Thyme of Death (21 page)

“Amazing,” Ruby said, awed.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “our case
is entirely circumstantial. Which means that without a witness or a confession—”

“But that’s what we’re after
tonight, right?”

I nodded. “I hope getting caught
breaking into my house will rattle her so much that she’ll spill the whole
story.”

Ruby rubbed her hands. “That’s the
way it happened in the old Nancy Drew books. Nancy nabs the crook and the crook
spills the beans.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that was before
Miranda. The D.A. won’t touch Roz’s confession if the defense can argue
coercion or entrapment. So we’ve got to be careful.” I stood up and went to
the kitchen desk where my Macintosh lives, along with other important things
like cookbooks and recipes and manila folders full of craft clippings. I pulled
a Sony minirecorder out of the drawer and put it on the table. “If she
confesses, I want to get it on tape.”

Ruby stared at the tape recorder,
suddenly sobered. “Listen, China,” she said slowly, “is this the kind of thing
we ought to be tackling alone? How about giving McQuaid a call? Maybe he’d like
to hang out with us tonight”

I shook my head. “McQuaid’s gone
camping with Brian.” I gave Ruby a sidelong look. “If you want to get somebody
in on this with us, we could ask Bubba.”

Ruby’s green eyes widened. “Bubba?
No way. He’d be a total disaster. Anyway, he wouldn’t take us seriously. He’d
say we’re just a couple of weird broads. When we’ve got evidence,
then
we
call Bubba.”

‘That’s what I thought.” I turned on
the tape recorder to make sure the batteries were up.

Ruby cleared her throat. “If we can’t
have McQuaid, what about your gun?” When there’d been a spate of shop
break-ins, I’d told Ruby about the Beretta. That is, I told her I had it, and
that I knew how to use it. I hadn’t told her why I wouldn’t.

“I
doubt if Roz
will be armed, and I don’t think a gun would serve any useful purpose.”

Ruby looked disappointed. “I wasn’t
suggesting that you actually
shoot
it—just wave it around a little. Look
authoritative.”

I made a noise. “People who wave
guns around get themselves into a shit-pot of trouble.”

Ruby gave it up. “What time does all
this Junior G-Man stuff take place?”

“I told Roz we were going to the art
show,” I said. “So I guess we’d better leave about eight-thirty. We can park on
Guadalupe somewhere and sneak back. It’ll be full dark a little before eight.
My guess is that she won’t try anything until then.”

Ruby sniffed. “I’m glad you
programmed in plenty of time for dinner,” she said. “That cornbread smells
terrific.”

I had to apologize for forgetting to
put the peppers into the cornbread, but Ruby’s venison chili lived up to its
reputation for firepower. We each had seconds. Then I checked the bedroom to
make sure that everything was in order. Before Ruby got there, I had arranged
packets of letters on the bed, as if I’d been interrupted in the process of
sorting. Roz’s letters and the journals, however, were still safely tucked away
under the stairs.

Then I stuck the tape recorder and a
small pocket torch into my brown leather shoulder bag. We went out the kitchen
door—the one that faced toward the guest cottage—laughing and making a great
show of leavings pulling the door shut without checking the lock. I glanced
toward the cottage. The Buick was in the alley behind the cottage, and the
cottage lights were on. Roz was watching, I hoped, for us to leave.

Ruby and I got into my Datsun, drove
around the block, and pulled up on Guadalupe. Not speaking, we climbed out of
the car and cut across the Emporium’s skimpy backyard. The house itself is so
large that it takes up most of the lot, leaving a little patch of weeds that
Constance occasionally mows with an old-fashioned push mower that a tenant once
gave her in lieu of the rent. The stars were out in a black velvet sky, and the
moon hadn’t risen yet. It was dark, especially in the shrubbery around the
Emporium’s rickety back porch, where we stationed ourselves.

I couldn’t see the guest cottage
because the Emporium’s dilapidated garage blocked the view. But we were only a
few yards from my kitchen door, which was in full sight, as was the bedroom
window. I had left a night-light burning in the kitchen and another in the
bedroom, so Roz wouldn’t have to stumble around in a dark house. The
night-light in the bedroom gave us a shadowy view.

