Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

far. No one saw a suspicious vehicle, or anybody leaving the scene on foot. I’ll have Mattie follow up with the Wauer woman.”
    Sheila made a note. “I wonder if that garbage truck always shows up at the same time.”
    Bartlett pursed his lips. “Let’s check that out. You’re thinking that maybe—”
    “Right. If this is a homicide, and if the shooter knew the neighborhood well enough to know what day and time the garbage truck picks up, it would be an easy thing to time the job for when the truck was on the street. I’ll give the garbage company a call, find out who was on today’s route. Maybe the garbage guys saw something.”
    Bartlett was frowning. “I was thinking how this would’ve gone down. No sign of a struggle, nothing out of place except for the chair and the beer on the floor. Seems to me that it had to be somebody Kirk knew—somebody who could come in, maybe talk a little, then step forward, pull a gun, and fire when he wasn’t expecting it. When he was still seated at the table.”
    “And if Dana Kirk didn’t write that email to herself, it had to be written by somebody who knew about the divorce,” Sheila said. “Who knew the wife’s name and email address or knew that it was in the address book on Kirk’s computer.” She glanced at Bartlett. “So what’s next?”
    Bartlett gave her that slanted grin of his, and she thought again of his reputation as a dangerous man. “You’re really gonna do this, aren’t you?” he asked. “Let me have the lead.”
    “Yep,” Sheila said, straight-faced. “Really gonna do it.” She liked this guy. Orlando would have liked this guy.
    “Okay.” He was brisk. “Okay, here’s what we do next. We take the computer for printing. We get a search warrant for the business, then we go to the shop, have a look around. Pull the names of the employees, talk to them, see what they know about this stalker Kirk mentioned.”
    “Timms’ computer,” Sheila put in. “Where is it?”
    “In the evidence locker at the station. Timms didn’t find it when he broke into the shop. Somebody had stuck it in one of the file cabinets.”
    “Might be a good idea to ask Annetta Blount to take a look at the data files on Timms’ machine,” Sheila said. Blount was one of the detectives who worked under Bartlett, specializing in fraud and financial crime. She had taken a couple of courses in forensic computing at the academy. “See if she can find whatever it was Timms didn’t want anybody to see. That is, if there is such a thing, which we don’t know.”
    “Yeah. I’ll put her on it.” Bartlett glanced at his watch. “After I leave here, I’ll stop by the station, leave Kirk’s laptop, and punch up the warrant request. I’ll get the warrant signed and meet you at the computer shop—say, maybe forty minutes.” He paused, thinking. “Hey. We haven’t cleared the break-in yet. We might not need a new warrant.”
    “Uh-uh. We’re both thinking homicide, Jack. New case. May be connected to the break-in, but maybe not. Let’s do it by the book, so we don’t get any crap from anybody when we go to trial.”
    “Especially crap from the chief.” Bartlett grinned.
    This time, Sheila returned the grin. “Right. I’ll phone the judge and let her know you’re bringing the warrant.” She paused. “Okay if I take the Polaroids? I didn’t get a chance to look at them.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    There was another clap of thunder, closer. Sheila looked up. The sky was gray and dark. “Maybe we ought to get something to eat before we do the shop. You think?”
    Bartlett put out his cigarette and bagged the butt. “Sounds good. There’s a fast-food joint across the street from the computer shop. Meet you there.”

Chapter Seven

    If you have ever tangled with the greenbrier vine [
Smilax bona-nox,
aka catbrier, blaspheme-vine], you can appreciate its common names. The thorns cling like the claws of a cat and have induced more than one blasphemous response from this explorer.
    Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest
by Delena Tull
    The name bona-nox means “good night” in Latin. Why did Linnaeus give [the catbrier] this unusual name? Perhaps bona-nox was a curse in Latin—the species certainly causes lots of cursing by field biologists when they get stuck by its prickles!
    Charles Wilson Cook
    McQuaid and the kids and I live off Limekiln Road, twelve miles outside Pecan Springs, at the western edge of the developed part of the Hill