Holly Blues

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  “Family disputes can be hellacious,” I said. “Did Erin tell you what they fought over?”

  “Money, mostly. Leslie was careful with hers, and Sally—well, ‘Sally is Sally,’ as Erin put it.” Ruby hung air quotes around the words. “No matter how much she had, it was never enough. She was always hitting Leslie up for more. Recently, too.” She frowned. “Erin said that Sally needed money ‘to get away.’ She was asking Leslie for five thousand dollars.” She gave me a meaningful look. “Which is the amount of the check Sally cashed at the bank.”

  A pair of holiday shoppers went past us, the man loaded down with bags and wearing a long-suffering look on his face, the woman chattering gaily about what a wonderful shopping trip they were having together and wasn’t this fun?

  “Get away?” I repeated. “Get away from what?” But I could hazard a guess. Sally was either trying to get away from Jess Myers or from what happened to Joyce Dillard—or both. And that five thousand dollars. Was it Sally’s getaway money or a payoff of some kind? If it was a payoff, who was the payee? I could hazard a guess on that one, too.

  “Erin had the impression that Sally was involved with something ugly and dangerous,” Ruby said. “She thought it was probably drugs. She saw Sally a few days ago and said she seemed really strung out.”

  Drugs. A good guess, except that in this case, the ugly, dangerous something was a lot worse. It was murder. “What did Erin know about Leslie’s death?” I asked.

  “Nothing but what she read in the paper. That’s where she found out about it. She felt really awful about that—learning about it in the paper, I mean.” Ruby reached into her tote bag and held up a folded newspaper. “I got this from one of the other shops.”

  She handed me the paper, and I stood still, reading. The headline read, “Teacher Killed While Jogging.” There was a photograph of Leslie, pretty, perky, smiling. It hurt. I scanned the story and handed the paper back quickly.

  “Unfortunately,” Ruby said, “there aren’t any details in the paper. Nobody saw it happen.” She put the newspaper back into her tote bag. “But I did learn something else from Erin, China. As it turns out, her sister-in-law Christina drove Sally to the bus station on Tuesday morning. Sally was leaving her car with Leslie, because Leslie’s Prius needed some work. Christina was going to the station to catch a bus to Fort Worth and offered to take Sally.”

  “What time?” I asked quickly. This was crucial, and the reason for asking was obvious. “Before Leslie was killed, or after?” The question couldn’t be answered, though, since the time of Leslie’s death had not yet been established, at least as far as we knew. At best, the coroner would only be able to give a two-hour range.

  Ruby shook her head. “Dunno. I wanted to talk to Christina, but she’s with her daughter in Fort Worth right now, helping take care of her new grandson. He’s just two weeks old. Erin is going to call her—Christina, that is—and give her my phone number so we can talk directly.” We started walking again, and she turned to look at me, frowning slightly. “Is something wrong, China?”

  “Yes. Very. Leslie Strahorn isn’t the only woman who’s been found dead by the side of the road.” It took only a moment to relate what McQuaid had told me on the phone about finding Joyce Dillard’s body. Ruby was stunned.

  “Two women?” she asked, wide-eyed. “This can’t be a coincidence, China.”

  “Not likely,” I said, and relayed the rest of McQuaid’s report: that Joyce Dillard either knew or guessed the identity of the Strahorns’ murderer, and that she had told Sally who it was.

  By the time I finished, Ruby was shaking her head. “It’s so hard to believe,” she whispered. “Joyce Dillard was killed—maybe—because she was a threat to the Strahorns’ killer. But Leslie? Why Leslie? She didn’t know who shot her parents—did she?”

  I was saved from trying to answer that because we had reached Leslie’s driveway. I turned toward the house, with its icicle lights and gaily lighted red and white candy poles—on an automatic timer, I guessed, since nobody was at home to turn them on and off.

  “Act like we’re supposed to be here,” I said. “Act natural. We’re just a couple of friends looking for Leslie.”

