Dark Moon Crossing (29 page)

He groaned and flung me a look of total frustration.
“I was kidding! Jesus, Kendall, use your head. These White separatist groups
and the ranchers want to keep these people
out
, not bring them in.”

“Maybe, but ask yourself this question. Why are all
of these people having the same hallucination?‌ The fact is, Lupe’s relatives
are gone and Javier’s mother is nowhere to be found. How do you explain that?‌”

He held up a warning hand. “You know what?‌ This
conversation is over. I think you’ve had a little too much of Lin Su’s herbal
soup. We’ll talk later, when your head has cleared and you don’t sound quite
so…delusional.”

“I am not delusional,” I snapped back, more hurt than
angry. “There’s something very odd going on here. I don’t know what it is
yet, but I feel it right here,” I added, poking my gut.

He rose and stomped towards the doorway. “It’s
probably indigestion from the soup. I’ve got to go now and I don’t know what
time I’ll be back.”

“I know this whole thing sounds crazy, but
please…please don’t give up on me.”

He
swung around, jamming on his hat. “You sure as hell don’t make it easy.”

I sighed. “I know. I feel terrible about the way
this has all turned out. Please give me a chance to make it up to you.”

His unyielding expression sent my spirits plummeting.
“Are we gonna be okay?‌” He took a long time to answer and all at once, it
seemed as if there was no oxygen in the room.

“I guess that depends on you.”

My heart stumbled over itself. “Meaning?‌”

“That
I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life being your afterthought.”

He
may as well have slapped me. Tears stung my eyes as I listened to the harsh
clatter of his boots fading down the staircase. “That’s right, just walk out
as usual!” I called after him, well aware that he had the upper hand. What was
I going to do?‌ Flounce out of the room and walk home?‌ If I could get my hands
on the people who’d stolen my car for one second…. I pounded the pillow with
my fists, not knowing which was worse, that my career was interfering with my
love life or vice versa. Perhaps it was time for some serious self-analysis.
Had I really given him the impression that I considered him nothing more than
an afterthought?‌ Or was a certain blonde bombshell feeding this fallacy to
gain advantage?‌ I didn’t even want to face the next thought, but it rammed its
way into my consciousness. What exactly had just occurred?‌ Had we simply had
another one of our fiery disagreements or had he just broken up with me?‌

I
reached for a tissue and was dabbing my cheeks as Lin Su breezed into the room and
laid my freshly laundered clothes on the arm of the sofa. “You feel better
today.” It was more a statement than a question.

“I guess,” I sniffled.

She frowned, shoving her wizened face close to mine,
her deep-set eyes searching my face. She placed her hand under my armpit and
then nodded with satisfaction. “Herbs chase away fever, salve brings voice
back, but,” she said, eyeing me shrewdly, “body cannot heal if heart is
unwell.”

Dang, the woman was intuitive. Or perhaps the simpler
answer was that she’d noticed the angry thundercloud on Tally’s face when she’d
passed him in the hall. Unwilling to discuss my personal life with her, I
said, “I appreciate you taking such good care of me. But, what in the world
was in that tea you brought me last night?‌ Physically, I feel a hundred
percent better, but I still can’t seem to shake the fuzziness in my head.”

Her mouth pinched in surprise, she shook her head
slowly. “Your mind should be clear, your body growing stronger.”

“If you say so, but I’ve never experienced dreams like
that before and yet I sort of felt like I was still awake. It was weird.”

Wooden-faced, Lin Su snatched up the empty cup and sniffed
it. Her shuttered expression hiked my uneasiness up another notch. “I wash your
clothes,” she stated, pointing to my shirt and jeans.

“Thank you.”

She fluffed the pillows. “Bed rest one more day.”

As much as I appreciated her nursing skills, I had no
desire to remain isolated in the stuffy little room for even one more minute.
“No, I can’t. I need fresh air.” I threw back the covers.

The obstinate set of her jaw conveyed that she was
unused to being challenged. “I prepare lounge in garden behind house. You
rest there.”

“Really, I’m fine now.” When I stood up the wave of
dizziness that washed over me was so strong I had to grab the arm of the sofa
for support. I eased myself back into bed. “Guess maybe I’m not quite a
hundred percent,” I confessed. “But, I have a lot of work to do. I need to
call my office and…stuff.”

Was that a spark of sympathy behind her eyes?‌ “A
woman named Ginger calls many times asking for you.” She pulled a piece of
paper from her pocket and handed it to me. I had a hard time reading the
slanted scrawl, but was finally able to decipher that Ginger had called and
cancelled all my credit cards. Thank goodness I’d left my password on the list
of numbers or it wouldn’t have been possible. There was also an addendum to
call her right away.

