Death Come Quickly

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “That’s tragic, Ruby.” It was, but I was finding it a little hard to concentrate. I was trying to get away from the truck and watching for the turnoff—a left exit—from 290 onto I-610 South.

  “And prophetic, too, wouldn’t you say?” Ruby asked. “I mean, she paints a severed head, and then she suffers a stroke that virtually incapacitates her. It’s as if her dream foretold the future.”

  I began edging left, sneaking in behind a pickup loaded with cardboard boxes wrapped in plastic. Flags of ripped plastic were peeling off in the wind and flying across the freeway. “Yes, prophetic,” I said and moved one more lane to the left, to avoid the flying plastic, which could blanket the windshield and leave me sightless. “Yes.”

  “But wait, there’s more!” Ruby exclaimed, like that voice on the television commercials that wants to sell you two or three of something you don’t want even one of. “I found out that Izquierdo’s work is really hot right now. That painting I just told you about—Sueño y Pensamiento? It sold at Sotheby’s recently for a whopping four hundred fifty thousand dollars!”

  “Wow,” I said, slipping between two cars to get into the near left lane. “Nearly half a million! That’s a lot of money, Ruby.”

  “Right. And now the Mexican government has declared Izquierdo a national treasure, which means that her paintings can no longer be taken out of the country without the government’s approval.” Ruby took a deep breath. “That would tend to drive up the prices even more, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’d think it would make her paintings harder to get,” I said.

  “Oh, and guess what! That painting you showed me in the Sotheby’s catalog, the one Karen marked with the yellow sticky? I checked the Web page for that auction lot. Muerte llega pronto went for far more than the estimate. In fact, it sold for twice what they estimated, China. A cool quarter million.”

  A quarter of a million dollars. I wondered whether it had gone to a museum or disappeared into a private collection, where it wouldn’t resurface until it was put up for sale again. I thought of the painting I had seen on the wall of the Morris Museum—and Ruby hadn’t. How was it related to the painting that somebody had bought at Sotheby’s? Why did Karen have the Sotheby’s catalog in her briefcase? Did she know something about that painting—those two paintings—that might explain her death? And why couldn’t Ruby see that painting when it was hanging right in front of her eyes?

  “Ruby,” I said, “that weird business with the painting yesterday—have you figured out what it means?”

  “I’ve tried,” Ruby replied. “I asked the I Ching why I couldn’t see the painting. The answer I got is interesting and seems very apt. But I haven’t been able to make any sense out of it yet.”

  “What did you get?” I asked.

  The I Ching, the “Book of Changes,” is an ancient Chinese oracle. Ruby consults the oracle in the traditional way, by tossing down fifty dried yarrow stalks from the garden and picking them up in a certain pattern. Some people find it easier to use four coins. And easiest of all, you can have your computer make a random choice for you. Any of these methods will result in a figure called a hexagram, a series of six lines stacked one on top of the other, either “changing” lines (broken in the middle) or “unchanging” (straight). There are sixty-four possible hexagrams, each of which has been interpreted by Asian scholars and teachers in a variety of ways.

  “I got hexagram 20,” Ruby said. “Kuan. Four changing lines topped by two unchanging lines. It has a kind of double meaning—seeing and being seen. Or viewing and being viewed. It suggests contemplation. Perspective. Or maybe setting an example for others to look at and follow.”

  Typical I Ching. It means so many things that, practically speaking, it means nothing. “Well,” I said, trying to be encouraging, “at least the answer is in the right ballpark. I don’t know about contemplation or setting an example, but you were certainly having a ‘viewing’ problem.”

  “I need to give it some more thought.” Ruby paused. “Oh, and I talked to Sheila a little while ago. She’s home. With the baby.”

  “Oh, that’s good!” I said and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “But she has to stay flat for a couple of days,” Ruby added. “The doctor wants to be extra sure. Which means that she can’t go to work.”

