Spanish Dagger

by Susan Wittig Albert

  I nodded, understanding. Coke, cocaine, coca, once a sacred herb whose ritual use was restricted to priests in trance states, now a killer, arguably the most dangerously addictive plant in the world. Three hundred pounds of it was being trucked up Interstate 35—the main road between the border, Pecan Springs, and points north—in a tractor-trailer rig. About the same amount of cocaine had recently been seized in El Paso, where it was found hidden inside stereo speakers. The street value was something like three million dollars. DEA officers had arrested the driver and a couple of local drug lords, but the main ring was still out there, still in business.

  “Where?” I pressed urgently. “Did she say where?”

  “No.” She frowned. “I think…Mr. Fowler seemed to know that already. He said he’d handle it, and that she should stay out of the way. She’d already done her part by delivering a sample. He laughed when he said that, but I don’t think he thought it was funny. She didn’t laugh. She sounded pretty scared.”

  A sample? Delivering a sample? I stared at Marcy for a moment, but I wasn’t seeing her. I was remembering something, something that had struck me as odd when I first saw it. Something that hadn’t seemed quite in synch with what I knew about Colin Fowler. And then, suddenly, I understood. I knew where that sample was.

  She was looking at me strangely, and I brought myself back to the present. “Did either of them mention any names? How about a man named Tyson?”

  “Tyson?” She shook her head. “No, not then. The name didn’t come up when they were talking—at least, not that I heard. But later that afternoon, a guy came into the store. He said his name was Tyson. Scott Tyson. He came to see Mr. Fowler.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked, and was not surprised when she replied, without hesitation, “Like he’d just got out of the army. Tall, big shoulders, buzz cut. Strong face. But nice. He was really awfully nice.”

  Yes. Tyson, the meter man, the jump-out boy. “Did the two of them—Fowler, Scott Tyson—seem to be acquainted?”

  “Sort of. But not friends. I got the idea that Mr. Fowler didn’t think much of the way Mr. Tyson was handling something.”

  Handling something. Something like an undercover narcotics investigation for one of the task forces, no doubt. It sounded as if Colin had Tyson’s number. “Did you hear the two of them talk?”

  “Not really. They said a few words, and then they went out the back way.”

  And across the alley into the First Baptist parking lot, where Darla had seen them having a heated discussion. Where Tyson reminded Colin that he “owed” him.

  Tyson, who worked for a drug task force, notorious for slipshod dealings with evidence, for a bloodlust eagerness for booty. Was Colin playing Tyson for a fool, planning to make a big drug buy and ride off into the sunset, leaving Tyson holding the bag? Or was Tyson planning to make a big drug bust—the biggest of his career—and set Colin up to take a fall?

  On a hunch, I said, “Did you see or hear from Tyson after that Saturday afternoon?”

  She bit her lip. “Well, yes. Actually, I did. I—” Her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “He…he came into the shop. Tuesday morning.”

  Tuesday morning. “The day Colin was killed?”

  She nodded. Her chin was trembling. “I opened at ten and was planning to stay until one, when I had to go to class. He was looking for Mr. Fowler, and I said he wouldn’t be there until after lunch. He asked where he could find him, and I said I didn’t know. But I knew that Mr. Fowler was meeting somebody at Beans at eight that night. I told him that. I said if he went to Beans, he could probably catch him there.” She blinked fast, and the tears spilled over. “Did…did Mr. Tyson go there and…and kill him? Did I—”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said gently. “You’re not responsible for Colin Fowler’s death, Marcy. Whatever happened the night he died had nothing to do with you. It would have happened, regardless.” I wasn’t sure of that, but I had to say it anyway. And hope she believed me. She had enough to carry around, without that burden of guilt on her young shoulders.

  “I’d like to believe that,” she said brokenly. “Maybe I will, later. Right now, I’m afraid I…Oh, God,” she said to the rabbit, and put her head down.

  “You said that Mr. Fowler was meeting somebody at Beans at eight. Who was that?”

