A Dead Red Heart

by R. P. Dahlke

  I locked the door behind Caleb, set the alarm, turned off the downstairs lights, and dragged myself up the stairs for bed.

  Routine won over exhaustion, so I brushed teeth and hair and then stripped and took a warm shower. Powdered and scrubbed, and in my tidy white cotton gown, I climbed in between the crisp white linen sheets of my antique rosewood double bed, and turned out the light.

  Outside my bedroom window cicadas sawed a sleepy rhythm and a breeze picked musically at the dry leaves on the chinaberry tree, and then—nothing. I couldn't sleep. I turned over again, slamming down the image of a dying man clutching scissors sticking out of his chest. Never mind that I couldn't remember his last words. Terrible as it was to think that someone would murder Billy Wayne Dobson, it seemed obvious to me that the killer was also clever enough to know how, and where, to apply the right pressure. I'd felt, rather than seen, someone at the end of that alley. But the killer didn't know that, did he? I was seen, identified, and marked as a witness.

  It was very clever of him to send me a threatening note. Really it was. I might later actually remember something and think to speak of it, maybe tell Caleb, or the police, I'd seen someone at the end of the alley. Now, however, any whiff of a memory would be sealed in a tomb of silence— silent as the grave, that would be me. I'd keep my head down, study map coordinates, calculate chemical formulas for pest control, kick airplane tires, and check pilot flight logs, pay Av Gas bills, anything that would keep me away from the potential of a murder investigation that might endanger what was most precious to me—my family.

  I rolled over onto the other side, dragging my unpleasant thoughts with me. Why did Billy Wayne have to single me out for an unrequited love interest? Whether he was mentally ill, or a drug addict, it wasn't my job to be his savior, was it? He had a mother and VA doctors to help him, didn't he? That was it, of course. At the heart of it was my own loss at age eleven, my own guilt, and I wanted nothing to do with another. I'd seen a counselor after my mother's death, but that ended at the dinner table when I asked my brother and dad what bi-polar meant. From then on, we never discussed her death, or her problems.

  I turned over again, hearing again the interview with the first two policemen at the scene:

  Did you know Billy Wayne Dobson?

  We'd never actually had any kind of conversation.

  Did he at any time accost you, or attempt to touch you?

  No.

  Other than the paper notes in the form of snowflakes, at any other time did he attempt to contact you by phone or at your home?

  Eyebrows raised, subtle nods exchanged.

  No.

  Did you at any time go to his home?

  No.

  Do you know of anyone else who might have had a grudge against Mr. Dobson?

  No.

  Billy Wayne Dobson loved you, needed you, and you let him down. You're responsible for his death--

  No, no, no!

  I jerked awake, threw the covers off, pulled the sweaty nightgown over my head, and headed for another shower. Would this nightmare never end?

  Chapter four:

  I stretched out an arm and batted the digital alarm on my nightstand. Its little red digits glared accusingly at me–three a.m. Time to get up and go to work. The few hours of tortured sleep I'd endured only left me feeling as painfully bruised as if I'd been beaten with nightsticks.

  Lately, lack of sleep has been due to those few and precious nights I get with Caleb, and then sleep seldom comes into the picture. Caleb. Did he call me last night? Oh God, last night wasn't just a bad dream. It really did happen, signaling the end of any hope I might have entertained that I was going to be able to extract myself from the attention of either the police or the killer. Regardless of my own fears, I knew that sometime today I'd have another round of interviews with a suspicious homicide detective who would only be too happy to have me back in the hot-seat.

  Turning on the light I groaned, rolled over, got up, and reached for yesterday's T-shirt. My hand automatically retreated at the smear of dried blood. I jammed the soiled T-shirt into the laundry basket and went for another shower, even though last night I'd taken two, letting the sharp needles of hot water pound into the mauled pores of my skin. Poor Billy Wayne—poor me.

