Holly Blues

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  “She said she didn’t have any money,” I amended. “No money, no car. Which meant no motel. So I invited her to stay with us for the holiday.”

  The phone rang, and I picked it up quickly, thinking it might be Sally. “Is my mother there?” Ruby asked plaintively.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby, she isn’t. Why are you asking?”

  “Because somebody saw her heading in that direction, walking fast,” Ruby said, sounding disappointed. “Phone me if she shows up there—okay?”

  “Okay.” I glanced at Sheila. “Smart Cookie is here. Have you already called the cops?”

  “Castle Oaks called when they first missed her,” Ruby replied. “It’s standard operating procedure. But tell Sheila, will you? Just in case.”

  “I already did,” I said. “I also told her that her officers should make Doris walk back, just so she doesn’t get too used to riding in those squad cars.”

  “Good idea.” Ruby chuckled sadly. “Call me if you see her.” She hung up.

  “Ruby says Doris is hotfooting it in this direction,” I reported. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

  Sheila took her radio off her belt, spoke into it briefly, and replaced it. “We’re putting another car on this side of town. We’ll find her.” She went back to the subject. “I’m surprised to hear that you invited Sally to stay at your place over the holidays, China. I thought you weren’t a big fan of hers.”

  “I’m not,” I admitted. “But she seemed . . . well, different, I guess. Not quite the same old Sally. Ordinary clothes, no makeup, a little less attitude.” Unfortunately, there was still some of the old Sally, the part that told lies, but I didn’t see any point in going into this with Sheila. “Anyway, it’s Christmas,” I added. “Be of good cheer and all that. And she is Brian’s mother, after all. He doesn’t like to make a big deal about it, but he’s glad to have her here.” I looked at Sheila. “Why are you asking? What’s she done?”

  Sheila was matter-of-fact. “I don’t know that she’s done anything, China. But her sister is dead. I was notified by the Lake City chief of police about an hour ago.”

  I stared at her. “Leslie? Dead? Oh, god, Sheila! When? How?”

  Leslie, dead. It was hard to believe. Leslie was a couple of years younger than Sally, which made her, oh, six or seven years younger than I am—a young woman, with most of her life ahead of her. Hearing something like this always stops me in my tracks. First there’s a sweeping wave of regret and sadness, and then something else, something less noble, a great gratitude that I am still alive. What had happened? Some sudden illness, maybe, or an accident?

  “You knew her?” Sheila asked.

  I nodded. “Not as well as McQuaid or Brian. Leslie is—was Brian’s favorite aunt. But yes, of course I knew her. She’s visited us quite a few times.” I paused. What was I going to tell Brian? He would be terribly upset. “How did it happen?”

  “Sorry. I don’t have the details.”

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll fill in the gaps.” I gave her a sadly grateful smile. “I appreciate your stopping by to tell Sally in person, Smart Cookie. Next-of-kin notification is no fun. Thank you for doing this.”

  I was already beginning to make mental lists. Leslie was divorced, no children. Sally was her only sister, and their parents were dead. Sally would have to go up to Lake City and do all the unhappy things that need to be done when a family member dies: make funeral arrangements, deal with the house and the furniture and the bills, notify people in the deceased’s address book—all that difficult, painful stuff. I know how hard this is because I am still cleaning up my brother Miles’ estate after his death last spring. It takes a long time and it hurts the whole while. Sally would want to leave for Lake City right away, and she might not be back for Christmas. She’d have to take Brian’s car, I guessed. Or maybe she could wait until McQuaid got home, and he could drive her there. I was sure he would want to go to the funeral.

  But Sheila was shaking her head. “I’m not here for next-of-kin notification, China. The Lake City police have named Sally Strahorn as a person of interest in her sister’s death. They’ve requested that she be detained. They’ll send an officer to interview her.”

  “A person of interest?” My head jerked up. “You’re kidding. Why in the world—” I took a deep breath. A person of interest. This was not sounding good. Not good at all. “Okay, Sheila. Exactly how did Leslie die?”

