In Big Trouble

Chapter 25

They left a message for Al Guzman to meet them at the Liberty Bar, where Rick and Kris were to have dinner.

"If she shows," he said glumly, parking next to a lopsided old house that made the Tower of Pisa look stable. But once inside, Tess felt like Brigham Young regarding Utah. The long old-fashioned bar, the worn wooden floors, the smell of fresh-baked bread, the decadent chocolate cake beckoning to her from a sideboard-it was at once homey yet untamed, a place to seek comfort or adventure, depending on one's mood.

"Do you come here a lot?"

"All the time." He looked wistful. "Kris and I have had some of our best fights here."

They took a seat in one of the neon outlined windows overlooking the street. Older ghosts and goblins roamed the sidewalks here, and many of them had spilled into the bar. A devil brandished his pitchfork at a curvy vampire, while a doleful-looking man with an accordion was walking around in huge rubber chicken feet.

"Strange costume," Tess said.

"Old story," Rick said. "Suffice to say, a woman who dances with the man with chicken feet will live to regret it."

The waiter, dressed as a safari-bound Groucho Marx, greeted Rick with a familiar smile and a curious look for the woman who was not Kristina. He left them with fresh bread as they studied the specials on the menu. Pork chops, meat loaf, pasta, eggplant puree on parmesan toast, and-she couldn't help laughing at this-a "Maryland-style" crabcake that was billed as one of the house specialties. No crab for her, Maryland-style or otherwise. But everything else looked wonderful. Everything. Tess, whose Irish roots often had to fight to be heard over the domineering Weinstein genes, had found her inner Molly Bloom. Yes, her taste buds sang out. Yes, yes, yes.

She was not so far gone in her own appetites that she didn't notice how glum Rick still looked.

"Not to pry-" she began.

"You?" But she had gotten a smile out of him. "You're a professional pryer."

"It's just that you and Kristina bicker all the time, and you both seem to enjoy it immensely. So how did you end up having a fight-fight?" She was feeling very warm and wise. Now that she had all but solved the triple murders, she was ready to tackle anything. She could see herself on the radio, dispensing brisk, no-nonsense advice about love and marriage, or telling people how to manage their stock portfolios, repair their cars, build small nuclear weapons with household items.

"Honestly, I don't have a clue. It started out about there being no two percent in my fridge, and the next thing I know, she's slamming doors and saying I'm not serious about our relationship."

"You're the one who wants to marry her."

"She says the marriage talk is a joke to me, that I'd never mention it if I thought there was a risk of her saying yes. At least, I think that's what she said. I kind of zoned out in the middle part, somewhere between the two percent and ‘you son-of-a-bitch.' I was reading the sports pages when she started in on me. That columnist Robert Buchanan, man, he pisses me off. I mean, I'm not saying he should be a homer for the Spurs, but he could cut them a little slack now and then, you know?"

"When Crow and I were together, I was the one who buried my nose in the paper while he prattled." She remembered Charlottesville, the discovery of all the things she hadn't heard-assuming they had ever been said. "Just more proof that I'm not very feminine."

"Wouldn't say that. Wouldn't say that at all."

The compliment was automatic, mindless. Rick was still in his funk, while Tess's mind was racing, making connections someone should have made long ago. The fire at the Sterne house, the fire that was never started at Espejo Verde, despite the gas cans found there. Did Emmie's act prove that she knew the man who raised her was responsible for her mother's death, or was it just a coincidence? And all those psychiatrists, how scared Gus Sterne must have been when one had tried to recover Emmie's memories from the night of the triple murder. You could see how everything fit together if you took a step back. Guzman had been too close, for too long.

The paunchy homicide cop came into the restaurant as she was thinking about him. There was a split second before he spotted them, and Tess used this opportunity to study him. His eyes were so active, like a camera on a motor drive clicking away. She saw skepticism on his face, a hint of amusement at his surroundings. But the primary impression was of someone who made a constant inventory of wherever he happened to be, whether it was a restaurant or a murder scene.

Then he saw them, and his face was instantly more guarded.

