Black Joint Point

16

Dinner was the ‘Vengeance Is Ours’ special: grilled hammerhead, with little plastic cups of melted butter for dipping, drippy corn on the cob, and French fries thick as a finger. Whit Mosley and David Power sat in the canopied shade of the oaks bending over Stubby’s. The food was excellent but the locale was not gourmet; rather, Stubby’s was a trailer, with a walk-up window and a barbecue in the back that offered up pork ribs and brisket, except this morning Stubby’s son had snagged a hammerhead on the edge of St Leo Bay and the unlucky shark debuted on today’s menu. The tables were old cable spools, upended, each one surrounded by stumps weathered smooth from the rubbing of a thousand butts. Clouds filled the evening sky and it was still too warm and sticky for comfortable outside eating, but David wanted Stubby’s. Plus fewer people meant it was less likely they would be overheard.

David bit into his shark, which made Whit think it was truly a dog-eat-dog world.

‘Let’s get one thing clear. I’m not gunning for Lucy because you’re involved with her. You could give me some credit. I can’t not consider Lucy. You understand that.’

‘But you do have this other suspect. Jimmy Bird.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘His wife hates your guts. She called me. I called Hollis about it. She got an idea that Jimmy ran off to New Orleans.’ Let him talk to Sheriff Hollis about it, Whit decided.

‘Well, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You were too busy telling me about Lucy,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Bird asked me not to talk to you.’

‘She’s just a drunk.’

‘I got an anonymous tip today.’

David lowered his corn, butter dripping from his mouth. ‘Aren’t you popular?’

‘I heard Patch Gilbert asked around town about quietly raising a hundred thousand dollars.’

‘For what?’

‘That I don’t know.’

‘I assume the tip didn’t come from a loan officer at a bank?’

‘No. Hence the anonymous,’ Whit said with a thin smile. ‘But don’t you think it would be wise to check Patch’s finances? Maybe see if he owed debts, gambling, I don’t know what, but this had to be big.’

‘We’re already on that,’ David said. ‘Jesus, a hundred thou.’

‘According to Lucy, his other niece, Suzanne, asked for a loan in that amount. Suzanne denied it to me. Said she asked for ten thou, Patch said no, she got the money from a friend. Lucy claims she and her ex-con boyfriend have gambling problems.’

‘Lucy’s sure well-informed.’

‘Patch had money,’ Whit said, ignoring the jab. ‘At least he was land-rich. I don’t see why he would need to be trying to get a private loan.’

‘You sure you don’t know who this tip came from? Was this a phone call?’

‘It’s just anonymous, okay?’ Whit said. He owed Gooch his life; if Gooch wanted anonymity, Whit gave it to him. The lie felt slick and unpleasant on his tongue but he didn’t change his mind.

‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ David wadded up the wax paper that had held his grilled shark. ‘That’s all right. I’m not going to bust your chops over it, Judge. I mean, you’re an officer of the court. A public official. You sure don’t owe anything to law and order, no, sir.’

Treat it like any other tip.’

‘You sure this didn’t come from Lucy?’

‘It wasn’t Lucy.’

David mopped at his mouth with a napkin, picked shark from between his front teeth. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘It wasn’t Lucy.’

‘I mean, it’s one family member pointing the finger at another, right, maybe just a little. A little?’ David held up his forefinger and thumb a centimeter apart.

‘I know you don’t actually suspect Lucy,’ Whit said and made his tone sure.

‘Was she with you Monday night?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did y’all do Monday night?’

‘You already questioned her.’

‘I’m asking you, Your Honor.’ Stress on the final two words. ‘As an officer of the court.’

Whit tore a French fry in two. ‘We had dinner at my place. Watched a movie.’

‘What for dinner, what movie?’

Asshole, he thought. ‘Gazpacho. Grilled trout. A salad. Some Australian white wine she brought. I cooked the fish. The movie was Shakespeare in Love. She rented it.’

‘Didn’t think you did. And she didn’t spend the night?’

He could argue but decided not to. They had nothing to hide. ‘We both had busy mornings scheduled. She went home about eleven.’

‘And you?’

‘I went to bed.’

‘When did you see Lucy next, Judge?’

