The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Boyd’s truck,” Chet remarked. “I recognize his bumper light bar. Should be four lights on that bar but there’s only three. One of the bulbs is burned out, and he hasn’t gotten around to replacing it.” He shook his head. “The guy is like that, you know? He’s got good ideas, but he’s kind of careless with—”

  At that moment, the truck lights disappeared. “What’s going on?” I asked, puzzled. “Did he turn his lights out?”

  “Switched them off or pulled off the road,” Chet said. “Or both. That is weird. Wonder what he’s doing—and where he’s been.”

  “To see Maddie, maybe,” I suggested, and then bit my tongue. I didn’t need to remind Chet that Boyd and Maddie were a thing.

  “Probably—although this road is a little out of his way.” Chet’s mouth tightened. “And I don’t understand why he’d cut his lights. No reason for him to do that—unless he’s trying to keep us from seeing him. In which case, he’s probably pulled off. There’s a cottonwood grove up there on our right.”

  “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “Without a doubt. That burned-out light is like a missing tooth. At night, you can spot it a couple of hundred yards away.” Chet sighed. “You’re probably right—he’s been with Maddie. They’ve been spending a lot of evenings together, that’s for sure.” His voice took on an ironic edge. “I guess she’s trying to figure out if she wants to spend the rest of her life with the jerk.”

  There was nothing much I could say to that, and Chet seemed to have lapsed into despondency. As we drove past the clump of cottonwoods where he thought Boyd had pulled off, we peered into the darkness, searching. But we couldn’t see a thing. We made the rest of the drive in silence.

  The lights were on in our cabin and Pete’s truck was not parked in front beside Big Red Mama, so I figured Ruby was already home from her date and it was safe to go in. I wouldn’t be interrupting anything . . . well, intensely personal.

  I picked up the bag Andrea had given me and glanced toward Sofia’s cabin, wondering if it was too late to deliver the cake and wine. But the lights were out. Sofia must have gone to bed. Her goodies would have to wait until tomorrow. I turned to Chet with a smile.

  “Thanks for the evening. It was fun.” I reached for the door handle. “Will you be around tomorrow after the workshop? Maybe we—”

  “Wait, China. There’s something I need to say.” Chet put his arm across the back of my seat and leaned toward me. The Jeep was still running and the dash lights cast a shadow on his face. “I know I haven’t been very upbeat about the situation with Maddie and Boyd. But that thing you said, about being straight with Maddie and letting her know how I feel—I needed to hear that. You’re right. Maddie needs to know that Boyd isn’t her only option. I may not be much of a choice, but I’m here. And I really do care for her.”

  “I know I’m right,” I said firmly. “What’s more, you should talk to Andrea about this. She has the idea that Maddie is in love with you.”

  “Huh?” Chet pulled back sharply, eyes wide. “How does she— I mean, what makes her think—” He stopped, staring at me. “Are you foolin’ me, China? Andrea really said that?”

  “She really said that. Talk to her. Ask her for her opinion. Then go talk to Maddie.” I touched his arm. “But don’t put it off, Chet. In fact, it’d be good if you did it this weekend. There’s no point in leaving Maddie in the dark.”

  He stared at me for a moment longer. “Okay,” he said slowly, “I’ll talk to Andrea. Tonight, if she and Jason haven’t gone to bed already.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “If I’d known you were so damn smart, China Bayles, I might not have left you back in Austin all those years ago.”

  “Huh,” I said. “You left me back in Austin all those years ago because I was so damn smart. Remember?”

  Which made us both laugh. I put my arms around him and hugged him, thinking how interesting—and nice—it was to reconnect with someone I had loved briefly, in another lifetime, and discover that he was pretty much the same person now as he had been then. In an odd way, it was comforting.

  We said good night. Carrying my bag, I got out of the Jeep and went up the walk to the cabin, eager to hear how Ruby’s evening with Pete had gone and share what Andrea had told me about his vulnerability. Ruby liked to flirt and play around, and it had been a long time since she’d been serious about anyone but Colin Fowler. But Pete had struck me as a very nice guy. She needed to know—if she didn’t already—that he was nursing a wounded heart.

