Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (30 page)

No reaction. White looked out over his gardens and
waved his champagne glass toward the north.

"What do you think, Miss Lee?" he said.
"I’m thinking about tomatoes over in that corner, next to the
mountain laurels. "

If Maia was trying to look hard and unapproachable,
she was failing miserably. She smiled without even looking at the
future tomato patch and agreed that it would be a lovely spot for
gardening. I swear to God, White’s eyes twinkled at her on command.
When he was ready to entertain my questions again, he pushed the
croissant carcass and the
Express-News
away. He leaned forward across the table, looking earnest and
helpful.

"I assure you, Mr. Navarre, Beau Karnau is no
associate of mine. I’ve only met him on a few occasions, and I
found him . . . tiresome."

He let his eyes reveal just a hint of annoyance, a
benign peevishness toward that quite colorful character Mr. Karnau.

“
And Dan Sheff?" Maia ventured.

Guy paused momentarily, then decided to smile. I
thought for a minute he would pat Maia’s head.

"What of him, my dear?"

“
Read your paper," I suggested. "I think
the Moraga murder story dropped below the fold today, but you’re
still getting page one press."

I couldn’t get White’s attention away from his
imaginary tomato patches. His tone stayed pleasantly distracted.

"As I said to you before, my boy, faulty
assumptions?

"So you have no relations with Sheff
Construction," I said. "No knowledge of how their business
changed in the mid-eighties." I finished my mimosa. "I’d’ve
thought about that time you would’ve been looking for less
high-profile opportunities yourself. The drug trafficking trial, the
investigation of my father’s murder. It must’ve been very . . .
tiresome."

I warranted only a strained sigh from our host, but
you take what you can get.

“
All I can tell you about Sheff Construction, my
boy, is that Mr. Sheff, that would be Mr. Sheff, Jr., has little to
do with the—shall we say the day-to-day running of business.
Perhaps—" He raised a finger, as if he’d finally spotted the
ideal place for some pink azaleas. "Perhaps you should speak to
Terry Garza, the business manager. That might be more enlightening."

"We’d made arrangements," I said. "They
were canceled last night, when we found him with an
anticucho
skewer sticking out of his neck."

That did it. White lifted his eyes off his future
garden and stared at me. I think he was genuinely surprised. Then it
passed.

"How unfortunate."

"Once the police come to question you, yes."

I put the photo we’d found in Garza’s trailer on
top of Guy White’s newspaper, facing toward him.  "What I
think," I told him, "is that you are either in this photo,
or you know who is. Sheff Construction started some extremely
lucrative and extremely questionable dealings with city construction
contracts ten years ago, Mr. White, and it’s an arrangement which
is still going on. I would be surprised if anything that large
could’ve escaped your notice. Either you were involved directly, or
you’d make it your business to know who was."

White looked over at Maia, smiled like one parent to
another when their child has said something cute and foolish.

"Mr. Navarre, I do not appreciate being
scapegoated. As I told you, I went through much grief ten years ago,
when your father died. Much unwarranted suffering."

"You’re telling me you’re being scapegoated
again?"

He stretched like a cat. "Convenient solutions,
Mr. Navarre."

"Help me find Karnau, then. He’s got the
answers."

White gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. Behind
the bland smile, he seemed to be deciding something. He got out of
his chair and surveyed his lawn one more time. Then he took an index
card and a pen from his pocket. He wrote something on the card,
folded it, and let it fall to the table.

"Good-bye, Mr. Navarre." He stretched
again, raising himself up on his toes. “So nice to meet you, Miss
Lee."

When Guy White was a half acre away, strolling past
his newly planted verbena, Maia picked up the index card and read it.

“
Try Mr. Karnau at the Placio del Rio tonight. "

"That’s the Riverwalk Hilton. Downtown."

Maia put her champagne glass on the table. She looked
at the index card again. "Why do I feel like we’ve just been
offered a sacrifice?"

