In Big Trouble

Chapter 6

The sheriff held a metal wastebasket beneath Tess's chin. It was the third time she had thrown up in the hour she had been here, and his courtly manner was wearing thin, exposing the hard little kernel of his personality. The first two times she had gotten sick, he had let her leave his office and visit the ladies' room, a secretary posted outside the door. Such niceties were now officially over.

"Is that it?" Sheriff Kolarik asked.

"Probably. I haven't eaten that much today."

"Remind me to be thankful for small favors."

He meant it to be funny, but it didn't quite come off. The sheriff was young, no more than thirty-five or so. Maybe even younger. He had shiny black hair, shinier in the band where his hat had rested, and blue eyes that were almost too bright. Medium height and weight, not exactly the iconic Texas sheriff that pop culture had taught Tess came in two varieties-pot-bellied redneck and Gary Cooper. But his face was tanned and the sun had etched lines at the corner of his eyes and mouth. He also had a deep crease across the bridge of his nose, as if he squinted too much. That crease seemed to be growing deeper the longer Tess was in his office.

"Now tell me again what brought you to the old Barrett place," he suggested in a would-be friendly tone.

"I told you. I got lost and I stopped to ask directions."

"All the way from Baltimore, Maryland. I'd say you were lost."

He was looking at her PI's license, which was on his desk along with her cell phone and every other piece of plastic from her wallet, even her Nordstrom credit card, a relatively new link in her identity chain. Jackie had convinced her to start wearing makeup this fall, taking her to the M.A.C. counter and buying her the darkest lipstick Tess had ever used. Paramount. She seldom applied it, but she liked knowing she had it in her purse, in case a lipstick emergency came up. This little black tube was also rolling across the sheriff's desk. Esskay was sleeping in the corner, unperturbed by the day's events, although the sheriff had threatened to take her to the nearest hospital and have her X-rayed. He had heard of people smuggling things in dogs, he had told Tess. She had countered that one would probably use a fatter dog for such an operation, as opposed to one on which you could count each rib.

"Theresa Mon-a-ghan," the sheriff said. He hit the G hard, but something in his smart-alecky smile told Tess he knew better. "What brings you down this way, Miss Mona-ghan?"

"Vacation."

"You must be doing well. Most folks who work for themselves don't get to take many vacations. I know. I used to be one of them."

Tess pretended the interest he obviously expected of her. Baltimore or Blanco, in a bar or behind bars, the one thing men wanted to do was talk about themselves. "Really? What did you do?"

"Started a software company, then sold it for a lot of money. I'm a millionaire, and not just on paper. I moved out here thinking I'd take it easy, got bored in about six weeks and ran for sheriff. I spent one hundred thousand dollars on my campaign, and the only reason I won was because the incumbent died the day before the general election. That was six years ago. They like me now. Returned me to office with sixty percent of the vote last time around."

He leaned across the desk toward Tess, hands clasped as if he were praying. "You see, they like me because I don't take shit from the outsiders who are moving here. Converts make the best adherents, you know. I hate outsiders more than any fourth-generation Hill Country type ever could."

Message received: She wasn't to treat him like some local yokel, nor should she contemplate filling out a change-of-address card anytime soon.

"So, let me rephrase my question. You sure you're here on vacation? Or is there something going on in my county I should know about, something that would bring a private investigator all this way? Something that has to do with that ripe ol' boy you found?"

Against her will, she once again saw the vivid image of the body in the shed, its face missing, along with most of the chest. If it was Crow, her job was done. That was the possibility that had first made her nauseated. She grabbed the metal trash can, just in case.

"I'd like an answer, Miss Monaghan."

But she knew in her heart that it wasn't Crow. Death and rot could do a lot to a body, but the frame she had seen in the shed wasn't his. The legs had been thicker, shorter, with the cuffs of the jeans rolled up over a pair of fairly new-looking cowboy boots. Even if Crow had gone Texan with a vengeance, he couldn't find a pair of jeans so long that he'd be forced to roll them up over a pair of cowboy boots. Besides, the boots had been tacky, overdone. Cowboy Crow would have preferred something more authentic.

"Miss Monaghan?" Sheriff Kolarik handed her a paper towel to wipe her face, but he was clearly out of patience with her. "You going to answer my question?"

Yet Crow had been there, she was sure of that. Surer still that the sheriff must not know.

"I'm on vacation. I was looking for a shortcut to the LBJ ranch when I got lost."

"You think that's going to butter me up, throwing around LBJ's name? Well, I'm a Republican," the sheriff said, as if everyone should know this fact. Software millionaire turned sheriff, he probably had been written up in some of the national papers. Tess couldn't help wondering if there was any corner of the world where oddity was allowed to flourish for its own sake, unchronicled and unknown.