  Chapter Twelve

  MCQUAID

  Friday Evening

  “Chisholm Road.” In the passenger seat, McQuaid hunched over the GPS on his phone. “His name is Lester McGown. Mantel’s stepbrother. Lives in a single-wide west of New Braunfels, on Chisholm Road.”

  “You’re sure that’s where Mantel’s got Sally?” Blackie asked, cranking up the windshield wipers another notch.

  They were driving south on I-35 toward New Braunfels, flying like a bat out of hell through the thick, rainy twilight. Sunset was still over an hour away but clouds hung like a leaden curtain over the highway and everybody was driving with full lights.

  After he’d left the house, McQuaid had stopped at the PSPD office to pick up Blackie and the Taser. “I don’t like this,” Sheila had said when she heard that Mantel had taken Sally. “It could turn ugly. I’m going with you.” She reached for her duty belt.

  “Not,” Blackie replied firmly. “We agreed. We’re not going out together on the same . . . situation.” He gave her a quick smile. “And don’t try to pull rank, Chief. You’ve got a baby on board—remember?”

  She glared at him. But Blackie wasn’t budging, and after a moment she said, “Okay, then. Who’s your backup?”

  McQuaid spoke up. “I’m in contact with Harry Royce, with the Rangers. He’ll give us whatever we need.” He wasn’t telling the full story, though, and all three of them knew it. Urgently, he said, “Come on, Blackie. We need to get this show on the road.”

  They traded McQuaid’s truck for Blackie’s heavier, faster Dodge Charger. It had been his Adams County squad car. He’d bought it when he left his post as sheriff because its Hemi V8 engine was fast and powerful enough to easily catch up to anybody who thought he was faster and more powerful, and its all-wheel drive gave him a definite edge in back-country terrain. (Not that he needed these advantages now, since his work as a PI rarely involved chasing crooks across the back country. But it felt good to have it, just in case.) He’d had it repainted—the Charger was now all black, no longer black and white—but it still looked enough like a cop car to fool somebody who gave it a quick glance. Blackie said it made him feel like a sheriff again, even when he was just going to the grocery store.

  “No, I’m not sure that’s where they’ve got her,” McQuaid replied to Blackie’s question. He clicked out of GPS and went to Google Earth, zooming in tight. “But before somebody slapped a hand over her mouth, she managed to let me know that she was in a single-wide out in the country somewhere. When Harry emailed me the addresses this afternoon, he told me there’s a single-wide at the McGown place on Chisholm. He sent a guy out there earlier today. Somebody’s living there but nobody was home.”

  Mentioning Royce reminded McQuaid that he’d intended—as he’d said to Sheila—to let him know what was going down. Harry had said he’d be watching his son pitch in Little League that night, but if the lightning was flickering in West Austin the way it was flickering here, the game had probably been called and Harry was home, beer in hand, watching television.

  But McQuaid didn’t want to talk to him, actually. When Harry learned that Mantel had Sally, he would tell McQuaid to back off and let the Special Response Team take over, even though they wouldn’t know where they were going and wouldn’t have a plan to handle the action when they got there. There would be gunfire and dead people. Sally might be among them,
and McQuaid knew he couldn’t let that happen—not because he gave a personal damn about Sally, but for Brian’s sake.

  So instead of a phone conversation where he’d have to answer questions, he would text Royce a much abridged version of events, just to get it on the record, in case he had to explain himself afterward. And if Royce replied with a set of instructions and a barrage of do-this, do-that, he would ignore it. He was, after all, an indie. Royce wasn’t paying him, and Royce couldn’t fire him.

  The text message sent, McQuaid clicked back to Google Earth. He was looking at the white roof of a mobile home, parked some fifty yards behind a small house and half hidden under a clump of trees. His stomach muscles clenched. Was that the single-wide where Mantel was holding Sally? The man was a brute with a short fuse and Sally had a quick, loud mouth and a way of pissing people off. She might irritate Mantel to the point where he figured her orneriness outweighed her usefulness as bait or decided that killing her was a nice down payment on what he owed McQuaid for sending him to Death Row.

