I have to admit that my reaction was probably colored by the fact that I have a certain amount of ingrained antagonism toward laws that seem to be discriminatory. Carole, however, was not concerned about what was to me full of potential injustice.
“All I’m saying is that Ruby needs to be careful,” she said, concerned. “And you, too, China. Rottweilers are big dogs.”
“Thanks. I will,” I promised, trying to sound grateful. I knew that Carole was only trying to keep Ruby and me from making a well-intentioned mistake.
As she left, Khat sauntered in and announced that he could handle a Rottweiler with one paw. Khat—Imperial Top Cat and Sovereign Chief of Security at Thyme and Seasons—weighs in at seventeen pounds, about twice the size of your ordinary skimpy Siamese. When I adopted him, his name was Pudding, but Ruby (whose favorite sleuth is Kao K’o Kung, star of the Cat Who Mysteries) renamed him Khat. He may not read backward or like to talk to ghosts, but he can definitely tell time: on his clock, it’s always five minutes past time to eat. I scratched him between his dark ears, assured him that he’s the best security officer in town, and sent him out to the kitchen to ask Cass for a little something to tide him over until lunch.
The next half hour was nice and busy, exactly the kind of busy you like to be when you own your own shop. Carolyn Marshall purchased two bottles of Texas Tarragon Vinegar, one for herself and another for a housewarming present, and Edna Fisher called to find out if she could get enough fresh mint from my garden to make mint juleps for seventy-five guests, for the Kentucky Derby party she was planning. Edna always thinks ahead, and a good thing, too. Fresh mint goes fast during Derby Week.
I had just finished helping Carl Hudson pick out a dozen two-inch potted basil plants—lemon basil, Purple Ruffles, Thai, cinnamon, and sweet Genovese—when a largish shadow darkened the door. I looked up to see Hark Hibler.
“Thanks, Carl,” I said cordially. “Good luck with your basil.” I handed him the plastic tray loaded with plants and held the door open for him. As he left, I turned to Hark. “Hey, Hark. What’s up?”
It was bound to be something serious. The Enterprise may be a small newspaper, but it keeps Hark on the go, checking out the City Council’s front-burner controversies, going to junior high basketball games, editing the write-ups submitted by Bible study groups, book clubs, garden clubs, and Brownie Scout troops—not to mention writing editorials and occasionally tracking down real news. He doesn’t have time for casual drop-ins and he doesn’t shoot the breeze unless he’s aiming at a story. I thought back to my suspicion of yesterday morning: that Hark had some bit of information about Colin Fowler that he wasn’t ready to share with Sheila, some sort of lead that he intended to follow up on his own. I wondered if he had managed to dig up a connection between Colin and Lucita Sanchez. If he had, I definitely wanted to hear about it.
But he didn’t mention Sanchez. Instead, he leaned his elbows on the counter. “How’s Ruby?” he asked in a low voice. “I understand her mother is having mental problems.” He gave me a sympathetic look. “Buggy as a bullbat, is what I hear.”
If you’re from Texas, you probably know that a bullbat is a nighthawk, a small brown bird that is remarkable for its wildly erratic flying and high-pitched chatter as it goes after flying bugs. I smiled wryly, since that’s a pretty good description—and not really unkind—of what was happening to Doris.
“I guess you could call it that,” I said. “Ruby is coping courageously. Her sister, Ramona, will be there on Sunday to help out, so maybe she’ll be able to get home then.”
Hark nodded, relieved. “Tell her I’m thinking of her. I hope things get better, ASAP.”
“Sure.” I smiled, liking his concern. Ruby could do with some of that. “I’ll tell her, Hark.”
He looked down. “Must be pretty hard on her, dealing with her mother and…” His fingers played with a piece of paper on the counter. “And with Fowler’s murder. Both at the same time, I mean. Sort of a double whammy.”
“Yeah,” I said. It was time to prompt him. “You didn’t come over here to talk about Ruby, though. What’s on your mind, Hark?”
