Murder Takes a Break (19 page)

"This is a Ralph Kiner autograph model," he said.
 
"It must be forty years old at least.
 
I wonder how much it's worth?"

I wasn't in the mood to discuss baseball memorabilia.
 
I was worried about what the sawdust on my clothes was going to do to the upholstery in the truck.

"You can have the bat if you want it," I said.
 
"I don't think Big Al will be coming after it."

"She might.
 
You can't tell about her and Henry J."
 
He looked out at the esplanade for a second or two.
 
"You know, I think Henry J. must be a little crazy."

"Really?
 
What was your first clue?"

Dino took me seriously.
 
"There was no call for him to do what he did in there.
 
We weren't going to argue about leaving.
 
Were we?"

"I wasn't."

"Me neither.
 
I wonder if there's something he doesn't want Big Al to know?"

"It's a thought," I said.

He brushed at the legs of his jeans, knocking damp sawdust to the floor of the truck.

"I don't think this sawdust is very clean," he said.

"You're developing a real talent for stating the obvious."

"I'll bet people have been spitting in it for years.
 
Decades, maybe.
 
Can you smell it?"

I could smell it all right.
 
The smell filled the whole truck.
 
I just didn't want to think about it.

"You can take a bath when you get home," I said.

Dino put a hand to his face.
 
His lips were swollen, and there was a bruise beginning to form on his jaw.

"I hope I don't get some incurable disease," he said.

 
"I'd recommend very hot water and an anti-bacterial soap if you have some."

"I think I do."

"Good.
 
Use it."

He didn't say anything else for a few minutes, not until we were nearly at his house.
 
Then he said, "There's one thing I gotta know, Tru."

"Go ahead and ask," I said.

"Would you really have eaten those enchiladas?"

I tried a smile.
 
"We'll never know, will we?"

I
let Dino out at his house and drove home after he assured me that he was going to be just fine as soon he got a good night's sleep.
 
I gave him the baseball bat and told him to take a couple of aspirin and call me in the morning, but he didn't laugh.

There were all kinds of ideas tumbling around in the back of my head by the time I got home, but I couldn't make sense of any of them.
 
It was almost as if the bartender had hit me with that bat of his.

I managed to feed Nameless, take off my wetly sawdusted clothes and stick them in the washer, except for the jacket and tie, of course, which I hung on the back of a lawn chair outside.
 
Maybe they'd air out and I could get them cleaned later.

 
After that, I took a hot shower, but I didn't manage to read even a page of O'Hara.
 
I fell into the bed and went to sleep almost at once.

Nameless woke me up the next morning.
 
He was standing on my stomach, plainly irritated that I hadn't gotten up at the usual time to feed him.

He stared at me accusingly with his green eyes and said, "Mowr."

I lifted my head to get a better look at him and immediately wished I hadn't.
 
It felt as if it weighed a ton.

"Mowr," Nameless said again, with no regard for my pain.
 
Cats have no pity.

"I don't guess I blame you for not feeling sorry for me," I told him.
 
"I'd be upset if someone delayed my meals, too.
 
But I've got a good excuse."

"Mowr?"

"Never mind.
 
You wouldn't believe it, even if I told you."

"Mowr."

"Oh, sure, you say that now.
 
But you haven't heard the story yet."

I tossed off the sheet and sat up with my legs over the side of the bed.
 
My head felt a little better, but my whole body ached.

Nameless didn't care how I felt.
 
He just wanted me to feed him.
 
He jumped down from the bed and walked around in front of me so that he could look up at me.

"Mowr?"

"I'm not going to tell you.
 
Let's just say that I'm getting too old to get into fights with women.
 
And with bartenders who carry baseball bats."

Nameless had no comment.
 
Apparently my decrepit condition was obvious to him.
 
He stalked away, his tail in the air, confident that I would follow him.

So I took a deep breath, stood up, and did.

After I'd fed him, I shaved and washed my clothes.
 
I wasn't sure I'd ever wear them again, but I wanted them to be clean even if I threw them away.
 
I didn't want to be arrested for polluting the garbage dump.

While the clothes were chugging through the wash cycle, I went in and fixed a bowl of shredded wheat.
 
It tasted surprisingly good, and I remembered that I hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast the previous day.
 
I'd gotten cheated out of my enchiladas, but then I hadn't paid for them, so I guess it all evened out.
 
I finished the shredded wheat and had another bowl.

When I was finished, I put the bowl in the sink and ran water in it.
 
Nameless hopped up on the drain board.
 
I put a little soap in the bowl and washed it out with hot water.
 
Then I dried it and put it away.
 
Nameless gave me the accusing look that he'd been practicing.

"I've told you before," I said.
 
"Drinking out of my bowls isn't sanitary."

He ignored me and got in the sink anyway.
 
Since there was no bowl to drink from, he just licked the water in the bottom of the sink.
 
You can't win with cats, so I left him there and went to run my clothes through another wash cycle.

I put on my running shoes.
 
I didn't feel like going for a run, but I went anyway.
 