"Or someone’s unwanted ballast."

I looked across the yard at Guy White, who was now
stepping carefully but easily between rows of his Blue Princess like
this was his minefield and he’d crossed it many times before.
 

42

After that, the clean air of the country felt good.
By one o’c1ock we were speeding along the banks of the Blanco River
in Larry Drapiewski’s jeep, and Larry was rapidly consuming the
Shiner Bocks and beef fajitas we’d brought him as a peace offering.

“
Three beers," Maia said. "What happened
to setting a good example for your youngers, Lieutenant?"

Larry laughed. "You get as big as me, Miss Lee,
then you can see what three beers does to your blood alcohol
content."

Drapiewski’s red jeep seemed right at home in the
Hill Country. So did Larry. Off-duty, he was wearing boot-cut Levi’s
and black leather Justins that must’ve been made from an entire
alligator, a red shirt that made his hair and his freckles seem a
little less neon by comparison. Howdy Doody on steroids.

"So what is it you folks are expecting to find?"

Drapiewski said. "It’s been a lot of years
since they pulled Halcomb out of that deer blind, son. You expect
something with an orange flag on it just sitting out there all this
time?"

"That’d be fine," I said.

Larry laughed. The
fajita
disappeared in his mouth, followed closely by most of the beer. Maia
looked on in awe.

Drapiewski’s friend with the Blanco County
Sheriff’s Department had the unfortunate name of Deputy Chief
Grubb. We met Grubb outside the Dairy Queen, a place he had obviously
frequented over the years. His white hair had a slightly greasy tinge
to it, and his upper body, once that of a football player, had
swollen up over his belt buckle until it bore an uncanny resemblance
to a Dilly Bar.

Larry made the introductions.

“
Halcomb," Grubb said, by way of introduction.

"That was a luncher."

"Meaning—? "

When Grubb grinned you could get a good feel for how
much he liked his coffee. The layers of yellow on his crooked
incisors were like glacial flood lines.

"Meaning we ate it, son," he told me.
"Never found a damn thing."

It was a ten-minute drive from the DQ in Grubb’s
unit. Along the way, he told us about a slave ranch they’d closed
down a week before—seventeen Mexican migrant workers kept in a
barn, chained up at night, worked with a whip and a double-barrel
shotgun during the day. Then he talked about the domestic disputes
he’d broken up so far this week, the new Mexican restaurant in
town, the high school team’s chances next fall. By the time we’d
driven to the site and walked through five acres of brush and live
oaks, Maia and I knew every bit of gossip Blanco had to offer,
including where to buy your duty-free liquor, what fields the
marijuana planes landed in, and which local wives were likely
candidates for a steamy affair. All I needed now was a place with
cheap rent.

"There it is," Grubb said finally, wiping
the sweat off the back of his neck. "Ain’t much."

The blind had probably been old and abandoned when
Randall Halcomb’s corpse was stuffed into it years ago. Now it was
just a collection of rotten planks and sheets of plywood on four
wobbly posts. It had tried to fall down a long time ago but had been
stopped by a nearby mesquite that was still propping it up like a
sober friend trying to support a drunk. There was a frayed rope
ladder hanging from the back. Even if it had held together long
enough to climb, the blind would’ve collapsed under the weight of a
full—grown man.

Grubb and Drapiewski started trading stories of gory
hunting accidents while Maia and I poked around. Nothing was marked
with an orange flag. Five cows were standing in a clump in the shadow
of the blind, hiding from the afternoon sun. They looked at me with a
kind of lazy resentment, wondering what I was doing there. I started
to ask myself the same question. I’d been hoping, maybe, to match
the terrain to Karnau’s photos, get a sense for where the shots had
been taken from, why Halcomb’s employers had chosen this site for a
meeting and why Karnau might’ve been here. So far
nada
.

"Grubb," I called.

The deputy chief came over next to me, with
Drapiewski and Maia following.

