“Who didn’t take kindly to such threats…?”
“Then two men, one knife, and a big ol’ draft horse later and the mysterious C.A. enacted some of his own brand of winning.”
“Silencing a potentially powerful opponent of whatever legislation he was attempting to pass.”
“That’s my theory, yes,” I replied. Then I blew out a long breath, my nerves suddenly jumping because Ben was staring at me again.
He was only thinking, I could tell, but still. It was dawning on me that I had many intelligent people in my life who respected my brains as well, but I hadn’t been around someone who had so easily helped me to flesh out my thoughts before. It felt intimate.
He took off his glasses and put them in his shirt pocket. “All right, let’s nutshell this. What you want from me is help in going through political records to see if something sticks out from either Ayers or Applewhite that might indicate they were trying to control something—possibly in the sheep, wool, or textiles arenas.”
“Yes. That’s about the size of it.”
“So you need me for no other reason than you’re too lazy to do the research yourself,” he said, closing out his browser.
Indignation colored my voice. “No, I need you because political research is not my strong suit. It’s not that I can’t do it myself, it’s more to speed up the process, to know where to look first and how to narrow down searches faster. What would take me days would probably only take you hours.”
That got a smile from him. “I was right. Pure laziness.”
Scowling now, I reached across the desk and slapped a hand on top of the Tupperware container to slide it my way. I was going to take the whoopie pies and do this research myself, by golly.
Quick as all get out, his hand was on top of it, too, stopping me from taking back the goods.
He opened the top and handed me one of them. “You really can’t take a joke, can you?” he said before taking a bite.
“Are you going to help me or be a big jerk?” I said.
He stood up, grabbing his wool sport coat and leather bag. “I might do both.” Taking another bite, he said, “Man, these are good. C’mon, let’s go.”
For the second time today, Agent Ben Turner was having fun at my expense—and I wasn’t at all sure I liked it. “Where are we going?”
“To the Legislative Reference Library at the capitol to look at the House and Senate journals from the Second and Third Legislatures.”
I said, “I thought I’d read sometime back that the Texas Legislature and Republic of Texas journals had been digitized to be viewed online.”
“You’re right, but they’re not finished yet. The project started at the most recent legislatures and has been working backward. They’ve made it to the Fifteenth Legislature so far, so we’re going to have to do our research in-house. Close the door behind you, will you?”
I bit into my whoopie pie as I shut his office door. Ben was actually going to help me. This could either go really well or the librarians at the Legislative Reference Library were going to have to separate us and put us in a time-out.
TWENTY-ONE
Ben kept glancing at me as we walked to his car.
“What?” I finally asked as I hugged my arms closer to my chest and tucked my chin into the warmth of my wool scarf. It was tartan, in the royal blues and greens of the Clan MacKay, which was my mother’s surname.
“It’s really not that cold, you know.”
“Says you. I’m a seventh-generation Central Texan on my mom’s side and a fifth-generation South Texan on my dad’s. The ability to withstand cold has been duly bred out of me.”
I eyed him, smirking in his sweater and windowpane-check sport coat, looking truly oblivious to the whipping winds that kicked up the dead leaves and reddened the ears of the students we passed. “Speaking of, where are you from? Beyond the obvious ancestral answer of England, which your surname Turner makes obvious.”
He rattled off towns in the U.S., as well as Stuttgart, Germany, and Seoul, South Korea. His response was rote, but not without affection for a couple of places. Fort Lee in Virginia got an, “I wouldn’t have minded staying there longer, the local girls were really pretty,” and Stuttgart got a, “Nothing like a place that isn’t afraid to let teenagers drink.”
“You could have just said ‘I’m an Army brat’,” I teased as we got into his Explorer, earning me a muttered, “Serenity now…” that had me laughing.
“Have you ever been to the Legislative Reference Library?” he asked as he pulled out onto Martin Luther King Boulevard.
“Never,” I said. “I’m at the Texas State Archives and Library building quite a bit, which is next door to the capitol, but I’ve yet to visit the library. I’ve heard it’s small but beautiful, though.”
“I happen to like it. It’s a unique combination of classical design and something that’s just very Texas,” he said, and a smile was building on his face. “It’ll be nice to spend some time there. I don’t get much of a chance to do in-house research these days, but I prefer to whenever I can.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “It’s great to be able to do family research online and all, but my favorite parts of the job are going to the genealogical libraries, archives, and even into people’s homes to do my work. Rather than just seeing research on a computer screen, my subjects come alive in a whole new way.”
He glanced toward me—appreciatively, I thought—as we hooked a right onto one-way San Jacinto Boulevard and headed south toward downtown.
“It must’ve felt pretty good when you found that photo of Seth Halloran.”
I grinned like a loon at the memory. “Pretty good would be a massive understatement. I really thought Betty-Anne would only be able to tell me a tale or two that had been passed down. I was amazed all of Jeb’s photographs and journals would still be in the family. None of them even knew about the daguerreotype showing Seth had been stabbed, too. Finding that really was like finding lost treasure. The family had absolutely no idea of what they had and what it might mean to the Hallorans.”
