Death Come Quickly (13 page)

“You bet they got it. They acquitted, didn't they?” Charlie laughed, then sobered. “But what I want to know is what this has to do with the documentary those students are making. And Karen Prior's death, damn it.” His eyes narrowed, and he muttered, as if to himself, “Or what Douglas Clark may or may not have done with community property during the divorce proceedings.”

“Sorry, Charlie,” I said regretfully. “I can't help you with any of that.” I hesitated. I was guessing that McQuaid had told him about Karen, and that Charlie had known her—which was no surprise. Pecan Springs is a small town. I wanted to ask who he might be working for on the investigation of those hidden assets—who his client was. But that wasn't a question he, or any lawyer, would answer. “Do keep me posted, though, will you?” I added.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “And if you get any information about—”

A woman thrust a package of chamomile tea at me. “Says on this box that this stuff will make me sleepy,” she said impatiently. “Is that true?”

“Hang on a moment,” I told her. “Any information about what, Charlie?”

“Forget it,” Charlie said and stepped back. “I've bothered you enough for one morning. I'll go see if I can find Ms. Wilcox.” He raised his hand and disappeared into the crowd.

“Sorry,” I said to the customer. “Now, how can I help you?”

The farmers' market may look like a lot of fun, but—in terms of the work involved—it's no picnic, especially on a hot July day. Any vendor will tell you that. I was glad when noon rolled around and Caitie and I could take down the booth and head for the air-conditioned shop, where I mopped the sweat off my face and neck and swigged down a large glass of iced tea. Caitie and I shared a chicken salad sandwich and some cookies from the tearoom, and I paid her twenty dollars for helping with the market. She put it in my purse for safekeeping and then skipped off down the alley to spend the afternoon with her friend Robin. I went to work.

Summer Saturday mornings are busy because of the market, but the afternoons are iffy, sometimes good, sometimes slow. The locals are mostly at the river or out on the lakes or cooling off in the shade with a frosty margarita, or even doing some minor garden work, although it's really too hot.

But the heat doesn't seem to daunt the tourists who come to Central Texas to visit the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin or the Sophienburg Museum in New Braunfels, take photos of the dolphins at San Antonio's SeaWorld, cruise around in the glass-bottom boats at Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, chill out underground in the Cascade Caverns near Boerne, or tour the justly famous Painted Churches of Schulenberg. And there are the wine lovers who pour into Gruene's Grapevine tasting room to sample an array of Texas' best wines, and the fans of Gary P. Nunn and Emmylou Harris who flock to Gruene Hall for country-western music. Plenty of them end up in Pecan Springs on a Saturday afternoon, and some of them make it a point to drop in at Thyme and Seasons, to see what's new in the shop or to walk through the gardens. If you're in the vicinity, please consider this an invitation. I'd a lot rather be talking to you than dusting the shelves or sweeping the floor.

• • •

T
HE
shop was middling busy that afternoon, with foot traffic and telephone calls. One of the calls was from Kitt, accepting the invitation to supper and a sleepover, and offering to bring potato salad and deviled eggs for our picnic. Another was from Sheila, who wanted to know if I knew where Gretchen was.

“I asked the officer assigned to that incident to keep track of her,” she said, sounding frustrated. “But she checked out of the hospital and apparently didn't go home.”

“That's because she went to my house,” I said. “Jake picked her up. Both she and Jake are staying with us until their folks get back from Belize. Sorry—I should have asked her to let you know where she would be.”

I cradled the receiver against my shoulder and smiled at the customer who was purchasing a glass jar of herbal bath salts, made with calendula and chamomile, lavender, ylang-ylang, and geranium.

“I find this very soothing,” I said to the customer, a woman about my age with a look of strained weariness on her face. It was true: I had a jar of it at home and used it when things really got to me.

“Soothing?” Sheila asked doubtfully. “Well, I agree that it's a good idea for Gretchen to stay with you, but I wouldn't call it—”

“Not you, Smart Cookie,” I said into the phone. “Hang on a minute.”

I put down the receiver and rang up the sale. When the woman had gone, I picked it up again. “Soothing bath salts,” I said and added, “Oh, by the way, I have Gretchen's laptop at the house, too. I picked it up last night. Under the circumstances—”

“Smart,” Sheila said, approving. “What about the other girl?”

“Kitt. She's coming tonight. It's a sleepover.” I chuckled. “Just us girls. Want to join us?”

