Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 Read Online Free PDF Page B

field jacket with corporal's stripes
on the sleeve. But today she had added a rainbow-hued crocheted shawl and a
green-and-purple knit cap, pulled down to her ears so that her straggly gray
hair hung down beneath it like a dirty floor mop. A purple plastic badge was
pinned to the cap, with / Am
a Klingon emblazoned on it in
silver letters. "Hello, Aunt Velda," I said.
    "What you doin' out today, China?" the
old lady asked. "Colder'n a witch's tit out there." She fished in
several pockets and pulled out a crumpled brown-paper cigarette, hand-rolled.
She lit it and peered at me through the smoke. "You ain't seen Carlos
hangin' around, have you?"
    "His name isn't
Carlos, Aunt Velda," Donna said patiently. "It's Carl. Carl Swenson.
And I wish you wouldn't smoke in the kitchen." She got up and poured a cup
of black coffee for her aunt.
    "Pie, too,"
the old lady said imperiously, ignoring Donna's request. "Cut me a piece
o' that pie, girl. Tastes better to me, remember'n' how mad Carlos got over
them pecans." While Donna was cutting another piece, Aunt Velda leaned
toward me and giggled, like a teenager sharing secrets. "Shoulda seen
him, stompin' around an' wavin' his arms and yellin' 'bout them pecans. Boy
howdy, that was funny! Made me bust out laughin' right to his face." She
narrowed her pale blue eyes, blew out a stream of smoke, and sat back.
"But that boy ain't long for this earth. I beamed his vectors up to the ship
and they're fixin' to set a trap for him, like they did for Max. Only Carlos
ain't as smart as Max. He won't git away. Where's that ashtray, Donna?"
    "It wasn't the
pecans he was yelling about, exactly," Donna said to me. With a resigned
look, she put a metal ashtray in front of her aunt and sat down. "It was
the land where the trees are located. Which is what Terry and I wanted to talk
to you about."
    "Too bad," I replied.
"Nothing makes for hard feelings like a land dispute." I sipped my
coffee, thinking that Carl Swenson wasn't someone I'd like to provoke. He had a
taut, tense look, like a man riding a nasty, reined-in temper. "How did
the misunderstanding come about?"
    Donna didn't answer
right away, and Aunt Velda spoke up. "Reason Carlos has gotta go,"
she said grumpily, "is that he poisoned poor old Lizzie. Like this."
She dumped three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her cup and began to stir it
with a violent motion, slopping the coffee onto the tablecloth.
    "Carl Swenson
put sugar in your gas tank?" I wasn't exactly surprised. There was
something furtive about Swenson. He struck me as the kind of man who'd prefer
to come at your back, rather than take you on face to face.
    Donna put her hand
over the old lady's. "We don't know for sure Carl did that," she said
quickly. "We have no evidence."
    "They saw
him," Aunt Velda replied, still stirring, still slopping. "From the
ship. When they re'lized how much trouble he wuz causin' down here, they
decided to take him up there." She glanced pointedly toward the ceiling, chuckling
slyly. "They got uses for dimwits like Carlos Swinberg, y'see. They put
'em to work scrubbin' decks and washin' dishes, stuff like that. Them big
ships, they take a lot of housekeepin', which Klingons don't much cotton
to." "Aunt Velda," Donna said, "please don't—"
"Hey, China," the old lady said. "Did I ever tell you 'bout my
trip across the galaxy? Eight years, two months, and sixteen days I wuz gone,
and when I got back I wasn't one second older'n when I left. Didn't do no
dishes, neither. They treated me like I wuz a queen. Had a window seat the
whole trip, champagne, movies, even a pair of them little felt booties to keep
m' tootsies warm."
     
    Donna gave up trying to reason with
her aunt and turned to me. "To answer your question, the disagreement came
about because we didn't have the money for a land survey when we first bought
this place from Carl."
    "Had
he owned it for a long time?"
    "It was part of
his family's ranch. This house used to be the ranch manager's house. We