by Kit Frazier
Grimacing, he sniffed the air. “Somebody break in again?”
“No,” I said. “My friends were trying to cleanse my house of evil spirits.”
“Did it work?”
“Depends on how you look at it. What do you want?” I said, and cringed at my snippy tone.
Logan shook his head. “You lead an interesting life, Cauley MacKinnon.”
“I’m ready for un-interesting. I was thinking of finding a nice, boring accountant, getting married and moving to the middle of a Kansas cornfield.”
Logan snorted. “Yeah. That’ll happen.”
“You don’t think I could marry an accountant?”
“I don’t think you’d be happy with a boring life.”
Without asking, he settled on the sofa. I joined him and we stared at the television, where Lauren Bacall was busy slapping the living daylights out of Edward G. Robinson. The gangster looked like he was going to kill her when Bogey stepped in.
I sighed. “Do you think Bogey really loved Bacall the way everybody makes out they did?”
“I don’t see why not.”
I watched the screen as it flickered in black and white clarity. “It’s a big fat fairy tale. Nobody really believes in that stuff.”
Logan shrugged. “Sometimes they do.”
I turned and looked at him. “I’m sure you didn’t come by to watch old movies and talk philosophy.”
“I told you. I heard you were having a rough time.”
“Have you been spying on me?”
“Should I be?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Yeah, you caught me,” he said. “FBI agents have nothing better to do with their time than surveil private civilians.”
I was half thinking about smacking him when he smiled. I had to admit. He had a really great smile.
“Hey,” he said. “You haven’t been calling my office and harassing my secretary for information. I thought I’d come by and see if you were okay.”
“And see if any big earless guys left confession notes on my doorstep?” I said.
“It was a thought.”
“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “I’m back to writing obituaries and off Barnes for good.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I mean it, Logan. You were at the funeral you heard her. Selena’s mother called me a murderer in front of God and half of Austin. She said it was my fault Scooter killed himself. It would take an act of God to get me involved again.”
Logan nodded. “I don’t think I’d blame myself for someone else’s actions.”
“Obviously you don’t know me very well.”
“You hear from your customs agent?”
I stared at him. He’d almost growled when he said that. Maybe there was hope after all.
“No,” I said, trying not to smile. “Right now I’m just slothing around feeling sorry for myself.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Prove Scooter didn’t kill himself.”
“Easier said than done.” Logan rose. “Give it some time, kid.”
Thunder rolled on the horizon and lightning flashed bright through the wide living room window.
Logan looked down at me. “An act of God, huh?”
“A specific act of God.” I pulled my robe tightly around me and walked Logan to the door, Marlowe trotting alongside. I felt miserable and cold and I was about to be alone. Again.
Looking out the door, Logan turned to me.
“Storm’s getting close,” he said.
I shrugged, but tipped my face skyward and I could smell the threat of rain.
Logan stepped onto the porch and turned back to me. “You need anything, you call. I’ll be there.”
I nodded. The problem was, I wasn’t sure what I needed, but I was pretty sure I was the only one who could give it to me.
It rained hard all night, a genuine, Texas thunderstorm, and it rocked the house to the foundation. I slept in fits and starts, and when I wasn’t dreaming of exercise equipment I would never use and swimwear I would never fit into, I could hear Selena’s mother’s voice hissing behind me.
Murderer.
Muse slept on my head, Marlowe on my feet, and as I dozed, I wondered if the animals were the only things anchoring me to the earth. The telephone trilled, puncturing my turbulent dreams.
Lightning snapped outside my bedroom window like a brilliant whip, and I rolled over to get the receiver, knocking both the dog and cat off the bed.
“Cauley?” A woman’s voice quavered over the line. Even in my dream-induced stupor, there was something familiar about that voice.
“Yes?” I sat up, blinking and wiping my face to get Muse’s orange and white fur off my face.
“It’s Golly Barnes. You said if you could do anything to help…?”
