The Last Chance Olive Ranch Read online

  Ruby was staring at me with the kind of intent, listening look that suggested that she was decoding a message I couldn’t hear. “The call, the situation that came up this morning,” she said. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  Bad. I sighed. Ruby tries not to poke around in her friends’ thought processes, but it looked like this was going to be one of her psychic rabbits. It might be better if I spilled the whole story now, so she would understand why I couldn’t go.

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly. His name is Bad Max Mantel. When McQuaid was with Houston Homicide, he led the investigative team that sent him to Death Row. Bad Max told one of his prison mates that he intended to get revenge on everybody who convicted him. He broke out of Huntsville and apparently made good on part of his promise by killing the prosecutor last night. One of McQuaid’s cop buddies phoned while we were still in bed this morning. Mantel could be on his way here.”

  Ruby’s expression was grave. “It sounds . . . dangerous.”

  “It is,” I said, wondering whether she knew something I didn’t. That’s one problem her friends have with her. Sometimes she knows more than we do, but (for what might be very good reasons) chooses not to let us in on it.

  “Just to be on the safe side,” I went on, “McQuaid is taking Caitie to Seguin. I’m feeling like I need to stay in Pecan Springs, in case I’m needed. Instead of going out to the ranch, I mean. I thought of canceling, but there are about thirty people registered, and your friend Maddie will be disappointed. There’s no reason you can’t do the workshop, Ruby. Everything is loaded into the van and ready to go—supplies and handouts, all but the olive oil.” I managed a small smile. “I understand that Maddie has barrels of that. Extra virgin, too.”

  I was hoping fervently that Ruby wouldn’t snoop around in my not-so-subconscious and pick up on my guilt for misleading McQuaid. I had not agreed to go out to the ranch, as he had . . . well, ordered. I just hadn’t argued with him. And when he had asked me if I understood why he wanted me to go, I’d said yes, I understood, which I did. I understood why he wanted to have it his way. I just hadn’t agreed to do it his way.

  Ruby was frowning. “I don’t think that’s going to work, China. McQuaid may have talked to Sheila and asked her to—”

  She was interrupted by the bell over her shop door, and I turned to see our friend Sheila Dawson. She was suited up for her day as Pecan Springs’ chief of police, wearing her official navy blue uniform, sharply creased; her tie, neatly tied; her cop cap, set at just the right angle; and her black duty belt loaded with a businesslike battery of cop-wise gear and weapons. I’ve always said that you have to wonder at somebody who looks like a homecoming queen and thinks like the regional director of the FBI, but that’s Sheila, a beautiful blonde who is lovelier than your average Miss America and smarter than . . . Well, very, very smart. Tough, too. Her friends call her Smart Cookie (when the officers on her force are not listening), but we could just as easily call her Tough Cookie. You don’t want to mess with Sheila when she is on the job. And from the sour look on her face, she had already been on the job for a while this morning, was expecting to be on the job for the whole day, and wasn’t especially thrilled about any of it.

  I looked from Sheila to Ruby and back again. Sheila wasn’t here on a social call. McQuaid had asked her to drop in and Ruby had flashed onto it.

  But I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “Good morning, Chief,” I said. I didn’t need to be psychic to know why Sheila was out of sorts, and it had nothing to do with McQuaid. “How’s your morning sickness?”

  “Damn it, Bayles,” Sheila muttered. She made a face. “Not too good, if you have to know.”

  Sheila is not only a very good friend, she is married to McQuaid’s partner, Blackie Blackwell. There’s a story behind that marriage, for Blackie was the Adams County sheriff for many years. He and Sheila wanted to get married, but they agreed that two law enforcement careers in one family were a disaster waiting to happen. After months of vigorous debate that didn’t settle anything either way, they gave up talking and tossed a coin. Blackie liked to joke that he had lost the toss, lost a job, and won a wife. Sheila won the toss and kept her job as Pecan Springs’ first female chief of police, now the first pregnant chief of police. She is four months along, expecting in November, although she hasn’t yet announced that fact. This is her second pregnancy. The first one ended badly, so she’s waiting to tell the world about this one—a smart plan from one point of view and not so smart from another. Sheila is slim, with a drop-dead-gorgeous figure that attracts attention, even when she’s in uniform. Guys like to stare. Some guys have sharp eyes. It wouldn’t be long before they would be drawing their own conclusions.

