Hangman's root : a China Bayles mystery

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  "Ruby Wilcox and I are helping out."

  She looked at me, eyes flinty. "China Bayles. Aren't you the one who runs the herb shop? Why 2s^you working with Dottie's lawyer?"

  "I used to be a trial lawyer in a former life," I said. "I'd like to help Dottie clear up this misunderstanding."

  "Well, I certainly hope to God somebody straightens things out," Beulah said, pushing up the sleeves of the gray sweater that topped her tailored white blouse. Her tone was testy. "How Bubba Harris can be fool enough to arrest that woman is totally beyond my comprehension. Somebody's getting away with murder while he's wasting time picking on an innocent person. In fact, I told Bubba's wife Gladys that very thing when I ran into her at the post office this morning. I told her to tell Bubba, too." She frowned. "Now, how can I help you?"

  "Fm hoping to trace out a lead or two."

  She picked up a pencil and twirled it like a miniature baton. "What exactly are you looking for?"

  "Miles Harwick's personnel file. Fm specifically looking for the name and address of next of kin, information about prior employment, and address at the time of initial application. At this point, Fm making an informal request for the material," I added, to show her I meant business. "Dr. Riddle's attorney will subpoena it later."

  She shook her head. "Fm sorry, but you're too late. Sheila Dawson, the new head of Campus Security, came up on Friday and took it." She pressed her lips together. "I believe she planned to turn it over to Bubba Harris."

  "I see," I said. I wasn't surprised. Maybe Fd have better luck with my second request. She furrowed her brow and stood up when I gave her Kevin's name.

  "Terminated last week? Let me check."

  She was gone about five minutes, while I sat, listening to the buzz of voices in the open office behind me. When I came in, I had noticed the spirit of good-natured camaraderie that energized the office—telephones ringing, people moving from desk to desk, lots of chitchat. The clerical staff was almost a hundred percent women, of course. In any bureaucracy, they're the ones who keep the paper-stream flowing, input the data into the computers, and do the nitpicky things that make institutional life halfway bearable for everybody else. The trouble is that they're usually pretty much invisible. People count on them, get used to them, fail to notice them. Fd bet it would take three, maybe four of the female clerical staff to equal the salary of the male personnel director. He'd certainly miss them if they left. I wondered if anybody would miss him.

  When Beulah came back, she was carrying a manila folder. She laid it on the desk and glanced at her watch. "I usually take a break right about now."

  I looked up at her, grateful for her tact. "Thank you," I said.

  "Don't mention it," she said with emphasis.

  Kevin Scott's file was pretty thin. But it did contain a Pecan Springs address, which I copied down. I also copied his social security number, the rest of his personal data, and the name, address, and phone number of his parents, Anne R. and Charles I. Scott, who lived on Mesquite Drive in San Antonio. I put the folder on Beulah's chair with a hastily scrawled thank-you, and threaded my way through the busy office to the elevator, where I punched the down button.

  Campus Security is located on the first floor of the administration building. The elevator and the quad entrance open onto a lobby where students and faculty can apply for IDs and parking stickers and pay their parking fines, a revenue source which no doubt covers the salaries of half the Security force. A young girl with deeply waved chestnut hair was sitting behind the counter, concentrating on a computer monitor. She stood up when I came in, and I noticed that she was wearing a button with the catchy slogan "God Is Coming and Is She Pissed." When I told her who I was looking for, she took my name, sauntered through a door between a file cabinet and a computer station, and came back a minute later.

  "The chief says to come on in. She's in her office, third door on the right."

  I knew where the chief's office was because I had been there once with McQuaid, who was a buddy of the man who preceded Smart Cookie. When I opened the door, I saw that the office had undergone an extraordinary change. The gray metal desk, green plastic sofa and chair, and beige tile floor were gone. In their place was a polished wood desk topped with a tasteful gold reading lamp, across from a soft coral upholstered sofa and chair, on a forest green carpet. On the wall was a poster depicting a giant green pea pod, with the caption "Give Peas a Chance." The north-facing window sill was crowded with pots of pink and

  mauve African violets, one of which sported a heart-shaped "I Love You" balloon.

