by J. A. Kerley
“A happy marriage?”
“Buck needed someone to run him, but she flat ran over him. Do this, do that, talk like this, dress like that. Took over every second of his life. All their lives.”
“Turned an out-of-control youth into a life of absolute control,” I said.
Aubusson clenched a fist until his knuckles turned white, held it up. “Control like this,” he said. “She finally got to shape the world like she wanted. A closed place, ain’t many invited inside.”
I said, “Daddy Kincannon isn’t even there anymore.”
Aubusson took a long drink of his whiskey, his face hidden behind the glass.
“I think maybe he found his own way free.”
“Pardon me?” I said.
“I don’t think he got the Alzheimer’s like they say. I think he let hisself go crazy ’cause it was a better way to live than with her.”
Aubusson shook the ice in his glass, empty. He set it aside. I figured he was about talked out.
“Tell me more about Maylene’s children, Mr Aubusson,” I said.
“Never held much hope for the kids, myself. I remember being over there one time. One of the kids’ birthdays was going on in the other room, kid was eleven or twelve. Racine, or maybe Nelson, took a bite of Buck’s cake when he wasn’t looking, grabbed a forkful. I see Maylene motion Buck to her side, whisper in his ear. He turns and sees the missing bite. A minute later he marches over and flat-out punches his brother in the mouth.”
Harry made a noise like a deflating balloon. “Don’t let anyone take from you. Not even your brother? That was the lesson?”
Aubusson sipped from his glass. “Or maybe Maylene just liked winding him up and setting him loose, her little soldier. Wasn’t no favoritism. Next time around it might be Nelson set loose on Buck.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t get in trouble growing up,” Harry said.
“They got in scrapes, but nothing too bad. A little money cured the problems. Strange thing is, for all their weird-ass upbringing, the kids are boring. The older ones, that is. No spark. Put you to sleep just listenin’ to them a few minutes. But Lucas had sparkle from the git-go. A fire in him.”
“Lucas?” I said, shooting Harry a glance. “Who’s Lucas?”
“Miss Maylene’s last boy. Came as a surprise when she was in her forties. Strange kid. Born too late to be a hippie, but had that hippie thing, you know? Questioned everything, argued about everything, hated everything. Took streaks where he’d get pissed off, yell about having to live with a bunch of capt’list pigs, run off across the country. Got all the way to California when he was fifteen, Maylene had to send private investigator types to bring him back.”
“Lucas sounds like trouble,” I said. Or, perhaps, decompensating: falling apart mentally.
“He was ten handfuls of trouble when he wanted to be, but everybody agreed he was whip-smart. Had his granddaddy’s brains, but didn’t get the brittle. Helluva lot brighter than his puddinghead siblings.”
“Puddingheaded?” Harry said. “I thought the Kincannon brothers were business geniuses, growing the empire and all.”
Aubusson grinned. “A lotta folks assume that, but like the old song says, it ain’t necessarily so. Take young Buck. Boy’s not an ignoramus, he just ain’t sharp. Buck knows things about business …number one being what phone numbers to call for advice. The Kincannons hire the best advisors, best financial consultants, best lawyers. It’s hard to make money, a lot easier to hang on to it.”
“Let’s get back to Lucas,” I said. “He had a destructive side?”
“I know he busted some stuff up around the house. But the boy could be a charmer if he wanted, sweet. Even when he was ten, twelve years old, he could carry on a conversation better’n most adults. I liked the little monster, myself, even though he once called me a running dog lackey for the system, whatever that meant. At least he had a personality.”
“Where is Lucas now?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
Aubusson drank the liquid from melting ice, flung the ice into the yard.
“I’d heard he was calming down, but nope. When he turned eighteen, he up and left. Ran as far as he could and won’t have nothing to do with the family, hasn’t been heard from in – what’s it been? – about four years now. Got himself chopped clean out of the will, probably what he wanted. I hear he’s up in Canada or Alaska, living in the mountains, doing things with beads.”
“Or maybe not,” Harry said, so quietly only I heard.
