Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 Read online

  I was beginning to feel very uneasy about this. When Terry was asked for her prints, she probably figured the game was up. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd already fled. Come to think of it, though, she didn't have a vehicle— unless she'd finished repairing the van, or was willing to steal her friend's car.

  "When are you picking her up for questioning?" I asked.

  "I'm heading out there as soon as I can get hold of a social worker who can make some arrangements for the old lady's custody. We can't leave the aunt alone at the farm, not in this weather. They're forecasting freezing rain. If we get much more ice, there's no telling how long the utilities will hold up."

  "How about sending Donna home to take care of her aunt?"

  "I sure as hell would if I could," Blackie growled. "If I could get her to recant her confession. Which is why I want you to talk to Wyzinski. She needs to instruct her client to come clean. Until that happens, Donna's staying right where she is, and that's that. Damn, I wish that social worker would call."

  I thought for a minute. "How about if Ruby and I go out to the flower farm with you? We can stay with Aunt Velda until the social worker gets there."

  Blackie didn't hesitate. "Best idea I've heard all day. Stay where you are, China. I'll be there in ten minutes."

  Chapter Sixteen

  In Teutonic mythology, it is believed that if mistletoe is found growing on a hazelnut tree, a golden treasure trove will be discovered nearby.

  German folklore

  "So Terry was running from the law," Ruby said sadly, when I'd told her the whole thing. "That explains why she was so fanatical about privacy. And why she refused to involve the police when Swenson was giving them trouble at the farm."

  "Yes. It also explains why Donna was willing to take the blame for Swenson's death, and why she was so insistent on avoiding trial." I wondered whether Donna had known all along that Terry was a fugitive. It was my guess that she had, for I couldn't imagine how two sisters could live with a secret like that between them. But maybe not. Maybe Terry hadn't told Donna anything about the escape until after she'd hit Swenson, panicked, and hid the truck.

  For that was what had happened, I'd concluded. Unless Terry chose to make a clean breast of things, no one might ever know exactly what had occurred on that lonely stretch of road on Sunday: whether she had been drinking, or was full of rage at Swenson, or had somehow lost control of the vehicle. And I couldn't guess whether Terry had been involved in Swenson's marijuana operation. I wouldn't have thought so—but then I'd never suspected her of being a prison escapee, either.

  However, it certainly wasn't hard to figure out what happened after Terry had hit Swenson. Believing that she'd go to jail for manslaughter in Texas and then be extradited to California to serve out the rest of her prison term, she'd decided that she couldn't get help for the victim or confess that she'd struck him. Panicky, scared, not thinking very straight, she'd run through all the possible places she could dump the old truck and hit on the idea of concealing it in Swenson's shed.

  Once the truck was safely disposed of, she'd hiked home across the ridge to tell her sister what had happened—and perhaps, for the first time, the truth about her prison escape. Together, the two of them had cooked up that absurdly improbable story about Aunt Velda taking off with the truck and appearing later that afternoon without it—the same explanation they gave to Blackie and me when we went out to the farm on Monday. On Tuesday, when Donna learned that the truck had been found, she realized that their story would never hold up under scrutiny, so she had impulsively taken the blame for herself. A brave and generous act—but very, very dumb.

  I frowned. I had constructed a reasonable theory, but it left two things unexplained. The perplexing fact that Terry's were the only prints on the steering wheel and the gearshift, and the troubling fact of those unidentified prints.

  But there wasn't time to think about that now. I reached for the phone and dialed Justine's number. She was in court, so I left a detailed message with her secretary, summarizing what Blackie had told me and suggesting that she talk to her client as soon as possible. She needed to convince Donna to retract her confession so she could go home and take care of her aunt. It was a lost cause, anyway. Donna would have to be crazy to stick to her story, in the face of the fingerprint evidence. And once Blackie had booked Terry, Donna would be released, whether she wanted it or not.

  Ruby had gone to change into jeans and a sweater and lock up her shop. Returning, she said: "The sheriff's car just pulled up out front. Ready?"

  "Tell him we'd better take two cars," I said. "He'll be taking Terry back to town, and we don't want to be stranded."

