Lalla Bains 02 - A Dead Red Heart (15 page)

She says, "Now go answer the phone, dear."

I awoke to sunbeams dancing across my bedroom floor and the sound of disco. No, not disco, it was the musical tones of my cell phone. I reached out and picked up my cell while noting the rainwater dripping off the eaves. Feeling groggy, I sat up on the side of the bed and hit talk.

"Miss Bains? This is Merriweather Cook."

I sat up straighter, now completely awake. "Miss Cook? Where are you?"

"I'm terribly sorry I couldn't be there when you called. It was rude of me to leave without a note, but my son came by and convinced me to go with him. He seems to think that my life might be in danger."

If she knew something about the killer, perhaps her son had it right—hide mom, apologize later.

"Where are you?"

"I can't say, dear. He doesn't know I'm using the phone, and I only have a minute. I need to ask, no beg you, will you please do what you can to find Billy Wayne's killer?"

"But, I don't understand. Why can't you call the police?"

"I believe my nephew had a secret that he felt he could only share with you. It would explain his agitation, and the strange behavior those last few days. His obsession with you was most peculiar, considering that he never mentioned it to me. I know it sounds odd, that a young man would confide in an old woman like me, but that dear boy shared many things with me. Please Miss Bains, I'm sure that if you look hard enough you'll be able to find the evidence that will bring his killer to justice."

The connection was cut. I punched Recall and got a continuous ring but no answer. I wrote down the number and then punched in Caleb's private line. "Caleb. I just talked to Merriweather Cook!"

"Who?" I could hear his feet smack the floorboards. He must have been leaning back in his dad's old office chair, long legs stretched out on the desk as he read some report.

"Merriweather Cook, Billy Wayne's aunt, remember? She just called me."

"Lalla, Billy Wayne's mother says her sister is on a road trip to Canada and doesn't even know that her nephew's dead."

"I have two words for you—cell phone. She knows her nephew is dead, and she's not on any road trip because she told me her son is hiding her. I wrote down the number. You could trace it, find out where she is. If she has information about her nephew's killer, you're going to want to talk to her."

He was silent for a moment. "We need to talk. Either drive into town, or I'll have someone pick you up."

My breath caught in my throat and the bottom of my stomach dropped. "Someone pick me up? But
why
?"

His response was simple. "Pick one, sweetheart."

I'd been clutching at the slim hope that Byron, having seen his chance to haul Del and I in on a perversion charge slip through his grasp, had decided to err on the side of caution. Guess not.

I picked my own transportation and a time to be there.

Chapter fourteen:

I drove through puddles mirroring a hot blue sky with Donna Summer crooning work ethics in my ear. It was unlikely that my mother ever spent any time in our sunny kitchen, and we certainly never made pies together. Mom spent most of her days floating around in a prescription drug induced haze, and Juanita did all the cooking, but never apple pies. All of it, the dream, my mother softly speaking to me, was an eerie reminder of last year. In another bizarre Norman Rockwell dream we were all together, my mother, father, brother, and I, roasting marshmallows around a campfire. My subconscious must've planted the campfire because of the smoke oozing under my bedroom door. But still, it didn't explain how my dead mother managed to insinuate herself into my dreams in order to get me to wake up and get me out of the burning house. I felt goose bumps climb up my arms. Why would my mom say, "The more there is, the less you know?"

Until Del repeated it to me, I'd been unable to remember the exact words, and my mom's weren't quite right, were they? It was supposed to be, "The more you see, the less there is," or was it, "The more there is, the less you see"?

This required a detour. Ten minutes out of my way, tops. Though I heard murmurs of caution knocking at my head, I thought the side trip might give me the coin in trade I would need to get out of the trouble I saw bearing down on me at Caleb's office.

I put my finger up to ring the doorbell and then hesitated. Maybe I should think about this. After all, wasn't this the woman who tried to shoot me?

While I hesitated, an eyeball appeared at the door crack. "Who are you?"

"Remember me, Mrs. Dobson? The funeral home? I swear to you, I'm not responsible for your son's death." I was staring, dumfounded, at her aluminum headgear. Obviously the funeral home fiasco was not going to be an isolated incident.

The door cracked a little wider, and she grudgingly motioned me inside. "You might as well come in. You couldn't do any worse than that numb-nuts police detective, Rodney."

I tore my eyes off the bright aluminum wrapped around her head and stepped inside. She swept the pile of newspapers, magazines, and unopened bills from a spot on her couch, and motioned for me to sit.

When she didn't offer to explain the bizarre contraption on her head, I asked. "Am I keeping you from something?" She stared at me as if I'd just dropped in from Mars. I pointed to her head. "Uh, perhaps I interrupted your hair coloring?"

She straightened the crumpled cap and sat down in a ratty upholstered armchair. "I believe you."

"That I didn't have a relationship with your son? Oh, good, thank you." I always start any conversation with crazy people by agreeing with them.

"What are you doing about my son's killer?"

"Can we start with your sister? Merriweather Cook is your sister, right?"

She nodded and reached up to adjust the aluminum cap.

I should start with something simple. "Is Cook her maiden name?" I was thinking of the picture on her table. The one with Margery and two boys.