CHAPTER 36
Harry and I entered the department through the back door. Vince Raines from Vehicle Theft was in the hall sipping coffee and tacking a page to the bulletin board. It was in-house stuff: folks selling a car or boat or had a litter of kittens to dispense.
Vince saw us, nodded. “You guys don’t need a jon boat, do you? Just put one on sale. Two years old. Cost thirty-five hundred with a ten-horse motor. Yours for twelve hundred even.”
“I got a kayak,” I said. “And an aversion to motors.”
“I got an aversion to seasickness,” Harry said.
“Just thought I’d …hey, I just got back from vacation. Mitch Burdon told me you two stopped by, looking into something.”
“We were trying to track down some stolen cars,” Harry said.
“Find ’em?”
“Mitch checked by make and model,” Harry said. “Some upscale machines that weren’t in the system. Mitch thought they might have been yanked from the airport, owners still out in Hawaii or whatever.”
“Like what?” Vince asked.
“A ’97 Porsche Turbo, ’58 Mercedes Roadster, a 2004 Beamer, I forget what.”
Vince’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I dunno. I got kind of a weird call last week. I was working alone. Got a call that some fancy cars were missing from a place off Highway 45. ‘Fancy’, that was the word the caller used. Went to a Quonset-type warehouse, climate controlled, a collection of cars in storage.”
“There’d been thefts?” Harry asked.
“That’s the strange part. The guy that called – a guard or something – was all worked up. Scared. He said to get there quick. I got there about a half-hour later. The guy, a big goofy hick, said it was all a big mistake. His boss, the guy who owns the vehicles, had sold some and the guy didn’t know. So that was that.”
Harry said, “I’d sure like to take a look at this place. Mind if Carson and me became vehicle-theft cowboys for an hour?”
“Saddle up, boys. Lemme draw you a map where this place is.”
The address led us to a defunct single-runway airfield between a melon field and scrubby woods. I think the KEEP OUT signs outnumbered the TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs, but not by much. The only action nearby was an old strip-mall cum flea market about a half-mile down the road. A twelve-foot cyclone fence surrounded a gray Quonset structure, a small guardhouse in front. An industrial-size air-conditioning unit sat beside the hut, and I heard it running. The security was an electronic lock keypad that seemed to control the main gate. I saw a second keypad unit by the door of the hut, two dozen feet away.
The guardhouse looked little used: weeds growing from pavement cracks, the door half ajar. There was a phone in the guardhouse, a sign on it saying, ‘In case of emergency, call …’ such and such.
Harry looked at me. “You got an emergency?”
“I have to take a leak pretty bad.”
“I’ll phone it in.”
Harry dialed the number. I wasn’t lying, and crouched between the car and guardhouse to lose some coffee.
“Someone’s on the way,” he said. “Ten minutes.”
We leaned against the Crown Vic and watched heat shimmer from the old runway. Eight minutes later a pickup truck pulled into the lot, kicking up gravel.
The driver jumped out, a heavyset guy, thirties, knock-kneed, belly drooping over a too-tight belt. His face was wide, his cheeks as red as if rouged.
“What’s the emergency?” he aske
d, looking worried.
Harry and I flipped out the buzzers. I said, “We’re following up on a report about some stolen cars.”
“That’s all cleared up,” he said. “Over a week back.”
“Oh shit,” I said. “The report got filed wrong again.”
Harry slapped his forehead. “What?” the guy said.
“We got a new girl sticking reports in the wrong box. We pick it up, see the address, head out. What happened?”
“It was a mistake. The cars got sold.”
Harry laughed, clapped his hands.
“Come on? Really?”
The guy grinned, happy to tell the story again. “See, what happens is I come by ever’ morning to do a look-see. I’m s’pose to check inside, make sure the temperature and humidity are set right. I opened the door and saw empty spots where three of the cars had been. Nothin’ there. I called the cops, told them. Then I called out to Mr Kincannon’s office, told his people about the cars bein’ gone.”
“You mean like Buck Kincannon?” I shot Harry the eye.