I pictured Sheila's eyes rolling. “Not,” she said firmly. “Blackie and I are going riding at his place this evening. We're planning to stay overnight. I need to get away from this place for a few hours.” Blackie keeps an RV parked beside a pretty creek that runs through his property, so he and Sheila and Rambo can stay out there in comfort.

“Just don't fall off your horse,” I said sweetly. “It wouldn't be good for the baby.” Before she could respond to that jab, I added, more seriously, “Anything on Karen Prior's assailant?”

“I wish,” Sheila said with a sigh. “No, nothing so far. But I would definitely like to talk to Gretchen and Kitt. Since they'll both be at your place, why don't I stop there on my way back to town tomorrow morning? Maybe about nine?”

“Make it ten,” I said. “I'll try to get them out of bed and coffeed by that time, but I can't promise.”

“Do your best,” Sheila said sternly. “Remind them that this is a murder investigation.”

I sighed. “Speaking of which, do you know when Karen's funeral is scheduled? And what about Felicity? Is anybody staying with her?”

“I talked to Felicity again today,” Sheila said. “We're still trying to get a fix on the phone call her mother got before she left for the mall. She said that her grandmother—her mother's mother—drove down from Oklahoma City. No date yet for the funeral. There are relatives on both coasts, apparently.”

Two anguished women, I thought. A mother grieving a murdered daughter, a daughter grieving a murdered mother. I could only hope for their consolation, knowing that they would find none.

Whether death comes quickly or slowly, it is utterly, completely final. It shadows everyone it touches.

• • •

I
T
took an effort to shed that darkness. But by the time I closed the shop, picked Caitie up at Robin's house, and drove home, I was ready for a picnic. As it turned out, my family—bless them—had already done most of the work. The temperature was still in the low 90s, so I changed into shorts and sandals and poured myself a tall gin and tonic with plenty of ice and a twist of lime, feeling a special gratitude for our family evening together. Felicity and her grandmother didn't have that privilege.

Supper was in experienced hands. McQuaid had put a brisket (liberally rubbed with kosher salt, coarsely cracked black pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne) into the smoker early that morning and left it there all day, basting with his secret high-test barbecue sauce whenever he thought of it. At five thirty, he put on some links of smoked venison sausage, and when I got home at five forty-five, he was sharpening his slicing knife. I went out to the back deck to join him.

“Did you talk to Charlie today?” I asked, resting my head against his arm. I can't explain it, but there is something very sexy about a man who is slicing a barbecued brisket, especially one he has cooked himself, start to finish.

“I did.” He tested the knife's edge with a quick cut and held out the slice on the tip of the blade. “What do you think?”

I tasted, chewed, and rolled my eyes. “You are
sooo
good,” I cooed. “A gourmet cook. And a stud, too. What more could a girl want?”

“That's me,” McQuaid said comfortably and began to slice. “All around good guy. Especially in bed.”

“Mmm,” I said, agreeing. “So what did Charlie say?”

“A lot of things.” He kept on slicing.

I stole a slice of brisket and nibbled on it. “I talked to him myself this morning, at the market. He claimed that there was police misconduct in the Morris murder investigation. A warrantless search.” I licked my fingers. “But the evidence was allowed in anyway.”

McQuaid shrugged. “Wouldn't be the first time. Won't be the last, either.”

“So you talked to Charlie,” I persisted. “He didn't happen to give you a hint about who his client is on that hidden assets investigation, did he?”

McQuaid forked a bite of brisket, chewed thoughtfully, and said, “Next time, I think I'll use more garlic. Not everyone would agree, I suppose, but in my opinion, you can never have too much garlic.”

I poked him in the ribs.
“Charlie,”
I said. “Hidden assets. His client.”

“Okay, okay.” McQuaid gave an exaggerated sigh, humoring me. “I dropped in at his office early this morning and asked him about the coincidences. My assignment, Prior's death, the documentary. He knew about the documentary, but not about Karen. He was acquainted with her. He was jolted to hear that she's dead.”

“Weren't we all,” I said soberly. “How did he find out about the documentary?”

“One of the student filmmakers interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. She knew he'd handled Christine Morris' divorce and asked him to talk about her—what kind of person Morris was, her run-ins with the city council, that kind of thing. He said he gave the girl about five minutes, nothing specific, nothing she couldn't have found out from reading the newspaper.”