"This the kind of place you hang out in?" he asked Rick, sitting down and helping himself to a piece of bread, reaching for the butter, then pushing it away. "Kind of girly, isn't it?"

"The food is good and they've got Shiner Bock on draft. Besides, Tommy Lee Jones always brings the out-of-town press here for all those profiles they're forever doing on him. If it's good enough for Tommy Lee Jones-"

"Then it's good enough for Tommy Lee Jones," Guzman finished. "Now what have you and this particular out-of-towner cooked up for me tonight? You going to tell me where to find your client?"

"I'm going to tell you why you don't need to find him." Tess had intended to be cool, to make Guzman work harder for what she knew, but she couldn't hold back. "Crow didn't kill anyone. Neither did Emmie."

"Yeah?" He was intent on his bread, which he had decided to butter after all.

"Seriously, you've got to listen to me. I know one of the first things police do in any homicide is look to see if anyone benefits from the murder, financially or otherwise-"

"Oh, you mean like that whole motive thing? You know, I knew there was something I forgot." He slapped his forehead with the palm of his free hand. "Twenty-one years on a case, off and on, and I forgot to check if there was a motive."

"No need to be sarcastic, guy," Rick put in. "She's assuming you did your job. So tell us, were there life insurance policies on the victims?"

"Okay, yeah, we checked that. Lollie Sterne's daughter was her beneficiary, while Frank Conyers left Marianna about five hundred thousand dollars. She's probably got more change rattling around in her sofa than that. The cook, Pilar Rodriguez, was the kind of old woman who kept her money in her mattress, so she didn't need an executor for her estate."

"There was a corporate policy, too, one that Lollie took out as a publicity stunt. It paid one million dollars if her hands were damaged. I'm assuming death counts as damage. That policy paid off, and Sterne Foods, which was about to be forced into seeking outside investors, was suddenly in very good financial shape."

Nothing registered on Guzman's face. Not surprise, not even mild interest. He just helped himself to another slice of bread. When he did speak, his voice was so mild that he might have been inquiring about the weather. "Why not just torch the restaurant, if you need insurance money? Why kill your cousin, and two other people?"

"Arson might have been the original plan," Tess said. "It was a Monday night, the one night the restaurant was supposed to be dark. Darden and Weeks came with gasoline. But the building probably wasn't worth nearly as much-"

"Fifty thousand, as a matter of fact. Yeah, I checked that, too."

"So I think the intent was just to cover their tracks after they killed Lollie. But they couldn't go through with it, because of Emmie. They couldn't kill a little girl."

"They could shoot two women in the head, and torture a guy, but they couldn't let a baby burn up? I guess everyone has their limits."

"It's consistent, though. They didn't hurt Danny Boyd, either, when they realized they had the wrong little boy. They could have killed him, or left him by the roadside. Instead, they tried to abandon him someplace relatively safe and got caught for their trouble."

"Wrong little boy?"

"Darden and Weeks meant to kidnap Clay Sterne. Check the arrest report. He was grabbed a half-block from the Sterne house."

Finally, she had Guzman's attention. She could almost see his mind opening beyond his intense dark eyes, taking in the new information and examining it from every angle.

He spoke slowly, deliberately, thinking out loud. "When Darden and Weeks were picked up for the kidnapping, they hadn't yet been linked to the triple murders. That was a lead we developed while they were in Huntsville. So at the time-"

"No one made a connection between the Boyd kidnapping and the murders. And even when they became suspects, the reason for the kidnapping seemed obvious-they took Danny Boyd to generate quick cash for their getaway. It all made perfect sense." She tried to find a smile that was conciliatory, without being smug or cocky. "Unless you know they intended to kidnap Clay Sterne. Two boys, both blond, about the same age."

She hadn't expected Guzman to start high-fiving her, but she had thought he would be more gracious. Instead, he chewed his bread, staring over her shoulder at the Halloween night crowds.

"So you're saying Gus Sterne hires these guys-to kill his cousin, a woman who was like a sister to him-because he needed money to keep Sterne Foods going, and then was crazy enough to think he could get away with not paying them?"