A phone call in the middle of the night from Scooter’s mom? I was wide awake. “What kind of help did you have in mind?”
“We, the Coach and I, we need to talk to you.”
Thunder boomed outside my bedroom window and the hair lifted on the back of my neck.
I supposed I’d found my act of God.
Chapter Eighteen
Great. Scooter’s parents wanted to talk to me. The thing is, they couldn’t say anything worse to me than I was already saying to myself.
I climbed out of bed, showered, blasted my hair dry and pulled it into a ponytail holder, then fed the cat and put water down for the dog.
“You’re going to have to stay here,” I told Marlowe, who stared at me with a pained look in his dark, almond eyes.
With a growing sense of dread, I stuffed my little notebook and new mini recorder into my new purse and headed for my Jeep.
I stopped just inside the front door, looking up at the thick, gray sky. The rain had let up but it had poured buckets all night, and, as usual in these cases, I’d left the top of my Jeep off. The seats were going to be soaking wet. I headed back into the house for a towel to wipe the driver’s seat when Marlowe flew by in a blur of gray and white fur. He leapt into the wet passenger seat and looked at me expectantly.
“You are obnoxious,” I told the dog. “It is truly no wonder that your owner hasn’t come to claim you.”
The dog stuck out the tip of his tongue and ignored me.
“What do you suppose Mrs. Barnes wants from me?” I said to Marlowe as I unfolded the canvas top to the Jeep and struggled to snap the gigantic snaps into place.
Murderer. Selena’s mother’s voice echoed in the damp air.
Whatever Scooter’s parents wanted, I was going to do my best to give it to them. Even if what they wanted was somebody to blame.
My hands were sweaty and my throat was tight when I nosed the Jeep down Creek Road toward Paradise Falls. I felt like I’d been sucked into a time warp. The towering live oaks were the same. So were the rolling hills. The only real change was that Scooter wasn’t there.
I pulled past the old, white farmhouse and into the separate garage out back, just as Golly Barnes had asked.
In the past month, I’d been threatened with a knife and run into the river. I’d lost a childhood friend and been called a murderer. I supposed there were a litany of reasons why I shouldn’t be sitting in the garage of the parents of a man I may or may not have helped commit suicide.
At the back of the property, the shed where I’d last seen Scooter loomed like an old wooden grave marker.
“Stay,” I said to Marlowe, and I swear the dog smirked at me. It didn’t matter. The canvas top was snapped onto the Jeep’s frame. This time he’d have to do what I said.
I climbed out of the Jeep, my chest going tighter with each step I took toward the back of the old farm house. I knocked on the screen door. “Mrs. Barnes?”
Golly Barnes appeared in doorway. She was wearing a pale blue Mexican dress, looking exactly like what she was, an aging, West Texas cheerleader with a kind face and bright eyes.
“You’re alone?” she said, her gaze darting along the r
olling hills behind her house.
“Mrs. Barnes, are you okay?” I said, with the sinking feeling that she wasn’t okay at all.
I heard a popping noise like big, industrial-sized snaps unsnapping, and in a streak of white fur, Marlowe leapt to my side.
Mrs. Barnes let out a small yelp, and I grabbed the dog by the collar. “Blast it, Marlowe! I’m really sorry, Mrs. Barnes ‘
Footfalls from deep in the house rang on terracotta tile, and I heard the Coach’s voice rumbling down the hall like the voice of God, if God had been born in Lubbock.
“Is that little Cauley?”
“Hey Coach,” I said, offering my hand when the big man rounded the corner, and he looked so much like an older version of Scooter that my breath caught. Coach stepped inside the handshake and hugged me hard. Something in my chest tightened.
“I’m really sorry about Scott,” I said, fighting back tears as Coach released me. They both seemed to have aged ten years since the funeral.
“We know you are, hon,” he said.
Marlowe and I followed Coach and Golly through the mudroom into the kitchen. I sat at the red formica and chrome table, where a bulging photo album lay next to the longhorn salt-n-pepper shakers.