I looked up. “Is there a phone I can use?‌”

“In hallway, but first breakfast and then hot bath.”
With that she marched to the doorway, carrying the empty cup in her hands.

“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured, saluting her retreating
figure. She was the most unbending person I’d ever met, but I was grateful for
her steadfast devotion to my welfare.

I laid my head back against the pillow, still mentally
flogging myself about Tally. Had I cooked my goose for good this time?‌ Never
in my life had I felt so isolated, so powerless, so foolish. Lin Su was right
about my being heartsick. That area of my chest felt raw, like it had been
buffed with a sheet of coarse sandpaper. Did the Chinese have herbs to cure a
broken heart?‌

Good
to her word, she returned with a light breakfast of oatmeal and fruit. Once
I’d finished, she ran a steaming tub and I immersed myself in her special
herbal bath powders that smelled of peppermint and cloves. My skin was pink
and water logged, but I felt much improved after soaking for almost half an
hour in extremely hot water. Lin Su earned a spot in my heart when I realized
after I’d dried off that, not only had she washed and ironed my clothes, she’d
carefully mended the rip in the thigh of my jeans. I used a few toiletries
from the medicine cabinet, including perfume, and wished to heavens I had my
makeup case so I could apply a little blush to my pale cheeks. I couldn’t seem
to stop obsessing about the differences between me and the Golden Goddess of
the Sundog Ranch.

Unfortunately,
there wasn’t enough makeup on the planet to raise me to Bethany’s level. I
stuck my tongue out at my reflection in the mirror and stepped into the
hallway. As if on cue, Lin Su materialized in the doorway of Bethany’s room wearing
a puzzled frown. When she saw me, she quickly slipped whatever she was
carrying into the pocket of her trousers and picked up a cup and saucer from a
small table beneath an oval mirror. Having no desire to repeat last night’s
psychedelic dream, followed by the foggy-brained aftereffects, I hesitated as
she pressed it into my hands. “I really don’t care for any more tea right
now.”

“Drink,”
she stated with simple forthrightness.

Positive
that the mulish gleam in her black eyes matched mine, I sensed that she had no
intention of backing down although the midnight remembrance that she might have
spiked the tea with something other than healing herbs flashed through my
mind. But, in truth, I felt no more of a threat from her than I had from the notorious
man-eater of Morita, Russell Greene. I accepted the tea with a gracious smile
and took a sip.

The
house seemed extra quiet as she seated me at the little phone table in an
alcove near Jason’s room. Before silently descending the stairs, she volunteered
that Twyla had driven to Tucson and that Tally and Bethany were busy with the
guests. Good. Maybe this time I could conduct my calls in privacy.

First
on the list was Dean Pierce. I wanted to let him know I was still here and
hadn’t forgotten about Marmalade. Inez answered, told me he’d accompanied
Twyla to Tucson and said she’d give him the message. With my phone card also a
casualty of the car thieves, I had to place a collect call to the office. I
braced for the barrage of questions I knew awaited me the moment Ginger
answered the phone. It rang four or five times and a zing of surprise shot
through me when I heard Walter Zipp’s hearty voice answer instead of hers.
“What?‌ Kendall O’Dell?‌ Sure, we’ll accept.”

“Hey,
Walter, how are you?‌”

“Well,
good golly Miss Molly, what the hell’s going on?‌ I’ve been trying to reach you
on your cell phone since Monday afternoon.”

“It’s
out of order.”

“No
shit. From what Ginger’s been saying this morning, it sounds like you’re out
of order too.”

That
was an interesting way to put it. “Yeah, let’s just say I’ve had better days.
Is Lupe back to work?‌”

“Yeah,
she’s here, but completely bummed out. She thinks it’s her fault that you got
sick.”

Actually
it was. “I’ll talk to her after we finish and I need to speak to Ginger too.”

A
pause. “Guess she’s in the can…no wait, I think Tugg sent her out on an
errand. She oughta be back soon. Hey, you want to know what I found out about
the Hoggwhistle woman?‌”

“I
sure do.”

“Hang
on a second.” I listened to papers rustling in the background and finished
half of the spicy-tasting tea by the time he came back on the line. “You made
my job pretty easy because there sure as hell weren’t any other inmates named
Hoggwhistle.”

“I’m
not surprised.”

“Your
gal served three years in Tennessee for check cashing fraud and got released
about eighteen months ago.”

“Hmmm.
That doesn’t sound like a crime worthy of blackmail.”

“Hang
on, there’s more.”

My pulse rate gathered speed.

