Spanish Dagger Read online

“Eight dollars an hour for twenty hours. A hundred and sixty dollars altogether. But I owed him seven dollars and thirty cents for lunch, which makes a hundred fifty-two seventy. He was supposed to pay me on Monday night, but—” She stopped. “You’re not a cop, are you? I bet you don’t have a gun. Who are you? Are you a friend of Mr. Fowler’s? What are you—”

  “Okay, Marcy,” I said. “Find a piece of paper and write down your full name, address, and phone number, and the amount you’re taking out of the register. Then put the key on the counter and pick the money up off the floor.”

  She stared at me, her eyes widening behind her glasses. Someday, after the acne, she was going to be a very pretty girl. “You mean, I get to take it?”

  “You earned it, didn’t you?” There was no point in a college kid getting tangled up in the settlement of Colin Fowler’s business, which could go on for months. She might as well take the money and run. But not before I asked her a few questions. “Did Mr. Fowler ever mention a woman named Lucita?”

  Marcy looked uneasy. “Lucita? Well, maybe. I know I’ve talked to her. She phoned a couple of times.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I never met her, if that’s what you’re asking.” The girl bent over and picked up the bills from the floor. “She was a bookkeeper, or something like that. The calls were about some…some plants Mr. Fowler was supposed to pick up.”

  “Plants?” I thought of Cannabis. “Any special kind of plants?”

  She tucked the money into her fanny pack, adding some coins out of the till. “I don’t know. Just plants, I guess.” She straightened up, not quite meeting my eyes. She knew more than she was telling, I was sure of it. But I’d let it go for now. I could talk to her later.

  I took the calendar page out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Name, address, phone number, please,” I said, nodding to a cup of pens on the counter. I watched as she wrote it all down, so fast that I knew she wasn’t making it up.

  She handed the page back to me. “Do they…do they have any idea who killed him?”

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head numbly. “I can’t even imagine it. He was…strange. But nice. Easy to work for. He never hassled me about…stuff.”

  “Did you ever hear anybody threaten him? Did you ever witness any arguments?”

  “Arguments?” She pulled her brows together, hesitating. She started to say something, stopped, and started again, on what I thought was a different track. “Well, I heard Mr. Fowler and Mr. Mueller arguing about the roof. It leaks pretty bad, and Mr. Mueller is supposed to fix it.”

  “Wilford Mueller, from the antique shop next door?”

  “That’s the one.” She nodded distastefully. “He owns this place. Mr. Fowler was trying to get him to repair the leaks. Mr. Mueller kept putting it off, even though it’s in the lease that he’s responsible. They had a few heated discussions about that.”

  I’d bet. Wilford Mueller, who owns half the block, has a reputation as an unpleasant landlord. There had been some real trouble last year, when he tried and failed to get some of his other property rezoned. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he and Colin had had their differences. “Other than that, did you ever see or hear anything that might suggest that somebody wanted to kill Mr. Fowler?”

  “Not…not really.” She bit her lip, and I wondered if she was going to tell me what was on her mind. But whatever it was, she filed it away. I’d have to come back for it later. “This was a quiet place to work. Nothing exciting ever happened, and Mr. Fowler was very nice, always polite and friendly. I couldn’t believe it when I found out he was dead.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said quietly, remembering the still figure sprawled in the yucca, like a scene from a TV cop show. I took one of the store’s business cards, turned it over, and wrote my home phone number on the back. “If I have other questions, I’ll call you. And if you think of anything else, call me.” I handed the card to her. “Now, go on, scoot. Get out of here.”

  She scooted, in a hurry, anxious to be gone. I waited until I heard the alley door close, gave it a few minutes more, then made my way through the back room and out. Full dark had fallen, but Mrs. Reedy and her choir were still at it, having moved to a thrilling arrangement of “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” in which the basses and tenors were doing most of the work.

  I was closing the door behind me when a low, husky voice spoke out of the darkness, making me jump.

  “Is it true?” the voice asked breathlessly. “Don’t tell me it’s true!”

