by J. A. Jance
The house had been gaily decorated in anticipation of Christmas. A lovely artificial tree, surrounded by a stack of brightly wrapped gifts, stood in front of the living room window. A collection of handblown crystal angels stood atop the wooden mantel on the fireplace, and three hand-decorated but empty stockings hung there, waiting for Christmas morning.
Wild with grief, Christine’s starkly pale, tearstained face had been completely at odds with the colorful holiday decor. Phil had answered the questions with terse replies that bristled with grim self-recrimination. At the time Manuel Renteria already knew that many marriages weren’t strong enough to withstand the death of a child, and he had wondered if Phil and Christine’s relationship would ever recover.
At first the only thing most people noticed was that Christine stopped coming out of the house. No one else seemed to be going inside it. Phil emerged. He went to work; he went to the store and did the shopping; but there was no sign of his wife. As time went on, people noticed the bedraggled Christmas tree and began speculating about how long it would be until it went away. All these years later, the forlorn tree stood there still, decorated but only partially lit.
Manuel Renteria realized that in all the intervening years, he had never laid eyes on Christine Tewksbury, not even once, not until today, when he and Deputy Carson and Detective Zambrano had knocked on Phil and Christine’s door and let themselves into the house. It had been like stepping into a time capsule. Nothing in the room had changed-not the tree, not the presents, not the dusty crystal angels on the mantel, not the hanging Christmas stockings, and not the furniture, either. The room hadn’t changed, but Christine had.
Back then Renteria remembered her as a well-built woman, a little old to have a daughter as young as Cassidy, but attractive and fit. There was nothing attractive or fit about the enraged woman they found lurking in the Tewksbury living room today. Christine was little more than a gaunt, snaggletoothed hag. A shapeless shift that appeared to be several sizes too big now swamped her sallow body. Long gray hair, lank and greasy, hung past her waist. She was missing several teeth. Sitting in a filthy recliner, she had a clear view of an old-fashioned television console, but the set wasn’t turned on. Next to the recliner stood a grimy TV tray with what looked like the remains of a half-eaten dish of oatmeal.
That was something that took Sheriff Renteria’s breath away. Christine Tewksbury had slaughtered her husband, then she had gone back inside and calmly eaten her breakfast. That was beyond cold-blooded.
The three men had entered the room in single file but without drawing their weapons.
“What are you doing here?” Christine demanded.
“We’re here to talk to you about what happened to your husband,” Renteria said.
“No,” Christine insisted. “No one is supposed to come here when Phil isn’t home. Come back when he’s here.”
“You know we can’t do that,” the sheriff said. “Phil is dead.”
Christine’s response to that was one of immediate rage. “No!” she shrieked, half rising out of her chair. “That’s a lie! Phil’s at work!”
On the way to the house, Renteria had anticipated finding Christine a wheelchair-bound invalid. Deputy Carson had warned them in advance about the bat, and it was a good thing. Reaching down to pick it up, Christine had exploded out of the recliner like a crazed jack-in-the box. While she screamed and brandished the weapon, it had taken all three officers and two shots from Detective Zambrano’s Taser to subdue her enough to put her in cuffs.
Ultimately, they managed to wrestle her out of the house and into the back of a patrol car, where she continued to scream and pound her head against the window as she was driven away.
Once she was gone, Sheriff Renteria had spent hours at the house and in the garage, following his crime scene techs as they photographed the scene and searched for evidence. Renteria gave the guys full credit. They had found two tiny and almost invisible screw holes in the outside of the door frame on the garage door. The holes had been plugged with a dollop of toothpaste that was crusty on the outside and still semi-soft on the inside.
From the distinct straight lines visible on both of Phil Tewksbury’s legs, they had deduced that Christine must have used something-most likely a string or a wire-to trip him. So far, they had found no evidence of string, wire, or wire screws in the house or in the trash. Tomorrow the sheriff planned to have his officers perform a grid search of the entire property to see if Christine had disposed of the evidence by tossing it into the yard.
