Blood Orange: A China Bayles Mystery

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “You were telling us,” I prompted, “that he said he was pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes, and that he was fit. Did he say anything else?”

  “Well, he certainly did. As I said, he’d been drinking a little too much. He was feeling pretty good about himself that day. He said that all he had to do was play sick, and in return, he got free rent and his groceries delivered and a big-screen TV and money for gambling online. He especially liked Texas Hold’em, although he wasn’t much of a big winner. But he said he was getting tired of being so confined and he wasn’t going to play sick forever.” Mrs. Mueller leaned forward and took another cookie. “He said the doctor was going to give him a lot more money and then he was going to get out of town. He was flying to Guadalajara—in fact, he had already bought his plane ticket. He was all excited about it. He had a friend who was living there, so he could move in with her until he found a place of his own. He thought it would be easy to relocate. He even demonstrated his Spanish to me.”

  “The doctor was going to give him more money?” Lara’s voice was strained. “Did he say which doctor? Or how much?”

  Mrs. Mueller pressed her lips together. “No, and I didn’t ask. I may be nosy, but not as nosy as some folks think. But I was surprised when he said that, which is why I remember it.” She tilted her head to one side, her eyes bright and birdlike. “Never heard of a doctor giving money, you know. Usually, it goes the other direction.”

  Lara looked at me, and I saw that she had reached the same conclusion I had. Chris Burgess had been paying MacDonald to play sick. “You told Kelly Kaufman about this?” Lara asked.

  Mrs. Mueller nodded. “And she was every bit as interested as you are.”

  I was calculating. If Mrs. Mueller’s conversation with MacDonald had taken place on the day after her birthday, that would make it August 11. And just a few days later, MacDonald was dead. “Do you know,” I asked, “whether he had any painkillers in the house? Morphine, that is?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said definitively. “Like I told you, he was out there in the alley just the week before, throwing away all kinds of stuff like that. I suppose Ms. Blake could have left him some, when she came—although I don’t know why in the world she would, since he was just playing sick.” She paused. “Of course, I suppose he fooled her, too. He was proud of fooling everybody.”

  I pulled in my breath. “Ms. Blake? Marla Blake? When did she visit him?”

  “Why, yes, Marla Blake.” Mrs. Mueller smiled at me. “I’m sure you know her, China, from Friends of the Library. She owns the hospice now. I saw the two of them sitting out on Mr. MacDonald’s back porch the morning I went to Chicago to help take care of Martha. I remember, because I was rushing around, finishing up my packing, and just happened to glance out of my upstairs bedroom window. And there they were, chatting away a mile a minute. She’d brought takeout, too. They were having an early lunch.”

  “And what day did you leave for Chicago?” I asked.

  “August fifteenth,” Mrs. Mueller said promptly. “A couple of days before, Howie—he’s my brother-in-law—called from Chicago and said my sister wanted me to come and stay with her. So I called Mrs. Bosworth at the travel agency and she got me a ticket, and Mrs. Van Kirsten took me to the airport and Howie picked me up that night at O’Hare.” She paused for breath. “It’s amazing how you can get up in the morning in Texas and go to bed in Chicago. All in one day.”

  August 15. That put Marla Blake on the scene on or just before the presumed date of MacDonald’s death. It wasn’t definitive, but Mrs. Mueller’s eyewitness testimony was likely the best the prosecuting attorney was going to get. She had taken us from possible accident or suicide to murder in the space of a few minutes, and had given us a potential murder suspect, as well. Of course, there were holes, but—

  “You were gone how long?” I asked.

  “Over a month and a half.” She sighed. “I don’t begrudge dear Martha the time I spent with her. After she passed, we had the funeral, and then I stayed on for a week to help Howie pack up her things for the Goodwill. That’s always so sad, you know, and it’s not easy to do.” Another sigh. “But it was a long time to be away. I missed putting out my fall vegetable garden. And I didn’t find out about Mr. MacDonald until the day I got back and looked across the alley and they were tearing down his house.”