  “Poor Sheila,” I said sympathetically. I was safely off 290 and swinging under the overpass onto 610, heading south. “Having to stay flat will drive her crazy. Knowing her, though, I’m sure she’ll find a way to manage the entire police department from her bed.”

  Of course, she’d have to begin telling people why she was in bed, which would cause a lot of head shaking and tongue wagging. I could just imagine what the good old boys of the Bubba Harris era would have to say about a pregnant police chief.

  “Actually, China, she’s a little ticked off at you,” Ruby said hesitantly. “Somebody told her that you had been at the Prior house yesterday morning, and that you were rummaging through Karen’s office. She wanted me to tell you to get out of her case and quit messing up her investigation.” She cleared her throat, sounding embarrassed. “She said something about obstructing justice.”

  “Obstructing justice,” I muttered under my breath. I was trying to move right, into a slower lane, to get away from the garbage truck that was still riding on my back bumper. But some jerk in a burnt orange Hummer with University of Texas license plates was threatening to cut me off. Talk about obstructing!

  “China? Did you hear me, China? Sheila said to stop fooling around and stay off Karen’s case. She said she’s sorry, but she really has to insist. You’re a civilian and you’re not supposed to—”

  The Hummer driver had the nerve to blow his horn at me. It sounded like an eighteen-wheeler’s air horn. I used a very rude word.

  “I should do what?” Ruby asked, startled.

  “Not you, sweetie,” I said apologetically. “Listen, I gotta go. This traffic is murder. But if you talk to Sheila again, tell her I’m not on Karen’s case, and I’m not obstructing justice.” At least, I told myself, not so’s she’d notice. “I’m in Houston for the day. I’m getting together with Lucia Bettler.”

  “Oh, good,” Ruby said, relieved. “Tell Lucia I said hello. I’ve been meaning to drive over and visit.” She paused then, sounding doubtful. “Are you sure this trip doesn’t have anything to do with Karen’s mugging?”

  I laughed. Ruby knows me too well. “Actually, I hope it does,” I confessed, “but it’s a long shot—a very long shot.” It depended on what was in Johnnie’s notes, or in the transcript, if there was one, of the closed hearing on the defense’s alternative suspect strategy. To tell the truth, I had been enthusiastic about coming to Houston to work on the case, but that was when I was back in Pecan Springs. Now that I was here, the doubts were setting in. There were too many little pieces to this puzzle, and none of them seemed to be connected. I didn’t see how this trip was going to turn up anything that would help us learn why Karen had been killed.

  A raucous truck horn sounded behind me. I flinched and clutched the steering wheel harder. In fact, I was beginning to wish I hadn’t given up my precious day off to play dodgem cars with garbage trucks and Hummers pushing seventy miles an hour in Houston traffic.

  Chapter Eleven

  Yarrow is one of those herbs that has a contradictory reputation. For centuries, it was carried in battle as a lucky charm and believed to protect the warrior from harm. In China, it was considered one of the luckiest of plants. Where yarrow grew, people said, neither tigers nor wolves could venture and poisonous plants could not be found. In Europe, it was grown beside the door and strewn across the threshold to keep evil from getting into the house.

  But in some parts of England, yarrow was known as “devil’s nettle” and “bad man’s plaything” and associated with witchcraft. In Wales, yarrow went by the name “death flower.” Carry it into
the house, and death will follow.

  China Bayles

  “Herbs of Good and Ill Omen”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  To reach Aaron’s office, I stayed on 610 South across town to the Southwest Freeway, then got off at the Kirby exit, made a right at the light, headed south across Bissonnet, then made another left a few blocks farther on. His law firm still goes by the name Brooks and Carlson, but he has moved from the large concrete-and-glass building where he and Johnnie once had an office to a single-story frame house—green with a tasteful purple trim—in an area of other fixer-upper houses that have been converted to professional offices, thereby raising the property values and the tax base. The building has a small off-street parking area, a couple of trees in the back, and a landscaped front court, bright with clumps of yellow and pink and lavender yarrow, purple coneflowers, sunny black-eyed Susans, orange-and-yellow lantana, and bright red Turk’s cap, all heat- and drought-tolerant perennials that need practically no tending.