  Was she still undamaged, still alive? McQuaid was kicking himself for being stupid enough to let Mantel move in and snatch her. It couldn’t be said that it was his fault, exactly, since he’d had no way of knowing that Sally was going to put herself in harm’s way. But he should have thought ahead, should have tried to imagine what stupendously, spectacularly stupid thing Sally might conceivably do—like showing up unannounced at his house—and make damn sure she didn’t do it.

  Yes, he’d been careless. If he’d anticipated what she was going to do, they wouldn’t be in this situation. And the whole damn thing was his fault, come to that. Every single one of the five dead people would be alive right now, if he had pulled that trigger just once. Jeez. Just once.

  “How much farther?” Blackie was utterly relaxed and calm behind the wheel. The traffic was lighter than usual and he was staying in the far left lane, cruising smoothly past the slower vehicles. If the drivers glanced at the Charger’s passing rack of LED lights, they would take it for a cop car for sure, or a low-flying UFO.

  McQuaid refocused. “A couple of miles.” He flicked back to the GPS. “Get off at the next exit—short ramp, move quick to the right and hang a right on 337. It’s six point five miles to River Road. Right again, then another three point four miles to Chisholm.” He pocketed his cell and flexed his hands, trying to relax his cramped fingers. He had traded his shoulder holster for an ankle holster for the Glock and he was wearing the Taser on his belt. He’d changed out of his street clothes, too, and into his nighttime surveillance outfit: a black T-shirt and black nylon zip-up jacket with black jeans.

  Blackie took the off-ramp, cleared a motorcycle and a panel truck, and moved to the right as the wind from a squall line picked up a discarded newspaper and sailed it across the road. A spill of bright lights from the McDonald’s on the corner splashed the wet pavement like colored paints. “Got a plan?” he asked, slowing for the turn onto 337.

  McQuaid shook his head. “Making it up as we go along. One good thing, though. They won’t be expecting us. We’ll surprise them.” If they were headed to the right place.

  “We could get some backup, if you think we need it. I know the chief here.” The dash light illuminated Blackie’s relaxed expression. In all the years McQuaid had been acquainted with the man—how many? twenty? twenty-five?—and in some pretty hairy situations, he had never seen him lose his cool, a powerful asset in a working partner. McQuaid knew that under his jacket, Blackie was wearing his Smith & Wesson 5946 service pistol, loaded with a fifteen-round magazine. And in a locked gun box in the Charger trunk, he kept a twelve-gauge tactical shotgun.

  “We could,” McQuaid agreed. “On the other hand . . .”

  He let his voice trail off. You never knew what kind of backup you’d get from the locals. A siren, a careless car-door slam, a loud voice, a nervous young cop with an itchy trigger-finger. And Sally, held hostage by a guy with a deep, serious grudge who was facing a death sentence, one way or another. This was going to be dicey, but until they understood more about what they were up against—who, where, when, how many—he figured they were better off dealing with it themselves.

  “Yeah,” Blackie said. “At this point, surprise is our best weapon. They don’t know we know where they are.”

  “If that’s where they are.” McQuaid spoke the words that had been ricocheting around in his head and they both lapsed into silence. Mantel hadn’t called back with directions. They were banking that the single-wide Sally had mentioned was one of the two addresses Harry Royce had given them—the New Braunfels address. It wasn’t the wrecking yard, McQuaid felt pretty sure. That one was in San Antonio. Anyway, New Braunfels was closer.

  Chisholm Road was a narrow two-lane road that led downhill toward the river. The small frame houses were pushed far back from the road on overgrown, ill-kept lots haphazardly strewn with old tires and refrigerators, junked cars, even a derelict school bus. It was nearly full dark now, and there were no vehicles on the road, only a kid wearing an orange vest and reflectors on his pants cuffs, pedaling a bicycle through the persistent drizzle. There were no streetlights and the house numbers were badly marked. If it hadn’t been for McQuaid’s GPS, they would have driven past the address they were looking for, since a couple of the digits of the street number that had once been displayed on the mailbox had peeled off and the driveway entrance was nearly obscured by weeds and a dense sumac thicket.