‘When she showed up at the courthouse to tell me Patch was missing.’

‘She’s in big debt. That psychic network thing? Well, you got lots of kids calling it. Parents bitch, charges get cut. Or the folks that charge up on their credit cards, they default, don’t pay. But that don’t mean Lucy’s staff, her expenses, get cut, too. She’s gotten in deep financially. She tell you about getting sued by a couple of creditors in the past month?’

Whit was silent.

‘I thought not,’ David said after a moment. He licked butter and shark from his fingers.

‘That is still a real long road from murdering people the way Patch and Thuy died.’

‘I found your button, now, didn’t I?’ The smile was coldly amused. Miffed, Whit saw, over the tips, over Mrs Bird calling him, over the idea of Whit having an advantage.

‘I suppose Claudia was the same button for you,’ Whit said, knowing as soon as the words were fired they’d hit like bullets.

David didn’t blink. ‘I’m over Claudia. You can tell her that the next time you see her.’

‘You want to make trouble for Lucy? Fine. But watch where you step. Be very careful, David, because you take a misstep, I’m going to be on your ass like white on rice. I think I’ll have a talk with your boss about these skeletons, since you don’t seem to think they matter very much.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ David stood. ‘I’m keeping every angle open. That’s what an investigator does. But I’ll give you a piece of advice, Judge. I don’t think you can afford Lucy Gilbert. The press won’t be kind, and they love a little funky twist like her maybe killing two old folks to get the money to salvage her psychic hotline business.’

‘I think you love the funky little twist more than finding out the truth.’

‘Whatever,’ David said. ‘But you keep telling me to lay off Lucy Gilbert, I’m telling the press. I got the perfect phrases already in mind. And you’re gonna be in front of a judicial review board or facing a recall election in two seconds flat.’

‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘Don’t worry. If she did it, I won’t ask you to sign her arrest warrant.’

After David dropped him off at the courthouse, Whit drove home, to the guest house behind his family’s grand Victorian, to do chores on his computer and gather some clean clothes before heading back over to Patch’s to stay the night with Lucy. His father, Babe, and his Russian mail-order stepmother, Irina, weren’t at home and he felt a tickle of relief. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone. In his small kitchen, Whit poured himself a glass of ice water, then flopped on the couch, wanting to get back to Lucy but grateful for the peaceful quiet of the moment. He propped his feet up on the table. He’d head over to Lucy’s in a few, get to bed early if Lucy let him. Tomorrow was Friday, the long, annoying haul of juvenile court, his least favorite judicial chore, and then he’d…

His bedroom door was shut.

He never left it shut; in the little house in the summer, the window units froze a closed room into a miniature Antarctica and left the other rooms sticky-warm. You had to be careful; sometimes the door, old and a little warped, closed on its own if he brushed past it the wrong way.

Whit went to the door and listened to the rattle and hum of the overtaxed window unit. He opened the door. His bedroom was as he’d left it when he’d last slept in it, the night Patch died: books stacked next to the bedside phone, bed made in haste, dirty clothes in a tidy pile, ready for his Saturday laundry duty, closet door shut. He went to the closet, opened it. Clothes hung in neat lines, a cavalcade of ugly-bright tropical print shirts. In the corner was his computer and a small desk he used for work at home, with a few file folders and the Texas Civil Practice books. Nothing gone.

But the room felt subtly shifted, as though every item was just a hair out of place. He went through his files, his drawers, glanced under the bed. Nothing was missing. But the files on his desk were in two stacks instead of one, the books on his desk were leaning, and he hated that.

The room had been searched. He felt the odd tingly linger of an intruder in his space.

He went back to his front door. The lock appeared whole and unscratched. He checked his spare key – still hidden under the porch’s neglected potted fern. He inspected the windows. A back window wasn’t locked and he couldn’t remember when – if – he had unlocked it. He locked the window, went back to the den, refilled his water glass.

He tried calling Claudia Salazar at home, wanting a shoulder to bitch on about David Power. No answer. He tried Gooch’s cell phone. No answer either; Gooch was still presumably en route to New Orleans.

So who was in your house?