He straightened up. “I thought you might be interested in a couple of things I picked up recently.” He gave me a look that I couldn’t read. “About Fowler.”
I thought so. “What about him?”
He pulled down his eyebrows. “Well, it’s like this. I’ve been working a story for several weeks. A big story, one that’s going to upset some pretty important apple carts here in town.”
“Oh, yeah?” I was definitely curious. “Tell me.”
He looked secretive. “I’m not ready to break it yet. But I think you might be able to help. A couple of weeks ago, one of my sources told me that Colin Fowler’s real name was Dan Reid, and that he came from Dallas.” He glanced at me to see if this registered on my face. When it didn’t, he went on. “Seems that Fowler or Reid, or whatever you want to call him, was an undercover cop in Dallas, until he was busted for tipping off a drug dealer who was about to be arrested. He did a year in jail. That’s where he was before he moved here and set up shop.”
I was noncommittal. “So? What’s your point?”
Hark looked a little deflated, as if he had expected more reaction to what should probably have been a jaw-dropping, damning revelation. “The point is, did Ruby know about Fowler’s background when she was going out with him? This is completely off the record, of course,” he added, half-apologetically. “It’s just something I need to know, China. It’s for me. It’s got nothing to do with the story.”
I thought about this. Colin was dead, and Ruby had to get on with her life. Hark cared about her, and he’d never given me any reason to think he’d do anything that wasn’t in her best interests. His motive for asking probably had more to do with his heart than with his nose for news.
“No, Ruby didn’t know it,” I said truthfully. “But I did. I told her the whole story last night, when I told her that he was dead. It was news to her.”
Hark looked pleased. “Well, that’s good. Good for Ruby, I mean. I always knew that she had a good head on her shoulders.” Without giving me time to ask what he meant, he went on. “My source also told me that there was something dirty going on in the Dallas PD while he was there. Not long after Reid went to jail, so did several other cops.”
“A dozen,” I amended.
He raised an eyebrow. “So you know.”
“And there was one suicide,” I added, just to keep the record straight. “That was McQuaid’s information, anyway. He didn’t know Reid personally, but he was acquainted with the Dallas situation.”
Hark’s mouth twitched. “And does Ruby know about that part of it?”
“She does now.” I paused. “Of course, nobody’s saying whether there was any real connection between Reid and those dirty cops. They’re all just guessing, including McQuaid. But maybe you’ve heard something I haven’t.” I eyed him.
“Well, I have.” He thought about it briefly, then said, “Can I trust you to keep it under your hat?”
I considered. I don’t take promises of confidentiality lightly. But in this case, since the issue was related to Ruby…Anyway, he looked as if he were bursting to tell me. If it was that good, I didn’t want to miss out. “Yeah,” I said.
He leaned closer and lowered his voice, as if he were afraid the shop might be bugged. “My source tells me—on good authority—that Reid and Sheila Dawson had a flaming affair back in Dallas, which resulted in Reid getting a divorce. And that when he was killed, they were still pretty good friends.” He shook his head sadly. “Very good friends, as a matter of fact. Behind Ruby’s back.”
My heart dropped into my shoes. A rumor like that flitting around Pecan Springs was only going to hurt Sheila, not to mention Ruby. But I wasn’t about to let on to Hark. I put on a nonchalant look.
“Is that all? If it is, I can tell you, flat out and final, that it’s not true. Sure, Sheila hung out with him when th
ey were in Dallas. But not here. And not behind Ruby’s back. Ain’t so, Hark. Believe me.”
“Actually, I do,” he said. “The behind-the-back bit, anyway. It’s not like Sheila. But if they were lovers before, it compromises her investigation, don’t you think?”
I folded my arms. “I don’t see how.”
He hesitated. “She could be…personally involved.”
“We’re all personally involved when it comes to murder,” I said starkly, remembering Colin among the yucca, Lucita lying in a litter of bloody papers. “But Sheila Dawson is a professional. Whatever her connection to the victim, she’ll do her job. No compromises, no personal axes to grind, just top-notch police work. You’ve been covering her for a couple of years now. You ought to know her well enough to know that.”
