Cat's Claw (4 page)

“I never thought they’d actually pull it off,” McQuaid remarked, after the bride and groom had driven away for a short honeymoon at an undisclosed location, and the rest of the hundred-plus guests had wolfed down the last chipotle meatball, nibbled the last piece of wedding cake, and drunk the last champagne toast. The cleanup crew would be working for several more hours, but McQuaid and I were getting ready to call it a day.

“Sheila looked absolutely stunning, didn’t she?” Ruby said, tossing a dustpan full of birdseed (a good substitute for rice) onto the grass.

She did. Sheila Dawson is beautiful at any time, any place, no matter what she is wearing: jeans and sandals, a chic suit with pearls and heels, or her trim blue cop uniform with a duty belt loaded with guns and gadgets. (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.) Since she and Blackie had decided on “ranch attire” for their wedding, the bride was dressed in a sheer, off-shoulder, ivory blouse, western denim skirt, and cowgirl boots, with a wreath of rosemary and white rosebuds on her shining blond hair and a bouquet of lavender and white roses in her hand. She might have put Blackie off while they got their respective careers sorted out, but anybody with eyes could tell that she believed that “yes” was the right thing to say at last, after several long years of “yes,” then “no,” then “maybe.” She was radiant.

“You gotta admit that Blackie looked pretty good, too,” McQuaid said with a grin. “Especially for a guy who lost his job in a coin toss.” McQuaid had been the groom’s best man. He and Blackie had worn
open-collared white shirts, dark jackets, jeans, and cowboy boots. They looked like ranch hands who were cleaned up for Sunday church.

“Well, yes,” I said. “But you have to remember that he lost a job and won a wife.”

McQuaid is right, though. Throughout the ceremony, Blackie wore the stunned, disbelieving expression of a man who’d just learned that he’d won a ten-million-dollar Super Jackpot in the Texas lottery, instead of the regretful look of a man who had given up a job he enjoyed. He and Sheila had long agreed that two law enforcement careers in one family were a train wreck, so marriage hadn’t seemed in the cards. But when they decided (after several false starts) that they really wanted to get married, they couldn’t decide which one of them should quit.

If I’d been guessing, I would have said that Sheila (known to her friends as Smart Cookie) would be the one to hand in her badge. She has worked like the devil to break the brass ceiling, but while she doesn’t talk much about what goes down in her cop shop, it’s an open secret around town that PSPD is not a congenial place for women. If she weren’t as stubborn and tough as she is—we sometimes call her Tough Cookie—she probably would have called it quits already. What’s more, the Blackwells count three generations of Adams County sheriffs in the family, and Blackie loved his job. He was good at it, too. The best sheriff that Adams County ever had, according to some.

Either way, each of them had a lot to give up. They had reached a serious impasse: a Mexican standoff, as it were. They wanted to get married, but neither Blackie nor Sheila was ready to quit. So a few months ago, after another frustrating evening of weighing pros and cons, they gave up trying to make a logical choice and decided to toss for it. Heads he’d keep his job as sheriff and she’d give up hers as Pecan Springs’ police chief. Tails she’d keep her job and he wouldn’t run for a third term.

The coin came up tails, and Blackie bowed out of the next election. But the toss is a close-held secret, known only to a few friends. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Blackie had simply decided that he’d been in the sheriff’s office long enough. He was leaving to join McQuaid at McQuaid and Blackwell. Now, a couple of months after the fact, he is a licensed private investigator. He seems to like the job.

McQuaid cocked his head, regarding me, his lips pursed. “You look pretty great, too, China.” There was an admiring glint in his eyes.

I had been the bride’s attendant. Sheila and I picked out a blouse exactly like hers, except it was a steel blue color that went with my denim skirt. I wore my red cowgirl boots and carried a bouquet of red roses, with lavender, mint, and rosemary. Justice of the Peace Maude Porterfield conducted the ceremony, and in the spirit of the occasion, wore a white cowboy hat, white pants and cowboy boots, and her best Dale Evans shirt. Judge Porterfield has been a JP in Pecan Springs for nearly fifty years and still leads a busy and colorful life, holding traffic court, issuing warrants, signing death certificates, and marrying people. She says she much prefers to marry people. It doesn’t leave a bad taste in her mouth, like death certificates.

As long as they stay together, that is. Maude regards the ones who don’t make it as her own personal failures. “I guess I didn’t put enough emphasis on ‘until death do you part,’” she says sourly, whenever she hears about the latest divorce. “Sad to say, but some are in it just for the good times. Married folks, they gotta be like that cat’s claw acacia I’ve got growin’ in my yard. Gotta grab hard and hold on tight when the going gets rough. Only way to get through the bad times. Grab hard, hold on, and ride. No matter what.”

But even though Maude gave “until death do you part” her very best shot, it may not be enough. Sheila’s and Blackie’s careers in law
enforcement have created a great many conflicts between them over the past few years, and after a couple of broken engagements, I’m afraid to be too optimistic. Or maybe I’m just realistic. I’m married to an ex-cop, and I understand why McQuaid’s first marriage ended in divorce. So did Blackie’s, and while I don’t know all the details, I’m guessing that it happened for pretty much the same reasons. I’m sure that he and Sheila will give it all they can, and I hope it works. Their friends and well-wishers gave them a great sendoff, and we all wish them the best. The rest is up to them.