  I turned to see Darla McDaniel, her bulk enveloped in a purple crocheted shawl. She was wearing a red hat decorated with purple feathers. Darla is the Rodeo Queen of the Cowgirl Girlfriends, the local Red Hat chapter. She had just come out of the Bluebonnet Bookstore’s back door, a large box of books in her arms.

  “Is what true?” I asked cautiously. Because of her association with the Cowgirls, Darla has a finger in every pie in town. She might have been talking about anything, from a scandal involving Mayor Pauline Perkins to the rumor that Constance Letterman was selling the Craft Emporium, next door to my shop.

  But Darla was talking about Fowler. “I heard that…that Colin was…murdered,” she said breathlessly. She set the box of books on the ground and pulled the shawl tighter around her, shivering slightly. Her loose gray dress, printed all over with large purple and red hibiscus flowers, hung straight down from her sizable breasts to her thick ankles. Darla and Ruby went to Pecan Springs High School together, and both were on the same cheerleading squad. They were also both in love with the same high-school quarterback. Darla had worked very hard to marry the guy. But he turned out to be a bad bargain, the marriage was a bummer, and Darla has resented Ruby ever since—for not trying harder, I guess.

  Darla pulled down her mouth in a pitying smile. “Poor Ruby,” she said. “I understand that she and Colin were…involved.” She made involved sound like it was Ruby’s dirty little secret. “This must be very hard on her, with her mother in such a precarious mental state.”

  Oh, for pity’s sake. Darla McDaniel is one of Pecan Springs most notorious tale-tellers. If she knew that Ruby’s mother was having difficulties, everybody else in town knew it, too. And whether Hark put Colin’s death on the front page of the Enterprise or buried it on page six, they no doubt also knew all about it, and how he had died.

  I paused. The choir had stopped singing, but Mrs. Reedy filled the silence, tremulously demonstrating a difficult soprano passage. It wouldn’t hurt to ask Darla a few questions, since her bookstore was right next door to Colin’s shop, and since she is such a dedicated snoop.

  “I wonder,” I said, “whether you might know who Colin’s friends are.” I paused. “At the Chamber of Commerce, maybe?” Darla had been the Chamber secretary for four or five years.

  “Friends?” If she wondered why I was interested, she didn’t let on. “Well, not at the Chamber. He wasn’t the kind to hang around and trade chitchat after the meetings. He was always very businesslike, which didn’t make him terribly popular.” She tilted her head to one side. “If you know what I mean.”

  I knew. To win friends and influence people in the Pecan Springs Chamber of Commerce, you have to be one of the good ol’ boys, even if you’re a good ol’ girl. Colin was neither.

  “Still,” she added hastily, condemning with faint praise, “Colin wasn’t a bad man. Not at all. He paid his Chamber dues on time, and his assessments—which is more than you can say for a lot of folks. When I asked him for a donation to the United Way, he was very generous. And he helped out at the Merchants’ Pancake Breakfast last month, when the flu bug was going around and all our flapjack flippers called in sick.”

  “Gosh,” I said in a genial tone, “I’m sorry I missed that. I would like to’ve seen Colin Fowler flipping flapjacks.”

  There was a silence. Mrs. Reedy had stopped singing, and the piano moved into the crashing notes of “Onward Christian Soldiers” as the choir girded its f
igurative loins to go out and do battle with the unwashed ungodly.

  “But I’m afraid Mr. Fowler did have an enemy or two,” Darla went on, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “He and Wilford Mueller were always going around and around about the roof, which Mr. Mueller had got his back up about. And there was an argument with another man, just last week.”

  She bent to pick up the box, then put a hand to her hip. “Oh, dear,” she said faintly. “My sciatica is acting up something fierce. I’ve been taking painkillers, but they make me groggy. Maybe you know something that would help. Some herb or another.”

  “You might try Saint-John’s-wort,” I said. “People have been using it for centuries to treat their sciatica.” I bent over and hoisted the box. “If you’ve got a bad back, you really shouldn’t be carrying anything heavy, Darla. Let me help.”

