Dead Man's Bones Page 9

  “What?” I asked, realizing that my thoughts were taking me on a detour and I’d just missed something. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about the opposite of ugliness.”

  “I asked,” McQuaid said, “whether she mentioned anything about her undergraduate work.”

  “Undergraduate work?” I asked blankly.

  He was patient. “The university where Montoya got her degree.”

  “Oh, that. Mexico City. National something university. But you know all that.” I frowned, thinking that I had not told him about Alana’s getting drunk, or my taking her home and putting her to bed. Was I afraid it would affect his opinion of her, professional or otherwise? Was I protecting her? Why?

  “Oh, sure,” McQuaid said carelessly. “I was just wondering.” Then he got serious. “Listen, China, I’m seeing a couple of new clients this morning, somebody you know. Maybe you can give me some background on them.”

  New clients. Hey, that was good news. At least one of us was bringing in money. “Somebody I know? Who?”

  He paused for effect. “Jane and Florence Obermann.”

  I stared at him in astonishment. “Jane Obermann is hiring a private detective? What in the world for?”

  “She says she’s afraid that someone plans to kill her and her sister. She wants me to keep it from happening.”

  “Kill them?” I laughed grimly. Why was I not surprised to hear this? “Kill her, you mean. Florence is a sweet old lady who looks like she might fall apart any minute, but Jane is a genuine fire-breathing dragon. Don’t get too close, or she’ll scorch you.”

  With a chuckle, McQuaid picked up both our cups, went to the coffeemaker, and poured. “I don’t know yet whether there’s been an actual threat—I’ll find that out when I see the women today. And I don’t know whether the threat, if there is one, has anything to do with the theater association. But there’s a chance that it might.” He brought our cups to the table and sat down. “I know you’ve been doing some landscaping at the theater. I was wondering whether you might have picked up something—a bit of gossip, some information, maybe—that could help me.”

  “What I have picked up is that Jane Obermann is the very devil to work with,” I replied. “She won’t give you the information you need. Whatever information you give her, she’ll find something wrong with it and probably refuse to pay you for it. And if somebody does succeed in bumping her off, she’ll come back from the dead and sue you for malfeasance.”

  McQuaid chuckled. “The client from hell, huh?”

  “Laugh now,” I retorted. “You won’t be laughing later.”

  His eyebrows were amused. “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Well, if she’s that kind of person, maybe she’s got something to worry about, after all.” He pulled a scrap of paper toward him and turned it over to the blank side. “Who might have it in for the old lady?” He took a pencil out of the ceramic cup where the writing implements live when they’re off-duty. “Why?”

  “Who? Why?” I began counting off on my fingers as McQuaid made notes. “Well, you could start with Lance Meyers, who was forced to resign as president of the theater board because he refused to stage Miss Jane’s play. Or Marian Atkins, the current president, who told me a couple of days ago that if she’d known what the board was getting into, she never would’ve accepted the offer of the theater. And then there’s Jean Davenport, the director, who has to put up with Jane’s constant meddling. And Duane Redmond, who got fired from his role as leading man because he didn’t meet Jane’s expectations. And her sister, who seems innocuous enough but has probably been carrying a grudge for decades. And—”

  McQuaid looked up. “Well, go on. And who else?”

  But my cautious lawyer-self had taken over and warned me against charges I had no way of backing up. “I’m exaggerating, McQuaid. Nobody in Pecan Springs would actually kill that old witch. People are too civilized, or too afraid of getting caught, or both.” I grinned maliciously. “Of course, I wouldn’t rule out a little bodily injury, or maybe aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “Well, I have to start somewhere,” McQuaid said, pocketing the list.

  “Good,” I said, and gave him a dazzling smile. “You can start with hamburger, anchovies, and mozzarella.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “And don’t forget milk and bread. But it’s all on the list.”

  He frowned. “The list? What list?”

  “The list you just put in your pocket, on the other side of which you have jotted the names of five potential killers, none of whom, I hasten to say, has what it takes to do something really nasty.” That was certainly true of Marian and Jean, and probably true of Lance. Duane, however, is impulsive and unpredictable, and he doesn’t handle frustration well. He might—

  “Oh, yeah.” McQuaid had pulled out the list and was turning it over. “Sorry, China.”

