“But you would have called him a bad driver, or…maybe some other things, too, wouldn’t you?”
“I sure would.” Tally didn’t often use colorful language, but she kept it ready in case she needed it. They had reached her house and walked up her sidewalk slowly.
“Yeah, and he was mad. But he kept saying, ‘What did you do that for?’ Like maybe he’d done it on purpose. And then, just before they took him away in the ambulance, he yelled, ‘Now everything’s messed up.’”
“Messed up? I guess so.”
“It sounded so specific. Like maybe they had plans together? I’m not explaining it well. It just didn’t sound like what a normal person would be upset by. He never said anything about him paying for the hospital or his truck, like you or I would.”
“Oh yeah. I’d definitely get the insurance info first thing.”
“We got that, of course, for our report. Well, the state trooper got it. But the two men didn’t mention it.”
“Why were you called? You don’t do highways.”
“The troopers wanted backup because the pickup driver was so belligerent.”
They both stepped onto the dark porch that ran across the front of the house. Tally heard a thump from inside. Jackson tensed.
“What was that?”
Tally laughed. “That was Nigel, probably jumping off the couch because he heard us coming.”
“I keep forgetting how big that cat is.” Jackson put his warm, strong hands on her shoulders.
Tally smiled, knowing what was coming next. And it did. The longest, sweetest kiss she’d had in ages. She felt her toes curl inside her shoes.
As they broke apart, a car cruised slowly past them. It gave Tally a moment of alarm when the passenger peered out the window at them, then the streetlamp lit the magnetic sign on the door: Crime Fritzers.
Jackson felt her stiffen and looked around. “Ah, the intrepid neighborhood crime fighters,” he said sarcastically. “Now we’re all safe.”
“Oh come on, they’re just trying to help out.” She gave them a wave as they continued their patrol.
“I know, I shouldn’t complain. The patrols are fine, from the cars. We’re not in favor of them doing it on foot, though. That can lead to all kinds of problems.”
“It already has, right? That guy, the Crime Fritzer, tried to apprehend the one stealing from Yolanda’s store and he got beat up.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” He nodded emphatically. “He should have called 911 and let us handle it. As far as I know, he’s still in the hospital.”
Tally looked in the direction the amateur patrol car had gone. “You’re right. He shouldn’t have confronted the thief at the broken window. But some of them are doing extra patrols—from their cars—to help out with the…crime wave. That’s what they called it.”
“They used that term? Crime wave?”
“Yes, and I wondered about that. Is there one? I hadn’t heard of it.”
He hesitated before answering. “There kind of is, but we haven’t publicized it at all. I wonder how they caught wind of that. I’d rather no one talked about that right now.” She nodded. “Nothing too major is going on, but a lot of petty theft lately. Just don’t get mixed up with them, okay?”
“I don’t think I have time to join them, if that’s what you mean.”
“Partly. There are some things I can’t discuss with you, but just promise me you won’t have anything more to do with them. Or with trying to find out what’s going on, all by yourself.”
“My landlady is one of them!”
He shook his head slowly. “I know. I wish she weren’t.”
Before he left, they set up a tentative lunch date for Monday, Tally’s day off.
4
Yolanda knew she was going to be late, but she had to answer the call from Kevin. Things had been running hot and cold between them, bumpy and smooth, lately. When they were cold and bumpy the last time, she made a promise to herself that she would give their relationship every chance she could after he said his divorce was going through. She missed being with Kevin when they were on the outs. Their shops were next door to each other and things could get awkward, at the very least. Although she didn’t think of Kevin’s winery outlet as a shop. He sold local and imported wines and had tastings regularly. And awkward wasn’t really the word for how things could get between them. It was much too mild.
“How’s it going? You busy right now?”
“Kevin, I have dinner at my parents’ place tonight.”
“Ah. It’s Saturday, isn’t it? Sorry. I forgot.” Sometimes she wanted to ditch that family dinner tradition. Maybe she’d be that brave one day.
“How about Monday? I’ll be crazy busy w
orking during the day and I bet y’all will be, too.”
“Yeah, I sure hope so. I need to work in the vineyard on Monday. I haven’t spent more than a half an hour at a time there for weeks.”
