Witches' Bane (24 page)

I shook my head. “Somebody actually called her that, huh?”

“Yes, but Fannie blew the whistle.” This was not a figure of speech. When a caller says something Fannie thinks shouldn’t go out over the air waves, she whistles into the mike. It drives the sound engineer crazy and he keeps telling her not to do it, but she does it anyway. Fannie is a law unto herself. “Ruby was very cool,” Laurel went on. “She said she wasn’t a witch, and if the caller wanted to come to her shop and bring a frog, she’d show him she couldn’t turn it into Bubba Harris. Fannie thought that was pretty funny.”

So did I. I’d have to ask Ruby how she planned to prove a negative. “Where is Ruby?” I asked.

“She said to tell you she’d be back about closing time. She’s ordering stock this evening, so she’ll be around kind of late.”

I asked Laurel to stay for the rest of the afternoon and went through the connecting door to my house. I got out the phone book and looked up Rita’s number. I had a feeling that Rita knew more than she was telling, both about C.W. and about Jerri. Or maybe she knew things she didn’t want to know about their relationship and hence had forgotten them, not deliberately, but because she couldn’t face them.

Whichever way it was, getting through to the truth would be tough. She’d defend C.W. as long as she could.

Rita answered. When I asked if I could come over and talk to her, she said, “I can’t just now. Mama’s here, and her two sisters.” She paused, and I could hear high, chattery voices in the background. “Can it wait a couple of hours?”

“How about four o’clock?”

“I guess.” She sighed. “Mama’s got to go home for a nap sometime or other. But you’d better call first.”

I said I would, and then dialed McQuaid’s office. My ideas about the case had firmed up, and I wanted to talk them over with him so he could point out the flaws in my logic. When there was no answer, I tried the criminal justice department. Lucille Sweet, the departmental secretary, told me McQuaid had gone to the airport in San Antonio to pick up some people who were attending the conference.

“What time will he be back?” I asked.

“Not before six thirty,” she said. “The last plane gets in at five, and he’ll have to hurry to get here in time for the banquet and the first speech.” She lowered her voice. “Listen, China, if you see him before I do, tell him that Patterson’s got another burr under his tail.”

“God,” I said. “What is it this time?”

“The copy machine.” Lucille sounded resigned. “McQuaid didn’t pay for his copies. If he can sneak ten bucks into the money box before the chairman comes in tomorrow, I’ll say it got dumped on the floor and I found the ten behind the radiator.”

I grinned. Poor Lucille bore the brunt of the chairman’s bad temper with a good grace. I left a message for McQuaid to call me and tried Ruby, thinking that maybe it would be good to take her with me to talk to Rita. But there was no answer, and by now it was pushing two forty-five. I went back out, got in the Datsun, and drove to Jerri’s Health and Fitness Spa.

The front door was posted with a red-crayon sign that said “Closed Today,” but it was unlocked, so I went in. Peaches was in the office, bare feet propped up on a desk. She had pulled purple sweatpants and pink leg warmers over a gold- striped purple leotard, and she wore a petulant look on her hollow-cheeked face. Plastic rollers, like fat pink worms, curled all over her head. She was blowing the worms with a hand-held hair dryer.

“You decided to close?” I asked.

“So? Whatta ya think I should do?” she asked over the wheeze of the dryer. “Take over her classes? Let people in to use the equipment? Or what?”

“Better ask Jerri’s mother,” I said. “Or Rita. I suppose somebody in the family’s making decisions like that.”

Peaches turned off the dryer and swung her feet to the floor. “Forget it. I just came over to sit in the sauna for a few minutes and unwind. Now I’m gonna pack my gear and my tapes and split. I’ll probably never see another paycheck. And I sure as hell don’t want to deal with that Rita. She may look like a Miss Goodie Two-Shoes, but looks are deceiving, believe you me. I’ve seen her and Jerri get into it a time or two.”

“Oh, yeah?” I was interested. I’d often wondered how things would have been different if I’d had a sister, somebody to talk to, to share things with. But I probably idealized the relationship. Sisters were probably like everybody else, they tore into one another from time to time.

