Fool's Puzzle (8 page)

“I ...” I started to say I was too busy. My intention was that Rita would be the person talking to him, not me. I just hadn’t figured how I was going to work that out.

“What?” His voice practically barked.

“I’ll see you then,” I said lamely.

“Good,” he said and hung up.

Sticking my tongue out at the buzzing receiver made me feel juvenile, but a whole lot better.

Less than an hour later, the detectives showed up. Detective Ryan, the bushy-browed one from last night, and Detective Cleary, a somber-faced black man with skin the color of aged oak. With exaggerated politeness they commandeered my office and methodically called in each artist and questioned them. I wandered through the studios and tried to eavesdrop. Finally, I just came out and asked one of the quilters, a gossipy, myopic woman named Meg, what they were asking.

“They wanted to know where we were at the time she was killed. How well we knew her. Did we know of anyone angry at her. Things like that.” She held up a lap quilt she was working on, a copy of Georgia O‘Keeffe’s painting ’Corn.‘ “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “That’s all they asked?”

“That’s all. Why, what did they ask you?” She leaned forward, crumpling the quilt in her lap, her face awash with curiosity.

“Same thing.” I avoided her avid gaze, deciding I’d better limit my questions until I found Rita. “I have to go out for a while. I have some errands to run, then I’ll be at Blind Harry’s. If anyone needs me, I should be back by three or four.”

I glanced at the unfinished quilt exhibit as I walked through the main hall. I wondered if Eric would ever show up. If he didn’t, it looked like my Thanksgiving would be spent hanging quilts, something I wasn’t really upset about—at least it would keep me busy. I tried briefly to imagine Eric stabbing Marla. It just didn’t seem probable. For one thing, she was five inches taller than him. And he seemed too shallow to work up the kind of passion it took to kill someone. But then again, I’d only known Eric three months. What did I really know about him?

Detective Ryan called to me as I was about to walk out the front door. “Can I use this?” He pointed at the phone behind the tiny gift shop counter.

“Sure,” I said. “Take as long as you like.”

Take all day, I thought. I didn’t know how many detectives Ortiz had working on the case, but I was hoping it was just Cleary and Ryan. This had to be the best time to cruise by Marla’s place and see if there was any sign of Rita. If the police were there, I’d keep driving. No one would ever know.

Easy, Dove would say, as shooting a turkey.

Of course, I should have remembered what Daddy always added to that statement in his calm, ironic voice.

“Or your own foot.”

MARLA RENTED HER paint-peeling, 1930’s bungalow from Floyd, her boss at Trigger’s. It squatted in a neighborhood where fifty-year-old houses shared street lights with muffler repair shops and aluminum recycling centers. Half-covered by a huge orange bougainvillea bush that clashed with the faded red clapboard walls, it appeared deserted when I swung into the driveway. After banging on the torn screen door and pressing the rusty doorbell until my forefinger throbbed, I came to the brilliant conclusion that no one was home. There was no indication the police had been there, but then what did I expect, a twenty-foot banner?

Though Trigger’s was the last place I felt like going, I knew I’d have to talk to Floyd. There was only a slim chance he knew where Rita was, but it was a possibility I couldn’t overlook.

Trigger’s Saloon was two blocks away, and though it was only eleven o‘clock, the parking lot was already half-full. I pulled up between a chopped Harley with “Midnight Confessions” painted in script on the purple gas tank and a school-bus-yellow crew cab pickup.

I sat in my truck and stared at the bar. A flat-roofed cinder-block building the size of a small bowling alley, it sported the usual Silver Bullet, Budweiser and Dos Equis signs in the darkened windows, as well as two large white satellite dishes on the roof. It played live country-western music six nights a week, was the bar of choice for oil-field workers and cowboys, concrete and otherwise, and served the best beef dip sandwiches in the county. It was also the last place my husband was seen alive.