  Pulling clean jeans and T-shirt out of the drawers, I added a sweater against the early morning chill and the freeze of ice that lingered in my own heart. I seized up my shoulder length blond hair and tugged it into the ponytail I usually wore, then opened the closet and taking a leather belt off the rack, threaded it onto my jeans. In the soft light of the lamp reflected in my bedroom window, I almost didn't see the dark shadows under my eyes that probably wouldn't be disappearing anytime soon. If you didn't count the fact that I was forty going on forty-one I might pass as the New York model I'd been twenty years ago. Then I had to go and ruin the image by looking down at my banged up, chapped, veiny hands, and short nails. If twenty years ago someone had told me that this was the life I would be living, I would have laughed like a hyena.

  I gave a hasty swipe at the covers on my bed then closed the door behind me so our housekeeper, Juanita, wouldn't feel the need to come into my room and do it right. Work would help me forget about Billy Wayne's mental illness and my own encounter with that kind of personal evil. Not my problem. Not anymore, it wasn't. I would stay as far away from this as possible. Hugging work boots to my chest, I padded quietly down the stairs so as not to wake Dad and Spike in the TV room. In the kitchen I poured myself a cup of coffee, noted the time, and exited the back door, careful not to let the screen slam behind me. Conversation on yesterday's troubles could wait. I wanted to get to work and let the day scrub away the layer of hurt and fear that had tunneled into my sleep.

  I stepped out into the pale pre-dawn of an August morning and trudged through the fine dust from a lingering summer. Faint outlines of barn, officed, and airplanes appeared against the dawn. My dad, dubbed the wizardly weather shaman of Stanislaus County, predicted no rain for today. His uncanny ability to predict the weather made him very popular with the farmers who'd been his clients for the last forty years. Lately, all that popularity went towards squeezing his cronies into my work schedule.

  No rain, and if we were lucky, no wind; at least long enough for us to get a long summer day's work done. I beat the ground crew to the office and divvied up work orders, giving Mad-Dog Schwartz and Fitz the larger jobs, and to me, the last of my dad's unprofitable customers.

  We'd talked about this customer of his, hadn't we? Agreed to give it over to Merced Aero Ag, because they were forty miles closer, right? But, here it was, edging its way under my nose, stubbornly taking up space. We were definitely going to have another conversation about this customer—and soon.

  I handed the work order for the material to Javier, my favorite "flagger." Javier isn't a flagger, not in the truest sense of the word. We no longer use a real person to signal the end of a row by waving a flag. Now we use GPS to get us there, map out a field and then confirm that the spray or dust is laid where it should be. Even so, I always send someone to sight the job and look for obstacles. These days we are as concerned with drift onto the subdivisions as we are with towers, wires and wind. Javier would report the tiniest breeze and I would start my first pass downwind from any houses. City folk moving to the country are only fond of the country as long as it doesn't intrude into their yard.

  "Merced?" Javier asked, looking at the paperwork.

  "Yeah," I sighed, letting my annoyance seep through."You'll need Benito to drive the water truck if you think he's ready."

  He nodded thoughtfully. "You know there's a sheriff's car at the side of the road? Did the yard alarm go off again?"

  We kept the perimeter around our shop covered with motion sensor lights, and a horrendously loud clanger that sets the neighbors dogs to howling. As a first line defense against equipment theft, it was iffy. Someone intent on theft could filch the equipment and be gone long before a patrol car showed up
.

  "False alarm," I said, not looking him in the eye. "I guess they decided to hang out and make sure. So, is Benito good to drive the water truck yet or not?"

  "Sí. Señor Bains says so."

  That meant that my dad had made sure Benito could back up the big water truck without running into anything, and then quizzed him on some basic map reading so the kid wouldn't get lost. With radios in all the trucks, and with Javier's rapid fire Spanish, the kid should be fine.

  "Okay. It's John Warren's forty acres of corn, you've done them before."

  "Sí, but I think your daddy tol' me Señor Warren died last week."