Hark had an odd look on his face. He was telling me only a part of what he knew, or thought he knew, which amounted to the same thing. This in itself was worrisome. Hark is a reliably good guy, and even if he was on the trail of a delectably juicy story that had BREAKING NEWS written all over it, he wasn’t going to smear Sheila—and he would never in the world do anything to hurt Ruby. But if the story about Sheila and Colin was making the rounds out there in gossip-land, it was bound to rear its ugly head in one public forum or another, with potentially disastrous consequences. Yes, definitely worrisome.
“Sure, sure,” Hark said, in a conciliatory tone. “And of course I don’t intend to run anything about it. I was hoping you might be willing to give me some insight into Reid, just for background. You knew the guy. What was he like, personally, I mean? Was he—”
The phone rang, just as I was about to tell Hark that he could take his personal questions and buzz off. It was McQuaid, calling from Houston to let me know that he had found a cache of interesting information at the newspaper and had decided to stay overnight so he and Jim could follow up on a couple of promising leads. I took the phone and stepped out the front door, out of Hark’s hearing.
“It turns out that your father—” he began.
“Somebody else got murdered here,” I broke in, feeling that Lucita’s death was more urgent than a sixteen-year-old traffic accident.
“Murdered?” he squawked.
Filling him in on what had happened that morning took a few minutes—it’s not the kind of thing you can summarize in thirty seconds—and then he had questions, most of which I couldn’t answer, since they were cop questions, and I had no idea where the investigation was or where it was headed. When I had done my best to deal with that, I stepped back inside the shop, and then I thought of something else I ought to let him know about.
“We’ve temporarily adopted a dog,” I said in an offhand tone, putting the emphasis on temporarily. “I’m going to put him out in Howard’s kennel for a couple of days. Okay?”
“I guess,” he said. “Yeah, sure.” He became distracted. Speaking to someone else, he said, “Just put those papers over here, and I’ll get to them right away. Thanks.” To me, he added, “I’ve had some stuff sent up from the morgue.” He paused. “A dog, you said? What kind of dog?”
“Ruby’s dog.”
Hark, who was browsing the nearby bookshelf, glanced up and raised an eyebrow.
McQuaid rustled some pages. “Oh, yeah?” he said absently. “I didn’t know she had a dog.”
“She adopted Colin’s dog.”
“Oh,” McQuaid said. More rustling pages. “What kind of dog did you say it was?”
“A Rottweiler,” I said with some reluctance, remembering my conversation with Carole. “His name is Rambo. He’s a really nice dog, really,” I added, in a reassuring tone. “A very nice dog. He was trained by somebody who trains police dogs.”
“A Rottweiler!” Hark said, abandoning all pretense of not listening. “Ruby’s taking on a Rottweiler? That’s crazy!”
“A Rottweiler!” McQuaid exclaimed, suddenly wary. “Jeez, China, are you sure you know what you’re doing? What if he goes after Howard Cosell?”
“He won’t,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “He’s a civilized Rottweiler. A Rottweiler with self-restraint.”
“A self-restrained Rottweiler.” Hark snorted scornfully. “There’s no such thing. Especially if his name is Rambo. Bet he has his own bandolier.”
“Hark, hush,” I said. I was going to tell McQuaid that Rambo was afraid of cats and thunder, but I stopped. If I laid it on too thick, McQuaid wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. Rambo didn’t look like a dog who was afraid of thunder.
“I don’t know, China,” McQuaid said. “I’m concerned about Howard. Rottweilers are big dogs, aggressive and temperamental. And poor old Howard’s getting pretty slow. He could never defend himself against an attack.”
“It’s just until Ruby gets back,” I argued. “I’ll keep the dogs apart.”
“Yeah,” McQuaid said, darkly. “Well, okay. But if there’s any trouble, Fowler’s Rottweiler is going to the boarding kennel, faster than you can say ‘heel.’ And it’s your job to keep that animal away from old Howard. I am holding you personally responsible.”
