Cat's Claw (21 page)

“Where exactly is Timms’ property?” I asked curiously.

McQuaid drew an imaginary map on the table with his finger. “You go west on Limekiln, about two miles past our turnoff. Hang a right at Paint Horse Road, left at a pair of mailboxes a couple of miles later. Down that gravel road another mile or so, you’ll see a sign for Paint Horse
Ranch. That’s it, although it hasn’t been used for actual ranching for fifty years or so.” He sat back in his chair. “It belonged in the family, all twelve hundred acres of it, going back two or three generations. Timms inherited it from his older brother, minus the disputed chunk, which is a bluff with a spectacular view. That’s the piece that the neighbor adversely possessed, during the years when Timms’ brother had the property. The brother lived in Houston, Timms said, and never paid any attention to the land.”

As I remembered the professor’s lecture on this subject, that was the way adverse possession usually happened. Land was passed along in a family, the property wasn’t used, perhaps not even visited, and pieces of it were appropriated by other people—usually the neighbors.

“But Timms was making the best of it,” McQuaid said. “Last time I was out there, he had just finished building a cabin on Paint Horse Creek, where he could throw parties.” He chuckled wryly. “A cabin. That’s what he called it. To me, it looked like a fancy bachelor pad, with plenty of parking, a couple of guesthouses for overnighters, and no neighbors to get pissed off when his friends are drinking and the music’s too loud. Kind of a secret getaway, where he could hide out from his ex-wives. Not my style, but it fits good old George.” He pushed back his chair, stood, and stretched.

“Hmm,” I said, frowning. “I wonder if Charlie thought to have a look out there. Maybe Timms—”

McQuaid interrupted. “Did you remember that I’m going to El Paso tomorrow?” He picked up the empty Saint Arnold bottle and dropped it into the recycle bin. “Blackie’s already out there. I talked to him on the phone earlier this evening.” He went to the back door and checked the lock. “He’s got a couple of good leads, although it looks like we’ll have to cross over to Ciudad Juárez.”

“That’s the missing boy?” I asked. I wasn’t thrilled at the thought that McQuaid and Blackie might go into Mexico. Juárez is especially dangerous territory. The drug cartels own the city, and scores of young women factory workers have been murdered there. But I had seen the boy’s picture on Austin television. The little guy was only seven, with dark hair and flashing brown eyes in a delicate face. He’d been gone for over a week. The custodial parent, a single father, was desperate. He had come to McQuaid for help in getting his son back. It was a case that tugged at our hearts, McQuaid’s and mine. Brian had been taken by his mother once, without permission or notice. He was gone for only a few hours and no harm was done, but the experience had been harrowing. I knew how the little boy’s father must feel.

McQuaid nodded. “The mother apparently took him from school. She has family south of Juárez.” He came close, dropping his face to nuzzle my throat. “Will you miss me, wife?”

“I miss you already,” I said truthfully, and my arms went around his neck. I didn’t say so out loud, but I didn’t want him to go. Not this time. Not to Juárez.

“Prove it,” he whispered against my cheek, after a minute. He took my hand, his voice softly urgent. “Come on, babe. Let’s go to bed.”

I didn’t need to be asked twice. We locked the doors, turned off the downstairs lights, and climbed the stairs. But just as McQuaid was pulling my T-shirt over my head, the phone in our bedroom rang.

“Rats,” I said eloquently.

McQuaid dropped my shirt on the floor and began unfastening my bra. “Let it ring, China.”

I thought of what had happened that afternoon, and shook my head. “It’ll just take a minute,” I said, reaching for the phone. “Might be important.”

McQuaid growled between his teeth and pulled off my bra, brushing his hands across my breasts.

It was Ruby. “Sorry to bother you, China,” she said tersely, “but Ramona and I just thought of something. Larry Kirk did
not
kill himself.”

“How do you know?” I sat down on the bed and listened, but McQuaid was beginning to strip, so I have to admit that I was a little distracted. My husband has a terrific body, lean and muscular, and I enjoy looking at him—especially when he’s not wearing clothes.

But what Ruby had to tell me was pretty urgent, persuasive, too. When she finished, I thought I’d better telephone Smart Cookie and pass the information along. But before I could do that, my naked husband dove into bed and pulled me in after him.

Who says married sex is dull?

Chapter Ten

Richie Potts lived in a second-floor apartment in the university’s graduate student village, not far from the campus. As Sheila walked up the outside stairs, she saw a bike with a child’s seat on the back, chained to the balcony railing. A baby stroller with a blue plastic canopy was folded and propped against the wall beside two pots of dead plants. Sheila could hear rock music and feel the rhythmic
thump-thump
vibrations of the heavy bass, although it was difficult to tell whether the noise was coming from the apartment in front of her or the one on the other side of the double entrance. From somewhere close by, the odor of marijuana wafted into the night, mixed with the sour smell of cooking cabbage. A typical student apartment complex, she thought, remembering her own college days, which seemed like a century ago now. She knocked, then knocked again, louder. The door, on the chain, cracked open an inch.

“Police,” Sheila said to the crack, and held up her badge wallet. “Looking for Richie Potts.”

Richie Potts was twenty-two, twenty-three at most, red-haired and freckled, with an acne-scarred face and a thin stubble of gingery beard. A red-haired baby—a boy, about eighteen months old—clung to his blue-
jeaned leg. A pretty young woman, heavily pregnant, appeared in the kitchen door, then disappeared. The sound of rock music (but not of the bass) was partially shut out when Potts closed the apartment door. When Sheila introduced herself, he pointed to one of a pair of living room chairs, arranged on either side of a sofa and coffee table. She sat down and told him that Larry Kirk was dead.