  My dad used to read the obituaries so he could compare the probability quotient of his own demise to his peers. Now he treated funerals and their accompanying wakes as a dating service. But did this mean he was doing this job so he could get a date with the widow Warren? Nah. That would require a round trip of more than one tank of gas, and my dad, a notorious skinflint, kept his selection for dating to a twenty mile radius. Lately, his social life had become a whirligig of phone ringing off the hook as the county's widows called to invite him to yet another function. I just didn't see how he found the time to date all of them and mess with my scheduling, too.

  "Since my dad's name is still painted on the side of our trucks I guess we'll be doing it."

  Javier nodded, and went to load up trucks with lunches and respirators. In another fifteen minutes they rumbled out of the yard for Merced.

  I took off into a peachy dawn sky crackled with hot sun streaks, banked over the sheriff's patrol car idling next to our entrance, and aimed for Merced and the widow Warren's measly forty acres of corn.

  Up in the air, I allowed myself a few moments of Zen-like meditation, my mind lost in the chatter of the VHF. Then the timber changed, pitching me back to reality. There was a truck in the Mendota canal a half-mile off the highway. I touched the rudder, and drifted over to follow the waterway until I spotted the useless twin headlamps pointed up into the weak dawn. I banked and saw the distinctive logo of Bains Aero Ag on the side of the truck.

  Crap! I called the house and the office, getting the answering machines on both. My father's response to the notion of a cell phone was that since I ran the business, he didn't need to be bothered. It also meant that it would be up to me to get a tow for the water truck.

  I sprayed a double swath on all four perimeters of the corn, cursed the bad timing, the additional expense it would cost to come back again to finish the job, and left for home.

  It was late afternoon when I finally called to tell the widow Warren why we had to leave her field for the next day.

  "You should have called me sooner," she snapped.

  I was surprised at the irritable tone, then remembered that the poor woman had just lost her husband. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Warren, but it was also my responsibility to get that truck out of the canal."

  "Well, don't go thinking you're going to bill me for what little you did this morning. I had to get someone else to finish the job for you."

  This was a surprise. "Mrs. Warren, I can appreciate that you needed the job done, but who was able to do your field on such short notice?"

  "Another company has been kind enough to pick up after your sloppy work," she sniffed. "And I really must say that I don't approve of a company that would allow a drunken truck driver to work for them."

  Benito, drunk? Last year I had to fire a pilot because he got stuck in a bottle of prescription pain meds. I made sure he had a decent severance pay as well as two long stays in a rehab unit. But nothing took with Brad, and last I heard he was lost in more than illegal pain killers. Cousin or no, Javier wouldn't tolerate drinking on the job, and while I should be glad to be able to slide out of doing Mrs. Warren's work, I was rankled to the core at the undeserved insult.

  "Mrs. Warren, we've done your work for over thirty years, and if there's one thing I can promise you, we've never had a drunk pilot, or ground crew, working for us."

  "Well," she said, a little doubt creeping into her voice. "Mr. Margrave said so, and in consideration of my husband's recent passing, he's agreed to do the job at half the cost."

  Junior Margrave? That dirty rat. Because I had to leave before finishing the job, Margrave must've heard it over the VHF, and moved in to pirate the job right out from under me. The sorry bastard would fly a diluted spray on the interior and call it done. Mrs. Warren might become suspicious when she saw her crop was still infested, but Margrave would whine that it was my fault, or the pest control advisor's fault, anybody's but his. The chemical salesmen hated him already, and he hadn't been in business for a year.

  "Mrs. Warren, just have your field man check the work, will you?"

  I heard her sharp intake of breath. "What do you mean?"

  "I did a double pass on all perimeters. It's the first thing I do to make sure the corn blight doesn't bleed into the next field, but please, have your manager check to make sure Junior Margrave finished the job."

  I explained to her about how even good companies have to work with weather changes and engine problems, and that even without Margrave stepping in at the last minute, our work would still hold the pest problem and not bleed over to the next field. It's what any competent applicator would do.

  The moment of silence on the line held, then, "Well, I see what you're getting at, but the job's been done and paid. I don't think we'll be having Bains Aero Ag do our work anymore."

  And to think I was wondering how we could gently get Mrs. Warren to go with another applicator. The poor woman didn't realize what a cheapster like Margrave would do to get her business, and then leave her looking at a ruined crop.