I nodded. Of course, Charlie was free to speak generally about his client, although he would be careful not to violate privilege. In 1998, the entire legal profession breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Supreme Court ruled, 6–3, that the attorney-client privilege survives the client's death, thereby taking lawyers all over the country off the hook. Christine Morris might be dead, but as far as Charlie was concerned, she was still his client and their communications were still privileged.

“But after the interview, he got to reflecting on some things that had happened, and started thinking about this and that and wondering.” McQuaid sliced off three more pieces, then paused. “Charlie doesn't have a client.” Another two slices. “He's acting for himself.”

For himself?
“But why?” I asked, frowning. “Charlie Lipman isn't exactly the type to lay out cold hard cash on an investigation just out of intellectual curiosity.”

McQuaid hesitated. “Of course, I'm only guessing. But I think maybe he feels that he didn't do all he might have when—”

“Hey, Dad!” It was Brian, standing at the back door. He and Jake had been shucking the sweet corn for supper. “We finished the corn and the water's boiling. Want us to dump it in?”

“Yeah, we're about ready out here,” McQuaid replied. He added, “Hey, Brian, slice up a couple of those yellow onions, too, will you?” To me, he said, “There's more. Let's get into it later.”

Jake had already put a bowl of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers on the cloth-covered picnic table. Kitt (who was delighted to join us and happy about the idea of staying all night) had brought potato salad and a dozen deviled eggs. I did nothing that required much mental or physical exertion, except to pull a peach cobbler out of the freezer and pop it in the oven. Caitlin made a pitcher of lemonade. Then she and Gretchen (who was under orders to take things easy for a day or two) set the picnic table under the live oak trees in the backyard with our favorite red plastic picnic plates and yellow paper napkins, with a Mason jar in the center full of bright yellow sunflowers, orange butterfly weed, and lacy wild carrot. It was all very Norman Rockwellian and very pretty.

Supper was on the picnic table at six and by six forty-five it was history. By seven, the kids were cleaning up the kitchen and putting the dishes in the dishwasher, and McQuaid and I had taken our glasses of wine out to the front porch, where we each settled in a white-painted wicker rocking chair to appreciate the quiet green landscape.

According to an entry tagged “malicious magic” in Daniel Moerman's
Native American Ethnobotany
, the Iroquois used a prickly, vining plant called smilax (
Smilax hispida
) to bring about bad luck or accidents. They also used the plant to construct a crude doll, like a voodoo doll, with the aim of killing a woman who was causing trouble.

China Bayles
“Herbs of Good and Ill Omen”
Pecan Springs Enterprise

Our house is located in the Hill Country west of Pecan Springs, a half mile off Limekiln Road. Over the years we have lived here, we've added another twenty acres to the original three that came with the house, so it's easy to feel that we're alone out here, on the edge of a wilderness that stretches all the way to the western horizon.

That isn't true, of course. Over the past decade, the Hill Country has been filling up fast, with gated communities swallowing up the woods and prairies and small towns pushing out their boundaries farther and faster every year. But drought is a constant threat and water has become a major problem. Even the grow-baby-grow crowd has to admit that there are limits. Most counties are tightening their building and well-drilling restrictions and putting the brakes on development.

But this house has been here for a long time, and the land around it has stayed wild. Our nearest neighbors, the Banners, are well out of sight, and Limekiln Road is far enough away, and buffered by trees, so that we rarely hear a vehicle. From our porch, McQuaid and I can look out onto an expanse of grass and an old stone wall overgrown with greenbrier, our native Texas species,
Smilax bona-nox
. (If you have ever tangled with this thorny vine, you will appreciate two of its common names: cat's claw and blaspheme-vine.) Beyond the wall is a wide meadow, rimmed with juniper, live oak, and mesquite trees. Tonight, in the shadows under the distant trees, a doe and two fawns, still wearing their baby spots, were cropping grass. Low in the west, the sun was about to duck behind the hills. The high-pitched song of the cicadas filled the air, and the honeysuckle at the near end of the porch scented the slight breeze. It was a lovely summer evening, almost too hot to sit outdoors, but not quite. When you live in Texas, where there's too much air-conditioning too much of the time, you learn to go outside whenever you can, even if it is a little too hot.

I picked up our before-supper conversation where we left off. “You said there's more to tell about Charlie.”

“Yeah.” McQuaid leaned back in the rocker and propped his sandaled feet on the porch railing. “Turns out that he and Christine Morris were . . . involved.” He gave me an oblique glance. “Romantically involved, that is.”

