by George Wier
“I love you, daddy.”
“I love you too, honey. How'd you know I was leaving?”
“The same way mom knows. It's always on your face.”
“Hank's going to come get you in a few minutes. You guys are going to walk down and get something to eat.”
“I'll watch out for him.”
“What makes you think you have to watch out for him?” I asked.
“Because, he's an old man, now.”
“That's very observant. Do watch out for him. I'd consider it a personal favor.”
She released me and Morgan Freeman and I took our leave.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I waited in the parking lot until Hank came and got her, then I left with a wave. They would have no more than two blocks to walk, and I figured they both needed the exercise.
It was a warm afternoon and traffic had geared up a notch against the coming evening. People going places—shopping, out on the hunt for dinner, gassing up their cars, while the big trucks plying the highway through town tried to dodge it all.
There's something attractive about living in a small town. It has a different rhythm, a slower beat, if you will, than the big city. It's not nearly as loud, and at times it seems downright sedate, as if everyone is on some kind of stress-reduction-slash-happiness drug. I missed small town life. What I didn't miss about it, though, is the insularity. Texas is so big that it has downright different cultures between east and west and north and south. Out west, the people are, by and large, overtly friendly. I think it has something to do with the general population decrease the farther west you go—that is, until you get to El Paso, which has it's own face on things. Farther east, folks can be downright taciturn. They don't so much as speak as they do study you, and you can sometimes tell what they're thinking, especially if it's something rude. In San Sebastian, which is decidedly Central Texas, it's a commingling of all of them—east, west, north, and south—but without the eastern prejudice and without nearly as much crime. Well, except for those committed in the last few days and weeks of which I was acutely aware.
I headed my Mercedes toward the southeastern side of town, where the land slopes abruptly upward into the stony hills. I was supposed to be headed out of town, and I was so aware of this fact that I successfully dodged one of the town cops, whom I had hoped hadn't gotten the word from the Sheriff. He—or perhaps, she—didn't turn around and come get me, so I sighed with relief and followed Hank's crudely-drawn map.
I turned back to the north along a high ridge on Flotsam Drive, a narrow lane that wound through over-arching cedars that were likely a few hundred years old. I slowed for a row of mailboxes, noted that the address I was looking for was farther on, and sped up. I came to the mailbox—one of those welded chain affairs, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a chain to be sticking up out of the ground and supporting something—looked to see what I could from the roadway, which was damned little, and eased on past.
I drove down the length of three properties and pulled into one that appeared abandoned.
“Come on Morgan,” I said. “Let's go do some criminal mischief.” He crawled up my arm and settled himself around my collar.
I closed up the car, locked it, and walked back along the roadway. The air was redolent with cedar, and so I sneezed a time or two, decided I was going to live through it, and so plunged into the heavy brush at the edge of what I believed to be Sheriff Singletary's property.
After a hundred yards of nothing but scrub brush and prickly-pear cactus, the property opened out into a fenced yard, a house, and a detached garage. The garage door was closed and I saw no vehicles anywhere about. A set of large oak trees shaded most of the yard, which was badly in need of mowing.
I kept waiting for the bark of a dog, or worse, the charge of one or more directly at me. I ducked back into the brush and continued my way west until I was parallel to the garage, and then strode directly over to it where a side door beckoned. The door, however, was locked. The shade was likewise drawn, but there was half an inch of space at the bottom, so I ducked down and peered inside.
I waited and allowed my eyes to adjust to the gloom. There was a car in there; a fairly new one. I couldn't tell the color, but as my eyes continued to adjust, the probability slowly became a certainty.
It was Lorraine Sands's electric car, and it was plugged in and charging.
*****
Sometimes being right is a tough one. I once had a friend who described it something like this: “I go through life continuing to expect people to disappoint me, and I'm still surprised every time they do.” Whatever or whoever Lorraine had held herself out to be, she was one thing for certain: an actress. Her performance had fooled me. And that was probably closest to the heart of the matter. Whatever was going on, someone was making a fool out of everyone else.
Morgan and I quit the garage and moved around to the back of the house.
No dogs, yet.
I looked in an open window and saw a utility room—what people commonly call “the junk room.” No one was there and the far door was closed.
I drew carefully up to a window along the opposite side of the house from the garage, peeked above the sill and saw Lorraine sitting in an easy chair facing away from me, thumbing through a magazine.
She was waiting for her friend—and likely lover, either former or current—to return home. With the hours he kept, I figured it might be awhile.
At that moment I had a choice. Whether to go to the front door, knock, and say what was on my mind. In my mind's eye I saw her petting Morgan Freeman in the jail interview room back in Elysium, crying crocodile tears and acting all charmed in front of Jennifer, and as I looked at that picture, I began to get angry.
A word about anger. At times it is a damned healthy emotion. With it, one can summon the energy and strength, for example, to take down a Goliath with the throw of a stone. Or, on the other hand, there are times when to walk forward in anger can lead to decisions from which there is no going back.