  Behind the desk, Sheila looked up and smiled. "What do you think?" she asked, with a gesture that included the African violets.

  "Bob Dylan was right," I said. "The times really are changing."

  "Maybe, maybe not," Sheila said. She stood and came around the desk. "He said that almost thirty years ago. And there's more to it than redecorating." Her silky cream blouse was a mute contrast to her beige suit, her shiny blond hair was smoothed back beneath a beige hairband, and her nails and lipstick matched. "Mike told you about Chief Harris making the hair match?" She took the upholstered chair and motioned me to the sofa.

  I nodded and sat down. "Any possibility that Dr. Riddle's hairs could have been planted?"

  "That was my first thought," she said, showing a length of slender thigh as she crossed her legs. "But if it was a plant, it was carefully done. I saw the hairs myself when we took the body down. They were tied in with the knot."

  "Yes," I said. "So McQuaid told me."

  She looked at me. "McQuaid? I thought you two were like that." She held up two fingers, close together.

  "We met professionally," I said. "I was on one side of a case, he was on the other. We got used to last names. But to answer your question, yes, we are like that. We're looking for a house together." That last sentence surprised me when I heard it. I hadn't mentioned our househunting to anybody but Ruby. Had I told Sheila because I wanted to make sure she knew where the boundaries were?

  "It's a big step," she said.

  "Is it ever," I said fervently.

  She kicked both beige pumps off and wiggled her stockinged toes in the carpet. "Look. I'm trained as a police officer, but I've

  learned to rely on my intuition. When I listened to Riddle's answers to the chief's questions Saturday morning, I got the very strong feeling that she didn't have anything to do with the crime, although she certainly was'antagonistic toward the victim. That's why I've been willing to help."

  "Do you have an alternative theory about Harwick's death?" "I guess I lean toward planned suicide, with an attempt to frame Riddle for murder. It seems consistent with Harwick's personality and his relationship to Riddle. He lived right next door. If he had wanted to set her up, it wouldn't have been hard for him to get into her house. All he needed was some hair, which would never be missed, and a length of rope. Or he could have brought the rope and planted it in her garage, keeping enough for his purpose." She hesitated. "Unfortunately I haven't yet turned up Harwick's motive for killing himself."

  Wait until she saw the blackmail letter, I thought, thinking I'd show it to her as soon as The Whiz had seen it. It gave Har-wick a very strong motive for suicide. But I still had to dig into the connection between Kevin and Harwick, which troubled me deeply. I took out my notebook. "I talked to Beulah Bracewell in Personnel a few minutes ago. I understand you have Dr. Harwick's file."

  Her face was bland. "Chief Harris requested it." I cocked my eyebrows. "You wouldn't happen to have copied it, would you?"

  Her mouth twitched. "What makes you think that?" "Because that's what I would have done if I were in your shoes." I glanced at the dress-for-success pumps she'd kicked off. Mine had gone to Goodwill, along with my power suits.

  Sheila got up, padded to the desk, and took a file out of her bottom drawer. "Riddle's attorney will get this sooner or later," she said, handing it to me. "You may as well have a look at it now." The file held an application form,
a copy of Harwick's W-4

  listing only himself as a deduction, and the usual college transcripts. There was also a computer check-sheet showing which bank his paychecks were automatically deposited to, which health and life insurance packages he had opted for, how much he paid into his retirement fund, and how little he gave to United Way. I noticed that a couple of years ago he had changed the beneficiary of his life insurance from a Mrs. Letitia Harwick, Mother, to Central Texas State University, with the cryptic note, "bio. exper acct. only." At the same time, he had increased the benefit from a fairly standard seventy-five thousand to a cool million. The "bio. exper acct.," whatever that was, would be receiving a nice round sum.

  I shuffled copies. Harwick's transcripts were from Texas A&M, where he earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees. His grades were mostly As and Bs, although in two non-consecutive undergraduate semesters he had earned Cs and Ds, even an E I made a note of his student ID and the relevant years and turned to his employment application, which showed that at the time he was applying to CTSU he lived at 202 Mesquite Drive in San Antonio. I did a double-take, and flipped to the previous page in my notebook.