"I'm saying Gus Sterne was naive enough to think that he could pay these guys for their work, and they would go away. Once the job was done, I'm sure they blew it all, then demanded more money. There's about a two-week lag between the two crimes. They blackmailed Sterne, he balked, and they decided to take his son, to show how serious they were. Instead, they ended up with Danny Boyd and they went to prison, hoarding their secret because they still planned to cash it in. You said they obviously had money when they got out. That could have been hush money from Sterne."

"Okay, I'm with you so far. I don't believe a word of it, but I'm with you. So who killed Darden and Weeks?"

"Gus Sterne," Tess said, trying not to sound too triumphant. "He learned the hard way that you have to do these things yourself. He killed Darden and Weeks, and tried to frame Emmie for it. So the gun shows up under the bed, Crow's T-shirt ends up at the murder scene. But it's all credible, because everyone knows she's crazy enough to do anything. Whereas no one would believe Gus Sterne, San Antonio's great benefactor, could be responsible for his own cousin's death."

Guzman smiled. Worse, it was a fatherly smile, sweet and sorrowful and kind. The smile of someone who knows he has no choice but to disappoint you.

"It's not a bad theory," he began, and Tess knew then how bad it must be, that she had missed something crucial, that the devil, as always, lurked in the details. "But there are a couple things you couldn't have known, either of you. You, because you're not from here, and Rick because he was just a kid when some of this happened."

"Fourth grade," Rick confirmed. "I remember the cops coming to school after the kidnapping, reminding us not to get into strangers' cars."

"So you can't know that Gus Sterne was almost destroyed by his cousin's murder," Guzman said. "His business got much worse before it got better, and he neglected his wife, which probably set him up for the divorce that came a decade later. I saw this guy at the funeral-I did the motorcade. He was a zombie, a wreck. He sobbed, and he didn't care who saw him. Finally, he pulled himself together for the kids, for Clay and Emmie, and he turned Sterne Foods around by sheer will."

"You can grieve for someone whose death you caused," Tess said stubbornly.

"Yeah, but not for someone whose death you ordered," Guzman said. "A person who contracts a hit is a strange combination-a cold-blooded wimp. But, okay, let's say Gus Sterne's the greatest actor since Barrymore, that he faked out everyone. You still lose your motive, because he didn't use the insurance money to bail out the company. Yeah, we knew about the Lloyd's policy. It paid off to the corporation, sure-and Sterne used every cent of it to set up a foundation. A foundation in Lollie's name, not his. Neither he nor the business got a penny of it. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think anyone has three people killed because he's itching to set up a scholarship fund."

"Remorse?" Tess offered, but it sounded weak even to her. Guzman shook his head impatiently.

"Now let's talk about that other crime-solving favorite, opportunity, as it applies to the deaths of Darden and Weeks. As you know, the coroner can only come up with a range of time they've been dead. It's pretty interesting, actually, they use the maggots to date the corpse-"

"I've read about this, I don't need all the details," Tess said firmly. She was still planning to eat something after Guzman left.

"So, anyway, all we've got is a range. But the range says one thing: Gus Sterne couldn't have killed either guy. Because, as those who read the Eagle's business section know, Gus Sterne returned Sunday from an international restaurant expo in Tokyo, where he had been for the last two weeks."

"Have you seen his passport?" But it was Rick who jumped in, and he was too quick, too glib, a lawyer falling back on his instinct to match the other side point for point. "For all you know, the paper ran something from a press release. An article doesn't prove he was in Japan."

Rick was given the kind smile, too. "Well, if it comes to that, I'll check the airlines. In the meantime, if your client shows up, please remember I've got dibs." He stood, leaving behind a five-dollar bill for the half-loaf of bread he had consumed, waving Rick's hand away when he tried to push the bill back to him. "Ethics policy, Mr. Trejo. Can't have it get out that I let a criminal attorney stand me to even a slice of bread. I'm sure you understand. Drive safely."