I stared at him. “Are you kidding? I understood that she sued for divorce on grounds of adultery. And that Charlie was her attorney.”

“Nope. Not kidding.” McQuaid shrugged. “Wouldn't be a first, you know. Happens all the time.”

“Well, maybe,” I muttered. But while love affairs between lawyers and their clients may make for stimulating television drama, they are a very bad idea—in spite of the fact that the State Bar of Texas has never quite managed to bring itself to specifically prohibit them. I found it hard to believe that Charlie would be stupid enough to get himself into that kind of situation.

And there was something else. From everything I'd heard about Christine Morris, she was a consummate fashion plate—clothing, hair, jewelry all flawless, a beautiful woman. But in the decade or more that I've known Charlie Lipman, he's looked like the quintessential Texas country lawyer, given to wrinkled suits and coffee-stained white shirts. He is not what anybody would call a hunk. And definitely not a suitable escort for a fashion queen.

“You're surprised?” McQuaid asked, eyeing me. “Hey, sex happens, China. Love, too, sometimes—although maybe less frequently than sex. And Charlie didn't always look and dress the way he does now.” He paused thoughtfully. “He didn't drink, either. At least, not so much.”

“How would you know?” I challenged. “You've only known him for as long as I have. And all that time, he's been . . . well, just the way he is now. Just Charlie.”

“Blackie told me,” McQuaid said. “Charlie used to be the sharpest tool in the box. But something happened in his personal life—Blackie isn't sure what. After that, he started going downhill. Of course, as a lawyer, he's still plenty good. He's just . . .” His voice trailed off. “He's just Charlie.”

I sighed. “So Charlie told you that he and Christine Morris were involved. I assume that this went on while he was representing her in her divorce action.”

“He didn't say when. It could have been after the divorce was granted, for all I know.”

I went back to the point. “So how does this . . . romantic involvement play into the current situation?”

“Don't ask me,” McQuaid said. “But if I had to guess, I'd say that he thought of something in the course of his interview for the documentary—something he had forgotten about or maybe decided not to pursue. He thought more about it and concluded it was something he wanted to investigate, because of his involvement with Christine. So he called me and asked me to look into it for him.”

“
It
being the possibility that Doug Clark hid some—or a substantial portion—of his assets during the property settlement.” I shook my head. “If Charlie was sleeping with Christine, maybe even wanted to marry her after the dust settled, I would have thought that he would have dug for those assets with every spade and shovel he could find. And if he didn't do it then, why bother now?”

“Dunno.” McQuaid shrugged. “But they weren't sleeping together when this happened, apparently. According to Charlie, some time after Christine got her divorce, the two of them ended their relationship and she began seeing someone else.”

“Anybody I know?” I asked curiously.

“A guy named Roberto Soto,” McQuaid said.

“No kidding.” I was mildly surprised. Soto was an art dealer based in San Antonio. Some years before, he had been indicted by the feds for wire fraud, conspiracy, and the sale of a forged painting. I couldn't remember the artist at the moment, but it was a name I recognized at the time.

“Yeah,” McQuaid said with a chuckle. “
That
Roberto Soto. The one your friend Justine took to the cleaners.”

I knew about Soto because Justine Wyzinski, a San Antonio attorney in private practice, had represented one of his customers in a civil suit against him. Soto hadn't admitted guilt in the federal case, but he pled to a lesser charge in return for a fine. And he paid court costs and restitution in the civil case Justine had brought. Interesting, but ancient history by now, and most people had probably forgotten it. Still . . .

“Ruby told me that Christine was collecting Mexican art, in a big way.” I paused. “I wonder if she bought any of her stuff from Soto.”

McQuaid shrugged. “Maybe. But I'm not sure Charlie knew very much about that part of it. Christine was still his client, even if they were no longer otherwise involved. Shortly before she was killed, she came to Charlie with the claim that her ex-husband had hidden some of the marital property in a complicated business arrangement. She wanted him to look into it. Depending on what he found, she wanted to get the divorce settlement readjudicated or file a civil fraud suit. At her insistence, he began the investigation. When she was killed, he dropped it.” He paused. “And now he's reopened it. And hired me.”

“Did Doug Clark know that his ex-wife was looking into his business affairs?”

“It wouldn't have been smart to let him in on the secret.” McQuaid frowned at me. “What are you thinking?”

I shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Except that this is shaping up to be a more complicated matter than it seemed at first.” Doug Clark and hidden assets, Roberto Soto and Mexican art. Briefly, I made a mental note to ask Justine—a friend from law school—if she knew what Soto was doing with himself these days.

McQuaid gave me a curious look. “I thought the neighbor killed her. What's his name—Bowman?”

“Dick Bowen.” I
tsk-tsk
ed. “Don't forget. The jury found him not guilty.”

“Which doesn't mean that he
didn't
do it,” McQuaid pointed out. “As you very well know, China, juries acquit for all sorts of reasons. They might have believed he was guilty as sin but let him walk anyway.”

He was right, of course. The jury's “not guilty” didn't necessarily mean that Bowen was innocent. But judging from what I'd heard from Charlie that morning, I'd say that the smart money was on somebody else—on Johnnie's alternative suspect, maybe. That trail of clues sounded like it was laid down for the benefit of the investigators, who had followed it obediently—without a warrant.

“After Christine was killed,” I said, “did Charlie go to the police with what he knew about those assets?”

“He didn't
know
anything,” McQuaid said. “All he had was Christine's suspicions. And at the time she asked him to look into it, Charlie says, she was pretty unbalanced. This was when she was causing a lot of trouble, haranguing the city council and making wild claims all over the place. He didn't quite believe her.”

“But he does now? I wonder why he's changed his mind.” I leaned forward, itching to get into this. “Listen, McQuaid. Charlie told me some interesting things about the Morris murder investigation. Turns out that the lead investigating officer was—” I was interrupted by a light rap on the door into the living room.

“May we join you?” Gretchen asked, and a moment later, she and Kitt were seated on the porch swing.

Kitt wore a pair of narrow, hip-looking glasses, and her pink-streaked brown hair gave her the look of an untidy child. “Thanks for inviting me to sleep over tonight,” she said, pulling her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs. “Jerry will be home tomorrow night, which is good. After everything that's happened, I don't mind telling you that I'm just not real crazy about staying by myself.”

Gretchen's eye was several colors of purple and green, and the abrasions on her arms were bandaged. “Kitt and I have been talking about the documentary.” She pushed the swing with the toe of her sneaker, setting it swaying. “We really do feel responsible for what happened to Dr. Prior.”

McQuaid cleared his throat. “I didn't get all the details about your film,” he said in a kindly voice. “Maybe you could fill me in on what you're up to. Words of one syllable, please. I don't know the first thing about moviemaking.”

Gretchen and Kitt exchanged glances, and Gretchen spoke. “A documentary is a requirement of the master's degree in the film program. We do the whole thing ourselves, start to finish. We're supposed to choose a topic, do the research, create a storyboard, shoot the interviews and other scenes, dig up the archival footage we want to use, do a rough cut and the final edit.”

Kitt picked up the story. “Then we have to screen it for a critique team, go back and rework wherever necessary, and do a final screening for the public. We get graded on all the steps along the way.” She stopped, chewed on her lip, then added, “We actually thought we had a good shot at a national distribution for this project. My uncle works with a company that distributes independent films, both home video and broadcast. He's seen some of our footage. He's been encouraging us.”

Ah, I thought. If somebody knew about a potentially wider distribution of the film, that person might be nervous enough to make a threatening call to the filmmakers. But why would he—or she—attack Karen? She was only the filmmakers' supervisor. It didn't make sense.

A mockingbird flew to the top of the small yaupon holly at the far end of the porch and began to chirp in a bossy tone, as if he were lecturing us for sitting on
his
porch. The sun was gone now, but the western sky was tinted with pastel lemon and pink. The meadow was empty. The doe and her fawns had melted into the purple shadows of the trees.

“I'm curious about the topic,” McQuaid said. “What made you decide to choose the Morris murder for your documentary?”

Gretchen spoke up. “I was in your class one day—Criminal Investigations, I think it was—when you lectured about cold cases and the reasons why some crimes are never solved. I thought that was really interesting. When Kitt and I started talking about the documentary, I went to the newspaper morgue and glanced through old copies of the
Enterprise.
That's when I stumbled over Christine Morris' murder. I was still a girl when it happened, so I didn't remember anything about it. But when I told Kitt, she liked the idea because Ms. Morris collected Mexican art, paintings, mostly, but other stuff, too. Which gave it a really interesting angle. Some of the paintings in the museum are spectacular, and since it's private, people don't know much about it.”