Blood Orange: A China Bayles Mystery Page 11

  The wrecked van was towed into town, the lead investigating officer wrote his report, and that would have been the end of it—except that Lara Metcalf had called Sheila’s office about an hour ago and caught Sheila at her desk, doing early morning administrative chores. That’s when the word murder entered the conversation.

  Lara and her husband, Matt, had gone to the wrecking yard where their Astro had been towed. The front end was smashed, the windows were broken, and there were long scratches and several dents on the driver’s side where the vehicle had scraped against obstructions as it careened down the hill. The van was a total loss.

  But there was more damage—and Matt Metcalf thought it looked odd. The vehicle’s left rear taillight was broken. There was a dent low on the left rear tailgate, below the hatch, and another dent on the left side of the wraparound back bumper. Both dents were concave, and the upper dent bore visible flecks of orange paint. Metcalf insisted that this was fresh damage and that the Astro had been unmarked until last night. He pointed out that the concave dents weren’t the kind that a wrecker would have made when it winched the van up the hill and towed it into town. It was his opinion that somebody had rammed the vehicle from behind, causing Kelly to lose control, veer off the road to the left, and smash into that tree. Which would also explain the fact that there were no tire marks on the pavement. Kelly hadn’t braked.

  Metcalf’s report of the rear-end damage, Sheila said, was compelling enough for her to order the Astro towed from the wrecking yard to the police department’s impound lot, where it could be given a closer look by one of their crash investigators, under magnification and in the full light of day. If there had been a rear-end collision, the evidence would be found and documented.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that had caught Sheila’s attention. She had begun to listen with both ears when Lara Metcalf added the information that, when the crash happened, Kelly Kaufman had been on her way to talk to China Bayles—about a murder. And that she had taken her laptop with her because she wanted to show Ms. Bayles some sort of evidence.

  Murder. There was that word again.

  Khat had put his paws on Sheila’s shoulders and was rubbing his cheek against hers, purring like a steam engine. Sheila pushed him back into her lap. “So,” she said, “you’ve already told me that Kaufman mentioned murder when she phoned last night. Do you know anything else about it?” She added, “Like maybe who or when? Or even how?”

  “Sorry, Sheila. I wish I did.” I paused, feeling a flicker of disquiet. “Kelly’s computer—where is it?” Anything valuable left in a demolished vehicle in a wrecking yard could easily disappear.

  “It was under the front seat of the van. The officer overlooked it last night when he was clearing the accident scene—easy enough to do in the dark. But Lara Metcalf found it this morning when she and her husband went to look at the wreck. She brought it to the station.”

  Well, that was good news. “Have you looked at it yet?”

  Sheila gave up tussling with Khat and put him on the floor. He gave her a disapproving glance, then flicked his tail twice and stalked off.

  “Ignore him,” I said. “He’ll get over it. He’s too egotistical to brood over rejection for very long.”

  She smiled at that, then grew serious again. “Our forensics computer tech is going over the laptop now. In the meantime, I was hoping you might know something that would save us some time.”

  I shook my head. “When Kelly used the word murder in her phone call last night, my first thought was that there had been some sort of incident connected with her nursing. Like, maybe she had inadvertently administered a fatal drug, or something like that—something that involved her personally. But she immediately said that she hadn’t killed anybody. She said she thought she knew who did, though, and she wanted me to help her get proof.”

  “Anything else?”

  I frowned. “Yes, something about having evidence about ‘the other cases,’ whatever that means. But nothing more about the murder. Which of course might just be her imagination.”

  “You mean you think she was making it up?”

  I shook my head. “Kelly doesn’t strike me as the kind of person to lie about something so potentially serious. But she could be mistaken. Hospice nurses must have to deal with death all the time. Maybe she saw something and thought it was . . . something it wasn’t.”

  Sheila leaned forward. “The other cases? Drug trafficking, maybe? A nurse might get involved in something like that.”