  “That’s it,” McQuaid said, jerking his head. “On the right.”

  Blackie slowed as they cruised past. The house in front was a white clapboard with a dark roof and a flock of pink plastic flamingos scattered across the grass. There were no vehicles, no lights showing. The single-wide trailer was fifty yards behind it, angled at the end of the gravel drive, under a clump of large live oak trees. There was one light burning in the living room window; the rest of the structure was dark. No vehicles there, either.

  Blackie cut the lights and pulled off the road onto the right shoulder. The Charger was obscured from the house and the trailer by a thick patch of cedar. “What d’you think?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t look like Mantel is here,” McQuaid said, his nerves jangling, so disappointed he could taste it in his mouth, like a bad hangover the next morning. He’d been expecting one, maybe two vehicles and at least two guys, and he was psyched to get Sally out. Where the hell was she, if she wasn’t here?

  “I’d say we try the place anyway. On foot.” Blackie put up a hand and switched off the dome light so it wouldn’t turn on when the doors were opened. “They may have stashed her here and gone off somewhere else.”

  McQuaid nodded. “I’ll take the front entrance. You’re under those trees on the right, covering me. Just in case.”

  “I’ll go first.” Blackie grinned cheerfully and patted his jacket pocket. “Don’t knock until I’m set up where I’ve got a clear line on the door.”

  McQuaid watched as Blackie moved silently through the trees, then made his way up the long drive, past the silent house, to the single-wide. By the time he reached it, he’d already decided that they had either come to the wrong place or were too late. Mantel wasn’t here.

  Somebody else was, though. A table lamp was burning, and the drapes at the front window were pulled back just far enough that he could see a woman coming out of the kitchen with a drink in her hand. She pulled up her yellow T-shirt to scratch under her bra, then bent over to pick up a wineglass and a cigarette from an ashtray. Her movements were unhurried and unselfconscious, and she had the look of somebody who knew she was alone. The television was tuned to a game show, the blue-white flicker reflecting on the ceiling. The window was open and he could hear the flat, hard buzzer that signaled somebody’s incorrect answer, followed by the disappointed sigh of the studio audience.

  He glanced over at Blackie, who was crouching, tensed and alert, under the trees at the far right end of t
he trailer. He lifted his hand to the door and rapped, hard. The TV sound went off and there was silence.

  “Who is it?” the woman asked warily. “What do you want?”

  “Lookin’ for Lester,” McQuaid said, slow and friendly. “He told me to meet him here, him and Max. Sure hope I haven’t missed them. Got held up on I-35. Big rig jackknifed in the rain. Major mess.”

  He waited, half expecting the woman to say that she’d never heard of Lester or Max. But she didn’t. The door opened on the chain. “Sorry, they’ve already left,” the woman said. There was a slight slur in her words.

  Ah, McQuaid thought exultantly. He’d come to the right place. But he frowned. “Aw, hell,” he said. “Did I miss them by much?”

  “A little while,” the woman said, and lifted the chain off the door. She was in her late thirties, he guessed. Her bleached hair hung loose around her shoulders and her heavy makeup—eye shadow, mascara, purple lipstick—obscured her attractiveness and made her look older, harder. She was barefoot and wore ankle-length black leggings so tight they looked like they were painted on. Her yellow T-shirt was stretched tight over her breasts and cut in a deep vee that showed a nice cleavage. The shirt said Pinto’s Sports Bar, and McQuaid thought that must be where she worked. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  She took a sip of her drink and eyed him appreciatively, taking in his full height. She raised one shoulder and gave him an appraising smile, kittenish, flirtatious. “Don’t think we’ve met. What did you say your name was?”

  “Gillis.” McQuaid returned her smile, giving her a slow, approving look up and down, his glance admiring, lingering deliberately on the cleavage. “Harvey Gillis.” He raised his eyes to her mouth, to her face. “I’m sure I would remember it if we’d met.”