He was silent for a moment. Then he tried again. “China, you and I both know that privilege covers—”
I broke in briskly. “You and I both know that privilege does not cover the mere fact of an attorney-client relationship, Charlie. You are free to tell me who your client is, anytime you feel like it. So don’t try to hide behind the privilege shield. What’s more, privilege does not cover information you may have about the furtherance of a crime or fraud. If you suspect that your client had anything to do with Kelly’s accident—”
He didn’t let me get the rest of that sentence out and on the record.
“I would like to help you, but I can’t.” All business now, Charlie pushed back his chair and stood up. “This is as far as we go in this matter.” He glanced down at his watch. “I have to head for Austin. I have a bar association committee meeting tonight.”
I wanted to say that I hoped it wasn’t the ethics committee, but I thought better of it. “That’s okay, Charlie. I’m meeting a friend at Beans’.” I paused. “Let’s stay in touch on this, shall we?”
“Sure thing,” he said, and walked with me to the front door. He unlocked it to let me out. “No hard feelings, I hope. Still friends?”
“Of course,” I said cordially. “Professional disagreement, that’s all.”
At least, that’s what it was until I noticed Charlie’s truck, sitting next to my Toyota in the small parking area at the side of the house. It was an old Dodge crew cab pickup with badly dinged fenders, a deep crimp in the tailgate, and a rash of rust spots, like a bad case of the measles.
The truck was familiar, of course. And it was orange. Burnt orange.
I stood for a moment, calculating. Then, since I’m the kind of person who likes to get all the information possible about a given subject, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Charlie wasn’t coming out of the back door or watching out of the window, then ducked around in front of his truck to give it a close look. He has never been what you’d call a cautious driver, and the dents and scrapes on his truck, front and back, are silent witnesses to his close calls, some of them obviously recent. I bent over, squinting. Had any of them been made as recently as last night?
It was possible, yes—the crease in the front fender looked highly suspicious. But I couldn’t form an opinion with a quick, casual glance in the afternoon light. That would require a search warrant and a forensic examination of the paint flecks on the Astro van and the paint on the Dodge.
I straightened up and hurriedly climbed into my car. Come on, China, I reprimanded myself guiltily. This is complicated enough without inventing a boogieman. It was hard to imagine that Charlie could have rear-ended Kelly—and even harder to come up with a reason why.
But as I got into my Toyota, it certainly gave me something to think about. I shivered. As if I didn’t already have plenty on my mind, with Charlie’s suggestion that McQuaid and Blackie were working for the Oil Field Theft Task Force and might be down in cartel country at this very moment. I put the key into the ignition and started the car, reminding myself that McQuaid and Blackie were both big guys who had plenty of experience taking care of themselves in tough corners. But I am a worrywart, and the possibility of danger always looms large in my mind. It’s the downside of being married to somebody who is married to his job as a private investigator. If I wanted to live with him, I had to learn to live with what he did for a living. Nobody had ever said that life would be easy.
I put the Toyota in gear and pulled onto the street. What I needed was a glass of wine in a familiar place with familiar people. And I needed it now. I was glad that it was just a few blocks away.
* * *
BACK when Pecan Springs was a true small town, Beans’ Bar and Grill was at the center of its social life, and everybody met friends there for lunch or dinner at least once a week. Now that Pecan Springs is just another bead on the string of thriving communities along the I-35 Corridor (Buda, Kyle, San Marcos, New Braunfels), things have changed. You can sit down to an excellent Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Greek, or Cuban meal, all within a fifteen-minute drive. If you want to travel a little farther north, there is a glittering galaxy of upscale places to eat in Austin, where at least one glitzy new restaurant is born every week. Southbound, there’s another galaxy of good eating in San Antonio.
