Black Jack Point

by Jeff Abbott

  “Right before Labor Day.”

  “Why?”

  “Jimmy got mad that Patch wanted him to work on a Saturday and called him a bad word under his voice. Patch heard him and fired him on the spot. Jimmy begged him for another chance, but Patch said he’d crossed a line and he wasn’t getting even a toe back over it.” Linda Bird lit a cigarette without asking permission; David glanced at Sheriff Hollis, who let it slide.

  “Did Jimmy hold a grudge?”

  “He really wanted that job back—Patch was a good man, easy to work for most of the time, and doing the odd jobs for him wasn’t too much hard work—but Jimmy’s pride got the best of him. He talked about screwing Patch over.”

  “How?”

  “Flattening a tire, sugaring his tank. Kid stuff.” She tapped ashes into a coffee cup. “He sure didn’t mention murder. Jimmy don’t even like to spank our four-year-old. I’ve never been afraid of him and if he could go off and kill two people just like that”—here she snapped her fingers—“then I don’t know him. And if he’s gone dangerous, I want police protection for me and my little girl.”

  A patrol officer stuck his head into the interrogation room. “David? Your other appointment’s here.” David nodded and the dispatcher shut the door.

  “You got a suspect?” Linda asked.

  “It’s on another case,” David said.

  “Aren’t you the busy bee?”

  “How’s the marriage?” Sheriff Hollis set down his pen.

  A pause. “I filed for divorce last week. He knew it was coming.”

  “So he might have reason to leave town.”

  “He might. Although he’d hate to leave our girl, Britni. He does love her—I give him that, even if he don’t got the sense the good Lord gave a goose.”

  “Why’d you file?” David asked.

  “Irreconcilable boredom.”

  Randy Hollis leaned forward. “If Jimmy calls you, Linda, what do you do?”

  “Tell him to stay the hell away. If he’s innocent in this, then he should come forward. If he’s guilty, give up. For Britni’s sake. Is this all?”

  “Judge Mosley’s conducting an inquest. He may call you for a statement.”

  “He’s okay,” she said with a contemptuous glance at David. “A judge’s robe ain’t the same as a uniform, doesn’t make a man turn mean.”

  David felt his temper rise. “You be clear on this, Linda. Your husband calls you, you don’t offer him any help. You don’t want to be an accessory. I don’t want to be charging you. Putting your little girl through that grief.”

  “Try it without proof,” she said. “This ain’t Red China.”

  David asked Linda Bird a few more questions he already knew the answers to and dismissed her. She left and David had his hand on the door when Sheriff Hollis said, “David. About Lucy Gilbert.”

  “What?”

  “Are you just taking another statement or questioning her as a suspect?” Asked like he didn’t know the answer, and David could tell he did.

  “Questioning her.”

  “Why?”

  “She and Suzanne Gilbert are Patch Gilbert’s only relatives. They stand to benefit from his death.”

  “That aside, what you got on her?”

  “She runs a disreputable business.”

  “You talking about that psychic hotline thing?” Hollis said. “How’s that disreputable? My mother calls it, says the girls on the phones are real nice and insightful.”

  “You like your mother pissing away her Social Security on phone psychics?”

  “She can piss her money how she pleases. I heard Lucy Gilbert’s dating Whit Mosley.”

  “So?”

  “His Honor’s not a big friend of yours, is he?” Hollis capped his pen, gave David an unexpected frown.

  “We get along fine.”

  “No, you don’t. You’ve never gotten along with him. Never made the effort, far as I can see.” Hollis stood, wadded up his page of doodles. “You got a reason to suspect Lucy Gilbert, a solid lead, you go for it. You questioning her because she’s the girlfriend of a guy who’s a pain in your neck, forget it. I won’t have an officer of mine abusing his position.”

  “I resent that. Deeply.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to resent it shallowly, David,” Hollis said. “We clear?”

  “Crystal.” David kept his voice steady. “I need clarification on some items in her statement. That’s all. In fact, my friend Judge Mosley and I are supposed to drive in together to Corpus for the autopsy results and to meet with the forensic anth team.”

  “Good. Keep playing nice.” Hollis left.