  The thing was, of course, that the police had not strung crime scene tape around the house. Which stood to reason, if they were investigating Leslie’s death as a more or less straightforward hit-and-run, an accident that befell a jogger, the crime being the driver’s failure to stop and render aid. Aside from the rather odd fact of her jogging so far out of town on a school morning, they had no reason to suspect otherwise—right?

  I frowned. If that were the case, why had they named Sally as a person of interest? It didn’t make any sense to me—unless they had some sort of evidence. The car, maybe? The tip Ella had mentioned?

  Beside me, Big Bird was dancing a little jig. “We’re going to break and enter?” she asked eagerly. She cast a glance to her right. “What about the neighbors? Won’t they see us and call the police?”

  “That place is empty right now. There’s a For Lease sign on the front. What about the house on the other side? Did you check it out?”

  “It’s not a house, it’s an accountant’s office, and it’s closed this evening.” Ruby looked at me expectantly, her gingery eyebrows raised so high they disappeared under her unruly bangs. “Does this mean—”

  “No, Ruby. We are not breaking and entering. We’re just entering—I hope.”

  I had my fingers crossed. I was going way out on a limb here, and a fairly thin limb at that. I am not inclined to trade my bar privilege (even though I haven’t used it for years) for a charge of criminal trespass (Section 30.05 of the Texas Penal Code, “Offenses Against Property”), which is a Class A misdemeanor, carrying a fine of up to four thousand dollars and a jail term of up to a year, or both.

  There was also the question of whether what we’d get would justify the questionable means we used to get it. In theory, I usually came down on the side that this is never the case, while in practice . . . Well, real life is something else again, and I am a pragmatic person. The information that is only available by questionable means is sometimes so unquestionably useful that I have been known to ignore certain rules and regulations.

  But more importantly, there was the question of whether anything we might find in Leslie’s house would be admissible in court, if it came to that. That’s the trouble with trespass as a method of discovery. If I happened to uncover something important to Sally’s case, Justine would have to find another way to introduce it, because she couldn’t put me on the stand and ask me to tell the court how I chanced to come across it. Believe me. Finding a legitimate way to introduce an illegitimately obtained piece of evidence is not as easy as it sounds.

  But that question was moot, at the moment, anyway. I could postpone answering it, since I didn’t know yet whether (1) there was a case; or (2) whether there was anything of interest in the house. If anybody asked (I hoped they wouldn’t), Big Bird and I were just two of Leslie’s gal pals from out of town, stopping by for an evening’s girl talk, at her invitation. And since we hadn’t come in the front way and noticed that telltale black bow on the holly wreath, we had no idea that Leslie was dead. We had simply let ourselves in and made ourselves at home while we waited for her.

  That is, if we could get in, which was the next question I had to answer.

  We had reached the back of the house. There was enough light from the utility lights on the street to see the Prius, parked in front of the garage. A turn to the left, a short walk on a flagstone path past a small flowerbed, a couple of steps up, and we were on Leslie’s back porch. The kitchen door looked to be slightly ajar. I pushed it with my finger, and it opened at my touch.

  Ruby was looking over her shoulder uneasily. “China,” she said in a low voice, “I have the feeling that we’re being watched.”

  I glanced around. The backyard was screened on three sides by a six-foot privacy fence. There was a gate beside the g
arage—to the alley, I thought, and remembered that Ruth had said that Sally’s yellow convertible had been parked back there.

  “I don’t think anybody’s watching,” I said. “Unless they’re peeking through a hole in the fence.”

  “Seriously, China,” Ruby said. She shivered. “I’m feeling . . . spooky. There’s something weird here. Something totally wrong.”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “Something is wrong. Leslie’s dead. No wonder you’re feeling spooked.” What’s more, I knew that Ruby didn’t want to face a charge of criminal trespass any more than I did. The thought of being hauled into municipal court was extremely spooky. I didn’t want to think it.

  The door opened into a narrow hallway, as I remembered, which led into the kitchen. “Let’s put our food on the table,” I said, as I took a step into the darkened hall. “That way, if we get interrupted, we can always say that we were so hungry that we decided to go ahead and eat while we waited for Leslie.” I felt for the light switch just inside the kitchen door. “Burglars don’t usually have a sandwich before they start burgling.” Burglars don’t turn the lights on, either.