I settled under a shaggy juniper to
wait. Ruby squatted down beside me. I could feel her trembling slightly.

“I wish McQuaid were here,” she
whispered. “A little muscle would be reassuring.”

I agreed with Ruby about the muscle,
even though I thought that we could handle Roz, who was smaller than both of us
and probably out of shape. Anyway, I was hoping there wouldn’t be any rough
stuff. “Yeah, well, remind me to invite him next time we do something like
this,” I said.

“He’ll probably invite himself when
he hears how much fun we had. I can’t imagine an ex-cop missing a chance to
strut his stuff.” Ruby squinted at her watch. “How long have we been here?”

“About two minutes.”

We sat, eyes growing accustomed to
the dark, for another ten minutes. Juniper needles were sifting down the back
of my neck, my fanny was cold, and my right foot had gone to sleep. I shifted
to get the circulation going again. I could hear tinny music from the direction
of Lillie’s Place further down on Guadalupe, where Ruby and I hang out fairly
regularly. Lillie’s is an interesting Texas-style bar, frequented by a miscellany
of rednecks, cedar-choppers, and cowboys, with a few intellectuals from the
university thrown in to leaven the lot. It’s owned by a guy named Bob, who is
also interesting and always pleasant, if sometimes a little quirky. The bar is
named for Lillie Langtry and plastered with posters and pictures and fake “Jersey
Lily” memorabilia put up by the bar’s former owner— a woman—to attract
tourists. Sometimes the tourists come and sometimes they don’t. The rest of us
are pretty regular, though. I could hear Willie Nelson singing “Mamas, Don’t
Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” I fantasized a takeoff: “Mamas, Don’t
Let Your Daughters Grow Up to Be Stakeout Artists.”

“God, I hate that song,” Ruby said. “It
was Ward’s favorite. Every time we’d go up to Austin to country dance at the
Broken Spoke, he’d bug the band until they played it,” She sighed mournfully. “I’ll
bet he still does—only now he takes
her,
not me.”

“Ruby,” I said gently, “lay off the
self-pity and be quiet. Okay?”

Ruby straightened her shoulders. “Yeah.
I don’t have anything to feel sorry about.
She’s
the one who got the
turkey. Me, I’m doing great, just fantastic. Did I tell you about this real
cute guy who asked me for a date? His name is—”

“Shh! Listen!”

We both heard it. The rustle of
footsteps, the crackle of tiny twigs. And I smelled it—the brisk, tangy scent
of thyme.

“She’s coming down the path!” Ruby
whispered. A dramatic Nancy Drew whisper.

But Roz couldn’t be coming down the
path—there weren’t any twigs on the path. For some reason, she was creeping
through the thyme bed along the side of the Emporium’s garage. What was she
doing there? She’d seen us leave—why didn’t she just come up the path to the
kitchen door?

A minute or two later, the rustling
stopped. Unfortunately, the garage blocked my view. I waited another minute,
then stood up, half stooping under the juniper. “I’m going over by that yaupon
holly,” I whispered to Ruby, “to get a better view. You stay here. Don’t make a
sound.”

“Screw that,” Ruby whispered back.
She rose to her feet. “I’m coming with—”

Suddenly all hell broke loose. A
gunshot shattered the silence. It was followed by an ear-piercing scream that
was punctuated by a second shot. Then footsteps raced toward the alley. More
screaming, loud and shrill.

I took off in pursuit, with Ruby
close behind. But whoever it was had a start. By the time we reached the alley,
there was no one in sight. Only the screaming, high-pitched and hysterical,
going on and on and on.

CHAPTER 13

The screams came from Roz. She was
crouched on knees and elbows on the cottage floor, her hands clasped over her
head as if she expected shell fragments to rain down. She was dressed for an
air raid, too—black slacks, black sweater, her blond hair covered by a dark
scarf. It was also perfect breaking-and-entering garb.

