Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  "No," I said feeling a little guilty. "I don't suppose you could say that."

  "That's good then. It means that you have some gossip for me."

  I needn't have felt guilty. Sally loved gossip, as she called it, and she loved talking about my cases. Whenever I got one that required her help, I made another trip to her house after it was over to let her know how things had turned out, a courtesy she always appreciated.

  "I don't really have any gossip," I said, just as John came into the room.

  As usual he had the Mogen David on a silver tray with two crystal glasses. Neither Sally nor I spoke as he poured the wine. I thanked him when he handed me my glass, though I took it only out of politeness. I can drink Big Red, but Mogen David is different.

  Sally, on the other hand, didn't hesitate. She took a large swallow and smiled with satisfaction.

  "It's very nice of you to bring this, Truman," she said. "It does an old woman good to have a touch of wine for her stomach's sake."

  "I think that's what St. Paul said."

  "You are correct. And how right he was." She took another swallow. "Now tell me what you came here for. Have you been to Dickens on The Strand?"

  "Not exactly," I said. "I was close, though."

  "Closer than I would like to be, I'm sure. I'm afraid the crowds would simply run over me and trample me."

  I told her that I didn't really think that was true. Sally might have been small, but she wasn't the type to let anyone run over her.

  "You're flattering me, but don't worry. I can accept flattery gracefully. But we've gotten away from your reason for coming by. Please tell me now."

  I told her what little I knew about Randall Kirbo and what seemed to me to be his mysterious disappearance. It didn't take very long.

  "I was hoping that you might have heard something about it," I said. "Nearly anything would help."

  She had already finished her wine, so I walked over to her chair and poured her a second glass.

  "You've hardly touched your own," she said.

  "I'll get to it. Right now, I'm more interested in anything you might have heard about Randall Kirbo."

  "I'm sorry to say that I haven't heard a thing," she said, sipping more delicately at the wine than she had earlier. "I don't seem to be hearing as much as I used to. Or maybe I'm simply forgetting it."

  I said that I doubted that very seriously. "You've never forgotten a single thing. I'd be willing to bet that you've got the entire history of the Island in that head of yours."

  She smiled. "I don't have quite as much faith in my memory as you do, but you might not be far wrong."

  "Nothing in there about a young man disappearing during last year's spring break, though."

  "Nothing at all, I'm afraid."

  "Well, that's all right. I'm glad I got to come by and see you, anyway."

  "So am I. It's always nice to talk to you. Would you be interested in anything else that happened at spring break?"

  If she wanted to talk for a bit longer, that was all right with me. Her stories were always interesting, whether they had anything to do with the job I was doing or not.

  "Like what?" I asked.

  She looked into her half-full glass. "It has nothing to do with a disappearance, I'm afraid."

  "That's all right," I said. "I like gossip almost as much as you do."

  That wasn't quite true, but sometimes a little white lie doesn't hurt anything. I thought this was probably one of those times.

  "What does it have to do with?" I asked.

  "It has to do with something being found, which I suppose is the opposite of what you're asking about."

  "Don't tell me that someone found Lafitte's treasure," I said. "And that no one told me about it. I'd really hate that. I've been looking for that treasure since I was six."

  Sally laughed. It was a short, dry sound, more like a couple of wheezes, but it was a laugh.

  "Half the people born on the Island have been looking for that treasure since they were six," she said. "Not to mention the people who come here from other places to look. I only wish it were something like that. I'd love to be alive when that treasure is found. If it ever is."

  I didn't think it ever would be. Lafitte's treasure was one of the Island's legends that everyone wanted to believe but no one really did. At least not for very long after about the age of six.

  "If they didn't find treasure," I said, "what did they find?"

  "Something much less pleasant than treasure," Sally said. "But possibly more interesting in its own way. And something that a person like you should have heard about."

  "A person like me?"

  "Someone who has an interest in the unusual and the bizarre."

