Dang Near Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery Book 2) (12 page)

Twenty-Six

Sam steered the car higher through hills before the highway began a gradual descent back toward San Antonio. He and I weren’t having the quiet vacation I’d hoped for, but at least we were together. He was including me.

Our methods might be different, but we shared a compulsion to find justice for victims.

I relayed all I knew about Max and Billy Sue Vernons’ deaths near the drilling site. “Even though Herb was their son,” I said, “they left the ranch to their niece Bertha because she loved it so.”

“I don’t imagine that sat well with Herb.”

“No, it didn’t. He’s still furious with Bertha. When Bertha treated my poison ivy, I heard him arguing with her about the ranch.”

“The Vernons were not elderly and died unexpectedly? Authorities would have autopsied their bodies,” he said.

“Vicki said Bertha didn’t like to talk about it. She did say Billy Sue exercised constantly to stay thin and that walking back to the lodge shouldn’t have been difficult for her. According to Maria, they’d ridden around and hiked all day a couple of days earlier without incident. Maria made them sandwiches and Max wanted extra thermoses of water. The day after they spent roaming the ranch, they went to San Antonio on business and returned home late that afternoon. Their son Herb arrived at the ranch that same day, stayed overnight and left early the next morning. On the day they died.”

“Did Vicki know if authorities did toxicology tests on the Vernons or their thermoses?” he asked.

“We didn’t talk about that. But when I met Herb Vernon and his wife Bitsy at the lodge, I gathered Herb thought the ranch should be his. I heard him badger Bertha to let energy companies drill on the property. He owns half the mineral rights. Bertha owns the other half and the executive rights, so she’d be the one to lease the land to an oil company. She’s against drilling. Wants to keep the ranch as it is.”

“Interesting. Especially since Bertha has to work so hard maintaining the place as a dude ranch.”

I didn’t tell him how menacing Herb was when he accosted me outside the lodge. Now that Sam and I were working together, I didn’t want to give him another reason why we should leave.

“I found the Vernons’ obituary online,” I said. “Herb and Bertha are their only living relatives. Herb apparently never liked living on the ranch. Once his parents sent him to school in San Antonio, he never came back much over the years. Maria told me that. Which makes it even stranger that he happened to come back the night before his parents died.”

He rubbed his chin. “I’ll see what I can learn about the Vernons’ deaths at SAPD. Bandera doesn’t have a medical examiner, so the couple would have been sent to San Antonio for autopsy. Maybe I can see a copy of those reports. By the way, did you bring that map of the ranch?”

“Sure did.”

He stuck it in his pocket. His cell phone rang. “Yeah. Thanks, buddy, for the flight information.” Sam clicked a button to save the call.

We drove straight to the airport and parked as close we could to the flight arrival terminal. At the baggage claim, we didn’t have long to wait. An attractive couple with pinched faces stood waiting for luggage. The woman had Vicki’s pretty features. She wore creamy, wrinkle-free linen that highlighted her smooth complexion, which had probably been enhanced with Retin-A and cosmetic peels. I hoped grief wasn’t about to diminish her beauty.

A red silk power tie set off her husband’s lightweight wool-and-silk navy sport coat. He paced around luggage conveyer belts rubbing his hand across his chin like a man impatient with unpleasant surprises and interrupted schedules. This couple had to be Steve and Marcia Landsdale.

Sam walked up and introduced himself as a San Antonio detective vacationing incognito at the ranch where Vicki worked. He introduced me as Vicki’s friend and a guest at the ranch. We expressed our condolences about Vicki’s accident. Sam said we questioned whether her fall was accidental and asked them to protect his cover so he could investigate.

“Why would anyone want to hurt Vicki?” Steve asked.

“We don’t know that they did. We’re just checking possibilities.”

“Vicki has begun to enjoy herself at the ranch, hasn’t she?” Marcia asked.

“Yes, I think she has,” I said. It was only a partial lie. “She does a good job and works hard to keep the guests happy. She’s grown to care about the place. She loves riding the horses.”

Why should I tell them I knew about River Rat or about Vicki’s other conflicts? They clearly loved their daughter, even if they found unusual ways to protect her. There was no point adding to their concern.