  “No need to be sorry, babe,” I said sweetly. I got up, circled around behind him, and put my arms around his neck, my cheek against his. “At least, not about the groceries. Working for Jane Obermann, you’ll have plenty else to be sorry for.”

  AFTER breakfast, I drove to the shop. No matter how I’m feeling, the sight and scent of Thyme and Seasons always gives me a lift. The place isn’t large, but every inch of it is filled with something that looks pretty, smells good, or does something nice for my soul. Herbal wreaths and swags and bundles of dried herbs are draped against the stone walls, and braids of garlic and peppers hang from the ceilings. The wooden shelves hold gleaming jars of bulk herbs, handmade soaps, herbal cosmetics, bags of potpourri, vials of essential oils, sparkling bottles of herbal vinegars, boxes of fragrant herbal teas, and books about herbs and gardening. On the flagstone floor, the corners and aisles are crowded with baskets of dried celosia and goldenrod, salvia and sweet Annie, tansy and yarrow. Thyme and Seasons is a treasure trove of wonderful, natural things, and I love it. I would even pay for the privilege of working here, although that hasn’t been necessary. Not yet, at least.

  I propped the door open, took the cash register drawer out from under the cache of dust rags where I always hide it, and filled Khat’s bowl with some of his low-cal kitty food. Khat K’o Kung, as Ruby has christened him (in honor of her favorite sleuth cat, star of the Cat-Who mystery series) is an eighteen-pound Siamese who enjoys the run of the shops, the tearoom, and the gardens. His Largeness takes a fiendish delight in playing mountain lion, peering down at startled customers from the top of a shelf and frightening them with an imperious “I-do-not-suffer-fools-gladly” growl. The rest of the time he spends dozing on a sunny windowsill, his charcoal paws tucked symmetrically under his tawny bib, his charcoal tail wrapped around his plump and satisfied self.

  One of my tasks this morning was seeing to the completion of the deck just outside the tearoom. When I first stepped on the wooden step and broke it, Ruby and I had thought that replacement would be a minor do-it-yourself job. But after we’d pried up a couple of boards and had seen what was underneath, we changed our minds and called Hank Dixon, the handyman who helps us with the repairs we can’t handle for ourselves. Hank had shaken his head when he came to look at the deck and give us an estimate on the cost of the work.

  “Looks t’ me like y’all got yerselfs a big problem here,” he said, in his raspy Texas drawl. “Some stupid sumbitch went ’n’ built this here deck outta untreated lumber.”

  I sighed. The deck had been designed and constructed by the architect who owned the building before I did, and who should have known what kind of lumber to use. But we had run across some of his cost-cutting efforts before, so this one didn’t surprise me.

  “That sounds bad,” Ruby said apprehensively.

  “You betcher sweet boobies it’s bad.” Hank shifted his cud of chewing tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other, and winked at Juan Gomez, his helper. Hank is probably pushing sixty, although he began looking older and grayer while he was nursing his
father, Gabe Dixon, through an extended battle with lung cancer. Gabe had died, at last, a couple of months before.

  Sixty or not, Hank is still strong as an ox and twice as stubborn. If you hire him to do a job for you, don’t bother to sketch out any plans, and forget about giving directions. Hank will do it his way or not at all—although in fairness, it ought to be said that his way is usually better than anything you could’ve come up with, even if you are an architect. He has a reputation as the finest handyman in all of Pecan Springs.

  Hank also has a reputation for a quick temper, and he’s been known to go on titanic drunks of several days’ duration, which often land him in the hoosegow. Ruby and I have had a firsthand acquaintance with both these unfortunate traits because Hank has done several jobs for us, both at the shops and at home, occasionally missing work to sober up or sit out a spell in jail. I’m also acquainted with him through his helper, Juan, who came from Guadalajara to CTSU to get his education. Juan was one of McQuaid’s students last spring and came out to our house for the party McQuaid always throws when classes are over. He wasn’t in school just now, I understood. But he was still in town, working with Hank and staying with him, too.

  The day Hank bid our project, he was sober and in an uncharacteristically good mood, probably because the work was easy, and was mostly in the shade of a large pecan tree. He grinned as he regarded the deck.

