Lavender Lies (30 page)

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you, China,” Rachel said simply, and put her hand on my arm. Tears were glistening in her eyes. “Thank you, for Elena, and for me.”

I was silent for a moment. Thinking about the Jacksons had brought another question to mind. “What are you going to do about Dr. Jackson?” I frowned. “Sorry. That’s the name I know him by.”

“I understand. I need to learn to call my daughter Melissa. I’m afraid she’ll never be Elena to anyone else but me.” Rachel’s face was troubled, her voice low and tense. “Dealing with her grandfather is terribly tricky, don’t you think? My mother was Elena’s temporary guardian, and she’s dead. I was never Elena’s custodial parent. Dr. Carlson has raised her, and he’s done a first-rate job under difficult circumstances. She clearly loves him very much, and it would be dangerous to wrench her away.” She passed a hand over her forehead wearily. “I don’t see how it would help to get the authorities involved, or try to press kidnapping charges against him. In fact, I don’t think there’s anything that would stick.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. Carlson might try to argue that he didn’t know the whereabouts of Melissa’s mother and that when his son died, he simply assumed custody of his fatherless granddaughter. But how would he explain the fact that he had taken the child to Atlanta and begun practicing under an assumed name—and then repeated the process in the states of New York, Idaho, Washington, and Texas? Under oath, he would be forced to admit that he had fled from city to city to prevent discovery of his granddaughter’s whereabouts. What’s more, I seriously doubted that the Texas State Board of Dentists would approve of his behavior. They take a dim view of dentists who practice without a state license. But there was no point in introducing these issues just now. They might come in handy later, though, if Rachel needed some leverage.

I went back to the subject. “It’s your call, Rachel. If Melissa’s situation can be resolved without a custody battle, so much the better.”

Rachel shifted in her chair. “I’m hoping I can convince Elena’s grandfather—and his wife, too, now that he’s married—to let me become a part of my daughter’s life. Legally, I suppose, that means assuming some sort of joint custody. I’d be willing to move here, if that’s the only way we can work it out.”

I was still thinking of leverage. Rachel and I weren’t the only ones in Pecan Springs who were aware that there was something unusual about Dr. Carlson and his granddaughter and cared enough to do something about it. “The woman who sent in the tip,” I said. “Do you know her name?”

“I have it in my notes somewhere.” Rachel gave me a quizzical glance. “Why? Do you think it’s important?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It might be, especially if you’re hoping to keep a lid on this. She might feel she has some sort of stake in seeing the matter resolved and begin making inquiries.” I paused. “Or maybe I’m just irredeemably curious.”

“I’ll see if I can find it.” Rachel got up and went through the balcony doors into her room, while I sat and thought about what I had just heard, reflecting that life offers more complications and complexities than we can ever imagine. After listening to the catastrophes Rachel had lived through, all I could think of was a get-well card that a cop friend sent to McQuaid after he got shot:
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff,
it read. In light of Rachel’s loss of her daughter, everything—including Leatha’s experimental wedding cake and the menace of Hurricane Josephine—seemed like pretty small potatoes. Another lesson?

After a few minutes, Rachel came back out on the balcony. “Your question started me thinking, China. In her E-mail, the woman said something to the effect that it might be a good idea to get somebody out here right away. The case worker who got the tip thought Carlson was getting ready to flee again—although when I got here and saw the situation, I decided that wasn’t the case. I don’t know what the tipster meant to convey. Anyway, here’s the name, for whatever it’s worth.” She handed me a slip of paper.

I glanced at it, then looked again.

The name was Iris Powell.

Lavender Sweet Lavender
Judyth A. McLeod

Herbal
William Turner, 1568

 

 

 

The first thing I had to do, of course, was to call Iris. Was it just a coincidence that she had happened to see the Center’s Web site and Melissa’s picture? Or had she come by the information about the abduction by a different route, via Edgar Coleman, say? But I didn’t want to think about that just now. If Iris was planning to leave town—and that seemed to be a strong possibility, given what she’d said that afternoon—I needed to talk to her.

I used the telephone book in Rachel’s room to locate Iris’s number. I dialed and let the phone ring, but there wasn’t any answer. I copied the address out of the phone book, promised to call Rachel in the morning to discuss how we were going to approach Melissa and the Jacksons, and drove to Iris’s upscale condo complex on the north side of town. There was no response to my knock, but the front drapes were open just enough so that I could see she hadn’t moved out yet. The living room was furnished in
Better Homes and Gardens
-modern, with a large gold-framed landscape over the fireplace and a beige carpet on the floor. The expensive sofa and chairs were strewn with clothing and magazines. The remains of a takeout pizza had been dragged from the coffee table to the floor and across the room to a plush dog bed in the corner, leaving an interesting trail of tomato sauce and bits of pepperoni. A yappy dog on the other side of the door was announcing that I should leave immediately or he would come out and sink his vicious, sharklike teeth into my leg. Ignoring his threats, I scribbled a “Call me, Urgent” note on a business card, added my home phone number, and stuck it in the door. Then I paused. I hated to depend on Iris to get in touch with me. Maybe I should just hang out in my car and watch the condo until she came home from wherever she was spending the evening.

But I’m too impatient to be much good at surveillance. When I wait for people, I tend to mutter swear words under my breath and worry my cuticles into little rags. Maybe I should go away and come back later. Maybe I should go over to Ruby’s and get a look at that dress. No, maybe I should go to Coleman’s office and search his floor safe. Yes, that was it. There might be something in the safe that would give me an idea where Iris learned about Melissa—and what Coleman had done with the information.

