Bitch Factor

by Chris Rogers

  Her stop at the Green Hornet Saloon fared no better. Augie was still out sick. Dixie didn’t see anyone with a butterfly tattoo. She left the bar without finishing her beer.

  At home, she parked the van in the barn alongside the Mustang. The outdoor floodlights brightened the porch and yard under the old oaks. Parker Dann sat in the antique rocking chair that had belonged to Barney, throwing a red Frisbee so Mud could lumber happily after it and bring it back.

  Dixie’s steps slowed as she approached the porch, listening to the familiar creak of the rocker, watching the red disk sail through the night sky and Mud’s joyful leap to catch it. A curl of smoke rising from the chimney carried the smell of roasted pecan shells. Another homey scene, which gave Dixie another peculiar feeling.

  Recalling the awkward moment in the kitchen earlier, she felt a surge of expectation, and paused to collect herself. She was no stranger to physical attraction. Her longest, most comfortable relationship had been with a saxophone player, a real “stud muffin,” according to both Belle and Amy. When his big break came, Dixie and the sax player had said good-bye with the same ease they’d felt dating each other. She was happy in her independence, and she certainly didn’t need the complication of falling for a man who might be headed for prison. Nor could she afford to lose her objectivity. Dann was still a suspect in Betsy’s death.

  By the time she walked into the light, he stood lounging against the porch support. He had shaved and changed clothes. Instead of a jacket, he wore two shirts, blue plaid flannel over a blue chambray work shirt. His hair spilled rakishly forward, as if he’d been running a hand through it.

  She couldn’t deny a flash of tenderness when she drew close enough to see the worry in his eyes, nor a ripple of lust that made her mouth go suddenly dry. Her gaze fell to the sensual curve of his lips, the broad chest, the hard line of his freshly laundered jeans. She wiped her damp palms across the seat of her own jeans. She couldn’t deny the feelings, maybe, but she could damn well resist them.

  Mud trotted down the walk to nuzzle her hand, then padded quickly back to Dann’s side. Where he belonged, she reminded herself. Where she’d told him he better by-god stay.

  He kept glancing up, as if taking a cue from Dann on how to act. The cussed dog was forgetting who rescued him from mongrel heaven and raised him from a stumble-footed pup nobody would look at twice. She wanted to smack him on the nose. On the other hand, anybody Mud liked couldn’t be all bad.

  “’You’re home, then,” Dann said as she climbed the steps. “Is it over?”

  An electric drill and bit case lay on the porch.

  “Where did that come from?” Dixie said.

  “Found the tools going to rust in the utility room. Thought I’d fix that wobbly porch rail, but…” He shrugged.

  Dixie saw the toolbox and an oily rag he’d used to clean the bits. The stripped-out hole had been filled with wood putty, and a new screw gleamed in the porch light. But the rail felt just as wobbly when she pushed against it.

  “Tomorrow, I’ll replace the strut and look around for some touch-up paint.” He scooped the drill and bits into the toolbox.

  Dixie didn’t think replacing the strut would help, but at least it’d keep him busy and out of trouble. When she opened the door, the smell of apples and cinnamon drifted on warm air.

  “You baked, too?”

  “Just a pie.” He carried the tools to the utility room and took her overalls and vest to hang in the kitchen closet. She saw him glance in the pocket where they’d tucked the ammunition.

  “No, I didn’t have to shoot anybody tonight,” Dixie said.

  He looked at her. “Sorry. Where I’m from, taking a gun out means you expect to use it. Hunting deer, elk, moose. Never people.” He hung up the vest and shut the closet door. “Ever shot anybody?”

  “No. That coffee looks good.”

  The dripolator gurgled and sputtered. Dann must have started it brewing the instant her headlights hit the gate.

  He filled two mugs, then splashed a few ounces in the bottom of a cereal bowl, cut it with water, and put it down for Mud.

  “You’re giving him coffee?” Dixie said.

  “A little won’t hurt him. Who else am I supposed to drink with when you’re not here?” He set two slabs of pie on the table. “Hope you didn’t have dessert.”