“Shouldn’t we be at the hospital?” Steve looked at his watch.

“Yes,” Sam said. “We need just a few minutes to learn more about Vicki. She was going to college in Wisconsin?”

“When she was younger,” Marcia said, “we took Vicki and her brother Trey to the horse fair in Madison. Trey never cared much about horses or college, but Vicki loved horses. She wanted to attend Wisconsin University in Wausheka. The town has a lot of horse farms and rodeos. It’s about nineteen miles west of Milwaukee on Highway 94. It’s only a little farther from our Bayview house on Lake Michigan, so we’d have her close by. She was taking general education requirements when she met a boy studying sociology.”

“That hippie,” Steve fumed. “I never saw him wear anything but faded jeans, T-shirts with holes and flip-flops. Naturally, he had long hair and a beard. Nobody’s going to offer a good paying job to a guy who looks like that, unless he’s some kind of genius. This guy was no genius.”

“Vicki told me that when his sociology class took veterans to rodeos in Milwaukee, her boyfriend took her along,” I said.

“That’s right,” Marcia said. “It was a kind thing for the school to do, but that hippie’s classes had nothing to do with Vicki.”

“Can’t make a living studying sociology,” Steve said. “The hippie called himself an artist, but so far as I knew, he never sold anything. We thought if Vicki did some real work for a while, she might appreciate the value of a good education. We’d heard about Texas dude ranches and found out about the BVSBar. The ranch in Bandera, Texas, was as far away from Wisconsin as we could send her without shipping her overseas.”

“I see,” I said. I remembered my conversation with Vicki the first day she and I walked to the cabins. “If it’s any comfort,” I told them, “I don’t think she cares much about her Wisconsin boyfriend anymore.”

“Thank goodness.” Marcia sighed. “She doesn’t communicate much. We didn’t know how she was doing. We sent her brother Trey down to keep an eye on her. Nobody at the ranch knows he’s her brother.”

“All Trey knows how to do is swim and flirt,” Steve said. “We thought he’d fit right in.”

Could the Landsdales be oblivious to Trey’s fondness for alcohol and drugs? What about his attempt to prey on Vicki?

Marcia’s cell phone rang. She turned her back and scrambled through her purse.

“About the veterans her boyfriend’s class took to the rodeo,” Sam said, “do you know which VA hospital they were from?”

“It wasn’t something that interested us.”

Marcia, her ear still to the phone, put her hand over her mouth and burst into tears.

“Vicki lapsed into a coma,” she cried. “They said to hurry.”

Her husband caught her before she collapsed and struggled to carry her to a chair. He blinked back tears.

“Do whatever you need to do, detective,” he commanded. “Find the bastard who did this to Vicki.”

Twenty-Seven

Sam and I helped the distraught couple hail a cab to San Antonio University Hospital. We drove to SAPD Central on Nueva, stunned into silence from learning Vicki was in a coma.

Since it was almost noon, we maneuvered through Jack in the Box’s drive-through on the way and got two bacon ultimate cheeseburgers with Cokes. Sam had scarfed down his burger before we arrived at SAPD’s parking lot.

The air was fairly cool from the recent rain. I told Sam if he’d park in the shade, I’d finish my burger, fire up my laptop, and see what I could learn about Vicki’s college taking veterans to rodeos. I might also glean tidbits about wire used on ranches and horse behavior.

“I need to know about clowning and clown makeup,” I said, “and about drilling for oil and gas in Texas,” I said. “I’ll enjoy surfing the net again.” Even though Meredith and I had only been out of classes since mid-May, I missed studying.

“Why research drilling for oil and gas?” he said.

“When I overheard Herb Vernon arguing with Bertha, Herb said he remembered that when he was growing up, an oil well was drilled somewhere on the ranch. He asked Bertha if she’d ever gone to check the site. He thought there might be oil all over the place. She told him if he wanted to go looking for a dry hole, go ahead. She wasn’t interested in having anybody drill holes in her land, never had been and never would be. But earlier, when Bertha was treating my poison ivy, I saw a piece of paper in her room that said something about a well.”

My other reason for staying in the car was that I felt my face swelling. I’d definitely spread plant poison from my fingers to my face. When I crashed into Sam in the wilderness and planted those kisses on him, I might have transferred a tad of urushiol sap to his lips. I scrutinized his mouth and jaw line. One jowl looked puffy.