But that doesn’t mean that Beans’ Bar and Grill is running short on customers these days. If anything, its appeal may be even stronger, since people who are crazy about down-home Texas usually aren’t nuts about Thai or Greek and they’d just as soon not dodge the big rigs that dominate the heavy truck traffic on I-35. Beans’ is located in a two-story stone building between Purley’s Tire Company and the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks, across the street from the Old Fire House Dance Hall. Built sometime in the 1930s, it has a well-worn wooden floor, a white-painted pressed-tin ceiling, an antique bar along the right side of the main room, and a couple dozen mismatched tables and chairs painted red, green, yellow, blue—whatever color happened to be cheap at Banger’s Hardware when the chair or table was acquired. Old wooden wagon wheels hang from the ceiling, studded with lights shaped like red and green jalapeño peppers. A carved wooden Indian stands in the corner with a politically correct sign around his neck, requesting that people refer to him as a Native American. On the walls: posters of Texas politicos—Lyndon Johnson on a horse, rounding up steers on his ranch; white-haired former Governor Ann Richards in white cowgirl garb on a white Harley; George W. Bush in dirty jeans with a chainsaw in one hand and a Lone Star longneck in the other. The posters are full of holes. They’re used as targets for dart games.
Bob Godwin has run Beans’ for five or six years. His food is good and, yes, often great. But not everybody goes there to eat. Some go to sit at the bar and cheer for the Texas Longhorns on TV, play pool (eight-ball, nine-ball, or one-pocket), or throw darts. Others go there to drink with friends and catch up on the gossip or listen to gen-u-ine cowboy music—the Sons of the Pioneers or Tex Ritter or Gene Autry—on the wheezy old Wurlitzer jukebox.
But when you get right down to it, it’s the down-home food that brings most people, as it brought me that night. There’s always barbecue on the menu—beef, chicken, and pork grilled out back in old metal half-drums over mesquite fires. Chicken-fried steak smothered in Bob Godwin’s special cream gravy. Big bowls of Bob’s secret-ingredient chili (be warned: it’s spicy), served with hot-water cornbread flattened into five-inch pancakes and fried. One of Bob’s neighbors raises goats, so there’s usually cabrito in various forms—kabobs, or drunken goat stew, or (as it was this week) fajitas. Plus there are the sides: mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, deep-fried pickled jalapeños, frijoles, black-eyed peas, collards, cole slaw. Desserts, if you’re still able—pecan pie, peach cobbler, fried ice cream.
And when you’re ready to settle your tab, you can whistle for Bud (short for Budweiser), Bob’s golden retriever. Bud trots over to the table wearing a sporty blue bandana and a leather saddlebag with pockets marked Cash, Credit Cards, and Tip, as well as a little sign that says, Don’t feed me French fries, but steak is great. Bud is very professional: he always brings back the change.
I parked my Toyota in the gravel lot beside the railroad tracks and headed for Beans’. I was turning the corner of the building when I was barged into, hard, by a bulky, heavyset man wearing a red sweatshirt over jeans. He had a narrow moustache and metal-rimmed glasses and a scar from the corner of his right eye to his jaw, relic of a motorcycle accident.
“Oh, hell, China, sorry,” he said, putting out a hand to steady me. “You okay? Shoulda looked where I was going.”
“Oh, hi, Jack,” I said breathlessly, righting myself. “I’m okay. But you pack a wallop.”
It was Jack Bremer, the owner of the strip center where McQuaid, Blackwell, and Associates has its office, on the south side of town. The strip is a little seedy, but McQuaid likes it. A PI’s office ought to look
a little seedy, he says.
“Yeah,” Jack said, grinning. “Your guy wouldn’t be too happy with me if he thought I’d knocked his pretty wife down and walked over her.” Jack talks fast and it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. “He back from Mexico yet? Chihuahua was what he told me, I think.”
“Chihuahua?” I asked. “He said he was going to Chihuahua?” That’s the Mexican state just south of the border, across from El Paso.
Jack tilted his head. “I think I’m remembering right. I told him to watch himself and pack plenty of firepower. And stay away from the señoritas.”
I was having trouble with my breathing, and it wasn’t because I had nearly been knocked over. “Did he . . . did he tell you what he was doing down there?”
“Working for one of the big oil companies, with some kind of federal SWAT team, was what he said,” Jack replied. “We don’t hear much about it up here, but Pemex—the Mexican oil company—has mucho trouble with the cartels.” He patted my arm reassuringly. “You don’t have to worry, China. McQuaid may be a danger junkie, but he knows how to handle himself.”
A danger junkie, I thought. Oh, right. I steadied my breathing. “I never worry,” I lied.