  “No clue,” I said. I thought briefly of what Ramona had said and decided it was time to come clean on that—or on part of it, anyway. “There is something else, though. I understand that Kelly and her husband were having difficulties. When she rented the cottage, she told me that she was getting a divorce and that she wanted to stay in the cottage while she found another place to live. I don’t know the details, but I’ve heard that there’s been some sort of property disagreement. The two of them—Kelly and her husband—own the Comanche Creek Brewing Company.”

  Sheila frowned. “Comanche Creek. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it near where the crash occurred?”

  “Not far. Less than a mile, I’d think.”

  Then something else occurred to me. Ramona had arrived at my house on Limekiln Road, six or seven miles west of the crash, right at eight fifty and had left at nine twenty or so. She was with me when Kelly’s vehicle had gone off the road. If there was another vehicle involved in the crash, it wasn’t Ramona’s white Hyundai. The flecks of orange paint in the fresh dent in the rear end of the Astro hadn’t come from her car.

  But I’m a suspicious person by nature and by training, and the first thing I thought of was whether I might have been used to provide an alibi. After all, Ramona’s visit almost exactly coincided with the time frame of the car crash. How improbably convenient was that?

  The second thing I thought of was the man Kelly was about to divorce. If Rich Kaufman had somehow known that Kelly was on her way to my house—or even if he had happened to pull out of the brewery and onto the highway at the moment when she was driving past—he might have seen an opportunity to take care of his problem. Divorces have the power to turn an average spouse into a psycho, fueled by bitterness and frustration. Maybe something like that had happened here.

  Sheila was following my train of thought. “I’ll talk to Kaufman’s husband. Do you happen to know what he drives?”

  “Sorry, no.” But I was guessing that if he drove an orange car or truck, the cops would be taking a close look at it. Out in the shop, I heard the telephone rang. The answering machine would pick up, but it reminded me that there was a workday world waiting for me. I stood and picked up our mugs and plates.

  “Kelly’s things,” I said. “Her suitcase, her purse, her car—they’re all still at the cottage. Would you like to take a look?”

  “Definitely,” Sheila said, and waited for me beside the French doors while I put the dishes in the kitchen sink. I snagged the cottage key off the nail behind the kitchen door and took the lead along the gravel path through the gray morning mist. There was enough of a drizzle to make us walk fast, and we went in the shortest way, through the front door. I led Sheila past the kitchen, where yesterday’s breakfast things were still on the counter, and down the hallway to the bedroom.

  That was where I got another major surprise. The glass in one of the French doors had been shattered and both doors stood partway open. There was a trail of wet leaves across the carpet, a large patch of damp carpet where the rain had blown in, and a single muddy shoeprint in front of the suitcase—an odd sole pattern of wedges, ridges, and lateral slices on a very large shoe, a man’s shoe, most likely. The contents of Kelly’s suitcase—tidily arranged the last time I’d been here—had been tossed around, some of them on the floor. The dresser drawers were all pulled open. The shoulder bag that I’d stashed in t
he bottom drawer was also on the floor, the contents spilled out.

  “Looks like you’ve had a visitor,” Sheila remarked. “And not a very neat one.”

  I bent over to pick up Kelly’s wallet, but Sheila stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “Don’t touch,” she warned. “We may have something here. Fingerprints, maybe. That shoeprint.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Meanwhile, the carpet was getting wetter and wetter. But the place was a crime scene now, and I needed to cooperate. I glanced back at the shoeprint. “Distinctive,” I said. “Not your everyday sneaker. Might not be too hard to find a match.”

  “Sure,” she said ironically. “All we have to do is check every closet in town.” She glanced at me. “Sorry,” she said. “Just being realistic.”

  With a sigh, I turned and went back down the hallway to look through the living room window and see whether Kelly’s Kia was still there. To my relief, it was, although one of the doors was slightly open and the dome light was on. Whoever had found her purse and the money had also found her car keys and searched her car. I wondered whether he—or she—was looking for something in particular. Kelly’s computer, maybe?