I picked up my shoulder bag and paused for a moment before I switched off the lights, liking what I saw. Thyme and Seasons, the Crystal Cave, and the tearoom are housed in an old two-story building that is constructed of blocks of Texas limestone. The shops and the tearoom have stone walls, deep-set casement windows, and the original wooden floors. My shop is small and very full, but I like it that way—there’s an intimacy about it that’s lacking in larger, more open shops, seems to me, and the rustic space suits the down-to-earthiness of my wares. The ceiling-high shelves along the back wall display dozens of jars and bottles of dried herbs, salves, and tinctures. A corner rack holds herb, gardening, and cookery books, as well as copies of my own
China Bayles’ Book of Days
. There’s a display of essential oils, diffusers, and other aromatherapy supplies on an old wooden table—everything you need to create and enjoy herbal fragrances. Along another wall are herbal items from local crafters: jellies, vinegars, seasoning blends, and soaps. There are baskets of dried herbs in the corners, bundles of dried plants hang from overhead beams, and raffia-tied braids of red peppers and garlic are displayed on the stone walls. The air is rich with the sweet-spicy scents of patchouli, nutmeg, cinnamon, and sandalwood—fragrances that remind me of a lingering autumn. I won’t start putting up the holiday items for
another week or two. I absolutely hate going to malls and seeing the Christmas stuff up before Halloween. This is
my
shop, and I don’t rush the season.

People sometimes ask if I miss my former profession—I was a practicing criminal attorney—or long for the excitements and entertainments of Houston, where I used to live. But I don’t have to hem and haw and fumble for an answer. I love it here. I’m doing something that feels right and healthy for me, for my customers, and for the planet. I don’t know what the future holds—nobody does. But I intend to do this for as long as I can.

I reached for the switch to turn off the lights. But before I could flick it, the door to the Crystal Cave popped open and Ruby stood there, her cell phone in her hand, her eyes round, her face white.

“It’s Ramona!” she gasped. “She’s just— She—”

“Uh-oh,” I said, under my breath. Ramona is a little ditzy. She collects weird accidents, like the time the car ahead of her on the freeway threw a hubcap through her windshield, or the afternoon she was sailing with a friend on a lake near Dallas and a big fish jumped into the boat and bit her toe. Aloud, I said, “What’s happened to Ramona now?”

Ruby gulped. “She … she’s found a body.”

“A dead one?” I was startled. Even for Ramona, finding a body is not something that happens every day. “Where?”

Ruby gave me a look that said,
Yes, dead, you dummy
. Into the phone, she asked, “Where?” After a moment’s listening, she said to me, “Three doors down from my house. In the kitchen. There’s a… a gun.”

I could’ve asked why Ramona was wandering through the neighborhood kitchens, but I didn’t. Urgently, I said, “Tell her not to touch a thing. Tell her to call nine-one-one, then go around front and stand on the curb until the cops get there.”

Ruby repeated my message. Ramona must not have processed it, so Ruby repeated it again before she closed the phone, biting her lip.

“She says she’s already done all that, and there are cops on the scene. I’ve got to go over there, China. Will you go with me?”

“No,” I said automatically. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go home and cook supper for—”

And then I remembered. Brian’s school baseball team was playing at Seguin this afternoon, and McQuaid had picked Caitlin up after school to go and watch the game. Afterward, they planned to have supper with Mom and Dad McQuaid, who live in Seguin. I would have joined them after I closed the shop, but McQuaid hadn’t had a chance to spend an evening with the kids lately.

Ruby was looking at me plaintively. “Please?” she whispered tremulously. “I don’t want to do this by myself. Ramona is— Well, you know.”

I knew. But hubcaps and toe-biting fish are one thing. Dead bodies are something else altogether.

“Okay,” I said, deciding. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Two

“That about does it for now, I guess,” Deputy Chief Clint Hardin said in his slow drawl, getting out of the chair on the opposite side of the chief’s desk. Hardin was six-two with burly shoulders, craggy face, unflinching dark eyes. Impressive in his dark blue uniform. A cop’s cop. Looking up at him, Sheila thought with a tug of irritation that he never missed a chance to use his height and size to make a point with the women on the force, including (or maybe especially) his boss.

He picked up the file from the desk. “If we get anything actionable on the blackmail, I’ll let you know, Chief. But you can look for an arrest on the trespass and burglary charges in another—” He looked down at his watch. “Fifteen, twenty minutes. You’ll get the word when it happens.”

“Good job, Captain,” Sheila said, although she knew that the arrest was more Bartlett’s work than Hardin’s. The deputy chief had a reputation for taking credit for his subordinates’ work when it was good and giving them hell when it wasn’t. Not a positive character trait, in her opinion. But Clint Hardin had spent the better part of his nearly twenty-year career developing and perfecting it and wasn’t likely to change.

She rolled back the black leather desk chair and stood up. The massive chair had belonged to the former chief, Bubba Harris, and was much
too large for her—another of the things about the Pecan Springs Police Department that didn’t fit but were hard to change. It was the chief’s chair. She was stuck with it.

“Pass that word along to Bartlett,” she added, “and put a note in his file. This one is dicey, considering who’s involved. Bartlett handled it well—this part of it, anyway.”

The commendation would go through channels, of course, but Sheila would take a minute to speak to Jack Bartlett herself. He was in charge of PSPD’s four-person detective unit. Young, newly promoted, and ambitious, he’d go by his gut when Hardin would’ve gone by the book. On the surface, the case had seemed minor, a random break-in at a local computer firm, Kirk’s Computer Sales and Service—one of a string of several break-ins at other small businesses. But as things turned out, it wasn’t the size of the crime that was important; it was the status of the criminal whose shadowy image had been caught on video. A prominent citizen who was going to be mightily embarrassed when his arrest became public later today.