I wasn't going to let a little thing like a few hundred bruises stop me.
 
I was old and decrepit, but I wasn't going to give up my exercise.
 
Not yet, anyway.

When I got outside, I discovered that the weather had undergone a complete change.
 
Gray clouds scudded along so close to my head that I could have jumped up and touched them, if I could have jumped, which wasn't every likely.
 
The air was heavy with moisture, and a cold wind blew from the north.
 
I didn't mind.
 
It was pretty good weather for a run.

I ran about three miles with only an occasional twinge from my bad knee, and by the time I got back to the house I was feeling much better.
 
The run had loosened me up and relaxed my muscles.
 
A hot shower relaxed me even further, and after I dried off I sat down to think things over.

I'd put in a hard day on Sunday, but I wasn't sure I had much to show for it.
 
About the only conclusion I'd come to was that nearly everyone was still lying to me.
 
Maybe not Dino, but I thought his daughter was.
 
And I was absolutely certain that Patrick Mullen and Chad Peavy were.
 
Everyone was covering up something, and I wondered if all of them had played some role or another in the death of Kelly Davis.
 
I hoped not, especially in Sharon's case, but I didn't know what else to think.
 
It was depressing.

Even more depressing was the fact that I knew no more about what had happened to Randall Kirbo than I'd known when I started out.

What I did know was that Big Al was involved in both cases.
 
Or maybe I didn't even know that.
 
Maybe only Henry J. was involved.
 
Dino's idea about Henry J.'s over-reaction made sense when I thought about it.
 
Dino had over-reacted the same way when he wanted to put an end to a conversation.
 
That could explain some of Henry J.'s behavior, I thought, but not all of it.

I was also sure that in all the lying, someone had told me the truth about something important, something that should have meant something to me, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was.

I didn't know what to do next, so I looked through the notes I'd made in the police station.
 
I'd taken down the address and phone number of Kelly Davis' parents.
 
I didn't feel like making the long drive to San Antonio to interview them in person, but I could call.

The mother answered the phone.
 
Kelly's father was at work, she said, but after I explained who I was and what I was working on and told her that I'd spoken to Bob Lattner about things, she said that she'd be glad to talk to me if I thought I could do anything about Kelly's death.

"Someone killed her," she said.
 
"And I want that person punished.
 
I want that person to suffer a little of the hell I've gone through for the last nine months."

"I don't know that I can do anything about that," I said.
 
"I've really been hired only to find out what happened to Randall Kirbo."

"I can understand why his parents are concerned," she said.
 
"Bob thinks he's dead, too."

I assumed that would be Uncle Bob, the cop.

"Did he say why?" I asked.

"He says that whoever killed Kelly probably killed the Kirbo boy, too.
 
He says they put them both in the Gulf, and that Kelly just happened to be the one who was found."

Old Uncle Bob hadn't shared that thought with me.
 
I wondered why, aside from the fact that he didn't seem to like me very much at all, a fact I had neglected to mention to Mrs. Davis.

"Bob really loved Kelly," she went on.
 
"She was his favorite niece.
 
He loves Kate and Karen, too, of course, but Kelly was always the one he doted on."

Good old Bob hadn't mentioned that, either.
 
I'd been worried from the beginning about the possibility of his emotional involvement in the case, and Mrs. Davis had done absolutely nothing to relieve my misgivings.

"Kate and Karen were Kelly's sisters?" I said.

"Yes.
 
They're still in high school, and I'll never let them go on spring break when they get to college.
 
You can count on that."

I didn't blame her.
 
I said, "Did Kelly call you while she was here in Galveston?"

"Yes.
 
She called twice to tell us that she was all right and to tell us what a good time she was having."

Mrs. Davis had to pause for a second while she tried to stop remembering, something that's not always easy.
 
Sometimes it's just downright impossible.

"I don't know what happened that night," she went on after a while.
 
"All I know is what Bob told us.
 
She went to a party, and she met some boys there.
 
He talked to some of them, but they didn't tell him anything.
 
Or so he said."

"Why do you put it that way?" I asked.

I could hear her breathing while she thought about it.

"He just seemed vague when I talked to him," she said finally.
 
"It was as if he really did know something, but he didn't want to tell me."

I filed that away under "Other Stuff I'd Like to Discuss with Uncle Bob."

"Did he tell you any of the boys' names?" I asked.
 
"Had Kelly known any of them before?"

"One of them was named Chad," she said.
 
"I don't remember his last name, and I don't think Kelly knew him."

"That's OK.
 
I've met him."

"What kind of boy is he?"

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Sometimes I think I'd like to talk to them, just to ask them what she was like that night.
 
You know.
 
Was she having a good time?
 
Was she behaving herself?
 
She was a good girl, Mr. Smith.
 
She really was.
 
She would never have done anything to cause someone to kill her."

There was nothing I could say to that, nothing comforting at any rate.
 
The truth was that you could never be sure what someone might do, even someone you thought you knew very well indeed.
 
I'd had some experience along those lines.
 
More than I'd ever wanted to have, as a matter of fact.