  “My goodness,” Lara said. “That must have been a shock.”

  “Oh, it was,” Mrs. Mueller said earnestly. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw it. I immediately thought, well, he’s gone to Guadalajara, the way he said he would, but why in the world are they tearing down his house? So I went next door and asked Mrs. Van Kirsten what about it, and she told me that Mr. MacDonald had died just about the time I left, apparently, but they didn’t find the poor man’s body for quite a long time. Which was why the house had to be torn down, since the smell had got to the point where it just couldn’t be cleaned up. Mrs. Van Kirsten said I should be glad I wasn’t here, because it had been plenty hot and the air conditioner was shut off over there. Things got so ripe the day before they found him that the neighbors couldn’t use their barbecues out in their backyards.”

  “Oh, dear,” Lara said, wide-eyed. “How awful for everybody.”

  “Yes, it was, just terrible, apparently. Mrs. Van Kirsten is the one who called the police about the odor. She told me all about how the police came, and then there was the autopsy, and after that the inquest. Oh, and she gave me the mail she’d picked up at Mr. MacDonald’s house. That was before she knew he was dead, you see. The man collected catalogs and they were all piled up on his porch, and she thought so much mail might invite burglars, although how a burglar could stand going into that place, I don’t know. So she put everything in a shopping bag and gave it all to me. There was a letter from his friend in Guadalajara wanting to know why he hadn’t arrived when he said he would. I answered that and told the lady that Mr. MacDonald was dead and wouldn’t be coming to stay with her.”

  “Ah,” I said, and let out a long breath. “I wonder—would you mind letting me see the letter from Guadalajara? Or better yet, would you loan it to me?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll get it for you before you go.”

  “Thank you.” I paused. “You said earlier that you went to the police. Why did you do that?”

  She pushed her bifocals up on her nose. “Well, I’m sure it was none of my business. But you know, I just couldn’t see where that old man got so much morphine after he’d cleaned out all his painkillers, which to me meant that he didn’t do it accidentally, especially since he said right out that he wasn’t sick and didn’t need any painkillers. And he’d made all these plans for Guadalajara and was really excited about going, which made me think that he wouldn’t have wanted to kill himself. And that left—” She stopped.

  “That left what?” I asked quietly.

  She twisted uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, murder, I suppose. But that’s pretty silly, isn’t it? I mean, he could be unpleasant and even nasty, if he didn’t want you around, which is why I suppose the nurses stopped coming. But I couldn’t think of a reason in the world why anybody would want to kill him. So I did try to talk to the policeman about it, but when he asked me that question you just asked—‘Well, then, if it wasn’t an accident or suicide, what was it?’—I couldn’t come up with an answer. So I tried to forget about it, until Kelly came over to lunch last week to talk to me about it.” She scrunched up her face. “And now she’s dead, too. Seems like a kind of curse, doesn’t it?”

  I chuckled mildly. “Well, if that’s what it is, all I can say is that the three of us had better be careful.”

  Lara smiled at that, but Mrs. Mueller didn’t. “Mind what I say,” she said soberly. She gave me a direct look. “Didn’t I hear that you used to be a lawyer, China? Maybe the police would listen if you went and talked to them.”r />
  “I’m not so sure about that,” I said, remembering that Sheila did not always welcome my suggestions. “But I’m definitely going to give it a try.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she said, and pushed the plate toward me. “Have another cookie. It’ll give you strength. I’ll go look for that letter.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lara didn’t say much as I drove her back to her car. I didn’t prod her. I guessed that she was thinking of the sadness that lay ahead of her that day: helping Kelly’s mother and husband plan a funeral for a daughter and wife who’d died too young and by someone’s dark intention. It wouldn’t be easy.