He looked at me quizzically, but shrugged, turned and headed for the station. I looked in the vanity mirror. My cheeks looked balloonish. Puffiness around my eyes pulled them sideways. I resembled Wo Fat.

Forty-eight hours had passed since I’d sat in the ivy, so the time for dangerous swelling was past. I wasn’t worried about my throat closing so I couldn’t breathe. A swollen face and itching feet apparently weren’t fatal.

I had more curiosity than four search engines and powered up my laptop. I learned clowns used two types of paint: grease paint and common face paint. Amateur clowns generally used face paint, made of similar ingredients to those in women’s makeup. It was easier to apply and remove.

Although it was trickier to apply, professionals used grease paint, available in pots and tubes, because it stayed on longer. Some clowns painted their faces with white or skin-colored paint before painting new features over the base paint. As a professional, Sunny probably used grease paint. Skin-toned grease paint would more effectively cover the scar running down his jaw line.

Next, I researched Vicki’s college, Wisconsin University in Wausheka. Their sociology department frequently took patients from the local veteran’s hospital to rodeos and other events.

As for who or what had spooked Vicki’s horse, I already knew horses spooked at sudden unexpected noises, smells, and movements. They could hear lower and higher frequencies than humans could, and had a superior sense of smell. With eyes set on the sides of its head, a horse had nearly a 350-degree range of vision. With about sixty-five percent of this range being binocular vision, the horse could quickly spot approaching predators. Any number of stimuli could have caused Vicki’s horse to pitch her off.

I found general information about drilling for oil and gas in Texas. When about forty-three percent of US savings and loan associations failed in the 1980s and 1990s, banks grew squeamish about making loans. Energy companies found it nearly impossible to obtain financing for drilling operations. Many Texas companies abandoned drilling projects and sold non-producing wells to smaller companies that later made other efforts to drill. If those wells came up dry, smaller companies couldn’t afford to plug them. By the early 1990s, thousands of non-producing unplugged wells dotted Texas.

Was that the type of well that lured Max and Billy Sue out on the ranch the day they died?

Since information I found wasn’t shedding much light on our investigation, I decided to research anti-aging remedies for my Dear Aggie readers. It was cool in the car, and Sam was still inside the police station.

I typed telomeres into WebCrawler, to see what I could find about these cap-like ends on our DNA strands. Scientists had linked longer telomeres to extended life spans. If scientists could lengthen telomeres, I could have more time with Sam.

Before I could Ask Jeeves about telomeres, Sam came walking toward the car. I saved my sites and shut down the laptop.

When he slid into the car, I studied his face. He looked like a squirrel who’d stored a pecan in each jowl. Hopefully, that was the extent of his facial swelling caused by my kisses. Otherwise, he might be inclined to find me reprehensible. He started the engine.

“I’m afraid I didn’t find much online to help us learn the details of Vicki’s attack,” I said.

“It’s good that you tried,” he said. “I called Joaquin at the crime lab to see if he could obtain the Vernons’ autopsy reports without written authorization. He said pathologists are usually reluctant to release autopsy findings because of possible future litigation, but he knows one of the docs there pretty well. Since the deaths occurred five years ago, he thought the doc might let him see the reports. He’ll try to have them for us when we arrive.”

Twenty-Eight

We drove west on IH 10 toward the medical center. A string of buildings lined both sides of the highway. Freeway traffic was bumper-to-bumper. I began to miss open space at the ranch.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner shared a building with the morgue and crime lab on Louis Pasteur. We walked in with our plastic bags concealed in Sam’s pockets.

The building smelled of disinfectant.

I put my hand on Sam’s arm. “I hope you get to review the Vernons’ autopsies,” I said, “but I’m not sure I want to hear the details.”

“I understand. I’ll summarize what’s pertinent. Joaquin said he’s ready to look at the evidence you found.”

Sam asked to see Forensic Scientist Joaquin Salazar. We were directed to Salazar’s lab, and Sam introduced him to me. Joaquin courteously pretended I looked normal and led us to a lab table. He didn’t seem to notice that Sam’s face looked puffy.