“Yeah”
Peaches said emphatically. “Jerri’d get pissed off and throw things around, smash a few glasses, kick a wall or two. Ten minutes later she was cool again. But that Rita—” She pulled out a curler, testing her dark hair for springiness. “Kissy face, sweet as pie, but watch out. Scratch your eyes out behind your back.”

Peaches’ view of Rita was cast in some interesting metaphors, but I was more interested in dates and times. “Were you here on Tuesday night?”

Peaches looked into a mirror over the desk and began to pull the curlers out of her hair. “Was that the night she ran off the road?” To my nod, she said, “Yeah, I was here. Didn’t plan to be, but Jerri called and asked could I take the Seven p.m. Steppers and close up afterward, so I did. Meant a little extra money, or so I thought.” Her mouth twisted. “Doubt I ever see any of
that,
neither.”

“Was Jerri here when you got here?”

All the curlers out, she began to fluff her hair with her fingers. “Yeah. She left after the class started. I know, because I saw her leavin’ and like waved good-bye.” She dropped her hands and gazed at herself in the mirror. Her eyes grew solemn and a little frightened, as if she were looking at her own skull. “I been thinkin’ about that. Wavin’ good-bye, I mean. Like what would I of done if I’d of known I’d never see her again? It seems sorta ... well, sorta
puny,
don’t it? Just a wave, when somebody’s about to cash it in.” She shrugged and fluffed some more. “Good thing I didn’t know, I guess.”

“How did she seem?”

She picked up ajar of mousse and dug in with both hands. “Seem? How’d ya mean?’

“Was she up that evening? Was she down? Had she been drinking?”

She rubbed her moussed fingers through the curls until they were shiny and oily-looking. “Maybe some. She always kept wine in the fridge. But she wasn’t like drunk. And she sure as hell wasn’t
down.
She’d been talking about movin’ over to the mall, goin’ big time, maybe even sellin’ franchises.” She leaned forward, arranging the curls around her face so that they looked disheveled. “Shit, I really walked into that one, didn’t I? That girl, she had this way of making big plans that never panned out, and I got so I didn’t listen much. But this time it was different. She had me convinced.”

“Did she say where the money was coming from?”

Peaches laughed wryly and reached for a big-toothed comb. “You kiddin’? She never told me
nothin’,
‘cept when my check was goin’ to be late.” She teased out the hair on the side with the comb. “Then she’d piss and moan about the rent and the bills and stuff, and how the bank was goin’ to take this, that, the other. Then she’d tell me I’d have to wait.”

“When she left Tuesday night, was she on her way to meet somebody?” I paused, and took a long shot. “C. W. Rand, maybe?”

Peaches fished in her bag for a small mirror and used it to inspect the back of her head. “She didn’t like say where she was goin’. But she talked to C.W. earlier, ‘cause I happened to pick it up when he called.”

I leaned forward. “Did he call often?”

She put the mirror back in her bag. “Once, twice a day, maybe. Who keeps score? But about that evenin’, I don’t know about her seein’ him then. When she left here, she was with her sister.”

That was a break. Maybe Jerri had told Rita that she was planning to meet C.W. later.

Peaches turned to me, tilting her head. “How does it look?”

“Curly,” I said. “Wet.”

“Good,” she said, satisfied. She reached for her bag. “Listen, you mind? Friend of mine told me there might be a job at the gym over in San Marcos. I’m outta here.”

“Good luck,” I said.

She glanced around. “Yeah, well, wherever I land, it’s gotta be better than this rat hole. This place gives me like”— she shuddered—”the creeps.”

CHAPTER 18

My conversation with Peaches had turned out to be unexpectedly profitable. Not only would she be able to testify that Jerri had not seemed suicidal, but had talked with C.W. on the phone on Tuesday, and often. Pushed, Peaches might even be able to recall other evidence of their relationship. I was betting that Rita knew that Jerri had seen C.W. later that night.