I shoved the picture out of my my mind, reached up and petted Morgan Freeman, who must have felt it necessary to hook one of his tiny paws around my ear, and turned and walked back to my car.
And when I got there, someone was waiting for me.
*****
“Travis County is a long way south of here,” Bob Ross said. He was leaning against my car with his hand-held radio sitting upright on my hood.
“Hi, Bob,” I replied.
“Did you find what you came looking for?”
“I did.”
“Is she in there?”
“She is,” I said. “Of course.”
He nodded slowly. We stood in silence, about four feet apart from each other.
“What are we going to do, Bob?” I asked. “It looks like the ball is in your court.”
He rubbed his chin, looked away to the cloud cover rolling in from the southeast. I had yet to see a weather report, but I figured it for a good drenching over the next few hours. The hill country looked as though it could use it, even though the drought that had lasted the previous five years appeared to be pretty much over.
“I don't know if there's much I can do yet,” he said. “Not...technically.”
“You mean 'legally.' But you've been waiting, haven't you? You've been waiting for some time.”
“Not that long.”
“How long have you and Dusty known each other?” I asked.
“Long enough. Once he crosses some kind of line, I'll do something then.”
“Do you know for sure he hasn't crossed one?”
“No, I don't. But I don't know that he has, either. But like you, I'm starting to piece a few things together. I suppose you and I need to talk.”
I sighed. “I thought we were already talking.”
“Not even. There's a bar down by the San Sebastian river where the black folks hang out, play dominoes and sometimes do a little singing. Mostly blues. If you'll follow me there, I'
ll buy you a beer or a coke or something, and maybe we can have a bite to eat. It's as good a place as any for me to lay a few things out for you.”
I nodded. “The place sounds too good to be true.”
Bob smiled. “It's even better than that.”
*****
The San Sebastian is not much more than a bone-dry arroyo during drought-weather. Anytime, however, it rains more than a few inches in the hill country, it becomes a raging and unforgiving torrent. We crossed the river over into Newell County and turned to the north along a caliche county road. I hung back a bit so that I wasn't eating Bob's dust, but he soon turned off into a roadside tavern that stood on the high bank of the San Sebastian. As I got out of my car, with Morgan Freeman once again perched on my shoulder, and walked up to the building—a weathered old place hardwood place that had not seen paint since about the time Jimmy Carter was in the White House—the first fat raindrops started to fall. From the porch I looked to the south and could see a bend of the river, its bed dry and thirsty.
Music came from inside. When Bob pushed the door open, I knew I had died and gone to heaven.
Bars, for some reason, are their own little world, and the rest of the Earth seems to have little power over the passage of time inside of one. An ancient Wurlitzer juke box, its lights on and working, gleamed in the glow of neon lights from the bar and from the soft yellow lights from above the two regulation-size pool tables. A game was going on there, one of those slow, serious ones, where the players—four dour black men ranging in age from thirty-eight to seventy—calculated the run of the balls on the table four and five balls ahead, took careful aim and pulled slow triggers from stationary elbows. The balls didn't zing around, like one could see down at the family pool hall. These billiard balls downright sauntered. The bar was forty feet long and there was a mirror there that had once been something grand, but for a series of very old cracks that made it essentially worthless. A woman who could have doubled for a young Ella Fitzgerald was just sliding onto a stool before a microphone. There wasn't enough of an audience to sing to, really, but either the bartender or the owner was just taking his seat. Maybe she'd be good enough for Friday and Saturday night, and maybe she wouldn't. He'd be the judge of that. Bob nodded to a couple of the fellahs at the pool table, waved to the bartender, who held up a finger, as if to say, “I'll be right with you, Bob,” and then took a seat at one of the tables and gestured to me to sit. The chairs were hard metal, the folding kind, and they'd seen a lot of service over the years. I pulled out one of them and took a seat. Morgan Freeman jumped down onto the table and ran about sniffing every available inch.
“Bill, they have a kitchen back there like you wouldn't believe. There's this big woman who does all the cooking. I've known her since I was a kid. She makes collard greens with ham and just a little bit of bacon grease and pickle juice. And her pork chops—let me tell you, she starts cooking them when she gets here around five o'clock in the morning, and they don't start serving them until around six in the evening. The meat melts right off the bone when you take a bite. And if you order a steak, you can cut it with a butter knife.”
“Stop it,” I said. “First of all I feel guilty because my kid and my friend are having hamburgers back in town. Second, I'm so hungry I could eat this table, so you're not helping me any here.”
The woman began to sing a capella. From her looks, I would have thought she was going to break into something bluesy, or perhaps religious. Instead she started off on O Shenandoah.
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Away you rolling river.
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Away, I'm bound away
'Cross the wide Missouri.
Oh Shenandoah,
I love your daughter,
Away, you rolling river.
For her I'd cross
Your roaming waters,
Away, I'm bound away
'Cross the wide Missouri.
'Tis seven years
since last I've seen you,
Away, you rolling river.
