Dead on the Island (6 page)

I had a feeling that I'd found Terry
Shelton.

The girl from the soap shop, whose name I
learned was Vicky Bryan, called the police, who questioned us
separately. I'd dealt with the Galveston police before, when I was
looking for Jan, but I didn't know the one who was grilling me, a
detective named Gerald Barnes. I didn't feel any particular
obligation to tell him I'd been looking for Shelton. I just said
that I'd been in the shop, noticed that no one was around, and gone
next door to see if the girl inside knew what was going on.

It was a mistake.

What can I say? I was rusty. I hadn't been
into a serious investigation for quite some time. I should have
realized that Vicky would remember I'd been asking questions about
Shelton and that she would see no reason not to mention that
fact.

Barnes was mildly chapped. "You're trying to
dick me around," he said after returning from a consultation with
the cop who'd been talking to Vicky. "I really don't like to be
dicked around. It's boring, and it's a waste of time."

Barnes was not an imposing man. In fact, he
was somewhat slight, and he wore glasses. He looked more like a
computer programmer than a cop. But the implied threat in his voice
was real enough, and I figured he could back it up. He could get
help if he needed it, and I couldn't.

"Look," I said. "I'll level with you." I
gave a look at my license. "I'm working with a collection agency.
This guy's three payments behind on his car and one step ahead of
the repo man. I'm the last chance he gets. And then I come in here
and find him dead. You think I wanted anything to do with a murder?
All I wanted was out. I just didn't want to be involved. The girl
didn't know my name. I could have skipped, but I told her to call
you while I stayed here. You can ask her. I don't want anything to
do with this. I'll call the agency and have them send the repo man
out. Then I'm outta here. I'm history."

Barnes gave me a speculative look through
his black-rimmed glasses and brushed his thin brown hair off his
forehead. "What's a Dallas snoop doing here on the Island?"

"I'm working out of Houston now. Haven't had
time to file the change of address."

He took a notebook out of the inside pocket
of his brown jacket. "So what's your Houston address?"

I gave him one, along with a phone number. I
hoped he wouldn't check it. "You need me, you get in touch," I
said. "I'll be glad to help out."

He put the notebook back in his pocket. He
didn't look as if he'd believed a word I'd said, but eventually he
let me leave.

~ * ~

I wanted to talk to Vicky some more. I
thought she might know more than I'd been able to find out so far,
but I had to talk to Dino first. This was turning out to be a
little more complicated, not to mention dangerous, than I'd
expected.

Terry Shelton had been killed by someone
strong. I didn't have time to look at him very long, but there was
hardly a mark on him. My guess was that his neck had been broken. I
hadn't searched his body, but I'd looked around the cash register
and found a package of Camel filters with a matchbook stuck down in
the cellophane. I'd slipped the package into my pocket. How was
Barnes to know I didn't smoke? The matchbook was from a Houston
club called The Sidepocket. It was the only clue I had, if it was a
clue.

Barnes had kept at me for a long time, so it
was well after the lunch hour. I wanted to eat before I talked to
Dino, and Shrimp and Stuff was on the way home. I pulled the car in
behind the building and parked. Shrimp and Stuff doesn't pretend to
be fancy, but the food is cheap and good.

I opened the door of the restaurant and
stepped in, glancing at the menu hanging from the fourteen-foot
ceiling over the cash register. The menu items were painted on two
pieces of wood, brown on white, but the prices were inked on poster
board and stuck beside the menu names, just in case another oil
spill came along and drove up the price of seafood. It had warmed
up enough outside so that the ceiling fans had been turned on; the
blades revolved slowly over the few tables in the place. I stepped
up to the register and ordered a shrimp and crab po-boy, told the
cashier my initials, and sat down to wait.

When my initials were called out, I went up
to the counter and got my sandwich. There were only a couple of
other late diners, and I hardly glanced at them. My mind was on
Terry Shelton and Sharon Matthews, for whom things didn't look too
good right then. Obviously her disappearance was more than just a
runaway. If it involved murder, as it appeared to do, it was
getting beyond my area of expertise. I could find people, or I used
to be able to, but murder was another thing entirely.

