Dead Giveaway (3 page)

  Jeff came back over and bent close to my ear. ''I need to interview this one now that I have his complete attention.''

  I whispered, ''Okay, I can wait.''

  ''Please go home. I'll call you.''

  ''But—''

  ''And do me a favor? Let me talk to Will Knight first.''

  He said this nice enough, but he wasn't asking for a favor: Jeff was warning me not to contact my client.

  ''If you say so,'' I answered.

  Now, sometimes you gotta dance to the tune the band plays, especially when one of the fiddlers is your cop boyfriend. But as I drove home, I had to think long and hard whether this was one of those times.

2

I arrived home around ten, grabbed a Coke from the fridge and headed for the living room, unable to stop thinking about Verna Mae's call to me today and the horrible way she died. The sheer brutality had me as mad as a bull in red dye factory. I needed to find out what had happened. I mean, why beat a woman to death for jewelry and the contents of a handbag that could have been snatched without much effort? But maybe she had some fight in her and pissed off her assailant. If the bad guy was on drugs, it wouldn't take much to set him off.

  Then there was Will. He would soon learn about this, and I sure wanted to be the one to tell him. I did have his number on speed-dial. One press of a button and I could see if he was home, walk that tightrope Jeff had placed between me and my client by asking Will if he'd had any surprises today—like a visit or call from Verna Mae.

  
Don't be an idiot,
I told myself. I needed to respect Jeff's request, and I sure didn't want to get on the wrong side of HPD. I was still a new PI and under the supervision of Jeff's good friend Angel Molina of the Molina Detective Agency. Though I
am
a registered investigator, I only stay that way if I don't get into trouble. Getting into trouble with Jeff would affect not only my ability to work as a PI but also our relationship . . . which could affect Jeff's friendship with Angel . . . and maybe then affect the prospect of getting my little subsidiary of the Molina Agency, Yellow Rose Investigations, licensed by Texas in a few years. That damn domino effect will get you every time.

  No call to Will. Period. But I had to do
something.

  With my calico cat, Diva, watching from the arm of one of the overstuffed chairs, I practically wore a hole in the Oriental rug in front of the sofa while sorting through all this, thinking about what I'd seen tonight and trying to remember every detail of my conversation with Verna Mae the other day. Could there be a clue from our meeting, a clue to explain why she contacted me today, a clue connected to her death?

  Sipping intermittently on my soda, I recalled the woman's enthusiastic greeting when we'd arrived at her house, an encounter that immediately made Will and me uncomfortable. It would have made any sane person uncomfortable. I mean, what was Will supposed to do when a stranger hugged him like the human equivalent of Saran Wrap? Verna Mae's nose only came to his navel, and she pressed her plump face into his abdomen, wrapped her fleshy arms around him and held on for dear life. He reacted by raising his own arms as if he were being fitted for a tuxedo, all the while staring at me bug-eyed.

  After she finally let go, she gave me one of those pat-you-on-the-back type hugs, thanked me for bringing her boy back home and walked us through her
I Lust for Waverly
house to the dining room. There we found a meal fit for a July Fourth picnic. Fried chicken, potato salad, a slab of ribs, baked beans and a gallon of sweet iced tea were laid out on a massive table—enough food to serve the state legislature.

  We filled our plates—she'd even brought out the good china—and went out to the front porch. I chose the wicker chair right next to a planter filled with baby's breath, and Will sat to my right. Verna Mae flanked him on the other side. Thank goodness the round glass-covered table was high enough that he could fit his unbelievably long legs underneath.

  I no sooner took my first bite of beans when I dropped my napkin. I bent to retrieve it and saw it had blown under the planter, the one I hadn't paid much attention to when we walked inside despite its presence near the front door. The one I now realized used to be a bassinet.

  A white wicker bassinet on wheels.

  I felt like ten caterpillars were crawling up my neck. ''Um, unusual use of a baby bed,'' I said. ''Did it belong to one of your children?'' About then I was praying that was the explanation, but my gut told me otherwise.

  ''I have no other children, Ms. Rose.'' She rested a hand on Will's arm. ''I placed the bassinet where I found my boy that night.''