  “Yup,” he said, with a pitying shake of the head. “Best thing fer y’all to do is to tear up this whole dad-blamed piece o’ shit and rebuild it with treated lumber.” He handed one end of a tape measure to Juan and measured the deck, which I had already told him was sixteen feet by twenty. “’Course, it’s gonna cost you out the wazoo,” he added, reeling in the tape. “But the wood’ll last longer’n you will, and it’s a damn sight cheaper ’n gittin’ yer butts sued.”

  This statement was inelegant but true. Ruby and I had already agreed that it was a very good thing that I had been the one to put a foot through that rotten board and fall flat on my face. Luckily, I didn’t break any bones. But if this had happened to a customer, and she had broken an ankle and fractured her nose—well, the thought of it makes me shudder. A repair bill wasn’t welcome just now, but it was better than the alternative.

  So we accepted Hank’s recommendation that the entire deck be ripped up and replaced, haggled over the bottom line, and finally agreed to a price. The work wouldn’t take long, happily. When Hank agrees to do a job, he doesn’t usually mess around, unless he’s drunk or in jail. He and Juan had started on Monday and were finishing up this morning.

  I opened the door, went out onto the new deck, and looked down at the clean, straight, strong boards. I could stop worrying about somebody falling through them.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said admiringly. “Nice work, you guys.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Bayles,” Juan said, with a smiling flash of white teeth. He’s short and slender, with dark skin and dark hair. He’s a personal favorite of Ruby, who seems to have a motherly attitude toward him. She always makes sure that he leaves with his pockets full of cookies.

  Hank slung his hammer into his tool box and straightened up. “Yup,” he said, putting his hand on his hip as if his back might be bothering him. It was probably time for him to go on another drunk. “I’ll bring you the bill in the mornin’, and you kin write me a check. I don’t take no credit cards.” He tipped his battered straw hat onto the back of his head, a hat that he had worn as long as I’d known him. “I don’t like to wait fer my money, neither, but I reckon you remember that from before.”

  “Sure,” I said absently. Actually, I was remembering my conversation with McQuaid at breakfast, and what he’d told me about the Obermann sisters. I was also remembering something I had known and forgotten, one of those odd bits of random fact that pop into your mind when it’s busy processing other information. “Hank, didn’t your father work for the Obermann sisters awhile back? He lived in the stable, too, didn’t he?”

  Somewhere I had heard—maybe it had been Marian Atkins who told me—that both Mr. and Mrs. Dixon had worked for the Obermann family, he as a yardman and handyman, she as cook and housekeeper. Mrs. Dixon had died fairly young, in the 1960s, and Gabe Dixon had stayed on, doing the sisters’ shopping, running their errands, taking care of the yard and the house, and driving them around in their gleaming-white 1964 Cadillac, complete with fins, vinyl top, whitewalls. Now, they didn’t go out often; when they did, the Cadillac—still gleaming white—was driven by their housekeeper, a grim-faced, dark-haired woman who never smiled.

  A dark look crossed Hank’s face. “Yup,” he said gruffly. “Pop worked fer them fer goin’ on forty years. Lived in that old stable, too. And then that damn ol’ bitch tossed him out like a piece of stinkin’ garbage.” Juan put a cautioning hand on Hank’s arm, but he shook it off. “Damn bitch,” he repeated sourly. “Meaner ’n a stuck rattlesnake.”

  “Tossed him out?” I asked, surprised. By “ol’ bitch,” he had to mean Jane Obermann.

  “Yup. Pop, he’d got too sick to work, so they stopped payin’ him. Didn’t stop chargin’ him rent, though. The place needed fixin’ bad—floorboards was rotted clear through, roof leaked like a sieve, plumbin’ was stopped up. Gas heater didn’t work, neither. Place was allus cold as a witch’s tit in January and hot as a whore in July.” He gave an exasperated snort. “All he’d done fer them women, you’d think they’da built him a palace. But Miz Obermann, she said she didn’t have the money to fix things up. And Pop, he didn’t have money fer rent cuz she’d allus paid him under the table, so he didn’t have no Social Security. She told him she was fixin’ to tear the stable down, and he had to get out.”

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised by this bit of information. It fit with the image I had already formed of Jane Obermann.