In other words, what had happened was obvious, but as he stared at Midge’s smiling face in the photo, what Manuel Renteria still wanted to know was why. After all those years of being cared for by her husband, why had Christine Tewksbury suddenly snapped? What was it that had driven her over the edge and into a murderous rage?
If, as Patty Patton claimed, Christine hadn’t set foot outside the house in years, why had she done so now, not once but twice-once to lay the trap with the trip wire and once to do the actual killing? Why kill her husband in the garage when she could just as easily have attacked him in the house-when he was asleep in bed, for instance? If she’d been intent on murder, wouldn’t it have been easier to do the deed inside the house? Why go to all that trouble of setting the trap outside? Was it to deflect suspicion?
More than that, why do it at all? And then, almost as though Midge had spoken aloud, Sheriff Renteria had his answer. He immediately picked up his phone and called Detective Zambrano again.
“Whenever you see Patty, ask her about Phil’s private life.”
“What do you mean his private life? Like an affair or something?”
“Exactly,” Sheriff Renteria said. “If he was having an affair, that might supply a motive. What if Phil Tewksbury was fooling around with some other woman and Christine found out about it?”
“After what we saw today,” Zambrano said, “you could hardly blame him.”
“Maybe you couldn’t blame him, but Christine sure as hell could,” the sheriff said. “And if he did have an outside interest, Patty will know about it.”
“What if the other woman turns out to be Patty Patton?”
That one set Sheriff Renteria back on his heels. He hadn’t even thought about that.
“Crap,” he said. “I don’t know. I guess you’ll need to ask her.”
He hung up the phone and went back to staring at Midge’s silent photo.
If Patty turns out to be Phil’s girlfriend, Renteria told himself, there goes another pillar of the community.
47
6:30 P.M., Monday, April 12
Patagonia, Arizona
By the time Patty made it home from dinner, she was done. Eating at the cafe had been a tactical error, because she’d been forced to do far too much talking. Was it true Christine Tewksbury had murdered her husband? People had heard rumors that bundles of drugs had been found in Phil’s garage. How was it possible that the nicest guy in town was actually a drug dealer? In other words, everyone wanted to know what Patty knew and how long she had known it.
When she came in the front door and saw the voice-mail light blinking on her phone, she was tempted to ignore it. After all, it was bound to be more bad news. But when she saw the number listed on the display and realized it was Ali Reynolds calling, she picked up the phone and dialed back.
“Sorry it took a while for me to get back to you,” Patty said. “I stopped off and had some dinner on the way home.”
“I’m doing the same thing on the way to the hospital,” Ali said. “Some relative or other of Teresa’s showed up this afternoon to help with the little ones, so I got a break. But I did stop by to see Christine.”
“And?”
“She seems to think Phil had a girlfriend.”
For a moment Patty said nothing. This was not news to her. She had suspected Phil had a girlfriend for a long time, and why shouldn’t he? He was devoted to Christine, but Patty was of the opinion that, after years of being pun
ished for his daughter’s death, he deserved to have some kind of life and some kind of fun.
Months ago Patty had noticed Phil starting to take a little more pride in his appearance: He didn’t wear the same uniform two days in a row; he took more trouble arranging his comb-over; sometimes he even whistled or hummed as he took the mail bins out to his truck.
Yes, Patty had noticed, and she hadn’t said a single word about it to Phil or to anyone else, either, because it was no one else’s business. That didn’t mean she hadn’t wondered, though. Who was it? Where had he met her? Phil wasn’t the kind to hang out in bars. Maybe it was someone he had met at the cafe, but if that were the case, someone probably would have noticed and mentioned it. When she noticed he was often late coming back from his route, especially on Mondays, Patty concluded that it had to be someone on his route.
