“He’s called the Rangers,” I said. “They’re sending an officer. That ought to be enough. ‘One riot, one Ranger,’ remember?”
“A Ranger?” Ruby gave me a scornful look. “That’s not the kind of help he needs. Anyway, it’s just another reason to worry. Have you ever heard of a police officer—especially an
interim
officer, taking off on his honeymoon and leaving a Ranger in charge of a big investigation? Why, it’s against the code of honor, or whatever they call it.”
I hated to admit it, but Ruby was probably right. McQuaid would leave only if he had a suspect in custody and either a viable confession or a strong evidence-based case that the county attorney could go to work on. And even then—
“Anyway, this isn’t a case for the police, and you know it.” Ruby looked at me. “Did you ever, in all the years you practiced as a criminal attorney, hear of a single living soul who actually volunteered to be a suspect in a murder investigation?” She answered her own question with an emphatic shake of her head. “Of course not. Phyllis would never in the world have gone to McQuaid on her own, or to any policeman. Darla isn’t going to be any more forthcoming—to an official investigator, that is. But we are not officials. We are not investigators, public or private. We are sincere, helpful people who might be able to get our friends out of a jam. Do you see?”
“I do,” I conceded, “although a sincere helpful person who rats to the cops is a pretty lousy friend. Anyway, I don’t know where that leaves us, as far as the honeymoon is concerned. McQuaid still has to interrogate every single—”
“McQuaid can do anything he wants,” Ruby said, “any time he wants. Meanwhile, we’ll just poke around a little bit and see what we can find out that might expedite his investigation. There’s no law against a private citizen asking a few questions of her friends, is there?” She had a gleam in her eye.
“Not as long as the private citizen doesn’t obstruct justice,” I said cautiously. “But on the whole, it’s not a good idea to get in the way of an official—”
“Right. We won’t stand in front of any police cars.” Ruby pursed her lips. “Really, China, I should think you’d be anxious to get this case wrapped up so that you and McQuaid could get on with your lives.”
“Well, I am. But—”
“Good.” Ruby smiled. “The Council has seven members. Why are there only five on your list?”
I took out my two “fors” and five “againsts” and explained the arithmetic. “McQuaid is concentrating on Pauline and Phyllis,” I said, ticking them off. “Which leaves three. Darla McDaniels, Winnie Hatcher, Wanda Rathbottom.” I frowned, thinking that I knew all of these people, one way or another. Pecan Springs is a small town.
“Wait a minute,” Ruby said. “Why couldn’t one of the ‘fors’ have killed him? Maybe he laid a little blackmail on them before the first vote was taken.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” I asked.
“Because you subconsciously wanted to keep the list as short as possible, hoping to speed things up.” Ruby had shifted into her brisk, take-charge mode. “Who are they?”
“Ken Bowman,” I said. “And Billie Jean Jones.”
“Well, that’s easy,” Ruby said. “Ken Bowman lives just across the street from me. He can help me jump-start my car tomorrow morning.”
“Your Toyota?” I asked, surprised. “It’s almost new. What’s wrong with it?”
“Whatever it is,” Ruby said with a twinkle, “it will go wrong first thing in the morning, just as Ken is on his way to work. And Billie Jean works at the House of Beauty. You’re going to get your hair done before the wedding, aren’t you? Why don’t you make an appointment with her?”
“I suppose I could, although I was thinking maybe I’d just shampoo it.” I rubbed a strand of hair, thinking that it felt pretty dry. I’ve started to think about getting it frosted, to hide the streak of gray that runs down the left side, but I never manage to find the time.
“You will get a style cut,” Ruby said emphatically,
“and
a manicure.”
“A manicure! Not on your life.”
“A style cut, a manicure, and a facial,” Ruby said. “That should give you plenty of time to give Billie Jean the third degree.” Pointing to Winnie Hatcher’s name on the list, she ignored my strangled protest. “And don’t forget that Winnie offered to give us roses for the wedding. So we’ve got a good excuse to go talk to her.”
I shook my head. “If Winnie got mad enough, she wouldn’t hesitate to bash Edgar Coleman with anything she could reach. But she wouldn’t
shoot
him. She’s led the anti-gun lobby at the legislature every session for the last ten.” Not that it’s made any difference. Texans would sooner give up their wives than their guns.
