Spanish Dagger

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Oh, you bet,” I said. “Yucca faxoniana. They’ll grow as tall as a palm tree. Very impressive in the landscape.” And then, on impulse, I made another snap decision, thinking that it might not be a bad idea to leave a trail of crumbs for Tyson. It might lure him into making a mistake. “Listen, I’m going to give you a business card, just in case there are any questions.” I looked through my shoulder bag, found a slightly tattered Thyme and Seasons card, scratched out the shop address and scribbled my home address on it. “It’s possible that somebody else may come looking for this stuff. A guy. If so, tell him I’m the one he wants to see.”

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the card with a puzzled look. “I will.”

  “You have a nice evening, now,” I said, and gave her a brisk wave as I got in the car.

  I backed out of the drive. Crazy Zany was watching me, and the man across the street was watching her. The blue van was nowhere in sight, but I was betting that the meter man was also watching—from somewhere close enough to be tempted. He’d have that business card in his gorilla hands faster than you could say “Custer’s last stand.”

  BUT I was barely around the corner before I began to regret my impulsiveness. I had given Tyson all the probable cause he needed. If he decided to stop my car and search it—task force agents have the authority to do that, in any jurisdiction in the state—there was enough cocaine to warrant a charge of possession with intent to distribute, a second-degree felony. Clearing myself would be tough, very tough. I could be up to my neck in some serious trouble. And under the forfeiture laws, I could lose my car.

  And I had compounded this stupid error in judgment by leaving a trail to my house.

  A trail to my house? When McQuaid was out of town—Brian, too—and I was there alone? What was I thinking? He might try to seize my home, too!

  The only thing I could do was to dump Colin’s stash, before the guy stopped me and searched my car. But I couldn’t dump it just anywhere. I reached for my cell phone and punched in the speed-dial number for Sheila’s direct line. She picked up on the fourth ring, long enough to make me very nervous.

  “You’re still planning to come over tonight, I hope,” I said fervently. I checked the rearview mirror. No blue van. “If you’re not, I’ve got something I need to drop off at your office, pronto.” The sooner I got this stuff out of my car, the happier I would be.

  “Hang on to it, China,” she said genially. “I’ll pick it up when I come over. It’s been a helluva week, and I’m ready for an evening off.”

  I took a deep breath. I hate to admit I’ve made a mistake, but now was the time. “Listen, Sheila. I really think I should—”

  “I’m getting ready to leave,” she went on, in her peremptory, don’t-interrupt-me-I’m-the-law tone. “All I have to do is change my clothes. Want me to phone Gino’s and order a pizza? I can pick it up on the way out.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “Anchovies and double cheese for me. I’ll make a salad and find something for dessert.” I paused, and added a heartfelt plea. “Come as soon as you can, Sheila. I have something important for you.” Once Sheila was there, the stuff was all hers. I was off the hook.

  “Show and tell in thirty minutes, then,” she said briskly. “And make damn sure that Rottweiler is locked up. You know how I feel about attack dogs.”

  BUT an hour later, Sheila still wasn’t there, and I was a nervous wreck. Feeling vulnerable and apprehensive, I had locked the doors, closed the blinds and drapes, and was pacing from one window to another, peeping out. We live in an isolated house off Limekiln Road, about eleven miles outside of town, and I was all alone in the place—unless, of course, you count the intrepid Howard Cosell (napping in his basset basket beside the kitchen stove) and the valiant Rambo (napping in Howard’s doggie igloo). I had secured Colin’s stash and now I kept a close watch on the driveway, checking for vehicles and beating up on myself for giving my address to Crazy Zany. What if Tyson showed up and demanded Colin’s stuff?

  Would I give it to him?

  Would I try to keep him from taking it?

  Would he attempt to arrest me?

  My palms were sweaty. I was breathing hard. This was a fiasco, a catastrophic misjudgment. My stupidity was beyond belief. The sooner Sheila arrived and took possession of the stuff on the other side of the stone fence, the better I would feel.

  My nervous pacing was interrupted by a call from McQuaid. I held on to the phone, wishing he were here. I wished I could tell him why, but instead, I told him that Miles had phoned. “He wants you to call him. It has to do with Dad’s car.”

