The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Put your cell number in that email.” McQuaid slipped into his mock gangster growl. “Us indies, man, we don’t got no quittin’ time. But hey, old buddy. If Blackwell and me find us some fun tonight, we’ll be glad to let you know, so you can come and give us a hand.”

  Royce gave a sharp laugh. “You can forget that, ‘old buddy.’” McQuaid heard the clicking of a keyboard. “Glad to hear Blackie’s going with you,” Royce added. “He’s a good man. I’ll put my cell number in, but if you’ve got to call me, it’d better be good. My kid’s pitching tonight. Western Hills Little League. If we don’t get rained out, I aim to be in the front row of the bleachers.” He paused. “Haven’t you got a boy in Little League? Seems to me I remember something about that.”

  McQuaid thought of Brian and the girl. “Hell, Harry, that was seven, eight years ago. Brian’s in college now. He’s got a place of his own, off Oltorf in South Austin. With a roommate.”

  “No shit,” Royce said. “My, how time flies.”

  “It does that,” McQuaid said softly. A place of his own, with a roommate. A girl roommate. A lover. It was enough to make a man feel old. “Time sure as hell does fly.”

  • • •

  LIGHTNING was flickering but the rain was still stop-and-go a half hour later, when McQuaid slowed for a left turn off Limekiln Road west of Pecan Springs. He drove down the narrow gravel lane that led to the large Victorian house where he and China lived with their adopted daughter, Caitlin. He had already arranged to pick up Blackie at the Pecan Springs cop shop, where his partner was enjoying take-out Tex-Mex with the chief of police. Then they would drive down to New Braunfels to see what they could learn, if anything, at the Chisholm Road address Royce had emailed him. No point in going all the way down to San Antonio. Likely wouldn’t be anybody at the wrecking yard on a rainy Friday night.

  But Blackie—with whom McQuaid had talked by phone several moments before—was occupied, and the chores came first. McQuaid would feed Winchester and the cat, look in on Caitie’s flock of pet chickens, and pick up his bulletproof vest and a few other items. He ran mentally through his checklist for nighttime action: Glock and ammo, pepper spray, vest, LED Maglite, raingear, spotlight. He was trying to remember where he’d put that spotlight when he made the last turn and saw the beat-up red Ford Fiesta parked in his drive.

  His jaw dropped open then snapped shut. He narrowed his eyes. Hell and damnation. That was Sally’s car, the one she’d been driving since she totaled her Subaru last winter. What the devil was she doing here?

  And then he remembered Brian saying that he’d told his mother to check with his dad and China about staying with them. Taking her cue from the boy, Sally had apparently figured that the McQuaid house in Pecan Springs was a pretty good place to hide out from whatever she was afraid of. But instead of checking, she had pulled one of her usual dumbass tricks. Sally—or maybe Juanita was running things this week—had just shown up, here at the house, with the idea of doing whatever she damn well pleased first and asking permission later. That was the way she’d always operated. She was never going to change.

  He pulled up next to Sally’s car and turned off the ignition. The kitchen light was on, and there was a light in the dining room, too. She had obviously managed to let herself in, which wouldn’t have been hard, if she had remembered from the last time she’d stayed here that they kept the back door key under the third flowerpot to the right of the steps. He scowled, noticing that the back screen door was hanging open. She had probably let Winchester out, and there was no telling where the hell he’d wandered off to. The little guy was still new to the place. He couldn’t be relied on to stay in the yard—or find his way back home once he’d left it.

  McQuaid could feel the anger rising inside his chest like the world’s worst case of heartburn. Before he could do what he’d been planning to do tonight, he would have to hunt for the dog, as well as deal with his out-of-control ex-wife and her psycho sidekick. He narrowed his eyes. Well, he wasn’t going to let Sally get by with this kind of ill-mannered, immature behavior. Not this time, and not ever again. He was drawing the line. She wasn’t staying in his house and that was all there was to it. Period. Paragraph. The end.

  He yanked his phone out of the device holder and speed-dialed his mother in Seguin. After a brief chat with Caitie—who was a) worried about her chickens and b) excited about going fishing that afternoon with her Pawpaw and catching two big striped bass, bigger than the biggest striped bass Pawpaw himself had ever caught in the San Marcos River—he got his mother on the phone. She knew Sally pretty well, given that her son had been married to the woman for over five years, and she’d had enough acquaintance with Juanita, she often said, to last her for three or four lifetimes.