  A brief, tense silence followed before Will said, ''Cool,'' and continued eating.

  I believe that's how teenage boys cope with everything—by eating.

  Verna Mae raised the thin eyebrows over her gray eyes—the only thin thing on her body. ''You may have the planter if you like, Will.''

  He gave me this pleading sideways glance that shouted,
Please help me.

  ''A baby bed in a men's dorm might make for some interesting jokes,'' I said, trying to sound lighthearted rather than critical.

  ''Of course,'' she replied. ''I was just . . . kidding.'' Her tone was terse enough that I knew the lighthearted approach had failed.

  So much for my acting skills. ''Why don't you tell us about the night Will arrived.''

  Her face relaxed and her eyes glazed over in dreamy remembrance. ''I heard him crying. Jasper— he was my husband—said a cat was in heat. But I knew better. Thank goodness Will came to us in October, because the weather was perfect. No danger of him freezing or dying from the heat.'' She turned to Will. ''When I picked you up, you quit crying right away. You knew we belonged together.''

  More hairy little feet on the nape of my neck. More painful glances from Will.

  ''But that's not how things worked out,'' I said.

  ''Thanks to
Jasper
.'' She practically spat his name. ''Will was sent to
me.
God knew how much I wanted a baby, but Jasper called the police—even after I told him it was downright blasphemous to go against God's will. We should have kept our baby.''

  ''But . . . your husband did what he was supposed to,'' I said, trying to sound apologetic for pointing this out.

  She looked at me like I'd tracked horse manure onto her plush white carpet. ''The
right
thing to do, my dear young woman, is to accept what God gives you. And He gave me a perfect baby boy.''

  Will subdued a ''Yeah, she's definitely crazy'' smile by scooping up one last giant forkful of potato salad and shoving it into his mouth.

  ''If you'd kept him,'' I said, ''wouldn't people have wondered where this baby came from?''

  ''They might have had questions,'' conceded Verna Mae. ''But folks in town knew we wanted to adopt. It's not like I didn't talk to everyone and their stepcousin about our desire for children.''

  ''Did you apply to be Will's foster parent after he was taken from you?'' I asked.

  ''That's not something I wish to discuss.'' From her brusque attitude and the little twitch near her eye, I figured I'd better leave the subject alone.

  According to my amateur psychological analysis, this woman was angry at her dead husband and mad at the system that took Will away—grudges she'd held for nineteen years. Focusing on her old wounds wouldn't help Will find his birth parents. I needed to know what had
not
appeared in the newspaper articles, anything that would give me a place to start looking for clues. I said, ''The articles Will's parents kept about the abandonment were pretty sketchy. Did Will come with a note? Or a special formula or baby bottle? Anything?''

  ''Nothing but the little T-shirt and diaper he arrived in,'' she said.

  ''No blanket?'' I asked.

  ''Maybe a flannel receiving blanket. I don't really recall.''

  ''Did he arrive in a box or a car seat or . . . what?'' I asked.

  ''One of those plastic infant seats that you could buy anywhere back then. Officer Rollins took everything with him that night. Said he needed them for evidence.
Evidence.
Like it was a crime God left Will here with me.'' Her eyes filled and she blinked hard to fight back the tears.

  Explaining to this woman that child abandonment was indeed a crime back then, and still is if you don't drop the baby off at a hospital or other safe haven, would have done no good. I chose another direction. ''Did you hear anything about the baby in the days that followed?''

  ''Only that CPS got custody. Ridiculous arrangement. He already had someone to love him. But look at him,'' she said, beaming at Will. ''He's turned out beautifully despite all those mistakes.''

  She put her hand on Will's forearm and kept talking, rattling off stories about championship games he'd played in, starting with Little Dribblers. Little Dribblers, I learned, was not a team of bib-wearing toddlers but rather a youth basketball league.

  Will and I may have been squirming before, but this was the
Twilight Zone
moment—when we realized she'd followed Will around, maybe even with a camera. ''And . . . how did you learn all these things about Will?'' I asked. Because she shouldn't have known anything, not even his name.

  She stared at me, color rising in her cheeks. ''Why does that matter?''

