Stag Party (Blanco County Mysteries Book 8)

by Ben Rehder

  Now there was Jessi.

  Rather than spending time fighting for the rights of animals—which seemed to be a futile battle, if he was being honest—he’d rather spend that time with Jessi. Hiking with Jessi. Swimming with Jessi. Going to movies and restaurants and nightclubs with Jessi. Having long, intense, meaningful conversations with Jessi. And sure, yes, absolutely, having sex with Jessi. Again and again. Every chance they got, or as often as she was up for it.

  Was it wrong that these feelings had come out of left field and suddenly made their mission seem so unimportant? Not just unimportant, but foolhardy. Their mission would put their budding relationship at risk, because it would be hard to stay close if they were in prison.

  So he had been furiously trying to come up with a reason to abort the mission without looking like a total wimp, and now he thought he had it.

  “Aw, crap,” he said, trying to make himself sound massively disappointed.

  “What?”

  “I just thought of something,” Liam said.

  He was on his motel room bed, leaning against the headboard, and now he shifted to his side, propping himself on one elbow.

  Jessi was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her own bed, once again staring intently at the iPad in her lap. They still hadn’t picked which house to burn on the Endicott ranch, and she’d volunteered to keep studying the satellite images to see if one of the other residences made more sense than the one that was close to the county road. But time was running short, because they’d agreed to start the mission at midnight sharp, even if they had to wing it. Jessi had said that sometimes you just had to act, without waiting any longer.

  “What’s up?” Jessi said.

  “How are we gonna make sure the house is empty?”

  He was watching her closely to see how she would react. The question actually caused her to stop messing with the iPad and raise her head. Good.

  “Hmm,” she said.

  “I mean, I don’t mind burning the damn house to the slab,” Liam said, talking tough, “but we have to make sure nobody is asleep in there. We don’t want to kill anybody.” Jessi didn’t say anything, so Liam added, “Right?”

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  That was a relief. Now, if he was lucky, she wouldn’t be able to come up with some clever solution to the problem.

  The fuse issue had turned out to be remarkably simple, thanks to Jessi’s find on the Internet. Cigarettes make a good fuse, because they burn on their own, nice and slow, even if nobody is smoking them. Actually, some cigarettes now used a “fire-safe” rolling paper that was meant to self-extinguish if it wasn’t smoked. But Liam figured a way to beat that. They would need a fuse longer than one cigarette, so they would use rolling papers—not the fire-safe kind—to splice two or more cigarettes together, end to end, basically creating a longer cigarette. The additional rolling paper around the cigarettes would override the fire-safe rolling paper.

  Based on their experiment a few hours ago, a single unfiltered cigarette would burn for about six minutes. Once they knew how long of a fuse they’d need, they could create one to burn as long as they wanted. It was a smart, easy solution. Fairly reliable, too, as long as it didn’t rain on the cigarettes. No problem. The forecast for tonight was clear and dry, along with a moon that was nearly full, which would make it easier to move in the dark.

  “We might have to postpone,” Liam said. “Or cancel altogether. Or come up with a different plan.” Like sending the Endicotts a box of cow manure in the mail, Liam thought. Sure, that wouldn’t have quite the impact that arson would, but at least nobody would get killed. And nobody would get caught. And Liam and Jessi could stay together.

  “We could burn one of their barns or something,” Jessi said, “although that wouldn’t have nearly the same impact.”

  “Yeah, I agree. That’s not even worth doing.”

  Jessi was staring into space, considering the situation.

  “Let me think about it,” she said. “I’ll come up with something.”

  That’s what Liam was afraid of.

  “I thought of something!” Jessi said, less than ten minutes later. “I told you I would!”

  Damn, Liam thought. Damn, damn, damn.

  “Excellent,” he said.

  “It so simple.”

  She bounded from her bed and joined him in his, lying side by side, face to face. He’d noticed that every time she got excited about their plan, she tended to get closer and make more physical contact. Now, for instance, she reached out and placed her hand on his hip.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “We do it in the daytime instead of at night.” She made a little gesture with her free hand and said, “Ta da.”