Sam laid the bags on the table. “Aggie found these on the trail where the girl’s horse threw her.”

Joaquin picked up two bags that contained pieces of wire. “These look like 26- and 30-gauge wires—pretty common on a ranch. Can’t tell much, though. You can connect a suspect to these wires?”

“One possible suspect uses the thinner wire to make sculptures. But we don’t know if he handled the piece we have here,” Sam said.

“We’d need DNA samples from this wire and from wire you know the suspect handled. You’d have to send both pieces to forensics to check for a match. It would take a while.”

Sam nodded.

Wearing a sterile glove, Joaquin retrieved the piece of rope from the bag. “The rope is a common variety,” he said. He saw a snip of thicker wire stuck to it. “The rope and wire could have multiple uses. To connect a suspect to this sample, you’d have to have a piece of matching rope. The suspect’s prints or DNA would have to be on both samples.”

Joaquin’s evaluation didn’t surprise Sam. Sam knew he couldn’t send the wire or rope to forensics. Not yet. The items I’d found were, by themselves, insignificant.

Sam handed Joaquin the bag containing the red-splattered rock. Joaquin removed the rock and placed it under the microscope. “Some of the marks are paint. Some are blood.” He looked up.

“I think Vicki hit her head there,” I said. “Can you tell what kind of paint that is?”

“No. I’d have to compare it to other samples.”

“Could any of it be face paint?” Sam asked.

“Could be.”

“Could it be grease paint like clowns use?” I asked.

“Could be.”

I handed him the plastic bag with flecks of paint I’d scratched from Sunny’s face. “Do these flecks match the paint on that rock?”

He moved them under the microscope and compared my paint scrapings with the red splatters.

“They match.”

Sam and I looked at each other.

He handed Joaquin another bag. “What can you tell us about this snatch of hair?”

Joaquin slid it under the scope. “It’s animal hair. It’s consistent with hair from a cat…probably pulled out of the animal. There’s a small piece of wire on it, too.”

I thought about the bobcats hanging from the dining room ceiling. Wire, looped around their necks and under their hind legs, tied the cats to the ceiling. “The hair you’re looking at that’s consistent with cat hair, was the cat alive?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. If this hair was yanked from a live animal, there would be traces of blood on the scalp end.”

We thanked him. As I gathered up our samples, Joaquin pulled Sam aside and showed him a file. “These are the autopsy reports.”

Sam found an empty table at the other side of the room, grabbed a stool and bent over the stack of papers.

Joaquin and I made small talk about his job while I watched Sam from the corner of my eye and ignored my itching feet. He took forever perusing the documents and scribbling notes on his pad. He finally came over and handed the papers back to Joaquin. “I appreciate your getting these for me. It’s good information. Before we leave, would you check to see if anybody at the ME’s office received notification of the death of Vicki or Victoria Landsdale?”

Joaquin dialed and asked about the girl. He listened, then hung up. “No death notice has been received. She must still be at a hospital.”

I sighed with relief. “Can you call the hospital,” I asked Sam, “and find out how she is?”

“They won’t tell me her condition. Only whether or not she can talk. The health privacy act Congress enacted last year, HIPAA, prevents the hospital from releasing information. But I’ll call the hospital from the car and see what we can find out.”

We thanked Joaquin, returned to the parking lot and sat in the car while Sam dialed University Hospital. I leaned my head against the seat while he asked the charge nurse on Vicki’s floor about her, thanked the nurse and clicked the phone closed. When he turned toward me, I opened my eyes.

“They say she can’t talk. She must still be in a coma.” When my eyes grew moist, Sam reached over and grabbed my hand. “When she lay on the ground,” he said, “I thought I saw a trickle of blood seeping from her ear. That usually indicates a swelling brain…not a good sign.”

I swallowed the tears in my throat. “I need antihistamine to stop my face from swelling anymore,” I sniffed, “and Kleenex…low fat yogurt…and a fashion magazine that doesn’t show boots and jeans.” I’d spotted a drugstore across the street. “I need to walk. Will you pick me up over there?”

I walked to the store, made my purchases while blowing my nose, and got back in Sam’s car. He studied my face but didn’t say anything.