  David Power unclenched his fingers. Odd. Hollis and Whit Mosley had been elected from differing parties. Why would Hollis take Whit’s side? But he saw it then: both of them from old Port Leo families, the old moneyed families of the coast that didn’t include the Powers. Old family allegiances meant more than political party lines.

  It wouldn’t buy you an inch with him.

  He stepped out into the hallway. Lucy Gilbert stood there, along with an older woman he presumed was her attorney. The lawyer gave David a predatory glare like a barracuda who’d missed breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  No sign of Whit. It surprised him; he thought Whit would be here, steam pouring from his ears. Perhaps, David decided, that was best for the moment. But he turned his friendliest smile toward Lucy Gilbert. You just make one teeny misstep, you had a thing to do with these murders, you’re mine.

  “Miss Gilbert? Thanks for coming in. I just had a few questions on your statement you gave the police. If y’all will just step this way…”

  Patch Gilbert’s older niece, Suzanne, lived in a grand development called Castaway Key, a series of streets and private docks that few born and raised in Port Leo called home. Her house sat facing St. Leo Bay, and in the summer afternoon the bay hummed with craft: sailboats slicing the waves; jet skis buzzing like maddened bees; a pleasure boat loaded with urban weekenders cutting near the shore, extra-bad eighties dance music drifting from its deck. Whit rolled up the window.

  Castaway Key was not aptly named. Many houses went for a quarter million and higher. Whit supposed anyone dressed like Robinson Crusoe, ambling along Castaway Key’s resort-named streets—such as Hilton Head Road or Cozumel Way—would be summarily brought to him on charges of vagrancy.

  Suzanne Gilbert’s house was white and modern, and it glittered with windows large enough to drive a car through. Delicate palms and sprawling bougainvillea filled the beds near the curved stone driveway. Brightly painted Mexican tiles spelled out the house number. Suzanne, an artist, seemed flush rather than starving. Or maybe Suzanne was house-poor, and this mansion was a symptom of her supposed financial woes.

  His cell phone beeped as he parked. “This is Judge Mosley.”

  “Judge. Hi. This is Linda Bird. I’m Jimmy Bird’s wife. I think you know who he is.”

  “I know we want to talk to him, ma’am.”

  “Well, I just talked with that idiot David Power. I don’t want to talk to him no more, and the sheriff said I might have to talk to you. So I’m talking because”—she paused—“I find the deputy to be irritating.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “New Orleans. I think if Jimmy has run off he’s gone there. Couple of times last month I hear him, late at night on the phone, talking, saying, Alex. I thought it was some drunk friend of his. They love to get tight and phone each other. Like gossipy teenagers.”

  “I see.”

  “Then the phone bill comes. We don’t know people in New Orleans but there’s three calls there, late at night. I pay the bills, as I have the job. I ask him about who he’s calling, he says it’s a mistake. He’s a bad liar. I can tell he’s lying.” She paused. “So then I think maybe Alex is a girl. In New Orleans. How he got a girlfriend in New Orleans is beyond me, but I’m telling you because I sure ain’t telling David Power. You want the number he called?”

  “Yes, ma’am
, I do.” She gave it to him and he jotted it down.

  “You tell David Power he better treat me nicer next time he sees me, or I’m filing a complaint. I got a lawyer now, what with getting the divorce, and I am in a filing mood.”

  “I sense your resolve, Mrs. Bird. Thank you.”

  “You set bond on my brother last year,” she said. “An amount we could handle. We appreciated it. I’m voting for you next time.”

  He thanked her, stared at the phone number, nearly laughed.

  Suzanne Gilbert opened the front door as he headed up the stairs. She wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, black sandals. Idiotic in this heat, Whit thought. Artist mourning clothes. She was very fair, attractive, a good five or six years older than Lucy. Her cheekbones and chin and nose were all precise and perfect, as measured as an architect’s drawing.

  She greeted Whit with a brief hug, so quick he wondered why she’d bothered. Whit suspected that Suzanne wanted to pat his blondish hair flat or put him in a suit, tidy him up for Lucy. He saw her eyes take in his clothes with disapproval: the faded polo shirt, the rumpled khakis, the sandals.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Barely am,” she said in a tone that meant anything but.