  “What is she hiding from this time?” she asked tartly. “Somebody she owes money to, I reckon.”

  Which brought McQuaid up short. Was it a good idea to put her up at his parents, where his daughter was also staying? What if Sally’s pursuer, whoever the hell he was, managed to track her to Seguin and cause trouble for Mom and Dad and Caitie? He considered that possibility for a moment, but it was so remote a chance that he discarded it.

  “I think she just needs a place to stay for a couple of days, Mom,” he said in a placating voice. “Everybody can use a break now and then, you know.”

  There was a silence. “Well, I suppose,” his mother said at last. “But she can’t come tonight. We’re going to have Caitie’s fried fish for supper and then she and I are going to the nursing home for my regular Friday night Bingo. Mr. Rizzo from down the block and Mr. Reilly Junior and Senior from the hardware store are coming to play poker with your father. If Sally can’t find anyplace else to stay, I suppose she can come tomorrow.” Her voice grew steely. “But you tell her she can’t come at all if she’s going to bring that friend of hers. That Juanita person.” McQuaid flinched, recognizing that I-am-laying-the-law-down tone from his high school years, when he and his friends had not always trod the straight and narrow. “You tell her if she’s thinking of bringing Juanita, they can both stay at the Motel 6 out on the highway. Your father and I are not having that one in this house ever again. You tell her now, you hear, Michael?”

  McQuaid sighed and said that he understood her reservations and he would certainly share them with Sally. He pocketed his cell phone and got out of the car, muttering curses. His ex-wife had to pick tonight, of all nights, to impose herself. Well, he supposed there wasn’t any harm in letting her stay, since it would be just one night. He wouldn’t be back from checking out McGown’s address until pretty late, and China surely wouldn’t mind if Sally slept in Brian’s room. He wasn’t entirely sure about that, but he figured he could explain the situation in a way that would help his wife understand why he had invited his ex-wife for a sleepover. First thing tomorrow, he would make sure Sally got down to Seguin, where his mother would make her behave—or pack her off to the Motel 6. Either way, she would be out of his hair.

  It wasn’t just the door to the screened-in back porch that was open, McQuaid saw as he went up the steps. The kitchen door was wide open, too, and when he went inside, he saw to his horror that Sally or Juanita or both must have had a meltdown. The kitchen—neat and tidy when McQuaid left that morning—was a huge mess.

  A blue nylon duffel bag was lying on the floor, a woman’s purse, open, next to it. Chairs lay on their sides. The door to the pantry was open, and cans and boxes were scattered across the pantry floor. Mr. P, Caitie’s orange tabby cat, hissed at him from the top of the refrigerator. In the corner, Winchester’s basket and water bowl were both upside down, and there were kibbles spilled across the floor. The knife rack on the counter beside the sink had been knocked over and the knives scattered. A saucer was broken in the sink. The flour canister that usually sat beside it had tipped onto the floor and the lid had come off. The flour was strewn in a powdery white arc, with footprints tracking through it
and around the table and out the hallway door.

  “Sally?” McQuaid shouted furiously. “Sally, where the hell are you? What in the devil do you think you’re doing? What—”

  He heard a plaintive whimper, and Winchester pushed one of the lower cupboard doors open and crept out, trembling all over. His large brown eyes were filled with apprehension, his lifelong expectation of calamity and catastrophe fully realized. He threw back his head, closed his eyes, and gave one long, doleful, desolate howl.

  “Winnie, poor boy,” McQuaid crooned, and gathered him up in his arms. “What has she done to you?” He checked to be sure the dog was all in one piece, then righted the basket and deposited Winchester in it, giving his head a reassuring pat. “You’ll be fine, guy. Just hang in there while I get to the bottom of this.” The dog gave him an accusing look, turned around in his bed, and tucked himself into a ball, his long ears draped over his eyes.

  McQuaid straightened up and raised his voice again. “Sally! Sally, damn it, what the hell is going on here?”