'Tis seven years
since last I've seen you,
Away, we're bound away
'Cross the wide Missouri.
“That's enough, Gertie. You've got the gig,” the black bartender said.
“Thank you, Samuel,” she said and grinned magnificently. She got up from the stool, stepped behind the bar and put on an apron.
Samuel came over to us. “Heya, Bob,” he said. “You'll be wantin' the greens and the pork chops.”
“I would,” Bob said. “Make that two plates.”
“Some creamed corn with that?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
“How about a couple of beers?”
“Some sweet tea, maybe,” I said.
“You got it, boss.” Samuel went back toward the kitchen, and I took in the rest of the bar. I knew he was going to begin talking and I'd have to both focus and listen, but I didn't want to miss a detail of the place. Bob waited while I scanned the room.
When I turned back to him, he said, “I figured you'd like it.”
“What are you talking about? When I die, I'm going to come haunt this place.”
“Yeah. I knew that about you. Okay, let's get down to it.” He leaned forward, set his hand-held police radio on the table, and folded his fingers together. “I'd say that the fellow you're looking for—the piano teacher?”
“Todd Landry.”
“Right. I'd say that he's wise to be hiding. I think Lorraine Sands was trying to lure him in. I spent some time with both Fenner Schoonover and his brother Reece today.”
“How are they doing?”
“Better. Both of them. Reece will be up on his feet by tomorrow, probably. Fenner's going to be the one in rehab for awhile, and I don't envy him. Rehab is slow and painful. Nobody ever liked Fenner anyway.”
“You know these people better than I do,” I said. “I don't have enough acquaintance to form any real judgment.”
“If you'd lived in this town, you would,” Bob said. “First of all, back in the day, Fenner was the one who was going to be famous. He was All American his senior year after the Cougars went to State Finals and won. He was supposed to be drafted by Texas A&M, but he had a little run-in with the police. This was back when Jackie Sherill was running the A&M football program. Sherill dropped him like a hot potato, and Fenner never went to college. If he had, he would have ended up in the NFL.”
“What did he get popped for?” I asked.
“Drug bust. It was one of the biggest scandals this town has ever seen. He ended up doing some community service for it, that was it. If it had been me, they would have sent me to Huntsville and threw away the key. But old Tinnie, you see, she had money. She knew the judges, the prosecutor...everyone.”
“What kind of drugs?” I asked.
“An estimated two hundred thousand dollars in street drugs, including methampetamines, cocaine and marijuana. It was huge.”
“No doubt.”
“Anyway, the family circled the wagons and Fenner came out of it all right. But no one ever trusted him again. The family owns a chunk of South Padre Island, and he would go down there for months and sometimes years at a time. With the drug bust, he couldn't get his pilot's license, but that didn't matter to the family and it didn't matter to him. He flew the family plane whenever he wanted to, and he usually flew it back and forth between here and Padre.”
“What about Reece?” I asked.
“The favored son? He was the one with all the chances after Fenner's nosedive from fame, but he never...did anything. I've known people like Reece. They have all the advantages in the world, but no imagination to go along with it.”
“That's awfully harsh,” I said.
At that moment, two tall glasses of iced tea appeared before us. Morgan Freeman decided to test mine for me, I suppose to make sure that it was acceptable. I took it away from him and d
rank.
“Plates will be up in a minute, fellahs,” Samuel said.
“Thank you, Samuel,” Bob said.
“So, where does Lorraine come in?” I asked.
“She was the belle of the town at one time. She could do no wrong, and all the fellahs wanted her. But she was too good for any of them.”
I nodded. She no longer looked the part of the debutante. Some women don't realize that looks actually mean very little in the long run. They're fleeting, and time exacts its toll.
“Dusty included?” I asked.
“Especially Dusty. He was after her from day one. I was younger than both of them, but I knew he was barking up the wrong tree.”
“What about the killing of Oliver Bledgrave?” I asked.
“Fenner says he killed him with a hunting rifle. The original story was that the gun was laying against a tree, it fell and discharged, killing the old man. Now Fenner says that he killed him. The other two who were there, Lorraine and Todd, have been covering for him ever since. Until now, that is. One or the other, or maybe both, have it in for him and were blackmailing him to find the original will and to deep six the newest one.”
“I have a stupid question, then,” I said.
“Ask it.”
“Any wealthy person worth their salt has this thing. It's called an attorney. The attorney should have copies of every will that's ever come down the pike. So, who was the family attorney?”
Bob Ross leaned back in his chair, sipped his iced tea, and smiled.
“Let me tell you,” he said after he put his half-empty glass back down, “I do enjoy watching the way your mind works.”
“Uh. Thanks, I guess.”
“That was a compliment. A sincere one.”
The plates arrived, along with a couple of napkins wrapped around a plastic fork, spoon and knife.
“Before we dig in,” Bob said, “once we're done here, you and I are going to pay a little visit to the Bledgrave Family Attorney.”
“I wouldn't miss it for the world,” I said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