  There it was. Anne R. and Charles I. Scott, 204 Mesquite Drive, San Antonio, Texas.

  Ten years ago, Miles Harwick and Kevin Scott had been next-door neighbors.

  44 4

  On the way to Dottie's to meet Ruby and feed flocks of starving animals, I drove by the address Kevin had put down in his personnel file. It was west and south of campus, in a neighborhood that had been developed twenty years ago, when Pecan Springs was first beginning to respond to the growth of CTSU,

  the town's largest employer. Most of the houses were the kind you see advertised now as "starter" homes—two-bedroom, one-bath bungalows with detached garages, stucco or lap siding, built on narrow, nondescript lots. There was a smattering of newer duplexes occupied by young families, judging from the tangle of bikes and balls and play equipment that littered the porches and sidewalks. It was past midafternoon, but there wasn't a child to be seen. My generation would have been taking naps. These kids were probably watching Maury Povitch.

  There was a "For Sale" sign stuck in the middle of Kevin's front lawn. When I went up to the front door, I noticed several pieces of mail in the mailbox. My hand—a creature of old, inquisitive habits that I haven't quite outgrown—reached out and grabbed them. One was a junk-mail coupon flyer for Kevin. Two were letters addressed to Carl Wendt at the same address. Kevin's roommate, maybe. I tucked the mail back in the box and hit the doorbell. I could hear it ringing. But there wasn't another sound inside, and the closed drapes denied me a look into the living room. After a while I gave it up and went back to my car. I drove down the street, pulled around the block, and parked two doors down from Kevin's, where I sat for a few minutes, watching and thinking. But the front door remained shut, and after five minutes I drove off again, still thinking.

  I was mulling over the same subject when I pulled up behind Ruby's Honda in front of Dottie's house. One of my questions had been answered, but the knowledge didn't take me far enough. I was left with at least five more, all of which had to be resolved before I could assure myself that I had arrived at something like the truth.

  What was the connection between Kevin's blackmail letter— if it actually was Kevin's letter—and Harwick's death?

  Had the man committed suicide or had he been murdered?

  Either way, how did Dottie's hair come to be caught in the

  knot? How did the rope get into her garage—or out of her garage and around Harwick's neck?

  How was Amy involved?

  Of all these questions, the second was the most fundamental, and the most troubling. There is no crime as horrible as murder There is nothing any human being can do to another that wreaks more moral havoc and shatters more completely our fragile connections to one another. When one person willfully and maliciously deprives another of life, all of the energies of the law, of society, must focus on justice.

  But suicide, while it breaks the social contract just as irrevocably, is a special kind of murder, and we are ambivalent about it. We may mourn the loss of a human life and blame ourselves for not being able to prevent it. We may feel compassion for the individual whose last desperate act was self-annihilation. But there is no justice to be sought, for the killer has acted as judge and jury and pronounced the final sentence. If Harwick had killed himself, there was nothing to be done.

  But I was not yet convinced. The answer to this enigma did not lie in the direct evidence, which was ambiguous at best, but in the hearts of those involved. And that took me back to Harwick, and to Kevin, and to Amy.

  Amy. I glanced at Ruby's car parked in front of me. Bringing Ruby into this mess when I knew her daughter might be involved had been thoughtless and stupid. I had to find a way to divert Ruby to the periphery of the case, away from the center, away from Kevin and Amy.

  I got out of the car and went around the back of Dottie's house. I found Ruby in tight jeans, loose blue chambray shirt, and cowboy boots, dispensing cat food to a hoard of furiously hungry felines. I yelled at her through the fence.

  "Have you shot Ariella yet?"

  "I was hoping you'd do that," Ruby called, stepping out of the

  way of a giant Persian making a beeline for a food bowl. Ruby can spend hours getting acupunctured, but the thought of giving a shot makes her want to throw up.