“The one. Got a helluva collection of cars in there. Great to be rich, huh?”
“What happened next?”
“Mr Kincannon came over. Buck. Mr Nelson, too. I was outside and I heard Mr Buck inside having a real shit fit. Just yellin’ and screaming and throwing things. But when he come out he was smiling and said the cars was sold a few days before and he was sorry he’d forgot to tell me. Then he took off back to work. Then the cops come about ten minutes later and I explained it all.”
“Why do you think Buck Kincannon was yelling?”
The guy shrugged; it didn’t fall under his purview.
“I got no idea why rich people do the way they do.”
We returned to the department. The detectives’ room was pretty much deserted, with Roy Trent and Clay Bridges back in the conference room laying out files on their own mean-ass case, two biker gangs going toe-to-toe to carve out drug-sales turf. They had three bodies and no leads, biker types not prone to ask for police assistance.
I filled Harry in on my conversation with Tyree Shuttles.
“Fixated on me? Logan?”
“I don’t really know what that’s all about. Shuttles was pretty shook. I told him to relax, wait it out. Logan’s out of here in around a month.”
Harry drummed his fingers on his desk.
“Two times Logan’s been wandering around in our area. He said he was back looking at the Wookiee drawing that time.”
“I remember. It was on the floor.”
“The second time he’s sitting on my chair and says he’s reading the murder book.”
We sat at our desk and looked at Logan’s area, twenty feet distant. Like our arrangement, Logan and Shuttles had abutting desks in a tri-walled cubicle.
“What’s the saying about turnabout?” Harry asked. “It’s fair play?”
Harry walked over to Logan’s desk, sat. I followed, stood behind him, and kept an eye on the door. Logan was, strangely enough, a tidy kind of guy. Harry lifted a stack of papers, looked in files, checked in Logan’s desk drawers. He lifted Logan’s calendar, then his desk pad.
“Guess they didn’t slide into the trash by mistake after all,” Harry said, pulling out the two crime-scene photos missing from the Franklin book. Taken by the Forensics team, one photo was a wide shot of the Mazda and fifty or so feet surrounding it, rain-wet sidewalk, water running down the gutter. The other was basically the same, except the photographer had climbed the side of Arlin Dell’s truck cab to get the wide downward angle: Mazda, background. A dozen feet ahead of the car I saw the yellow marker indicating where the knife had been found.
“Why in the hell would Logan want these?” Harry said. “They’re location setters, not close enough to show anything important.”
He slipped the photos back under the pad and returned to his desk shaking his head.
“Souvenirs, maybe? The last scene he never worked? Shuttles is right, the son of a bitch is weirding out.”
Harry headed to the Prosecutor’s Office, a final meeting before the trial on Monday. Harry would be on the stand a fair amount, grilled by a defense lawyer, and everyone wanted to get their acts down. I was just happy the PO preferred Harry to me on such cases. But I had a tendency to ramble when questioned whereas Harry kept his answers brief, to the point, and had the presence of Thurgood Marshall in a room full of Munchkins.
I had an idea we hadn’t yet considered: having sketch artist Terry Baney do a drawing of Crandell. We concluded he was running his operation from a rental house, somewhere with land around the dwelling, so he could remain anonymous and not make neighbors suspicious with what would probably be comings and goings at all hours. But he’d still have to be near Mobile.
We could put a sketch on the air, accompanied by a “wanted for information” type of line. I made a phone call, but forgot it was Saturday; Baney worked standard hours, wouldn’t be in until Monday.
I scrawled my usual reminder – Call Baney: Drawing of Crandell – set it front and center on my desk. I spun a few times in my chair.
I looked at my watch. Clair was stopping by tonight at seven, and we were finally going to have our talk. I wiped my palms dry on my jeans and went home to sweep the sand from my floor.
CHAPTER 37
At six fifty-nine, Clair Peltier’s little red Beamer crunched across the sand and shells of my drive. For a moment I thought I’d forgotten to brush my teeth, recalled I’d brushed them twice this hour. I finger-combed hair from my eyes.