  Smart Cookie and I have been close friends for several years. What’s more, I have been involved in several of her local cases—not, I hasten to add, as a person of interest, merely as an interested person. From time to time, I have even assisted the police, as the news media are fond of saying, in their investigations. Not that I go around inviting these things. They just happen. But still—

  “I’m sorry, China.” Sheila looked me straight in the eye. “It was a homicide.”

  Chapter Seven

  McQuaid: Omaha

  With a frown, McQuaid said good-bye to China, clicked off his cell phone, and sat back in the seat of his rented Chevy compact parked in the snowy lot outside the offices of Nebraska Asset Management Services in downtown Omaha.

  A little while ago, he had concluded a preliminary conference with Peter Kennard, the man Charlie Lipman had sent him to track down and interview. Their conversation had been unexpectedly informative, and he’d gotten at least some of what Charlie was looking for—enough to know that there was more good stuff there. They might have wrapped things up this morning, but Kennard had a tight schedule. They couldn’t complete the interview until tomorrow afternoon, which would give McQuaid just enough time to get to the airport, drop off the car, and catch a plane home.

  McQuaid glanced at his watch and sighed. Eleven thirty. Over twenty-four hours to kill until tomorrow’s interview. So how was he going to spend the time? Omaha had an art museum, the Joslyn, but museums weren’t exactly his thing. It was too cold and snowy to go for a walk in the park. Hole up in the motel and watch TV? The prospect didn’t fill him with enthusiasm. Maybe he’d stop by that little mystery bookstore over on Thirteenth. They might have a new Steven Havill or one of Bill Crider’s mysteries. A couple of police procedurals, popcorn, crackers, cheese, a few beers—might not be a bad twenty-four hours after all.

  He turned up the heater to high, feeling the warm air on his feet. He would’ve brought his boots if he’d known there’d be this much snow on the ground. Gloves, too, and a warmer coat. He looked out the window at the metallic sky, the dirty drifts along the perimeters of the parking lot, the leafless, spindly trees planted in gray cement containers, the racks of newspaper vending machines, the parking meters like iron soldiers lined up in military precision, wearing caps of melting snow. Not an inspiring view.

  The bleakness outside the window matched the way he was feeling. He felt bad about the brusque tone he’d taken when China asked him to come home early. She phoned because she was trying to handle a bad situation—although probably not a dangerous one—and he’d all but bitten her pretty head off. He hoped she wasn’t too mad about spending the night with Ruby. But that business with Sally’s ex-boyfriend had pissed him off, and with good reason, too, damn it. Sally had a long history of sicko relationships. Sounded like this jerk was more of the same.

  Angrily, he smacked the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. Whenever that woman was around, there was trouble, sometimes less, sometimes more, but always trouble. Like the time she snatched Brian and took him to the Star Trek convention without telling anybody, setting off a police manhunt. Or the time—

  He grimaced, making himself stop. If he started down that road, he’d be there the whole freakin’ day. He and Sally had been through a lot of ugly stuff in the few years they were married, and the divorce hadn’t ended it. You could get a divorce, but when there was a child, you were still connected, like it or not.

  He rubbed his hands together and held them briefly in front of the heater panel, frowning at the scrap of paper on which
he had written the name China had given him. Myers, Jess. He hadn’t needed to write Sanders, Kansas, because he knew the town, knew it from the dozen or more times he’d gone there with Sally when they were still married, when the Strahorns were still alive, before—

  He shook his head, not liking to think of that, either, and pulled up a pair of happier images from his first visit there. He was still a Houston PD rookie with a shiny badge, Sally was just out of college, and they were too young to have a clue to what marriage was all about and whether they were right for each other, which they weren’t, as it turned out. But Sally was pregnant with Brian. When she said she was going to get an abortion, he’d put his foot down, fast and hard. Not that he was opposed to abortion in general—women had a right to choose, and he had no problem with that. But this was his kid, by god, his boy. His just as much as hers, which meant that he had every right to insist. That was the way he saw it, anyway. If she’d do her part and carry the child, he’d do his part and marry her. What’s more, he’d try his damnedest to make it work.