  "I'll drive," Ruby offered.

  "Okay. I'll finish locking up." I picked up Mrs. K's reference guide. "I'll take this home with me. We've got to figure out how to handle the cooking."

  I was getting my parka and muffler when the phone rang. I almost didn't answer, figuring that it was only a customer calling to see whether we were still open. On the other hand, it might be Justine, checking in. I picked it up.

  The gruff voice on the other end of the line was Terry's. "We've got big trouble out here, China."

  You don't know the half of it, I thought. But at least she was still at the farm—she hadn't hightailed it. Or had she? "Where are you? What kind of trouble?"

  "I'm at home, where else? Aunt Velda's gone."

  "Gone?" I asked blankly. "Gone where?"

  "How the hell should I know?" Terry was brusque and angry. "If I knew, I'd go find her, wouldn't I? I've searched every damn place I can think of. There's not a sign of her."

  "When did she leave?"

  "Some time between ten and twelve." There was a brief silence, and when she spoke again, the anger was gone and in its place was a quiet desperation. "I went out to the barn to work on the van. When I came back, her coat and her boots were gone. I've been searching ever since."

  I shivered, thinking of the old woman wandering through the woods on a day when younger, able-bodied people had chosen to stay indoors.

  "The weather out here is wicked," Terry went on. "Icy rain and bitter cold. Aunt Velda is a tough old bird, but if she's broken a leg or a hip, she can't last the night. Can you come out and bring Ruby?"

  "The two of us won't be enough. Have you called the police?" I glanced up at the clock. It was after three o'clock. In December, the Hill Country is dark by six. Given the rugged terrain, it would take more than the three of us to mount a full-scale search-and-rescue operation before it was too dark to see. We needed help.

  "I don't want to take the time to explain why, but that's a last resort," Terry said. "However, if we haven't located her by five, I'm planning to call the cops. Please don't—"

  "We're on our way," I interrupted, and hung up before she could ask me not to notify the sheriff.

  Terry's face darkened when she saw Blackie's official car pull in behind Ruby's red Toyota in front of the gate. "I thought I told you—" she began furiously.

  I held up my hand. "The sheriff was already on his way out here when I got your call. He wants to talk to you, Terry. It has nothing to do with your aunt."

  Terry's eyes suddenly went dead. "He knows, huh?"

  Pulling my parka tighter around me, I replied shortly, "Yes, he knows." I didn't want to go into it with her. The sheriff gets paid to do that kind of dirty work.

  "Where have you looked for your aunt?" Ruby asked.

  "Just about everywhere," Terry said dully, thrusting her bare hands into the pockets of her coat. "I'm afraid she's gone to look for that stupid cave she keeps talking about. Or maybe she's hunting for that blasted spaceship." She threw a resigned glance at Blackie, who was striding up the path toward us. "Now that the cops are here, there's no point in delaying the search. Who do I call?"

  "That's been taken care of," I said. "The sheriff has put an EMS crew on standby alert and radioed the volunteer fire department over at Deer Springs. They're only ten miles away, so they'll be
here before too long. In the meantime, Ruby and I can start looking."

  Look where? Beyond the well-kept fields, past the fences, we were surrounded by thousands of acres of impenetrable cedar brakes, dense thickets of scrub oak and elbow brush and unruly wild grapevines, rocky ridges Uttered with stones weathered loose from the thin caliche soil, steep canyons, eroded slopes, wilderness. The old lady could be anywhere, everywhere. I shivered in the cruel wind knifing down from the north. Exposure kills fast in weather like this. She could be dead.

  Blackie reached us. His eyes were watchful and his mouth was firm, but when he spoke his voice was deceptively mild. "Ms. Fletcher, you and I need to have a little talk about some unfinished business you've got in California." He paused. "And about Carl Swenson's death."

  Terry sucked in her breath, straightened her shoulders, and came to life again. "You're not getting anything out of me," she growled. "I'm not talking until I get a lawyer." She looked at me. "How about that Wyzinski woman? Will she represent me?"

  "You'll have to ask her," I said. Justine had been sympathetic toward Donna, but I wasn't sure how she'd feel about Terry, who'd been willing to let her sister go to jail in her place. A lawyer doesn't have to like a client in order to represent her fairly, however. Some of my best work had been on behalf of people I detested.