  Whit followed her into a high-ceilinged foyer and then to a living room. The furniture was modern and expensive, imported teak, leather surfaces of tan and black, the carpet a creamy white, brave for a beachside house. Abstract art filled the walls, lined the bookshelves. But all painted with the same crude hand, no eye to detail or form. Savagely mixed, the colors selected to hurt the eye. Jackson Pollock without the restraint. Whit sensed a sudden meanness in the pictures. They were ugliness disguising themselves as talent. He hated the pictures on first sight.

  He followed her to an immaculate, steel-dominated kitchen. A man who looked like he might drag his knuckles when he walked stood by the granite kitchen counter, drinking a bottle of Dos Equis. Big, thick-necked, with a shaved-bald head and wearing a black T-shirt and faded denim overalls. A bracelet of intertwining tattoos whirled around one melon-shaped bicep.

  “I don’t think you’ve met my boyfriend, Roy Krantz. Hon, this is Whit Mosley. He’s the coroner and the JP here and he’s conducting the inquest into Uncle Patch’s death.” No, he hadn’t met Roy. The few parties and events where Lucy and Suzanne crossed paths, Roy was always at home or sleeping or working on a sculpture. Roy shunned limelight, it seemed to Whit. Perhaps he had trouble fitting through the front door.

  Whit offered a hand; Roy shook it and didn’t try to squeeze Whit’s fingers into pulp.

  The phone rang. “Excuse me,” Suzanne said. “News has spread, and people want to bring over casseroles and cakes. You know how it is when you have a death in the family. Everyone swarms over with comfort foods and you gain ten pounds.”

  As though weight gain were her biggest worry. Whit thought she needed a cheeseburger. But he gave his solemn, conducting-the-inquest nod. “Of course.” She left the kitchen, scooped up a phone in the living room, spoke in a low voice.

  “You’re Lucy’s guy,” Roy Krantz said. His voice was low and flat and sounded like it had been honed in a prison yard.

  “Yes.”

  “How’s she holding up?”

  “She’s talking to the police right now.”

  Roy raised an eyebrow. “And what’s she saying?”

  “Family secrets, probably.”

  Roy made a noise of thick beer-swallow, kept staring at him.

  Suzanne returned. “Something to drink, Whit?” Her voice glimmered a little too cheery, a little too hostess-bright.

  “No, thank you. May we talk now? Privately?”

  “Sure.” Suzanne glanced at Roy, then led Whit down a hall thankfully empty of abstract art-pukings. Two doors opened off the hall: one to a concrete-floored room cluttered with small iron sculptures of gulls, palm trees, flamingos, and assorted equipment; the other to another studio, bright windows framing the view of the bay. A huge canvas leaned near one window, covered with a stained dropcloth. A worktable stood nearby, dotted with oil paint in blues, mustards, venomous greens, as though poison dripped on its surface. Finished paintings—more of the obnoxious scribblings that hung in the living room—decorated the walls.

  In one corner a huge roll of paper lay unfurled, with smears of bright acrylic paint dried on the paper. Whit glanced at it, then glanced again. Two round magenta globes looked like they’d been pressed on the paper from small, pert breasts. A roll of lime paint looked like a hip; multiple handprints lay in blue and pink. Other blobs resembled knee-prints, footprints, and one squat figure eight looked like apple-green testicles. Suzanne wore a bent little smile on her architectural face.

  “You’re very prolific.” Whit nodded toward the calmer paintings on the wall. It was the only compliment he could think of.

  “I get bored working on a painting too long, so I paint quickly. But they sell quickly, too.” An offhand shrug.

  “They’re very interesting.”

  Interesting apparently didn’t cut it; she frowned. She sat on a paint-splattered stool and he settled on its twin across from her.

  “You’re probably wondering why I don’t paint the bay, with a wonderful view.” Suzanne crossed her legs, dangled a black sandal off one alabaster foot.

  “No. But you want to tell me.”

  She gave a solemn smile. “Everyone here paints the bay. Every stupid little dabbler who can barely hold a brush between their fingers. And the required frisky gulls, little boats, swaying palms. Tiresome.” She pointed at one small painting, framed in silver, a violent swirl of purple spirals, gray crosses, and white froth that looked like nothing more than idle slapping of paint by an angry child. “That’s the bay. My interpretation of it. No adorable dinghies, no fishing grannies, no endangered whooping cranes winging back to the refuge. The bay as it is. Hard. Cruel. Like life is.”

