Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 by Susan Wittig Albert

saying—"
    But the old woman had closed her eyes,
her chin had dropped onto her chest, and she was snoring, her bootied foot
still propped on the chair.
    "She falls asleep like that all the
time," Donna said, sitting down at the table again. Her tone was at once
relieved and embarrassed. "You can't tell when she'll wake up, or what
she'll say when she does." She looked straight at Blackie. "You can't
believe a word she tells you, about Carl Swenson or anything else. She's
crazy."
    "What is your
aunt's name?" Blackie asked, picking up his pen.
    "Velda
Fletcher."
    "Her
age?"
    "Seventy-five.
Before she came to live with us she left her apartment and wandered around lost
for several days.
    She couldn't be trusted to live alone
any longer, so we take care of her."
    "When
was the last time she was out of the house?"
    "The last
time?" Donna said quickly. "Oh, it must have been a couple of months
ago. That was to go to the doctor." Her smile was small and tight.
"We can't allow her to go out, Sheriff. We have to watch her all the time
to keep her from wandering off and getting hurt. You can see for yourself that
she's not mentally competent."
    I looked up quickly.
Aunt Velda was a couple of bricks shy of a load, as we say here in Texas, but I
didn't believe she was as disabled as Donna made her appear. On Saturday, the
old girl had been eager to claim the credit for discovering the arrowhead cache
up at the spring and was proud of herself for helping her
nieces haul out the debris in the farm truck.
    The farm truck. I
pulled in my breath. Aunt Velda's old red Ford that couldn't be driven on the
highway because it didn't have current plates. But the old lady was allowed to
drive it around the farm, to make her feel she was doing something useful. Had
she driven it yesterday?
    "What is her social worker's name?"
Blackie was asking.
    "I'll get her
card," Donna said. Cradling her burned arm, she got up and opened a
cabinet drawer, fished for a moment, then came back to the table. "Here
it is," she said. "Shirley Cowan. You ask her, Sheriff, she'll tell
you that Aunt Velda is delusional. A couple of years ago, she got up one
morning claiming that she'd been abducted by the Klingons. Since then, she sees
an alien behind every bush." She laughed a httle, sadly. "She even
sees them watching her through the windows and stealing her underwear. She's
convinced that they set a trap for our dog, and she thinks they intend to
capture Mr. Swenson." She appealed to me for confirmation. "You heard
her talking about that just a couple of days ago, didn't you, China?"
    "When I was here on Saturday," I said
slowly. If I was going to say something about that damn truck, now was the
time.
    Blackie finished
copying the information from the card into his notebook. "So your aunt
didn't leave the house yesterday?"
    "Oh,
no, sir," Donna said. "Absolutely not."
    "And
your sister?" Blackie asked.
    "We were all
three right here together, all day and evening. If you don't believe me, you
can ask Terry." She laughed a little. "In fact, we can't go anywhere
until she gets the van working again. Our friend was nice enough to loan us her
little white Geo. We don't want to abuse the privilege."
    I wanted to believe
her but I was finding it difficult— and of course, if we asked Terry to
confirm, we'd get the same story, true or false. Belatedly, I opened my mouth
to ask about the farm truck, but Blackie was closing his notebook and standing
up.
    "Thank you, Miss
Fletcher," he said. "I think that's all the questions I have for you
at the moment." He glanced at Aunt Velda, snoozing comfortably in her
chair. I knew he'd like to wake her up and ask her what she had seen. But it
was clear that he wasn't going to get any more information out of her just
now, and if he did, it wouldn't be reliable. She might know something, but it
would take a lot of perseverance—and luck—to dig it out of her confused
memory.
    "Oh, there is one more
thing," Blackie added, as if it were