“I agree,” Ruby said, “but Winnie is a very smart woman and knows everybody and his nephew, so we ought to start with her. And that just leaves Wanda Rathbottom.” She gave me a meaningful look.
When Ruby revs into high gear, you either have to climb on her bandwagon or get out of the way before she careens over you. “I guess I can talk to Wanda,” I said. “But we’re not exactly bosom buddies. I doubt that I’ll be able to get anything out of her.” Wanda Rathbottom owns a nursery called Wanda’s Wonderful Acres, which makes me her competitor—in her mind, anyway. We’ve never been very friendly. We’ve gotten even less so since I took over her job editing the Home and Garden page for the Enterprise. No matter that Hark fired her before he hired me. The way Wanda sees it, I’m the one who killed her promising career as a garden columnist.
“You’ll just have to be creative,” Ruby said. “If she acts nervous and suspicious, that tells us something.”
“Tells us what? I might be nervous and suspicious if somebody came around asking me nosy questions about my private business. And Wanda is a nervous and suspicious woman by nature. She sees a bee in every blossom, and it’s always about to sting her.”
Ruby waved her hand. “You’ll do fine. Just pretend she’s a hostile witness, and you’ve got her on the stand in front of a judge and a jury. All your old grilling tricks will come back to you. Anyway, what we’re trying to do is eliminate people. We’ll let McQuaid worry about getting the confession.” Ruby looked at her watch. “You call the House of Beauty and make an appointment with Billie Jean, and I’ll give Winnie a buzz and see if we can drive over there this afternoon.”
“You won’t hear me objecting to a tour of Winnie’s garden,” I said, “but the wedding isn’t until Sunday. We can’t cut roses this early.”
“We’re not going to cut the roses today, silly. We’re just taking a look. That way, we’ll know how many and what colors Winnie has, and somebody can get them later. And while we’re there, of course, we can discreetly find out what she knows about Edgar Coleman.” She lined up the last chintz-covered pot. “There,” she exclaimed. “All done! China, we make a great team. When we decide to do some- . thing, it gets done right, with no dawdling.”
“I doubt that McQuaid will be so enthusiastic about our detective work,” I said. “We’d better stop by the office and let him know what we’re up to. We probably won’t cause him any trouble, but I don’t want to run the risk.”
Ruby frowned. “Is that really necessary—before the fact, I mean? We’re simply gathering information. If we find out anything, sure, we’ll tell him. If we don’t, what he doesn’t know won’t make him mad.”
Ruby’s response made a certain kind of sense. “Just the same,” I said, “I’d feel better if I talked to him.” I was betting that he’d say no, which would put an end to Ruby’s nonsense. I could go back to getting ready for the wedding and leave the investigating to my future husband. Husband? I shivered. I was still having trouble getting used to the idea.
“Excuse me,” Laurel said, opening the doors again. “I hate to keep interrupting you when you’ve got so much to do, but we’re piling up punch bowls out here. At last count, there were eleven, plus a couple of sets of crystal cups with matching trays. Somebody even left a big bag of plastic tableware and a bunch of paper peonies sprinkled with glitter. Where do you want me to put this stuff?”
“Eleven!” Ruby cried. “Plus six—that makes seventeen punch bowls!” She shook her head. “It’s out of control. I feel like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice with his brooms and buckets.”
“I thought you were going to tell people we don’t need any more punch bowls,” I said to Laurel. “This is a pain.”
“I
am
telling them,” Laurel replied earnestly. “But folks are leaving them outside the door and driving away. I guess I’d better put up a sign, huh?
No more punch bowls, please.”
“Definitely,” I said. “Or hire a sorcerer to get rid of them.”
Ruby drove her Toyota to the square and parked in front of the police station, next to a green pickup with two bales of hay in the back and a bumper sticker that declared “Oprah is the only mad cow in Texas.” But Ruby was more interested in the car on the right.
“Isn’t that a Ranger car?” she asked, pointing at the discreetly marked blue Ford.
“McQuaid’s backup must have got here already,” I said, getting out. “Maybe there are some new developments.” Maybe they had wrapped up the case already, and Ruby and I could go back to other important things.
“I’ll wait,” Ruby said. “I can read my book. Maybe I’ ll get some ideas for our investigation.” She hauled out a copy of
N Is For Noose.