"What? Of course it is. Merri took it back after the divorce. Cook is our family name. I resent having to tell anyone this, much less the woman my boy adored—oh yes, you don't have to sneer," she said putting up a bony hand to ward off my denial. "I could tell, he was in love with you. Why else would he sneak out of the house at all hours of the night? Not that you or any other woman deserved his love. She's missing you know."

Sorting through the oddly strung together words was as simple as climbing through a pile of debris. "Missing? But, Mrs. Dobson, you told the police your sister is on a road trip to Canada."

She bit her lower lip and looked down at the floor. "I know, but it's not true. For all I know, she could be off on one of her binges. Merri has a drinking problem, you know. She's been sober lately, so that's a plus."

"She told me her son was hiding her."

"She what? When? She hasn't returned any of my calls! What the devil is she doing talking to the likes of you?"

She had me there. What did Merri Cook want with me when she could have told all of this to her own sister, or the police? Here was something that would have to get settled when I saw Caleb.

"Do you have any idea who would want to hurt your son?"

"I've already told this to the police. But they just say that my boy was a drug addict like all the rest of them bums on the street. He wasn't, you know. He was a Marine, and proud of it. He came home sick. Nothing I could do made a difference. He wouldn't let me help him. The Veterans hospital said it was a precondition and put him on some no-good crappy medicine, and forgot about him. He couldn't sleep. Up and down the streets with that stupid shopping cart, all night long, picking up cans and what-not."

I tried again. "Did you know anyone who might've wanted Billy Wayne dead?"

She jerked up out of her seat on the couch and started pacing. "They all wanted him dead."

I waited until she calmed a bit then gently asked, "Anyone in particular?"

She tsked, reached down and picked up a brown shopping bag. Grabbing a handful of its contents she shoved them at me.

"All of these people. They all wanted him dead."

I took the letters and quickly scanned a few pages. Despite the spelling errors and simple stationery, they all had one thing in common: "Billy Wayne was meant to die," and, "Your son was a killer!" and, "After what your worthless son did he deserved—" and, "—a sin against nature."

I looked up from the letters. "I don't understand. He served some time in prison for burglary, didn't he? One of the letters said something about him being 'a sin against nature'. Was that because he was a sniper in the military?"

She shook her head, the shiny hat threatening to capsize. "He did his duty and came home a decorated hero, and if he hadn't taken up with those hippies he called protestors, he never would have gone into that bank in the first place. He actually thanked the judge for his sentence, told the court, and I had to listen, that he deserved prison."

"So, he knew he'd done something wrong and he was sorry?"

"Oh, he was repentant all right. But not for what you think. Not for the burglary and getting caught with that riff-raff he called friends. It was that damn war. I didn't know about any of it, until the doctor, the good one, not that quack Army doc, said he not only had that PTSD thing, but he'd also been exposed to some kind of chemicals over there. My boy was going to die and he didn't even care. He told me not to make a fuss, can you believe that? What mother wouldn't make a fuss. Said he was okay with it. He was going to give up, but I couldn't let my boy die in prison. I wouldn't. So, I did it."

"Did what?"

Through tears streaking down her face, she said, "He'd faithfully served his country and this is how they treated him? They were really sorry he didn't die over there after I got through with them, because when I found out how they were treating him, I took over. I promised that if they didn't give him a new heart, I would take it all the way to Washington. The dirty outfit. He wasn't going to die in prison, not if I could help it. I made them give Billy Wayne a new heart, and now he's dead anyway." She put her head down on her knees and wept.

I spent the next few minutes consoling a desolate mother as she mopped up her sobs with a wet hanky.

So the Iraq war and its inherent toll of death had left Billy Wayne heartsick in more ways than one. His anguish at what he saw as duplicity on his mother's part, getting him the surgery that would allow him to live out the rest of the life he'd been so ready to forfeit must have been unbearable. And from the stack of letters, apparently a lot of other people didn't think he deserved to live, either.

"How long have you been getting all of these letters?"

She held up the
Secret Star
, a sleaze rag out of New York. "I don't know. They just keep coming, even after the police came and took the first ones away." She stood up, covering her face with her hands as she started to cry again. "I have to leave now. I have to go change my mailing address to a new post office box so they'll stop hounding me."

"But surely the VA looked at his heart problem?"

"They said it was a pre-existing condition, but that was just an excuse so they wouldn't have to pay for his treatment. And then they said he had mental problems, another pre-existing condition."

"But, how could this have been leaked to the press? I thought donor and recipient information was sealed to the general public."

She threw out a hand at the pile of hate mail on the couch. "Well, missy, I guess someone talked, didn't they?"

I stood up, put the bag on the floor and took a step towards the door. "Well, thank you for your time, Mrs. Dobson."

"Not so fast," she said, leaping to grab my arm in her bony hand. "Since you've already talked to my sister, where the hell is she?"

"Well, uh, I was hoping you knew where she was. As for the leak, I suppose you could sue the
Star
to find out."

She gave me a sour look. "My lawyer already tried that. But not if I get my hands on him first."

Now she'd lost me. "You mean the lawyer?"

"Not the lawyer, dummy. I'm talking about Del. He's always resented my Billy Wayne, that he was tall and so smart looking in his uniform. Del Potts couldn't even pass the physical for the Marines; too short, too fat," she said, touching the bright metal cap on her head.