Mrs. Barnes slid me a glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon, then wiped her hands on a red checked dishtowel and sat. “At the funeral, you said if we needed anything we should call?”
I nodded.
Her lips pressed into a thin, pink line and she looked at me dead on. “We want you to find out who killed Scooter.”
My heart gave a thump and I wondered what to say. I had known these people since I was a kid, ate cookies at their kitchen table, skinny-dipped in their creek. Now they were asking for my help. As a peer.
Their only child was dead and the M.E. had ruled his death a suicide. My boss’s needle was pegging the patience-meter and he’d practically forbidden this line of research.
But now the Barnes’ sat across from me at their kitchen table, watching me expectantly.
I blew out a long breath and pulled the little Sony and notebook out of my purse. “All right.” I blew out a breath and flipped the recorder on. “What makes you think Scott was murdered?”
“Scott wouldn’t have killed himself,” Coach said.
Mrs. Barnes flipped open the tattered photo album and pointed to photos of Scott and Selena on their wedding day. I looked closely. Captured on crystal clear Kodachrome, Scooter was beaming as he carefully offered Selena the first bite of expensively frosted white wedding cake no obnoxious rubbing it in her face.
I looked at Coach and Golly and didn’t know what to say. Since Scooter started having problems I’d done some research on suicide. According to the books I’d read, relatives and friends often get mired in guilt or denial.
Mrs. Barnes looked at me sharply. “He had too much to live for.”
“You mean The Blue Parrot?” I took a long drink of iced tea. It was good, like Nana MacKinnon used to make.
“That little pet shop was really taking off,” Coach said. “But, no. There was more.”
Mrs. Barnes leaned toward me. “Selena is expecting.”
I nearly dropped my iced tea.
“You mean like a baby? How do you know?”
Scooter’s parents stared at me like I’d lost my last shred of decency.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know that sounded harsh and I apologize. But you asked for my help, and I have to know what leads to follow. Did Selena see a doctor?”
“You think she’s not being truthful?” Mrs. Barnes said, her eyebrows raised so high they disappeared into the fringe of her platinum bangs.
“It’s just to establish a time line and a paper trail,” I said carefully. “And I’ll probably need to go talk to Selena.”
Coach nodded. “In case we wind up in court.”
“Like Matlock,” Mrs. Barnes said, brightening a little.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just like that. Have you told the police about this?”
I was scribbling like crazy.
“We figured Selena told them,” Coach said. “They interviewed her for at least an hour and then she did that press conference.”
“And then those men stopped by yesterday,” Mrs. Barnes said.
I continued scribblng. “What men?”
“Strange thing. We don’t get many people out here at the ranch just stopping by, and these two fellas stopped by, ‘bout forty minutes apart.’
I looked up from my notebook, and the Coach went on, “The first fella was some kind of foreigner, German I think. He said he was with the State Treasurer’s office and he was asking about stolen property.”
“German guy?” I scribbled, keenly aware that my recorder was still whirring. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth. We don’t know. But soon as he left, I got on the horn and called the State Treasurer’s office. They said they don’t have any German fellas and they aren’t working on anything that has to do with Scott.”
“Good for you,” I said. “This um, German guy, was he strange in any way?”
Mrs. Barnes pressed her lips together. “He was a big man. Very pushy. And he had on a sock hat pulled way down on his head over his ears and he didn’t take it off when he sat down to the table. Imagine. A sock hat in this heat. And at the table for cryin’ tears!” Mrs. Barnes said, tutting as she spoke.
My stomach knotted. I’d bet this month’s 401K deduction that the Barnes family had just had a run in with Van Gogh.
“Did the man threaten you in any way?”
“Hell no,” Coach said. “I don’t get many people offering to run me ‘round the barn.’
I smiled, looking at Coach’s arms, which were as big around as my head. “No, I imagine you don’t. Did you tell the police about this?”