The air in the bar felt thick and cold and rippled with the scent of wet, smoldery beef, the vinegar of men’s sweat. I scanned the room uneasily, studying the high-backed booths lining the walls, the three crowded pool tables, the long bar presided over by a depressed-looking elkhead with battered cowboy hats stuck in its antlers. A smoky haze hovered over the room like a misty tarp. From the juke box, Alan Jackson moaned about the haunted, haunted eyes he saw one midnight in Montgomery.

I almost ran out.

But something—responsibility, loyalty, stupidity—compelled me to walk up to the bar where Floyd swabbed the counter with a stained white towel. His fiftyish face held a tired look. A sparse, graying beard attempted to cover a cherry-red skin rash.

“Floyd?”

“That’s my name,” he said. He traded the tired look for a suspicious one.

I stared at him for a moment. The questions on the tip of my tongue had nothing to do with Rita. What I really wanted to ask was—Do you remember Jack? Did you serve him that last beer? Did you talk to him last? The one thing I’d never been able to let go, was the feeling that if Jack
had
to die before me, the last voice he heard should have been mine.

Floyd’s cross voice brought me back. “Is there something you want, lady?”

“My cousin Rita.” I forced myself to focus on him. “She works here. Have you seen her lately?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“Two nights ago?” He phrased it like a question. His scraggly eyebrows intersected in a frown.

“Sunday night?” I prompted.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He pulled out a can of Copenhagen and stuck some behind his bottom lip. “She’s supposed to work tonight.”

“I need to get in touch with her,” I said. “It’s extremely important. Can you tell her to call Benni when she comes in?”

“If she comes in. She ain’t all that dependable.”

“You heard about Marla, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” He nodded and folded his towel in half, in quarters, then stuck it under the counter. “Tough break for me. She was a good bartender. Never cheated me once. Least, far as I could tell. She’ll be hard to replace.”

I looked at him in amazement. Tough break for him? What about Marla? Nice guy. One of his employees is murdered and all he can think about is her replacement.

“Well, Rita was with her that night and I think she might have gotten scared and taken off. Do you have any idea where she might go?”

“Ain’t she living with Marla? You check the house?”

“Yes, no one answered.” When he didn’t offer anything more, I decided to take a chance. The worst he could do was say no. “Maybe there’s something in the house that will tell me where she’s gone. Have the police been here asking for a key yet?”

His expression became irritated. “No. You think they will?”

“Probably. I’d like to see the house before them. Do you have a key?”

“I don’t want any trouble,” he said with a scowl.

“Just give me five minutes. Please. I want to see if her clothes and stuff are gone. Her grandmother is worried. Please.” I gave him my best pleading look. Being short and somewhat adolescent-looking can have its advantages. It’s harder to pull off the helpless female act if you’re over five-six or carry a briefcase. I hated using it, but your resources are your resources. It doesn’t always work, but this time it did.

He eyed me sourly and reached under the counter. Pulling out a huge set of keys, he twisted one off. “Make it fast.”

“Thanks.” I smiled widely, feeling a bit proud of myself for finally accomplishing something concrete in my search for Rita, even if I did set women’s lib back a game point or two.

My feeling of triumph lasted until I entered the house. I purposely stayed away from anything of Marla’s, knowing the police would be looking through her things soon, if they hadn’t already. Rita’s room was empty except for an old bed, a couple of pasteboard boxes and a lone fly two-stepping across the window screen. I sat down hard on the saggy mattress. My options were few. Nonexistent, actually. I locked the back door and drove back to Trigger’s, rehearsing what I would tell Ortiz. None of it sounded plausible. I’d withheld important information on a homicide investigation. There was no dancing around that.

By the number of pickups and motorcycles crowding the parking lot, Trigger’s lunch rush had begun. When I walked back up to the bar, Floyd was filling a pitcher from the tap with one hand and picking up a wad of bills with the other.

“Find anything?” He set three mugs and the full pitcher on a large tray. A gray-pig-tailed man in a blue “Built Ford Tough” tee shirt winked at me as he picked them up.

“She’s gone.” I tossed the keys on the bar. “Thanks. If she happens to come in, tell her to—”

He interrupted me. “You got a visitor.”

“What?”