I nodded at the deer blind. "Did you determine
whether this was a dump site or not?"

Grubb took off his deputy’s hat and wiped his
forehead on his arm.

"A lot of blood about a hunnerd yards down that
way, " he said. "That’s where they killed him. Then they
dragged him over here."

"They. As in two."

Grubb nodded. "Could be more. There were tire
tracks down that way. FBI took some plaster mold footprints too. I
don’t recall exactly what the story was."

"Cause of death?"

"Old boy got it right between the eyes at short
range. Hell of a shooter. You know what a Sheridan Knock about is?"

".22 caliber single shot pistol," Maia
said, almost absently. "Went out of production in ’62; only
twenty thousand were made."

Grubb and Drapiewski gaped at her. In khakis and a
white tank top, her eyes invisible behind large black sunglasses,
Maia looked like a safari veteran. There was a single line of sweat
running from her ear to her jaw. Otherwise the heat seemed to be
having no effect on her. She’d been looking toward the deer blind
until she noticed that she’d become the center of attention.

She shrugged. "Just a guess."

Larry grinned.

"A Sheridan," I said. "My dad had one,
actually got it right after Korea."

Grubb was back to swabbing his forehead. "Sure.
They were popular with a lot of the vets. Target shooters, mostly.
Thing was, it’s a mighty strange gun to murder somebody with. Very
clear striations on the bullet—easy to pin down. And by ’85 they
weren’t what you’d call standard street issue."

I thought about a picture I’d seen in the Sheffs’
house—Dan Sr. as a young soldier, off for Korea. I thought about
the box of .22 ammo in Dan Jr.’s office closet.

"And you said it’s a single shot."

Larry whistled silently. “You got to be pretty sure
of your shooting to kill a man like Halcomb with a gun like that.
Pretty damn ballsy."

“
Or," said Maia, “you’ve got to be not
really planning on murder. You might bring a gun like that along for
protection to a dangerous meeting, if it’s the only gun you have.
Or for a little leverage if things got rough. But probably not for a
premeditated kill. Either way you’re not talking about a pro."
She looked at me. "Not the mob. They’d come a lot better
prepared."

Grubb looked Maia up and down one more time, a
mixture of confusion and budding respect on his sticky forehead.
"What’d you say you were again, honey? Chinese?"

To her credit, Maia left his face intact. She said
dryly, "That’s right, Mr. Grubb. The ones who built the
railroads. You remember."

I looked back at the cows and tried to think. The
cows didn’t offer any suggestions.

"Is there anything else?" I asked Grubb.

The old deputy took his eyes off Maia, looked at me,
and shook his head. "Just a dead end, son."

Drapiewski shrugged. He looked sorry, but not
surprised.

I could’ve left then. I had something to go on. Our
two law enforcement escorts were definitely ready to get back to the
air-conditioning and the Dilly Bars of a friendly Dairy Queen. But
after sweating in the sunshine and swatting the mosquitoes for a few
more minutes, I started walking down toward the place where Halcomb
had been shot.

There were more mesquite trees down in the hollow.
The dry brush was so high we had sticker burrs as thick as fur on our
pants by the time we got to the murder site. It was a small clearing
barely accessible by two tire ruts that led off into the woods. It
was the place in Beau Karnau’s photos.

"Not a bad place for a meeting," Larry
said. "Very low-profile. "

He started picking the sticker burrs out of his
crotch. Maia leaned against a dead tree. Grubb just looked at me,
losing patience.

"What are you thinking, son?" he asked.

I wanted to give him an answer. I didn’t have one.

"Who owns this land?" I asked.

Grubb thought about it. "Right now, I don’t
know. It was pretty much abandoned in ’84. Old Mr. Baker passed on
and none of the sons would move back into the house. Then in ’86
the ranch burned down. It’s changed hands plenty of times since.
Nobody uses it nowadays except the neighbors’ cattle."