Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09

by Susan Wittig Albert

  "Lookin' fer me?" She shook off my hand and stood. "I ain't lost."

  "Terry thought you were," I said. "You left without telling her where you were going."

  "Huh!" the old lady grunted. "I'm growed, ain't I? Do I gotta sign my name ever' time I walk out the door fer five minutes?"

  "You've been gone more than five minutes," Ruby replied. "You've been out here for hours."

  Aunt Velda shook her head. "Uh-uh. I bin down there for hours." She pointed toward the boulder.

  "Down where?" I asked.

  "In that hole," Aunt Velda said. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "It's a cave."

  "A cave!" Ruby exclaimed.

  "Sure 'nuff," the old lady said. She turned and pointed. "Right there. See fer yerself."

  I looked at the tumble of boulders. Between the two biggest rocks was an opening about the size of a large watermelon, overgrown with an almost impenetrable jungle of elbow bush and wild grapevines. A couple of old hackberry trees leaned over the site, their leafless limbs laden with the prettiest clumps of fruiting mistletoe I had ever seen.

  Ruby sucked in a breath of surprise. "You crawled in through that little hole?"

  "Nope." Aunt Velda was emphatic. "I crawled out through that little hole. I crawled in through a bigger one, over that way. The Klingons showed me where." She turned and pointed off to the left. "When I was in, I turned on my flashlight and snuck around, lookin' at stuff. I got sorta turned around after a while, though. Lost my bearin's. Lost my flashlight, too. That's how I come to crawl out here. I could see the light comin' through them rocks." She showed us a snaggle-toothed grin. "Good thing I came out this way, too. Guess whut I found, right inside that there hole." She grinned again, excitedly. "I found me a treasure trove. Real gold."

  "Gold!" Ruby exclaimed.

  The old lady cackled. "Ain't it a hoot? Here them poor girls've been workin' their fannies to the bone growin' flowers, and all the while there wuz enough gold in that there cave to make the whole durn lot of us rich as thieves."

  I frowned. "I really doubt that you'd find gold in the caves around here, Aunt Velda. The bedrock is mostly sedimentary limestone, and gold is formed in igneous rock, where it—"

  "I dunno about any iggy stuff. All I know is I found gold." And she reached into her pocket and produced a gold coin. "A whole big bunch of it."

  Ruby gaped at the coin. "It is gold!"

  "Din't I tell you?" Aunt Velda demanded. "Gold, sure as yer born. Worth ten whole dollars," she added. "Says so right there, under th' eagle."

  I took the coin. It was a ten-dollar gold piece, with an eagle on one side and a Liberty head on the other. I gulped when I saw the mint date. 1879. "And how many of these did you find?"

  Aunt Velda pulled a handful of coins out of a pocket. "A bunch. But I dunno's I got 'em all. Some critter went 'n' chawed big holes in the leather saddlebag and drug it around in there. Could be a few more, here'n' there."

  I grinned. I was betting that there were more—a lot more. For if I was right, that hole in the ground was where Jess Newton had stashed the loot that he and his two brothers stole from the Ranchers State Bank.

  And what was more, that gold eagle Aunt Velda was holding was no longer worth just ten measly dollars. On the collectors' market, it would go for twenty or thirty times that much, maybe more. It didn't take a Ph.D. in higher math to figure out that the gold in Jess Newton's long-forgotten hidey-hole might be worth something on the order of a million dollars.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The yellow colour of the withered bough may partly explain why the mistletoe has been sometimes supposed to possess the property of disclosing treasures in the earth; for on the principles of homoeopathic magic there is a natural affinity between a yellow bough and yellow gold.

  Sir James George Frazer The Golden Bough

  It was dark by the time Ruby and I got Aunt Velda back to the farm, where we met the search-and-rescue party just as they were preparing to fan out across the hills in a full-scale search pattern. An hour later, after a hair-raising drive on glazed roads back to Pecan Springs, we checked the old lady into the Manor Nursing Home, where her social worker had arranged for her to stay until she was released in Donna's care, probably the next morning. Then we said good night to one another and went home. There wasn't anywhere else to go. Seized in the icy grip of a full-blown winter storm, Pecan Springs was totally shut down. The Diner was closed, the lights were off at Beans Bar & Grill, and the Sweet Adelines Women's Barbershop Group had canceled its concert in the high school gym.

