Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  I winced. “What about Mrs. McBride? I’d say she didn’t take the ride so well, either.” My mouth felt like cotton, and the headache was crawling up the back of my scalp. Soon it would cover my left temple and carve out a shallow tunnel for my vision.

  He moved the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and gave Caleb a look over my head that said he’d had enough. “I could let you have it tomorrow, maybe next day.” He handed me a card and, turning it over, wrote down a number. “You call this guy and he’ll let you know if we’re done with it. See she gets over to my office in half an hour, Sheriff.”

  Caleb gave the detective a little nod, squeezed my elbow, and pulled me away. “You okay? You look like you’re going to faint or something.”

  “I’ll be all right. I just wish I could have picked a better time to quit smoking.” I still thought smoking bit off the start of a migraine, though the doctors didn’t agree. “I’ve got my pills in my purse if I could get some water.”

  “Come on, I’ll walk you over to the police station. They’ve got a cooler by the exit. Oh, I almost forgot. You remember Patience saying anything about a nephew?”

  “Yeah,” I said, listlessly watching the sun crawl across the Caddy’s hood, leaving behind gray-green spots of dried algae on an otherwise dull red exterior. “Lives in Oklahoma.”

  “Well, I got a message he’s trying to reach you.”

  “Okay, I’ll call him when I get home,” I said, miserably turning away.

  Steering me by the elbow out of the police impound lot, Caleb said softly, “He’s in the county jail, and he’s asking for you.”

  “Who?” I asked, holding onto my aching head.

  “Patience’s nephew. After you complete your interview with Detective Rodney, of course.”

  I blanched, cold again in the summer heat. “Are you joking? Her nephew’s in jail? What for?” Then I remembered the detective and asked, “Did he kill his aunt?”

  “That hasn’t been determined. Police found him asleep in his RV outside her home. You can ask the detective why he’s now behind bars. Come on, we’ll get you some water for your headache medicine.” His voice was as noncommittal as any deadeye dick’s. It was beginning to worry me.

  “Tell me you don’t think I had any part of this. Come on, Caleb, I wasn’t that jealous of her winning the damn blue ribbon. Besides, it was really bad jam, just ask my dad.”

  “Lalla, I know you didn’t,” he said, still dragging me along by the elbow. “Now stop fussing. Just answer the detective’s questions, then stop by the jail and see Patience’s nephew.”

  We arrived at the police station, Caleb holding me up by the arm and me holding a soggy paper cup of water. “When you’re ready, go straight back to the elevators, second floor, third door to the right.”

  At the entrance, I dug in my heels, resisting all further efforts to push me inside. “Tell me, am I their first or second choice for a suspect?”

  “Go on,” he said, as if my being a number on a list for murder was amusing. “I’m going back to your place to watch the Ident team try to get prints on those cracked, unpainted wood doors on your barn. That should be fun.”

  “You’ll explain it all to my dad?” I said, holding onto the doorframe as if actually stepping through his office door was an admission of guilt. “That someone stole my car and somehow Patience ended up drowned in it? You’ll tell him so he won’t worry, right?” I giggled nervously and then bit at my thumbnail. It sounded incredibly dumb, even to me. Though my life had been relatively trouble-free since my divorce from Ricky, if there was going to be trouble, my dad wouldn’t be surprised to find that I was in the thick of it—again.

  “I got it covered,” Caleb said. “It’s a courtesy call because of your dad’s health.” He pecked me on the cheek and patted my shoulder before abandoning me to my fate, not in the least bit worried I might be charged with a murder I didn’t commit. I could’ve asked to have a lawyer attend the meeting, but knowing Caleb had my back, what could go wrong?

  ~*~

  I spent the next hour with Detective Rodney and his sidekick playing good cop, bad cop. The upshot of their routine was a big fat zero; I couldn’t prove I’d been at home all night, and they couldn’t prove I hadn’t. But neither could I explain how Patience and my Caddy ended up in the lake.

  I was thoroughly relieved when the detective finally put down his pen and closed his little notebook.

