Cat's Claw

by Susan Wittig Albert

  But she only said, “When this is all over, let’s sit down over a cup of tea and some of your fresh-baked cookies and talk about it, China. In the meanwhile—”

  “I know,” China said with a sympathetic look. “In the meanwhile, you can’t tell me what’s going on.” She shook her head ruefully. “Actually, I’m not sorry, Sheila. I don’t envy you your job. After what we saw here today—down by the creek and in that bedroom—I’m glad to be an ordinary citizen. I can go back to my quiet herb shop and let you and your cops deal with the ugly stuff.” Her mouth tightened. “And after seeing those girls’ photos, I personally believe that cat gave George Timms exactly what he deserved. If Ruby were here, she’d probably tell us that it’s natural justice, arranged by the universe in payment for his sins.”

  “I’d prefer not to trust the universe,” Sheila said wryly. “Although I have to admit that the justice system doesn’t always do the best job.” She had seen far too many cases where the innocent paid the price and the guilty got off scot-free, some of them aided and abetted in their escape by their defense lawyers. But in this instance, she had to agree that if the mountain lion hadn’t killed George Timms, it was likely that his cache of secret photographs would never have come to light. Depending, of course, on what they found on Timms’ computer, and whether it would have been enough to get a search warrant for both his house in town and this place.

  China nodded. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got to get to work—and to pleasanter things.” She paused, her face darkening. “Except that I’m concerned about our guys. I try to remind myself that Americans are going back and forth across the border every day, thousands of them. But that doesn’t help. I still worry.”

  “I know,” Sheila said. “I try not to think about it, but I’m worried, too—which of course doesn’t do anybody any good.”

  Unexpectedly, China leaned forward and put her arms around Sheila. “They’ll be okay,” she said, with a strong, solid hug. “And so will we.”

  She lifted a hand in good-bye and was gone.

  A half-hour later, Sheila and Bartlett stood in the kitchen, getting ready to head back to town. He had taped the front and back entrances with yellow plastic crime-scene tape. While he was doing that and locating the keys to Timms’ house, Sheila had a phone conversation with Sheriff Chambers.

  After her brief explanation of what their preliminary search had turned up, the sheriff had agreed that the house wasn’t part of his crime scene. But he had also agreed to post an officer out front.

  “I’ve got to have somebody directing traffic, anyway,” he said. “When we’re done out there and ready to leave, I’ll let you know and you can post one of your officers.” He had also said an immediate yes to her request to have Timms’ body fingerprinted. The prints would be needed for exclusion purposes here at the house and on the laptop Annetta Blount was working on. He also reported that the county forensics team would have a preliminary report later in the day.

  “Sounds like you folks have your hands full,” he added. “You need any additional assistance, you let me know. Y’hear?” He paused. “One of our guys told me that Blackie is making a trip to Juárez to try to locate that missing kid.”

  “Yes,” Sheila said. She could hear the concern in Chamber’s voice and it reminded her of her own—the worry she had been trying to bury. “He and Mike McQuaid are planning to cross today.”

  “Tell the truth, it’s not something I’d want to do.” Chambers cleared his throat. “You talk to Blackie, you tell him luck from me, Sheila. Hope the job goes okay. That’s a dangerous place down there, whatever the mission.”

  “Thanks, Curt,” Sheila had said. “I’ll do that.”

  Now, she pushed the worry out of her mind and tried to pay attention to Bartlett, who was filling her in on his activities of the morning. Before she had interrupted him with news of Timm’s death, he had completed his interview with Kirk’s contract worker, Dennis Martin. He had caught him at his apartment before he left for the shop.

  The interview had not produced any new information, but Martin had confirmed what Richie Potts had told Sheila the night before: that Jason Hatch had been let go because of some kind of difficulty with a customer. What it was, exactly, Martin didn’t know, but it had made Kirk really angry. “Steaming” was the way Martin had described it. And no, he hadn’t worked on Timms’ computer, Martin said, although he knew where it was because he saw Henry Palmer putting it into the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. He claimed that he hadn’t touched it. Bartlett had sent him to the station to be fingerprinted.