“Should we have?” Mrs. Barnes said, worry deepening the gentle lines in her face.
“I think you should talk to a detective, just in case,” I said. “You mentioned a second guy?”
“A Customs Agent,” Mrs. Barnes said, and she blushed like a school girl.
There was only one Customs Agent I knew who could make a grown woman blush. Of course, I only knew one Customs Agent. Maybe they were all hot enough to start a brush fire.
“He had a bit of an accent, too,” she said.
I turned to Coach. “Did you call the Customs office and ask about him?”
“No,” Coach said, running a large hand over his balding head. “He showed us a badge and left a card. He seemed like a stand up guy.”
“Has anybody else been by?” I said. “Say, like an FBI agent or a man named Diego DeLeon?”
“No,” Mrs. Barnes said, looking more worried by the moment.
I stared down at my notes. There was a piece missing. “Did Scooter ever mention being in trouble? Ever mention any groups or organizations?”
They both stared at me blankly.
“Nothing like, say, El Patron?”
“Oh, hell no,” Coach said. “I woulda remembered that.”
“And he never mentioned storing or hiding something?”
They looked at each other blankly, then back at me. “Like what?” Coach said.
I shrugged. “He never mentioned having something that didn’t belong to him?”
They stared at me.
“There’s an FBI agent in town who might want to talk to you about this,” I said. “He’s a good guy and very good at his job. Do you mind if I give him your number?”
Tears filled Mrs. Barnes’s eyes and her face went tight. “Why can’t we just talk to you? This has all been so…awful.” I heard her heart shift in her voice.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. But this agent, Tom Logan, he’s a professional and he’s a really nice guy. He’ll probably ask you things I didn’t think to ask, and he has resources I don’t. He’ll help, I promise.”
Mrs. Barnes fidgeted with the hem of her dress. “Do you know him?”
“Yes,” I
said. “And I know his kind. He reminds me a lot of my dad, and you know I don’t say that lightly.”
Mrs. Barnes nodded and swallowed hard. Coach reached across the photo album and took his wife’s hand.
I looked down at the album. “Would you mind if I took the photo album? I promise I’ll bring it back.”
Coach nodded. “We’ll do whatever it takes, darlin’.”
“I’m going to call a friend at APD and he’ll probably be by to talk to you as well,” I said, closing the photo album. I flipped open my notebook and stared at my own shorthand. Something in my notes, or something missing from them, nagged at me.
“Is there anything that’s been bothering you? Anything that doesn’t seem to fit?”
Mrs. Barnes glanced up into her husband’s eyes. “One thing has been bothering me.”
I waited.
“The Blue Parrot. It’s been closed. It was in Scott’s will that his friend Burt Buggess would run the store with Selena as a silent partner.”
I looked up from my notes. “The store’s still closed? Is the crime scene tape still up?”
“No. It seems to be cleared, or whatever you call it.” Mrs. Barnes shook her head. “Scooter loved that store. He would want it open, you know, for Selena. And the baby.”
“Do you have a copy of the will?” I said, and Mrs. Barnes got up and went to the living room. She came back with a fresh sheath of papers.
The will was on new paper and it was dated two months ago. My hands stilled at the significance. “Is this a copy?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Barnes said. “The original is with our attorney. You can take that one, dear.”
Nodding, I folded the copy of the will and tucked it into my purse. “Have y’all spoken with Selena?”
Mrs. Barnes shifted uncomfortably.
“No,” Coach said. “Her family never much liked the idea of her marrying a Texas boy. They were big shots from Argentina, you know. Thought they were some kind of royalty or something. When Scooter busted his knee and left pro ball, her family lost all use for us.”
Mrs. Barnes nodded. “We offered to help with The Blue Parrot, but they don’t want our help.”
“Who is they?” I said, just to clarify.
“Selena and her mother,” Mrs. Barnes said, her mouth twisted around the word “mother” like she’d bitten into a bad apple.
