Murder Takes a Break (15 page)

"You know damned well what I'm talking about.
 
I'm talking about you hitting Henry J. in the gut with my fishing rod yesterday."

Dino laughed, which just made me angrier.
 
I could feel my face getting red, but Dino didn't notice.

"I didn't break your rod, did I?" he asked.

"No.
 
That's not the problem."

"Then what is?"

"You know what it is."

Dino sat down.
 
"You keep saying that, but I really don't have any idea."
 
He looked up at me.
 
"Don't just stand there like a store dummy.
 
Why don't you have a seat?"

"I don't want to have a seat."

"I guess you don't.
 
Would a Big Red help?"

"Not this time," I said.

"Must be really serious, then."

"It's serious, all right.
 
You've lied to me right from the start.
 
I expect clients to lie to me when I'm working on a case, Dino, but you aren't my client.
 
You're my friend.
 
You're supposed to tell me the truth."

"Shit," Dino said.

"I want you to tell me what's going on, and I want you to tell me right now.
 
Otherwise, I'm leaving, and you can tell the Kirbos I'm sorry, but I won't be looking for their kid any longer."

"Listen, Tru, it's not like you think."

"That's what people always tell me, but usually they're lying then, too."

"Look, I'm going in the kitchen and get you a Big Red. I bought some special, just in case you came by, so you might as well drink one.
 
I even put the cans in the refrigerator so they'd be cold.
 
I know you'd rather drink out of the can than pour Big Red over ice."

I gave him a mature and reasoned response: "I don't want any of your damned Big Red."

"It's not mine.
 
I bought it for you.
 
So sit down while I get it."

He stood up and left the room.
 
I fumed for a few seconds and then sat down.
 
I'd drink his Big Red, but I wasn't letting him off the hook.

It was Chad Peavy who'd clued me in.
 
I'd wondered why Dino had slugged Henry J.
 
There hadn't seemed to be a reason for it, and I probably should have asked about it after it happened.
 
When Chad told me that Sharon Matthews was at the party, I knew the answer.

Sharon was Dino's daughter.
 
She had lived with her mother, Evelyn, a former prostitute who was now completely respectable, and Dino had hardly known her until she disappeared one day a year or so back.
 
I'd located her for him, and now their relationship was improving, just as Dino's relationship with Evelyn was improving.
 
Evelyn was better at getting him out of the house than I was, and I hoped that eventually the two of them would decide to live together, maybe even get married.

Sharon had been attending the local community college, and from what Dino had told me, she was doing very well.
 
She was supposed to graduate that summer with her associate's degree and go on to the University of Houston to get a teaching certificate.
 
It was hard for Dino to believe that someone related to him was going to be a teacher.
 
It seemed too respectable, somehow.

Apparently, Sharon wasn't so respectable that she was above going to a spring break party in one of Big Al's beach houses, however.

Dino came back in the room and handed me the can of Big Red.
 
He'd wrapped a paper napkin around it, but I could feel the cold of the can even through the paper.

He sat back down and watched me take a sip of the drink.

"I didn't put any poison in it, if that's what you're thinking," he said.

"I wasn't thinking that.
 
But I wouldn't put it past you."

"Look, Tru, I never lied to you.
 
I just left out a few things."

"Just little things, though," I said.
 
"Things anybody might overlook.
 
Like a dead body."

"Maybe I should start at the beginning and tell you the whole thing."

"What a unique idea.
 
Why didn't I think of that?"

"You know what you said to me yesterday?" he asked.
 
"About sarcasm?"

"I remember."

"Well, it doesn't become you, either."

"I can't help it.
 
I'm pissed off."

"I don't blame you.
 
It's my fault.
 
I admit it.
 
No wonder you don't trust me."

"Oh, I trust you all right.
 
I trust you to lie like a rug."

"That's a pretty good one.
 
Did you think it up right on the spur of the moment?"

I took a drink of Big Red and set the can on his coffee table.

"I thought you were going to tell me the truth," I said.
 
"From the beginning."

"Yeah, I guess I was."
 
He stared at something just above my head for a while.
 
"It's hard to know where to start."

"At the beginning.
 
Like you said."

"I'm not sure what the beginning is."

"The party," I told him.
 
"Start with the party.
 
I'd really like to hear about that party.
 
And try to tell the truth.
 
I'm going to check it with Sharon."

"I wish you could leave her out of it, Tru.
 
She's had a tough time, and this isn't going to help her any."

"Maybe not.
 
But she's in it already.
 
Now tell me about the party."

"All right," he said.

S
haron had found out about the party the way kids do, through hearing about it from someone who'd heard about it from someone else.
 
She didn't have anything else to do that evening, and she thought it might be fun.
 
