Cat's Claw (24 page)

It was gray and overcast when I got up early Tuesday morning. The rain had stopped, but the air was damp and chill and tendrils of writhing ground fog clutched the trees. The overnight rain, widespread across the Hill Country, had undoubtedly brightened the hopes of the towns that depend on the April wildflower season for much of their annual tourist revenue. The traditional weather calendar that works
in the northeast—April showers bring May flowers—doesn’t suit our seasons. For us, it’s the rains in November, December, and January that bring up the April wildflowers—bluebonnets and brown-eyed Susans and winecups—and summon wildflower fans by the thousands. You can call me a cynic if you want to, but gardeners and farmers aren’t the only ones who get down on their knees and pray for rain. Around here, when the winter is dry, the spring wildflower season is a bust, the bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants in towns like Pecan Springs, Fredericksburg, and Boerne are half-empty, and every small-town shop owner feels a hard pinch in her bottom line. Rain is something to celebrate—although, of course, we don’t want a repeat of the flooding that happened when what was left of Hurricane Josephine slammed across Adams County. I caught a glimpse of the TV as I came downstairs and was glad that we weren’t experiencing the early-season snowfall that was blanketing the northeast today. I could celebrate the fact that we weren’t going to be blitzed by a blizzard. In fact, the temperature was heading for a balmy seventy-plus this afternoon. Not bad for November.

Like every mom with school-age kids, I’m an early riser on weekday mornings, getting the kids dressed and breakfasted and equipped with books and homework and out the door in time to catch the school bus at the corner of Limekiln Road and our lane. This morning was more challenging than usual, because McQuaid had an early plane to catch and Austin-Bergstrom International is a good fifty minutes away—longer, when inbound traffic on I-35 is heavy. Once you’re at the airport, you have to find a place to park and catch the shuttle to the terminal—and of course, there’s security. These days, flying isn’t a picnic.

For our breakfasts, I make up a batch of sausage, egg, and bean burritos, wrap them individually, and keep them in the freezer for a quick,
nourishing meal-to-go. McQuaid was on his second when I came into the kitchen, dressed in my usual jeans, the shop T-shirt, and a green-and-black plaid flannel shirt, ready for my workday. He got out another burrito, popped it into the microwave, and folded me into a large hug.

I spoke against his shoulder. “When I talked to Sheila on the phone last night, she said to tell you to tell Blackie to be careful. Ditto from me, for you.”

“Sure thing,” he said, nuzzling my neck. He let me go and turned to fill his thermos mug with coffee. “Don’t worry, China,” he added, over his shoulder. “We’ll watch ourselves.”

“I
mean
it,” I said urgently. I had awakened early that morning and lay beside him, worrying about the trip he was about to make. “Neither Sheila nor I am very happy about you two gringos going over the border to—”

“I know,” he said, seriously now. “We won’t go across unless we think the trip is worth making—unless we’re sure we can find the boy. Tell Sheila that.” He slipped an arm around me, then bent and kissed me, lingering for a moment.

I pulled away, frowning. “If you cross, and if you find him, how are you going to bring him back?”

“We won’t,” he said. He took out the burrito and wrapped it in a paper towel. “Bring him back, that is. We’ll find out where he is, get photos, dig up as much information as we can about the situation, and report to the father.”

I was relieved. I didn’t like the idea that McQuaid and Blackie might be arrested by the
Federales
and tossed into a Mexican hoosegow, with a kidnapping charge hanging over them like a Mexican machete.

“After that,” he went on, “it’s up to the father and his lawyer. These
international cases are always difficult. They take longer than you’d think.” He glanced up at the clock. “Hell’s bells. Look at the time! I’m outta here, China. I’ll call you before we go across.”

