by Diana Palmer
“I’ll lose my pension,” the warden was murmuring.
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Brannon told him. “I’m working for Simon Hart, the state attorney general. I’ll make sure he knows the situation. You can’t possibly keep up personally with several hundred inmate histories. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s my prison,” Harris said harshly. “I should be able to do it.”
“None of us are superhuman,” Brannon said. “I’d like hard copy of that file, if you don’t mind.”
“I can do that, at least,” Harris said, crestfallen. He pushed the button to print out the file and rose to get it from a tray across the room. He waited for it to finish, and collected the pages into a new file folder, presenting them to Brannon. “Get the person who did this,” he said.
“See that?” Brannon asked, indicating his Ranger badge. “We never quit.”
The warden managed a smile. “Thanks.”
“We’re all doing the job. Thank you.”
He took his file and left.
The sun was out for Jennings’s funeral. It was a warm day, and there wasn’t much traffic as Josette sat beside Brannon, with a mothball-scented Holliman seated in the back, as Brannon pulled up at the cemetery minutes before Jennings’s funeral.
Brannon helped Holliman out and escorted the old gentleman to the graveside, with Josette bringing up the rear.
There weren’t a lot of people present, and most of them were law enforcement. Brannon recognized the sheriff, the local police chief, a couple of plainclothes detectives and Mrs. Jennings, in an obviously borrowed black dress. Josette had phoned Mrs. Danton and had her ask Mrs. Jennings if she wanted Brannon to drive her to the funeral. But Mrs. Danton phoned back and told Josette that the sheriff had already offered to transport the little old lady.
It was easy to see that the burial was being paid for by the taxpayers, since Mrs. Jennings very obviously had nothing left after the fire. There was a hole and a coffin, but none of the niceties that would have gone with a proper funeral.
Josette looked at the simple pine coffin and remembered, all too well, her parents’ funerals. At least they’d had insurance, so there was a service in church and then a drive to the cemetery for burial. Poor Dale Jennings had only a hole in the ground.
She remembered him, tall and fair and a little cocky, only four years older than she was. His brashness and the abrupt way he had with people made it hard for him to make friends. But Josette had seen through the protective shell to the man underneath. Not that she was blind to his lack of honesty, which was all too apparent. When he’d asked her to a party at Webb’s, she’d debated about going. But Marc Brannon had just walked out on her and her ego was badly bruised. She’d expected Brannon to show up at his friend Bib Webb’s party, and that was the only reason she’d accepted Dale’s invitation. What a difference there might have been if Brannon had come that night.
She stared at the coffin with sad eyes. It seemed such a waste. If only Dale had stayed in prison. Even if it was for his mother’s sake, his own greed had seen him done in by a bullet. Blackmail was repulsive, regardless of the reason, Josette thought. There was a price for such underhanded conduct, and Dale had paid it.
She thought of her father, an honest man who’d never done a thing to hurt any other human being. Then she thought of Dale, in that lonely grave on the outskirts of the cemetery, in a mound of earth that would only be marked by a simple white card in a metal holder with a plastic face. Over the years, it would fade until it was no longer recognizable. And it would be as if Dale Jennings of San Antonio, Texas, had never even been born.
A movement caught her eye, and she watched as Jack Holliman went right to his sister and hugged her close.
“They killed my baby, Jack,” the white-haired old woman said huskily, tears pouring down her lean, pale face. “Shot him down in the street like a dog.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He patted her back awkwardly.
Two men were standing by the coffin. One, well-groomed and wearing a nice suit, had to be the funeral director. The other, a slight man with thinning hair and about Dale’s age, clutched a Bible. The minister, she assumed. Josette noticed the funeral home director looking impatient, and she turned and started moving the elderly couple toward the grave. There wasn’t even a tent to shelter silver hair from the blistering sun, or folding chairs to take the weight off arthritic legs.
The coffin was a cheap one, and the service was very brief. The minister was soft-spoken and a little nervous as he spoke about Dale Jennings, whom he said he never met. He read a couple of lines of scripture, endearing himself to Josette when he stumbled over the pronunciation of some of the words. Then he led a prayer, still inarticulate, and folded his Bible against his hip before he walked over to offer his condolences to the elderly people, with the crisp black cover of the Bible held tightly in his hand. A wide gold ring on his little finger caught the sun and sparkled.
That was when Josette noticed that he was dressed very much like Mrs. Jennings and her brother, in clothes which were functional rather than decorative. She realized also that he’d probably offered to conduct the service out of his own generosity rather than for any monetary concession. She decided that she’d dig into her own purse for that compensation, but she was a minute too late. She saw Brannon pause beside the minister and place a bill gently in his hands. She had to turn away so that Brannon wouldn’t see the mist over her eyes. He had a big heart. It was one of so many things she loved about him.
Josette composed herself and turned her attention to the small crowd as Brannon paused to talk to the sheriff. Brannon, too, was looking around for anyone in the small crowd who shouldn’t have been there. But it would have been too obvious for the killer to join in.
“Unless you think the sheriff or one of those detectives is the culprit, we’re out of luck,” Brannon murmured to her.