  He didn’t think she knew diddly about hard life in this grand house. Maybe he should have her call Linda Bird. “I’d like to know about your relationship with Patch.”

  “Are you asking as a judge or because Lucy’s said an unkind word or two?”

  Now that was interesting. “As a judge.”

  “I loved Patch. Who didn’t?” She tucked her sandal back on her foot. “Artists live up to our stereotype now and then, get moody and mean when the work sucks. Patch always pulled me out of the blues, gave me a slap on the fanny when I needed it.” She spoke with the air of the artist, playing out each nuance until it wasn’t a nuance anymore. But he saw in the dusky light how brittle her eyes and mouth looked under the fresh makeup. She had cried and cried hard.

  “Did he ever help you in other ways? Say financially?”

  “You ask that like you know the answer already.”

  Whit shrugged.

  “You know, Lucy doesn’t make it easy to love her sometimes, does she? She does have a mouth.” She lit a cigarette, a thin, ladylike coffin nail pulled from a pink pack, then offered him one. He declined.

  “She told you garbage about me with great reluctance, right? Much wringing of hands? She got a vibe, right?”

  Whit said nothing.

  “Lucy was born with a finger pointing at someone else. Artists see patterns, honey, and I’ve seen plenty of this one.”

  “She said you asked Patch for a large loan.”

  “I was a little short on cash between paintings and asked Patch for help. He said no, I said fine, we were fine. He’s not a bank. I understood.”

  “You asked for a hundred thousand?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Good Lord, no. I asked for ten thousand. I got it from a friend. It’s being paid off, no problems.” She tapped ashes into a crystal ashtray on the worktable, her mouth thinned. “A hundred thousand. She ought to use that imagination for noble causes.”

  “She said it’s what Patch told her.”

  “She’s dead wrong.”

  “She and Patch seemed to have a good relations
hip.”

  “Lucy likes people who have things and will give them to her. I’m not one of those people. Patch was. He doted on Lucy, just a bit too much.”

  “Can you think of anyone who’d want Patch or Thuy dead?”

  “He only dated widows, and he was successful at it. I could see he might make another man jealous. Thuy, Lord, no. Gentle and kind as a lamb. Retired teacher, loaded with patience. I adored her.”

  “You and Roy were here in town on Monday night.”

  “Yes. I already gave a statement to the police. We were here, watched the news, turned in.” She paused, tilted her head, gave him a melty smile. “We made love. Twice. So we were awake until midnight or so. That’s not in the police statement but I don’t mind total honesty with you.” Her smile shifted; his skin prickled.

  “In a bed or on the canvas?”

  The smile widened. “You have a good eye.”

  Yeah, it’s real tough to make out painted, squashed boobs. He saw the perfection of her face created a sense of emptiness—like a house with no curtains in the windows. “Roy’s what to you, social engineering?”

  “Radio Lucy strikes again.” She shrugged. “It was a minor drug conviction, ten years ago. He’s clean.” She exhaled a cool little stream of smoke. “He was here all Monday and Tuesday with me, okay? Working. He’s an artist, too. His studio’s across the hall. Sculptures in metal. Gulls, lighthouses, coastal art for the gift shop crowd. He’s not an artist at my level but he has potential.”

  Whit glanced at the body prints on the paper on the floor and thought he saw Roy’s rather limited potential at work.

  “It’s a lot of land at stake. With Patch gone.”

  She frowned, as though he had dragged a dirty finger across one of her artworks. “Well, the Gilberts have owned most of Black Jack Point since before Texas was Texas. It totals about three hundred acres. Fifty acres is mine. Fifty is Lucy’s. Uncle Patch owns another two hundred.” She shrugged again. “I’ve no idea of the details of Uncle Patch’s will. I would suppose Lucy and I inherit. But we never discussed it.”

  “But if you needed ten thousand dollars, why not sell some of your land?”

  “We’ve always had an unspoken agreement not to sell, except as a group. Patch wanted to hold on to the family land, even when solid offers came in. Lucy and I always deferred to him.”