An Unthymely Death (27 page)

Ruby put the key in the ignition. “Not a thing,” she said innocently, starting the car and pulling away from the curb. “You know everything I know.”

“Then why—” I frowned at her. “Where are we going?”

“To Jason’s apartment, of course,” Ruby said. “When you bait a trap, you want be around when it’s sprung, don’t you?”

With a sigh, I reached in my bag for my cell phone. “I told McQuaid I’d be a little late for dinner. Guess I’d better call him and tell him to go ahead without me.”

 

 

“I’m sure that Jason must appreciate you two taking such good care of his cat,” Ginger said when we knocked on her door and asked her to let us into Jason’s apartment again. She frowned. “Funny thing—I didn’t even know he had a cat.”

“It’s just a kitten,” Ruby said quickly. “In fact, I think I’ll take her home with me tonight, so she won’t be lonely.”

“Good idea,” Ginger said. She gave us the key and went back to watching TV.

It was just after eight when Ruby and I sat down at the table in Jason’s shadowy kitchen. A streetlight outside cast lacy shadows through the window. I thought fleetingly, and hungrily, of those brownies. It had been a long time since lunch.

“So,” Ruby said, “I guess we just sit here in the dark and wait, huh?”

“I suppose you’re thinking that Kaye may show up,” I said.

“Exactly.” Ruby sounded smug. “She’ll figure she’s got to get her hands on that tape to protect herself. Pretty smart, huh?”

“Well, maybe,” I said. “Unfortunately, though, I don’t think you’ve thought this thing through.”

Ruby frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, just for instance, what happens when Kaye shows up?”

“We grab her,” Ruby said promptly. “I know she’s strong, but there are two of us. After we’ve grabbed her, we call nine-one-one and report that we’ve caught a burglar.”

I laughed shortly. “You’ve been reading too many Stephanie Plum mysteries, Ruby. So what if we capture her? There’s no evidence that she sent those brownies.”

Ruby frowned. “You don’t think she’ll confess? After all, if she’s apprehended in the act of breaking and entering—”

“I doubt it,” I replied dryly. “Unless Jason recovers and agrees to testify against her, we can’t tie her to the stalking. And there doesn’t seem to be any sort of physical evidence connecting her to the brownies. Without that—” I looked at Ruby, who had gone to the counter and pulled out the drawer beside the sink. “What are you doing?”

“I keep my unpaid bills in the utensil drawer,” she said. “I was just thinking that maybe—” She riffled through a stack of envelopes, pulled out a piece of paper, and held it up in the dim light. “Hey, here’s something interesting. It’s about his telephone service.” Then she looked at me, her eyes wide. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

“I heard it,” I said.

Somebody had come up the short flight of stairs and was standing outside the kitchen door. Then we both heard the sound of something stealthily inserted in the lock.

“Jason must have given her a key when they were going together,” Ruby whispered. The paper fluttered from her hand onto the floor. “Get ready, China! We need to grab her the minute she comes in.” Quickly, she stationed herself to one side of the door, motioning me to take the other side.

But at that moment, a dog began to bark in the apartment next door. “What are you barking at, Renegade?” a woman called. More barking. “Is somebody out there?” the woman cried. “Go away, or I’ll call the police.”

The key was withdrawn from the lock and we heard the sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs.

“Rats,” Ruby said in disgust. “That darn dog.” She turned on the light. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in hanging around here any longer. After all that racket, Kaye won’t be coming back tonight.”

“It’s just as well,” I said. “Since she has a key, she could always claim she was just stopping by to get something she’d left here. She couldn’t be charged with breaking and entering.”

Ruby looked disappointed. “Too bad,” she said. “What do we do now?”

I bent over to pick up the paper Ruby had dropped and scanned it. “Look at this, Ruby!” I said. “Jason Wagner was a subscriber to the telephone company’s answering service. That’s why we couldn’t find an answering machine here in the apartment.”

“Omigosh!” Ruby exclaimed. “Do you suppose that the stalker—Kaye, I mean—might have left a message that Jason didn’t get around to picking up?”

“If we can find the passcode,” I said, “we can probably dial into the system.”

“Maybe it’s on the phone,” Ruby suggested. She picked up the receiver. On it was a yellow sticker with four digits written on it. “Try this, China.”

I took the phone and punched in the number on the paper Ruby had found. There was a recorded greeting—Jason’s cheerful voice saying, “Leave a message and I’ll return your call”—and then a prompt for his passcode. I punched in the number on the yellow sticker.

“It’s working!” I said.

“What are you hearing?” Ruby asked anxiously, as I listened.

“The machine is saying that there are sixteen messages,” I reported. “They must’ve been piling up since before Jason went into the hospital.” I picked up a pencil and a scrap of paper and listened as a guy called with a reminder about a soccer game, a broker wanted to set up a meeting about an investment possibility, a dentist’s secretary confirmed an appointment. Ordinary telephone messages, the kind that everybody receives all the time. And then there was a message that
wasn’t
ordinary.