  “That should take care of everybody who might have had a shot at that computer,” Sheila said thoughtfully. “Except for Hatch, of course. We’ll have Timms’ prints before we leave here. We’ve already got Palmer’s, Potts’, Martin’s, and Kirk’s.”

  Bartlett lit a cigarette. “If these people are telling the truth, the only prints we should find on the computer are Timms’ and Palmer’s. Anybody else’s prints show up, he’s on our blackmail suspect list.” He blew out a stream of smoke. “I’ve got Matheson working on a summary of Kirk’s movements for forty-eight hours before his death.”

  Sheila took out her notebook and flipped a couple of pages, catching up. “What about the autopsy? Today, is it?”

  Bartlett nodded. “I talked to Morse as I was driving out here. She’ll phone when she’s ready to start the autopsy. One of us needs to be there. You or me?”

  “Your call,” Sheila said.

  Bartlett flicked his cigarette ash. “My case, too. I’ll take it.” He looked at her. “Next dead body is yours.”

  “Next dead body,” Sheila said wryly, “we’ll haul Hardin back here to do his share.”

  “I’ll go for that,” Bartlett said, and grinned easily. “On the autopsy, there are two major questions we’re interested in, right? Whether there’s any stippling around the entry wound and whether there’s gunpowder residue on the hands.”

  “We’ll also want the bullet—or the fragments,” Sheila reminded him. “There wasn’t any exit wound, so it’s still in Kirk’s skull. The angle of entry would be good if Morse can get it, but she may not be able to.” The path of a bullet through hard and soft tissue was often erratic, and it would require careful examination to determine the angle.

  “Right.” Cigarette in his mouth, Bartlett made a couple of notes. “Did you pick up anything in the Kirk house this morning?”

  “Several things,” Sheila said. “In fact, there’s one that I’d like to follow up on this morning. There’s a message on the answering machine from a woman named Tina. Tina Simpson. I’d like to have a talk with her. She sent Kirk copies of a couple of premium notices. Looks like somebody was paying the bill for a million-dollar life insurance policy on him.”

  Bartlett frowned. “The wife?”

  “No. This is in addition to the policy Kirk took out on himself. Two hundred fifty thousand on that one, with the wife as the beneficiary, according to her. No idea who the beneficiary is on the larger one.”

  “A million bucks sounds like a pretty fair motive to me,” Bartlett said. “Back to the blackmail. I’ll check with Butch on the fingerprint situation. If we get a match on Timms’ computer with one of the other contract guys, Hatch isn’t so urgent. If we don’t get a match, I’ll put out an APB on him as a person of interest.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it out in the gravel. “Guess I’m ready to head back to town.”

  Sheila glanced around. There was nothing more they could do until the team came in and started its work. Meanwhile, there was plenty of work waiting in Pecan Springs.

  “You go on,” she said. “I’m going to take a quick walk through the rest of the house. I’ll lock up.”

  The tour produced nothing of interest, although she knew that an intensive search would have to be made. When she locked the place and went out to the Impala, she was met by a deputy with a pair of fingerprint cards—Timms’ prints, taken from his body. As she was sig
ning for them, another deputy arrived, with orders to station herself in front of the house. Sheila talked to her for a few minutes, leaving instructions that anyone who attempted to enter should be questioned, logged, and detained for more questioning, if that seemed warranted.

  Whatever else was inside Timms’ house was going to wait, undisturbed, until they had the opportunity to do a thorough search.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Another “hold-tight” herb is the devil’s claw (Proboscidea parviflora ssp. parviflora), a pretty pink-flowering annual that grows in deserts and arid uplands. Its sinister common name refers to the seed capsule, which splits open at one end into two curved horns or claws. These claws readily cling to any passing animal or human, so that the seeds may be widely distributed. The fresh green pods and dried black seed capsules were used for food and in basketry by Native American tribes of the southwestern United States.