  Sheila had come out of the bedroom and was standing behind me, looking out the window over my shoulder. “We’ll check the car for prints, too.” She paused. “Any idea whether this break-in is related to the car crash last night? Assuming the crash wasn’t an accident, that is.”

  “How the hell should I know?” I asked testily. “Given the circumstances, though, I’d say there’s a good possibility. Wouldn’t you?”

  I was beginning to feel exasperated and angry. My guest—a very nice young woman—was in the hospital as a result of a possibly deliberate collision. My cottage had been trashed. The word murder was coming up with a disconcerting frequency. There was something going on here, and I was being pulled into the middle of it, whatever “it” was. That made me edgy. I have learned—the hard way—that ignorance can be dangerous—deadly, even. And while it may be a personality flaw, I don’t like being kept in the dark. The feeling always makes me want to start digging for information, any kind of information.

  I took a deep breath. I was jumpy, yes, but that was no reason to jump all over Sheila. And anyway, I had a favor to ask. I moderated my tone. “Is there any chance that I can get a look at Kelly’s computer?”

  “You know the protocol,” Sheila said, regarding me steadily. “I can’t let you go on a fishing expedition, counselor. But you can tell me what you’re looking for and how it’s relevant. In which case, I might be able to tell you when it turns up. If you have a reason for needing that information.” We were friends, yes. But Sheila has a habit of putting that to one side when it comes to cop business. And at this moment, she was one tough cookie. “Do you? At this moment, I mean.”

  “No,” I muttered, and stuck my hands in my jeans pockets. I was disappointed, but I knew where Sheila was coming from. The forensic tech would have a much better chance than I would of uncovering something significant. I would have no idea where to begin looking for it or what it might look like if I found it.

  “I don’t want to be a prick, China.” Sheila went to the front door. “If you do come up with something you think might be on that computer, let me know and I’ll reconsider.”

  “Got it. In the meantime, I need to repair the glass in that French door before the rain ruins the carpet. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “I do, actually. I’ll send somebody over to check for fingerprints on that door and on the dresser drawers. We might get lucky.”

  “Sure,” I said, resigned. “But make it snappy, will you? I hate to say it, but this business, whatever it is, is getting expensive. The broken door glass, the carpet, the cleanup.” And then I thought of Kelly in a hospital bed, with tubes stuck into her and machines humming around her and nurses hovering over her, and felt a sharp thrust of guilt. My trouble was a nagging mosquito bite compared to hers.

  Sheila gave me a sympathetic look. “I’ll ask the techs to get it wrapped up in a couple of hours.” She nodded toward the bedroom. “Please don’t touch anything back there until they’re finished—ditto the Kia. And if you run into anything that sheds any light on all this, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “And you’ll return the favor?”

  It wasn’t hard to read the look she gave me, since I already knew the answer to the question. Regardless of what happens in your favorite cozy mysteries, the police simply do not allow a nosy Miss Marple to involve herself in a criminal investigation, except under the most unusual circumstances—that is, when they’re out of leads and desperate for information. Given my experience as a lawyer, I have been allowed to intrude, but only very occasionally and only because there wasn’t any other way to settle the matter at issue. In this case, I had no special knowledge or reason to get involved, and Sheila had no compelling reason to allow me to trespass on her turf. Which didn’t make me any less curious, of course.

  But there was a question that she might answer for me, and I asked it as we went back along the path to the shop. Since our husbands are partners in McQuaid, Blackwell, and Associates, she and I often discuss the investigations they’re working on. She might know what McQuaid was doing in El Paso.

  “McQuaid is out in West Texas,” I said. “I thought he was handling an investigation for Charlie, but Charlie says he isn’t, so I guess I’m mistaken. He’s in El Paso. Do you know what that’s about?”

  The drizzle had temporarily stopped when we reached the tearoom deck and Sheila turned, hesitant. “Actually, Blackie’s out there, too,” she said and added, as if she were weighing her response, “No, sorry, I can’t tell you what it’s about.” And then, hurriedly, as if to correct the impression that she knew and didn’t want to tell me: “I mean, I don’t know. That’s why I can’t tell you.”