  She shook her head, still bowed. “No idea,” she said in a muffled voice. She raised her head, her eyes still wet. “Listen, when you see Ms. Wilcox, will you please tell her that he really loved her? Deep down in his heart, I mean. I think he just didn’t want her to get involved in his bad stuff. The drugs, the dealing.” Her eyes brightened. “I think he gave her up to save her. Will you tell her that?”

  She had found her fairy tale. Colin Fowler, a bad guy with a good heart, who surrendered the woman he loved rather than drag her down into the pain and darkness of his underworld. Colin Fowler, the mythic hero of Marcy Windsor’s romantic story. But who am I to find fault with a good myth that explains a mystery, whether it’s Marcy’s myth or Ruby’s, whether it’s true to life or a total fiction? One myth is as good as another, if it will help to heal a broken heart.

  I stood up. “I’ll tell her,” I said.

  Marcy was going to have to go through all this again for Sheila, since her testimony would be crucial to any case in which the murders of Colin and Lucita Sanchez were linked, or in which Tyson somehow figured. But now wasn’t the time to lay that on her. Anyway, I needed to talk to Sheila before Sheila talked to Marcy. I left the girl clutching her rabbit, said good-bye to Molly, and headed for my car.

  It was nearly six. Brian wouldn’t be home from his field trip until Sunday afternoon, so I didn’t need to rush home and cook supper. I had another errand, however, and I was anxious to wrap it up before the same bright idea occurred to somebody else—somebody whose intentions were not as pure as mine.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Although the common names Spanish dagger and Spanish bayonet are applied to many yuccas, it is Yucca faxoniana that most deserves the name. This is an imposing, treelike yucca that regularly grows to twenty-five feet, with a sturdy trunk covered by a thatch of dead foliage and a dense crown of stiff, wide, olive-colored leaves. It is native to far west Texas, New Mexico, and the mountains of northeastern Mexico, where it grows in yucca forests, spectacular when the plants are in bloom.

  The errand, important as it was, would have to wait. I was unlocking my Toyota when an old green Dodge pulled up to the curb in front of me and Amy Roth jumped out. Amy is Ruby’s wild child, the daughter she gave up for adoption at birth (at Doris’ insistence), the daughter who searched her out a few years ago. As you can imagine, it has been a stormy mother-daughter relationship, with Ruby’s anguished guilt on one side, Amy’s bitter resentment on the other. Having passed the quarter-century mark and given birth to Grace, Amy is settling into a quiet and apparently stable relationship with Kate Rodriguez in the comfortable house where they live together. As you might guess, this liaison has not won the approval of all of Amy’s relatives. Doris has taken every opportunity to snort “lesbians” with a fiery contempt. Shannon, Ruby’s younger daughter, pretends it doesn’t exist. Ruby and Grammy, however, love Amy, adore Grace, and are fond of Kate, and so they accept it.

  As far as I’m concerned, the ambiguous morality of the situation can be resolved into one single word: Love. Amy (who works part-time for Jon Green at the Hill Country Animal Clinic) and Kate (who has her own accounting business) are good parents. Grace—who might have been raised by a single mom struggling to make ends meet—has been welcomed into a devoted home. Lots of kids born into heterosexual families aren’t so lucky.

  Amy rushed up and flung her arms around me with a glad cry. She is a younger version of Ruby, tall and slender, with freckles plastered across her delicate, triangular face. She no longer has rainbow-colored hair (purple on one side, pink on the other, green between) and seems to have made a sort of peace with the naturally red, naturally curly mop she in
herited from Ruby and passed down to Grace. But while motherhood might have matured the wild child a bit, she has not gone completely au naturelle. The gold rings still glitter in her pierced ears, nostrils, and eyebrows, her makeup would still be the envy of a Metropolitan Opera diva, and she still dresses like a punk rocker. But that’s just Amy, in her own way as outrageously flamboyant as Ruby. I have learned to love her various weirdnesses. In fact, I confess to a serious fondness for the girl, who moved in with McQuaid and me last summer after she and Ruby had a fight and she moved out.