He checked every room. Maybe he had bumped the door the last time he left and it had shut on its own. Maybe David talking to him about Lucy – about what he didn’t know, her inheritance, her debts – made him paranoid. Christ, what else about her life didn’t he know?

Maybe she was embarrassed. Maybe she was ashamed.

It was time to get David off Lucy, time to find evidence that would point elsewhere. David was competent but not imaginative. He might dismiss Patch wanting secret funding of a hundred thousand or the skeletons found with the bodies. They could be little fringe elements that had nothing to do with the heart of the case. And Gooch looking for this Alex in New Orleans might lead nowhere fast.

So what else did he have? The name on the bottle, the guy Suzanne mentioned as interested in buying Black Jack Point.

Whit took his drink and sat down at his computer. He logged onto the Internet, opened a search engine, and did a search for Stoney Vaughn.

Results were few – a couple of articles in the Corpus paper, an article in some highflier financial magazine Whit had never heard of. He’d risen fast in the investment world, the kind of quotable grandstander the press loved. Scrappy son of shrimpers killed when he was at the University of Texas – where he’d gone on a full scholarship. Economics and history degree, MBA from Stanford. Worked for a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley for a while, took a hit in the dot-com bust, came back to Texas, and apparently started phoning the Social Register to get clients. The newspaper article included a picture. Average-looking, confident, hair a shade too glossy, a hint of gut, cool, confident, the kind of young man the numerous wealthy old ladies of the coast liked to have handle their money.

Not much else. Another link on the Corpus Christi Caller-Times site when he’d opened his office, another when he’d built that monstrosity of a mansion out on the Copano Flats, a link to something called the Laffite League. He clicked on the link.

A simple Web site opened, with an old portrait of a rakish man who wore a broad mustache and looked every inch the gentleman robber. Underneath the portrait was the text: The Laffite League explores and celebrates Jean Laffite, the great pirate of the Gulf one of the most unusual and mysterious figures in American history. Membership is open to all at dues of $50/year. We have chapters in New Orleans, Galveston, and Corpus Christi with a total membership over 100. We are academics, historians, teachers, students, businesspeople, jet pilots, nurses, retirees – anyone interested in the days of old. We sponsor trips to Galveston, Grande Terre, and other sites to explore Laffite history and also offer a quarterly newsletter on all matters Laffite-related.

Below the statement were links to newsletter archives, an on-line forum for Laffite discussion, and sites for historical research. And below that, a list of officers of the League, with Stoney Vaughn as president of the Corpus Christi chapter. He searched through the rest of the site. No mention of Patch Gilbert.

A fan club for a dead pirate. An overdue book about Laffite. Skeletons. Arid Stoney Vaughn, giver of whiskey, buyer of land, whose name kept sidling into view.

Whit clicked back to the newsletter articles, wondering if there was much discussion about buried treasure. He found none – this was all straight, well-footnoted history. The articles ranged from detailed analyses of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, where Laffite played a key role, to speculation of Laffite’s ultimate fate. Several of the articles were attributed to a writer named Jason Salinger, and the short bio at the end of each minutely researched piece indicated Jason was a freelance writer working in Port Leo, Texas.

He looked up Jason Salinger in the phone book. Not listed. He could track him down tomorrow.

He saw, through his window, his father moving in the soft glow of the kitchen lights in the big house and headed up there.

‘You want me to change the locks?’ Babe Mosley said after Whit explained.

‘Just as a precaution, Daddy.’

‘Why on earth would anyone be breaking in and then not taking anything?’ Babe sipped from a cup of decaf, still a big man at sixty, his face creased and handsome.

‘I don’t know. But I’d feel better if you changed the locks.’

‘I’ll call the locksmith tomorrow.’ He lowered his cup. ‘You staying out with Lucy again?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come stay here.’

‘She wants to be at Patch’s house, and I don’t want her to be alone.’

‘I wish y’all would just stay here,’ Babe said. ‘I’d sure sleep better.’

‘We’re fine.’

Halfway up toward Black Jack Point, he thought, Why wait? See if Stoney Vaughn’s at home tonight. Ask him about the Gilberts.

He drove past the Point, toward Copano Flats, looking for a big-ass mansion.