To make matters worse, I'd already lied to
the cops about my interest in the case. If they ran into me again,
they weren't going to be pleased. And that was understating the
case. I had the idea that if I gave Barnes half a chance, he would
charge me with everything but mopery and stash me so far back in
one of the TDC's correctional units that I'd never see the Gulf of
Mexico again. Some people just don't like private eyes, especially
private eyes that lie to them. And who could blame them?

I finished my sandwich, gathered up my
Styrofoam plate and the crumpled napkins, and threw them all in a
large brown trashcan. A hand printed sign attached to a railing
behind the can said, "SAVE ALL BEER BOTTLES." I wasn't sure whether
it was a command or request, but I didn't have a beer bottle
anyway, so I went on out.

I drove over to Dino's tan-colored Tudor
house, stopped the car, and got out. Ray answered the door. I was
beginning to expect him to be dressed in livery, but he was wearing
a brown suit that clearly had no unnatural fibers in its
composition, a crisp white cotton shirt, a silk tie with a sort of
paisley pattern, and brown shoes. Probably Stacy-Adams. I could
never figure anyone who would wear a suit in the middle of the day,
but maybe if I'd looked a little more like Ray, Julie Gregg
would've talked more to me.

"You admiring my outfit or trying to
remember your sales pitch?" Ray said.

"I need to talk to Dino," I said. "It's
important."

"It better be. He's in the middle of
Days
of Our Lives
. You know, 'Like sands through the hourglass . . .
. '"

I said I didn't know.

"Well, you better come on in anyway."

He led me into the living room, where Dino
sat on his couch watching the television set. He was crouched
slightly forward, holding the remote control device in his left
hand. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of blue slacks,
much more casual than Ray, though still not in my class. Ray and I
stood respectfully silent until a commercial for a feminine hygiene
product came on.

"Those damn ads always embarrass me," Dino
said, which I thought was a strange remark for a man whose entire
personal fortune--which was no doubt considerable--was based on the
income of a huge gambling and prostitution operation. He turned the
television's sound down and looked at me. "What's happening?"

"I hate to interrupt your program."

"That's OK. Hasn't been worth a damn in
years, not since Doug and Julie left. Julie's back now, but it's
not the same. Amanda left too. She's on that Newhart show. You ever
catch that one?"

I shook my head. "Afraid not."

"Well, it's too late anyway. It's off the
air now. But it was pretty good. The last show was a classic."

I said I was sorry I'd missed it.

"Yeah, you should've seen it, all right. You
remember how they had this thing on Dallas a few years back, about
how Bobby's death was all just a dream? It was a take-off on
that."

I had to admit that I didn't even know who
Bobby was.

"I guess you didn't come here to talk about
TV shows, did you?" Dino glanced back over at his set, where the
soap opera had resumed. He didn't turn the sound up, though. "Sit
down. Ray'll bring us something to drink. I guess you want a Big
Red."

"That'll be fine."

Ray took his cue and disappeared. I went
over and sat in the same chair I'd occupied the day before.

"Don't tell me you found the girl already,"
Dino said.

"Don't worry. I won't."

Dino sneaked a look at the TV screen. "What,
then? It must be something, or you wouldn't be back so soon. You
haven't spent that thousand already, have you?"

"No," I said. "Not yet."

"So? Gimme a clue. You're the detective, not
me."

I told him that I'd talked to Evelyn
Matthews, found out about Sharon's friends, and visited Julie
Gregg. By then Ray had come back with the drinks. I took a swallow
of Big Red.

"I went to see another friend of Sharon's
today," I said. “He worked down on The Strand. Name was Terry
Shelton."

I was watching Dino closely, but he didn't
seem to notice the use of the past tense. Ray had retired back out
of my line of sight, so I couldn't see how he'd reacted, if he'd
reacted at all.

"So what did this Shelton have to say?" Dino
asked.

