The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(46)

Daylight filtered through the oak tree, the leaves a mesh of green and yellow. Looking up, I felt like I was under the weight of a giant gumball machine.

Maia said, "I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Ingram."

The older woman smiled. "My loss is nothing, Miss—"

"Call me Maia."

"I'm used to being alone, Maia. I hope you have many happy years with your soul mate, dear, but that just doesn't happen for some women. I accepted that long ago. My sister never did. Compared to Clara, I lost nothing."

I concentrated on the heat vapour rising from the flagstones, the reflections of the sun tea jars.

"When Jimmy called," Faye murmured, "I told him I couldn't help him. He was so insistent."

"He didn't believe the abortion happened in '67," I said. "He thought Clara had the child."

Faye Ingram stiffened. "How did you know?"

I told her about the paperwork at Jimmy's house, the birth certificate search.

She folded her hands in her lap. "Jimmy was quite irrational about it. His mood reminded me—I hate to say this—he reminded me of Clara. He claimed someone had told him about her pregnancy, told him the child had been given away for adoption."

"Who told him?" Maia asked. "How recently?"

"Jimmy wouldn't say. But I was with Clara in 1967, dear. I know the abortion happened." Ms. Ingram turned a page in her binder. "It would've been better for Jimmy if he hadn't dug into all that," she said softly.

She brought out a yellowing document with a rusty paper clip mark at the edge. She studied the paper, then looked up at Maia and me. "We kept Clara's suicide out of the press, but naturally I was curious. I asked for the police report. Take it. W.B. can hardly crucify me now."

Maia took the report, thanked her. "Ms. Ingram, would anyone want to kill Jimmy?"

"I didn't know my nephew very well, I'm afraid. Not since he was a child."

"Whatever happened to Ewin Lowry?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. There was a time, back in the mid1980s, when Clara got a scare. She thought he'd resurfaced, but nothing ever came of it."

"A scare," I said.

"Ewin called her—1987, this would have been, the twentieth anniversary of the day he left her. It was a horrible call. He caught Clara at a vulnerable moment. Ewin threatened to kill her, demanded money. He said he would be coming to find her. It was the last time Clara ever came to me for help."

"You went to the police?"

"Clara didn't trust them to help. She said she needed money, wanted to hire a private investigator to find out where Ewin was.

We tried that, had no success. A few weeks later, a letter from Ewin arrived in the mail.

And that was the last we heard from him."

Ms. Ingram sighed, fished around in her binder again. "You'll think me a ghoul, but here it is, that letter."

Sure enough, it was postmarked May 1987 from Waco, Texas. It was typed—no signature, no return address. It said,

Clara,

Don't think I have forgotten you. Soon we'll discuss retribution.

Simultaneously, Maia and I said, "May we keep this?"

We glanced at each other.

Faye Ingram looked amused. "You may keep it. You two are an interesting pair."

"Ms. Ingram," Maia said, "is there anyone else in the Doebler family who might be willing to help us? Anyone who might've spoken with Jimmy about your family history?"

Faye reached toward her oak tree, plucked a brown pod from the creeper plant. The berries inside the pod were splitting out, fat and neon orange as jawbreakers. She cracked the pod, held up one orange orb.

"Coral bean," she said. "Can you imagine anything prettier? Hard to believe they use these as fish and rat poison, isn't it?"

"Ms. Ingram?" Maia asked.

"I don't know, dear. You could try to speak with W.B. He would merely refer you to his lawyers. I'm afraid that unlike Jimmy, unlike me for that matter, W.B.'s very much a Doebler. He's become just what the family wanted him to be."

There it was again, the undertone of fear I'd heard the first time we spoke on the phone.

Maia said, "How old would Ewin Lowry be now, Ms. Ingram?"

"I don't think Ewin is still in the world, dear. I can't imagine he would've lived to be this old, with his knack for causing trouble. The private eye we hired took our money and vanished, stopped returning our calls. He never told us a thing of importance, though he did seem a rather incompetent sort." She looked at me. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Maia assured her. "Most of them never complete a proper training."

We traded collegial smiles.

Faye Ingram said, "You two work well together, don't you? Despite the bantering."

Neither of us responded.

Faye closed her old leather binder. One hand still gripped her bean pod full of poison.

"I have a sense for these things. You're very pleasant people. Thank you for having tea with me."

I looked at the tea glasses, which neither Maia nor I had touched.

We thanked Ms. Ingram for her time, left her sitting at her patio table, arranging coral beans into a loose necklace on its surface.