“What
is
it?” Ruby asked, watching my face.

“It’s a warning,” I said. I punched a button on the phone and the message—the last one on the machine—began to play again. I held up the phone so Ruby could hear it.

“
Don’t eat the brownies,”
the low, breathy voice said. “
They’ll make you awf’lly sick.”

I pushed the star key to replay the message, and both Ruby and I listened again.

Ruby frowned. “That’s not Kaye’s voice.”

“No, it’s not,” I replied. I hung up without erasing the messages. They’d be there until the police could check them out. “Didn’t you recognize that Southern accent? We heard it just a little while ago.”

Ruby snapped her fingers. “It’s
Dora’s
voice!” she exclaimed. “Kaye’s roommate!”

“That’s right,” I said, and picked up the phone again. It was definitely time to call the police.

 

 

“Congratulations, you two,” McQuaid said. “You pulled it off.” He lifted his small glass of cranberry cordial—his Valentine’s gift from Ruby. The bottle bore a handmade label that read “Cordially Yours.”

“Thank you,” Ruby said with a modest smile, raising her glass. “It only took a
little
cunning.”

“We should be toasting Jason, too,” I reminded them. “It’s good to hear that he’s feeling better.”

Ruby sipped her cordial. “So Kaye actually confessed to sending him that deadly Valentine’s present?”

McQuaid nodded and nipped one of Brian’s chocolate-covered strawberries off the plate in the middle of the table. “After her roommate told the police that she’d seen Kaye baking those chocolate brownies and writing Phyllis Anderson’s name on the package, she knew she couldn’t get out of it,” he said. “She probably figures that a guilty plea will get her a lighter sentence—and she’s right. The DA is all for anything that saves him the cost of a prosecution.” He frowned. “What I want to know, though, is what gave you the idea of checking Jason’s answering service.”

 

 

 

Ruby and I exchanged glances. “Well,” I said, “Ruby was snooping in the utensil drawer, looking for unpaid bills, when she found—”

“I was not snooping!” Ruby said heatedly. “I was just doing what any self-respecting PI would have done. And it’s a good thing I did, especially since our trap failed.” She scowled. “If it hadn’t been for that stupid dog—”

“Trap?” McQuaid asked. He leaned forward. “What’s this about a trap?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said hastily.

He gave me a thoughtful look. “Well, however it happened, you two were plenty smart. The police might not have thought to look for an answering service. Without that recorded warning, they wouldn’t have questioned Dora directly. And without the threat of Dora’s testimony against her, Kaye wouldn’t have confessed. She’s a tough cookie.”

Ruby gave me a gratified glance and lifted her glass. “Here’s to sleuthing!”

I grinned. “Have a strawberry,” I said, and passed the plate.

BLOOM WHERE YOU’RE PLANTED

HAVE you ever noticed that people who live in big cities—Houston, for instance, where I came from—know very few of their neighbors? At least, that was true for me. There were probably five hundred residents in the upscale condo complex where I lived, but I couldn’t have told you the name of a single one, except for some jerk named Troy who lived two doors down and was in the habit of nosing his vintage Jag into my parking space.

It’s different here in Pecan Springs, where every Pecan Springer seems to know all there is to know about everybody else—their life histories, their successes, their failures, their foibles. There are a couple of good reasons for this. For one thing, Pecan Springers have a habit of staying in the same place for a long time, so they put down roots and develop an interest in the community. For another, there aren’t a lot of big events to discuss, since most of what happens around here is very small potatoes (the high school homecoming parade, for instance, or the Cowgirl Cloggers’ foot-stompin’ performance at the grand opening of the Senior Activities Center). Of course, there’s usually something interesting going on up at the college—that’s Central Texas State University, for those of you who don’t know—but there’s always been a strong separation between Town and Gown, so what happens on the Hill might as well be happening on Mars.

In the absence of local events of global significance, people in Pecan Springs tend to talk about what’s up close and personal, which is mostly the neighbors. Gossip, some folks call it, with a sneering curl of the lip. More positively, others think of it as keeping tabs on what’s going on in the neighborhood, like Neighborhood Watch. Watching the neighbors is everybody’s civic duty.

Which is both good and bad. It’s certainly nice when Diana Dabbs asks whether my cold is getting better, but it’s disconcerting when she wonders whether I like the Taffy Cream hair color she saw me buying at Peterson’s Pharmacy the week before (and which I was planning to keep a secret). It’s sweet of Leona Love, of the Love Family Funeral Home and Mortuary just down the street, to send me a birthday card, even if it is a bit schmaltzy for my taste. But when her husband Dennis pops into the shop to inquire jovially whether I’ve hit the halfway mark yet, I am definitely not pleased. Sometimes people cross over the line between being caring and being curious, between looking out for a neighbor’s welfare and invading her privacy. And sometimes it’s just plain difficult to know when to stop.