"Look, if you don't trust me, call Martin Tull. He's a detective in Baltimore City's homicide division. He'll vouch for me."

"He'll say you were on vacation, will he, and looking for the LBJ ranch? He must know you pretty well, to have such a detailed itinerary."

"No, I mean-he'll tell you that I can be trusted. In fact-" She tried a winning smile, then realized it wasn't the most appropriate expression under the circumstances. "We met over a dead body, Martin and I."

Sheriff Kolarik opened up her M.A.C. lipstick. "Kinda dark," he commented. "This other body you found-was it on someone's private property almost a mile from the road? You see, trespassing is the issue here, ma'am, not homicide. Marianna Barrett Conyers doesn't get up here much from San Antonio, so we keep a close eye on her property. She's good people."

"I got lost and I stopped to ask for directions," Tess repeated. "After I realized no one was there, I wandered around the property, just because it was so pretty. As for the guy in the pool house-well, once I got downwind, it was hard to miss him."

"Hardly any breeze blowing today, Miss Monaghan. You sure you weren't looking for something else? Maybe a little souvenir to take home from your ‘vacation'?"

"He didn't need any breeze, he was, as you said, pretty ripe." She widened her eyes, hoping she looked innocent. "He must have been dead a real long time, don't you think?"

"You do know your dead bodies, Miss Monaghan."

She sensed a trap, despite the sheriff's bland intonations. "Not really. I just watch Homicide a lot." Then, as an inane afterthought. "It's filmed in Baltimore, right in my neighborhood."

"That show's no good. None of those cop shows are. Although I like Chuck Norris in that Texas Ranger one. They filmed a scene up in Kerrville once. He's a little-bitty fellow, but all those actors are." The sheriff held his thumb and forefinger apart, in an approximation of Chuck Norris's little-bittiness.

"I don't know," Tess said. "Some of the guys on Homicide are pretty tall." The conversation was stupid, but safe. Then again, every minute she spent here gave the chatty convenience clerk more opportunities to tell someone about the inquisitive Yankee who had come in looking for local candy and some dark-haired fellow, and left with directions to the old Barrett place.

The sheriff also seemed anxious to get back to business. "So anyway, you find this body, which you know, from the smell, has been dead a long time because you watch a lot of television, and you called 911 on your little cell phone. Why do you have one of those things, anyway? You running drugs through my county?"

"The Baltimore drug market doesn't have to look to Texas for its supplies."

"Yeah, everybody's on crack up there, right?"

A conscious self-mockery edged his every word. The sheriff was playing with his role, Tess realized, shifting in and out of the stereotype as it suited his purpose. He was joking now, and testing her to see if she got the joke.

"Just about. Although heroin's making a comeback. It's sort of like the rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi."

He opened his desk drawer, rummaged around, and pulled out a pack of Dentyne, took his time unwrapping a piece. "But even though you had a cell phone, you said you went inside the house, right, to see if there was a phone connected there, right? Did you notice that pane of window cut out of the back door?"

"Of course I did." Tess sensed he was trying to lead her someplace, someplace she didn't want to go. She had admitted to being in the house in case she had left a print behind, but she wasn't fool enough to admit to being the one who had broken in. She straightened up, throwing her shoulders back and showing her Cafe Hon T-shirt to what she hoped was full advantage. It was the one T-shirt she had brought from home, back when she thought she was making a quick overnight trip to Charlottesville. She and Crow had bought their Cafe Hon shirts together, and she had donned hers that morning, thinking that it would remind him of the times they had shared. She had been so sure that she was going to find him today.

"And the reason you just didn't use your cell phone to begin with-?"

"The roaming fees on my service are really high."

"Uh-huh. Now here's the thing I'm wondering. Who cut the glass?"

Tess wondered if it was possible to leave too few fingerprints behind. Did he need a warrant to open her trunk? She had the presence of mind to hide her tools in the spare tire well, and she put her gun there, too, as she still wasn't sure if her license to carry was good in Texas.

"Who cut the glass, Miss Monaghan? You can tell me."

"But I don't know."

"Well, who do you think? What would be logical?"

"The dead guy?"

The sheriff pretended to think about her answer. "Okay, I see what you're saying. This guy was trying to break in when someone came along, shot him, and then put him in the shed. Or maybe Mrs. Conyers was up here from San Antonio one weekend and shot a prowler, then forgot to mention it to me."

Tess had been nauseous so long now that it was beginning to seem normal to her. She wondered if her stomach would flip and jump inside her for the rest of her life. "I thought it was the Barrett place."

"Really?" He grinned, sure he had her. "Who told you that?"

