A Dead Red Oleander (The Dead Red Mystery series) Read online

  I secretly smiled as he passed me for the kitchen, nose pointed toward the fragrant smells of supper. Satisfied to have won our most recent contest of wills, I closed the door behind me and followed him.

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  I greeted Caleb on the front porch, admiring how good he looked in his button-down shirt and khakis. His brush cut and thinning blond hair had been trimmed up on the sides, showing a white line where it used to lay too long on his neck. I loved his neck, his ears, the crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, and most of all, I loved how he loved me. He saw the wistful longing in my eyes, and as he directed me to precede him into the house, he lightly pinched my bottom.

  Around the dining room table, Aunt Mae entertained us with stories of the cattle industry and her recent jaunt to Las Vegas.

  My dad wiped his mouth with a napkin, stood up, and patted the bulge over his belt. "That was some good food, Pearlie. I think I'll go walk the goat."

  Aunt Mae got up and followed him into the kitchen. "You best keep that dumb goat away from the oleander."

  Knowing his offer to help with the dishes would be rejected, Caleb slid his chair back, and offered anyway.

  Pearlie batted her eyelashes, Nancy just shook her head, and Aunt Mae came back into the dining room in time to give her opinion. Her snort said what she thought of his artful dodger routine.

  With a nod to the girls to indicate I'd be back in a tick, I followed him to the front porch.

  Outside, the September heat was fast dissipating in the rise of cooler air from the recently flooded orchard on the other side of our house. Venus was a seductive glow between the indigo sky and the horizon, and the western hills were layered in shades of peach and red.

  I leaned into his chest and he circled an arm around my shoulders, tightening until I squeaked. "I see I can still make you squeal like a li'l piggy."

  "Yes, thank you very much." I loved it when he held me tight, and when stressed, I begged for more. "What do you think her chances are?" I asked, looking up into his kind face.

  He loosened his grip, letting his arms slide down to wrap around my waist. "She's out of the program, Marshal Balthrop made that clear, but he didn't seem to be happy about it."

  I thought of the marshal following her with his eyes, as if dreading the thought of never seeing her again. "I got the impression the marshal's feelings for Nancy go above a professional relationship."

  Caleb lightly stroked my cheek. "We don't always get what we want, sweetheart."

  I put my hand over his and kissed it. "The marshal thought she could still be in danger."

  "Arthur's friend—the one Mad Dog brought to the party—may be an issue."

  "How so? You mean because Arthur wasn't Dewey Treat? Do you think Nancy was right—that the guy was there to kill her husband? But how and when? You heard Nancy, she doesn't remember seeing him strike her husband."

  "Mad Dog's story is that the guy approached him at Bud's Place. Said he was trying to locate his old high school friend, Dewey Treat."

  I remembered the warmth of the night air, the smell of the beef sizzling over the coals, Mad Dog, secure in his flirtation with Pearlie, and the look on Arthur's face when introduced to Jack. "I can't believe Mad Dog was trying to get Arthur killed—humiliated maybe, but not killed."

  Caleb fingered my engagement ring, turning it round and round, humming thoughtfully. "I saw a picture of the real Dewey Treat. The guy was six-foot-four. I think Mad Dog's buddy knew he wasn't looking at the same man."

  "Some kids get all their growth after high school."

  "Mm-mmm."

  Caleb was partial to humming when he was doing some serious thinking, but I had to ask anyway. "What does that mean?"

  "We interviewed Mad Dog about this. He said the guy introduced himself as Jack Lee Carton."

  "Okay. Is that something special?"

  "Only if you're trying to hide your identity."

  "Spell it out for me, will you?"

  "You've heard folks refer to Jack in the Box as Jack le Cartón, haven't you?"

  "Oh my God! This guy was a killer after all?"

  "Or maybe he was here to check him out for his bosses."

  "But if this Jack person did murder Arthur, how did he do it?"

  "Deputy Everett and I interviewed everyone there. We took names and asked if they noticed any arguing or arm waving between the two men, or if Arthur had been pushed. No one saw anything that would indicate there had been an altercation or even an unkind word between them."

  "Could it have been a heart attack after all? Arthur came to us with a clean bill of health. Nothing was listed, not even allergies."