  “You’re free to go, Ms. Bains.” I was up and all but sprinting for the stairs. Free and no longer a suspect, what could be sweeter, right?

  I was finally released and pushed through the double doors to stand under a hot cerulean sky clinging to the tops of the buildings.

  In my eagerness to slide out from under the steely-eyed suspicions of the local police detective, I might have been a bit hasty.

  Damn. I think I’ve just been set up. I was the odd piece in an apparent homicide, someone who wasn’t going to immediately work out as a suspect, but obviously I had my uses. That’s me, usable.

  Patience’s nephew had better be real cute.

  FIVE

  Directed to the visitation room, I sat down in front of the green-tinted glass separating the free and the brave from those who were not. Still, if the next suspect should prove to be innocent, I would be feeling less than brave while I begged a lawyer to find a loophole in a murder charge.

  The door opened and I forgot about feeling sorry for myself as Patience’s nephew sat down across from me. Dark curly hair spilled over a high forehead; the brown eyes crinkled at the corners with what might have been amusement. He would be taller than me, and the chest and shoulders I noticed nicely filled out the standard-issue orange jumpsuit. Cute. Oh my God, Lalla, give it a rest, will you? Your choice for dating material has gone to an all-time low.

  He sat down and picked up the phone. I picked up mine. Twining large, square hands around the phone, he said, “You Lalla Bains?” The voice came through the electrical conduit in a tinny, hollow sound.

  “Uh-huh,” I answered, still numb from my own recent foray with the law.

  His eyes wandered over what little he could see beyond the glass. He didn’t look unhappy with what he saw. “Damn. She said you was pretty, but she was always matchmaking, if you know what I mean.” He saw my confusion and said, “My aunt Patience? I’m Garth Thorne, her nephew. I’d offer you my hand, but I guess it’ll have to wait. This is all embarrassing,” he said, waving a hand at the glass between us. “I wanted to speak to you as soon as possible because I didn’t want my aunt’s best friend to think I’d been arrested for killing the old girl.”

  I had no idea why Patience’s nephew would think I was her best friend and that certainly had to be corrected. “Whoa, sorry, but you must have me confused with someone else.” I do my best backpedaling when terrified I might become a murder suspect. “I knew your aunt as one of the regulars at a local café, but we barely knew each other. I mean, I gave her a ride to the fair the other day, but that was the first time I’d spoken more than three words to the lady.”

  “Lemme start this here again. I’m not a bum nor some criminal.” His smile cocked ruefully. “I was looking forward to meeting you. Maybe I misunderstood your relationship to my aunt, but all the same, her last letter said she wanted us to meet.”

  “She did?”

  He gave me the benefit of those incredibly perfect teeth. “But not like this.”

  Now that I thought of it, I remembered Patience, sitting primly beside me on the ride home from the fair, chattering on and on about her nephew. This nephew. “My nephew’s coming out from Enid, Oklahoma. He’s five years younger than you, but you two would make such a handsome couple.”

  “Honest, I wasn’t arrested for the murder of my aunt, if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” he said, stepping into my reverie. “I came in to ID the poor ol’ girl’s remains, but while I was viewing the body, they must have run a check on me and come up with some bogus old warrant. Child supp
ort, which I have been paying. So as you can see, this thing here is totally bogus. But, like I said, I got the bail covered and they’re about to release me. So, I was wonderin’, my rig is at my aunt’s house, and I could get a cab, but if you don’t mind…”

  I thought his eyes were beginning to look moist with tears, but then again, it could’ve been the green wavy glass, and reminding myself of the detective’s instructions to find out as much as I could about the nephew, I said, “I’ll be out front in half an hour.”

  Besides, it was obviously some stupid misunderstanding that would, in the end, prove Patience’s nephew blameless. Of course there had to be a simple explanation. Something less horrifying than Patience drowning in my car, and her favorite and only nephew, her murderer.

