Chill Factor (17 page)

Dixie didn’t believe all these people actually knew the deceased. They’d come to see the Granny Bandit.

She spotted Ben Rashly from HPD Homicide and a pair of FBI types lurking at the edge of the crowd. Their purpose for attending was obvious—they expected a third gang member to show up, possibly in a shiny new sports car purchased with part of the missing loot.

At the front of the church, Lucy Ames’ daughter, the chief reason for Dixie’s attendance, guided two children among the congregation. Except for a son in California, who apparently had elected not to fly home for the funeral, Carrie Severn was
Lucy’s only direct kin, according to the newspaper. She and her family lived in Austin.

Dixie wasn’t quite sure how to approach Lucy’s daughter to ask if her mother had ever mentioned Edna. It seemed disrespectful to start a conversation here, and during the entire service, Carrie Severn’s mouth had remained a tight, angry slash in her perfectly groomed face.

But if not here, where? The daughter would know more than anyone who her mother’s friends were, and she might head straight back to Austin after the service.

When Dixie reached the steps outside the church, Ben Rashly fell in beside her, tobacco drifting to the ground like brown snow as he filled a curved pipe. Dapper as usual, he wore a charcoal-gray suit and matching striped tie, his fine white hair combed neatly across his bald spot. The lines in his face seemed more deeply etched today. Working with FBI agents could do that.

“Isn’t this a little out of your jurisdiction?” Dixie asked him.

“Do I look like I’m on duty?”

“You’re always on duty, Rash.” And she certainly couldn’t approach the Severns with him here.

Ahead of them, a black limousine stood ready to drive the family members to the cemetery. Maybe Rashly would skip the grave site.

As the crowd parted, making a path for the coffin and pallbearers, he stepped back a pace. Dixie joined him.

“Did you know the deceased?” she asked.

“That’s supposed to be my question.” He flicked a lighter on, held it sideways to the pipe bowl, and drew several short, quick puffs. “What’re you doing here, Flannigan? What do you know about Lucy Ames?”

“I know she didn’t look like any bank robber I ever saw.”

He squinted at the coffin being boosted into the back of a hearse. “Short career.”

“Really, Rash, what’s a Houston Homicide cop doing at a Webster funeral? Are you on the task force?”

He shook his head and plucked a tobacco leaf from his lower lip. “My wife and Lucy Ames were in the same sorority. Ida’s visiting her sister in Arizona. She heard about the Ames
robbery and called me, all torn up about it. Feeling guilty, like if she’d been a better ‘sister,’ kept track, maybe Lucy wouldn’t have taken to knocking off banks. Whatever sense that makes.”

“So you promised to come and represent her?”

His steady eyes moved around the crowd.

“From what Ida said, Ames worked at Texas Citizens Bank since the day it opened. Her divorce didn’t leave her hurting for money, and she was never wild and crazy. Married right out of college, did her stint as a mother before starting on a career. She and Ida worked with their sorority sisters at Christmas every year, collecting food and clothing for the homeless. This past Christmas, Lucy didn’t show. Ida feels bad for never calling to find out why.”

Dixie considered that for a minute. She didn’t recall whether Edna had attended college, much less whether she’d been active in a sorority. She made a mental note to check it out.

“What about them?” Dixie nodded toward the FBI agents. “Are they sharing information?”

Rashly scowled at her.

“Flannigan, this case is already a mess. The feds won’t be nearly as understanding as I am if they catch you sticking your nose in.” Turning away from the two agents, he knocked his pipe against the heel of his shoe to clear it. “When you get through here,” he said gruffly, “maybe you should drop by my office and tell me what you’ve learned.”

“Not much to tell.”

“Flannigan—”

“Okay, okay.” She’d wondered why he was giving up information so easily. Naturally, he expected tit for tat.

The pallbearers had shut the hearse doors. Carrie Severn and her family were ushered into a limousine.

“Have you talked to her?” Dixie asked Rashly.

He shook his head. “Glad I don’t have to. Spent this morning with another bereaved widow.”

Dixie realized who he meant. Just before the funeral, she’d heard about the sniper killing of an HPD patrolman. “Did you know the officer?”

