Act of Deceit

Chapter 19

“H ey, Harlan, you in there?”

Donnally’s body jerked forward, as if the voice had jabbed him in the back of the neck. The sound broke his mind free from the accounting scrawl lying before him on top of Mauricio’s desk.

In the previous two hours he had discovered that the little guy had done well by living cheap. He had about thirty thousand dollars in cash in the bank and at least ten times that amount in equity in his property.

The question that had been troubling Donnally as he stared at the figures was what to do with the money now that Anna wasn’t alive to collect it.

He looked over and saw Will with his hands cupped around his eyes and pressed against the dirty office window, his cook’s apron splattered with beaten eggs and pancake batter.

“Harlan?”

“Yeah, what do you need?”

Donnally walked over and worked the bottom of the weathered double-hung window back and forth until he could raise it a few inches.

“Nothing,” Will said, tilting his narrow head to speak through the gap. “Deputy Sheriff Asshole came by the cafe a few minutes ago. Said he had to speak with you, personal. I told him I didn’t know where you was, and I didn’t, till now.”

“He say why?”

“Nope.”

“You ask?”

All the skin not concealed by Will’s black eyebrows and the wide soul patch springing from beneath his lower lip flushed red.

“I didn’t think to do it until he drove away.”

“That’s okay. Thanks for the heads-up.”

Donnally glanced over at the few cars left in the cafe’s gravel parking lot. Two had snowboards clamped onto rooftop racks.

“How many came in for breakfast?”

“I think forty. I wish it had been thirty-nine. Deputy Asshole was saying that if his father was still sheriff there’d already have been some kinda investigation of Mauricio to find out what he was hiding. Asshole kept calling him Pancho just like his father used to. Can’t we just ban him from the cafe?”

“You mean put up a sign? No brains. No sense. No service.”

Will laughed. “But you’d have to add, This Means You, Deputy Pipkins, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to figure out that it was aimed at him.”

D onnally stood by the window after Will returned to the cafe. He wondered whether Wade Pipkins Jr. was just doing what his father would’ve done, but for which he no longer had the authority beyond what he commanded as the patriarch of his Sunday dinner table.

Whatever the answer, Donnally knew he had to destroy what remained of Mauricio’s real identity.

Three hours later, Mauricio’s fireplace had consumed all the documentary remnants of his hidden life, and five hours after that, not one of Mauricio’s fingerprints remained on a countertop, refrigerator, doorknob, bed table, or dresser. Even his truck interior, which had never seen a dust rag or vacuum cleaner, had been wiped clean and now bore a coating of Armor All.

If latents still existed from the forty-five-year-old murder, now they’d never be matched to Mauricio.

Deputy Pipkins appeared again at the cafe during the dinner rush.

“I need to talk to you, Harlan,” Pipkins said, standing in the kitchen doorway, blocking the waitress’s path.

“Coming through,” she said, jabbing him with her elbow and squeezing by with a tub of dirty dishes.

Donnally glanced over from where he was grilling a steak.

“We’re kind of busy around here.”

Pipkins straightened his five-foot-nine body that matched his father’s pound for pound, mustache for mustache, pudgy jowl for pudgy jowl, and said, “That’s not my problem.”

Donnally pressed down on the beef with a fork. The meat’s slight resistance told him it was medium rare and ready to come off the fire. He slid it from the pan to a plate, then passed it down the stainless steel counter to Will, who was waiting with a ladle of mashed potatoes.

Only then did Donnally turn to face the deputy.

“If you’re going to use one of your father’s lines, you better learn to use it at the right time.” Donnally gestured toward the chaos of the dinner rush. “Otherwise you’re just going to keep sounding stupid.”

“Fuck you, Harlan, one way or another we’ll be having a little talk about your pal Mauricio.”

Donnally lowered the fork.

“You find out who stole Pete Johnson’s mare?”

The deputy shook his head.

“What about the backhoe from Tractor City?”

Another shake.

“The graffiti at the elementary school?”

Clenched teeth.

“Unless you’ve got a victim claiming that Mauricio did them wrong, you better get back to doing your job.”

Donnally turned again toward the stove.

“And I’ll get back to doing mine.”