  ~*~

  Garth was patiently leaning against the balustrade of the county courthouse, smoking a cigarette. He got enough second looks from passing women to confirm my initial impression. The guy was a hunk in a pair of tight 501s, and I would’ve bet my lunch money thirty-two by thirty-six was stamped on the leather patch of his jeans. A western shirt snugged across the broad shoulders and a couple of open snaps showed a few dark, curly chest hairs. His rock-hard jaw was shadowed with a day-old beard, and he carried some serious dark circles under his eyes. All of which said he’d probably not had much sleep the last day or so, but otherwise, he was a perfect candidate for a Marlboro ad. I may not be in the market for husband number three, but I wasn’t totally immune to a good-looking man. I found my mouth silently forming the words, “Saddle up, cowboy.”

  He crushed the cigarette under his heel, pushed off the corner of the building, and loped in my direction. I barely had time to reach across the truck to open the door when he hopped in.

  With the easy familiarity of one who is happy to be riding in a truck, he stuck out a big square hand. The tinny voice from the jail phone was now a deep and resonant baritone. “Garth Thorne, Esquire, at your service, ma’am.” He winked to show me the esquire was only for fun. The handshake was firm, but not bone crushing, and in spite of his well-trimmed nails, I felt calluses on his palm. If nothing else was right about this cowboy, at least he was familiar with hard work.

  “Lalla Bains,” I said, looking down at his hand still holding mine. I managed to slip out of his grasp and nervously snagged the gears into reverse, backing the truck out onto the street and barely missing a Pepsi truck. “Sorry. It’s this darn cast.”

  He nodded. “My aunt said you busted up your leg flying. Pardon me if it sounds like a pickup line, but what’s a classy lady like you doing flying crop dusters and driving a dumpy ol’ truck like this?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “It’s the farm truck. I drive it, though my dad gets annoyed because I grind the gears.” I demonstrated by lurching the stick shift into first. “And the short version on the flying is that I sort of fell into it. So, how long has it been since you’ve seen your aunt?”

  The crease he’d been wearing between his eyebrows faded in obvious relief. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, for starters, for believing I’m who I say I am. I’m her nephew, for Chrissake, but you’da thought I was the Hillside Strangler with the way the local cops treated me. Sorry, but it’s been so damn frustrating. Cops thought they could grill me till I confessed something I didn’t do,” he said, running fingers through dark wavy hair. It was a little long for my taste, but I knew it had that uncombed look women adore. “I used my one call to my lawyer in Enid,” he said. “He set up such a stink, they ran like the pack o’ mangy coyotes they are.”

  “When did you get here?” I asked sweetly. He might be cute, but I’d rather have a complete stranger in the radar of the local cops than me.

  He pulled out the ashtray, and seeing it was empty, asked, “Mind if I smoke?”

  “No problem,” I said, rolling down my window.

  “You want one?”

  I laughed. “Does it show?”

  “I’m trying to quit myself.” He grinned and flicked the unlit cigarette out the window. “So you asked—oh yeah. I drove straight here with a quick stop in Reno. I had some friends to catch up with. I got here, oh, sometime ‘fore sunup this morning, musta been around five.”

  “Did you see your aunt then?”

  “Nah. I was beat. Besides, it was too early, so I pulled my rig into her driveway and took a nap. That turned out to be a mistake.”

  “The police?”

  “On some crock about non-support for my kid.”

  “Oh? Boy or a girl?”

  “A daughter. You got kids?”

  “Bad timing, wrong men, the usual issues.”

  “Too bad. I owed my aunt a visit, but the trip out here was to see my kid.”

  “Here in Modesto?”

  “Stockton. She turned sixteen a couple of weeks ago, so I’m overdue on the visits, but not on my child support.” He frowned and went back to examining the road.

  If this guy weren’t so cute, it would be a waste of my time. He was here to see his kid and got put in jail for old child support issues.

  “Were you and your aunt close?”

  “We were.” You know how an expression flickers across someone’s face, but you can’t read it because you either don’t know the person well enough or you think you forgot to ask the right question? I was feeling that way now and only hoped something would fall out sooner than later.