  I parked, got out, and stretched, pulling the kinks out, then shouldered my bag, went up the walk, and rang the buzzer beside the front door. Not so many years ago, clients simply opened the door and walked into law offices right off the street, but no more. There have been too many nutcase shootings, and lawyers are by nature a paranoid lot. From the intercom, a chipper female voice asked my name. I gave it and waited for the click that allowed me to open the door.

  Aaron’s receptionist, a trim and tidy thirty-something woman named Tiffany Franken, was wreathed in pretty smiles. Her hair is dark, cut short to emphasize its natural curl. She has blue eyes, a fetching sprinkle of freckles, and a snub-nosed .357 Magnum in her desk drawer. I happen to know that she’s a crack shot.

  “Hello, Ms. Bayles!” she said with pleasure. “We don’t get to see you often enough. How’s life in the Hill Country?”

  “Much slower than life in the city,” I said, still feeling that garbage truck breathing down my tailpipe. “And there’s a heckuva lot less traffic.”

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it? I’m almost afraid to get on the freeway, and the streets aren’t a lot better.” She smiled warmly. “Mr. Brooks is in the conference room. He has the materials you wanted. Would you like some coffee? A soft drink?”

  I thanked her, declined, and headed down the short hallway to the conference room—probably the dining room when this was a real house. Three of the walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases, filled with legal volumes and reference works. The fourth wall, painted a rich chocolate brown, featured a large bay window dressed with tasteful wooden blinds, filtering the view of a dense yaupon holly hedge. The obligatory polished oak table stood in the center of the room, with the obligatory eight polished chairs with leather seats, all impressively lawyerlike. On the table was a four-inch-thick three-ring binder and a couple of file boxes.

  And there he was, my former lover, as blond and good-looking as ever—although I had to admit that he seemed older and more tired than I remembered, and he’d gained some weight. But never mind that. He had always been a natty dresser, and that hadn’t changed: he wore a gray Armani vest and pants, a pale lavender pinstripe shirt, and a fuchsia-and-navy paisley tie. My heart was tripping along pitty-pat, pitty-pat, like the unruly heart of that foolish chick-lit ingénue.

  I had come on business, however, and my heart, every last unruly ounce of it, belongs to my husband. So I exerted a firm control over the silly pitty-patting, straightened my shoulders, stuck out my hand, and managed a friendly, collegial “Hello, Aaron, nice to see—”

  And that was as far as I got before he folded me into his arms, crunching my nose against his tie, which smelled of that delicious vanilla pipe tobacco that I always loved. After a moment, he took a step back, tipped up my chin, smiled down at me, and said pleasantly, “Shut up, China Bayles. I’m going to kiss you.”

  He did, at length, and effectively. And then he let me go.

  “Very good,” he said, as I struggled to get my breath and smooth my hair. “Quite remarkable, in fact, and exactly as I remembered it.” He gave me an appreciative up-and-down glance. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can get on with what you came for.”

  “Wait just a darn minute,” I said indignantly. “Why did you do that, Aaron?”

  He looked at me, his blue eyes very clear, his dimples showing. “Why, because I wanted to,” he said innocently. “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since you telephoned. Haven’t you?” He raised one blond eyebrow, teasing. “Come on, now. Fess up. Yes, you have.”

  “I have not,” I said firmly, straightening my tank top and trying to hide my fluster. “Not even a little.”

  He pulled those eyebrows together in a frown and folded his arms across his chest in his best courtroom manner.

  Give me a break. “Oh, all right. Yes. Maybe a little. But just because I want to do something doesn’t mean I have to do it,” I added righteously. “Mature people don’t act on all their impulses.”

  The smile lines around his eyes crinkled. “My dearest China, you are just as human as I am, and sometimes humans do what they want to do just because they want to do it. So quit making a big friggin’ deal about a little kiss between old friends.” He reached out a hand and his fingers brushed my cheek. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I growled. I noticed a glint of gray in his blond hair and modified my tone. “You’re perfectly right, Aaron. It’s no big deal. No big deal at all.” Then why did I want to touch that glint of gray? And why was my heart still pitty-patting?