  Ruby was sticking close behind me, her hand on my shoulder. “I used to be hungry,” she said in a low voice, “oh, maybe three minutes ago. Right now, I’m just scared. This is beyond creepy, China. Maybe we’d better . . . maybe we’d better go away and come back another time.”

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “We’re here. And it’s okay, Ruby. Really it is.”

  But it wasn’t. I flipped the switch and glanced around. The kitchen of the small house had been remodeled, with new wood cabinets, a new granite countertop, new appliances, and a new floor, although it still looked pretty much as I remembered it, cheerful and bright with teacup-print wallpaper and fresh paint. Leslie was a tidy housekeeper, and the last time I had seen this room, it was neat as a proverbial pin. Nothing out of place, except perhaps for a dish or two in the sink.

  But not today. One of the red-painted wooden chairs at the small kitchen table had been tipped over, and one leg was broken. A box of Cheerios lay on its side, the contents scattered across the table, a half-gallon jug of milk beside it, and Leslie’s cell phone. A cup of coffee had been knocked onto the floor, the china cup shattered, the coffee in a brown puddle. Beside it was a paper grocery sack, spilling popcorn balls into the coffee puddle, and an overturned basket of mistletoe. A woman’s handbag lay on the counter, its contents—lipstick, coin purse, pen, keys, checkbook—scattered around, as if somebody had rummaged through it. A wallet was open on the floor, the driver’s license showing through the plastic pocket. It was Leslie’s, and I could see—without touching it—that there was money in it, bills, and several credit cards.

  But most tellingly, a woman’s pink Nike running shoe. It lay on the floor just inside the door.

  Ruby dropped her tote, and her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, my god!” she cried, aghast. “What happened here, China? Robbery?”

  I pointed to the wallet. “If it was robbery,” I said grimly, “the thief was pretty inept. Looks to me like an abduction.” I bent over to examine the ring of keys on the counter. The key to Leslie’s Prius was there, and several other keys—the house, maybe, and the school. “She must’ve been sitting down to eat her breakfast when somebody came in the back door and grabbed her. She struggled, and lost her shoe in the process.”

  Or kicked it off, to show us that she hadn’t gone willingly. The police were probably theorizing that her missing shoe—the one that lay here by the door—had been knocked off when she was struck by the car. They could search the roadside for a week and not find it.

  Ruby’s eyes were wide. She looked from the table to the chair to the door. “And then he dragged her off and stuffed her into his car, which was probably parked in the driveway.”

  I straightened up. I wasn’t going to quibble over the pronoun “he.” Sally was smaller and lighter than her sister. There was no way she could have overpowered Leslie—and no reason for it, either. Leslie might have had reservations about going off with Sally, but there would have been no struggle. The person who came into this kitchen and abducted Leslie had to have been a male. And my money was on the man who seemed to spend a lot of time lurking in the shadows these days. Jess Myers, of Sanders, Kansas.

  But there was something else. “He didn’t put Leslie into his car,” I said, thinking rapidly, putting two and two together. “He put her into Sally’s car. It was parked behind the garage.”

  Yes. It was the only thing that made sense. Sally had left her car with Leslie, because Leslie’s car needed work. Myers must have rummaged through Leslie’s purse, hunting for the keys. That’s why the contents were scattered. And taking her through the backyard to the car would seriously reduce the chances that somebody might see them, especially if he gagged her so she couldn’t yell.

  “Sally’s car.” Ruby sucked in her breath. “Yes, that’s right! And then he drove her out on Wildwood Road and dropped her off—”

  “And then hit her,” I said. “Probably drove off, turned around, revved it up, and came at her from behind. The police said she died instantly.” Which was the same way Joyce Dillard died, I was guessing. I closed my eyes, thinking about Sally’s yellow convertible, the impact smashing Leslie, lifting her up, hurling her into space, letting myself feel the splintering, fracturing pain.

  “But why?” Ruby asked, bewildered. “What possible motive could he have?”