  “Oh, would you?” she cooed. “China, you are such a sweetie. My car is right over there, in the lot.” She rummaged in her large straw handbag for the keys as I carried the box to her Mercury. She opened the trunk and I put it in. “Why do you suppose the choir has to practice that hymn?” she asked plaintively. “Don’t they already know it?”

  “Maybe it’s one of Mrs. Reedy’s favorites,” I said, closing the trunk. “You mentioned an argument,” I added. “Was it recent?”

  “Last week sometime.” She considered. “But maybe argument isn’t the right word. It happened in this very spot. Reverend Berry lets the merchants park here during the week. We don’t have a lot of our own, and the meters are so expensive. I’ve been trying to get the Council to buy that vacant lot on the other side of Lila Jennings’ diner and turn it into a parking area. But the mayor says Chief Dawson wants some new armored vests for the police department, and the city can’t afford both.” She made a face, indicating displeasure with the city’s priorities. “Really, you’d think the police could get along with what they have, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess it depends on your priorities,” I said. Getting Darla McDaniel to the point is like trying to herd cats. “What were you saying about the argument?”

  She adjusted her shawl. “Well, they weren’t yelling or anything, so maybe it was more like a serious discussion. I’d never seen the other man before, but I wondered if he might be a police officer. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he had that look.”

  “What look?”

  She shrugged carelessly. “Oh, you know. Blond, crew-cut, clean-shaven. A Boy Scout. Big, burly shoulders. Big hands. Held himself very straight.”

  Very straight with burly shoulders and big hands was definitely a cop look. “What were they discussing?”

  “Money.” She leaned closer, an eager, conspiratorial look on her face. “The man said Colin owed him.”

  “How much?”

  She pulled back, offended. “For heaven’s sake, China, you know me better than that. I don’t eavesdrop on private conversations. It isn’t any of my business how much Colin Fowler owed anybody.” She tossed her head. “Besides, they stopped talking when they saw me.”

  I suppressed a smile. “I just thought perhaps the man might have mentioned an amount. Or maybe he said something like, ‘You owe me,’ like maybe Colin owed him a favor.”

  Darla looked dubious. “I don’t think it was a favor. His tone was sort of threatening. But you’re right. The way he said it sounded like it was…” She stopped.

  “Like payback time, maybe?”

  “Yes, that’s it, exactly!”

  Payback time. I wondered if the blond, burly man was a friend of one of the Dallas Dirty Dozen. “And you didn’t hear anything else?”

  “No, that’s all.” She frowned. “I really hope Ruby’s going to be all right. The shock of Colin’s murder, together with her mother’s situation—” She looked at me, her eyes bright and inquiring. “How is her mother, by the way, China? One of my Red Hatters told me that there was a problem at Dillard’s—something about Doris forgetting to pay for some scarves and an alligator bag?”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes. Here in Pecan Springs, the grapevine rivals NASCAR for speed and Google for comprehensiveness, and some of the subcultures—the boys at Beans, the Red Hatters, the herb guilders—move the gossip even faster. But Fredericksburg is sixty miles away, for Pete’s sake. You’d think there’d be a few roadblocks in the information superhighway.

  “She forgot to stop at the cash register on the way out,” I said. “Sometimes older people don’t always remember the details.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” she trilled in a tone that made clear that she didn’t believe me but that it was perfectly okay with her if we both pretended. She opened the car door and slid in. “Please tell Ruby my prayers are with her at this difficult time,” she added in a saccharine voice. “If there’s anything I can do—anything at all—be sure to let me know.”

  “Oh, I will,” I lied, and waved as she drove away.

  A moment later, I was back in my car. I thought for a moment, then pulled the calendar Christmas page out of my pocket and picked up my cell phone. I punched in the number I’d copied from Ruby’s note. On the fourth ring, an answering machine clicked on.

  “You have reached the Sonora Nursery,” a woman said. “Our regular hours are eight to six, Monday through Saturday. We’re closed on Sunday. We can’t take your call right now, but if you would like to leave a message—”

  I clicked off the connection. Well, there it was, the answer to a couple of sizable questions. Sonora, which is located on the east side of Pecan Springs, specializes in plants from the Southwest, South America, and Mexico, like the blue-green agave, Agave tequilana, that I bought from them when they first opened. This succulent has long fleshy leaves with sharp-pointed tips. When it’s about five years old, it puts up a fifteen-foot stalk that is topped with yellow flowers. The mother agave is diligently putting out litters of pups—agave offshoots—which I have potted up and offer for adoption to friends and customers. In fact, I had several nice-looking pots sitting beside my garage, just ready to go.