  Juan gave me a sideways glance. “She did pay some of his medical expenses, though,” he put in—tentatively, as if he wanted to correct the record but didn’t want to rouse Hank’s wrath. “You gotta give her that, Hank.”

  “Oh, yeah? ‘Some’ is right. Like maybe a coupla thousand measly bucks, which wadn’t a drop in the damn bucket.” Hank was scornful. “She shoulda done a helluva lot more ’n that, seein’ wot he did fer her. Her ’n that sister, they wouldn’t be where they are today, wasn’t fer old Pop. But I aim to see that they set things right, and quick, too.” He stopped as if he had said too much, and spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the flower bed.

  “It was good of you to take your father in, Hank,” I said. It was not an idle compliment. Hank could have done what most men would do and checked Gabe into the Manor, the local nursing home. The old man would have qualified for Medicaid, and Hank wouldn’t have had to nurse him.

  Hank isn’t one to accept a compliment. He just grunted. “Yup,” he said, picking up his tool box. “Next thing I know, the ol’ bitch up an’ give Pop’s place to them damn actors. She had money enough to fix it up then.” He shook his head disgustedly. “Pop, he missed that old place somethin’ fierce. Him and Ma, they was happy livin’ there. It was home fer him. Reckon that was why he died. Jes’ couldn’t see any reason to go on livin’. And all on account of that ol’ bitch.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wondering just how many enemies Jane Obermann had accumulated during her seventy-five-year tour of duty on this earth. More than most people, I’d guess.

  Hank put on his cap and pulled the brim down. “No call fer you to be sorry, Miz Bayles. Man’s gotta die sometime.” He grinned briefly, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Woman, too, for that matter, I reckon. Ever’body’s gotta die.”

  “You’re right there,” I replied to this philosophical remark—cheerfully, since the prospect of death seemed far away on this bright, beautiful morning. I was to think about this exchange in a much different light later, though. And I was to wonder just how philosophical Hank’s remark really was.

  I opened up the Crystal Cave for Ruby, then spent the morning peacefully and product
ively dusting the shelves, balancing the checkbook, and doing the dozen or so little odds and ends that tend to get ignored during busy weeks. I also ordered another dozen of Theresa Loe’s herbal calendars, which are always a big hit with my customers. They love the illustrations, as well as the unique crafts and recipes.

  Around ten-thirty, Ruby stuck her arm through the connecting door between my shop and hers, called out a hello, then disappeared again. I did not take this to be a good omen. If she’d had something wonderful to tell me about her date with Colin, she would have been bubbling over with the news.

  At noon, I locked the door and hung up the OUT TO LUNCH sign. Unless there’s a special event, the tearoom is closed on Wednesdays. But there was plenty of good food in the kitchen fridge. I split two croissants and spread them with chicken salad and lettuce, ladled two cups full of cold tomato-basil soup, and poured two glasses of rosemary lemonade. Then I put everything on a tray with napkins and tableware and added a half-dozen lavender cookies. When the tea shop is open, you’ll pay $9.95 for this elegant little lunch; Ruby and I were getting it free, one of the perks of owning the tearoom.

  I carried the tray into the Crystal Cave and set it on the counter. Like Thyme and Seasons, Ruby’s shop is a delightfully restful place. The prisms displayed in the front window reflect shimmering rainbows against the walls, the air is gently scented with jasmine incense and resonant with whale songs, and the shelves and tables are filled with New Age toys and books, all aimed (as Ruby says in her newspaper ad), “to give you strength, wisdom, and insight for your inner journey.” Of course, you can’t embark on your inner journey without a natural crystal wand, a selection of mystic oils, a scrying mirror, a lunar candle, your astrological chart, and six lessons on developing your intuition. This week only, half-price.

  “Thought you might like to join me for lunch,” I said.

  Ruby was perched on a stool behind the counter, studying her playscript. She was wearing a long black skirt and a black T-shirt featuring the galaxy, with a silver arrow pointing to one of its spiral arms and a legend that read, “You are here.” Her hair was arranged dramatically across the left side of her face, like Cher, and she wore large silver earrings of concentric circles that looked like the solar system, with the sun in the center and the planets represented by tiny colored beads. Ruby Wilcox, Girl Guide to the Back of Beyond.