"You did. Remember? You asked me what I was doing up at the old Barrett place."

The sheriff had a poker face, but his body was not quite as disciplined. His chest seemed to collapse a little, and he rubbed his index finger and thumb together, almost as if he had felt the fabric of her shirt in his hand, only to have her wriggle free.

"Barrett was her maiden name. The Barretts go way back in this county. They go way back in Texas."

"What's that-thirty, forty years?" Of course, no one in Tess's family had arrived until the 20th century was well under way, but the sheriff didn't know that.

"Texas was a free-standing republic in 1836."

"That's right," Tess said agreeably. "You seceded from Mexico so you could have slaves, right?"

The sheriff was not impressed that she knew this particular bit of Texas history. "Now here's the thing. That old boy up at the Barretts' wasn't killed there. No blood. No blowback. You know what that is, don't you? You shoot a man in the face with a rifle, there's going to be brains and stuff everywhere." He held up the trash can, but Tess shook her head. She had nothing left. But moon pies, through no fault of their own, would be forever banned from her diet. "So he was killed somewhere else, maybe not even in my county, and left here for me to clean up. Now that kinda pisses me off."

"I can see that."

"You got any idea who that ol' boy is, by the way?"

"No," she said, hoping it was the truth.

"So you didn't go poking around in his pockets." The sheriff grinned at the way her mouth thinned and tightened, her gag reflexes working again. But she just shook her head and swallowed.

"Well, given the condition of his body, we'll have to send him to the medical examiner, but his papers say he's Tom Darden, a recent guest of the state prison system over to Huntsville. A San Antonio boy. Cops down there tell us he's been hanging out with an old buddy of his, Laylan Weeks, who was sprung at the same time."

The sheriff leaned toward her, hands clasped in that prayerful position again, trying to look kind and concerned. But whereas a genuine good ol' boy might have been able to pull this off, this technocrat was nothing more than a virtual Bubba. Tess stared back at him, unmoved, determined to say nothing unless necessary.

"Now if you happened to have a glass cutter and you happened to use it to get into the house after you found ol' Tom, that wouldn't be quite the same as breaking and entering, see? We'd call that a mitigating circumstance."

His words offered no comfort to Tess. Who needed legal terms unless one was going before a judge?

"I've thought of something," she said suddenly.

The sheriff smiled.

"I guess his buddy had the glass cutter. The one that the San Antonio cops said he was running around with, since they got out of prison?"

"Laylan and Tom weren't burglars. According to what I've been told about them, they're the kind of boys who'd put their fists through the glass, and enjoy doing it."

"People change in prison. I mean, that's the point, isn't it?"

"Are you asking me or telling?"

She met his eyes directly. "Just guessing. That's legal, isn't it?"

"It depends on what kind of guesses you make."

"Here's one: I'm guessing you don't have any reason to hold me and I'd like to go now. Unless you're going to detain me and charge me. In which case, I'd like to call a lawyer."

"Why would I charge you?"

"I don't know. That's what I've been wondering for the almost two hours you've held me here. I got lost. Okay, I trespassed up on the old Barnes place. Fine me, I'll pay it."

"Barrett."

"I found a dead body and I called the police. The sheriff. I guess it's true, no good deed goes unpunished."

"Did you know Tom Darden or Laylan Weeks, Miss Monaghan?" The sheriff was no longer taking the time to mispronounce her name, and what little drawl he had was gone, replaced with a clipped, precise voice. "You one of those girls who likes bad boys? Did you hook up with these two and find you were over your head? Because they're pretty bad. They've done things that you don't want to know about."

"I've been in Texas for less than seventy-two hours. I haven't had a chance to make any new friends." She stood up, reached for the Dentyne pack he had left on the desk. "I have been staying with some friends of my aunt up in Austin, and they'll be wondering where I am. So if you don't mind-"

"I'll want a number where you're staying up in Austin," the sheriff said. "And one back home."

"Sure," Tess said. She gave him her own home phone number. Let him talk to the mechanized version of herself. As for Keith's number-well, if the sheriff called there, Keith would tell him she had gone back to Baltimore. Because that's what she planned to tell Keith. Her work was done, she was heading home, taking the scenic route, stretching the 1,600-mile trip over several days. Let the sheriff call out the highway patrol in every state between Texas and Maryland. They'd never find her there-because she'd be here.

Even as the sheriff had tried to pry information out of her, he had provided her with the next lead she needed. The Barrett place, the last place Crow had been, a place where a convict's body lay rotting in the pool house, belonged to one Marianna Barrett Conyers of San Antonio, just eighty miles south of Austin according to the sign posts she had seen that afternoon.

Maybe she'd get to see the Alamo, after all.