  "Can't speak to that, but Marshal Balthrop and I are going to attend the autopsy early tomorrow morning, so I'd better get home." Caleb kissed me. "Sure you don't want to come with me?"

  "Can't," I said, regretfully remembering his playful butt pinching. "I'd go with you in a heartbeat, but duty calls. Nancy has to get settled here, then I'm up at three for another round of killing bugs. But you can cross off one more day until our wedding."

  He nodded, knowing I was as duty bound as he would be in the same circumstances. He kissed me and left. I returned to the dining room, where Aunt Mae was regaling Nancy with stories about her fifty-year love affair with the cattle business.

  Pleased to see that I wasn't going to shirk my duty and run off with my fiancé for a night of passion, Aunt Mae, with the easy excuse of her age, left for bed.

  Pearlie leaned over to me and whispered, "Since we're into inviting friends over for supper, you won't mind if I invite Mad Dog some night soon, will you?"

  "Mad Dog … uh, I dunno, Pearlie. We don't usually socialize with employees."

  Her pale brows arched toward her forehead and she tilted her head at Nancy. "Oh, really."

  Nancy, poor thing, was shoving broccoli around her plate and never noticed that she was a point of contention.

  Extenuating circumstances had smeared the boundaries of work and family and there was no use trying to put that genie back in the bottle. Pearlie was likely to swoon for anything in pants if given half a chance, but no one ever called my cousin stupid.

  Then I had an idea.

  "Sure," I said, standing and signaling Pearlie to pick up dishes. "Invite Mad Dog to supper." We backed through the swinging doors to the kitchen and I got out the dish soap. "I'm sure he would enjoy your wonderful cooking." I started laying dishes into the soapy water. "Besides, I don't think he's met Nancy yet. It might cheer her up to have some attractive male attention again."

  Nancy, her arms loaded with dishes, backed through the door. "Who might cheer me up?" she asked, scooting in to accept a soapy dish to rinse for the drying rack. "And what are oleanders?"

  Pearlie, clearly vexed at the idea of Mad Dog at the same table as the younger, prettier, and recently widowed Nancy Einstein, was in full-on pout.

  I smiled. "We were just talking about Mad Dog Schwartz, our other pilot, and how Pearlie thought he might enjoy a home-cooked meal. And oleander is that lovely line of flowering bushes next to our property. They grow like weeds here and provide an attractive privacy screen between the house and the business."

  "They have flowers?"

  "Yes, we planted the red and white ones five years ago and they're already ten feet high. Pretty, aren't they?"

  "They are. But would they make the goat sick if he ate them?"

  "They're poisonous to animals and people. Flowers, leaves, stems, and stalks are all toxic."

  The plate in Nancy's hand slipped to the floor and wobbled around on its rim until it settled with a clatter. Her face ashen, she backed up and collapsed into a chair.

  I put down the dish I was washing. "Nancy, what's the matter, honey?"

  Her breathing was shallow and her big blue eyes were wide and staring. "I didn't know they were poisonous."

  "Oleander? Sure," I said, "everyone knows that."

  Nancy paled. "I didn't. I don't think Arthur knew, either." />
  The oleander branch has a natural taper to it that made it a perfect hotdog skewer, but no one I knew would chance it. "Did you use an oleander branch for the barbeque, Nancy?"

  She gulped and trembled. "Not for the kids—not for their marshmallows. They had those metal ones with the wooden handles. We ran out. I needed one more—for Arthur's hotdogs. A long one. He said he would find one—he—he brought it to the fire and stuck the flowers in my hair."

  I forced her head down between her knees.

  Pearlie's eyes lit in vicious amusement. With two fingers she used like sticks to prod a dying bird, she lightly poked Nancy's shoulder. "Family of five were all killed when they used oleander skewers for their picnic."

  Nancy was hiccoughing between sobs. "Oh my God! I killed him!"

  "And you never heard about that troop of Boy Scouts in San Antonio?" Pearlie was on a roll. "Same thing, terrible, terrible tragedy for their parents."

  "Okay, that's enough, Pearlie, I think we've got it—terrible tragedy. It was only the one, right, Nancy?"

  Nancy couldn't seem to control her trembling. "Arthur could eat a dozen all by himself. The guy had a hollow leg when it came to hotdogs."