  By the time I got home, our electricity and the phone lines were down, victims of fallen branches. McQuaid and Brian had already eaten, but the scene in the kitchen was reminiscent of times long gone: father and son, wearing heavy sweaters against the cold, sat at the kitchen table in the golden glow of a kerosene lamp, playing Scrabble and snacking on popcorn and hot chocolate as Howard Cosell snored peacefully at their feet. While I made a tuna salad sandwich and warmed up some leftover sausage soup, I reported what had happened that afternoon—Terry's arrest and the fortune Aunt Velda had discovered in the cave.

  I had expected Brian to be excited about the discovery of long-buried loot from a 1920's bank robbery, but he had other booty in mind.

  "Awesome!" he breathed. "A cave that nobody knows about! I bet I can find some blind salamanders for my collection!"

  "Just what we need," I said, dipping into my soup. "A pair of blind salamanders to hang out with those fight-footed lizards."

  McQuaid frowned. "Best to leave the salamanders where they are, Brian. If they're not on the endangered species list, they should be."

  "They'd certainly be endangered if you brought them home," I observed, thinking of the lizard that had just missed being drowned in the drain. When I saw Brian's crestfallen look, I patted him on the shoulder. "But it'll be fun to explore that cave. After the gold has been recovered, we should let the University Caving Club know that it's been found, so they can organize a mapping expedition. You can go along." I'd have to check that out with Donna, but I was sure she wouldn't have any objection to mapping the cave. Aunt Velda could supervise.

  McQuaid turned to me. "Speaking of gold, I hope you didn't just go away and leave all those coins lying around. Did you think to post a guard?"

  I started on my tuna sandwich. "And who would guard the guard? Anyway, that opening is so well hidden that nobody's going to find it—even if they believe Aunt Velda's story about the stash, which they won't. She tried to tell the volunteer firemen about this wonderful pile of gold she'd found, but when she let it slip that the Klingons were the ones who led her to the cave, they just sort of naturally tuned out. I confiscated her gold eagles so she wouldn't be using them to prove her case. Here they are." I went to my bag, took out the coins, and piled them on the table, where they gleamed dully in the lamplight.

  "Cool!" Brian said, picking up a coin and flipping it in the air. "Real bank robbers, huh? Wait'111 tell the kids at school that my mom found a cave full of gold!"

  "I think," I said judiciously, "that we'd better swear ourselves to secrecy—for the moment, anyway." I turned to McQuaid. "I told Blackie about the cave, and promised to take him up there tomorrow. I figured he ought to take a look before any salvage operation gets underway."

  With a thoughtful look, McQuaid took the coin from Brian and turned it in his fingers. "I never believed that old tale about Jess Newton getting drunk and losing the money." He grinned. "I always figured his girlfriend made off with it, and he was too embarrassed to admit it. Either that, or he told his brothers he lost it in order to keep from splitting it with them."

  "Will the bank get the money back?" Brian wanted to know.

  "The Fletchers own the land where the cave is located," I said, "and the landowner generally has a superior claim.

  Anyway, it probably won't be possible to prove where the coins came from." I thought for a minute. "Carl Swenson's family owned that land for a long time. May
be he knew there was a cave up there someplace, and suspected that Newton had left the money there. Maybe that's why he was so furious about the way the survey turned out." I finished my soup and pushed back my bowl.

  "Oh, yeah. I forgot." McQuaid put the coin down. "Lila Jennings' granddaughter called here earlier this evening, before the phones went out. Said she wanted to talk to you. Something about Swenson."

  I leaned forward. "Did she say what?"

  McQuaid shook his head. "She wasn't very clear. She seemed nervous and kept talking low, as if she was afraid somebody was going to hear her." He raised an eyebrow. "Think it's important?"

  "I don't know. It might be. Did she say where she could be reached?"

  "Yeah, she left a number. But you can forget that. It may be tomorrow before they get our phone operating. Maybe even the day after."

  "You could use the cell phone," Brian suggested. "The phones in town might still be working."