"Very little. He was dead when I got
there."

Dino carefully set his glass on the
curved-leg coffee table. "Dead?"

"That's right. Dead."

"The police know about this?"

"They know. There was a witness with me when
I found the body, though, so I'm not in any trouble."

"Who's this witness?" He picked up the glass
again and took a drink.

"No one important. The girl who works in a
shop next door to where I found Shelton."

"What did you tell the cops?"

"Nothing much. I didn't mention Sharon
Matthews. I gave them a line about bill collecting. I wasn't sure
how much you wanted them to know."

"There was a time when we could trust the
cops on the Island," Dino said. "But not now."

I took that to mean that his family pretty
much had the cops in their pockets back in the 1930s and '40s.
Well, it was true, or so everyone said. But times had changed. Dino
had the money, but not the power.

"The problem," I said, "is that this isn't
just about some little girl who's run away from home, not anymore.
This is a whole lot worse, and I'm not sure I want to have anything
to do with it."

Dino looked hurt. "You trying to jack up
your price, Tru?"

"You know me better than that."

"Yeah, I guess I do. How's the knee
today?"

"Enough with the knee. It's not the
knee."

"I know that. I know that. It's just that
this bothers me. Even in the old days, I never heard my uncles talk
about murder."

He was telling the truth, I was sure. His
uncles might have controlled the Island, and they might have been
heavily into enterprises that some people might narrow-mindedly
have called criminal, but murder was a different story. The uncles
were never mixed up in murder.

Dino sighed, touched a button on his remote,
and caused the TV screen to darken. He was going to have to deal
with real life, whether he liked it or not. He looked over my
shoulder. "What d'you think, Ray?"

"Sounds like maybe someone else is looking
for the kid," he said. "How'd this Shelton guy die?"

"I don't know," I said. "I didn't see any
marks on him. No blood. His head was at a pretty funny angle.
Looked as if maybe his neck was broken."

"Damn," Dino said. "So where does this leave
us?"

"There are a couple of people I could talk
to again," I said. "And there's one other thing. But the real
question is, am I going on with this?"

"Why not?" Dino said.

"I told you," I said. "It's not a missing
person thing now. It's murder."

"You want out, huh? You wanta quit?"

"I'm not sure what I want. I think about
Jan, and I know that murder wouldn't stop me in that case. I guess
what I want is for you to say you didn't have anything to do with
this Shelton mess. That you had no idea there was anything like
that involved."

"How long have we known each other?" Dino
said. "Forever, right?"

"I guess," I said.

"No guessing. Ball High? Knocking heads in
football practice? Chasing the same girls? Forever."

"OK," I said. "Forever."

"Ray too."

Ray hadn't been in high school with us,
though the Island would have integrated fairly willingly. He'd been
around, though. Even then he and Dino were close.

"Yeah," I said. "Ray too."

"So I'm telling you we didn't know. No shit,
now. Right, Ray?"

"Right," Ray said.

"We don't know any more about murder than
you do," Dino said. "Think how Evelyn's gonna feel when she finds
out about this. Did you tell her yet?"

"No," I said. "I thought I'd better leave
that to you."

"Right. I'll call her. You gonna stick with
this?"

"All right," I said. I had a feeling I was
making a big mistake, but I didn't have anything better to do. The
house painting business was lousy. And I'd known Dino forever. If I
couldn't trust him, who could I trust?

"Great. You need anything, you let me know.
But don't get in trouble with the cops. I know a few of them, but I
can't help you very much there."

"There's one thing you can help me with. The
other thing I mentioned." I took out the cigarette pack and slipped
out the matchbook. "You can tell me about this place." I handed the
matchbook to him.

He looked at it for a minute, not saying
anything, and then tossed it across the room to Ray. "See what you
can find out," he said.

Ray went out with the matchbook. "I still
have a few contacts for that kind of stuff," Dino said. He drained
his glass and set it on the table. I still had half of my Big Red
left.

"Where'd you get the matchbook?" he
said.