  “Maybe he’s located it,” McQuaid remarked. “He found something in his mother’s papers that gave him an idea of where it might be.” He paused. “What are you up to tonight, honey-bunch?”

  What was I up to? I didn’t want him to know. “Oh, not much,” I said, and cleverly bounced the conversational ball back to him. “How about you? Finding anything interesting?” I lifted the curtain and peered anxiously out at the driveway. When was Sheila going to get here?

  “We just might have,” McQuaid replied judiciously. “I’ll be home tomorrow. I’ll tell you all about it then. So what’s new in the Fowler investigation? Has Sheila turned up anything?”

  I don’t make a regular practice of lying to my husband, but I am sometimes known to evade the truth, especially when the explanation will require at least two hours of face-to-face discussion, during most of which I will be on the defensive and inclined to be a bit short.

  “If she has,” I said, “I haven’t heard about it. What are you doing this evening?”

  “Having dinner with Hawk. How about you, babe? Going out?”

  “Sheila’s bringing a pizza.” I frowned at the old Seth Thomas clock over the refrigerator. The hands showed eight thirty. Outside, twilight was falling and the drizzle had become a serious rain, complete with sound effects. I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance, and wondered if Rambo heard it, too. “I don’t understand what’s keeping her. She should have been here long ago.”

  “Maybe she had to nab a dope fiend. Tell her I said hi. And you girls stay out of trouble, you hear?”

  “We will,” I promised agreeably, but without conviction. I had invited trouble, and it might prove a little difficult to stay out of it, especially since I myself might be mistaken for a dope fiend. We exchanged kissy noises, said I love you and good night, and hung up. I went back to pacing and biting my nails and cursing myself for being all kinds of a fool.

  Five minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, it was Ruby. Her mother was installed in her new apartment and she wanted me to have the phone number. She sounded tired and discouraged and ready to throw in the towel.

  “Mom is so cantankerous that it’s hard to do anything for her,” she said. I could hear the tears in her voice. “You’d think she’d like a nice hot supper, but she refuses to eat a bite. She says it’s poisoned. Even when I traded my plate for hers, she wouldn’t touch it. And her language—really, China, it’s obscene. I hate for other people to hear her.”

  “They’ll know she’s not herself,” I said.

  “But what if this is herself?” Ruby wailed. “What if she’s going to be like this from here on out?” She stopped and took a breath, trying to calm herself. “One of the supervisors gave me an article on something called ‘frontal lobe dementia.’ Impaired judgment, inability to recognize the consequences of choices, lack of concern over personal appearance, irritability, confusion. The article doesn’t hold out much hope for recovery. Once you’ve lost your frontal lobe, it’s gone forever.”

  I made some soothing noises, but there wasn’t much I could say to comfort her. “I talked to Amy this afternoon,” I said. “And Grace gave me a big smile.”

  I could almost feel Ruby brighten. “My beautiful girls,” she said happily. “Give them a hug for me.” She paused. “Has Sheila found out anything yet? About Colin, I mean.”

  “Nothing very productive
,” I said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.” I glanced at the clock. “Listen, Ruby, I have to get off the phone. I’m hoping Sheila will call and say she’s on her way. I don’t know what’s keeping her.”

  “She’ll be along.” Ruby sighed. “I wish I were there with you and Sheila, China.”

  “So do I,” I said.

  But it wasn’t true. I didn’t know what was going to happen that night, but I had a very large hunch that it was just as well that Ruby was in Fredericksburg, taking care of her crazy mom.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Landscape contractor Blair Davis was in his Houston-area home when the door flew open and he found himself held at gunpoint by some ten members of the Harris County Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force. They had come to arrest him and confiscate his hibiscus, which (acting on a tip from a botanically challenged informant) they mistook for marijuana. Task force agents searched Davis’ house for an hour, paying special attention to the red and gold bamboo growing in his window and the cantaloupes and watermelons in his garden. They left without apology.

  Source: Houston Chronicle, July 29, 2004

  Hibiscus sabdariffa, an herbal shrub that grows in tropical areas around the world, has antibacterial properties and has been shown to reduce blood pressure. It has also been used to treat indigestion, colds, respiratory ailments, and circulatory disorders. The edible flowers are used to make syrups, cordials, jam, and tea, and as a colorful addition to salads.

