In Big Trouble

Chapter 27

Before setting out, she stopped at La Casita to ask Mrs. Nguyen to keep an eye on Esskay for the rest of the day. She found the two fast friends watching yet another telenovela-Mi Amor, Mi Vida-and sharing a bag of pork rinds.

"Don't let her have too many of those," Tess cautioned. Esskay gave her a smug look, confident that she could charm the birds out of the trees. Or at least pry the pork rinds from Mrs. Nguyen's fingers.

"Okay. When you coming home?"

"No idea."

"Better take a jacket."

"Jacket? It's eighty-five degrees out there."

"See the sky?" Tess glanced at the little slice of sky visible from La Casita's office. It was bright blue, with a few white fluffy clouds. "No, other sky," Mrs. Nguyen said. "Blue norther coming in, from the northwest. Much rain, cool weather behind. Temperature drop twenty, thirty degrees just like that." She snapped her greasy fingers. "Chris Marrou on Channel Five said."

"I'll take a jacket, Mom," she said.

"And your gun!" Mrs. Nguyen called after Tess. "Always good for a girl to have her gun."

The cool front was only a rumor as Tess drove, windows down, re-covering all the ground she had covered in the past few weeks. She drove down the St. Mary's strip, where Primo's was already advertising "Lunch Box Nite!" and a new band called the Urkels. But the creepy manager was at the bank, and the smiling bartender had no news of Crow. She circled the Morgue, a forlorn place in daylight, all its doors locked and bolted, even the back entrance off the loading dock. She found the duplex on Magnolia Drive, where Crow's Volvo was still parked in the back. Had he left his car because he knew where to rendezvous with Emmie all along? She didn't think so. She thought Crow had done what she was now doing, moving in ever-widening circles, trying to find Emmie by visiting what he knew of her past. But Emmie had the home-field advantage.

She headed to Hector's, much scarier at three P.M. than it had been at two A.M. No Crow, no Emmie, she was told. Not since last Saturday night. Did she know if they would be there tomorrow? Doubtful, very doubtful.

The rhythm of driving was addictive, she couldn't stop. As long as she was moving, she was doing something. No location, no matter how tangentially related, should be overlooked. She ate an early dinner at Earl Abel's, glided past the Sterne house on Hermosa, cut over to Austin Highway, and saw the lonely band of picketers keeping vigil outside Sterne Foods. Her knowledge of San Antonio exhausted, she headed north, bypassing the town of Twin Sisters this time and going straight to the old Barrett place. She told herself she'd try Austin next, drive all night if she had to, watch the sun come up over I-35 and head back into San Antonio, repeat the whole crazy loop. Momentum was the only thing she had going for her.

Crime scene tape marked off the pool house at the Barrett place and a new pane of glass had replaced the one she had cut, but it was otherwise as she had first seen it. She shouldered her knapsack and walked around the house a few times before she peered through a kitchen window. There was a dark shape on the floor in the main room. Her stomach clutched-she really wasn't up for finding another body. But this shadow was flat and still, nothing more than the corner of a blanket, or a bedroll.

A bedroll? There had been nothing lying on the floor when she had made her first inventory of the house. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and stepped over the threshold.

"Hello?" she called.

"What do you want?"

The voice came from behind her. Crow stood in the doorway, backlit so she couldn't really see his face. The sky beyond him was unlike any she had ever seen-dark gray, with a stripe of navy blue on the horizon. A blue norther. She hadn't realized the term was so literal.

"You're alone?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I am, too."

"I know. I hid in the grove of pecan trees when I heard a car on the gravel driveway. I wouldn't have come out if anyone had been with you. Even Rick. I'm not turning myself in, Tess. Not yet."

"Not until tomorrow, right?"

He had come all the way into the house, and she could see his face now. He looked surprised and a little irritated. "How do you know about tomorrow? How did you find me?"

There was one answer for both questions. "Because I know you."

"You did once," he said. "Not anymore."