  The plant was also considered medicinal and was used to treat joint pain and rheumatism. Painted and decorated, the dried devil’s claws have a striking appearance and are often used for jewelry and other crafts.

  China Bayles

  “Herbs That Hold Fast”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  I cannot begin to tell you how glad I was to open the door of Thyme and Seasons, take a deep breath of the shop’s sweet, earthy fragrances, and feel Khat winding his sinuous self around my ankles, rumbling his velvet-throated glad-to-see-you purr. After what I had encountered that morning, my little shop felt like a dream of paradise, a safe haven against the ugly world outside. There was only one other thing I needed: to wash my hands. A gargle wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

  For once, I was glad to see that it was a slow morning at the shop. There were a couple of women outside, walking through the medicinal garden and comparing notes on herbs they wanted to buy. Inside, a mom was browsing through the soaps and lotions while her pigtailed little girl, dressed in white bib overalls and a yellow ruffled blouse, was sitting in the child’s rocking chair that I keep in the corner, humming as she turned the pages of a book. It was such a sweetly innocent picture that I could have hugged the little girl. But I didn’t. Some affections are appropriate. Others are not—witness what I had seen in Timms’ bedroom. I’d save my hugs for Caitie.

  Ramona was perched on the stool behind the counter, painting her nails. She looked up as I came in and raised her voice. “Ruby!” she called. “China’s here!” She didn’t add finally, but her tone implied it.

  “I’ll be here after I’ve washed my hands,” I told her, and headed for the tiny restroom under the stairs. We’ve painted the floor and walls and decorated it with posters of Texas wildflowers, and there’s always a small bowl of fresh green herbs on the commode. But I didn’t just wash my hands. I scrubbed them as hard as I could, using plenty of rosemary soap and the hottest water I could bear. As it rushed through my fingers, I bent over to take a deep, full breath of the soap’s cleansing scent. And for good measure, I went into the tearoom kitchen and got out the bottle of sage gargle I’d made the week before, a strong sage tea with a couple of spoonfuls of cider vinegar added. Back in the bathroom, I swished out my mouth.

  But when I was finished, I felt only a little better. Timms’ death had been violent and ugly, but it was a clean kill: a strong, skilled predator obeying an urgent instinct, taking the opportunity that presented itself, killing its prey without anger or malice or greed. But Timms himself had been a predator, and his victims would suffer for much longer than he had. After what I had seen on the wall of that bedroom, it was going to be a while before I felt entirely clean again. I was only glad that I could escape here, to a place that looks pretty and smells good and attracts pleasant people—moms and little children and people who love plants. I was even more glad that I didn’t have to do what Sheila was doing right now. For the life of me, I don’t know how she does it, how any police officer does it, really. But I reminded myself that they do it for us, and that instead of relief, I ought to be feeling gratitude.

  As I came out of the bathroom drying my hands on a paper towel, Ruby bustled through the door that connects her shop to mine. She was wearing her weirdest Queen-of-the-Jungle makeup, complete with amber-tinted contacts and a pair of furry faux eyelashes. She was dressed in a pair of skin-tight black leggings with three half-dollar-sized gold buttons at each ankle, a silky leopard-print top with a boat neck and long, tight sleeves. Around her neck was a curious necklace of devil’s claw seedpods, painted in bright colors and decorated with feathers and beads. If you’re not used to Ruby, her bizarre style is likely to startle you, but this morning I found it wonderfully comforting. The world beyond our shops had gone completely and totally crazy. Ruby, on the other hand, was completely and totally normal.

  “Ruby,” I said happily, “you’re gorgeous. That necklace is wild.”

  “Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, fingering the painted pods. “These are magic, you know. When you’re wearing devil’s claws, you’re safe. They frighten away the evil spirits, so nothing bad can harm you.” Her long fake fingernails were painted with gold and brown stripes. They didn’t quite look like claws, but almost. “When you mentioned the police, I began to worry, China. Where have you been?” She gave me a closer look. “Are you okay? What happened to you?”