He kissed me good-bye swiftly and was gone. I went to the window and watched him as he went out to the car, overnight bag on his shoulder, mug in one hand, burrito in the other. He was already absent from me, already focused on what he had to do over the next couple of days. As I turned away from the window, I was swept by a keen apprehension, sharper than any I had felt before when I had seen him off on an investigation. I was grateful for Brian’s clunky footfalls on the stairs, his almost-man’s voice: “Hey, Mom, do I have any clean gym shorts?” and Caitie’s higher-pitched, “Mom, I need some lunch money—and I can’t find my red shoe!” Their urgent needs (gym shorts, lunch money, two red shoes, burritos, orange juice, and milk) pulled me back into an ordinary morning, in our ordinary family.

The bus arrives at seven twenty, give or take five minutes, and when the weather’s clear, the kids walk out to the bus stop on Limekiln Road. When the weather is rainy or very cold, I take them to the stop in the car. This morning, the clouds were beginning to thin, the sun was peeking through, and the day promised to warm up nicely. But since all three of us were ready to go and it was just damp and chilly enough outdoors to be uncomfortable, I gave Brian and Caitie a lift.

We waited in the car until the bus came, listening to the local country and western station and joining Gary P. Nunn in a rowdy chorus of “London Homesick Blues.” When I said good-bye to the kids and watched them climb on the bus, I thought that if there was a better way to start the day, I didn’t know what it was. A kiss from my husband, hugs from two of the greatest kids in the world, and toe-tapping Texas music on the radio.

On a normal day, I would have driven on to the shop, arrived a little early, and used the time to catch up on chores I hadn’t finished the day before. But this morning, after the kids climbed aboard the bus, I hesitated for a moment, thinking of what McQuaid had said the night before about Timms’ property. Instead of going straight into town, maybe I should make a quick run out to Timms’ place. I flipped open my phone with the idea of calling Sheila to let her know what I was going to do, but decided against it and closed the phone again. She’d either tell me not to go or want to send one of her officers with me. But I was close, just fifteen minutes away, and besides, I didn’t think it was dangerous—or maybe I just didn’t think.

I put the Toyota in gear, turned left, and drove in the other direction, west, heading away from town on Limekiln Road, across Big Hackberry Creek. This part of the Hill Country is in the Guadalupe watershed. The landscape is cut by streams flowing south and east, carving out deep, wooded canyons. The Guadalupe River rises near Hunt, in the highlands west of Kerrville, and flows all the way to the town of Victoria and then into the Gulf of Mexico. To my mind, mile for mile, it’s the prettiest river in Texas. But dangerous. If a storm dumps a lot of water upstream, downstream people can be in danger and not even know it. People are more savvy about flash floods these days, but every year, at least one Pecan Springs driver ignores the Turn Around, Don’t Drown signs, and… well, drowns.

A couple of miles farther west, on the other side of the bridge over a creek, I spotted the faded sign for Paint Horse Road, a narrow black-top that took off to the right. It slanted diagonally up a steep, wooded rise, then leveled off across the shoulder of a narrow ridge, giving me a beautiful view of folded green hills, limestone bluffs, and steep-banked canyons cut into the limestone of the Edwards Plateau by eons of rushing
creeks and rivers. The sky to the west and north—a bright, sharp blue—had already cleared. The low pressure area that had brought last night’s rain was giving way to a high pressure system pushing down from the north that would keep us sunny and dry for the next couple of days, until a new storm system was forecast to come in from the north.

This area was far enough away from the road so that there wasn’t a house in sight, not even a utility pole or a cell phone tower. When the road slanted down again, I saw a small flock of Angora goats behind a rusty barbed-wire fence that zigzagged up the hill. Angoras produce mohair, a valuable luxury fiber with the sheen of silk and more durable and lightweight than wool. They are more valuable than your everyday, garden-variety goats, which are usually left to fend for themselves while Angoras are sent out to graze with a guard animal. This flock was under the protection of an attentive burro, who was keeping a close eye on his charges. Burros are fast on their feet and can kick like the devil, and they’re aggressively territorial when it comes to protecting their flocks. They might not be much good against a mountain lion, like the one I had seen the night before. But they’re diligent about keeping coyotes and marauding dogs at bay, and predators have learned to respect them.