  "Look, he didn't eat the oleander," I said, "he used it for a skewer. Surely that's not enough to kill someone." Even if he didn't ingest enough to kill him, I worried all the same. I patted her shoulder.

  Pearlie, clearly pleased with where this was headed, said, "That might be a complication if oleander poisoning shows up in the autopsy, but you're just going to have to put on a brave face and let tomorrow take care of itself."

  "See?" I said, adding a positive spin on my cousin's dour predictions. "It may not even show up in the autopsy report."

  Now that Pearlie had added that morsel for us to chew, she bid us good night and left for the room she shared with Aunt Mae.

  I settled Nancy into a cot I dragged out of a closet and tucking her in, crawled into my bed. We both had our bed lamps on, Nancy with an ancient Reader's Digest and me with Beryl Markham's West With the Night.

  Nancy was reading the same page over and over again. I know I couldn't concentrate on my book for wondering about that guy, Jack Lee Carton. A fake name. So, who was he really? If he was sent by the Las Vegas partners to kill Arthur, he missed his chance—that is, if Arthur really did die from a heart attack.

  But the real question, the one I'd forgotten to mention to either Marshal Balthrop or Caleb, was—how did the Las Vegas partners connect the dots? I mean, Arthur was an accountant in a Las Vegas casino. If they were looking to find him, how did they know that he'd be working as an aero-ag pilot in Modesto, California?

  Chapter Eight:

  Nancy and I did not have a restful night, and when my alarm went off at three a.m., she rolled out of bed and insisted on coming downstairs with me.

  With our elbows parked on the kitchen table, we blew steam from our mugs, deep in our own thoughts. When she sighed one more time, I tried to encourage her to go back to bed.

  "I couldn't sleep if I tried. I think I'll call Jim Balthrop later this morning, tell him about the oleander branch. Better now than later, huh? He'll know what to do. You want me to make your lunch?"

  She was too worked up to sleep for worrying the police were going to arrest her for her husband's murder and she wanted to make me a sandwich? How could anyone think this sweet girl would poison her husband? I bent over and hugged her.

  "I'm fine, thanks. About Pearlie, sometimes poison toads jump out of my cousin's mouth, but she had one thing right—don't worry about the oleander unless it becomes an issue—and it may not. Now, why don't you go take a nice hot soak in the tub before my cousin gets up and hogs the bathroom, or you'll be relegated to the pilot's washroom until suppertime."

  That got a smile out of her. "Sounds like a plan. By the time I'm dressed, Jim will be up."

  So now it was Jim? And she knew his hours? In an old habit, suspicious thoughts curled and twisted into one thought—could she have poisoned her husband to get out of WitSec for another man?

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  I was so distracted thinking about how, or who, could have killed Arthur, that I almost put chemicals on the wrong acreage, and only at the last minute did I wake up. I veered off, tilting a wing at the puzzled farmer as I soared away. Then I readjusted the air vents to blow away the blush on my face. I found the right acreage and finished my workday without incident or any more embarrassing flubs that would get me grounded.

  I was doing paperwork when Mad Dog came into the office and flopped down on the couch, billowing dust up into the air to settle onto my recently dust-free desktop. Waiting, I supposed, for me to take note of his latest complaint. It used to be Fitz, with his tone-deaf ear for singing off-key and his useless trivia, but at least Fitz was always cheerful. Mad Dog would be getting a pay raise with the new company taking over our business, so what could he have to grouse about now? I put down my pencil and motioned for him to get on with it.

  "I hope you know I was held at the Modesto police station for four whole hours yesterday while your boyfriend and that marshal checked out my story."

  "What story would that be—that Dewey Treat wasn't the seasoned ag pilot he claimed to be, or that his friend you brought to the party, Jack Lee Carton, was a fraud?"

  He touched the side of his nose. "I got a sixth sense about these things—uncovered Brad's addiction to pills, didn't I? What if you hadn't listened to me, and let Brad go on and fly into a power line and destroy one of those expensive Ag-Cats, or worse, crash into a schoolyard full of kids?"

  The thought of a crippled plane dropping into a schoolyard during recess was every pilot's nightmare. As for Brad, once I confirmed his addiction to pills, I'd fired him.