  Over the phone, I had told Ruby only that I would be late because I was waiting for the sheriff’s deputies to arrive at the scene of what looked like an accident, and asked if somebody was available to open the shop for me. I thought I should save the gory details until later, when I could take the time to answer her questions. Now was later.

  “It wasn’t me it happened to, Ruby,” I said soberly. “It was George Timms.”

  “Who’s George Timms?” Ramona wanted to know. Her question took me by surprise. I had forgotten that she hadn’t been around here long enough to recognize his name and be impressed.

  “George Timms is one of Pecan Springs’ biggest big shots,” Ruby told her. “He owns the Chevy dealership and property all over town. And he’s friends with everybody—the mayor, the city council. He gets his picture in the paper almost every week.” She looked at me, frowning, her head on one side. “What happened to him, China?”

  “A mountain lion happened to him,” I said.

  “A mountain lion!” Ruby and Ramona exclaimed, in unison.

  Keeping my voice low so that I wouldn’t alarm the customer and her little girl, I told them the first part of the story, the part where I found Timms’ faceless body down by the creek, buried under a tidy pile of twigs. The rest of it—the photographs in Timms’ bedroom—was a separate matter, as was the blackmail situation, which might or might not be related to Larry Kirk’s murder. That was Sheila’s territory, and I didn’t want to get into it. Not now, anyway. Smart Cookie would tell us about it when she had the case wrapped and ready to turn over to the DA.

  And anyway, the mountain lion was more than enough for them to handle right now. Both Ruby’s and Ramona’s cheeks were pale and their eyes wide and frightened by the time I finished telling them what I had seen—most of it, anyway. I left out a few of the gorier details, like the rip in Timms’ belly and the Nike-clad foot.

  “That’s grisly, China!” Ruby cried. She clutched at her necklace, as if it might save her from a similar fate. “Killed by a mountain lion! What a horrible way to die!”

  “It’s unimaginable,” Ramona whispered thinly. “I hope they shoot the beast! The idea that in this day and age, a person could be mauled to death by a brutal wild animal—”

  “It’s the natural order of things,” I countered, cutting Ramona off. “The mountain lions were here first.” It was my considered opinion that the lion had given Timms pretty much what he deserved, and that the jury was still out as to which of the two was the real “brutal wild animal.” But I didn’t share that. Instead, I said, “It’s pretty likely that the lion is already dead,” I said, and told them about the one that Tom Banner had shot.

 
; “So that’s it,” I said, when I had finished. “Thank you for covering for me here at the shop, Ramona. I really appreciate it. And now that we’ve all heard the story, I vote that we go back to work. I for one am certainly ready to stop thinking about this stuff.” I looked in the direction of the customer and saw that she was still busy with her browsing.

  “But we can’t go back to work, China,” Ruby said, very seriously. “Not just yet, anyway. There are some ladies who are anxious to talk to you about something important.” She gestured toward the door to the tearoom. “I gave them a table and a pot of tea and a plate of cookies. Now that you’re here, they’ll be very glad to see you.” To her sister, she added, “Ramona, if you don’t mind, you could keep an eye on both shops for us while China and I sit down with a cup of tea and talk to the ladies. I don’t think it’ll take too long.”

  “I hope not,” Ramona said. “I promised Molly McGregor that I’d stop in and see her this morning, so we could continue our talk about the possibility of my going into business with her at the Hobbit House. I had to break our date yesterday, you know.”

  I was frowning. “What ladies?” I asked. “Really, Ruby, I’m certainly ready to sit down with a cup of tea, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather skip the powwow with—”

  “Sorry,” Ruby said regretfully. “You can’t skip it. They’ve been waiting for almost an hour. They don’t think Larry Kirk killed himself.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice confidentially, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that the customer wasn’t listening. “They think they know who did it.”

  She had my attention. “They think what?” I asked, startled. “Who are they?”

  “The Texas Stars,” she replied. “You know, the quilting club.”