  I was silent, too. Mrs. Mueller had provided a great deal of detail, some of it relevant, some not. I needed time to sort through everything and pull out the information I intended to share with Sheila. The letter from MacDonald’s friend in Guadalajara, Sarita Gomez, for instance, which Mrs. Mueller had given me. Ms. Gomez had been disturbed when her old friend—they had once been sweethearts, so it seemed from the letter—didn’t arrive at the time he’d planned, and hadn’t answered his phone, either. The letter was strong evidence that MacDonald wasn’t a candidate for suicide, and I was confident that he’d been murdered. I thought of Mrs. Mueller’s report of seeing Marla Blake at MacDonald’s house on the day she left for Chicago. She might have identified his murderer, as well, and Kelly had given us the motive behind the killing. There were still a few holes to fill: identifying the driver and the vehicle that had rammed Kelly, for one. That was something the police could do better than I, given their forensic capabilities. But I thought I had enough to convince Sheila to reopen the MacDonald investigation.

  Before I could see Sheila, however, there was something I had to do. After I dropped off Lara, I stopped at the shop and was glad to see that Ruby—wildly resplendent in a rainbow caftan over red jeggings—had everything under control.

  “I’d like to take another hour or maybe two,” I said to Ruby, and told her why. “Would that be okay?”

  “No problem as far as I’m concerned,” Ruby said, straightening up from a box of dream catchers she was unpacking for display. “Miriam is here to help, and Cass has a helper in the tearoom. You can take the rest of the day if you need to.” She held up a peacock-feather creation decorated with bits of blue and green stained glass and glittery ribbon streamers. “Isn’t this gorgeous?” She pinned it to the display. “Good dreams guaranteed.”

  “I need one of those,” I said. “Last night, I dreamed I found McQuaid facedown on the floor. In the dream, I never found out if he was alive or dead.”

  Ruby turned to regard me, frowning,. “You still haven’t heard from McQuaid?”

  I shook my head. “Not since the message he left on Monday evening.”

  “Oh, hon,” she said sympathetically, and enveloped me in her rainbow arms. “I would tell you not to worry, but I know it wouldn’t do any good. Just try to keep from worrying too much.” She paused, holding me out at arms’ length. “And watch out for doors. Please.”

  “That’s still the best you can do?”

  “Well, I don’t know if this means anything,” she answered slowly, “but when I was brushing my teeth this morning, this weird picture popped into my head. A kind of shimmery image of a door, just sort of hanging there in space. I think it was light brown, or a kind of rusty orange, maybe. Does that help?”

  “Not much,” I said with a frown. “But I’ll be on the lookout.”

  “Please do,” she said. “And if I get a clearer picture, I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  THE Pecan Springs Police Department used to be located in the basement of the old brick building that also housed the town’s Tourist and Information Center, the Parks and Utilities Department, and a sizable colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that lived in the attic and swarmed out at sunset on mosquito patrol. When Sheila inherited the department from the longtime former police chief, Bubba Harris, the day-shift dispatcher, receptionist, and clerk to the justice of the peace was a woman named Dorrie Hull, whose uniform consisted of jeans, a fringed western shirt, and hoop earrings as big as saucers. Dorrie sat behind a wooden counter, greeting the people who came to pay parking and speeding fines (cash only, no checks), occasionally speaking into the dispatcher’s mike, and painting her nails. She came from Lubbock. On her desk was a silver-framed, autographed photo of her rock-and-roll hero, Buddy Holly, who had also come from Lubbock, and a saguaro-shaped ashtray, always full. Dorrie was a chain smoker. If you had to wait to see the chief, it was best to do it outdoors. The basement had no windows.

  But times have changed. The police department now shares a modern office building with City Hall and the municipal court on West San Marcos Street, a block from the courthouse square. The bats moved to the I-35 bridge over the Pecan River, and Dorrie packed up her Buddy Holly photo and her nail polish and went back to Lubbock. If you want to pay your parking fine, there’s an office for that, with a neat young lady behind a computer. Or you can pay with a credit card, by telephone or online. Some people say they miss Dorrie, but the work probably gets done faster. And the air is easier to breathe.