“Yessir,” I said, refraining from clicking my heels and saluting. “Good luck with your investigation.” I hung up the phone.
Hark returned to the counter and leaned on it. “Getting back to what I was saying. My source told me something else about Reid.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said cautiously.
“Yeah. I understand that Reid was here in Pecan Springs doing undercover work for the FBI. It’s about police corruption.”
“Corruption!” I yelped. I wasn’t faking it. I was genuinely astonished. “You’ve got to be kidding. In this little town?”
But the minute the words were out of my mouth, I knew how foolish they were. It’s only in novels that small towns are pure as a snowfall on Christmas Eve and their public officials as blemish-free as a newborn baby. In real life, it’s a very different story. Anywhere there’s money, there’s greed. And anywhere there’s greed, there’s the potential for corruption.
Hark chuckled grimly. “News to you, huh?”
“News to me,” I admitted. Not welcome news, either.
But after my first astonished rejection of the idea, I had to admit that it was entirely possible. When the City Council appointed Sheila as the new chief of police a couple of years ago, she inherited a police department that had been in the hands of Chief Bubba Harris for twenty-some years. At the time, it had been a small department, and Bubba ran a very tight ship. Officially and publicly, there had been only one scandal while he was in office: a rogue cop who set up his own private speed trap behind a billboard on the road to Wimberley. He collected a pocketful of change before he ticketed the wrong guy—Bubba’s cousin—and ended up in jail himself.
But it was entirely possible that something much more serious had been going on behind the scenes during those years, either in the department or on the Council, and that Smart Cookie had found out about it. In fact, maybe that was what had been bothering her for the past few months. If she’d gotten a whiff of something corrupt, of course she’d be worried. And it would be entirely reasonable for her to ask for undercover help from other agencies—the Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers, the FBI.
But wouldn’t she have told me?
My first thought: of course she would. We’re friends, aren’t we?
My second thought, a little unsettling: probably she wouldn’t, unless she thought it was something I had a reason for knowing—a serious reason, I mean. Sure, we’ve been friends, good friends. We enjoy each other’s company. We share a number of mutual interests and we’ve helped each other out of a jam more than once. But Smart Cookie is a cop’s cop, and since she’s been the chief of police, this part of her—the professional Sheila, hard as nails and tough right down to the core—has taken over. We used to talk a lot about what was going on in our personal lives: her sad breakup with Sheriff Blackie Blackwell, to whom she had been engaged for a co
uple of years, and my often frustrating relationship with my mother. But we don’t do that very often these days. And we rarely talk about anything having to do with Sheila’s turf or the internal workings of the Pecan Springs Police Department—except, of course, when she’s grousing about not having enough officers on the beat or the body armor to keep them safe and the radios to keep them connected.
My third thought was even more disturbing. Sheila might not know about an undercover investigation, especially if the situation in the department was out of control. If Hark’s source had the story right, it was possible that Reid had been sent on the QT to get information that might lead to wholesale arrests in the department and a career-ending embarrassment for Sheila. There have been several instances in the state of Texas in which other agencies—the FBI, the Texas Rangers, even the DEA—were dispatched to do the housecleaning in a small community, and the chief was the last to know. And in this case, Sheila and Reid had once been lovers, which further complicated an already complicated situation. I didn’t like this, not one little bit.
“Yeah,” Hark said, appraising me with a newsman’s eye. “Opens up all kinds of possibilities, doesn’t it? In terms of who killed Reid, I mean. Could’ve been revenge for what went down in Dallas, if he was the one who fingered those cops. Could also have been connected with his investigation into corruption in our fair city, if somebody was afraid of getting fingered.”
It was not a possibility I wanted to consider, for if it was true, Sheila was going to find trouble coming at her from all directions. It would be like being in the path of a very large and dangerous hurricane. There’d be nowhere to run for cover. But I needed to know more.
“You might be right,” I said cautiously, “if it’s true that Reid was here on an undercover corruption investigation. Maybe he was—and maybe he wasn’t. Is your source reliable? Who is your source?”
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