"No, it's the other way around. I know you better now than I ever did when we were together. Looking for you, I began to understand you, to find out things I should have known all along." His face remained guarded, closed to her. "There were times when I didn't understand you. But I always knew you wouldn't be involved in murder, Crow."

"Well, I'm not," he said, sounding at once angry and relieved. "But I can't go to the police, Tess. They'll keep me, thinking I can tell them where Emmie is. I can't. My only chance to find her is tomorrow."

"What is it about tomorrow? You've been fixated on that date since I got here."

"It's All Souls' Day-and the day of the All Soul Festival parade."

The parade, Gus Sterne's brainchild, his ego trip through the streets of San Antonio. "So what's Emmie going to do, Crow? She can't burn down a parade."

Instead of answering, he walked past Tess into the main room, where he crouched in front of one of the built-in bookcases. From the lowest shelf, he pulled out a scrapbook, then sat on the bedroll, inviting Tess to sit by him.

"Do you know where we are?" he asked, opening the book. It was a pretty volume, with a moss green velvet cover and pale gray pages.

"On the old Barrett place, near Twin Sisters, somewhere between Austin and San Antonio, in the state of Texas, in the United States of America," she answered dutifully.

"We're at a trysting spot. Two lovers used to meet here. Two lovers forbidden to be lovers. They met here and they promised to love each other forever and ever, despite the world's disapproval, despite all the obstacles in their path. One of them broke that promise, and the other one can neither forget nor forgive."

He began flipping through the pages, and dust from pressed flowers rose into the air, their fragrance long gone. The first few pages were filled with photographs. A Polaroid, the kind taken in restaurants, of two men and three women, laughing over their margaritas. Tess recognized Marianna Conyers and Gus Sterne, guessed that she was looking at the long-dead Frank Conyers and the long-gone Ida Sterne. The third woman looked like Emmie-more correctly, like the woman Emmie was in the process of becoming. Lollie Sterne. Her obituary was pasted beneath the Polaroid and Emmie had circled her own name among the survivors, then written "Survivor's List?" in the margin in the same red crayon.

"She thought it would make a good name for a band," Crow explained.

"An odd photo to save."

"It's the only one she has. Gus couldn't bear to have photos of Lollie around, after the murder. He put them away, planning to give them to Emmie one day. For obvious reasons, that never happened."

Next page. A tall, handsome man with two blond children on tricycles. Emmie smiled into the camera with a charisma that had not yet soured into craziness. Little Clay stared at the ground, sulky and cross. Gus Sterne looked at Emmie. More family photos, clippings from the society pages, more fragile remains of old corsages. Gus Sterne and family at this gala or that. Ida was in some of these, then she disappeared, with no explanation or acknowledgment.

With or without her, the dynamic was always the same-Emmie looked into the camera, Clay looked away, features twisted into a pout or a frown, Gus looked at Emmie as if startled by a particularly lovely ghost. It was like watching a rosebud unfurl-Emmie looked more like Lollie with each passing year. Here she was as the princess of the Order of the Alamo, escorted by her grim-faced cousin. Emmie at a picnic. Emmie backstage, in costume for a school play. Oklahoma, given the gingham dress and the comical hat. The girl who can't say no. Every picture told a story. Every picture told the same story: A radiant young woman, an unhappy boy, an older man who could not take his eyes off the young woman.

"Jesus," Tess said.

"There's more," Crow said. She was barely listening. Had Clay known his father and Emmie were lovers, or had he merely guessed? Technically, it wasn't incest, not by blood, but Gus had raised Emmie as his daughter, so it might as well be.

Crow turned another page, to a glossy photo razor cut from a book. This was a famous image, one Tess knew: The old Life photo of a woman lying on the hood of a crushed car after jumping from the Empire State Building.

"The twentieth century's version of the Lily Maid of Astolat, who died for the love of Lancelot," Crow said. "That's Emmie's fantasy. She'll jump, and hit the hood of the car, the old Lincoln, and it will carry her down Broadway. I've told her dying isn't as easy as it looks, but she's determined. When she realized I intended to interfere with her plan, she decided to get rid of me. She's the one who put the gun under my bed, then called the cops."