“Good girl,” Jack said. “You have a great evening, now.” He strode away.
I stood for a moment, holding myself against the fear that was sweeping me. McQuaid was going into one of the most hazardous of the northern Mexican states, on a mission so dangerous that I didn’t even want to think about it. With the fear came a quick rush of anger—he had broken his promise—and a hot rash of guilty shame: I hadn’t trusted him. I had thought he might be seeing Margaret. So many feelings, all swirling together.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and waited for the whirlpool to subside. I couldn’t let myself think of this, of any of it. If I did, I’d be pulled under, and there were things I had to do. I straightened my shoulders, turned the corner of the building, and went into Beans’.
Chapter Eleven
Cilantro doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. Some people love it and can’t get enough of it. Some people hate it—and don’t mind telling the world how they feel. Julia Child, the famous author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, once said that cilantro was one herb she positively didn’t like. If it was served to her, she told an interviewer, “I would pick it out if I saw it and throw it on the floor.”
Many people agree passionately with Julia Child. The problem, it seems, is created by cilantro’s odor, which to some smells like soap, with a strong top note of bugs. Chemists tell us that these odors are created by fat molecules called aldehydes, which are also present in soaps and, yes, bugs. If you don’t like cilantro, you may be responding to memory associations with unpleasant odors. Or, some scientists say, the aversion may be genetic. That is, your dislike of cilantro may be encoded in your DNA.
China Bayles
“The Great Cilantro Debate”
Pecan Springs Enterprise
It was still light outdoors, but inside it was dim and smoky. (The city council has been debating a “Smoke-Free Pecan Springs” ordinance, but they haven’t been able to pass it yet.) When I went in, the Riders in the Sky were doing the great old Gene Autry song “Back in the Saddle Again” on the Wurlitzer, and Pittsburgh was playing Cincinnati on the TV on the wall in the corner. Bob Godwin was behind the bar, wearing a black T-shirt that warned EASILY PISSED HEAVILY ARMED and a white canvas apron tied over his black jeans. A burly Army vet, Bob has gingery hair and furry red brows that meet like two antagonistic wooly caterpillars over his thick red nose. He wears a tattooed broken heart on one thick forearm and a coiled snake on the other. He and Bud live in a single-wide north of town.
“Hey, China,” he called over the Wurlitzer and the ESPN game. “Good to see you.”
At the bar, a couple of guys’ heads turned. The bald head belonged to Jake Robinson from the feed store where we buy Caitie’s chicken pellets, the pony-tailed head to Lyle Vargas, from Purley’s Tires next door. Lyle recently sold Ruby and me two new rear tires for Big Red Mama, our shop van, while Ruby flirted with him outrageously. Both guys raised their hands in greeting, and Lyle patted the empty stool next to him with a welcoming grin.
This is odd to say, since I’m a married girl and don’t hang out with the guys, but Beans’ is a kind of refuge for me. I needed that just now, and its down-home comfort settled across my shoulders like a much-loved ratty old sweater that smelled of tobacco smoke and beer and hot frying grease. I shook my head and smiled my thanks to Lyle, lifted my laptop case to signify that I would be occupied, and pointed to a table in the back corner.
“Wine,” I mouthed to Bob, who couldn’t hear me over the TV crowd’s bases-loaded roar. I held up one finger. “Red.”
Bob nodded and winked. “Comin’ up,” he mouthed.
Jessica wasn’t due for a while, and I thought I’d use the time to peek into Kelly’s files. So I headed for my favorite table at the rear of the large room, sat down with my back to the wall, and took out my laptop. I was booting it up as Bob arrived with my wine, a red plastic bowl of warm tortilla chips, and a dish of superhot salsa.
He set the food down. “Meetin’ somebody, or are you all by your lonesome tonight?” Bud was with him, and the dog put his golden muzzle on my jeans-clad thigh and grinned up at me. Bud and I are old friends.
“A friend will be along in a little while. We’ll be having supper.” I reached down and scratched Bud between his ears. “How ya doin’, old buddy?” Bud wagged his tail fervently.