  "I know you're concerned about your aunt," Blackie went on, "so we can wait until the search team arrives and you can give them some idea where to look. I'll also arrange for someone to let you know as soon as she's found." He paused. "I suggest, though, that you wait in the car."

  Terry lifted her chin. "I'll wait out here," she said defiantly. "I'm not cold."

  "That's not an option," Blackie said. He took Terry's elbow firmly, steered her down the path, and locked her into the back seat of the squad car. He opened the front door and reached for his mike. I knew he was letting the dispatcher know that he had the suspect in custody.

  Ruby and I stood looking after them. I had plenty of mixed feelings about Terry's arrest—mostly regret for the way things had turned out and for my part in it, combined with relief that Donna would be cleared, whether she wanted to be or not. More than anything else, though, I was glad the whole thing was over. Now if Aunt Velda would just turn up unharmed.

  "I wish I could feel sorry for Terry," Ruby said sadly, "but I don't. It's all very karmic, don't you think? She messed up her own life by getting involved with drugs, then she made trouble for her sister, running to her after she escaped from prison. Now she has to pay for what she did." She made a disgusted noise. "I'll bet Donna didn't know a thing about the escape. Terry probably told her she got out early for good behavior."

  I drew my wool cap down over my ears. "You think that's what happened?" "Don't you?"

  "I don't know," I said slowly. "It's possible. Terry is pretty coercive. And Donna strikes me as being the kind of person who invests a lot of herself in taking care of others, like Aunt Velda, for instance. Maybe Donna felt she needed to take care of her sister. Maybe she even helped Terry escape." I made a wry face. "Sounds like I'm describing a couple of dysfunctional co-dependents. I have no way of knowing whether it's an accurate description."

  "It's hard to know what's really going on with people," Ruby agreed. "Just when you think you've got them figured out, they show you another side of themselves, and it changes your whole view." She pulled her hood forward and fastened it under her chin. "Where do you think we ought to start looking?"

  "There's a spring near the top of that ridge," I said, pointing. "Mistletoe Spring. Donna and Aunt Velda talked about it when I was here on Saturday. The area was the source of their disagreement with Swenson. Aunt Velda mentioned that she'd found some arrowheads there and said she wanted to look for more. I suppose it's as good a place to start as any."

  "Should we walk?"

  I nodded. "There must be some kind of a road, but I have no idea what shape it's in. I don't want to drive on it." I glanced at my watch. It was almost a quarter past four. "We'd better get started. It'll be dark in less than two hours."

  I had brought a knife, two flashlights, and a couple of wool blankets, tightly rolled and lashed with a bungee cord. I had considered bringing other equipment—a rope, first-aid supplies, and so on—but decided it would be better not to load ourselves down. If we found Aunt Velda, one of us could stay with her while the other went back for help.

  I fastened the rolled blankets over my shoulder and we stuck the flashlights in our pockets. We left Blackie and Terry to wait for the search-and-rescue crew and headed off down the narrow gravel lane that ran beside Mistletoe Creek, calling Aunt Velda's name every few minutes and stopping to listen for an answering cry. The arctic wind flung flecks of stinging sleet in our faces and numbed our hands and feet. Ice was already beginning to embrace the exposed tree branches and twigs, and the rocks underfoot were treacherous. It was one of the coldest days I could remember. Terry had said that Aunt Velda had worn her coat and boots, but that wouldn't be enough to save her from hypothermia.

  Despite the body warmth generated by the exercise, I was bone-cold before we had hiked half a mile. Ruby was shivering and out of breath, and her nose was as red as a berry. I gave her a concerned look.

  "You sure you should be doing this?"

  "I'm sure," she said emphatically. "I keep telling you, China, I am not sick. There's nothing wrong with me that a little surgery won't cure." She threw me a sidelong look. "You sure you know where we're going?"

  "We're headed in the right direction," I said, stopping to adjust the blankets I was carrying. "The spring has to be up this way, because the creek is down that way." I pointed. "Way down."