"So you do think she killed Darden and Weeks."

"No. Emmie's not a killer. But she doesn't care about them. She doesn't care about anyone. Nothing is important to her, except making this grand, stupid, insane gesture."

"All for Gus Sterne."

Crow looked perplexed. "Who said anything about him?"

"You showed me the pictures." She took the scrapbook from him, flipped back to the earlier pages. "You told me about the two lovers who met here secretly. I put it together."

"You put it together wrong. Emmie wasn't in love with Gus, for Christ's sake. She's in love with Clay."

"Clay?" That raw, unfinished boy-someone was willing to die for him? But Tess was coming to realize that it was futile to try to understand who might love whom, or why. She thought of Kitty and Tyner, of Kitty and Keith, of Kitty and everyone. Of Rick and Kristina, even the squabbling couple on the bridge above the River Walk, comical to everyone, but not to one another. Lovers made sense only to themselves.

"Since high school," Crow said, answering one of her many unvoiced questions. "Gus found out and forbade them to see each other. Clay, dutiful as ever, agreed. Emmie didn't. That's when she tried to burn the house down. When she left the psychiatric hospital, she followed Clay to Austin and they started again, meeting here. Then, about a year ago, Clay suddenly broke off all contact, with no explanation. In May he moved back to San Antonio-and into his father's house. He chose Gus over Emmie. At least, that's how she sees it."

"May-that's about the same time a band called Poe White Trash arrived in Austin."

Crow nodded ruefully. "Yep. I was looking for a girl singer. She was in the market for an accomplice to her self-destruction. We both got more than we bargained for."

"Did she tell you her whole saga, or did you just figure it out?"

"A little of both. I knew about her mother's murder before I met her-she wasn't shy about milking her past, whether for publicity or sympathy. One night up here the two of us ended up on a real maudlin drunk, literally crying in our beer. I showed her my broken heart, she showed me hers. She told me she had a fantasy about killing herself in front of Clay. Later she denied everything, said it was the liquor talking. But I had already seen the scrapbook. Besides, liquor's a pretty good truth serum. I've never known anyone to lie when they were drunk." He looked at her. "Once, when you had a lot to drink, you said…someone else's name in bed."

She didn't remember this, but nor did she doubt it. "You know, liquor isn't so much a truth serum as it is a paint thinner. It strips a lot of stuff away, takes you down to the old finishes. I am so over my past, Crow."

"As of when?"

"As of this morning."

He had nothing to say to that. Some things were so stupid they had to be true.

"You know, she may have been exaggerating," Tess said. "Emmie's definitely a drama queen."

"No, she's going to kill herself, and she's going to make sure Clay sees the whole thing. When I couldn't talk her out of it, I thought I might at least be able to stop her."

"How do you know it's going to be at the parade?"

"I don't, for a fact. But Sterne Foods is a fortress, she can't get to him there. Ditto the house on Hermosa. Besides, she has to jump, that's part of the fantasy. Falling to her death, falling in love. The parade route has a nice tall building in a key spot." He frowned. "Although not necessarily tall enough. I've tried to impress that upon her. There's a real chance she'll only cripple herself. Or kill someone else, a spectator along the route. A child, even."

The wind was kicking up, but the chill Tess felt had nothing to do with the weather.

"Why did Gus care if Clay and Emmie were together, anyway? They were the children of first cousins. They could have married in most states."

"Gus said she would hurt him, and he couldn't bear to see his son hurt." Crow's face was sad and drawn in the strange gray-blue light. "As if you can ever spare anyone the hurt of loving anyone."

She reached for his hand, unsure whether to hold it or pat it. She ended up tugging on his index finger. "I'm sorry, Crow."

"Sorry for what?"

"Everything?" It still didn't seem like enough.

The rain Mrs. Nguyen had predicted started then, as heavy and sudden as any storm Tess had ever experienced. It clattered on the tin roof, cascaded from the pecan-clogged gutters. It was as if watery drapes had been thrown over the world, blotting out everything.