  Actually, she had. Fruitcake off the grocery-store shelf, which she’d nibbled to be polite.

  “You made this from those apples we bought?”

  “I only know one recipe for apple pie that’s not made from apples, and it tastes like soggy crackers.”

  “A frozen pie would’ve been easier.”

  “You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

  She took a bite. “It’s great.” She had never grasped how anyone could start with a sack of flour and a few apples and end up with something edible. “Tastes like you’ve had more practice cooking than fixing porch rails.”

  He grinned, cut another pie sliver, and placed it in Mud’s bowl.

  “When I was about eight, I got a notion to drive my dad’s tractor.” He unbuttoned the cuffs of the flannel shirt, releasing the strain across his broad shoulders. “Mason, my older brother, had been driving it three years already. Pop says, ‘Okay, Mase, take Parker out in the field and teach him.’ We hadn’t been in the field ten minutes before we started fighting over that tractor seat. Mason wanted to lord it over me. I was bratty enough to figure I knew everything. In the heat of battle, I ended up under the tractor.”

  That must be how he got the limp. Dixie had noticed it only on a few occasions, most significantly after the long drive to Houston.

  “I was housebound for six months. Soon as I could hobble, Ma put me to work in the kitchen.” He shrugged it off. “Guess you don’t forget the basics.”

  Dixie carefully mashed the last few crumbs onto her fork and licked them off. Tasted a hell of a lot better than basic.

  “So,” Dann said, carrying their plates to the sink. “Tomorrow you see Jonathan Keyes. Then what?” He peeled off the flannel overshirt, tossed it on a chair back, and rolled up his sleeves to rinse the dishes.

  Dixie liked the way the dark hair on his arms curled against the light blue chambray. She flashed on that first morning in North Dakota, that same dark hair curling across his bare chest. She looked down at her coffee.

  “First I’ll try to get a look at the police file. Then maybe I’ll talk to the camp counselor who was on duty when Courtney drowned.”

  There was a moment of heavy silence.

  “Think the deaths are connected?”

  The flannel shirt slid to the floor. Dixie picked it up.

  “Possibly. I try to avoid making assumptions, until the whole picture shapes up.”

  The soft flannel felt warm from his body heat and smelled faintly of bay rum. She liked bay rum. She draped the shirt over the chair back, smoothed the sleeves, smoothed the collar, her fingers lingering over the warmly scented fabric.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Jonathan Keyes’ office occupied one small corner in a black trapezoidal building in the Greenway Plaza business complex. Framed architectural sketches of skyscrapers and sprawling retail centers adorned the reception area. Dixie recognized several Houston buildings.

  She also recognized the red bows and gold balls that nestled in a pine bough on the desk. Some designer in town was making a killing this year on decorations imprinted with computer chips. The elaborate spray almost obscured a tiny woman who sat at the privacy desk reading a romance novel. Dixie read the nameplate, SHERI MCLAUGHTER, and squashed a bow to peek at her.

  “Cheers, Sheri!”

  Snapping the book shut, the woman smiled brightly.

  “Id’s dso quiet here during the holidays,” she said, her voice nasal from the head cold. “Even the delephones stop ringing. If I couldn’t read, I’d go dnuts.”

  Dixie smiled to put her at ease. Anyone chained to a desk all day needed all the distractions she could m
uster.

  “Sheri, I’m here to see Mr. Keyes—without an appointment, I’m afraid.” She handed the receptionist her card.

  “You’re lucky.” The woman blew her nose, clearing her head as well as her speech, “He’s one of the few people in the office this week. Nearly everyone took vacation days.” She punched a number on the telephone console and listened a moment. “There’s a D.A. Dixie Flannigan to see you, Jon. No appointment, but would you have time?” A pause, then to Dixie, “His office is third on the left” Waving Dixie toward a door, she went back to her novel.

  Photographs of completed buildings dotted the hallway. The shots had been taken from a helicopter, Dixie figured, or some other high vantage point.