  I opened my eyes. Something clicked, and without even having to think about it, I knew the answer. “Myers somehow found out that Joyce Dillard told Sally that he was the one who killed her parents. He silenced Joyce. Then he followed Sally here to Lake City, perhaps not realizing that she was coming to visit her sister. When he understood that, he knew that Sally would have told Leslie what he had done. So he had to kill Leslie, too.”

  “Which means that Sally’s next on his list!” Ruby exclaimed. Her eyes widened. “When he finds her, he’ll kill her, too!”

  “Unless he already has,” I said grimly. There were things that had to be done, and fast. “Where’s that Cookie Monster hat?”

  “It’s in my tote.” Ruby blinked. “Why?”

  “Because this is bigger than both of us, Big Bird. I’m going to call the Lake City police. And I want to have my cover story handy when they get here.” I paused. “Don’t touch anything. The cops are going to have enough to do. There’s no point in muddying up the scene with our fingerprints.”

  But before I put in the call, I spent a quick five minutes looking through the rest of the house. Nothing was disturbed, but it seemed eerily, poignantly empty. The dining room table sported a centerpiece of red poinsettias. In the living room, Leslie’s shapely Christmas tree presided over a number of wrapped presents, and her piano displayed a dozen family photos. There were pictures of her—her college graduation photo, in cap and gown—and several of her parents and of her and Sally when they were girls. There was also one of Brian, McQuaid, and me, taken during one of Brian’s visits, and a photo of Brian proudly displaying Spike, the spiny lizard. On a table in the front hallway, I found a stack of Christmas cards, stamped and ready to mail. As chance would have it, ours—addressed to “The McQuaids”—lay on top. I took it. Why not? I doubted that anybody would get around to mailing them, and certainly not before Christmas.

  Then there was Leslie’s bedroom and the guest bedroom where Brian always slept when he visited. I found nothing out of order, except that the bed in the guest bedroom hadn’t been made for some time, from the look of it. Sally wasn’t the housekeeper her sister was, and it was a good bet that she’d been sleeping there. I checked the closet. It was crammed with clothes—Sally’s, I guessed, glancing through the hanging garments, a few of which looked as though they might be Juanita’s. The guess was confirmed when I found a Gucci handbag bearing the gold-colored initials SS. Which suggested that Sally had planned to return here after . . . After what? When?

  I found the answer to that quest
ion in the kitchen, on the calendar on the kitchen wall, beside the refrigerator. It contained several penciled notes. On December 10 was written the word “Sally.” On December 16, there were two notations, “Sally to PS” and “Prius to shop.” There were several other events—the school Christmas program on December 19, the choir program on December 21, caroling at the nursing home on December 23, and the church party on December 24. On December 27, I saw “Pick up Sally in PS.” The next two days were bracketed, and the words “San An” were written across them.

  All this was no more cryptic than my calendar at home, and it cleared up some of the mystery. Sally had been staying with Leslie since December 10. She left for Pecan Springs on the sixteenth, the day before yesterday. She expected to stay with us until the twenty-seventh, when Leslie would pick her up at our house and the sisters would drive down to San Antonio for a couple of days—something they probably wouldn’t do together unless they had patched up their differences, more or less. Then they would drive back here, which was why Sally’s clothes were still in the guest room closet. Only now, Leslie was dead. Sally would be coming back here alone. Maybe.

  I still didn’t quite understand why Leslie hadn’t communicated with us, since she was clearly planning on coming to Pecan Springs to pick Sally up after Christmas. But that was a minor detail. There was one more important answer I needed, though. I found it in Leslie’s checkbook, which lay on the kitchen floor. It was one of those handy checkbooks that allow you to keep a carbon copy of every check you write, so if you forget to enter the amount into the register, you have a backup record. I left it where it was but used a pencil to lift the pages until I got to the carbon of the last check written—on Monday, December 15, to Sally Strahorn, in the amount of five thousand dollars. I supposed that it might be possible for Sally to have written herself a check from her sister’s checkbook, but I didn’t think a forger would leave a carbon copy behind as witness to her criminal act. Leslie had written that check, although I had no idea why.