I stopped at a pay phone and called Ruby. Her answering machine was still on. When I dialed my machine to see if Ruby had left a message, what I got was Leatha, telling me that she and Sam and Sara were going down to the ranch at Kerrville for the weekend. If I wanted to join them I was more than welcome and so was Mike and that “charming little boy of his.” I had to admit that a weekend away from Pecan Springs sounded like a good idea. Brian would enjoy stalking the animals, McQuaid could get in some hunting, and I was curious about Sam and his family. But it was out of the question while I was still trying to piece together the proof of C.W.’s involvement in Jerri’s death.

By the time I finished listening to both answering machines, it was nearly four and the sky was glazing over with a wintry twilight. I couldn’t wait for Ruby. I phoned Rita. “Is it convenient for me to come over now?”

“I guess.” She sounded tired. “Mama’s gone home to take her nap. If we’ve got to talk, this is the best time.” She gave me her address.

Rita lived in a small ground-floor apartment about four blocks from Jerri’s house. She answered my third ring, still wearing the loose black dress she’d had on that morning. Sometime during the day she must have caught her heel in the hem and ripped it loose, for it was hanging. Her dark-blond hair was limp and stringy, the flesh sagged in dark crescents under her eyes, she was barefoot. She padded in front of me down a hall and into a small living room that looked out onto a postcard-sized concrete patio surrounded by a weathered six-foot privacy fence. The planting space between the fence and the concrete had been filled with chrysanthemums, blooming bravely against the chill gray afternoon.

Rita’s living room was as small as Jerri’s, but much tidier, and she had paid a great deal of attention to decorating it. A chair and a rocking chair sat at right angles to a sofa-coffee table combination. On the polished wood coffee table was a white hobnail vase filled with red silk roses, and beside it was a tinted porcelain figurine of a woman in a décolleté gown frothed with gold porcelain ruffles. On one wall was a collage of red foil hearts, red velvet ribbon, and lace. On the opposite wall hung a large framed poster for
Gone with the Wind,
with a swooning Vivien Leigh clasped in Clark Gable’s passionate embrace. Beneath it was a bookcase filled with Harlequin romances, neatly aligned.

“Please sit down.” Rita gestured at the red velveteen sofa, which was decorated with a half-dozen crocheted pillows. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks, I’m fine.” I stood, waiting for her to sit. “How did it go with the sheriff this morning?”

“Pretty awful.” She went into the kitchen, came back with a cigarette, her lighter, and a glass ashtray. We both sat down, I on the sofa, careful not to disarrange the pillows, she in the wooden rocking chair to my right. She closed her eyes briefly. “I haven’t told Mama yet.” She opened her eyes and lit her cigarette. “About that stuff in Jerri’s house, I mean. Or about the sheriff and all those questions. I don’t relish the thought.”

I didn’t believe her. I thought she very much relished the thought of destroying her mother’s illusions about Jerri, the sister who had always come first. But I didn’t need to make us both uncomfortable by digging into it. It was her illusions about C.W. that I was here to challenge. “It’s probably best not to tell her until there’s something definite,” I said. I gave her a sympathetic look. “But that makes it awfully hard on you, carrying the burden all alone.”

“Yeah.” She pulled several nervous drags on her cigarette. “It’s pretty hard to sit here and listen to Mama go on and on about how perfect her dear sweet baby girl was, how Jerri never did anything wrong. She refuses to believe that Jerri was drinking. She keeps saying there must have been somebody else with her, and that was his gin bottle in the car.” Rita leaned her head back and began to rock. “Mama says they’ll probably find another body in that ravine. Or maybe he crawled out of the wreck and ran off.” She blinked away tears. “It’s bad enough about Jerri. It’s worse to hear Mama making up all these stories, just so she doesn’t have to face the facts.”

I murmured something. There was a tissue box on the floor beside the rocker. Rita put out her cigarette and pulled up a tissue. She wiped her eyes, pushing her glasses up on her forehead.

“I guess I’m like Mama, I don’t want to believe it. She must have driven off that road on purpose, to keep Mama from finding out what she’d done.” She blew her nose. “How am I ever going to tell Mama her baby
killed
herself?”

I leaned forward. “Rita, I don’t think that’s what happened.”