  Sonora used to be owned by Wanda Rathbottom, who called it Wanda’s Wonderful Acres. My first connection with Allan and Betty Conrad—Sonora’s owners—came through Wanda, who asked me to give them my opinion about their chances for succeeding as nursery owners in Pecan Springs. That was a couple of years ago, before they bought the place, while they were still debating whether to open a nursery here or in Brownsville, where Allan had managed a greenhouse for a local grower.

  Here’s the story—the part of it that I know, anyway. Wanda had gotten into some serious financial trouble and had to sell her Wonderful Acres or lose everything to the bank. The Conrads were interested, but worried that it might be bad luck (or bad judgment) to take over a failing business. In a couple of serious, extended discussions during which I got to know the couple pretty well, I assured them that Wanda’s business failure had nothing to do with poor location or lack of customers, actual or potential. She failed because of her own bad management, pure and simple. It was not quite the message Wanda intended me to give them, but it was the truth, as least as I saw it.

  The Conrads listened, came back with some questions, and then bought Wanda out. They gave the Wonderful Acres a complete makeover and their venture, called Sonora Nursery, has become a great success. They’ve brought in some interesting, hard-to-find plants, especially agaves and yuccas, which are among their specialties. They advertise widely and the place, which always looks terrific, attracts crowds of customers. I didn’t know anybody by the name of Lucita who worked there—as a bookkeeper, according to Marcy—but they’ve hired quite a few people recently. Lucita was probably new.

  Sonora was closed now, of course. I could drive over there in the morning and poke around, although Lucita no longer seemed like much of a lead. That handsome agave and those potted yuccas I’d seen in Colin’s backyard—it was dollars to doughnuts that they came from Sonora. The calls from Lucita and the note, too, on an envelope with what I now recognized as
Sonora’s logo, were probably related to his purchase of the plants. Maybe he had charged them, and she called to verify the account. Or maybe his check had bounced, and she called to let him know. I smiled wryly at Ruby’s jealousy of a potential significant other and my eagerness to make something out of nothing. So much for Cannibis.

  I turned the key in the ignition. This had taken longer than I thought, and it was time to head home. Besides, the choir members were starting to come out of the church. If I sat here any longer, somebody was bound to come up and tell me how sorry she was to hear that Colin Fowler had been murdered and ask whether Ruby’s mother had stolen any more scarves lately.

  Chapter Eight

  Damiana is an herbal shrub that grows throughout Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. It produces yellow blossoms and small, sweet-smelling fruits that taste like figs. The botanical name for the plant, Turnera aphrodisiaca, reflects its traditional use as an aphrodisiac. A Spanish missionary first reported that the Indians of Mexico made a drink from the damiana leaves, added sugar, and drank it to enhance lovemaking. It has also been used to treat depression and anxiety, as well as diabetes and a variety of intestinal and respiratory ailments. It is commercially available as a liqueur. The dried leaves can be brewed as a tea.

  Two hours later, McQuaid and I were upstairs in our bedroom, getting ready for bed. He and Brian had been late coming home, because when the soccer game was over, they had gone with Blackie Blackwell—the Adams County sheriff and McQuaid’s longtime fishing and poker buddy—to San Marcos to look at some antique guns for sale. Now, Brian was staying up late to finish his English paper (under the sleepy supervision of Howard Cosell), and McQuaid was in an exultant mood, having added a valuable Remington 1889 open-hammer shotgun with twin twenty-eight-inch barrels to his gun collection. McQuaid takes his guns seriously.

  He pulled off his plaid shirt. “How did Ruby handle the news about Fowler?” he asked, tossing the shirt into the hamper. We have come a long way from the early days of our live-in relationship, when I’d threaten to nail his used underwear to the floor unless it was properly disposed of.