"My car windows!" She ran through the rain to roll them up. When she returned, soaked to the skin, Crow was still sitting on the bedroll. For some reason, he seemed more surprised to see her now than he had been when she first arrived.

"I thought you had just uttered the greatest exit line of all time. ‘My car windows!'"

"Why would you think that?" she asked, squeezing water from her sodden braid.

"Because that's your style, Tess. Cut and run, with a few banalities about the weather, or your inability to make a commitment."

"I was trying to be fair to you. I had met someone else-"

"Tess, there's always going to be someone else. Your sexual desires don't go away because you're with someone. How are you going to stay in a relationship for the rest of your life if you can't grasp that?"

Tess was shivering in her wet clothes. "I'm not sure I'm ever going to find someone I want to be with forever and ever."

"Then you probably won't." His voice wasn't unkind. "Look, I don't want you to drive while it's raining so hard. You don't know this area. The low-water crossings will be five feet deep, you could be washed away if you make a wrong turn. Stay the night."

She pulled her T-shirt away from her skin, and it made a rude smacking sound. "You don't want me to leave because you need a ride into town tomorrow."

"Maybe." But he was smiling now, pouring on the charm.

"If I take you in, you have to let me come along."

Crow hesitated, but only for a moment. He had no leverage, he had to see that. It was a package deal, Tess and the Toyota. "Okay. Emmie knows you, so she won't freak out. She likes you, in her own way. In fact, she used to study this photo I had, the newspaper photo of you and Esskay."

"The one you showed Mrs. Nguyen, so you could search my room at La Casita. "

He wasn't listening to her. He was studying her face, with his detached painter's eye, as if planning to sketch her yet again.

"Your hair is going to get all snarly if you let it dry like that," he said. "You better comb it out."

"I don't think I have a comb in my knapsack. I wasn't planning on a slumber party."

"I do. I have a toothbrush, too, if you want it." He left the room and came back with both, obviously proud of himself.

"You were ready to evacuate all along, weren't you?" Tess asked.

"No, but I had the presence of mind to grab a few things before I jumped. I had my choice of toiletries, I just didn't have any money or food. I had to sleep in Brackenridge Park the first night, then catch a ride up here with a crew of day workers heading for a nearby ranch."

"Didn't it occur to you this place might be under surveillance?"

"Of course. But that was the one good thing about you finding that second body in San Antonio-it shifted all the attention down there." He was all but preening. "I keep the lights off to be safe, but as far as I can tell, the sheriff's deputies haven't come near this place. I have to admit I'm kind of proud of myself. It's not every man who gets away from Tess Monaghan twice."

"Let me have the comb, before my hair dries from all this hot air."

He shook his head. "No, you won't do it right. I've seen you comb your hair. You just try to beat the tangles into submission. Turn around, little girl, and no whining. Or we'll just cut off all this hair and leave you with something more manageable."

It was what her mother used to say when she was younger. She didn't even remember telling him this fact, but he remembered. Crow remembered everything.

She sat on the edge of the bedroll, her back to him. He unplaited her hair, running his fingers through it to loosen it. Only then did he use the comb, and he was as gentle as he had promised. He took his time, curling the ends around his finger, lifting the heavy mass so he could comb the wispy ringlets at the nape. The rain was even heavier now, and it was hard to imagine the room could get much darker.

"You ought to wear your hair up," Crow said, twisting it into a pile on top of her head.

"My friend Jackie showed me how to put it up so I don't look like a spinster in a bun. But I don't do it so well."

"Jackie?"

"A new friend. She has a little girl, Laylah, whom you'd love."

"I love you," he said very casually. "I stopped for a while, but then I started again."

Her back was to him, which made it easier to tell the truth, but it didn't make it easier to know what the truth was. She couldn't say she had stopped and started again, because she wasn't sure she had really loved him the first time around. She couldn't say she would love him forever and ever-she had just admitted she didn't know if she'd ever get that right. But Crow wasn't asking for assurances about the past or the future, she realized. He would settle for now.