The plunge from cocky conviction to abject humiliation is a fast, sickening one, and it doesn't mix well with alcohol. Tess drank anyway. She drank and she got maudlin, although she tried to disguise it at first.

Rick saw through her and hitched his chair closer, and his attempts to comfort her hurt almost as much as Guzman's fatherly smile. She must have looked very foolish indeed if Rick was trying to be genuinely sweet to her, with none of his usual smart-alecky comments or taunts. She drank bourbon, her appetite forgotten.

"Slow down," Rick said, as she drained her glass for the third time. "It's not a contest."

"Just my luck. This is one thing I do really well."

The Liberty was not quite as bustling as it had been when they had arrived an hour ago and she could hear the music over the speakers. She knew this melody. "That Lovin' You Feeling Again," the voices of Emmylou Harris and Roy Orbison entwined like a bower of wild roses. He gave her his love. She had wanted his heart. And some goddamn 2 percent, most likely. Tess hummed the last few bars as Orbison's yodel faded away.

"See, you do like country music," Rick said. His mouth was close to her ear, but it was all very brotherly and proper. A friend comforting a friend, nothing more. But she could change that. She knew, with a swift and terrible sadness, the power women have in such situations. Most women knew. How a look, a tone, the tiniest change in body language, the slight pressure of a knee or a hand, could transform such a platonic moment.

"I like you," she said. She wondered if this were true. She was in that gray space where she was still aware of what she was doing, but drunk enough so the alcohol could be her excuse if she kept going. Did she want to keep going? Rick had put his arm around her to comfort her, and it was still there. Rick was mad at Kris. Tess wasn't mad at anyone but herself, and she was so sick of her own company. She had not been with someone for such a long time.

"Have something to eat," Rick said. "A slice of chocolate cake, at least."

Of course, Rick belonged to Kristina, so it would be wrong, and she didn't really like him-not that much, not in that way. But if no one knew, if they just went to his car, parked in the shadows at the edge of the lot, and made out like teenagers, would it be so wrong? It would just be between Rick, Tess, and her karma. If no one knew, no one would be hurt.

"You son of a bitch." It was Kristina's voice, coming through the window. What a pretty picture they must have made for her, framed in the red neon that bordered the windows. "You goddamn son of a bitch."

"You're late," he said, confused by her anger. For he, after all, was still innocent, a guy doing nothing more than a good deed, who had no idea how close he had come to cheating on his girlfriend. But if he had yet to gauge Tess's intentions, Kristina had seen through her immediately. "Two hours late. I didn't think you were coming."

"So you start all but making out in public with whoever is convenient? Well, fuck you."

"We weren't making out," Tess said. Just contemplating it.

"You go, girlfriend," a man in a Mae West outfit hooted in falsetto, as the ghosts and witches surrounding Kristina nodded and yelled their support.

"You know, Kris, you're worse than any redneck racist," Rick yelled through the glass. "You see me with my arm around some woman-around Tess, who isn't my type at all, as you damn well know-and you think I'm on the verge of going to bed with her because I'm this hot-blooded Latino who can't keep it in my pants. But if I were to get jealous of you in the same situation, I'd be paranoid. The bottom line is you don't trust me. You don't want to marry me, and you're desperate to find an excuse, any excuse, so you can go running back to Wisconsin and marry some thick-headed Swede like yourself, and have lots of milky white children."

"I'm Norwegian, you asshole."

With that, Kristina ran across the street to her car. Rick bolted from the restaurant, and soon Tess saw his Lexus zipping past the window. She did the only thing she could think of, given the circumstances. She summoned the waiter, asked for the check, then inquired if it was difficult to catch a cab in this part of town.

Five hours later, in the grip of a guilt-induced insomnia, Tess finished Volume 2, Chapter 74, of Don Quixote. Or Don Quijote, as some of the new translations insisted. She had been working on the book so long that her copy was obsolete. Over the years, Kitty had tried to replace this worn, broken-back edition with newer, fresher versions, as if a new version was all it would take to get Tess to finish it. What she had needed was being spared the knowledge that it was so very good for her. The novel's virtue had always been the sticking point, as Don Quixote himself might have said.