  Now I had a vendetta, and since revenge was my middle name, I would have to see what I could do to help it along. Margrave was going to pay for this, somehow, some way

  I walked into the kitchen to see my dad daintily cutting pancakes into tiny bites and passing them down to Spike.

  "And you wonder why he's getting fat?"

  "After last night I think we should live dangerously."

  The sarcasm stung, but I still had to tell him about the fiasco with Mrs. Warren and the water truck.

  He sawed off another piece and slathered it with butter. "Javier told me. I hope you didn't call the insurance company."

  "What? And miss all the fun of putting the truck back together? Are you at least going to take your heart meds, or would that interfere with the heart-clogging butter and syrup?"

  He turned in his chair, draping a long arm over the back. "You trail trouble after you like nobody I know, Lalla Bains."

  I could feel a lump swell in my throat. "I went there to warn Billy Wayne. I didn't know I was going to trail home a killer behind me."

  He tapped a finger on the front page. "If you'da done that job yesterday like I told you, Margrave wouldn't have been able to get his ugly nose in our business, and you wouldn't have been anywhere near that poor boy's killing."

  I'd meant to avoid the Sunday paper but decided to point out the obvious. "And you can see how well that worked out."

  He put his hand over the page, covering the old publicity photo of me from my brief career as a model in New York City next to the one of Billy Wayne's body as it was loaded into the coroner's wagon, and his voice softened. "You tried to help. Wasn't your fault. Last night, either. I should've set the alarm. Won't happen again. I got my shotgun loaded and from now on I'll be in charge of setting that damn alarm at night."

  I took it for what it was, his way of saying he'd been as shaken I was.

  "Me and Spike're moving upstairs," he added.

  "You don't have to go that far," I said, feeling guilty again that everything I'd done so far had only managed to put our family in jeopardy.

  "It ain't safe sleeping downstairs, either."

  I flinched. "Mentioning Spike, I'm still wondering how someone got past him last night."

  He shrugged off my concern. "We're both getting old. You saw how hard it was to wa
ke me up last night."

  I nodded, but it didn't feel right. Or maybe I wasn't seeing something. Spike had been labeled a menace since before his last owner died, and everyone, except my dad and Juanita, gave him a wide berth. My dad, I suppose because he took him in, and Juanita because she made the pancakes he craved.

  But how did a stranger get past Spike when he was known to throw himself against the door to get to the UPS man? My dad must be right, they were both getting old.

  I decided to change the subject. "Juanita go to her grandkids birthday party today?"

  He picked up the remains of his breakfast, carried it all to the sink, and filled the tub with hot soapy water. "That was the plan. You going to do something about Margrave, or you want me to?"

  "I can take care of it, Noah Bains. I always do."

  He snorted at the sharp tone in my words, and the true course I would take to make sure Junior Margrave got his comeuppance. Then, whistling tunelessly, he went to drowning dishes under too many suds.

  Chapter five:

  It was late afternoon when I decided a break was needed, and took my dad's old farm truck to Roxanne's Truck Cafe. I continue to come here even though I'm razzed, teased and jeered at on a variety of subjects, like, "How long does it take a girl crop duster to finish spraying for mites?" the answer being, "Mite be now, mite be later." That dumb joke still put them all into hysterics. I didn't get it, but I suppose it was a compliment that they kept to crop duster jokes. It could be worse—they could still be torturing me with dumb blonde jokes.

  A faded, hand printed sign on the glass door at the entrance said, "Eat here and help support two kids in college." The "two" had been hastily crossed out, and "one" scribbled above it. Trust Roxanne to rub it in. I'm godmother to her handsome son, Terrill, and beautiful daughter, Maya. Terrill is in his second year at Berkeley, tearing up the football field, and sensibly keeping his head down. Maya, however, is in New York City blowing away the competition on the catwalk, and causing her mother to pull out her hair. Like it's my fault the eighteen-year-old hounded me until I'd helped get her a contract in the modeling industry?