“Personally?” His face was tight and gray. “I know he got up
every morning, strapped on a piece, and put himself on the line. That’s all I have to know.” He glanced at the FBI agents. “I meant what I said about coming by later.”

“I’ll be there. Aren’t you going to the cemetery?”

“Hell, I’ve had about all the fun today I can stand.”

After twenty minutes of oratory at the grave, Dixie wished she’d taken her cue from Rashly. The minister managed to drone on without repeating anything he’d said at the chapel, but the generic message didn’t convince Dixie he’d ever met the deceased.

Contrary to his promise, Marty hadn’t shown up. Dixie continued to puzzle over his reaction to Edna’s letter. He’d gone from contempt at Drake’s handling of the will to complete acquiescence. Had something Edna wrote caused him to lose interest in discovering what drove his mother to bank robbery?

Dixie scanned the faces of the assembly—which far outnumbered the crowd at the church. Some of them may have known Lucy at the bank, although, according to the news coverage, she hadn’t worked directly with customers. Several women in the bunch were middle-aged or older and might’ve been Lucy’s friends. Dixie couldn’t talk to them without missing her chance with Carrie Severn. Yet, one figure standing alone at the edge of the crowd drew Dixie’s attention. A shriveled-up prune of a woman, thin, well dressed, she seemed entranced with the minister’s every word.

Finally, he began to wind down.

Dixie sidled toward the front row where she could approach Lucy’s daughter after the hugging was over. Tom Severn had started moving his children away from the open grave.

“Daddy?” The girl, a miniature female copy of her father, including a grown-up frown, tugged at his hand. “Will the police kill us, too?”

“No!” His glance caught Dixie’s. “Where do children get such ideas?”

“When you don’t have answers, I suppose imagination ills
in the gaps.” Dixie longed to move on, to leave this family to grieve in peace. Instead, she placed herself in Carrie’s path. “Mrs. Severn …? I’m … awfully sorry for your loss. May I speak with you for a moment?”

“If you’re a reporter—”

“No, I’m not.” Dixie spoke gently but firmly. “I didn’t know Lucy, but I knew Edna Pine—”

“Who?”

“The other woman who was … shot by police officers.”

“What
is
this? Who are you?”

“My name is Dixie Flannigan. I was Edna Pine’s neighbor. She and your mother must’ve known each other. I thought, if we could figure out how—”

“The police already went over all that. I don’t know how they knew each other, and I don’t care. I just want this whole mess to go away.”

Carrie tried to move off, but Dixie blocked her. “It won’t go away until the police find—”

“Look, I don’t know
anything.
The police should do their job and leave us alone.”

“You must have some idea why your mother—”

“Why she held up a bank? She did it because she was
insane.
You got that? Nuts. Cuckoo. My mother
had
to be insane, didn’t she? To pull such a ridiculous stunt and get herself killed? First the divorce, now this. She wanted attention, that’s all. Well, she got it. Now my children will grow up knowing their grandmother was a thief.”

Tom Severn appeared beside her.

“Come on, Carrie.” He urged her toward the limousine.

“Leave it alone,” Carrie called back. “You got that?
Just leave us alone!”

The weather is all wrong for a funeral
, the Shepherd of The Light penned in his notebook.
Warm. Sunny. Fragrant with spring.

Anyone who went to the movies knew the best funeral weather was rainy and bleak. Go see
Harold and Maude
, all the graveside scenes filmed against dreary skies dotted with black umbrellas. Nutty old Maude getting her kicks attending funerals for people she’d never heard of. Young Harold trying to hang himself. The two of them as unlikely a pair as peaches and vinegar, but it made a good flick.

Humming a dirge from
Harold and Maude
, he watched the crowd break up and head for their cars. Only a handful, he estimated, had ever heard of Lucy Aaron Ames until her debut performance at the Webster branch made her famous. Like nutty old Maude, they’d all come for a good show.

Lucy would be pleased he’d remembered the gardenias. His anonymous donation ensured she’d have a fine send-off, but he also felt the importance of paying his personal respects. After all, Lucy had been his most loyal disciple, the first to follow his guidance to the ultimate reward.

“You have an ancient soul, Lucy,” he’d told her at their first meeting. “Long-suffering. Evolved. Strong as steel.”