  “I’ve got some ginger capsules I can give you,” I offered helpfully. “And Cass is in the kitchen. I’m sure she’d be glad to brew up some lemon-and-ginger tea. Either one ought to help. Or both, if you like. Ginger is really good for morning sickness.”

  “Appreciate your concern but I’m good, thank you.” Sheila squared her shoulders, letting me know that she aimed to tough it out. “I’m here because McQuaid asked me to be sure that you and Ruby got out of town without delay this morning.”

  Ruby gave me a tiny please-don’t-shoot-the-messenger shrug, then dropped her eyes.

  “Oh, really?” I asked pleasantly. “Well, gosh, Chief, that’s a coincidence. I was telling Ruby that I’ve decided to stay in Pecan Springs this weekend. Ruby can do the workshop on her own. Everything is all set up and all she has to do is—”

  “Actually, that’s not such a good idea, China.” Sheila’s voice was casual but her eyes were very sharp. “This might turn into a thing, so it would be just as well if you went on out to the Last Chance Ranch with Ruby. Of course, you’re a citizen and it’s up to you. I can’t give you an order but that’s my advice. My best advice,” she added emphatically.

  The room got very still. Next to me, I could feel Ruby tensing.

  “Might turn into a thing, huh?” I said. “What kind of a thing?” If this was really up to me (it probably wasn’t), we’d better have everybody’s cards on the table. All of them.

  Sheila considered for a moment, then decided I would more likely be persuaded if I understood the full picture. “A thing involving a team of Houston officers, a crew from Huntsville, a squad of Pecan Springs cops, an escaped convict, and—”

  “Ah,” I said. “Quite a few players.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s in my job description, you know. Coordinate with law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions, as required. Cooperate with them when they come onto my turf to get a job done.” She shifted her weight and gave me the rest of it. “McQuaid phoned after you left and asked me to see that you stayed with the original plan and got out of Dodge. This morning.”

  I sighed. “He doesn’t trust me, does he?”

  “Not so much, at least in this case.” Sheila flicked me a quick smile. “Should he?”

  “Actually, he shouldn’t,” Ruby put in helpfully. “As China said, she was asking me to do the workshop while she stayed here, in case she was needed. And I was telling her that it wasn’t going to work because—”

  “Because I’m not going to let it,” Sheila said. She folded her arms and eyed me. “I appreciate your wanting to hang around, but we’re not talking party games here, China. Mantel is extremely dangerous. We don’t know where he is, but we know he’s a killer. He’s armed and has a vehicle. He had a pretty tight gang before he went up, so he may have other resources. He could be on his way to Pecan Springs right now. There are already two people dead and we don’t want—”

  “Two people? Two?” I broke in urgently. “So Mantel got Zumwalt?” I felt suddenly cold. McQuaid would be devastated. He and Carl had been partners for a decade. They’d had each other’s backs in some very dangerous situations.

  “Zumwalt?” She was puzzled.
r />   I frowned. Not Zumwalt. But who? “So he killed a prison guard on his way out of the building,” I hazarded. McQuaid hadn’t told me that.

  “No.” She shifted again. Her face seemed to have a slightly greenish tint, and I guess that morning sickness was bothering her. “The DA’s wife. She was in the car with her husband. Mantel was waiting by the garage. He shot them both.”

  “Ah, hell,” I said. Jess, the detective who called McQuaid that morning, had been on the scene. He had undoubtedly reported that Paul’s wife had been shot, too, but McQuaid had deliberately kept it to himself, not wanting me to be frightened. “McQuaid didn’t tell me about Cindy. I’m sorry.”

  “You knew her?”