“Roz!” Ruby shouted. She grabbed Roz
and pulled her to her feet, shaking her. “Roz! It’s okay. You’re fine. You’re
safe.”

Roz’s eyes were squeezed shut. She
was still shrieking, high-pitched and shrill.

“Quit!” Ruby commanded, and slapped
her, hard.

Roz’s eyes popped open and her
scream switched off as if a circuit breaker had tripped. She swiveled her head
from Ruby to me. “I... I thought you’d left,” she said in a childishly thin,
gasping voice.

“We did,” I said. “What happened?”

“Somebody tried to kill me. They
just
missed!
If I’d been standing up straight I would be dead right now!”
She opened her mouth as if she were going to scream again.

Ruby shook her again. “It’s over,
Roz. Whoever did it is gone. They ran down the alley.”

Roz pulled away from Ruby and groped
unsteadily toward the liquor cupboard. She picked up a nearly full bottle of
scotch, but her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn’t open the bottle.

Ruby went to her rescue and poured
her a stiff shot. Roz gulped it and held out the glass. I shook my head
warningly at Ruby. She put the bottle back on the shelf, led Roz to the
loveseat, and made her sit down. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said, and headed
to the kitchen.

I sat down beside Roz. “Where were
you standing when this happened?”

“Right here,” Roz said, pointing to
a spot a little to the right of the coffee table, toward the fireplace. Her
voice was stretched like a too-tight violin string. “Then I bent over to get
something out of my purse and ...”

Both our eyes went to Roz’s purse,
which was lying on the coffee table. A credit card lay beside it. This time,
Roz wasn’t trusting that the kitchen door would be unlocked.

“I... I was checking to see that I
had my ... credit card,” Roz said lamely. “I... was on my way to the liquor store
for some more scotch.”

Yeah, sure. I didn’t look at the
open cupboard, where the scotch bottle was nearly full. “So you were standing
by the coffee table,” I said, “and you bent over...”

“And the first shot came,” Roz said.
“Right over my head.” Her voice rose, wobbling. “If I’d been standing straight,
I’d be dead. If I hadn’t dropped onto the floor, the second shot would have got
me.” She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth against the
cushions, shivering uncontrollably.

“Coffee coming up,” Ruby called from
the kitchen. “Black? Cream?”

“Black’s good,” I said, and Roz
nodded. She was starting to cry again, but more softly.

I went to the casement window. It
was open and gave a good view of the thyme bed and the Emporium’s garage not a
dozen feet away. I looked down at the limestone window sill. A piece had been
freshly chipped out of the outer edge, the limestone glistening white, where a
bullet—the second one, most likely— had struck the sill. I opened the door and
went outside, being careful to stay on the stepping stones along the cottage
wall.

Across the alley, old Mr. Cowan’s
back door opened and a square of light fell out onto his grassy yard. I heard
the brisk, scolding yap of his Pekingese, Lady Lula. “What’s goin’ on out here?”
a quivery voice called. Mr. Cowan is spry for his eighty-five years and his
hearing is pretty good, but he obviously wasn’t in a hurry to investigate.

“It’s okay, Mr. Cowan,” I called. “It’s
just me— China Bayles, your neighbor. There’s been some shooting, but nobody’s
hurt.”

Mr. Cowan wasn’t pleased. “Neighborhood’s
goin’ to hell, if you ask me.” The door closed, silencing Lady Lula’s
irritating yap, then opened again. “Want I should call the police?”

I considered. The last thing I wanted
was Bubba poking around, asking a lot of questions. But this was clearly a case
of attempted murder. I could be in big trouble if I
didn’t
call the
police.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “We’ve got
our hands full over here.”

Mr. Cowan’s door slammed.

With Bubba on the way, I had only a
few minutes to look around. I pulled the torch out of my shoulder bag, flicked
it on, and turned toward the thyme bed. Along the garage wall, the fragrant
plants were trampled into the soft earth, showing clearly where someone had
stood. I shone my light onto the ground. That’s when I saw it—a clear, unmistakable
shoe print, deeply impressed into a patch of bare earth. The print was a
distinctive zigzag.