  In Keyes’ office, however, the paintings were abstract swashes of color, vivid purples and blues. Dixie looked for a building hidden among the brush strokes, but if one was there, she wasn’t astute enough to find it. A teakwood desk faced the door. Behind it, broad windows offered an expansive view of downtown.

  Keyes was working at a drafting table, jacket off, tie loosened, shirt cuffs turned up exactly twice. He was thin, about thirty-five, with short brown hair and big ears.

  “Sit down, Ms. Flannigan,” he said, without looking up. He made angular lines on a large drawing, using a ruling device attached to a free-swinging mechanical arm at one corner of the table, moving it along in precise increments. “I’ll be a minute finishing up here… I assume you’ve come about the job.”

  Dixie sat in a guest chair upholstered in blue tweed.

  “Actually, I have a few questions, Mr. Keyes. About your stepdaughters.”

  He looked up, pencil poised above the drawing. “Betsy and Courtney? What about them?”

  “I can wait for you to finish. I’m doing some work for Belle Richards, tying up loose ends.”

  “Richards… Richards?! That’s the woman who’s defending the drunk that killed Betsy.” He snapped the pencil down in a tray at the front of the table and moved the ruling device off the drawing.

  “The man who allegedly killed Betsy. The charge hasn’t been proven.”

  “And you’re trying to dig up some nonsense to get the bastard off.”

  This was what she’d saved herself by not questioning the Paynes, Dixie thought.

  “Mr. Keyes, if Parker Dann killed your stepdaughter, he’ll go to jail. But if someone else was driving his car, then Dann’s innocent and deserves to have the guilty person brought to justice, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Glaring silently, Keyes rose to stand across from her at the desk. The silence stretched.

  He folded his arms.

  “What do you want to know?” His shirtsleeves had inched higher, exposing a tattoo on his left forearm.

  “On April thirtieth, the night before Betsy’s accident…” Dixie took a moment making out the tattoo design—a butterfly with a human head. Keyes’ name was Jonathan—Jon? A string of mental dominoes chinked into place. The description Dann had given her, six-foot-two, lanky, fit Jonathan Keyes like frost on a beer mug. She changed the gist of her question. “… you were in the Green Hornet. Is that true?”

  Keyes pulled the desk chair out, sat down, and studied her with another long silence.

  “The Green Hornet,” she continued, “is a bar about four blocks from the scene of the accid—”

  “I know where it is. Why are you asking?”

  “Someone described you, said you were drinking late that Thursday night.”

  “What does that prove?”

  “It doesn’t prove anything, Mr. Keyes, but it’s information we didn’t have before. Why didn’t you mention it?”

  “Nobody asked.”

  “That bar isn’t exactly in your neighborhood, is it?”

  “You know exactly where it is. What you want to know is, why was I there.”

  “Why were you there, Mr. Keyes?”

  He straightened the blotter pad, lining it up with the edge of the desk.

  “I’d dropped the girls off at Rebecca’s, and I was anxious about a meeting the next day. I stopped for a beer.”

  “That was a Thursday night. Was it usual for you to have the girls on a school night?”

  “No… but it wasn’t unusual. I get them the first and third weekends, plus alternate holidays. Easter weekend threw us off, then Rebecca had something planned for the following Wednesday, so I picked them up on the twenty-fifth, agreed to keep them all week, nine days, actually, since the following weekend was mine. Then we’d be back on schedule.”

  Dixie opened her wallet to a dog-eared calendar sent by her insurance agent every year. Time for a new one.

  “You planned to take the girls back on May third, the following Sunday?”

  “That’s right, Sunday.” He picked up a ballpoint pen from the desk and stared down at it. “But one of the Austin accounts we’d been pitching wanted to meet on Friday, May first. I had to fly up there with some rough layouts.”

  Dixie wondered why he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Do you stop by the Green Hornet every time you take the girls home?”

  “Every time? Of course not. What are you trying to do, turn this around so that I’m the drunk who ran Betsy down? Ms. Flannigan, I was on a plane at nine o’clock that morning.”