  “I did. Her husband got where he was because she was behind him all the way.” Cindy Watkins was a shy, pretty woman who had worked hard to put Paul through law school and pushed herself to give parties she didn’t enjoy because she knew it would help her husband’s career. I took a breath. Cindy had been with Paul when it happened. I didn’t want to leave McQuaid to face this situation by himself. “Look, Sheila, I promise I’ll be good. I’ll stay out of the way. I—”

  Sheila raised her hand palm out, like a cop directing traffic. “Sorry, China. Bottom line, we’ve got a job to do, and you’re not going to be any help. In fact, you could create problems for us. McQuaid has agreed to let us use him as—” She thought better of whatever she’d been going to say. “As liaison,” she finished lamely. “It’s already a mob scene. You’d just be in the way.”

  “Liaison?” I stared at her. Some kind of arrangement had been made here, and I suspected that McQuaid had initiated it. Or at least had not resisted it. “My husband isn’t a cop and he has no part in this,” I said, thinking it through out loud. “But he’s agreed to let you use him. He’s going to put himself on display at the Lions Club barbecue tomorrow, with the idea of forcing Mantel to show his hand. That’s it, isn’t it? He’ll be standing there behind the table, making sure that everybody sees him. He’ll be a target. He’ll be bait.”

  Sheila looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think I’d use that word to describe—”

  “I would,” I growled. “It is exactly the word I would use. This is horsepucky, Sheila. If you want my opinion. Which you don’t, obviously.”

  Sheila cast a silent appeal to Ruby. Help me out here, Ruby. Get her moving. Get her out of town.

  “China.” Ruby put a quieting hand on my arm. “Hey, come on, China. We can’t stand around here all morning talking. I promised Maddie. We need to be on the road.”

  I shook her hand off roughly. “I’m not going.”

  Sheila folded her arms. “Yes, you are.”

  “There’s nothing you can do here, China,” Ruby said. She added urgently, “Everything is all set, and Maddie is expecting us for lunch. I don’t want to disappoint her. She’s planning to give us a tour of the olive groves and introduce us to her staff and—”

  Clearly, Ruby had a private reason for going out to the ranch this weekend. But I wasn’t done. I glared at Sheila. “You’re using my husband as bait to catch an escaped convict and I’m supposed to just stay out of the damn way?”

  “An escaped convict,” Sheila retorted, “who held God only knows how many young girls as sex slaves, murdered two of them, and has now gunned down the Harris County DA and his wife.” Her voice was thin and harder than I had ever heard it. “Deal with it, China. Mantel is a dangerous man, and your husband knows what he has to do. I know what I have to do. And you do, too. So let’s put on our big girl panties and get the goddamn job done.”

  Ruby fixed a look at Sheila’s duty belt, then dropped her eyes to Sheila’s feet and raised them to her cop cap. “Smart Cookie,” she said, very quietly. “You already have your big girl panties on.”

  Sheila shot her a testy glance, but the effect was spoiled when she put a trembling hand to her mouth. “Excuse me,” she said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  She was.

  Chapter Three

  Once someone tries a real extra virgin—an adult or a child, anybody with taste buds—they’ll never go back to the fake kind. It’s distinctive, complex, the freshest thing you’ve ever eaten. It makes you realize how rotten the other stuff is, literally rotten. But there has to be a first time. Somehow we have to get those first drops of real extra virgin oil into their mouths, to break them free from the habituation to bad oil, and from the brainwashing of advertising. There has to be some good oil left in the world for people to taste.

  Tom Mueller Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

  I went, of course.

  I resented being pushed around. I was angry about being sent out of town. But what was I going to do? Stand around and argue with the pregnant chief of police while she tossed her cookies? Hand her a cup of ginger-and-lemon tea and say sweetly, “Sorry, Sheila, I don’t give a damn what McQuaid wants or what you want. I’m doing what I want, and I want to stay here, in case somebody shoots my husband.”

  I didn’t do that, much as I wanted to. Nor did I call McQuaid and give him a pointy piece of my mind for failing to tell me about Cindy’s murder and for hooking up with Sheila to double-team me. But I did get Sheila to promise that she would call the ranch the minute Mantel was picked up so I would know that everything was copasetic and could relax and stop worrying that he had scored his third post-escape hit on McQuaid. Ruby gave her the number, which I jotted down on a slip of paper. I’d call McQuaid and give it to him.