“You
ever hear of a bad-assed dude by the name of Johnny Ray Barker?‌”

I
searched my memory bank and came up empty. “No.”

“Got
a record as long as both our left legs. He’s still cooling his heels behind
bars. Seems that he and Ms. Hoggwhistle made quite a killing, so to speak,
running a nursing home in some little out of the way burg and hurrying along
the demise of some of their ailing patients.”

“Whoa.”

“Oh,
yeah. She claimed the whole thing was his idea and that it started rather
innocently. When the oldsters with no close relatives died, they simply
neglected to say anything to anybody and continued collecting their pension and
Social Security checks. But then Johnny got greedy. At the time of their
arrest, the Hoggwhistle woman admitted her part in the check cashing scheme,
but swore she had nothing to do with the twenty-eight bodies they found buried
under the old house.”

“Holy
crap.” My stomach locked up tight. “Was she charged as an accessory?‌”

“Yep,
but it didn’t stick. When she testified against this Barker fellow, she said
he threatened to kill her if she talked, and beat the tar out of her a few
times to make his point. And this guy was no dummy. Like a lot of career
criminals these days, he’d kept up on forensic advances and cleverly doused the
bodies with lye. The level of decomposition made it hard for the DA to build a
strong case. The medical examiner’s report was able to reconstruct enough to
be pretty sure ten of the old folks probably died of natural causes. The rest
were most likely murdered. But, they couldn’t put together enough hard
evidence for the jury to convict him of killing all of them. They were,
however, able to get him on one count of murder with the last old guy he’d
smothered just a few days earlier since he hadn’t had time to get rid of the
body. But, here’s the kicker. The authorities calculated that thousands of
dollars worth of checks were cashed, but they’ve never accounted for all the
money.”

“Did
they pinpoint an approximate amount?‌”

“The
estimate is a couple of hundred thousand.”

A
feathery tingle caressed the nape of my neck. The notion that Sister Goldenrod
may have been involved in some petty crime was bad enough, but murder?‌ No
wonder she feared Froggy. My mind raced back to the incident I’d witnessed
last Saturday night and a horrible thought surfaced. Was it possible that
under the guise of aiding the illegal immigrants she was actually the person
responsible for their disappearances?‌ Was she the mastermind behind the
smuggling ring, extracting large payments from the immigrants and, in lieu of
providing transport, then simply disposing of them and pocketing the money?‌
Was there enough money involved to take such a huge risk?‌ “What about Froggy
McQueen?‌ Anything on him?‌”

“Haven’t
had time to research him yet, but I’ll give you the web addresses and you can
probably look him up yourself.”

“They
wouldn’t do me much good at the moment.” He whistled with amazement when I
filled him in on why my laptop was missing and why I’d had to call collect.
“Man, have you ever had a run of bad luck.”

“Tell
me about it.” He promised he’d get on it right away and then wished me and
Tally well before transferring me to Lupe, who spent a full two minutes
apologizing. “Enough!” I protested. “It’s okay. I’ll survive. How are you
feeling?‌”

“Not
the best, but better.”

“You’re
a sport to come into work anyway and Tugg and I both appreciate it.” When I
filled her in on what Walter told me she was silent so long I thought we’d been
disconnected. “Lupe?‌ What do you think?‌”

“To
think she might be the one all along makes me lose all hope. This is very
terrible.”

“Yeah,
but it would sure explain why she was so frosted when you brought me into the
picture. Remember, even though the jury didn’t convict her of being an
accessory to murder, we really don’t know to what extent she was involved.”

She
paused again before adding in a quivery voice, “If she is so evil, why would
she call to tell me about Javier?‌ Why would she take a chance that I might
find out that she is to blame for Gilberto and my uncle to be missing?‌ And
look at the way she cares so well for all the other people who come to her for
help. It makes no sense.”

She
made a good point. Even though I knew it would discourage her, I felt obliged
to fill her in on everything else I’d found out and promised to keep her posted
if I discovered anything at all that would shed light on the mystery of her
missing relatives. “You may want to check in with Sister Goldenrod to find out
if you can get any more information from her. You never know. She might slip
and say something that would help break this case. And feel free to tell her
that I’m still here at the Sundog even though I doubt she’ll be interested in
talking with me again.”

“Okay,”
came her gloomy response.

“Lupe,
don’t give up hope yet.”

“I’m
trying not to.” She thanked me again for going out on a limb, but her
pessimism matched mine. I was on hold for a full minute before Ginger came on
the line squawking like a frightened hen. “Good gravy, girl, I been in a tizzy
and a half over you! Why didn’t you call me?‌”

“I’m
sorry. My cell phone is broken and I couldn’t talk for two days.”