  But that’s ancient history. They made up before Grace was born, and now Ruby can never get enough of her baby granddaughter. Amy sometimes brings Grace—nearly five months old now—to spend a morning or an afternoon at the Crystal Cave. With her curly red hair (of course!), sky blue eyes, and sunshine smile, the baby is a hit with the customers and a delight for the rest of us. The only creature who can’t tolerate her is Khat, who is bitterly jealous of the usurper. He can’t understand why everybody makes such a fuss over her—she doesn’t have fur and if she’s got a tail, she’s keeping it a secret.

  Now, I could see Grace snugly settled in her car seat in the back of her mother’s old green Dodge—the Gracemobile, we call it. I waved and made happy faces at her and she smiled back, bouncing a little with pleasure.

  But Amy didn’t look very happy. “Mom says you drove all the way to Fredericksburg just to break the news about Colin,” she said somberly. “I came by to thank you for that, China. I can’t tell you how much Shannon and I appreciate it.” Shannon lives in Austin, where she teaches girls’ physical education at Bowie High. “Bad as it was, it would have been a heckuva lot worse for Mom if she’d heard the news on the television or read it in the newspaper.”

  “I only did what I had to do,” I replied. “Have you talked to her today?”

  She nodded gravely. “She sounded harassed. Grandma Doris seems to have gone completely bananas. I hope Aunt Ramona gets there soon. It’s not fair for Mom to have to do this all by herself.” She made a face. “I’d go, if I didn’t have to work—although Grandma Doris doesn’t like me very much just now. And Grace makes her nervous.”

  “It’s a sad time,” I agreed. “We need to give your mom all the support we can.”

  “And to think I saw Colin that very evening,” Amy mused. “It must have been just a little while before he—” She shuddered and looked away. “God. What a horrible thing. I don’t even like to think about it.”

  “You saw him that evening?” My ears perked up. “You were in his store?”

  “No, we were at Beans. Kate and I and Sissy Conroy, our neighbor. We were having a Girl’s Night Out. Sissy’s husband babysat Grace and Sissy’s boys, and we went hootin’.” She grinned mischievously. “Of course, we don’t hoot as hard or as long as we used to, now that we’ve got kids. It’s just a chance to get out for a little while.”

  I remembered what Marcy had said about letting Tyson know that Fowler would be at Beans. “Was he alone when you saw him, or with someone?”

  “Colin?” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, gosh, look at the time. I have to pick Kate up at her office.”

  “Yes, Colin,” I said. “Was he alone?”

  “When we first went in, yes. He was sitting in that dark corner way at the back.” She tilted her head. “I knew he was planning to stop at Mom’s to pick something up, and I remember thinking that it was a damn shame that they weren’t together. It would have been so good if they’d been able to work it out.”

  “But he wasn’t alone for long?” I persisted. “Somebody joined him?”

  Amy nodded. “Some guy. They had a beer and talked for a little while. And then they left together.” She smiled a sad little smile. “He waved at me as he went out the door. I figured he was on his way to Mom’s house.”

  “What time was that?”

  In the back seat, Grace began to whimper. Amy went to the driver’s door and opened it. “Mommy’s coming, sweetness,” she said, getting in. “I’m sorry, China. Grace is getting restless and I promised Kate I’d—”

  “What time, Amy?” I repeated urgently. “When Colin left with the man.”

  She put the key into the ignition. “Oh, nine or nine thirty, I guess. A little later, maybe. Sissy doesn’t get off work until seven, and she had to go home and give the kids their supper before we could leave.” She frowned. “Why? Is it important?”

  “It might be. What did the man look like?” Big shoulders, blond buzz cut, I’d bet my last dollar. The jump-out boy. But I was wrong.

  “Short, stocky, dark. A mustache.”

  Dark-haired, a mustache. “Oh, Hark Hibler.” But why hadn’t he mentioned it?

  “No, not Hark. I know him. He’s sweet on Mom.” She turned to check on Grace, who was working herself into a crying fit. “Hang in there, dumpling. We’re going.”

  But she couldn’t go, because I was holding on to the open door. “Wait, Amy. How did they seem? Were they friendly? Angry? Argumentative? What was the guy wearing?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know, China.” She started the car and Grace immediately stopped crying. “I didn’t pay that much attention, actually. I was having too much fun.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “You’re not telling me that he might’ve…” She gulped. “I thought Colin was killed later. Like after midnight.”