  "Good idea," I said, and stood up. "I'll give it a try."

  McQuaid cocked his head curiously. "What does Lila Jennings' granddaughter have to say that's so important that you need to hear it tonight?"

  "I have no idea," I said. "But I'd like to find out. Anyway, I've got something to ask her, and the sooner the better."

  Earlier that evening, during the difficult drive into town, I'd had a brainstorm. We needed to find somebody to replace Mrs. Kendall in the tearoom, and Lucy needed to escape from the Diner, where her mother and grandmother exercised an unhealthy control over her. She was an experienced cook, give or take a regrettable lapse or two. We needed help, and we could help her. It seemed like a good solution all around, and I was glad I'd thought of it. Ruby had agreed enthusiastically.

  "Talk to her as soon as you can," she'd said. "It would be wonderful if we could hire somebody before Mrs. Kendall leaves town. I know you've got her recipes and shopping lists and stuff, but it would help if Mrs. K was still available to answer questions."

  Now, I picked up the cell phone and Mrs. Kendall's reference guide, which I'd brought home, and went into the living room to make the call. McQuaid had built a fire in the fireplace and I lit the fat red Christmas candle on the coffee table. I put the binder on the coffee table and punched in the number on the slip McQuaid had given me. Lucy answered on the third ring.

  "Hi, Lucy," I said. "This is China. I'm glad your phone's still working. Is your electricity off?"

  "It's off all over town," Lucy said. "Which means that we can't watch TV. I'm sitting here with a candle, and nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. Mom and Gramma have already gone to bed."

  I was glad to hear that Lucy was alone. She might be more willing to talk if nobody was listening. "My husband said you called earlier," I prompted.

  "Uh-huh. Well, I been thinking about what you asked me this morning—about whether Carl ever got any threats from anybody. Well, there was one, although maybe it didn't amount to much." She paused. "I wouldn't even bother telling you about it, except for the fact that Donna Fletcher has been arrested. I can't believe she would've done what they say. Why, she's just about the sweetest person I know. When she comes in the Diner, she always smiles and talks and leaves a nice tip, even though I bet she can't afford it. She and her sister can't make a lot of money out at their flower farm, and she takes care of that old aunt. You've got to admire somebody who works as hard as Donna does and still keeps smiling. That warms your heart real good, you know? I hate to see her in trouble. I'd like to help her, if I could."

  I could have told Lucy that Donna was being released and her sister was taking her place in jail, but she might be more willing to talk if she believed that Donna was in danger. And she obviously felt much less inhibited when her mother and grandmother weren't there to boss her around. Maybe she wasn't as taciturn and uncommunicative as I had thought—just repressed.

  "You believe that somebody else might have wanted to kill him?"

  "I don't know the details about how he died, except what's in the newspaper. But I've been thinking about it, and yes, there was somebody who didn't like him. Hated him, even." Her voice grew tighter. "I was out to his place on a Sunday night, you see, the week before he got killed, and there was this phone call. It made him pretty uncomfortable. And sad. I don't know that he was scared or anything like that, but he was sure sad."

  I listened with more attention. "Do you know who called?"

  "You mean, do I know the name? Uh-uh. I happened to pick up the call, but I can't tell you much about it, really. All Carl said was it was about something he'd paid for already, and it would be better off forgotten because there was nothing he could do to change things." Her tone became philosophical. "Life is like that, you know? Sometimes we do something we wish we hadn't, but we still have to live with it. I got the idea that Carl had done something he was really sorry for, but he was putting it behind him and getting on with his life the best way he could. You know what I mean?"

  All I knew was that if I didn't hurry this along, we could be on the phone all night. "You said you picked up the call. Maybe you could start there and tell me exactly what happened."

  "That's what I'm doing. Telling you what happened. You see, he was cooking in the kitchen, making hamburgers, when the phone rang. I offered to do the burgers, but he said I had to cook all the time for people, and somebody oughta cook for me once in a while. He wouldn't even let me make the salad. Wasn't that sweet? You couldn't tell it from looking, but there was a caring side to Carl, more than you'd guess. Lotta times people don't show you their secret sides because they're afraid you'll think they're silly or bad or—"

  I cut in, hoping to get her back on track. "So he was cooking when the phone rang. Then what?"