She'd been working on a term paper that was due in her English class the day after spring break ended, and she'd thought the party would be a good way to relax for a while.

"She didn't know very many people who were there," Dino said.
 
"Just a couple of kids from the college.
 
She didn't know Kelly Davis or Randall Kirbo at all.
 
They were there, though.
 
She remembers hearing the names.
 
There was another kid there that comes into this, too.

I thought I knew who that someone was.
 
Chad Peavy.
 
But I let that pass.
 
I'd ask Sharon.

"Sharon didn't think anything else about them, though," Dino went on.
 
"Not until she saw the picture of Kelly Davis in the paper."

"But she didn't go to the police," I said.

"My family doesn't go to the police," Dino said, which was true.
 

It didn't matter that Dino wasn't involved in anything illegal and that he never had been, at least not directly.
 
It didn't matter that his uncles had been dead for years and that during most of that time Galveston had been as tame as an afternoon social at the Baptist church.
 

It didn't even matter that his daughter might know something that would help the police in their investigation into Kelly Davis's death. Dino and his family didn't go to the police under any circumstances.
 
He didn't even like it that I occasionally helped out the police, or that they helped me.

None of that mattered.
 
What mattered was the time-honored family policy: no cops.

"OK," I said.
 
"She didn't go to the police.
 
But I'm not the police.
 
The least you could have done was tell me the situation."

Dino shook his head.
 
"I didn't know the situation.
 
When Tack called me and asked me if I could help him out, I didn't know that his son had anything to do with that party.
 
I didn't know until yesterday, when you started talking to Big Al.
 
When you said you wanted to ask about a party at one of her beach houses, it was like everything just connected up right there in my head.
 
So I clobbered Henry J. before we got to that part of it.
 
It was just a gut reaction."

I had to smile, thinking about it.
 
"And he shoved you in the bay."

"Yeah, but you got him back for me."

"You should see him today.
 
I got him again."

"You did?
 
How?"

"I'll tell you later.
 
Maybe.
 
I want to know more about that party."

Sharon had hung around the party with the young man she'd met, probably Chad Peavy, but she hadn't enjoyed herself.
 
There was too much drinking.
 
Too many drugs.

"Sharon doesn't go for that kind of stuff," Dino said.
 
"Sure, she drinks now and then, maybe a glass of wine, but nothing heavy.
 
And no drugs, not ever."

Dino was insistent on that last point, and it was a point of honor that his uncles had never been involved in the drug business.
 
Gambling, yes.
 
Illegal liquor, sure.
 
Prostitution, no question.
 
But not drugs.
 
Never that.

"Have you talked to her since yesterday?" I asked.

"Yeah.
 
I called her right after you brought me home."

"But you didn't call me to tell me any of this."

"Yeah.
 
I know I should have, but I thought maybe you could figure things out without having to talk to her."

I picked up my Big Red and took a couple of long swallows.
 
I set the can back down and said, "Well, you thought wrong.
 
Let's go."

"Go where?"

"To see your daughter," I said.

S
haron lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old house only a couple of blocks from the Galvez Hotel, down toward Broadway.
 
It was getting late, and paying her a visit meant that we might be out after dark, so Dino wasn't keen on the idea.
 
He didn't like going out at all if he didn't have to, and he liked going out at night even less.

"It won't kill you," I told him.
 
"I'll even treat you to supper."

He looked longingly at his TV set.
 
"I don't want supper," he said.

"Look," I said, "I don't much care what you want.
 
This is all your fault, and you're coming with me, whether you like it or not."

His mouth hardened.
 
"I'm not sure you could make me go if I didn't want to."

"Jesus Christ, Dino, you really crack me up.
 
You got me into this mess in the first place, and since then you've lied to me and held out on me.
 
Now you want to pull some macho tough-guy crap with me instead of just coming along to help me talk to your daughter.
 
OK.
 
How do you want to handle it?
 
Draw a line on the floor and dare me to step across it?"

"You make it sound pretty silly when you put it that way."

"It is pretty silly.
 
We're grown-ups, after all."

Considering what my earlier feelings and actions had been, I was now being a genuine hypocrite.
 
But you do what you have to do.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Dino said.
 
"Let me call Sharon and tell her we're coming over."

"Let's just surprise her," I said.

"What if she's not there?"

"Then we'll go see her mother.
 
I want to talk to her too."

"You really know how to show a guy a good time," Dino said.

F
inding out that her mother had been a prostitute had been quite a shock to Sharon, and one result had been the disappearance that had caused Dino so much concern.
 
But that wasn't why she was living alone now.
 
She and Evelyn had pretty much patched things up, but Sharon was twenty years old, and she felt that it was time for her to get out on her own.
 
She had a job at one of the stores on The Strand, and she was making enough money to pay for her own place, so Evelyn had told her to go for it.