“Though I agree with you in principle,” Ben replied, “that photograph and those journal entries became stones that Gus Halloran felt he could throw indiscriminately.”
“I had no idea he was going to do that,” I said, my shoulders tightening.
“You participated in a press conference about it, Lucy,” Ben countered. “How could you not know what he was doing?”
“The antihistamine I took before lunch had a decongestant in it and the combo reacted badly with the martinis I drank,” I said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t realize what I’d been a part of until hours later.”
At the stoplight at Fifteenth, he turned to me with the biggest Are you kidding me? look I’d ever seen when I heard his phone buzz.
“Turner,” he said. “What? When?” He listened for a few seconds. “No, I’m just down the street, on San Jacinto. I can be there in under ten.” Before I knew it, he was gunning it through the intersection.
“What’s going on?” I asked, bracing myself against the door as he swerved around traffic on the one-way street.
“Senator Applewhite has been attacked. I’ll walk you into the capitol, but I can’t stay.”
I was stunned. “The senator was attacked? Are you serious? Where?”
“At Waterloo Park.”
Waterloo Park sat on ten acres east of the capital and regularly hosted festivals and concerts on its grounds. It was named for the original 1837 settlement village called Waterloo, which would be renamed Austin two years later in honor of the founding father of Texas, Stephen F. Austin.
“He’s scheduled to give a speech at noon at some high school, but he went there first. Apparently to check it out as a potential rally site for the future. The guy must have been following him.”
“I can’t believe it. Is the senator okay?”
Ben grunted an affirmative as we sped through the next intersection at Fourteenth
.
Relieved, I said, “Was it the same guy who attacked me?”
“Don’t know, but probably,” he replied, riding the brakes and swearing when a slow-moving car didn’t get out of our way fast enough. “But this time, the guy didn’t only ask for a piece of paper from a diary. He tried to knife the senator, but only nicked him when the senator was pushed out of the way by one of his protection detail.”
“But where was his other bodyguard? There’re two of them.”
We cleared Thirteenth Street. “Hang on. How did you even know about his detail?”
“I … um…”
“You weren’t surprised when I said he was in town, either. How did you know? Did you go to see him about this Seth Halloran business?”
I realized at the last nanosecond that he couldn’t know about my waitress-turned-stalker moment at Flaco’s, he just thought I knew too much about the Senator’s whereabouts. Whew.
I said, “I overheard someone saying he was in town. I went to ask if he had any family knowledge as to whether Caleb was C.A. or not. It was nothing more interfering than that.” My guilt got the better of me and I added, “Actually, I had a nice talk with him about his family for about fifteen minutes, but he wasn’t able to tell me anything of much use.”
Ben shot me another searing look, but didn’t reply before cutting across the one-way street to the west side of San Jacinto, turning onto Twelfth Street, and pulling into the parking lot of the Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives and Library Building. The handsome capitol building stood close by, separated from the Archives by an expanse of grass, walkways, beautiful trees, and a black wrought-iron perimeter fence. He put the flashers on and unbuckled, motioning for me to do the same. We double-timed it through the iron gate and up the path, passing a sprawling live oak to the east entrance of the capitol.
“Start with the journals of the Second Legislature,” he told me as I worked to keep pace with his longer stride. “The dates of the session were almost a year before Seth was killed, but if you could find mention of Seth or his wife, Jennie, then it can be cross-referenced with any legislation that was passed in the Third Legislature. If you find something, it could be a motive for C.A.—and possibly a motive for any descendants in the present.”
We made it up the sunset-red granite steps and, as he opened the tall oak-and-glass door for me, I turned to him. “Will you let me know how the senator is doing? You can be ticked off with me if you want for going to talk to him, but I liked him. I want him to be okay.”
For a second, he just stood there, looking like he didn’t know what to do with me, but a hint of lightness had come back into his eyes just the same.
“Just behave yourself until I get back, will you? For once?”
Unable to resist, I threw him a snappy salute. “Yes, sir!”
I got the full eye roll in return and gave myself a mental high-five.
As I turned and walked through the doors and toward the nearest metal detector, it hit me: for all the effort I’d gone to in getting Ben’s help with this side of my research, I’d ended up on my own anyway.
Putting my leather tote bag on the scanner conveyer belt, I lifted my chin and walked through the metal detector with determination and a smile for the state trooper manning the security checkpoint. If figuring out who was the real C.A. was down to me alone, then so be it. I could do this.
* * *
“Here we are, all the legislative journals,” the librarian said, tapping the top row of thick books that had mustard-yellow spines and brown marbleized covers. Each one was about two inches thick.
“Wow, not your average light reading,” I said.
“Definitely not,” she agreed. “You said you wanted the Second and Third legislatures.” She pulled two journals and handed them to me. “For the Third, do you want to start with the Senate or the House?”
“Let’s go with the Senate.”
She pulled out three volumes and put them on top of the two I already had. “The Third Legislature had two called sessions in addition to the regular one, so you have these three babies to look through.”
My mouth gaped as she tapped three more books on the shelf. “Then the three from the House are waiting for you right here when you’re done with the Senate.”