“He’s great,” Bob said, smiling down at the dog. “He caught an armadillo the other evening. Couldn’t quite figure out what to do with him, though. Didn’t have a can opener, so he couldn’t eat him—finally decided he’d better let him go.” He laughed loudly, then leaned closer. I caught a strong whiff of beer and garlic. “Understand that McQuaid is headed across the border tonight, into Juárez. You’ve got one brave hubby there, girl.”
“Juárez?” I stared at him, taken aback, and my heart jumped into my throat. “Tonight? Where’d you hear that?”
Juárez is on the other side of the Rio Grande, opposite El Paso, in the state of Chihuahua. The two cities are so close that you can sit on a bench in Ascarate Park in El Paso and watch a woman hanging her family’s washing on a bare Juárez hillside. Juárez had been at the heart of the so-called narco war of a few years ago, when more than eleven thousand people were murdered in and around the city in the space of thirty-six months. Its reputation as a crime center has almost completely strangled American tourist traffic.
He straightened. “Blackie and McQuaid were talking at the bar the other evening. What I heard was that they were going out to El Paso together on a job for the Oil Field Theft Task Force. They expected to cross over into Juárez and see what they could find out about what’s going on down there.” He frowned at my look of surprise. “Why? Is it supposed to be a secret? Are they—” He bent over again and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Undercover?” He straightened up with a gleeful look. “I’ll bet that’s it, ain’t it? They’re undercover! Prob’ly connecting with some of them cartel guys. Making some sort of deal.”
“It’s possible,” I said slowly, not wanting him to know that everybody in town seemed to know about McQuaid’s job—everybody but me. “But I don’t think so. Undercover, I mean.”
Bob’s question gave me something more to worry about, though. Surely McQuaid and Blackie weren’t going to try to infiltrate one of the cartels. That would ratchet up the danger a couple hundred percent. I shivered.
Bob grinned, showing one broken tooth. “I told those boys I’d be glad to go with them sometime, when they pick up a job that could maybe give ’em some trouble.” He flexed a bicep, showing me his bulging muscle. “I could back ’em up. I’m black belt—damned good marksman, too.” He tilted his head, a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were imagin
ing himself riding shotgun alongside McQuaid and Blackie, through a dark canyon with a potential sniper behind every boulder.
“I like runnin’ Beans’, y’know?” he went on in a reflective tone. “Great folks, decent living, got my dog and my trailer, even got me a girlfriend. But every so often, a man yearns to get out there and mix it up with the bad guys, like we did back in the old days, in the Army. Y’know how it is?” He refocused his eyes and dropped a hammy hand on my shoulder. “Well, maybe you don’t, since you’re a girl. Things are prob’ly diff’rent with you. But McQuaid understands. That’s why he liked bein’ a cop. And now that he ain’t, he misses the danger, same way I do. You tell him for me, China—I’m his boy in a tight spot. He needs me, all he has to do is say the word.”
“Thank you,” I said, reaching for my wine. “I will.”
You tell him for me—I’m his boy. Bob’s words stayed with me after he walked away. A new idea was coming to me: that McQuaid had left me in the dark out of kindness, wanting to spare me from being worried or afraid. A misplaced kindness, yes. But maybe he would have told me about his work for the task force if I’d been a little more open to the kind of jobs he took, or been a little more of a cheerleader. Yes, I’m a worrywart. And yes, I hate the idea that he might be putting himself in danger. But I’ll always be his girl in a tight spot. Always. I need to tell him that.
But right now, there was something else I needed to do, and I wanted to get into it before Jessica arrived. I inserted Kelly’s thumb drive, brought up her four files (“Pecan Springs,” “Seguin,” “Lufkin,” and “Notes”), and opened the first one.
The Pecan Springs file was captioned “Pecan Springs Community Hospice Patient Records.” It was a fairly straightforward listing of patients’ names and addresses; dates of admission; dates of termination (with categories for death, discharge, and transfer); names of certifying physicians; and various codes for physical condition and treatment. There were also names and contact information for family members. At a glance, it looked as if the listing spanned at least two years, maybe more, and included both current and discharged patients. I scrolled through the file from beginning to end. Several dozen or so of the names were highlighted in yellow, a couple of dozen were highlighted in pink, and a lesser number in blue.
Blood Orange: A China Bayles Mystery Page 16