As we drove back toward IH 10, I spotted a sporting goods store and asked him to stop. “We have that long trail ride coming up. I better get some riding gloves.”

He waited outside while I shopped.

Feeling better, I trotted back to the car and threw my package on the back seat. I’d bought long Neoprene gloves that covered my arms. I didn’t want to worry about getting scratched up on the ride. The gloves wouldn’t be much hotter than wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

He entered the freeway and drove west, climbing back into the Hill Country. “What did you learn from your research?” he asked.

“Nothing new.” I looked out the window, feeling useless. As houses grew scarce on the hills, I noticed the cenizo plants had sprouted flowers from the recent rain. “I read that students from Wisconsin College took veterans from Milwaukee’s Clement Zablocki VA Medical Center to the rodeo. Zablocki went to high school and college in Milwaukee and was a US Representative from 1949 until he died in 1983. So they named the hospital after him.”

Sam looked over dully. “Is there a reason we need to know that?”

I shrugged. “That’s what I learned.” I hated not having discovered significant information.

I saw a dead animal roadside…couldn’t even tell what it had been. “Tell me about the Vernons’ autopsies.”

“They died from dehydration and heat stroke, like you said. There were no abnormal substances in their systems and no evidence of trauma, except for a few bruises from where they fell.”

“How could that be? How could they both just die like that?” We kept hitting dead ends.

“That’s what I wondered. Their family physician’s name was on the report, so I called him while you were shopping. He told me Max was diabetic. That’s why he drank so much water. Billy Sue exercised a lot, so they were probably both dehydrated when they started out. It’s not uncommon for healthy people to die of dehydration, especially in a hot climate during summer.”

“Did examiners check their lunches and thermoses? Maybe somebody added diuretics.” I remembered seeing diuretics, two different kinds, among pill bottles in Bertha’s medicine cabinet.

“They checked stomach contents, food remnants and thermoses. Didn’t find anything unusual. The doctor said they routinely took diuretics, her for weight control, him for diabetes.”

I told Sam that Maria confirmed Herb had been at the ranch the night before they died. “He had plenty of time to dilute diuretics in their thermoses before he left the next morning,” I said. “The question is, why would he do that? Maybe the Vernons told him something that night, something that made him decide to kill them.”

“Maybe the Vernons told Bertha they intended to leave the ranch to her, and Herb overheard,” he said.

“Examiners didn’t find an unusually high level of diuretics in the Vernon’s bodies or thermoses?” I had to verify this critical point.

“No, but the Vernons’ usual doses would make death from dehydration even more likely.”

“Did police question everybody who was at the ranch in the days before the Vernons died?” I asked.

“Yes, but when the autopsies showed death from dehydration and heat stroke, they had no reason to hold anybody as murder suspects.”

I thought about the Vernons’ activities near the time of their deaths. “Maria told me that the day before they headed out to drive over the ranch, the Vernons drove to San Antonio on business.”

“Their family doctor gave me their attorney’s name,” he said. “Maybe he can tell us what was on their minds.”

“Maybe they wanted him to change their wills,” I said. “Either that, or something they found at the well site precipitated their deaths, something the authorities overlooked.” I just wasn’t convinced their deaths were accidental.

“At SAPD,” Sam said, “I asked how I could get information about that well. One of the guys called a friend at the Railroad Commission in Austin who searched for records of wells drilled on the ranch. He couldn’t find records of wells drilled anywhere in that area. He said oil and gas fields weren’t typically found in the Hill Country. The closest fields had been in Medina County, south of Bandera County. He printed out a list of those fields for me.” He handed me the paper.

I skimmed it and read aloud: “Taylor-Ina field, near Hondo; Devine, Biry, and Irwin; Adams-Olmos field and Bear Creek field, near Devine; Chacon Lake field, four miles south of Natalia. These towns are all south of the BVSBar?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“So there was no oil well drilled on BVSBar property? Why did the Vernons say there was? Why did they go there?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“We need to find the place where they died.”

He smiled. “The medical examiner’s report showed the map location, latitude and longitude of spots where they died.” Sam produced a map of Bandera County and pointed to two Xs. “This is where Bertha found them.”

“Fantastic. Do you think we can find it?”

“Do you think you can avoid poison ivy?” He grinned.