“You can see that?” Her face radiated joy. “I’ve always known … well … I’m not sure how to say—”

“You don’t have to say anything. The wisdom in those incredible hazel eyes tells all.”

Later, in his carefully appointed studio, under soft light filtered through green branches, he had touched Lucy for the first time. Not sexually; merely the gentlest brush of his fingertips across her hand. A woman too often accepted sex when what she wanted—
needed
—was to be stroked, comforted, cherished. To be appreciated. Since Penny Hatcher, he’d learned to recognize a certain longing around the eyes and mouth.

At that first touch, Lucy’s hand had fluttered beneath his own.

“I know it sounds self-important,” she whispered, “but I’ve always sensed that God—”

“Had something special in mind for you? I’m sure He does, Lucy. You’ve suffered sorrows and suppressed passions that would drive lesser souls mad.”

“You
do
understand. I’ve dreamed that someday … someone—” Her eyes flooded, adoration glimmering through the waterworks, and he knew she was his instrument to finely tune.

“Drink your tea.” He’d patted the hand that showed a trace of liver spotting. “It’s a special blend. You’ll like it.”

His special blend came from a trio of aromatic herbs discovered in Shanghai and Zaire. One of the herbs enhanced a subject’s suggestibility. Taken together, they brought about a deep openness and trust but also an incredible loneliness, a need for human contact, a desire to be understood. Smoldering in an incense bowl, a spicy aromatic root he’d discovered in Hong Kong sweetened the air with a mild sedative. After prolonged or repeated doses—the aromatic root along with his specially blended tea—a subject eagerly accepted ideas she once would have rejected, and even moderate periods of isolation became intolerable.

These herbal drugs were not secret. The Shepherd had merely discovered specific uses for what pharmacologists and physicians considered side effects. For optimum results, however, the project required an ideal subject, a subject like Lucy
Ames, already experiencing the melancholy of isolation, the hunger for a kindred soul. The Shepherd filled that hunger instantly, with appreciation, compassionate touches, whispered reassurance. He’d learned, since that first experiment with little Penny Hatcher, that the right word at a vulnerable moment could seduce the stoutest heart.

Over the years, he’d studied every technique on record and invented a few of his own. And over the past months, he’d conditioned Lucy to crave his carefully metered attention as a junkie craves a daily fix. The time hadn’t been wasted. Lucy’s knowledge of the bank’s practices paved the way for lucrative ventures. More important, the Lucy Experiment had proved that kindness, discipline, and isolation could shape a weapon more powerful than a bomb, more guided than a missile.

“Align with me, Lucy.” He had tucked a scented handkerchief into her hand. “With your wisdom and grace we shall lead the pure at heart to glory.”

Lucy was unaware
, the Shepherd penned,
that she’d be the first soul to arrive.

He closed the book, and instead of driving away, as he should, he watched groups of mourners walking together from the grave site. Only a very few walked alone. His gaze settled on a solitary woman in a black suit.

In recent weeks, although he still drew his greatest strength from solitude, he had felt a pressing desire to share his discoveries with a companion of similar intellect, similar passions. His current partner could be counted on in the smaller picture, but since his college days—and a colleague’s betrayal—he’d confided in no one. Not a single person appreciated the full scope of his power. Somewhere, there had to be a suitable mate, a partner who would appreciate his discoveries and embrace his vision.

The Shepherd of The Light opened his notebook to a fresh page and wrote:
Seek out a subject who understands the beauty of patience, the value of power, and the strength of kindness.

Usually, Dixie skipped past the front desk at HPD’s Homicide Division with a wave, having picked up her ID sticker downstairs, but today an officer stopped her.

“Identification?”

Dixie showed her sticker.

“You have an appointment?”

“Sergeant Rashly’s expecting me. Didn’t someone call from downstairs?”

Ignoring her question, the officer picked up the desk phone and punched a button.

“Sergeant, a woman’s out here. Flannigan.” He replaced the receiver, his hard gaze inching over her face as if memorizing it. “Sergeant Rashly will be right out.”

“Thanks.” Dixie smiled at him and stepped a few paces away. A cop had been killed that morning, not in the line of duty but in his own driveway. Other cops would naturally be looking over their shoulders—and scrutinizing civilian visitors with a keener eye.