Rita’s head jerked up and her glasses fell back down on her nose. “It ... wasn’t? You mean, it really
was
an accident?”

“I don’t think it was an accident, either. I think your sister was murdered.”

Her face went dead white.

I reached for her hand. It was icy cold. “Are you all right? Can I get you some water?”

Her eyes were huge, pupils dilated like black holes drilled into her head.
“Murdered?
But ... but
who?”

I gripped her hand tightly. “Rita, I think C.W. did it.”

Her eyes closed. Her hand went limp. I thought she was going to faint.

I let go her hand and went to the kitchen for water. I’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. Rita would deny the truth as long as she could to protect her illusions.

I brought her the water and made her drink some. I put the glass on the table, sat down again, and waited for her to open her eyes. When she did, I said, “It’s hard to understand why C.W. would do it, but you have to try. Maybe it will help if we start from the beginning. Jerri and C.W. were lovers. They—”

She sat up rigidly, hands gripping the wooden chair arms. “Jerri lied!” she cried shrilly. “She
wanted
him, but he wouldn’t. He loved ... He wouldn’t do it, that’s all.”

“But she
didn‘t
lie. They made love in an empty unit at Lake Winds. You can see for yourself—there’s a vase of flowers on the table there, just like the ones in her bedroom, and a card from C.W. to Jerri. And Peaches, at me gym, says that he called Jerri once or twice a day, every day. He called on Tuesday, the day she died. And that night, he took her out and killed her.”

Small red triangles, like clown’s makeup, appeared on Rita’s paper-white cheeks. “No,” she moaned. “Oh, no, no,
no.”

It was hard to tell whether her no was another denial or the sheer horror of seeing her illusion dissolving like a shadow in the harsh, unforgiving light of reality. It was her faith that had held her together, had inspired her loyalty to C.W. Without it, she was coming apart, and I didn’t know if there would be anything left of her when it was gone. To get at the truth, the illusion had to die, no matter how agonizing the death. I had to be brutal.

“I don’t know whose idea it was to kill Sybil,” I said, “whether it was C.W.’s or Jerri’s. But they planned it together. C.W. would be the first one suspected, so he arranged to be out of town when Sybil died. Maybe they decided that Jerri would slit Sybil’s throat because Jerri knew how to do it, or because it isn’t a woman’s crime. Or maybe they decided to do it that way to make it look like a cult killing.

With the cult scare going around, that would be a good cover. It would also explain the voodoo doll, and why one of them—Jerri, probably—broke into Ruby’s shop and stole her ritual knife. And it must have been Jerri who called Bubba with that tip about a human sacrifice.”

Rita was shaking her head back and forth mechanically, like a wind-up doll. “Where are you getting this stuff?” she asked desperately. “It’s crazy. You’re making it up.” She reached for another tissue. “The part about Mr. Rand, anyway.” She gave me a look of passionate pleading. “Jerri did it, all by herself. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it. Why would he? Mrs. Rand had already left him a note saying she’d changed her will.”

“He didn’t find out about the divorce and the will until the sheriff started to question him,” I said. “Then he went home and typed the note, to make it look like he’d known all along. It was an idea he borrowed from a magazine article about a murder trial.” All this was inference, but it was damned
good
inference.

Rita began to shred the tissue. “You just don’t understand him,” she said despairingly. “You can’t, or you wouldn’t be saying these horrible things. You’re making him sound just
awful.
And he isn’t. He’s sweet and kind. He’s been ... a wonderful friend to me, in every way. He never yells at me, even when I do dumb things. He gives me time off. He ... brings me flowers and candy, and cards. To show me how much he ... cares.” Her chin trembled. “Anyway,
he
was the one who was in danger.”

“Danger? From whom?”

“From his wife, that’s who.” Rita’s eyes came to life. “She was an evil, evil woman. She wanted him dead. Why do you think she started growing all those awful poison plants? Every day he’d tell me how afraid he was. Once she tried to kill him with a knife, and another time she came after him with the car. He just missed getting hit. He was afraid she was going to put some of those plants in his food. It was only a matter of time.”