That mountain lion. I thought of her—silvery in the rain, in the glint of my headlights—and shivered. She had been so beautiful, so mysterious, so seductively, dangerously powerful. For a fleeting moment, I wished that I could see her again, witness her litheness, her gracefulness, her strength. But only for a moment. I had other things to do. And one glimpse of that kind of danger can go a very long way.

Another hundred yards on the left, I saw the pair of mailboxes that McQuaid had mentioned. But something caught my attention that he (not being a plant person) probably hadn’t noticed. The boxes were half-smothered under a luxuriant blanket of vine. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I
stopped the car and got out to have a closer look. I knew immediately what it was: cat’s claw vine, a long-lived, aggressive plant—a valuable medicinal in its tropical homeland—that can smother trees, structures, and native plants. The vine produces small three-pronged hooks that can cling to almost anything, and showy yellow, trumpet-shaped blossoms in late spring and summer. In fact, you may see the plant sold in nurseries as the yellow trumpet vine and advertised as useful for masking unattractive structures. But in southern states, the cat’s claw vine is considered a dangerous nuisance.

I got back in the car and turned onto the narrow caliche-topped road, following it through an open landscape of rangeland and bony mesquite trees, leafless now in the November morning. But there hadn’t been a hard freeze yet. The grass was still green, the live oaks still bore their shiny green leaves, and the morning sun was splendid. I saw a Cooper’s hawk, a flirtatious mockingbird, a pair of kestrels, and several jaunty red cardinals, as bright as flame.

And then I saw the sign I was looking for, weathered but just legible: paint horse ranch. The road, rutted now, dipped steeply downhill, and I guessed that I was headed toward Paint Horse Creek and George Timms’ cabin—his bachelor pad, as McQuaid had called it, where he could party as much as he wanted without disturbing the neighbors.

Why was I doing this? Curiosity, was it? Wanting to see what kind of party place a guy like George Timms had built? Or maybe a suspicion that Timms might be using the cabin to escape from the nastiness of his surrender and arrest. Charlie said that he had repeatedly called Timms’ cell phone, but Paint Horse Ranch was out in the boonies. It was entirely possible that there wasn’t a signal here, so Timms hadn’t gotten the calls. It was also possible that Timms wasn’t actually hiding—that he had fully intended to come back to town to keep his date with the police but had
run into some kind of trouble. That he was sick or maybe injured, with no way to call for help. The closer I got, the more possibilities I could conjure up. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come out here by myself, without letting anyone know where I was. If anything happened—

My cell phone was on the seat beside me. I picked it up and flipped it open. The signal wasn’t strong, only two bars, which faded to one as I held it in my hand. Then, as the road flattened out ahead, I glimpsed a log house with a green metal roof, ahead through the trees. I slowed for a curve. A good thing, too, because I nearly ran into the rear end of a low, sleek silver Corvette. It bore the vanity plate GTIMMS 1.

It looked like George Timms was in residence—at least, his Corvette was.

My mouth was suddenly dry, and I was wishing I hadn’t done this. But I had, and anyway, I knew George Timms. I conjured up a mental picture of him: blond and boyish, crooked grin, white teeth in a bronzed face. A handsome face. Owner of the local Chevy dealership, golfing friend of the mayor, former business associate of Ben Graves. Not somebody I’d normally be afraid of. I wasn’t going to start being afraid now.

I pulled around the Corvette and parked beside it in a largish graveled parking area, in sight of the front of the cabin. Then I turned off the ignition and sat still for a moment, studying the place. I wouldn’t call it a “cabin.” It was built of logs, yes, and it had a pleasing rustic appearance, with a wooden rocking chair on the front porch and an impressive rack of antlers over the glass-paned front door. But it looked more like an upscale fishing-and-hunting lodge to me, something you’d see in a travel brochure that advertised getaway vacations for world-weary city folk. Off to one side, I could see three cute little octagonal log buildings—guesthouses, no doubt. It was quite a party place.