  So Sally had bought a fancy dress, they’d driven up from Houston to Sanders, and the Strahorns had arranged a ceremony in the First Methodist Church and a big party at their house afterward. The whole town showed up with wedding presents and best wishes—more for the sake of Mr. and Mrs. Strahorn than for Sally or him, he thought, but whatever, it was nice. It was Christmas then, too, and there had been a fresh snow and carolers in the yard and a Christmas tree with lights and tinsel and a big holiday dinner, and Sally’s parents and her younger sister Leslie had been graciously welcoming to their unexpectedly married daughter and her newly minted husband, who felt out of place and a little bit alone in the midst of all this family and small-town camaraderie.

  But not for long. Mrs. Strahorn—Mama Lucy, she liked him to call her—was a pretty, petite lady with a sweet voice and a cap of iron gray curls precisely arranged at the local beauty parlor every Wednesday morning. She made a big fuss over her new son-in-law, asking him what he liked to eat and fixing it for him. Old Mr. Strahorn, as Kansas as they came, was a bluff, cordial man with rough, red hands who sold crop insurance for a living and knew every farmer in a fifty-mile radius of Sanders. He invited McQuaid to go with him on his business calls, introducing him with pride as “Sally’s husband, he’s a big-city cop and a tough son of a bitch, so you better not hand me any of your usual flimflam when he’s around.” McQuaid had enjoyed meeting the people, likable, salt-of-the-earth Kansans, had even enjoyed—more than he expected—being the Strahorns’ son-in-law. In fact, he had thought even then (and kept on thinking it) that he liked being their son-in-law more than he liked being Sally’s husband.

  The Strahorns, a prosperous couple, lived in a white frame house with green shutters and screen doors, pretty in the way of old farmhouses, with a wide porch and elm trees around it and a stretch of grass out front, and a big vegetable garden and a red barn in the back, although the house was in town. Sanders was fairly small, maybe forty-five hundred people, and its citizens went in for barns and gardens and chickens and even pigs. That was part of its charm. Real down-home America, as solid as the high-school homecoming dance and church suppers and the Fourth of July parade down Main Street. That’s why it was so hard to accept what had happened to the Strahorns. Something like that doesn’t happen in down-home America.

  Except that it had. It had happened.

  McQuaid’s mouth tightened, and he put the car in gear. He’d been a cop for a long time, and he’d seen more than his share of brutality. But what had happened to Sally’s folks wasn’t something he liked to think about, ever. He checked his rearview, and backed out of his space. It was time to get some lunch, and since he had so many hours to kill, he could blow off the usual fast food and have a real meal. He had noticed a promising-looking Italian restaurant down the street, so he pulled out of the lot, swung around the corner, drove a couple of blocks, parked, and went in.

  After the chill wind sweeping down the street, the restaurant was warm and fragrant with the spicy smell of tomato sauce. He bought a copy of the Omaha World-Herald and took a seat by the front window, his back to the wall, a habit from his days on the force that he’d never quite been able to break. The lunch special was spaghetti and meatballs, which suited him just fine, with fresh, hot garlic bread (there were other herbs in it—China could have told him which ones), the house salad (marginally acceptable), and a glass of red wine.

  He caught up on the sports, football mostly, while he lingered in a leisurely fashion over his meal, finishing off with cannoli (first rate) and coffee. No point in rushing, since he had nothing else to do but pick up a book or two and head for the motel. Anyway, it had started to snow, and he was enjoying the sight, since it rarely snowed in Pecan Springs. Oh, maybe once in a blue moon, although he remembered one year, before he and China were married, when they got a four-inch snowfall the week the students came back for January registration, and everything on the campus came to an icy stop. Outside the window, the fat white flakes were falling fast and faster, swirling through the air on eddies of wind, tossed and tumbled like feathers. It looked like they’d be getting a helluva lot more than four inches.

  He had just eaten the last bite of cannoli when his cell phone rang. He flicked it open, saw the number, and sighed. Sally. Damn. Good thing she hadn’t called before he’d eaten. Might’ve lost his appetite.