I heard Clair walk up my dozen wooden steps, pause on the stoop. When I opened the door, Clair’s knock was still gathering in her hand. I bowed flamboyantly and gestured her inside. She took a tentative step, then crossed my threshold. Clair wore a simple lavender blouse, a slender silver necklace across her flawless skin. She had on shorts, white, mid-thigh. I’d rarely seen her when not wearing slacks, or dresses with mid-calf hemlines. I glanced down, smiled up.
“My gosh, Clair, you’ve got legs.”
“I, uh …thank you, Ryder.”
She passed by, studying my decor of shells and driftwood and pieces of art I’d scrimped to acquire, bright and whimsical pieces of folk art. I felt dizzy, like the air around her was suffused with a gentle intoxicant.
“Can I get you a drink, Clair?”
“Wine available?”
“If you wish. Or I can mix up something with more …” I almost said sexiness, changed it to “sizzle”.
“Such as?”
“I worked as a bartender in college, at least when I felt like working. You enjoy rum?”
“When I’ve had it.”
“Ever had a Caribbean Lover?”
She touched a forefinger to her chin, batted her dark eyelashes, did Scarlett O’Hara.
“Mista Rydah, now that’s puh-sonal.”
“Rum, pineapple juice, O.J., amaretto …Whoops, I don’t have any amaretto. No Caribbean Lover. How about a zombie or a mai tai?”
She thought a moment, her lips pursed tight as a fresh rose.
“I’ve tried them. Give me something I’ve never tasted before.”
I opened the cabinet, removed several little-used bottles and a cocktail shaker. I dug around in the fridge. Clair went back to gazing at my art while I measured and mixed. Two minutes later I handed her my concoction and poured one for myself.
“My take on Barbados Punch,” I said. “Triple sec, lime, pineapple, dark rum and a pinch of cinnamon and clove.”
She took a sip, tasted her lips with her tongue, a flicker of pink. She winked her approval.
We walked to the deck doors, stepped outside. The water was aquamarine, turning deep blue a half-mile out. Gulls screeched and tumbled in the air. A blue heron eyed us warily from a seagrass-covered dune in my front yard. The white Bertram I’d been seeing lately idled past, just outside the second bar. Clair walked to the railing and looked seaward. The breeze played in her hair.
“It’s an inc
redible place, Ryder.”
“When my mother passed away she left me four hundred and eight thousand dollars. I had every intention of buying a twenty-thousand-dollar trailer out in the county, living off the interest of the remaining money.”
She turned. “I can see you doing that. I can’t see you being happy for long. What changed your mind?”
I tumbled backward in time, to one of the most haunting moments of my life. For a moment I was frozen in the memory.
“It might sound strange, Clair.” I tried to put a laugh in my voice, but it came out raspy.
“Try me.”
I turned and pointed to the surf.
“One night I drove to Dauphin Island to go fishing. I was right out there in the water, waves at my waist, a sky full of stars. The moon was full. It made a white line on the water that reached to the horizon. All of a sudden everything seemed to stop moving. I felt I could step onto the moonlight and walk to the horizon, gather the sky in my arms like silk. I could feel everything, Clair: sky, stars. Even the moonlight on my skin. It was the most peaceful moment I’d ever known, and I wanted to stay in that moment forever, never leave the water.”
I expected an amused smile. Clair’s eyes balanced concern with approval.
“One more thing, Clair,” I added. “When I headed back to my car, I passed this house, saw a FOR SALE sign. Guess what it cost?”
“Four hundred and eight thousand dollars, of course.”
“I’ve never known if I should have been delighted or scared. Do you think it was coincidence? Synchronicity? Fate?”
She moved beside me, her shoulder pressing my arm.
“You had a moment of light, Carson.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s beyond words. The moments can’t be described, only felt. We don’t have the language or system of reference for any form of description. The world works in ways we find mysterious, forbidding. But only because we can’t see beneath the surface. We sense shapes moving down there, feel ripples as they glide past. It’s logical and orderly. But we can’t explain why, or what powers it all, since …”