  No answer. He strode out into the hallway, following the floury footprints into the dining room, where a couple of chairs were upset and a potted fern on a stand in the corner had been knocked onto the floor, spilling damp dirt and a handful of decorative rocks across the carpet.

  And then on the opposite wall of the room, just above the wainscoting, he saw something that made his heart stop. It was a bloody handprint, the fingers widely splayed out, smearing a bloody trail several inches down the wall. And on the floor a few paces away lay a knife—a butcher knife from the rack in the kitchen—on a criss-crossing welter of white flour footprints. A pair of footprints left the welter and tracked the length of the room to the French doors, near which lay a woman’s white tennis sneaker, the laces still tied. The doors stood wide open. The tracks led out onto the brick patio, in the direction of the driveway. It was raining again, and the air in the room was damp and chilly.

  For a moment, McQuaid stood very still, staring at the bloody handprint on the wall, the knife, the open French doors, the sneaker, trying to put it all together. But then the irritation surfaced, on top of the confusion of other emotions. He knew Sally all too well, unfortunately. He thought it was entirely likely that she (or she and Juanita) had staged this melodramatic little charade to make it look like the guy she was running from—the guy she was afraid of—had followed her here and made off with her.

  And there was plenty of reason for him to think this. Sally had pulled a similar stunt once, when Brian was a baby. Clothes strewn across the floor, dishes broken, books pulled out of a bookcase, both baby and mom gone. McQuaid was a cop and cops always worried about the safety of their families. He had swallowed her cute little trick, hook, line, and sinker. He had felt pretty damned stupid—and mad as hell—when she showed up with the baby while the guys from the local station house were still investigating their “abduction.”

  But that was then and this was now, and when he knelt down to look carefully at the footprints, he saw that one set was small, a woman’s tennis sneaker, most likely a match to the sneaker beside the door. The other set—the pair leading to the French doors—had been made by heavy work boots. Large boots, size twelve easily, and the indentation in the plush carpet suggested that the wearer was pretty hefty, perhaps even carrying Sally, slung over his shoulder. What happened here looked like it had involved two people, one of them the man she was afraid of. Who was he? An angry lover? Somebody she owed money to? A business partner she (or Juanita) had double-crossed?

  But there was no point in standing around speculating. He had to get moving. He closed the doors and quickly searched the house: the downstairs room he used as an office, the laundry and utility rooms, the living room, the upstairs bedrooms, the bathrooms. He called Sally’s name, stopping frequently to listen for any sound. But there was no sound and no sign of her—no floury footprints on the stairs or in the other rooms, either.

  Back in the kitchen, McQuaid stood indecisively for a moment. He wished he could walk out, get in his truck, and forget about Sally until tomorrow or the next day—after Mantel was back in custody again. But he couldn’t. There was a lot of cop left in him, and he knew the drill.

  He pulled out his cell phone. The house was in Adams County, so he’d have to call the sheriff’s office and report this as an apparent abduction. The sheriff—Curt Chambers, another of his and Blackie’s fishing buddies—would dispatch a deputy or two, probably even come himself. The investigation would go on for a couple of hours at least, and like it or not, take priority over everything else. He would have to phone Blackie to let him know that their plan to check out McGown’s address in New Braunfels was on hold while he dealt with whatever had happened to Sally. He should probably also phone Royce and update him on the situation.

  But first, the sheriff.

  He was poised to punch in 911 when his phone buzzed in his hand. He felt a cold chill in his belly as he recognized the number.

  “Sally,” he said urgently. “Sally, where the hell are you? What happened? What’s going on?”

  There was a silence, then a grating, gravelly voice. An unmistakable voice. “You missin’ somebody, McQuaid? You lookin’ for your wife? Well, you can stop lookin’, right now. I told you I’d come for you, and I have, by damn. Lucky me—I’ve got your nearest and dearest. Pretty little thing, too.”

  McQuaid’s blood turned to ice. But when he replied, he managed an even, conversational tone, even a chuckle. “My wife? No, I’m not looking for my wife, Mantel. She’s out of town, where you can’t lay hands on her. That’s my ex-wife you’ve got.” Another chuckle, rueful now. He added, “You want her, Max, you can sure as hell keep her. But I’m telling you, man, you’ll be sorry. She may look cute and cuddly, but take it from me, that woman is the worst kind of trouble. You know what’s good for you, you’ll drop her off at the nearest shopping mall and forget you’ve ever seen her.”