  But Betsy was killed at seven-fifteen. Not impossible, Mr. Keyes. Not impossible at all, if you had a reason to kill your stepdaughter.

  “How late were you at the Hornet that night?”

  “Till closing.” He clicked the ballpoint to the writing position.

  “Where did you go afterward?”

  “Home. To bed.” Click, click.

  “With an early flight, it’s surprising you stayed so late.”

  “Usually, I wouldn’t, but I got to talking to someone—a salesman. He gave me some tips on how to pitch my account the next day—talked about selling fishing trips in the Caribbean, but I could see where the same techniques would work for me. Sales is not my strong suit, not what I usually… godammit!” He slammed the pen down on the desk. “That was Dann, wasn’t it?”

  “You didn’t recognize him when you saw him in court?”

  “I never went to court.”

  “The newspapers, then.”

  “I didn’t recognize the bastard, okay? Probably saw his picture, if it was in the paper, but I’d had a lot on my mind… that new account to worry about, Betsy’s death… maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t taken the girls home three days early.” Click, click. Click, click. “The cops did a good job catching the bastard as fast as they did. I don’t care what he looks like, only that he’s behind bars for the rest of his life.”

  The pen still clicking, he glanced at a Sierra Club calendar with days marked off in orange.

  “Mr. Keyes, your other stepdaughter, Courtney, also suffered a fatal accident earlier this year.”

  Keyes turned to look at her slowly. A quizzical frown wrinkled his brow. “What’s Courtney got to do with this?”

  “Doesn’t it seem a bit… strange…. two fatal accidents only three months apart?”

  He hesitated, then, “I don’t see where you’re going.”

  Dixie’s pulse hammered wildly. This was the break she’d been searching for, if she could figure out what to do with it. Keyes was nervous about something… but why would he risk setting Dann up for hit-and-run after spending so much time talking with him in public? On the other hand, real killers were rarely as smart as the ones in mystery novels.

  “Where were you the day of Courtney’s swimming accident?”

  “On my way to Austin again. Driving, since I planned to stay there several days. What the hell are you implying?”

  “I’m not implying anything. Just trying to see how it all ties together.”

  “It doesn’t tie together. Betsy was killed by a drunk driver. Courtney…” He looked away again. Click, click. Click, click. “I taught those girls to swim, and they were good. Too good for some freak accident like that to h
appen. Those camp counselors were negligent.”

  “What exactly did happen?”

  He shook his head, as if baffled. “All anybody could determine was that she must have tangled herself in the vegetation growing near the bank, maybe cramped up and couldn’t pull free.”

  “When did you hear about the accident?”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped.

  “When I returned from Austin. Rebecca had left a message on my answering machine. She knew where I was, godammit? She had both numbers. If her child-support payment hadn’t shown up on time, she would have tracked me to the North Pole, but to tell me my daughter was—” He glared at Dixie, his eyes moist. “I returned in time for the funeral. Just.”

  Dixie wasn’t sure what to make of him. He was either extremely distraught or a hell of a good actor.

  “You said daughter, not stepdaughter.”

  He brushed a thumb under his nose, then snatched a tissue from a box beside his drafting table.

  “I adopted the girls when I married Rebecca. Courtney was a year old, Betsy three. We were married five years, and I raised them as my own, loved them every bit as much as I love Ellie. In fact, Rebecca and I would’ve divorced long before we did if it weren’t for the kids.”

  “Did you pay child support for all three girls?”

  “Of course. Until the accidents.”

  Would a man resent paying child support for children not his own by birth? Maybe. Especially after his ex-wife remarried.

  “Did their new stepfather ever suggest he would like to adopt Betsy and Courtney?”

  “I’d have fought Travis on it if he tried.”

  “You sued Rebecca for custody of all three girls during the divorce, is that right?”

  His eyes sparked. “Maybe Betsy and Courtney would still be alive if the judge had ruled in my favor.”

  “What do you mean by that?”