“I don’t want to get old, and I don’t want to die poor,” she said stiffly.
“Don’t look at me,” he returned, shifting his gaze to Holliman. “I expect I’ll end up packed in mothballs like that suit Holliman’s wearing, greeting visitors with a shotgun and spending the hour before I eat trying to remember where I put my false teeth.”
“Oh, that was wicked,” she said softly, trying not to smile. It wasn’t an occasion for humor.
“Notice the minister isn’t standing too close to him,” he pointed out. “The smell of the mothballs is overpowering.” He looked down at her with concern she didn’t see. “This must be rough for you.”
Her gaze flew up to his. It embarrassed her that he knew. She moved one shoulder in her neat black suit. That and a navy blue one were the only clothes she’d packed, besides her gown and robe. There wasn’t much of a choice of outfits.
“You’ve lost your parents, too,” she pointed out.
“With more distance between their deaths, though,” he replied. His face was hard as he looked toward the grave. “And I didn’t care that my father died.”
She’d never heard him mention his father, in all the time she’d known him. She remembered a few low whispers around Jacobsville, that the Brannon kids had a tough life, but she’d assumed it was because their mother was widowed and sick a lot.
“Didn’t you love him?” she asked involuntarily.
“No.”
A single word, endowed with more sarcasm and bitterness than he might have realized.
She waited, but he didn’t say another word. The minister moved on and he went to escort the old people back to the truck.
“We’ll drive you to your apartment, Mrs. Jennings, and save the sheriff a trip,” he told her, revealing that he knew how she’d arrived.
The sheriff thanked him and made their goodbyes, along with the detectives. Brannon helped the old people into the truck and got in beside Josette. Minutes later, they disembarked at the small efficiency apartment the social worker had found for Mrs. Jennings just off the Floresville road
near Elmendorf.
“It ain’t much,” she said wearily as she pulled out her key. “But it’s a roof over my head.”
She unlocked the door and invited them inside. “I’ll make some coffee.”
“No, you won’t,” Josette said. She drew Brannon to one side and slipped him a ten-dollar bill. “Would you go get them a bucket of chicken and the fixings, and some cups of coffee?”
He pushed the money back into her hand and closed her fingers around it. “You’re still a sucker for lost causes,” he said huskily. “I’ll get the chicken, and the coffee. You see what you can find out from her. Back in a minute.”
She watched him go with a sense of breathlessness. He still got to her. It was disturbing.
She sat down on the sofa next to Mrs. Jennings and passed her a tissue. The old woman had been very dignified and quiet at the funeral, but it was all catching up with her now. She dissolved into tears. Mr. Holliman was trying his best not to be affected by it, sitting stoically in his chair until his sister calmed down.
“He was good to me,” she told Josette in a husky old voice. “No matter what else he did, he was a good son.”
“He didn’t kill anyone, Mrs. Jennings, least of all Henry Garner,” Josette said firmly, and with conviction. “I never doubted that for an instant. I just couldn’t convince anyone else, with so much evidence against him.”
“He never had no blackjack,” the old woman said harshly. “Never liked physical violence at all.”
“No, he didn’t,” Holliman added firmly. “I couldn’t even teach the boy to shoot a gun. He was scared of them.”
“I know he did some bad things, Miss Langley,” Mrs. Jennings continued, wiping her nose with the tissue, “but he wouldn’t hurt an old man.”
“I’m certain of that,” Josette replied. She leaned forward. “Mrs. Jennings, did Dale ever leave a package with you, something he wanted you to put up and keep for him?”
Old man Holliman shifted in his chair. Mrs. Jennings frowned, brushing at her mouth, and avoided Josette’s eyes. “He did once say he had something that needed a safe place. But he never brought it to me,” she said.
“Did he say what he did with it?” Josette continued, warming to her subject.
“No. He just said that woman wanted it.”
“Woman?” Josette asked quickly. “What woman?”
“Don’t know much about her,” the older woman told her. “He mentioned her once or twice, said she was helping him with this new job he’d got. He thought she was real special, but he wouldn’t bring her to see me, even when I asked. He said she was real shy, you see. He was talking about marrying her, but he said he didn’t have enough money to suit her. He was always talking about getting enough to make her happy. He said she wanted him to keep that package in a real safe place. She wanted him to let her keep it, but he wouldn’t give it to her. He said she’d be in danger if she had it. I asked,” she added, glancing at Josette, “but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”
This was something new. It was exciting to Josette that what had seemed a dead end was beginning to show promise.
“Did he say where the woman lived, what she did for a living?” Josette pressed.
“No. But he was seeing her before that mess he got into, and he worked here in San Antonio. I guessed she was a local girl. Oh, and he did say she loved peppermints. He was forever buying her fancy ones, whenever he went to the drugstore to pick up my medicine for me.”
Peppermints. Josette dug out her pad and pen and wrote it down.
“Did he ever mention a man named Jake Marsh?” she persisted.
Mrs. Jennings and the old man exchanged a look, but the old woman just shook her head. “Not that I recall. He just talked about that woman.”
“A bad woman can be the ruin of a good man,” Holliman said sadly.