  The chief’s office is at the very end of the hall, behind another, smaller office that belongs to her assistant, Connie Page, a recently divorced, attractive forty-something. I expected to find Sheila at her desk, digging out from under her usual mountain of paperwork, or on the phone with the accounting office, trying to squeeze enough money out of the budget to buy body cams for her officers. The chief’s job, she says, is mostly paperwork, personnel, and community relations. She’d love to get out in the field and actually fight crime, but that doesn’t happen very often.

  Sheila wasn’t in her office, however. She was closeted with the city attorney for the rest of the morning, Connie said, and after that she was scheduled for a luncheon meeting with the mayor.

  “Rats,” I said. “What’s her next free half hour?”

  “A whole half hour?” Connie picked up a large blue plastic cup and spooned something out of it. “You’re sure you can’t manage with fifteen minutes? Time’s tight today.”

  As Sheila’s gatekeeper, Connie is a good friend to have, and we have occasionally worked together to get something done under the radar. Now, I frowned. “Come on, Con. I need thirty minutes at least. This is business.” I paused, peering into her cup. “What’s that you’re eating?”

  “My lunch.” She opened a drawer, pulled out a plastic spoon, and dipped it into the cup. “Try it.” She held up the spoon.

  I tasted. “Mmm. Delicious. What is it?”

  “Orange-banana slush. I keep it frozen in the day-room fridge.” She sighed. “Of course, I’d rather have a cheeseburger, but this is much healthier. Plus, orange juice reduces stress. And believe me, this is a high-stress job. Nonstop stress, from the time I clock in to the time I clock out.” She took off her tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses and knuckled her eyes. “You said you wanted to see her on business, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Police business.”

  She put her glasses back on and frowned at the day’s calendar on her computer screen. “Well, I suppose I can move Internal Affairs to late afternoon and give you Quintana’s half hour. He’ll be pissed, but what else is new? Quintana makes a career out of letting people know he’s stressed.” She clicked a few keys. “How about one thirty to two, when the chief gets back from lunch?”

  I was glad that Ruby had said that I could take the rest of the day if I had to. “Great,” I said. “I’m just happy to get on her calendar. She’s a busy lady.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Connie said grimly. “Morning, noon, and night, that woman never stops. She doesn’t miss a beat and she never forgets anything. I don’t know how she does it. Me, I have to have a quiet evening with my feet up or I’m absolutely no good the next day. Plays havoc with my social life. Guys don’t like to date gi
rls who need to put their feet up in the evening.” She picked up her cup and spoon. “If something happens to her lunch and she gets back to the office early, do you want her to phone you?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “I’ll stay loose and keep my fingers crossed.”

  She made a face. “More likely, she’ll call and say she has to do such and such with so-and-so and tell me to call you and cancel. I’m apologizing right now for that,” she added, “in case I’m so stressed out that I forget to apologize when it happens.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t let her cancel, Con, please. Tell her I need to talk to her about the Kaufman case. And the MacDonald case, as well. The two are related.”

  Connie scowled at me over her glasses. “MacDonald? MacDonald?” She waved her spoon. “Who’s that? I don’t remember—”

  “As in Ronald. The old man who died of morphine poisoning last August and wasn’t found until he was grossly stinky.”

  “Oh, that one.” Connie wrinkled her nose. “Phew. I remember him. But that case has been closed for months. Maude Porterfield ruled—”

  “I know what Maude Porterfield ruled. Maude is a sweet old thing and we all love her dearly, but she isn’t infallible. If she had known then what I know now, she would have ruled differently, I promise you.” I tapped her desk with a finger for emphasis. “The chief needs to reopen that case, Con. Today, if not sooner. I’ll tell her why, in detail, when I see her.”

  “Well, that’s mildly interesting,” Connie said, tilting her head. “You’re telling me that this MacDonald thing is connected to the Kaufman case?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” I leaned forward, feeling urgent. “Listen, Con, if the chief says she wants to cancel, tell her that Kelly Kaufman was killed because she knew about MacDonald’s murder and she had a very good idea who did it and how and why—and that I know what Kelly knew.” I was lying. I didn’t know who. Not for sure.