I frowned. I couldn’t imagine Sybil taking out after C. W. with the car or putting a handful of monkshood leaves and some lantana berries in his salad. And I certainly couldn’t see him eating anything that remotely resembled a poisonous plant. But Rita’s version of history did offer one advantage, and I seized it without hesitation.

“Don’t you see, Rita? The fact that C. W. felt threatened by his wife makes it even more likely that he
did
want to kill her.”

There was a long silence. All that was left of the tissue was a litter of papery shreds all over her black dress. When she finally spoke her voice was wounded, fragile. “But why would he want to kill
Jerri
? My sister wasn’t always ... a very nice person. But she never did anything bad to ... him.”

“Look at it from his point of view, Rita. With Sybil dead, Jerri was expecting C. W. to marry her—something he maybe didn’t want to do. And she knew too much. It was dangerous to have her around. In fact, I believe he intended from the beginning to kill Jerri. He manipulated her into killing his wife, and once Sybil was dead, he got rid of Jerri.”

Rita stared at me for a long moment without saying anything. Her pale lips were compressed in a thin line, and the light reflecting off her glasses kept me from seeing her eyes. I’d been pretty rough, but it was necessary. I had to get her to see that the man she cared for was a ruthless killer, all the more despicable because he’d conned a woman into murdering for him, and when she’d done what he wanted, he’d killed her. And not just any woman. Her
sister.

Rita’s voice was flat and toneless. “How do you think he ... how was it done?”

I relaxed a little. I’d opened a chink in her defenses. “They drove up to Devil’s Backbone on Tuesday night. They’d probably been drinking, and Jerri was a little drunk. He got her to stop the car, and maybe he hit her to knock her out. We’ll know more about that when the autopsy report comes out tomorrow. Then he started the car in park, punched a couple of holes in the fuel filter, and lit the gasoline that was spurting out. He probably got the idea from Hank, when he took his Le Baron in to get the automatic fuel cutoff fixed. Then he shoved the car into drive and watched it go over the cliff.”

The expression that flashed across Rita’s face was a mix of disbelief, desperation, and fear. “How do you
know
all that?” Her voice was incredulous.

“You can read it in the evidence. There’s nothing to indicate that Jerri’s car went off the road at high speed. There’s a scorched spot on the shoulder where the car was set on fire before it went over. But the fire didn’t completely destroy the evidence. You can tell it was deliberate.”

She bit her lip. “Who else knows?”

“Right now, only you and I.” Hank knew part of it, but that wasn’t really relevant here. “I need you to confirm what Jerri did after she left the gym with you on Tuesday night. Where did you go?”

The same expression again. This time, more fear. Fear and something close to panic. Hadn’t I convinced her? Was she afraid of betraying C. W.? “We ... Jerri and I went to her house. We sat and talked for a while, then we ... I left, and came home.”

She wasn’t telling the truth—not all of it, anyway. “Did she say what she was going to do after you left?”

“No, not exactly,” she said. “But she ... she ...” She put her hand to her temple, as if she were feeling light-headed. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m confused. It’s ... too much.”

I put my hand on her arm. “You’re doing fine, Rita. Just take your time. We’ll do it step by step. While you were with Jerri, did she get a phone call?”

Her eyes flickered. “I don’t... yes, I guess. Yes, she did. She took it in the bedroom, though. I didn’t hear.”

“Did she tell you who the caller was?”

She leaned back and inhaled a deep breath. “Yes.” She let it out again.

“Who was it?”

“She said it was ... Mr. Rand.”

“Did she tell you about the conversation?”

“Not really. She said they were ... going out.” She didn’t meet my eyes. “I thought she was lying. I guess I just hated to think about the two of them being ... together.” She pulled in her breath again, let it out with a long, wavering sigh. “But if he killed her, I can’t protect him. Whoever did it has to pay.” She fell silent, staring at her hands. Finally she spoke. “Do you think we ... could make him confess?”

Now it was my turn to stare, dumbfounded by her change of heart. I prided myself on being good with witnesses, but I didn’t know I was
that
good. “You’re willing to confront him directly?”