  It was almost nine o’clock, full dark, and raining hard when Sheila finally showed up, still in uniform and managing to look beautiful even though she was clearly tired. She had two very good reasons for being late. She had been headed for the locker room to change when Hark Hibler came in. He had something important to tell her, he said, which turned out to be the same tale he had told me about Dan Reid’s investigation into “official corruption.”

  There was one important addition, however: the name of his informant, who turned out to be—yes, you guessed it. Scott Tyson. Tyson had surreptitiously contacted Hark and offered him information about Dan Reid, aka Colin Fowler, and what he was doing in Pecan Springs. Hark didn’t mention his conversation with me, nor the salacious tale Tyson had peddled about Sheila’s relationship to Reid. Instead, he told her that although he wasn’t able to corroborate the “official corruption” tip from other sources, he thought she ought to know about it, in case it had something to do with Reid’s murder.

  “Of course,” Sheila said disgustedly, “it doesn’t. The whole thing is a pack of lies, from beginning to end.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked, eyeing her. If Sheila was giving me a line, I couldn’t tell it, and I’ve had quite a bit of experience with liars. Sometimes when I look back on my life as a lawyer, it seems like most of it was spent sifting through lies to get to something, anything, that might approximate a truth.

  “Absolutely. If Dan—Colin—had any official connection, it wasn’t with the FBI, and it didn’t have anything to do with a corruption investigation. This is another of Tyson’s schemes.”

  “But why—?”

  “Because. Because he wanted to call attention to Colin. Wanted to muddy the waters any way he could. There’s nothing to it, believe me.”

  And then she went on to tell me that after she’d spent thirty minutes dealing with Hark, she had driven over to Gino’s to pick up our pizza. As she was leaving the parking lot, some college kid backed his mother’s dump truck–sized SUV into the rear of her red Blazer, effectively rendering it undriveable. That would have been bad enough, but before the kid had driven over to Gino’s to pick up pizzas for his frat buddies, he had polished off three beers. He was drunk as a skunk. An hour later, he was in the cooler, the paperwork was turned in, and Sheila had borrowed a car from one of the other officers. The pizza, of course, was cold. Smart Cookie, on the other hand, was well and truly steamed.

  Feeling much better now that she was there, I heated the pizza in the microwave while Sheila told me about the Blazer. “Oh, and there’s something else,” she said. “I had old Wilford Mueller checked out. Seems he fell off his porch a week ago. The day Colin was killed; he was in surgery in Austin, getting a pin in his hip.”

  “Well, that scratches him off the list,” I said, getting out the salad dressing.

  We put our salads and pizza on the dining room table, and Sheila slumped into a chair.

  “Why does everything happen to me?” she muttered dramatically. Howard Cosell threw himself at her feet, looking up at her adoringly. Hearing the tone of her voice, he gave her ankle a consoling lick. She bent over to scratch under his long, droopy ears. He replied with the basset equivalent of a purr.

  “Because you’re gorgeous?” I suggested helpfully, checking the drapes and blinds to be sure they were closed against a possible Peeping Tyson. “Because you’re the chief of police and act in loco parentis for cops who misbehave? Because your Blazer was parked where some drunk kid could back into it?”

  “I hate lawyers,” Sheila growled.

  “Me, too,” I agreed. “They’re rotten, through and through. Anyway, you’re not the only one who’s had a bad day.” I finished pouring glasses of iced hibiscus tea and sat down. “Have a piece of pizza and pay attention, please.”

  Sheila helped herself. “Pay attention to what? Pass the salad.”

  “A complicated story. A tale of tales.”

  I pushed the salad bowl in her direction. And then, while we ate, I told her what Wanda Rathbottom had told me, which had led me to track down Marcy Windsor and talk to her, which conversation had taken place only a few minutes before I bumped into Ruby’s daughter Amy. I held off telling her what I had found at Colin’s house and my dumb stunt with the business card. I didn’t feel quite so vulnerable now that she was here—there’s safety in numbers, especially when one of you is the chief of police. And anyway, Tyson hadn’t shown up yet. Maybe he wasn’t coming.