  “Don’t give me that horseshit, funny man,” Mantel growled. “What would your ex-wife be doing in your kitchen, feedin’ your damn dog? Nope, I got me the right one. Snatched her right outta your house.” His voice took on an edge. “Dunno about cute and cuddly, though. She’s a reg’lar wildcat. We had us a tussle over one of them big kitchen knives before I knocked her silly and hauled her outta there.” He snorted. “You don’t believe me, McQuaid? Just you listen to this.”

  There was a scuffle and a muted scream, and then Sally’s voice, low and frantic, terrified. “Mike! Mike, they’re going to kill me! Come and get me, Mike. Please!” She was sobbing hysterically now.

  They’re going to kill me. So Mantel wasn’t alone. “Where are you?” McQuaid asked roughly. She probably didn’t know, but it was worth a shot.

  “In a single-wide, out in the country somewhere, no idea where. Please, Mike,” she wailed. “Help me. Oh, help—” But her plea was cut off, as if somebody had clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Believe me now, funny man?” Mantel laughed, that crazy, unmistakable laugh.

  “You’ve made a stupid mistake, Max,” McQuaid growled. “She’s not my wife. But I don’t suppose that makes a helluva lot of difference to you. Where are you? What do you want from me?”

  “What do I want?” Another laugh, broken off sharply. “Well, hell, you’re such a smart fella, McQuaid, college grad, hot-shot cop. You oughta be able to figure it out. You’re the one who sent me to Huntsville. You could’ve ended it, quick and easy, the night you pointed your gun at me. That would’ve been the polite thing to do. Instead—” He made an ugly noise. “Instead, I’ve been buried in that damn prison, waiting for my execution. But that don’t matter none now. I got the prosecutor and your old partner and a couple of witnesses, and you’re next on my list. I’ll be more’n happy to trade your pretty little wife for you.” His voice roughened. “But you’ll have to come and get her. I ain’t runnin’ no delivery service.”

 
And then McQuaid understood.

  Instead of walking into the silly little trap he had set—the Lions Club barbecue, which had been a stupid idea from the get-go—Mantel had just set a trap for him, with Sally as the bait. And he was being pulled into it. He had no choice.

  There was a despairing wail in the background. “Mike, please! Don’t argue with him. He’s a brute. Just come and get me!”

  He forced himself to be cool. “Okay, Mantel. So give me an address. Where am I supposed to pick up this ex-wife of mine?”

  Mantel snickered. “You keep calling her that, man, she’s gonna be really pissed at you. She’s hot enough now—I’d hate to see her when she’s really mad.”

  “Tell me where I can find you,” McQuaid said tersely. He was thinking of the two dead girls in Houston, the witnesses at Mantel’s trial. Of the DA and his wife. Of Carl. Of Sally and what they might do to her. And then he thought: But it’s not Sally that Mantel wants. She’s just a means to an end. I’m the one he’s after. “Come on, give me an address, Mantel.”

  “Not so fast.” Mantel’s voice hardened. “I ain’t ready to hand this chick over just yet. You stay with your phone and hang tight, McQuaid. I’ll get back to you with instructions.” The call went dead.

  McQuaid thrust his phone in his pocket and strode toward the gun safe in his office.

  No need to call the sheriff now.

  Time to get his gear, pick up Blackie, and hit the road.

  Time to move.

  Chapter Eleven

  Texas is the site of the first vineyard in North America. Established around 1659, a century earlier than plantings in Virginia or California, it was the work of Franciscan priests—and the start of something big.

  The fifth-largest wine-producing state in the nation, Texas now has almost 4,500 acres of vineyards under cultivation. Some 350 commercial wineries that currently produce over 1.5 million gallons of wine a year, from some two dozen different grape varieties. The flourishing wine industry contributes more than $1.88 billion annually to the Texas economy. Recently, Wine Enthusiast magazine rated the scenic Texas Hill Country region outside of Austin among its ten top wine-travel destinations worldwide, saying that wine lovers can enjoy “the romance of the Old West” as they navigate “a sea of cowboy hats and pickup trucks.”