  ''Probably doesn't,'' I answered quickly. Getting her more agitated than she already was did not seem like a good plan, so I decided to keep my thoughts to myself about how Will's adoption information should have been better protected.

  ''It's been very difficult since he went away to college, though,'' Verna Mae went on. ''That drive to the university in Austin is simply awful.''

  
The drive to the university?
She was still stalking him today, and right there I should have quit worrying about the woman's mainspring popping and pressed harder for how she got her information. But did I? No. Stupid me changed the subject, asked about how the town reacted to the excitement of an abandoned child. And that's where I failed as an investigator. She was practically admitting to stalking the kid, but the idea made my stomach do little flip flops, made my skin prickle. I moved on, asking questions that didn't provide us with anything new.

  The Coke I'd been sipping had made my hand cold. I quit pacing and set the can on my coffee table. How I wish I'd probed further the other day, gotten past my own discomfort at Verna Mae's obvious obsession with a kid who, by law, was supposed to have remained anonymous to her. The only other thing I learned of value was the name of the policeman who took Will away—Burl Rollins—currently chief of police in Bottlebrush. My calls to him yesterday and today had not been returned, but maybe, with Verna Mae dead and a county deputy sent to hunt up her relatives, he might talk to me tonight.

  Yes. That's what I could do now. Jeff didn't say anything about my contacting the police in Bottlebrush.

  Diva followed me into my office—a converted study right off the front foyer. Once the cat was settled in my lap, I powered up my computer and within two minutes had Burl Rollins's home phone number. An unlisted number would have taken a little longer, but his was right there in the white pages.

  A sleepy woman answered on the fifth ring.

  ''Is this Mrs. Rollins?'' I asked.

  ''Yes, ma'am. And who might you be?''

  ''My name is Abby Rose, and I'm an investigator calling about a local woman named Verna Mae Olsen. Could I speak to Chief Rollins, please?''

  ''What kind of investigator?'' she asked warily.

  ''Private. Unfortunately, Mrs. Olsen passed away this evening and—''

  ''Oh, I know she's dead, and so does the Chief,'' Mrs. Rollins said.

  ''Terrible thing,'' I said. ''I identified her body and . . . it was very . . . upsetting. I'm hoping to find out what happened to her, and maybe your husband can—''

  ''You identified the body and now you're asking
me
what happened? Somehow that doesn't compute. Had she hired you for some reason?'' Mrs. Rollins asked.

  ''No. She was simply a person of interest in a case I'm working.''

  ''Person of interest? Aren't you slick with your cop lingo? Listen, Ms. Rose, you want to talk to Burl, you better be straight with me.''

  ''I would, except I'm not sure the Houston police would want me discussing what I saw tonight.''

  ''Burl tells me everything and the reporters will be saying plenty tomorrow, so why don't you just tell me what the hell happened?''

  If I'd learned one thing in my short career as a PI, it's that you have to give to get. So I gave. ''Mrs. Olsen was severely beaten. That's all I know.''

  ''Beaten? My heavens, that is
not
a nice way to go. Who'd be mad enough at a middle-aged country woman to beat her up? And I'm not just asking to be nosey. Burl would be asking you the same question.''

  ''The police think she was robbed. I take it Mrs. Olsen was well-off?'' I made it a question. It was her turn to give now.

  ''Listen, Ms. Rose. You're not getting another thing out of me until you tell me what's going on. What kind of case are you working on?''

  I explained about Will, how he was the baby found on the doorstep so long ago.

  ''The
baby?
You don't say?'' She sounded genuinely surprised and a whole lot friendlier all of a sudden. ''Now that's pretty interesting. I'm certain Burl
would
like to talk to you. Give me your number and I'll have him call you in the morning.''

  ''I-I'd kind of like to speak with him tonight.''

  ''You're out of luck. He's picking up the warrant to get inside Verna Mae's house. Deputy Sheriff called for his help about thirty minutes ago.''

  ''He's at her place?''

  ''He will be, I expect. Said he'd get the warrant and meet the deputy there.''

  ''From what Verna Mae said the other day, I assumed she lived alone. Why would he need a warrant?'' I asked.