Chapter Thirty-Six
DAY NINE
TUESDAY
Clara had client business this morning, so we planned to meet at the dog park at our more common noonish time.
Before that, I tried to write.
That spell of flow had been amazing last week. I hadn’t experienced that before, when the real world becomes misty and distant, something to sleep-walk through, while the fictional world presents itself bright and sharp.
Kit often told me those stretches were to be treasured but never relied on. You kept writing, kept working while you hoped another of those periods broke open. That, she said was training the writing muscle.
Flow is built on all the nuts and bolts writing sessions, where you’re putting down words knowing you’ll change them later.
I was having trouble getting down any words, even ones I knew I’d change.
What would Kit say?
And then a bus crashed through the wall.
I’d heard Kit propose that as a way to shake up her thinking, along with And then they all died.
Except there weren’t buses in the alternative world my character was thrown into. As for all of the characters dying . . .
Huh.
That might be interesting . . .
I poked around my work in progress until it was time for the dog park.
* * * *
Donna was gone when we arrived.
Clara grumbled about that, but became distracted when it quickly became apparent that the word at the dog park was that Pammy executed an NFL-level punt on Lucifer.
I did tell a couple people she hadn’t actually kicked the dog, not pulling her foot back or swinging her leg. Her motion was comparable to the leg block I suspected every one of us used to stop a dog from bolting through a doorway. Except Pammy used it to, uh, encourage Lucifer forward.
After the second time I tried to explain and a fellow dog owner stared at me blankly before adding a couple more yards to the account of the kick, I gave up trying to keep the record straight.
But I did mutter to Clara, “Pammy didn’t actually kick Lucifer.”
She directed her open gaze to me. “Her foot connected with his butt.”
“True, but . . .”
I gave up again.
Especially when my phone rang and I saw it was Teague. He must be making his connection.
I would pick him up at the airport in a few hours, but that didn’t make talking to him any less appealing.
After hellos with airport background noises on his end and barking on mine, he said, “Hey, no need to come to the airport—”
“I want to.”
“I want you to, too. But they want me to come straight to the department. Deputy Hensen is picking me up to fill me in on the way. Wasting no time, according to the sheriff.”
“You know they picked up Bryon Georger on Sunday?” I assumed he knew who Bryon was and his connection to the deceased.
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t going to tell me more.
He didn’t need to. I could build a strong case that the sheriff wanted him to question Bryon — and get a confession.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can, but it’ll be late,” he said.
“Understood.”
“If I have a chance to get away for dinner or—”
“That would be great. But I do understand.”
He grumbled. “Wish I did. I want to see you.”
* * * *
“Thought we’d stop off at the post office for the dogs to see Ike,” Clara said with innocence that would convince the unwary.
It didn’t need to convince me. I was all for this plan.
We arrived to find my kitty-corner neighbor, Amy Kackley, mailing a package. She was the only customer. We exchanged short hellos, she patted the dogs, then said she needed to get back to work at the library.
The three dogs wiggled and wagged in pleasure at Ira’s attention and he reciprocated with a smile, which drew a bigger one from Ruby.
Clara dove in — good idea, since customers had the irksome habit of showing up.
“Ruby, tell us about Willow Yost and her connection to Jean and Oscar Hoskins.”
“Oh, she’s been like a granddaughter to them since she was a little one. Because they were like grandparents to her.”
That echoed what the ladies told us at brunch. We needed more.
“It must have been so hard on her when Jean was diagnosed last year,” Clara said.
“It surely was. Hard on everybody. Only one who handled it well was Jean. Went on like herself, never missing a beat. Saying right out she needed to get her affairs in good order and do what she wanted to do. That was her, through and through.”
“Wasn’t there something about a trip . . .?”
“Yes, indeed. Jean had wanted to go to Europe, see all the things she’d read about and taught about all those years — literature and such. Had the whole thing planned for a couple years off. When the diagnosis came, she said they’d move it up and Oscar dug in to make that happen.”
“Did they go?”
Ruby’s face darkened. “No. Damon Swindell had gotten Oscar to invest in one of his business ventures at the start of last year.” Her tone put ventures in the same category as venom.
“When Oscar went to him to get the money out, he said it was gone. Just gone. Even though it had only been a few months. Made no bones about it that Oscar and Jean would never get a penny back.”
“A lawyer—?”
Ruby shook her head. “Jean said she absolutely would not spend the end of her life that way. That was her way. But I also think it was to pull Oscar up short. He was already on the edge of going into a tailspin over her diagnosis and if he’d started obsessing about that .
. . But with her insisting on living those final months, she held onto him and wouldn’t let him do anything but live, too. ”
Ira sighed from behind us.
We all looked at him.
He was still petting the dogs, but there was pain in his eyes.
“Ira is right,” Ruby said. “After Jean died, Oscar did go into a tailspin. If it weren’t for Willow and that little dog . . .”
“So, he’s back to himself?” Clara asked.
Ruby pursed her lips. “Wouldn’t say that. Not entirely. He came back from the edge of the pit. But there’s a . . . cloud. Not only grief . . . Anger, I guess I’d say. Some rail at God when they go through what Oscar’s faced, but I don’t think that’s it . . .”
She clicked her tongue, dissatisfied with herself.
“It’s so wrong when a woman like Jean dies without her dream trip and a man like Oscar carries the weight of that, while that Damon Swindell gets off free as a bird.”
“Well, he was murdered,” I noted.
“Some would say it was high time,” she said darkly.
“Would William Alsup say that?”
“Oh, him.” Her expression did a feat of facial gymnastics I interpreted as meaning he did not rank as low as Damon in her estimation, but would have a long climb to reach neutral.
“I don’t know for sure, so I’m not saying right out, but he’s not above using every trick in the book himself to get his own back, plus tricks that shouldn’t be written in any book ever.”
She looked past us to her husband.
We turned and saw him dropping his head. He might have been looking at Ruby a moment before, but now his focus returned to the dogs.
“Ira is right again. You two are a special case. But I don’t feel comfortable saying what’s only a spider web in my mind.”
She pressed her lips together and I thought we’d lost out on whatever speculations she had.
“I’ll say this much — Blanche wasn’t fooling around with Damon Swindell for fun. And she didn’t come up with the idea on her own.”
* * * *
“What do you think she meant about Blanche?” I asked Clara as she drove toward my house.
“I don’t know. But I’ll ask the ladies if they have any thoughts. Also about Oscar. That was interesting, wasn’t it? Sounds like he’s become an angry man.”
“And you’re thinking he could have taken it out on Damon.”
“He’d have good cause. Stealing money is one thing, but denying a dying woman her life-long dream . . .”
From her tone, Clara might vote for justifiable homicide under that circumstance.
Alsup didn’t have that advantage with her.
“While I talk to that potential client next, what you need to do is follow up with Urban about Alsup,” she added.