I looked down at the overflowing books in my arms, and then back up at her. “This is how librarians get their kicks, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” she said with a wicked grin.
En route to the back of the library to find a place to sit, I paused to listen to the spiel of a tour guide from the State Preservation Board as she led a group of children to a portion of the library’s center aisle that was formed from glass-block tiles. The children all wore royal-blue T-shirts printed with JOHNSON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL on the front and MRS. HANEY’S FOURTH GRADE CLASS on the back.
“Before I tell you about the library,” the guide told them, “let’s do a little review. We were just in the capitol’s rotunda and it used to have a floor with glass-block tiles that are similar to the ones you’re standing on here. Do you remember what design is on the rotunda floor now?”
One boy with a turned-up nose raised his hand and answered with more confidence than I had at that age.
“The seals of the six flags that flew over the state of Texas.”
The tour guide beamed. “That’s right. The seals were added in 1936, replacing the glass blocks. Can someone name, in any order, the nations represented by those flags?”
The first boy’s hand shot up, but so did that of a little girl, making her ponytail sway from side to side. Her response was punctuated by pauses as she searched her memory and counted them off on her fingers.
“The United States … Spain … the Confederacy … the Republic of Texas … Mexico … and…” Her face began to flush as she struggled to remember the sixth. The other boy was wiggling, holding up his hand ever higher when the girl’s face split into a smile. “France!”
“Excellent!” said the tour guide. I went to walk off as the guide told the students to tilt their heads back.
“From this part of the library, you’ll notice you can see all the way up to the skylight on the fourth floor,” she said. “In fact, the glass tiles you’re standing on help the sunlight pass through to the first floor. This open area is called an atrium, and it means that anyone walking by on the balconies of the upper-floor offices can look down over the balustrades and see you.” I heard a smile come into her voice. “And you can see them as well. Give the gentleman a wave, everybody.”
I glanced up and saw a goateed businessman in a white dress shirt and mint-green tie wave to the kids as he walked away.
The tour guide then encouraged the students to keep looking around and notice the library’s architecture, from the elegant Corinthian columns holding up the vaulted ceiling, to the crown molding with its dentil trim, to the intricately carved oak-wood frames that surrounded the entrances to every doorway and window.
I craned right along with them, thinking I could see why Ben liked this library. It was modestly sized, but rife with lovely, classic detail. The tall windows and ceiling reached toward the sky and let in such brightness, giving it that uniquely Texas “Don’t fence me in” quality.
I chose to sit at one of the long tables by the north-facing windows as opposed to one of the study carrels. Setting down the three journals, I felt my phone buzz with two texts, almost simultaneously. One was from Serena, who I’d texted as I’d made my way through the capitol building to the library. Since she’d be right outside the building doing her photo shoot, I’d asked if she wanted to meet me at the on-site restaurant for lunch, aptly named the Capitol Grill.
We’ll be breaking for lunch about 11am but need to choose next location. 11:30 OK?
I looked at the time. It was nearly ten, so that would give me an hour and a half to see how far I could get into the journals. I wrote her back.
Perfect. Meet you there.
The second message was from BAT
in the Bureau—aka Ben.
Senator’s cut is minor. I have lecture ending at 3pm. Can you wait at LRL until 3:30? If not, have a friend come get you.
I snapped a photo of all five journals I had to look through and texted it to him, adding:
I’ll definitely still be here at 3:30. More journals still on shelf. Decided the librarians are punking me.
Looking through the open louvers of the window’s narrow shutters, I saw the trees on the capitol grounds weren’t rustling as badly as they had been. The wind had died down, turning the day into a lovely one. I opened the journal for the Senate and started scanning, typing notes into my iPad whenever I found something remotely worth remembering.
Next, I dug into the House of Representatives journal, and soon lost track of time.
My phone buzzed with a reminder to meet Serena for lunch as I started on the Senate journal for the Third Legislature. The librarian said I could leave my reading materials on the table, so I gathered my things and followed throngs of tourists downstairs and through the underground walkway to the capitol extension building.
“Did you find any clues?” Serena asked, after greeting me at the entrance of the Capitol Grill with a hug. Her hair and makeup were flawless as usual. She’d been modeling a casual look of jeans and a collared shirt in a winter white, topped with a softly textured long cardigan, and heeled booties in a warm tan. Men and women both turned their heads to watch her as we walked into the cafeterialike restaurant. We chose salads and drinks from their grab-and-go section and picked a table, using the other two seats of the four-top table for our purses. I envied the buttery-soft leather of her latest handbag as she dropped it into the chair next to me and asked me how things were going.
“Was anyone named C.A. the author of an amendment titled ‘San Antonio: Murdering Dudes in Its Streets Is Fine and Dandy’?”
I wrinkled my nose at her with a grin and speared a cherry tomato from my Cobb salad. “Oh, har. I’ve finished going through the journals for the Second Legislature and started on those of the Third. So far, there’s not much exciting regarding Cantwell Ayers or Caleb Applewhite, and absolutely no mention anywhere of Seth or Jennie Halloran.”
Murder Once Removed Page 20