  McQuaid and Blackie were out there together? I was surprised. The two don’t team up unless they have a compelling reason. Not because they don’t like working together (they do), but because it’s more productive—that is, they make more money—if they’re conducting separate investigations. McQuaid, Blackwell, and Associates is a business, after all, and the purpose is to earn a living. The last time they joined forces, they were on the trail of an American child who had been taken across the border by his non-custodial Mexican mother. McQuaid and Blackie crossed into northern Mexico together, because they knew it was too risky to go alone. Juárez, where they’d been headed, was especially dangerous territory. Dozens of young women factory workers have been murdered there, and drug cartels own and operate the city. Gringos aren’t welcome—particularly gringos who have been hired to take a young boy away from his mom and back to Texas. I thought about this briefly, then pushed it out of my mind. After the frightening episode with the boy, McQuaid had promised me that he wouldn’t go into Mexico again for any reason.

  “I wonder why McQuaid didn’t tell me that Blackie was going out there with him,” I said. I wasn’t going to mention Margaret or say anything about my online search for Margaret’s current Ranger assignment. I already knew I was a jealous wife—I just didn’t want to sound like one.

  “I’m sure he just forgot,” Sheila said, and her glance slid away. “He probably had . . . other things on his mind.”

  “He just forgot?” I repeated. “That’s a weird thing to forget. And yesterday, McQuaid left a message on the answering machine at the house, saying that he might be out of cell tower range for a while.”

  I paused. To judge from the way Sheila avoided my glance, she knew what was going on—and I didn’t.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” I added petulantly. “Are you hearing from Blackie? Is he able to call home?”

  Sheila made a show of glancing at her watch. “Hey, look at the time. Gotta get my poncho and head back to the office before they send out a search team. I�
��ll see that the crime-scene people hit your cottage within the hour so you can get that door fixed. And if you find out anything that’ll help with this car-crash investigation, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Right,” I said, disgruntled. “Yeah, sure, I will.”

  Chapter Eight

  Research studies indicate that orange (Citrus sinensis) essential oil helps to calm and reduce anxiety, lift low spirits, and increase cheerfulness. The oil may be used in a room diffuser, in massage (the oil diluted in a carrier oil and massaged into the skin), or in lotions and bath fragrances.

  China Bayles

  “Oranges in Your Garden”

  Pecan Springs Enterprise

  I loved the rain that was coming down harder outside the windows of my shop, but it definitely had a dampening effect on business. A couple of women came in at ten, just after I unlocked the front door. One of them was looking for a copy of China Bayles’ Book of Days, which I was happy to find on the bookshelf and sign for her. Her friend was “just browsing,” but by the time she left, she was carrying a copy of Culpeper’s Color Herbal, the makings of a nice potpourri, and a bag of the Moth Attack blend that I grow and mix myself—southernwood, wormwood, rue, and santolina. Ten minutes later, a police officer came in to tell me that they were finished going over the cottage and I could get the door repaired. On her way out, she bought a small bottle of lavender bath oil.

  But after that promising start, the customer traffic dwindled away. The connecting door to Ruby’s shop was open, and the delightful aroma of fresh oranges and the relaxing sound of New Age music wafted through the doorway. The fragrance of oranges, Ruby tells me, has been shown to lower stress levels, so she likes to use it often in her shop, in one of those diffusers that scent room air. Her theory: shoppers with less stress tend to spend more time shopping and may find more things they can’t live without.

  I could see that Ruby’s shop traffic wasn’t any better than mine, and I wondered if we’d have any lunch customers when the tearoom opened at eleven thirty. But Tuesday is soup-and-sandwich day, which makes it easy to adjust for the size of the crowd. Cass was cooking up a pot of chicken noodle soup this morning—the aroma that came from the direction of the kitchen was an excellent clue—and several kinds of sandwich fillings. And there was a tea party scheduled for the First Baptist Church Ladies Club at three, so there would be some extra traffic then.