  “Good.” He dropped his hand.

  And that’s when I saw it. The plain gold band on his left hand. I did a double take, then reached for his hand, turned it over, and said, “Hey. Looks like you’re keeping a secret.” Was I annoyed? Well, maybe, just a little. But to tell the truth, I was mostly relieved. It felt as if the playing field had just been somehow leveled.

  “A secret?” He grinned. “Not really. I was going to tell you over lunch.” He tilted his head. “Sorry I didn’t invite you to the wedding. It was kind of . . . impulsive. We took a weekend and flew to Vegas to get married.”

  “Do I know her?”

  “Maybe. Paula Hemming. She’s an assistant DA with the Harris County district attorney’s office.”

  I pulled my eyebrows together. “Tall, stunning brunette? Glasses? Mega-smart? Formidable in the courtroom?” And on the home front, too, I’d bet.

  “That’s her,” Aaron said jauntily. “Just celebrated our first anniversary yesterday. And guess what!”

  He knows how I feel about guessing games. I rolled my eyes, remembered Sheila and Mrs. Banner, and said, “Okay, I’ll bite. The two of you are pregnant.”

  He stared at me. “How’d you know? We just found out last week and neither of us have told anybody. We don’t even know yet whether it’s a boy or a girl.”

  “I’m clairvoyant,” I said with a crooked grin. “Congratulations, Counselor.”

  And there was that twinge again. One of my best friends was having a baby. One of my old flames was having a baby. I felt . . . well, left out.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s great. Wonderful. Peachy. Of course, Paula is the kind of woman who wants to have it all. A great job and a couple of kids.” His voice dropped a notch. “I don’t know if she realizes what kind of change it’s going to mean, though. We’re in the habit of keeping long hours—sometimes we only see one another on weekends. Not even that, if one of us has a big case.”

  I knew all about that. It was the kind of relationship Aaron and I had had when we were together. Brutal schedules, nerves like bare electrical wires, ready to short out and flare up. And always the uneasy feeling that we were ships passing in the night, bound for different home ports. I could have reminded him of that, but I took the safer route.

  “I’m sure you’ll work it out,” I said. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, right.�
�� He didn’t sound all that confident. He gestured toward the binder and file boxes. “Anyway, there’s the Bowen casebook. You know Johnnie—he was a sloppy note-taker, he wasn’t systematic about documentation, and his trial work was more or less seat-of-the-pants. And Bowen was before laptops, of course. Now we scan everything in and keep the files on flash drives.”

  I sighed. The notebook looked formidable. I had the feeling that I wouldn’t be able to find what I needed—even if it was there, which it probably wasn’t.

  Aaron was going on. “However, I was glad to see that Johnnie’s trial assistant—a young attorney named Stan Simpson—kept the Bowen materials pretty well organized. Looks like it’s all there: the witness interviews and depositions, pretrial motions, briefs, jury information, witness lists, exhibits, notes for opening and closing statements. And the yellow tablets Johnnie scribbled on during testimony—mostly illegible, I’m afraid. The trial transcript is in the green box. I was late getting out of court this morning, so I didn’t have time to do more than look through it. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what you were looking for, exactly.”

  “I’m not either, exactly,” I said. “It falls into the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it category.”

  He nodded and glanced at his watch. “And as it turns out, one of my clients has gotten himself into a little trouble and I have to see what I can do to help him get out of it. He’s down in Pearland, which means I need to cancel our lunch.” His voice changed, and he turned down his mouth. “I mean it when I say I’m sorry, darlin’. I was looking forward to catching up with your life.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said and wasn’t surprised when I realized that this was true. “I’ll let you know the next time I’m in Houston. And in the meantime—” I was gesturing toward the table, about to remark that I had certainly enough to keep me busy, when I was interrupted.