  "So there was Carl, with a towel tied around him and the burgers in the pan. When the phone rang, he told me to answer it for him, so I did. The person didn't tell me her name, but I remember what she sounded like."

  I frowned. "What she sounded like?"

  "Sure. Different people talk different, haven't you ever noticed? This one sounded like that woman who cooks for you. She comes into the Diner sometimes, like today. I don't like to wait on her because she's always making fun of our food, like there's something humorous about okra and black-eyed peas and biscuits. Like maybe we're hillbillies or something. But I like to listen to the way she talks. It's classy, you know? Like old British movies." Lucy gave an envious sigh. "Anyway, that's how the woman on the phone talked. Classy. I bet if I talked like that, people would listen to me."

  A log fell in the fireplace, sending up a sudden shower of sparks. "This caller," I said slowly, thinking of Mrs. Kendall. "What did she say that made Carl uncomfortable?"

  "I can't tell you exactly," Lucy said, "because of course I only heard one side of the conversation, and when I asked Carl about it later, he wouldn't tell me. It was about something that happened a long time ago. To her cousin or her sister or somebody. Carl didn't want to talk about it. He said that she—this person who called, I mean—was a little weird. Like, crazy. She'd called him before, and sent him a letter or something, and she'd even come out to his place. He said it didn't matter and I should forget it, but it made him real sad, I could tell. It pretty much spoiled our evening. We ate the hamburgers, and then he took me home." She sighed. "I was kinda hoping we might get... well, get closer. But it didn't happen. He just took me home, and that was the last time we were together, except when he brought that mistletoe into the Diner last week and gave me a big kiss. Made my mom mad."

  "I see," I said.

  She cleared her throat. "I want you to know that Carl and me, we weren't engaged or anything, China, like my grandmother says. I don't want to marry anybody. I'm not that kind of person, to get married and have kids and stuff like that." She gave an awkward little laugh. "But Carl was good to me, you know? Sort of like I was his sister or something. I liked being around him. He'd been places and done things and he knew stuff. Sure, he'd been in trouble with the law, he'd even been in prison, which
is why my mother keeps saying I should forget him." Scorn crept into her voice. "She thinks I ought to go out with Orville Pen-nyman. But Orville's not near as interesting as Carl."

  I didn't doubt that. Orville Pennyman is about as interesting as a cold potato pancake. "I understand," I said sympathetically.

  "Since Carl was killed, I've been kinda blue, just thinking about things," Lucy said. "Like, maybe it's time for a change." She stopped. "I just heard Mama upstairs. Hang on a minute, okay?" There was a longer pause, as if she were checking on something, and when she spoke again, her voice was lower. "That woman who works for you, the one that talks classy? Well, she was in the Diner this afternoon. She said she's leaving town, and there might be an opening in the tearoom, and maybe I'd be interested."

  "What a great idea!" I exclaimed, thinking how nice it was of Mrs. Kendall to help us look for her replacement. But Lucy was going on.

  "I said I didn't think so, because I want to do something different from cooking, but what she said got me thinking. It's time I got me another job. A different line of work, you know? And a different place to live, away from Mom and Gramma." Lucy's voice became earnest. "I thought maybe you might have some garden work I could do out at your place, China. I've always liked working in Gramma's garden, and I'd love to live in the country. I'm a fast learner and a hard worker. And I'm strong. I'd do anything you told me to do, and I'd do it without complaining."

  Lucy's request for work was one of the most straightforward and wholehearted I had ever heard, and I was im-

  pressed. But if she wasn't interested in working in the tearoom, I couldn't offer her anything.

  "I'm glad to hear you're looking for something different," I said. "But there won't be much to do in the garden for another six weeks or so. Even then it'll be part-time work. But I'll keep my ears open and let you know if I hear of something. One of the local nurseries might be hiring after the holidays."

  Before Lucy could reply there was a click on the line, and an acrid voice demanded, "Lucy, it's after nine. Who you talkin' to all this time?" The voice sweetened. "That you, Orville? You and your mama got lights over on your street?"