  In the last few minutes, the road—twin tire tracks in the frost-killed grass—had angled diagonally upward across the densely wooded shoulder of the ridge. Mistletoe Creek, on our right, was now at the bottom of a ravine that was probably sixty feet deep, lined with cedar trees and tumbled limestone boulders.

  Ruby stopped, put her hands around her mouth, and called Aunt Velda's name again. We paused to listen, but all we could hear was the sound of the wind and the brittle rattling of the live-oak leaves.

  "Let's keep going," Ruby said determinedly. "We've got to be close to the top of the ridge." She frowned. "What did you say Aunt Velda might be looking for up here?"

  "Arrowheads. Donna and Terry were cleaning out the spring, and Aunt Velda found a cache of them. She claims she found a cave, too, with arrowheads and skulls, stuff like that."

  I stopped, cupped my hands, and gave another loud yell. A flock of twittering robins, migrants from an even colder north, flew up from the creek bottom, and somewhere a tree branch crashed with a splintering sound. At the rate the ice was forming, there would be a great many more downed limbs by morning.

  We started walking again. "A cave," Ruby said thoughtfully. "There's a big one on the other side of Austin—Inner Space Cavern or something like that. But I've never heard of one around here."

  "The ones in this part of the Edwards Plateau are pretty small," I said, "mostly sinkholes. The bedrock is limestone, formed from ocean deposits. Like this—see?" I picked up a pitted piece and showed it to her. "Wherever rainwater runs into a crack, the stone dissolves. What you get over time is a honeycomb of fissures and holes." I tossed the rock into the ravine and watched it bounce all the way down to the creek. "Underneath all these trees and bushes, the limestone probably looks like a piece of Swiss cheese."

  We stopped and the both of us called out together. After a moment, we moved forward again. To our right, the ravine fell away steeply; to our left, the ground rose to the top of the ridge, maybe fifty feet higher than the old road. The spring must not be far ahead.

  "There's a big cave over near Marble Falls," I went on. "Longhorn Cavern. When the area was first settled, some Comanches kidnapped a girl and took her there. Three Texas Rangers came after them, and there was a fight. The Rangers got away with the girl. She married one of them."

  "How
romantic," Ruby said with a grin.

  "There's more, only not so romantic. During the Civil War, the Confederates used the cave as a gunpowder factory. They dug up bat guano from the cave floor to make saltpeter, and stored their munitions in some of the back rooms. Sam Bass hung out there too, in the 1870's. You know, the guy who almost robbed the Pecan Springs Bank."

  "Sounds like a busy place." Ruby stopped and called for Aunt Velda. All we heard was the crash of another icy limb.

  "There's even more," I said, when we were moving again. "In the twenties—"

  But Ruby, head cocked, wasn't listening to me. Somewhere in the woods we suddenly heard a yelp, wild thrashing sounds, and loud cursing.

  We yelled. There was a wavering call in reply.

  "China? That you, China Bayles?"

  "It's Aunt Velda!" Ruby cried excitedly. "We've found her!"

  A silence, then more furious thrashing. "Goldurn grapevines! Stupid-ass, piss-ant grapevines! Tie up a person's feet so's she cain't walk."

  "Keep talking," I called. "Where are you?"

  "I'm in the clutches of these goddamn vines, that's where I am," Aunt Velda replied bitterly. "Git the hell up here and cut me loose!"

  We found her a few minutes later, just below the top of the ridge. She was sitting on a large hunk of weathered limestone, wearing purple sweatpants, old leather Army boots, a dirty red jacket with a torn sleeve, and a yellow wool cap. Her gray hair straggled around her face, her cheeks were scratched and filthy, and her feet and legs were hopelessly tangled in a snarl of wild grapevines.

  "Oh, you poor thing," Ruby gasped, as I took out my knife and knelt down to cut the vines. "You must be freezing!"

  "I bet I'm not as cold as you," Aunt Velda said, eyeing Ruby critically. "Yer nose is red as a beet, girl. What the hell you doing, traipsin' across this ridge on a day like this?"

  "We've been looking for you, Aunt Velda." I freed her from the last of the unruly vines and put a hand under her elbow to help her up.