  “What’s up, Sal?” he asked shortly. She hated being called Sal, so he did it whenever he got the chance.

  “Are you where we can talk?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Yeah. Just finished lunch.” He paused. “Heard you had a little problem last night. Old boyfriend, huh?” He let her hear the barb. “Some poor schmuck who just can’t bear to let you walk out of his life, I suppose.”

  If it stung, she didn’t let on. “China told you, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. So who is this jerk? Anybody I know?”

  Probably not. He’d tried not to keep track of Sally’s boyfriends, unless Brian was somehow involved in the situation. Then he felt obliged—although there was precious little he could do to keep her out of bad relationships. That was her modus operandi, one no-good bum after another. She had tried to blame it all on that Juanita character, that “personality” she had invented. Dissociative identity disorder, the therapist had called it. But he was skeptical about that kind of stuff, at least as far as Sally was concerned. He didn’t dispute the diagnosis, but this multiple personality business might be just a convenient way for her to do whatever the hell she wanted to do and let Juanita take the blame.

  “That’s what I need to talk to you about, Mike.” Her voice was wire-thin, tense, and he pictured her clenching her hands. “I tried to get you to sit down with me the other night, but you wouldn’t. Now I have to get you to listen to me. But please do it without getting mad.”

  “Mad? What’s there to be mad about?” He chuckled sarcastically. “You don’t write to your son, don’t phone, don’t even shoot him an email. You show up broke, on foot and without a vehicle, and announce that you’re moving in for the holidays. And then this meathead starts making threatening phone calls to our unlisted number. And now you’re telling me not to be mad? Come on, Sal. Get real.”

  He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t let her know that she could still get under his skin. But he couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t that he cared about her any longer. That feeling, strong as it once had been, was dead and buried. The trouble was that he still felt responsible for a lot of what had happened to her. His being a cop, but worse, his liking for being a cop, his insistence on being a good cop, the best cop—that had changed her, hurt her, in big ways and small. Too many ways, too many hurts.

  China said that Sally should have been stronger, should have coped. But China was tough, competitive. She’d been one of the best criminal attorneys he’d ever seen, and he’d seen plenty. When she left the law and put her money into her shop, she was still competitive: sharp, smart
, focused, determined. She’d made it work against all the odds. When times were tough, China just got tougher and smarter. He loved her for that.

  Sally had never been tough. When he married her, she was still just a vulnerable kid. He’d known that, known how fragile she was, and still—

  Sally broke into the silence. In a small voice, she said, “Just listen, please. The man who phoned your house last night—his name is Jess Myers. Does that ring a bell?”

  Jess Myers. The name he had written down on the scrap of paper. “Nope. Should it? This is somebody I’m supposed know?”

  “He lives in Sanders. He came to our wedding.”

  “Yeah, well, if I remember right, several of your old boyfriends came to our wedding.” Another sarcastic chuckle. “They were first in line to kiss the bride. Remember? In fact, one of them spent quite a few minutes kissing the bride, enthusiastically, as I recall. Was that Myers? Did he finally figure out that you’re single again and decide to get back in the game? I guess some guys never learn.”

  “Please, Mike, stop.” She was speaking just above a whisper, and her voice was raw and edgy. “This isn’t easy for me. I need you to do something, and I don’t quite . . . I mean, I know I shouldn’t . . .” She swallowed audibly. “You’re in Omaha. Right?”

  She needed him to do something for her. Something she knew she shouldn’t ask. How many times had he heard that? And when he did what she wanted (which he almost always did, even though he damn well knew better), what did he get? More freakin’ trouble, that’s what.

  Cautiously, he said, “Yeah, I’m in Omaha. On business. What about it?”

  “I need you to drive down to Sanders, Mike. I want you to talk to somebody.”

  Sanders? Now, that was a joke. A real side-splitter. “You gotta be kidding, Sal.” He looked out the window. “It’s snowing here, and colder than the north end of Hades. I’m not going anywhere except to the bookstore for a couple of books and then back to the motel. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow afternoon, and then it’s out to the airport and home. And when I get there, you and I are going to have a talk about that jerk who called the house last night.”