  Crap. She was right. That was simple.

  “I don’t know why we always assumed we had to do it at night,” she said. “But think about it. What’s the advantage? I don’t know if there actually is one, other than making it easier to stash the car.”

  “Somebody could still be sleeping inside the house,” Liam said. “Taking a nap.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jessi said. “If we keep looking for reasons not to do it, that’s what will happen—we won’t do it.”

  “I guess you’re right,” he said.

  “It’ll all be fine,” Jessi said. “Hey, if we do it in the daytime, we need to get some camouflage shirts and pants. Don’t you love the irony. They use camo when they kill defenseless animals, and we’ll use camo to get justice for those same animals. That’s so great.”

  She was rubbing his thigh now. Stroking it, really. It was purely innocent—she was a toucher—but he was starting to get distracted by it. It felt good. Really good.

  “You’re pretty resourceful, Jessi,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  He put his right hand on her waist. He was tempted to slide it around to her butt, but he had learned that girls sometimes wanted intimacy without any sexual component to it. They just wanted to be close. To be held. To be touched, without any expectations. Liam could understand that, and he wanted to make her happy. He really did. And there was no question that he did like Jessi for reasons other than her body. Her body probably wasn’t even at the top of the list. Second, maybe, but not at the top.

  He said, “So maybe we need to, uh...”

  Weird, but he couldn’t quite get his thoughts together. Jessi’s waist felt so good underneath his hand. He wouldn’t have guessed that it would start to turn him on, but...

  “Liam?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We need to what?”

  Don’t picture her naked. Don’t picture her naked.

  “We need to, uh, drive by,” he said, but the thread of the conversation was all but lost, because now he was envisioning Jessi’s smooth, delicate torso, and he was just so grateful that she had surprised him two nights ago by whipping her shirt off. If she hadn’t made the first move, he might not have ever had the guts to do it himself.

  “Drive by what?” she said, and a knowing grin was slowly spreading across her face, because she realized his brain had gone off the rails.

  “The, uh, we...”

  “You can’t even speak right now, can you? Do boys ever think of anything besides sex? You are ridiculous.” She took his right hand and placed it on her chest. “There. Better? Might as well get this out of the way so you can have control of your brain again. Otherwise we’ll never get anything done.”

  25

  Ron Rosen and Jasper Endicott had had their first meeting with Harley Frizzell two days after the inventor’s letter arrived in the mail. Ron knew from the start that the odds were slim that Frizzell’s deer scent would work as well as he described it in the letter, but what if it did? What if it was exactly as advertised, but the Endicotts dawdled and one of the other big names in hunting gear beat them to it? So Ron raised the topic in the Monday morning meeting, and it received the lukewarm reception he had expected from most of the Endicotts.

/>   “Waste of time,” Dirk said.

  “Can’t imagine it really works that good,” Sissy said.

  “Man’s looking for an easy payday,” Walter said. Always the cynic. Always crabby. Always thumping that damn cane on the floor.

  Ron nodded, appearing agreeable, but he said, “Y’all are probably right, but why not check it out? He lives just a few miles down the road.”

  “Harley Frizzell,” said Jasper. “That name sounds familiar.”

  Good old Jasper. Sweet, guileless Jasper. Unlike his father and siblings, Jasper hadn’t become jaded by his fame and fortune. He hadn’t changed at all, really. That was surprising, considering that Jasper had become the surprise star of the TV show, and it wasn’t solely because of Rosen’s brilliant “bulge” idea. It was because Jasper was friendly and funny and handsome, but in a rugged, outdoorsy way—unlike Dirk, who came across as more of a Nashville pretty boy who rode in limos instead of pickup trucks. Jasper was approachable, too. He never had a big head or a bad attitude. He was never too busy to sign an autograph. Whatever the reason, Jasper had become the fan favorite, especially among female viewers, and the producers had responded as you would expect—by mandating that Jasper get significantly more camera time.