"Death came at last for Don Quixote, after he had received all the sacraments and once more had disavowed his books of chivalry…Don Quixote was born for me alone and I for him; it was for him to act, for me to write, and we two are one…Vale."

Finishing it was strangely sad, sadder than finishing sex, which could be very sad indeed. The little death, as the French called it. No, what was really sad is what had driven her to finish it, how she had almost allowed herself to do something truly wretched because she was feeling sorry for herself. She was alone, more alone now that the book was finished. She had done something she had long meant to do, which should have filled her up, but instead it emptied her out. What would she put on next year's list, when she outlined her goals in a black and white composition book, her fall ritual for almost twenty-five years now? Perhaps: "Stop trying to sleep with other people's boyfriends."

It was three A.M., four A.M. in Baltimore, but she had to talk to someone. Kitty would understand. She would understand the book and all the varying types of sadness weighing Tess down.

She came on the line within two rings, her voice fresh and alive, as if she hadn't been sleeping at all.

"Tesser! Are you okay?"

"Physically. Spiritually, I think I racked up a few demerits tonight." The story spilled out, and Kitty listened, as was her great gift, saying nothing until Tess finished.

"You have to apologize," she said, her tone gentle but firm. "She doesn't have to forgive you, but you have to apologize."

Tess had hoped for something a little closer to absolution. "If you think about it, I didn't really do anything-"

"You would have. I love you, sweetie, but you've always had a covetous streak. Sometimes, I think you'd rather borrow someone else's boyfriend than have one of your own."

"Well, sure, there was Jonathan, but I'm not like that anymore."

"Apparently you are, and you're using the same rationalizations. You were feeling sorry for yourself. Just like when you got mixed up with Jonathan. Remember, you two had broken up, it was only after you lost your job and he got engaged that you started sleeping with him again. Have you ever stopped to think what would have happened if he hadn't died? He'd be married to someone else by now. He wasn't yours, honey. He still isn't."

Tess came close to making an angry reply. Unfortunately, Kitty had the advantage of being right.

"You're right, I have to apologize," she agreed. "I'll start with you, in fact. I'm sorry I called in the middle of the night. It was self-centered and thoughtless. But I felt so alone, and I needed to talk."

"Oh, I wasn't asleep, Tesser. I was having a little snack."

Tess smiled, happy to know things were back to normal in some quarter of the world. Kitty's predawn snacks were never eaten alone. "So I guess the UPS man kept wearing his shorts."

"Well, no-" Kitty sounded uncharacteristically flustered.

"Is it someone else? Is he right there? Or are you in the bedroom, waiting for him to bring you cold cuts on that white wicker tray?"

"No, I'm downstairs. What would you think if I moved my bedroom downstairs, into the big storeroom behind the kitchen, and moved the office upstairs?"

"Why would you do that? You'll be running up and down all day."

"Kitty!" It was a loud voice, a familiar voice, a voice that always made Tess feel as if she should drop and give someone twenty. But now there was a softness to the voice, a warmth that Tess had never heard before. "Do you want capers on your bagel, or just the smoked salmon?"

"Just the smoked salmon."

"That's Tyner! You're sleeping with Tyner!"

"We've spent a lot of time together in the past two weeks," Kitty said. "He started coming over at first because you hadn't called him. Things progressed from there."

"But-Tyner!" Esskay sat up in bed, instantly alert at the sound of any word beginning with a T, which meant "treat" in her limited vocabulary.

"He's very nice," Kitty said.

"Tyner!" Tess repeated. One of the hookers banged on the wall and told her to be quiet.

"We'll talk when you get home, sweetie." A muffled exchange. "Tyner wants to know when that is, by the way."

"I'd say sometime before hell freezes over, but it apparently just did. You're sleeping with Tyner! He's old! He's cranky! He's Tyner, for God's sake!"

"We'll talk when you get home," Kitty repeated. "I love you."

"Tyner!" Tess screamed to the empty line, and the hooker banged again, and Esskay wagged her tail harder, trying to wait patiently for this treat Tess kept screaming about.