The idea that Phil would casually pull his mail truck off into someone’s yard and park it while he indulged in a nooner was more than a bit disturbing, but obviously, he and his gal pal were incredibly discreet, because not a whisper of it ever came back to Patty. The previous week, when he had come back later than usual, claiming he’d had to help a stranded motorist change a tire, Patty had started to tease him about it, but then she had let it go. She had already decided that if Zambrano asked her about it in his interview, she would keep it under her hat. For one thing, it was nothing more than a rumor. Patty knew no details of any kind. Besides, why bring something up like that at a time when all it would do was hurt Christine? Now, to her surprise, word about a possible girlfriend had come from Christine herself.
“Hello,” Ali asked. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” Patty said. “Just a little taken aback is all. What did she tell you?”
“That she found a letter he had written sometime back-a letter to someone named Ollie.”
“That’s an unusual name for a woman,” Patty said. “It’s not one I recognize.”
“It was like a pen name or something,” Ali said. “He signed his letters Popeye, and Ollie was evidently short for Olive Oyl.”
Patty blinked in surprise. That was the tune she remembered hearing Phil whistle on occasion, the theme song to that old cartoon-“I’m Popeye the sailor man.”
“What’s really important,” Ali continued, “is that Christine thinks Ollie, or whatever her name is, was at their house this morning.”
“She saw her?”
“No. Christine claimed she smelled the girlfriend’s perfume, and she was offended that Phil would bring another woman into the house when she was right there.”
“Offended enough to kill him?” Patty asked.
“According to her, more like hurt,” Ali answered. “Besides, at this point, I don’t think Christine understands that Phil is dead. She’s sitting there fully expecting him to get off work, come pick her up, and take her home. But you’re sure you have no idea who this Ollie person might be or where we could find her?”
“None at all,” Patty answered. “But if Phil did have a gal pal, she’d have to live on or near his regular route.”
“Could he have met her anywhere else?”
“Not that I can think of,” Patty said.
“Whoever she is, we need to find her,” Ali said. “Right now the cops have only one suspect in Phil’s homicide, and that’s Christine. If someone else was at the house, there’s a possibility that the person may have either witnessed or been involved in what happened.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Patty said.
She put down the phone and stood staring at it, thinking about what Ali had told her. Christine had found a letter. That meant a letter on paper. Not an e-mail. Not a text. But a letter, and where there was one letter, there might be more.
Making up her mind, Patty picked up her purse and her car keys and left again. She drove straight back to the post office. What she and Phil had always referred to as the sorting table was really an antique partner desk that Patty’s mother, Lorna, had bought from a used-furniture auction in Tucson thirty-some years ago. The desk had two knee wells and two sets of drawers, one set on either side. For years, one of those sets had been Patty’s private domain. The other was Phil’s.
Once inside the back room, Patty ignored another blinking message light and went straight to Phil’s side of the desk. She found what she was looking for-a packet of envelopes fastened with a rubber band-squirreled away in the back of the bottom drawer. There were no stamps or postmarks. The letters hadn’t been sent through the mail. Written in flowery, feminine script on the outside of each envelope was a single word: Popeye.
Patty Patton had spent her entire life believing that handling the mail was a sacred trust. She didn’t pry, not even so much as to read the notes on picture postcards back when more than a handful of people sent them. Her whole being recoiled at the idea of reading a letter that was addressed to someone else, but with Phil Tewksbury dead and with Christine’s life hanging in the balance, Patty didn’t feel as though she had any choice. She picked up the top envelope and removed the single piece of paper.
Dear Popeye,
Up all night with Oscar. He’s still bad this morning. I can’t leave him for more than a few minutes.
Won’t be able to see you today. Miss you.
Ollie
And that was it. As far as Patty knew, there was only one Oscar living in the area-Oscar Sanchez. Oscar’s quarter horse ranch out in the San Rafael Valley had to be one of the last stops on Phil’s mail route. And if Oscar Sanchez were the topic of the note, than the person writing it, Ollie, had to be Olga Sanchez. Patty stood staring at the paper, thinking about Olga Sanchez, about the way she wore her hair-pulled back and wound in a knot at the back of her neck, just the way Olive Oyl in the cartoons wore her hair. Olive Oyl and Popeye.