  Ron sensed a bit of sibling rivalry after that—Sissy and Dirk versus Jasper. Nothing overt. More like cutting remarks disguised as constructive criticism. An unmistakable chill in family meetings. Sarcastic jabs whenever Jasper had trouble remembering his dialog. (Most viewers would be disillusioned if they knew how many supposed ad-lib lines were actually spoon-fed to the Endicotts by writers behind the camera. “Hey, Jasper, say something about E.T. being the only alien that actually goes home.”)

  The tension with Sissy and Dirk didn’t faze Jasper. He was still as fun-loving and even-keeled as he’d always been. He even asked the writers several times to incorporate Dirk and Sissy in scenes that were written for Jasper alone. And he continued to have an interest in playing an active role in the family business. He was an avid hunter, so he always enjoyed the challenge of developing and marketing new products, and that’s why the pitch from Harley Frizzell appealed to him. Jasper wasn’t particularly creative himself, and his intelligence was average at best, but he’d always had a fairly good eye for recognizing promising product ideas.

  “He invented the Turkey Charmer,” Ron said.

  “Oh, right,” said Jasper. “I’ve used that a couple of times and it works. So the dude isn’t just some amateur. How many units has that sold?”

  Dirk shifted impatiently in his chair.

  “In aggregate, about 45 thousand,” Ron said, grateful that anyone was interested in the pitch.

  “How long has it been on the market?” Jasper said.

  “It first came out in—”

  “Hey, if y’all want to fool around with it,” Dirk said, “knock yourselves out, but can you figure out the details after the meeting?” He was smiling. That’s the way he always did it. Be an asshole, but smile.

  “Let’s talk later,” Ron said to Jasper, and that’s what they’d done.

  After they discussed it later that day, they agreed that Ron would call Harley Frizzell and set up a meeting. Harley answered, sounded excited by the call, and suggested they meet that very afternoon, because, as he pointed out, he wasn’t getting any younger. Ron and Jasper were equally eager to get the ball rolling. In hindsight, of course, Rosen wished he had never made that call.

  At ten-fifteen in the morning, Red drove northward on the small county road leading to the entrance of the Endicott ranch. Red and Billy Don had poached this isolated road at night with a spotlight before, because it didn’t get much traffic, but as luck would have it, right now a car was coming up behind him. Red slowed down and eased over to the shoulder.

  “What’re you doing?” Billy Don asked around a mouthful of chocolate donut. He’d eaten the better part of a box. Red suspected that Billy Don had smoked some pot earlier that morning. His eyes were glassy, but not the same kind of glassy he got from drinking beer.

  “Letting this car pass,” Red said. “What does Betty Jean got to say about your new habit?”

  Billy Don frowned. “Chocolate donuts? She’s all right with it. She gets a hankerin’ for ’em herself.”

  I bet she does, Red thought. A donut or fourteen.

  “I ain’t talking about the donuts,” Red said.

  Liam came around a curve and suddenly there was an old red Ford truck in his path, going no more than thirty miles per hour. He and Jessi hadn’t seen any other vehicles on this quiet county road until now. The truck was pulling to the shoulder, wanting them to pass, so Liam had no other choice but to go around it. That sucked. It would be hard to do reconnaissance with that truck behind them.

  That’s what Liam had been trying to say to Jessi the night before—that they needed to drive by the Endicott ranch and see if that empty tract of land across the road really was a suitable place to hide the car.

  Since they had decided to carry out the mission in broad daylight, they needed a good place to stash the Hyundai. While they committed a major felony. Possibly winding up in prison. For many years. Where Liam would never see Jessi and her sweet body again, and might instead see some guy named Kurt or Raoul.

  Liam had long since decided it wasn’t worth the risk. He had fully embraced the idea that they should bail on the arson plan and do something less crazy instead. So he could continue to see Jessi and her sweet body.

  But it was a Catch-22. He remembered that concept from reading the novel by that name in English class. If he was being honest with himself, he was pretty sure Jessi was sleeping with him solely because they were on this mission together, because she liked the thrill of it. He had always suspected that she liked bad boys, but that had become clearer and clearer.