“No doubt about that,” Mrs. Jennings retorted.
“Can you remember anything else he might have said about her?” Josette pressed.
“Well, he didn’t say a whole lot about her,” she repeated. “Not even what she looked like, although my Dale liked a good-looker. I don’t think he would have been interested in an ugly girl.”
“No, I don’t either,” Josette replied, but she was wondering about that, because he’d asked her to the Webb’s party the night of the murder. Josette had a passable figure, but her face was just ordinary, not pretty, and she wore glasses. Funny, she hadn’t thought of that until now.
“Didn’t recognize that minister,” Holliman murmured. “Did you?”
His sister shook her head. “I asked the funeral home director if he could find somebody,” she replied. “He didn’t even have to look. That young fellow volunteered to do it. Nice young fellow.”
Holliman was about to say something when the front door opened and Brannon came in with a big sack of food, and a boxful of coffee cups. By the time they finished the meal, the thread of conversation was lost.
Later, Brannon took Holliman home before he drove Josette back to her hotel and told her what he and the warden had discovered.
“We’ve got a guy in our office, back in Austin,” she told him. “Phil Douglas. He gives Simon headaches, because he’s so overeager, but he’s a real hacker. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about computers. Maybe he could track down whoever changed those records.”
“We’ve got people working on it, but you might give him a shot at it,” Brannon replied immediately. “It had to take someone specialized. I know computers, but I couldn’t get into protected files, even with my clearance.”
“Neither could I,” she agreed. “Something else—Mrs. Jennings said Dale was involved with a woman when Garner was murdered. She said he was obsessed with getting enough money to keep her happy, and that there was some sort of package involved. But Mrs. Jennings never saw it.”
He’d already parked the truck near her hotel room. He leaned back in the seat and folded his arms over his broad chest. “A woman. Did she know what this woman looked like?”
“No. He didn’t tell her much, just that the woman was smart and that she liked fancy candy.”
“It’s probably a dead end.”
“That’s what I thought,” Josette agreed. She turned her purse over in her lap. “That was nice of you, slipping the minister money for preaching the funeral. I was going to do it, if you hadn’t. He was sweet.”
“Not long at the job, either, apparently,” he mused, smiling. “His Bible was brand-new.”
“He did a good job, for somebody who didn’t know Dale.”
He studied her from under the brim of his dress Stetson. “I hate funerals.”
“Me, too, Brannon,” she confessed. “But this one went with the job. I felt sorry for his mother and his uncle.”
“They’re good people. Sometimes the worst offenders come from the best families.”
“I’ve learned that.”
He studied her openly, one eye narrowed. “Tomorrow, I’m going to check out bank records and see if Jennings made any large deposits recently. You might phone your office and get that computer expert to work.”
“I will. Thanks for driving today.”
He shrugged. “I don’t really feel comfortable riding with anyone else.”
“I noticed. You were always like that. You can’t give up control, can you, Brannon?” she added.
His face hardened. “I never had any when I was a kid. My father told me what to do, where to go, how to breathe. Gretchen was only ten, too young to understand much about how things were, but I wasn’t. My mother couldn’t call her soul her own. He upset her constantly. I kept him away from Gretchen. She never even knew how dangerous he was.”
“At least he didn’t take a short quirt to her,” she said, recalling something that had happened to her friend Christabel at the age of sixteen.
He nodded. “Judd Dunn sent Christabel’s father to jail for that, after he’d beaten him within an inch of his life. Christabel’s protests and her mot
her’s didn’t faze him. Christabel almost died from the attack. Her back was in ribbons when her father got through with her. All because she tried to stop him from beating a horse.”
“Are she and Judd still married?” she asked, because Judd was a good friend of his, and a fellow Texas Ranger.
“Yes.” He smiled involuntarily. “And still not living together. She’s, what, almost twenty-one now?”
“She was sixteen when he married her, for no other reason than to take care of her and her mother,” she agreed. “Her father had no sooner got out of jail than he got drunk again and wrecked his car. He died of his injuries, so Judd still has the responsibility for the ranch, not to mention Christabel and her mother. You’d think he’d be glad to let her take over the ranch, and have the marriage annulled. She wrote me that a man she knows wants to marry her.”
“That’s what Judd told me,” he commented, pushing his hat back on his head. “But he doesn’t approve of her choice, and I wouldn’t give a fig for Christabel’s chances of an annulment.”
She wondered about that. She didn’t add that Christabel had also written her that she was either going to make Judd wild for her and seduce him, or make him give her up. It would be interesting to know who won that contest of wills.
His pale eyes slid over her body in the neat-fitting dark suit, down the long skirt to her ankles and back up to the high-buttoned white blouse she wore with the suit. “You always button the collar of your blouses,” he commented. “And wear skirts down to the ankles. I wish you’d stayed in therapy, Josette. You don’t move with the times.”
“My life was ruined because I tried to.”
The statement was bitter, full of self-recrimination. He laid his arm across the back of his seat and his pale eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to sacrifice your principles to fit in these days,” he said. “A lot of women prefer being celibate to risking their lives, and they’re not afraid to say so. Sex is dangerous. Even men think twice before they indulge.”