But maybe there was more to it. Wasn’t Olga the former mother-in-law of Teresa Reyes, and a seriously estranged former mother-in-law at that? It seemed like an odd connection between Jose’s shooting and Phil’s murder, but surely it was more than a simple coincidence.
With the letter still in her hand, Patty picked up the telephone receiver. The last call had come from Ali Reynolds’s number. She pressed redial.
“Christine is right,” Patty said when Ali answered. “I found a packet of letters hidden in one of Phil’s drawers here at the post office. Ollie is probably a woman named Olga Sanchez. She and her husband, Oscar, live on a ranch called the Lazy S that’s on Phil’s mail route, between here and Lochiel.”
“Wait,” Ali said. “Olga Sanchez? Teresa Reyes’s former mother-in-law? I’ve actually met her. Thin. Black hair pulled back in a bun.”
“Yes,” Patty said. “Just like Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend in those old cartoons. That’s where the Ollie part comes from, but you’ve met Olga? How?”
“She came to the hospital where Jose is being treated, offering to help out by looking after Teresa’s two older girls.”
“Her granddaughters,” Patty added.
“She even apologized to Teresa for some of her past behavior.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Patty said. “It’s about time. Life is too short to carry grudges around like that, and there’s been bad blood between Teresa and Olga for a long time. Olga always blamed her daughter-in-law for her son’s death.”
“Was Teresa responsible in some way?”
“Not in any legal sense. The way I heard it, Teresa and Danny had a big fight, Danny went out drinking with his pals and ended up in another fight-this one in a bar-and died as a result of a drive-by shooting. It’s a relief to know that they’re finally getting over it,” Patty added. “It’ll be better for them and certainly better for the daughters.”
“Who are being raised by Jose Reyes, her daughter-in-law’s second husband,” Ali said. “Was the bad blood between Olga and Teresa serious enough that Olga would target Jose?”
“I don’t think so,” Patty said. “I’ve known Olga all her life. Her father came from Mexi
co years ago and worked as Oscar’s foreman. Olga grew up on the ranch and ended up marrying Oscar after his first wife died. She was twenty, and he was a lot older, but as far as I can tell, it’s been a good marriage. Oscar has had some serious health issues in the last few years. Olga seems to have been his devoted caregiver.”
“Like Phil with Christine,” Ali said.
While they’d been talking, Patty had removed another letter from its envelope. As she unfolded the paper, she noticed that a faint hint of lingering perfume came off the page as she scanned through it.
“This letter is all about Oscar’s medical problems and going to Tucson to see doctors. So that’s something Phil and Olga shared, being caregivers. Based on my experience looking after my mother, I can tell you, it’s a pretty thankless task.”
Patty opened another envelope. This one was about the picnic lunch they’d had together. Olga had brought tuna sandwiches and some chocolate chip cookies; Phil had supplied the sodas. They’d eaten lunch on a blanket under a tree with his mail truck parked nearby.
“So far this all seems pretty innocent,” Patty said. “More like pen-pal stuff than love letters. And nothing salacious. Nothing about meeting somewhere and making mad, passionate love. More like having someone to talk to who knows what you’re up against.”
And nothing about drug dealing, either, Patty thought. Not a word about that.
If Phil had been involved in drug dealing, his gal pal, Olga, was probably as much in the dark about it as Patty was. And Christine.
All afternoon, since the moment Eunice Carson had told her Phil was dead, Patty had been grieving for the man. Now, for the first time, she was pissed at him instead. All the time he had been pretending to be one thing, he had evidently been busy being something else.
“I think you need to go to Sheriff Renteria with this,” Ali said.
“With the letters?”