  When I finished my narrative, Smart Cookie shook her head. “Windsor was on my list,” she muttered. “I just hadn’t got to her yet.” She narrowed her eyes. “How come she spilled this story to you?”

  “I had some leverage. Ronny Rathbottom is Marcy’s boyfriend.” And Marcy is a romantic, whose heart was touched by the love story of Ruby and Colin. “Also, I might have suggested that Marcy could be in danger herself. Anyway, I told her she’d have to talk to you.”

  Sheila nodded. “Well, she’s right about one thing. Lucita Sanchez has a record. She served two years for dealing in South Texas. She was released only six months ago.” She paused. “So this girl thinks her boss was buying and Sanchez was his contact in the ring?”

  “That’s what she told me,” I said cautiously. “It’s probably what she would testify to in court—although there’s more than one possible interpretation of what she overheard. The important thing is Sanchez’s statement about the cocaine delivery. Three hundred pounds is worth something like three million dollars.” And three million dollars is worth a couple of murders, in some people’s estimation.

  “An eighteen-wheeler,” Sheila said thoughtfully. “The drugs could be hidden in just about anything. That’s what makes this so hard. In Arizona, the Feds pulled over a cargo of bird supplies—the cocaine was concealed in bags of birdseed. In San Diego, it was hidden in a truckload of imported Mexican furniture. Sniffer dogs do a lot of the work.”

  But this particular truck wasn’t carrying just about anything. It was carrying a specific cargo, and I knew what it was—or thought I did. In a minute, I’d show her.

  “As far as what Amy told me is concerned,” I went on, “I’m not sure it helps all that much. Whether she actually saw the killer or not is anybody’s guess. And there must be thousands of dark-haired guys with mustaches in this area. I thought of Hark first, of course,” I added. “But she said it wasn’t him.”

  Sheila licked her fingers. “I haven’t talked to Bob yet—he was in El Paso yesterday. But now that we know that Colin had di
nner at Beans Tuesday night, maybe Bob will remember seeing him. He might even know the man he was with.” Bob Godwin, who owns Beans, is acquainted with most of the people who frequent the place. He knows their names, what they like to eat and drink, and whether they’re likely to get testy when they lose at darts or pool. He can even remember how many times he’s had to kick them out.

  I helped myself to another piece of pizza. Howard moved restlessly under the table and poked out his nose to ask whether he might have a bite of pizza. Outside, Rambo had waked from his nap and was barking at something—the raccoon that’s been raiding our compost bin, maybe. Or the thunder.

  “One thing I don’t know is how Tyson fits into this picture,” I said. “I got some hints this afternoon, but I was hoping you would enlighten me.”

  Sheila gave me a knowing grin. “This afternoon, when you were skulking around outside the cabin at the Pack Saddle, pretending to be V. I. Warshawski, on the case?”

  “Yeah,” I said, deadpan. “With my cell phone turned on. Swift, huh? V. I. would never make such a dumb mistake.” V. I. would never give out her home address, either. I was a fool.

  Sheila shrugged. “I’ve seen dumber. Remind me to tell you about the officer who was demonstrating gun safety to a bunch of school kids and blasted a hole in the blackboard. Nearly killed the teacher in the room next door.” She took another piece of pizza. “Tyson says he works undercover for one of the West Texas narcotics task forces. Bitter Creek.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Says he works?”

  “He had identification. It looked okay, but I’ve learned not to trust those guys. There was some character out in Amarillo last year—he’d been kicked off the task force but kept on acting like one of the agents. Caused all kinds of trouble.”

  “Ah,” I said thoughtfully. Impersonating an officer is a third-degree felony in Texas, but the potential benefits might outweigh the liabilities, if there’s a strong incentive. And in this case, there was plenty of incentive. Three million dollars’ worth. “West Texas. If Tyson’s legit, he’s pretty far out of his territory. Aren’t they supposed to notify DPS when they’re working extra-jurisdictionally?” The Department of Public Safety has been supervising the task forces, not with entire success, for the last couple of years. “Wouldn’t DPS notify you?”