  She was excited by men who committed crimes. When Liam shortchanged a customer by ten dollars, it gave her a minor rush. But arson? It obviously put her over the top. Problem was, Liam would jeopardize their relationship by carrying out the mission. But if they didn’t carry out the mission, Jessi would no longer be interested in sleeping with him. So, to keep her interest, he had to remain committed to the mission, knowing he might get caught and never see her again.

  This was totally fucked.

  “Then what’re you talking about?” Billy Don said.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Red said. “The cheeba.” It was a word he’d heard on a cable TV show.

  The car that had come up behind Red’s truck was passing him now—a gray Hyundai with Nebraska plates. Couple of kids inside. Long way from home.

  “The what?” Billy Don said.

  Red mimed holding a joint to his lips. “The wacky tobacky. The doobage. The bud. The herb.”

  “Oh, the pot?”

  “How’s she feel about that?”

  Billy Don pretended he was looking at something out the window.

  “She’s aware you been smoking, right?” Red said, knowing what the answer would be. “Because drug usage is not the kind of thing you’d keep from your fiancée. No, sir. Not an upstanding gentleman like you. Right, Billy Don?”

  “You need to be concentrating on what we’re doing out here,” Billy Don said, changing the subject.

  “Yeah,” Red said. “That’s what I thought.”

  Red was operating under the assumption that if he had figured out that one of the Endicotts might’ve killed Harley, the cops had figured it out, too. The cops in Blanco County weren’t the smartest, but surely they’d pieced that together.

  Red had no doubt he was still on the suspect list, but at least the list would be longer now. And it also meant the cops had probably been snooping around the Endicotts, and if one of them was the killer, he was probably feeling a lot of pressure. So if the old saying about a criminal returning to the scene of the crime was true, maybe the killer would do that real soon. Maybe there was one small bit of forgotten evidence he needed to destroy. Or maybe kil
lers simply got some sort of perverse thrill by going back to the scene. Sick bastards.

  “That looks like a good spot,” Billy Don said.

  “I was just gonna say that,” Red said.

  They were passing a dirt driveway that led into a wooded area across the road from the Endicotts’ ranch and maybe eighty yards from their gated entrance. To the average Joe, it probably looked like a dirt driveway and nothing more. But Red’s history as a poacher had helped him develop a keen eye. For instance, he noticed that the driveway had quite a few tall weeds growing in the tire ruts, meaning it hadn’t seen vehicle traffic in quite some time. Also, there was no mailbox anywhere near the driveway, which meant this was not a residence. Just somebody’s empty piece of land—maybe a small ranch. The owner probably lived in Austin, San Antonio, or somewhere even farther away.

  The driveway was blocked by a chain strung between two posts, which might keep the honest folks out, but Red had bolt cutters that would take care of that little problem in about five seconds. You just cut the lock, drive through, then hang the chain back in place, without the lock.

  “Not bad,” Red said as he slowly cruised past the driveway, which was on their left. “Lot of trees. We can hide in there real nice.”

  “Absolutely,” Billy Don said. “If you’re gonna insist on wasting your time, might as well do it right.”

  Red ignored that smart-aleck comment.

  As they got closer to the entrance to the Endicott ranch, Red noticed that the county had erected NO PARKING signs along the shoulder. Must be meant to keep fans from parking and waiting for the Endicotts to come and go. Red couldn’t imagine that was much of a problem way out here in the middle of nowhere, but some people went plumb crazy about celebrities. They’d track ’em down wherever they lived. The ranch’s eight-foot fence, topped with barbed wire, had a NO TRESPASSING sign posted on it every 50 feet or so.

  Now they were passing the Endicotts’ front gate, on the right. As Red had said to Billy Don earlier, it really was a gorgeous ranch entrance—maybe the most elaborate and well-constructed Red had ever seen. Probably cost more than most homes. It had three stacked flagstone columns of ascending heights on either side, flanking a massive iron gate with an elaborate “E” logo in the center.