  I went into the kitchen, located Ariella's insulin in the refrigerator, filled the syringe with six units, and finally found Ariella asleep on top of the refrigerator. Giving her the injection took less time than finding her. After I put her food down (she has a special diet, of course, being diabetic), I went to talk to Ruby through the cattery fence.

  "Did you locate Max Wilde?"

  Ruby straightened up, a ten-pound sack of Alley Cat hugged in her arm. Her smile was lyrical. "Oh, yes, I located him. What 2i fascinating man. His woodworking business is called Wilde-Works. Isn't that a clever name? And did you know he lives in a log house?"

  "I don't know anything about him, Ruby," I said. "Not a smidgen. That's what you went to find out." Now that I'd connected Kevin and Harwick, Wilde was probably irrelevant. On the other hand, judging from Ruby's reaction, he might be the diversion I needed. Her last boyfriend, a photographer named Andrew Drake, had moved out of town. Max could be helpful, especially if the situation with Amy got out of control.

  Ruby shoved a full bowl aside and bent over to fill another one, the outline of her blue-jeaned butt a graceful curve. "A big log house about three miles out of Wimberley," she said. "With a loft. He built it himself, next to Cypress Creek. And it's absolutely crammed with the most fascinating thingsl Chairs and tables and cupboards he's made out of cedar, and bowls and carvings and antique tools and pottery—"

  "What about Harwick? Did Wilde know him?"

  "And animals!" Ruby snagged the last bowl with her toe and began to fill it. "There are animals all over the place. Peacocks that roost on the porch railing, and ducks and geese. And chickens. He scrambled eggs for lunch, with eggs we found in

  the chicken coop. Would you beHeve it? And we had wine that he made himself, from grapes he grows right there on his property."

  I refrained from asking whether he had trodden out the grapes barefoot. Instead I asked, "Did Max Wilde know Miles Harwick?"

  She straightened up, looked around to see if she had missed any cat bowls, and came toward the gate. "Of course he knew him," she said. "They were business partners."

  Great. Now we were getting somewhere. "They were in the furniture business together?"

  "Well, sort of." She came through the gate and latched it behind her, shaking it to make sure the catch held. "Harwick didn't have anything to do with making the furniture. Max did all that. All Harwick did was put up some money so Max could build an inventory and put pieces on display in various shops. But that was a while ago." She looked at me. "Have you done the guinea pigs yet?"

 
; "I was waiting for you." We headed toward the room behind the garage where Dottie kept the food and other supplies. "This furniture business—how long ago was it?"

  "Four years or so. Max said he didn't like being partners with Harwick, so as soon as he could he paid him off and eased out of the relationship." Ruby opened the door and flicked on the light. There were two buckets of guinea pig food in the corner. She took one and I took the other. "Max says he kept on running into Harwick at Bean's. But he doesn't know much more about him than we do, apparently. He didn't even know Harwick was dead." She grinned. "He doesn't read the newspapers, and he doesn't have a television set."

  We went out and closed the door behind us. "That's it?" I asked.

  "Not quite," Ruby said. "When I asked him if Harwick had any enemies, he mentioned that there was some guy Harwick absolutely detested. Max even heard Harwick threaten to kill him once. Max thinks the guy had something on Harwick and was

  using it to get money or something. Max said when he heard Harwick was dead, this guy was the first one who came to mind."

  "Wonderful," I said. We opened the cattery gate and went toward the guinea pig cages. "Maybe you should follow it up. What's the guy's name?"

  Ruby put down her bucket. "Max didn't know. All he knows is that the guy lives in New Braunfels. But he shouldn't be too hard to find. He has dogs." She pointed to a cage. "Oh, China, look! Another litter of babies! Aren't they absolutely precious?"

  "What do you mean, easy to find?" I asked crossly. "New Braunfels isfull of people with dogs." I counted the downy bodies nestled against the mama guinea, who already looked harassed. "Twelve," I muttered. "Good God."

  Ruby began dipping dry food out of her bucket into the feeders on the cages. "I don't think it'll be too hard to locate these dogs," she said. "Max says they're greyhounds. Retired from the race track."

  I looked at her with a new interest. "Dottie mentioned that a man with a greyhound used to visit Harwick. Must be the same