"I love you, too."

He put down the comb, burying his face in her hair and her neck, his arms reaching around her waist. He held her tight, like an exhausted swimmer coming to a branch or a boulder after a long, long time in turbulent waters. Yet he was in no hurry, this was distinctly different from the other night, just a week ago. He had still been angry with her then, she realized, his passion had been a mask for his fury. Crow held her, and she allowed herself to be held, her senses expanding. She was aware of the rain, of the darkness, of the grain in the floorboards beneath them, of the watery shadows on the walls. Finally she broke his hold on her, but only so she could peel the wet T-shirt away from her body and turn to face him.

She was home.

When morning came, it was as Mrs. Nguyen and Channel 5's Chris Marrou had prophesied-cooler, crisper, the kind of fall day that Tess would have taken for granted back in Baltimore. But she was beyond taking anything for granted now.

Blinking heavy eyes, she glanced around the house. A shower was running somewhere, and the dryer was thumping softly. Thoughtful Crow must have washed her clothes. His nurturing, once mildly oppressive, now seemed sexy. She wondered if they had time for him to nurture her a little more before they drove to town. She glanced at her Swiss Army watch, the only thing she had managed to keep on through the long night. Nine A.M. The parade started at one but they needed to leave soon if they were going to intercept Emmie.

Strange-the only thing in the dryer was a small load of dishtowels. Maybe he had hung her clothes up outside, under the now-brilliant skies. But she couldn't see anything from the windows. She knocked on the bathroom door, then pushed it open without waiting for a reply. Steam rolled out, as if the shower had been running for a very long time.

It had, and if Crow had ever been in it, he wasn't now.

She looked for her shoes, but they were missing, too. Naked and barefoot, she ran from the house, down the flagstone path to where her car had been. Gone as well, not that this surprised her. The shower and the dryer-those had probably been turned on in hopes of muffling the noise of an engine starting.

Back in the house, she saw what she hadn't seen before-her datebook open on the kitchen table, a message scrawled on today's date, November 2.

"I started this on my own, and I need to finish it on my own. Love, C. (Nothing here to eat but canned pork and beans, I'm afraid.)"

Damn chivalry. It wasn't enough for Crow to rescue Emmie, he had to spare Tess as well, leaving her with nothing but canned pork and beans and a blanket. But what could she do, naked, shoeless, and at least twenty miles out of San Antonio? If it was so important to him to play Sir Galahad alone, then so be it. She wandered back into the main room and, for want of anything better to do, leafed through Emmie's scrapbook.

Funny how one's perceptions change. Now that she knew the story, she saw the photos differently. Clay was trying to hide his emotions, while Emmie didn't care if the world knew what she felt. Neither one of them had changed.

But how to explain Gus, with his sad eyes and haunted expression? What was he seeing? What was it that kept his eyes riveted on Emmie? Tess studied the Polaroid, the only image she had seen of Lollie alive. It was taken less than two weeks before the murders, according to the date stamped on the bottom. The five smiled, innocent of their destiny. Lollie sat in the center, the two couples on either side of her. Lollie, Gus and Ida, Frank and Marianna. Two were going to die, two were going to divorce, one was going to be widowed. The three women looked in the camera. The two men looked at Lollie.

The two men looked at Lollie.

Tess thought of the three bodies in Espejo Verde. Two had been killed hastily, quickly. One had been tortured, his death drawn out, his suffering the point of the exercise. Everyone does everything for money and sex, Rick had said, mocking the old robbery detective, Marty Diamond. But Diamond might have been closer to the truth than they realized. Sex and money, money and sex. And love. Some people killed for love, or thought they did.

The three women looked in the camera. The two men looked at Lollie. And a little girl had grown up, studying this photo, memorizing it, decoding it, until she finally recognized in her cousin's eyes a kinship only they could share. You had to be crazy to die for love. You had to be crazy to kill for love.

Emmie Sterne was crazy enough to do both.