  I wasn’t happy with this arrangement, of course, but I tried to comfort myself with the understanding that if I had been able to stay in town, there would have been nothing much I could do except worry. Which I could do out at the Last Chance, just as easily as here in Pecan Springs. The only difference was that if I were in town, I’d be on top of what was going on. Ruby had said that there was no reliable cell phone signal out at the ranch, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to get the latest news. I would probably spend my time imagining the worst.

  I made sure that there was plenty of change in the cash register and checked in with Cass in the kitchen. Then I joined Ruby out in the alley, where we park Big Red Mama.

  Big Red Mama, who looks like a cross between a psychedelic milk truck and a Sweet Potato Queen float on the way to a Mardi Gras parade, is our shop van. Ruby and I bought her at the Hays County sheriff’s auction a few years ago. We were attracted to her because she was cheap but also because of the swirling Art Deco designs of blue, green, and yellow that her former owner (a Wimberley hippie artist named Gerald) had painted all over her sides, perhaps under the influence of a certain hallucinatory herb. In fact, after we bought her, we had to give her a good cleaning and an even better airing. The odor of that hallucinatory herb still lingered—not the kind of scent you want wafting out of your vehicle window if the DPS pulls you over for a broken taillight.

  But while Mama may attract curious glances as she ambles down the road, she is a serviceable van. I use her for hauling plants and gardening supplies, Ruby uses her to deliver stuff for our Party Thyme catering service, and Cass uses her for the Thymely Gourmet. This morning, Mama was loaded with supplies for the workshop at the Last Chance.

  This would be my first visit to the ranch, but Ruby has been going out there since she was a girl, so she volunteered to do the driving. She negotiated the minor mid-morning traffic jam around the old Adams County courthouse and headed west on Limekiln Road toward my house. When I left that morning, I was planning to duck out of the workshop and let Ruby do it herself, so I hadn’t packed. At my house, she waited while I snatched up my overnight things and folded an extra T-shirt and blouse and clean jeans and panties into a duffel bag. I left a note on the fridge for McQuaid—I wish you’d let me stay but I love you anyway—and said an affectionate good-bye to Winchester, who is always at his gloomiest when his people leave him alone for the day. A moment
later, we were on our way.

  We were headed west across the rugged Texas Hill Country, known for its upland string of man-made lakes cupped in rolling mesquite- and cedar-clad hills. The sun was shining out of a cloudless blue sky and the fields along the narrow, winding road were brilliant with early summer wildflowers: orange and red and brown firewheels, bright yellow coreopsis, and coppery prickly pear blossoms. A little farther on, I saw pink pavonia spilling across the limestone rocks and purple coneflower beginning to bloom in the fence corners. Along the creeks and in the low-lying areas, pecans, oaks, and hackberry rose above a wild, dense understory of chokecherry and elbow bush, perfect cover for wild turkeys and possums and raccoons. May had been unusually rainy—the result of a lingering El Niño—and everything was green and lush. It was like driving through a park.

  We were aiming for the western stretches of the Guadalupe River, some seventy miles away. The terrain was rugged, with only a few houses widely scattered along the road. When I took out my cell phone, I saw that I’d already lost the signal—not unusual in rural Texas—which meant that even if McQuaid wanted to call and ask me to come back and watch him get shot at, he couldn’t. And I couldn’t call and ask him whether he was still alive and healthy. The landscape outside the window wasn’t quieting my irritation the way it usually did, and my mind kept leapfrogging back to the troublesome situation in Pecan Springs.

  Why had I let McQuaid and Sheila bully me into leaving?

  I might not have been able to help, but at least I’d know what was going on. I don’t usually do what I’m told. I should have dug in my heels and refused.

  But I hadn’t. Instead, I was on my way to the edge of nowhere. So, to keep myself from chewing my nails up to my elbows, I asked Ruby to tell me about the Last Chance Ranch. Maybe she would say something that would give away her private reason—I was sure she had one—for setting up this weekend.

  Ruby gave me the backstory first. Ruby’s mother, Doris, had been a girlhood friend of Eliza Butler, the ranch’s previous owner—dead now—and Ruby and Doris had visited the ranch often when Ruby was a kid. “I didn’t know Eliza when she was young, of course, but Mom says that she was an adventurous young woman, headstrong, maybe a bit impulsive. Lots of chutzpah.”