  “Times change people. I got married, opened a business, had a kid. It all went to hell when I started drinking. That’ll mess with your life. When the checks started bouncing, my wife got me to sign papers for stuff I don’t even remember, and I think I signed away custody of my kid. So with no reason to stay, I hitched a ride with a sympathetic trucker friend. Poor ol’ boy must’ve got tired of hearing my sob story, ‘cause he tossed me out somewhere near the Texas panhandle. It went downhill from there.” His deep chuckle belied the next statement. “I’d guess you’d call it downhill, since I woke up in an unoccupied dumpster.”

  “Dumpster?” He had to be kidding. I snuck a peek at his handsome head and tried to imagine those dark curls matted with garbage, his manicured nails grimy with dirt.

  “You have no idea how cold it can get in Texas till you spend a winter’s night outside. Trust me, darlin’, that dumpster saved my ass. I hitched another ride and woke up in a whorehouse outside Enid and couldn’t tell you how I got there.”

  “A whorehouse? Really?” This was entertaining. “I’ll bet they’re a lively bunch. Kinda like a full-time pajama party, huh?”

  The eyes crinkled with amusement. “Oh, it was fun, all right,” he added dryly. “Getting sober in an Oklahoma whorehouse was a hoot, scrubbing toilets during the day and AA every night.”

  Unlike my own ragged digits, which had more than a nodding acquaintance with the underbelly of an airplane, his very clean nails said he no longer hung around Dumpsters. I curled my neglected nails around the wheel to hide them.

  “I didn’t leave under the best of circumstances, grabbing a bag and hitching a ride out of Stockton, but I made a good living for us in Stockton, and I thought leaving her with all of it would mean she wouldn’t do without, but she figured otherwise. So, part of my program is to apologize to the people I’ve hurt. I’ve tried to make amends, but I guess she doesn’t think apologies, or the support checks are enough.”

  It must have been hard to confess so much to a stranger. I almost felt guilty about prying into his private life. Almost. “So, she’s lying about the back child support?”

  “Darlin’, AA taught me that lyin’ went with drinkin’, and I’ve long since given up both. She got the business, the house, the cars, and money for my kid. It took me awhile to get back on my feet, but me and John, he was managing the cathouse, we got us a truck repair shop, and now we work on trucks. Nothing as big as I had in Stockton, but it keeps us going, and I pay all my bills.”

  “So this is your ex’s punishment for you leaving?”

&nbs
p; “I can’t think of anybody else who’d go to this kind of trouble. Maybe I’ll go back to court, get joint custody like I should’ve in the first place. I could take my kid to Oklahoma for the rest of her summer vacation.”

  “At sixteen?” I thought of my goddaughter, Maya, at two years older. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to tear a sixteen-year-old away from her friends and the local mall?”

  “They got malls in Enid.” His dark brows settled into a stubborn line. Then he looked over at me and grinned. “Oh, hell, I’ll work it out with the ex soon enough. So, you feel better knowing I wasn’t in jail ‘cause I was a murder suspect?”

  “Sure do,” I said. “I already trucked home my share of criminals today.”

  He slapped his thigh and laughed, sending shock waves through the cab of the truck. “I gotta tell you, darlin’, you’re a sight for sore eyes. This trip’s sure been a doozer.” Then his tone turned serious. “I can’t believe the old girl went and drove herself into a lake. What was she thinking?”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about being addressed as darlin’, but maybe it’s what they all did in Oklahoma. “I’d like to know myself, since she did it in my car.”

  All his lighthearted sunshine disappeared again. “It was your car she was driving?” He shook his head. “Well, bump my ass and call me an Okie! Don’t this beat all. So, what happened? Girls’ night out? Whoop it up in town and you were too drunk to drive home?”

  “‘Fraid not. I wasn’t in the car.”

  He gave me a quick and concentrated once-over. “Please, darlin’, don’t tell me they’re fixing to size your pretty little self into striped pajamas?”

  I gave him a look over my sunglasses. Since little and I are seldom used in the same sentence, I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. But then, he hadn’t seen me standing either. From what I’d seen of his big frame, I’d say his chin could easily rest on my five-foot-nine frame. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I have absolutely no reason to do in someone I barely knew.”