They decided they would try for another day, to be determined, and Yolanda took off for the huge ranch her parents owned at the edge of town.
She drove through the gates at twilight, fireflies blinking in the yard beside the long driveway leading to the large house, made to look deceptively rustic on purpose. The glow of old-fashioned-looking lanterns competed with the fireflies for the last half of the driveway. She could smell the chlorine of the pool before it was in view. She hadn’t been in the water yet this year, but maybe she’d bring her bathing suit next Saturday. There weren’t any other cars present, so it would be just the three of them, her and her rather old-fashioned parents. Not for the first time, she wondered if she should bring Kevin along one of these Saturday nights.
Her mother called her over to the pool deck and Yolanda accepted a margarita from her father before she curled into a chaise lounge. Yolanda got her dark good looks from both her Italian father and her Latina mother. Luckily, she had avoided her father’s thick, bushy eyebrows, but the whole family had the same dark, curly, luxuriant hair and flashing black eyes. Her father was dripping from the swim he had just taken, but her mother, though she wore a bright-red bathing suit, had not been in. Yolanda was in one of her colorful outfits, a long turquoise top with green yoga pants. She usually didn’t swim, not wanting to get her thick hair wet, and she hadn’t intended to tonight, either.
Her father toweled off and they all sat and talked about the weather. Yolanda was glad he hadn’t mentioned her payment. She had half expected him to offer it back to her again.
Before she was halfway through the drink, her father asked her if she would like to invite “that nice Kevin Miller to dinner sometime,” as if he had been reading her mind. Most of the local residents knew each other, living in such a small town, but dinner at the house of a woman’s parents was a formal step forward, Yolanda knew, to her old-world father. It was a precursor to something she and Kevin had never discussed. Not that Yolanda had never thought about it.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe sometime. If he’s not busy.” She kept her voice casual, unenthusiastic, so as not to encourage him to insist on it. She never directly contradicted her father, or said no to him, if she could help it. Experience had taught her that was a bad idea.
“Since you two are seeing each other, Yolie,” her mother said, joining in, “we should probably get to know him a little better.” Her mother was old-world also, just a nicer version of it.
But should Kevin get to know them a little better? That was the question.
“Next Saturday would be perfect.” Her father’s smile indicated something else was going on.
So she asked. “What would be perfect about next Saturday, Papa?”
He busied himself making her another drink since she had drained hers.
Yolanda wondered if she would need three of them tonight. On the best Saturday, she required two to get through the meal. She looked the question at her mother, who also smiled, but also did not answer her.
Something was going on next Saturday, and she was pretty sure it was something she didn’t want to subject Kevin to.
* * * *
Later, after Tally had given Nigel something to eat and they’d had a petting-purring session, she wondered if she should worry about Mrs. Gerg. After all, one of her fellow Fritzers had been badly beaten with a crutch. He was maybe still in the hospital. And Jackson’s warning had her worried.
Wait a minute. Her mind whirred as she thrummed her fingers on Nigel’s head. He didn’t appreciate that and left her lap.
She tried to put some pieces together. The pickup driver in that wreck went to the hospital. With a broken leg. He would most likely have come out of there on crutches the night before the break-in, wouldn’t he? Was there a connection with crutches here? She thought about what it would be. The member of the patrol said he was beaten with crutches and, the night before, a man was in a wreck and was put on crutches. And a man on crutches shoved Lily just before Yolanda’s theft. Were they all the same man? She didn’t see a lot of people hobbling around Fredericksburg on crutches.
She soaked in the bathtub for a luxurious half hour, then snuggled up with Nigel in bed, all the while thinking about everything that was going on. She would definitely avoid actually working with the Crime Fritzers—that would be easy—but she would ask Mrs. Gerg a couple of questions to see if there was a connection. Maybe the man on crutches was the one who stole the plastic and the valuable jade—that is, if Jackson was right about it actually being valuable jade. More information was needed if she was to find out what was going on with their plastic candy. There were a few more pieces of it at Yolanda’s place. They hadn’t used all of the ones they had ordered. Yolanda had stuck them somewhere. Maybe, for them to ever use the plastic in the future would be altogether too dangerous.