Watching the young man closely, Sheila thought that the announcement was news to him. Like Palmer, he seemed taken completely by surprise. But his first thoughts were focused more on the future of his employment than on the death of his employer—understandable, since he had a wife, a child, and another on the way.

“Jeez,” he said, blinking. “The shop isn’t going to close, is it? Will I be out of a job?”

“I don’t know,” Sheila said, taking out her notebook and pen. “You’ll need to keep in touch with Mr. Palmer. He may be able to tell you something.” She paused. “When did you see Mr. Kirk last? What can you tell me about him?”

If Potts wondered about the reason for her questions, he didn’t say so. He couldn’t produce much information, though. He hadn’t seen Kirk that day. In fact, he hadn’t seen him for several days—they hadn’t happened to be in at the same time. He had worked at the shop off and on for only a few months and didn’t know Larry Kirk very well—couldn’t say much about him, except that he was pretty obsessive about stuff being done according to the book, his book. What else? Well, the guy hated guns, which was kind of ironic, wasn’t it? In fact, he had taken a day off to protest the student concealed-carry proposal in Austin, which Potts himself supported.

“You just never know when you’re gonna need a gun,” he said, shaking his head darkly. “Like, if somebody starts shooting up your history
class or something.” The baby climbed up on the sofa and crawled into his lap. “We had a big argument about that, me and Larry. I said we oughtta have the right.”

“Do you own a gun?” Sheila asked.

Potts shook his head. “Just think we oughtta have the right,” he said again.

Sheila nodded. “What about Dennis Martin and Jason Hatch? Do you know them?”

Potts knew Martin, but didn’t think he was a very good tech. “Too slow,” he said, with another shake of his head. “That’s what Larry said, too. I think he was getting ready to tell Martin to take a hike. There’s plenty of other guys who can work faster. You know what I’m sayin’? You gotta figure stuff out quick. Martin’s slow. Which drives Larry up a wall.”

Sheila was taking notes. “Jason Hatch?”

Hatch had been at the shop when Potts himself came on the team. He was older, not a graduate student like Martin and Potts. Richie had the idea that he’d been working there for quite a while, since the place opened, maybe. He was good. “Best I’ve ever seen,” Potts said judiciously. “He could scope out a problem way faster’n me. Faster’n Larry, too, which is sayin’ something.”

But Hatch had left about three weeks after Potts came on board. Hatch and Kirk had gotten into it, a real knock-down-drag-out, and Hatch was outta there. Fast. No notice, no nothing. Just
gone
.

“Got into it over what?” Sheila asked, looking up from her notebook. “What did they argue about?”

Potts shrugged. “Hatch was talkin’ to a customer, was what I heard from Dennis Martin.” The baby stood up on his lap and began to pull his hair.

“Talking to a customer?”

“Yeah. The way Kirk has his system set up, it’s against the rules for the techs to deal directly with the customers.” Potts pulled the baby’s hands down and the boy began to cry.

“Why? I mean, why is it against the rules?”

He put the baby on the floor. The little boy plopped down on his bottom and began to scream. Potts raised his voice over the noise, but didn’t move to placate him. “Lots of shops operate like that. Keeps the clients out of the techs’ hair, is the way Kirk explained it. Clients ask dumb questions—takes the techs too much time to answer them.” He grinned crookedly. “If you ask me, it’s more like it keeps the techs from lettin’ the clients know that they’ll work on the side cheaper than the shop can do it. In this shop, the jobs go in and out through Kirk or Henry Palmer, at the counter. Nobody comes around back. The tech’s got something to say to the client, he’s gotta write it on the job ticket.”

The baby was screaming louder. Sheila leaned forward. “But Hatch didn’t do that?”

Potts yelled, “Hey, Ruthie, come and get the kid. He’s bawlin’.”

The woman padded out of the apartment kitchen, picked up the crying child by both arms, and perched him on her hip. She directed a dark look at Sheila, as if the crying were her fault, and went back into the kitchen.

“Hatch didn’t do what he was supposed to do?” Sheila repeated.

“I guess not,” Potts replied with a shrug. “That’s what Henry said, anyway.”

Henry?
“Mr. Palmer knew why Hatch was fired?” That didn’t square with what Palmer himself had said. He’d claimed not to know what it was about.

“Well, he wasn’t fired, exactly. I mean, we’re not employees, we’re just contract. Larry told Henry not to call Hatch in for more work. But sure,
Henry knew all about it. He and Hatch were buddies, so if Larry didn’t tell Henry what was going down, Hatch would’ve.” He grinned slyly. “It was definitely okay by Martin and me, y’know. Meant more work for us.”

Sheila understood that reasoning. “Any idea who the customer was that Hatch was talking to?”

“Nah. But if you really want to know, it wouldn’t be hard to find out. Just look at the job tickets from around the middle of August, when it happened. It would be one of Hatch’s jobs about that time. Maybe the last one.” He frowned. “How come you’re asking about all this stuff? It’s ancient history.”

Sheila nodded and made a note to check the job tickets, wondering why she hadn’t thought of that. Or more to the point, why Palmer hadn’t suggested it. And why Palmer had lied about knowing the reason for Hatch’s firing. That was worth checking out.

“One more thing,” she said. “A notebook computer was brought in recently. The customer’s name was Timms. Did you work on that?”

“That’s the one the cops picked up, right?”

“Correct,” Sheila said. “Was it one of your jobs?”

Potts shook his head emphatically. “Nope. Never saw it, never touched it. Dennis and me talked about it afterward—after the cops took it, I mean. He didn’t work on it, either.”