“Cop.” He spit into a white mug and gave me an annoyed look. “Had to tell him where you were. Told you I didn’t want no trouble.”

“Thanks for nothing.” I turned and searched the noisy room for Ryan’s stomach or Cleary’s calm, dark face. How did they find me? No one could possibly have known where I’d been going.

“Okay, I give up,” I said. “Where are they?”

“He.” Floyd jerked his head toward a corner booth where a dark-haired man wearing a conservative gray suit, a crisp white shirt and a furious expression, stood up and crooked his finger at me.

The epithet I muttered caused the skinny cowboy standing next to me to burst out laughing. I was, obviously, going to be given the privilege of explaining myself earlier than I’d anticipated.

Walking slowly toward the man in the gray suit, I decided on the casual approach.

“Chief Ortiz,” I said. “I hardly recognized you in your grownup clothes.”

His facial impersonation of a mannequin impressed me, though I decided not to share that particular thought. He pointed to the seat across from him.

“Sit down.”

So much for the casual approach. I slid across the slick brown vinyl, avoiding eye contact. After he sat down, we played more of the silence game. While he worked at intimidating me, I occupied myself with studying his hands which were tapping a soft cadence on his thick white coffee mug. They were huge, strong-looking, with short, neat nails, and though clean, stained black in rough crevices no soap can reach. A mechanic’s hands. I looked up at him in surprise.

The expression on his face was unreadable. I refused to give in and look down, hoping my face didn’t show the dog-caught-in-the-garbage-can look I suspected it held.

Finally, he spoke.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

An excellent question. One I’d asked myself several times in the last twelve hours. I looked him straight in his peculiar gray-blue eyes and told him the truth.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

For a moment he appeared stunned. Not the answer he expected. Not the answer I expected. His mouth made a sharp downward curve.

“You can tell me about it now,” he said. “Or we can go down to the station. Your choice.”

My day had been full of choices, none of which had been appealing in the least. He wouldn’t believe I intended telling him everything at our afternoon meeting, so there seemed no point in mentioning it.

“You know, you might find people more cooperative if you were a little friendlier,” I pointed out, trying to stall for time.

He started to slide out of the booth. “Okay, Ms. Harper, let’s go.”

“No, wait. I’d rather talk here.”

“Then talk.”

I drummed my fingers on the wood table and studied his maroon paisley tie. “Look, I’m going to be straight with you.”

“Now, there’s a novel concept.” He sat back and crossed his arms.

I gave him one last irritated look before telling him everything I’d seen in the last twenty-four hours including Eric’s argument with Marla and how all Rita’s possessions were gone. I emphasized how she couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the murder.

“And how do you know that?” he asked.

“I just do. She didn’t have any reason to.” I paused and took a deep breath. “She’s my cousin, Chief Ortiz.”

“Your family has some sort of genetic immunity to capital offenses?”

“That’s not what I mean. I know her. She’s a lot of things, but she’s not a killer. I’m not saying she didn’t see anything. She probably did, and that’s why she’s hiding. She could be in danger. We have to find her.” My voice faltered slightly. Remembering what happened to Marla, a cold knot of fear twisted my stomach.

He adjusted his glasses impatiently. “We aren’t going to do anything. I’m going to say this once, Ms. Harper, so listen up. Stay out of this investigation. I’ll find your cousin. I’ll find Ms. Chenier’s murderer. And I’ll do it without your help. Got it?”

“Excuse me, but where does it state that looking for your family is against the law?”

“Ms. Harper,” he said, his voice deceptively soft. “The only law you need to worry about is the one about interfering in a police investigation. We have plenty of room in our holding cells downtown.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I held his gaze and waited. “Is that all?”

“Don’t forget to go by the station and give your prints.” He glared at me. “We especially need them now that you’ve tampered with a possible crime scene.”

“No problem.” I slid out of the booth and stood up. “Now can I go?”

“Yes.” He waved me away with his large hand, his mind already on something else.

I walked slowly toward the exit, fighting the urge to break and run. I heaved a sigh of relief as I hit the crisp afternoon air, then groaned as I caught sight of my lopsided truck.