I looked at my watch. I had a key to Coleman’s office, but it was getting dark and something told me I should have company on this errand. Smart Cookie lived only a couple of blocks away. I could swing by her house and pick her up.

I was standing there, thinking about this and staring at the claw marks on the bottom half of the door where the yappy dog had tried to scratch his way in, when another thought occurred to me. Iris had actually spoken about Melissa this afternoon, although she hadn’t come right out and called her by name. What was it she’d said, exactly? I shut out the dog’s clamor, sent my mind back to the afternoon’s conversation, and came up with it—not verbatim, the way I used to do when I was doing it for a living, but close enough.

The way I remembered it, Iris had remarked that one of Coleman’s malicious schemes involved a kid. She said she’d told him he was going too far. She’d made him back off, then taken it upon herself to set things straight. Presumably, that was when she E-mailed the Center and told them to send somebody out right away to check into the matter. Iris figured that took care of things. She had told Coleman off and done a good deed, to boot. End of story.

The dog had gone into major-attack mode, flinging himself against the door so hard it shook. Tired of his insults, I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jeans and began to walk toward my Datsun, still thinking. What if that hadn’t been the end of the story? Maybe Coleman hadn’t backed off, after all. Maybe he’d gone to Dr. Jackson—excuse me, to Jack Carlson—and accused him of abducting Melissa and practicing dentistry under an assumed name. Maybe he’d told Carlson that in return for a certain sum of money or for some other important consideration, he would keep his mouth shut about what he knew. Maybe—

I shooed away a couple of grackles roosting on the hood of my car, opened the door, and got in. Okay, so assume all those maybes, just for the hell of it. So how would Carlson respond when Coleman threatened to blow the whistle? In other instances when he felt threatened, he left the clinic he was practicing in, packed up the girl, and hauled ass for another state. But not this time. This time, it seemed, he had stayed put, which might mean that Iris was right after all and that Coleman had backed off. Or maybe it meant something else entirely. Maybe—

I put the key in the ignition and started the engine. The air conditioner burped a bubble of stale air that smelled like sour milk—a leftover from the week before, when I’d forgotten a plastic half-gallon of milk in the trunk and only discovered it when it had burst in a puddle of sour yucky. Maybe
what,
for Pete’s sake?

Well, maybe this time, Jack Carlson decided he was getting too old to run. He was tired of hiding out, and he didn’t want to start over again in a new place. After all, he stood to lose a bundle if he was forced to leave Pecan Springs. He’d take Melissa, of course, but he’d forfeit his practice and the land that he and his wife had bought. I rolled down the window for some fresh air and sat for a moment with the engine running, thinking. Carlson might also forfeit his wife, especially if she didn’t know the full story behind his travels during the last decade. In fact, having met the lady myself, I seriously doubted that he had filled her in on his past, or Melissa’s. Jennie Carlson struck me as an exacting, fastidious woman. She might act out of passion—sometimes a cool and polished exterior conceals a passionate heart—but I didn’t think she would have married Dr. Carlson if she’d known that he was involved in something as messy as abduction and criminal flight.

As I put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot, heading in the direction of Sheila’s house, a memory nagged at the comer of my consciousness. The memory of Dr. Jackson—Dr. Carlson—standing at the window of his office, watching through the blind while Melissa—Elena—climbed into his wife’s Taurus. I had remarked on what a wonderful girl Melissa was, and he had agreed. “I would do anything for that child,” he had said with an intensity that, thinking about it now, seemed almost frightening.

The words echoed in my mind.
I would do anything for that child. Anything. Anything. Any—

I suddenly felt cold. What if ... what if he had
killed
for her? What if those skilled professional hands, which on Monday morning had been in my mouth, adjusting my temporary crown, had picked up that wicked little silvery gun and—

The gun. Another memory surfaced, this one from my noontime lunch with McQuaid. According to McQuaid, the murder weapon had been purchased in Miami about ten years ago. Miami, where Jim Carlson died shortly after he abducted his daughter some ten years ago. Miami, where Dr. Jack Carlson had once had a flourishing dental practice. Was it a coincidence? Or had one of the Carlsons, father or son, been the original purchaser of the gun that killed Edgar Coleman on Sunday night?

But my speculations were ranging far ahead of what I knew of the facts. I needed to talk to McQuaid and find out the name of the original firearm purchaser. If it was Carlson, of course, that just about sewed it up. Even if it wasn’t, McQuaid would want to get the man’s prints and have a talk with him before the night got any older.

Which brought up a separate but equally perplexing and urgent problem. The minute McQuaid brought in Carlson for questioning, Melissa’s situation would be exposed and Rachel’s hope of working gently with the little girl would be destroyed. Melissa was a smart kid—she’d find out what was happening to her grandfather and why, and she’d be devastated. She might blame herself for her grandfather’s actions. She might blame her mother. Either way, there was nothing but losers and losses.

It was time to have a look in that safe to see if I could find any evidence that Coleman had attempted to blackmail Jack Carlson. I reached for my cell phone. It was also time to call McQuaid and find out who had purchased the gun. But instead of McQuaid, I got Viney Spry, the evening dispatcher, who is the best of McQuaid’s new hires. Viney is a tall, skinny, black woman who wears a regulation uniform and handsome nonregulation hair, braided in about a thousand tiny braids close to her head, all tied with red thread.

“Sorry, Miz Bayles. The chief i’n’t here. Him and the Ranger are in the jail questionin’ somebody they just hauled in.”