Kinsey Milhone is Ruby’s favorite fictional character, which is probably why we embarked on this mission this afternoon. When Ruby grows up, she wants to be Kinsey and live in a remodeled garage and have alphabetical adventures. I tell her that she wouldn’t like the life, but she doesn’t believe me.
Dorrie was still smoking and playing the radio, but now she was reading as well. The cover of her book featured a beautiful young woman wearing a few tattered rags of leopard skin, clutched in the muscular grip of a Sylvester Stallone look-alike with a handsome black ponytail tied with a raven’s feather. She glanced up long enough to see that it was me.
“He’s in there,” she said, tilting her head toward the chiefs door. She turned a page. “Him an’ the Ranger are talkin’ about the Coleman case.”
“I don’t suppose he’d mind if I interrupted him for a minute. I need to ask him something.”
Dorrie looked doubtful. “The
chief
wouldn’t,” she said. “The Ranger might. He looks like the kind who—”
But I was already on my way to the door. I rapped lightly and opened it.
McQuaid and the Ranger were seated at the conference table. McQuaid was in working clothes, a blue shirt, jeans, and scuffed boots. The Ranger looked as if he’d just come from dress parade, with creases down the front of his starched Western-style shirt; gray polyester Western pants, snug-fitting and also sharply creased; and a spit-and-polish finish on his shiny black boots. On the table in front of McQuaid was an untidy litter of handwritten notes on odd bits of paper, napkins, and the backs of matchbooks. Arranged with precision in front of the Ranger were two pencils, a yellow pad, a lap top computer, and his white Stetson.
“Oh, hi, China,” McQuaid said. He leaned back with a slight grin. “Guess who.”
The Ranger jumped up and stuck out his hand. “China Bayles! Hey, girl, you
are
a sight for sore eyes.”
“Good to see you again, Marvin,” I said.
There is something about Marvin Wallace’s enthusiasm that always strikes me as phony, and I
detest
it when an ol’ boy calls me a “girl.” But I usually try to remind myself that this is just Marvin’s style and I shouldn’t take it personally. McQuaid and Marvin had served together on the Houston police force, before McQuaid left to get his criminology degree and Marvin became a Ranger. Marvin drops in at the house when he’s in our area and spends a couple of hours nagging McQuaid about going back into law enforcement. I’m sure he was thrilled down to the toes of his polished boots when he heard that McQuaid had accepted a temporary assignment with the Rangers last February and was now serving as Pecan Springs’ interim chief. It must have given him hope.
“China and I are getting married,” McQuaid said, putting an arm around my shoulders.
“This weekend,” I added.
Marvin was startled. His glance went from me to McQuaid and back again. “This ... weekend?” His tone implied that I must be mistaken.
“Right,” I said, pleasantly cheerful. “Sunday at four. Would you like to come?”
Marvin’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he said stiffly. “I don’t make personal plans when I’m on assignment. The case comes first.”
“Well—” McQuaid said. He dropped his arm uncomfortably, looking as if he were being measured and found to be a half-inch too short. “I mean, sure it does. On the other hand—” He grinned, half-abashed. “I mean, a wedding’s pretty important too.”
I appreciated McQuaid’s dilemma, trapped between his temporary allegiance to his badge and his long-term commitment to his soon-to-be-wife, but I also needed to be sure that Marvin knew exactly where things stood.
“Our wedding,” I said firmly, “has been in the works for several months, long before Edgar Coleman got himself shot to death. The arrangements have been made, the food’s planned, and friends are coming from out of town. Our honeymoon is finalized, too. We’re flying to Hawaii early Monday morning.” Marvin was looking grim, so I tried to ease the tension a little by fluttering my hands and swaying my hips in an imitation of the hula. “Aloha, blue Hawaii,” I warbled.
Marvin was not amused. He turned to McQuaid. “Sounds like we’ve got somewhat of a problem.”
You’ve
got somewhat of a problem, Marvin, I thought darkly. But I put on a bantering smile. “Hey, come on. Where’s the old confidence? Where’s the Ranger spirit? There isn’t a killer in Texas who can buffalo you two guys. This is only Tuesday, for Pete’s sake. Sunday is five whole days away. By then, you’ll have the perp in jail and the case on the county attorney’s desk.”
As a cheerleader, I thought I sounded pretty darn good, but Marvin was not moved.