  “It was probably just before ten,” I said. “That’s when one of the kitchen helpers heard some hollering out near the tracks.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Amy whispered, and shut her eyes.

  “One more thing.” I was pushing it. “Did you happen to notice a guy with big shoulders and a blond crew cut—sort of a military look? Maybe he was hanging out at the bar, or playing pool in the back room.”

  She opened her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t remember. But I really wasn’t paying attention. You might ask Kate or Sissy.”

  I would. I was betting that Tyson was there, killing time in the pool room or at the dart board, watching and waiting for Colin to leave. He had followed him out, waited until the other man had gone and—

  Grace started to cry again, and I stepped back from the car. “Thanks, Amy.” I blew a kiss. “Bye, Grace.”

  I watched them drive away with something close to envy. Grace—sweet-tempered, cuddly, smelling sweetly of baby lotion—is almost enough to make me want to add a little girl to the family. Almost, but not quite. Little girls grow up to be teenagers, and teenaged girls (as I remember from my own experience) are generally unhappy creatures. Anyway, I reminded myself, it’s out of the question now. If I’d been interested in giving Brian a brother or sister, the time for that had all but ticked away on my biological clock.

  And speaking of a clock ticking, there was my errand. I’d better hurry.

  IT was beginning to drizzle when I drove down Oak Street and parked in Colin Fowler’s drive. People were home from work, the driveways were filled with vehicles (mostly pickup trucks, of course), and Oak Street was crowded with the usual gang of kids, dogs, and skateboards, now beginning to scatter because of the rain. Crazy Zany Sanders, dressed in skimpy white shorts and a black top that were more substantial (but not much more) than the bikini she’d been wearing when I saw her last, was painting a chair on her front porch. She was pretending not to notice the man changing a tire on the Ford station wagon in the driveway across the street, who was ogling her eagerly. She watched as I got out of my car and walked up Colin’s driveway.

  The crime-scene tape had been removed from the front and back doors. I didn’t have a key, but I didn’t need one. The kitchen window was unlocked. However, I resisted the temptation. I didn’t need to go through the house. The cops had been over it with a fine-tooth comb and had taken anything that even smelled promising. Anyway, I knew what I was looking for, and it wasn’t inside the house. I opened my trunk, found a pair of dirty garden gloves, and put them on.

  It took only ten seconds to find what I had come for, and another ten seconds to make
sure that I was right. I stared at what I had found for a moment, then put it back. I straightened up. Of course, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to whip out my cell phone, call Sheila, and tell her to come and get this stuff, pronto. I should not, under any circumstances, get myself involved with possession of—

  I heard the sound of wheels on gravel and looked up to see a blue van prowling down the alley. No surprise, really. The meter man was after the same thing I was. If I gave him half a chance, he’d grab it. I glanced around. I wasn’t eager to stand my ground here, like Custer, against a jump-out boy who was as big as a gorilla and armed, to boot—he’d be a fool to come after something of this value without bringing up the artillery. I was unarmed, having a serious aversion to guns and not having planned on being forced to use one. And like Custer, I knew that the cavalry couldn’t get here fast enough to save my skin. But the cavalry (aka the chief of police) was coming to my house for dinner and—

  I made a snap decision, not the wisest one, certainly, but the best I could come up with under the circumstances. I was closing the trunk lid when Crazy Zany, carrying a red umbrella, sauntered over to the hedge.

  “Hi,” she said, with a studied carelessness.

  “Hi,” I replied, very friendly. I opened the driver’s door.

  “Are you sure you should be taking anything from that place?” she asked dubiously. “The guy who lived here was murdered, you know.”

  I widened my eyes. “Oh, gosh,” I said innocently. “Murdered? That’s awful! Maybe that’s why he didn’t get around to paying for his stuff. I’ll tell my boss. I wish she weren’t such a stickler about slow pays—I always feel bad when I have to do something like this.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said sympathetically. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “You get used to it,” I said philosophically. “It’s part of the job.”

  She frowned. “Those plants—they don’t look like much. Are they all that valuable?”