* * * *
When Arlen Snead got the call from Thet Thura, he realized something had gone horribly wrong with this last shipment. He was being summoned to drive up to the warehouse. Before he left, he set his laptop on the counter where the infrequent customers checked out and searched for news from the town of Fredericksburg. He almost missed it, but there it was. A wreck between a Planet Earth truck and a pickup. And one man sent to the hospital. The shipment he’d received from Planet Earth hadn’t held any contraband. That wasn’t right, but Arlen had decided to wait to be told what to do about it.
He locked up his store, got into the van that had his sign, Arlen’s Aqua Shop, on the side, and headed to Fredericksburg area to meet his employer. There had been another story on the internet about a man being beaten when a shop window was smashed during a theft. He recognized the name of the shop, Bella’s Baskets. It just so happened that he had some kin in that town and visited a couple of times a year.
On his way southwest, to the Hill Country, he talked to Thet on his cell phone. Thet told Arlen that the shipment had been misdirected in Myanmar. He had tried to intercept it, but that went wrong. He wanted Arlen’s help finding a man named Walter Wright, who had been mentioned in a news article. He’d been beaten up in front of Bella’s Baskets and Thet thought he might have the jade, or might know where it was. The young man he’d hired to divert the shipment, Mateo, had filled him in on some of the details of what happened, but was short on exactly what caused the wreck and prevented them from recovering the merchandise. Mateo was helpful, though. He said Walter Wright was in the local crime watch group and told Thet where he might be now.
* * * *
Four hours later, Thet Thura met Arlen Snead at the small lodging place at the edge of town and Arlen checked into a room down the hall from his. Arlen said he had to get something to eat, so Thet returned to his room to wait for him. There were some things about the Dallas man that annoyed Thet. That gooey brown mess of smelly chewing tobacco he kept in his mouth, and the way he spit it on the ground—that was about the worst thing about him. He was smart, though, and had good ideas. He’d been a help getting this pipeline established. Thet hoped he could help straighten out the problem.
Thet stared at the walls of his musty, none-too-clean room, thinking. Arlen had to help him. They had to figure out what had happened. His uncle, U Win, would disown him if he lost a whole shipment. He would have to leave the family business. If that happened, he had no idea what would happen to him. He walked to the small, dingy lobby and picked up a newspaper from a metal kiosk there. He hoped he wouldn’t have to spend too much time at this place, or in Fredericksburg.
The story was there. The name of the shop jumped off the page. Bella’s Baskets. There had been a problem there, just as Mateo had told him. The window had been broken and plastic candies stolen. Bella’s Baskets. Yes, that’s definitely where t
he shipment had been sent to by mistake. Those were his plastics and they held his jewels. He read, concentrating on each word, to find out exactly what had happened. The only name mentioned was that of the man Mateo had mentioned, Walter Wright. He had been there. Had he broken the window? It didn’t seem like it. Had he taken the goods? That also seemed unlikely, since he had been attacked and the article said he had been trying to stop the thief. But his was the only name mentioned. Arlen could help him contact Walter Wright and try to find out what had happened.
Maybe Walter Wright was in the hospital, since the article said he was injured. Thet asked the sleepy man behind the desk at the motel where the hospital was and collected Arlen to drive there and try to find Walter Wright. He was the only connection Thet had to the missing jade.
The two men returned shortly, frustrated because the hospital wouldn’t give out any information to anyone but a relative. Thet didn’t think he could lie about that since it was unlikely that Walter Wright looked anything like him. Arlen tried, but they looked at his driver’s license and turned him down, too.
Maybe he should see if they could get information from the crime watch group. Organizations like that were always looking for volunteers. They would never suspect who he really was and why he was interested in them….
* * * *
Sunday morning, Raul ran into the shop, returning from a gift basket delivery, breathless. “Miss Yolanda, I just talked to my cousin.”
She smiled. “Catch your breath. How is your cousin? Mateo, right? He got that new job a few weeks ago?”
“He did, but he had a problem. You know he was working in a warehouse, loading and driving a delivery truck to Dallas, right?”
“For that new warehouse outside town. I remember. He thought he’d love it since he likes driving.” Yolanda snipped off pieces and laid out four different kinds of ribbon for the corporate banquet basket she was trying to get an early start on. “Which should I use?” she asked him.
“For that white wicker basket with the big handle?”