  Satisfied to see the pinch between my eyebrows, Mad Dog visibly relaxed. "It wasn't entirely your fault. I sure didn't figure him for Witness Protection, but I think it was the name—Dewey Treat—it didn't fit, did it? So what was he? Another one of those dumb schmucks who gets in the way, who just happens to overhear things they shouldn't?"

  It couldn't matter now, since Arthur was dead, so I gave him a pumped-up version, how Arthur bravely uncovered a money laundering scheme by some mobsters and then wore a wire to get the evidence the feds needed.

  Mad Dog absorbed all of this, and in a blink of an eye, went back to his favorite subject. "Well, I told you, didn't I? Maybe if you'd listened, he wouldn't be dead." Then his lips clamped together, a sure sign he was regretting the words. "Not that I could've done anything about it."

  I let him squirm in his chair while I twirled the pencil.

  "'Course, I did think it kinda strange the way that Jack guy walked into Bud's and sits down next to me," he said. "I mean, what're the chances?"

  "What else?"

  Mad Dog concentrated on some dust collecting on the tops of his work boots. "I was drinking," he said and held up a hand. "Only two… okay, three, and so maybe the beer was doing the talking, but I didn't think it would do any harm. I had Dewey pegged from the get-go—fake name, fake journeyman card. I was right, too, wasn't I? Think that pretty little wife of his is fake, too?"

  "If they weren't married, it's not an issue anymore, is it? Unless you're planning on hitting on her, too?"

  His eyes crinkled in amusement. "Pearlie said you were the jealous type."

  I waved away the gibe; like I could've had him instead of the Sheriff of Stanislaus County." As you well know, we don't require a wedding ring to work here, Mad Dog."

  "Well," he said, ignoring my reference to who might still be married, "if I'd been a little less drunk, I probably wouldn't have offered to give that Jack Carton fellow a ride to your party."

  "He held a gun to your head, did he?"

  "He was really pushy about it."

  "And what did he have to say? Did he tell you this was the same Dewey Treat he knew in high school?"

  He moved around on the couch, as if trying for a more comfortable position for the guilt he was
now wearing. "I'll tell you the same thing I told the marshal and Sheriff Stone; he was more interested in my military career than talking about his ol' buddy from Montana. Before I knew it, we were back to the bar and he was out of my truck like he had a plane to catch. He never even said thanks for the trouble of taking him to your party."

  Mad Dog was like a lot of guys, easily distracted by someone willing to listen to stories of his illustrious military career. "Did you see what kind of car he was driving?"

  "Police asked. I had other things on my mind."

  That would be his later date with my cousin Pearlie. "My cousin is a grown woman, but unless you've suddenly developed tons more than your usual charm, her grandmother will be soon giving you your walking papers."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence. But if you don't mind, I can handle her granny." He reached up and scrubbed at his ginger curls. "As for that Jack guy, it's kinda creepy to think I might've had a contract killer in my truck."

  I sat up straighter. "Is that what the police said—that he was a contract killer?"

  "That's all they wanted to talk about. Like I should've known the guy was some kinda killer." He looked up at me, worry creasing his brow. "It was kinda suspicious. How he died, right?"

  "It would really be ironic if Arthur had a heart attack brought on by his surprise visitor." At least I was hoping it was a heart attack. If the autopsy report didn't say he died because Nancy used an oleander branch for his hotdog. I would have to check on this and soon.

  Mad Dog got up off the couch and patted his slight paunch. "Still, not my fault," and strolled off for the showers.

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  An hour later I was on my bed, trying for a nap. The ceiling fan circled in a monotonously slow revolution as I considered how Arthur could have died. It was looking like Nancy was right—someone had murdered her husband. Then how? Could it have been the oleander? I didn't think so, but swung my legs off the bed and booted up my computer and did some research on oleander poisoning. Though goats seemed to instinctively avoid it, the whole damn thing is indeed poisonous to humans and animals. My Aunt Mae had to know that bit of trivia about the goats, and was simply enjoying the fun of teasing my dad. I read on: The toxin is a cardiac glycoside similar to digitalis, which if ingested or breathed as fumes can cause sweating, nausea, vomiting, respiratory depression, changes in heart rhythm, coma and death. It had to be ingested, or breathed into the body as fumes. It didn't sound like a skewer would do it. Still, we'd have to wait for the toxicology report from the medical examiner.