  "I'm not sure I'm following you. What exactly was it that they found?"

  Sally decided that she had teased me long enough. She put her crystal glass on the wooden table and said, "What they found was a body."

  8

  My first reaction was that maybe I should spend more time reading the Galveston Daily News, which billed itself as "Texas' Oldest Newspaper," a title that occasionally inspired some of the locals suggest that it be shortened to "Texas' oldest news."

  "I didn't hear about any body being found," I said.

  Sally wasn't surprised. "It's no wonder. You hardly ever leave that house of yours unless you're working on something for Dino. I worry about you. Dino, too."

  It wasn't the first time she'd mentioned that. She thought that both of us should get out more because we were just as reclusive as she was, without having age for an excuse.

  "Whatever happened to that woman you were seeing?" she asked. "Cathy Macklin."

  I looked at the floor. It was a nice floor, polished hardwood, but there was nothing there that would answer her question.

  "I'm not sure," I said. "It just ended, I guess."

  "Hah. Things don't 'just end.' They end for a reason."

  "You're right," I admitted. "But I'm not sure I know what the reason was."

  That was another one of those little white lies. I thought I knew the reason, all right, but if I tried to explain it to Sally, she'd just think that it confirmed her suspicions about me. And it probably did.

  Cathy and I liked each other. We enjoyed being together. We even had some of the same interests. But that was as far as it went, mainly because I wasn't willing to make the effort to take it any further. I was filled with a powerful sense of inertia, and it took something special to get me moving. Usually that something was Dino. If it hadn't been for him, I would most likely have spent all my days listening to CDs, working at the computer, and reading out-of-print books.

  Oddly enough, I worried much more about Dino than about myself, and I tried to get him out of his house more often. It was easy enough for me to see what he needed to do. It was a little harder for me to see that I had some of the same problems that he did, or maybe I thought that I had better reasons. Dino had the legend of his uncles, which he'd chosen not to live up to. I had my failure to find my sister when she really needed me. Neither of us liked to face those things.

  I realized that neither Sally nor I had said anything for a while, and I looked up at her. She was watching me calmly, rocking her chair quietly back and forth.

  "I didn't really come here to talk about me," I said.

  Sally nodded. "I know that. It was just something I thought I'd mention. I hope you didn't mind."

  "It's OK. Now tell me about that body."

  She really didn't know much more about it than I knew about Randall Kirbo. The essential facts were that the body of a young woman named Kelly Davis had been found by a couple of surfers who'd gone out to catch some waves early one morning on the last Friday of spring break. That would have made it March 20 by my reckoning.

  The woman had been floating in the Gulf, only about fifteen yards from shore. The surfers, Jack Munson and Todd Allen, had been paddling on top of the green water near one of the granite jetties when they passed the body
. They pulled it to the beach, realized that CPR wasn't going to do a bit of good, and called the police.

  "How did she die?" I asked. "Drowning?"

  Sally said, "There wouldn't really be much interest in that, now would there?"

  I didn't suppose there would. Drownings weren't exactly everyday occurrences in the Gulf, but they weren't uncommon, either.

  "There was no water in her lungs," Sally said. "The police believe that she was put into the Gulf after she died."

  "Murder?"

  "There were no signs that she had been in a struggle. There were no marks on the body, except for a few scrapes that most likely came from the jetty. She wasn't shot or stabbed or choked or beaten."

  "Was a cause of death ever determined?"

  Sally shook her head. "I don't believe so. If it was, there hasn't been a mention of it in the paper, and no one has told me about it."

  The lack of a mention in the paper didn't prove much, but the fact that no one had told Sally made it pretty certain that no determination had been made. Sally might not get many visitors, but she had a telephone.

  "Who was Kelly Davis?" I asked.

  "She wasn't from the Island," Sally said. "That's why I mentioned her in the first place. She was here for spring break. She was a student at Southwest Texas State."

  But not at Texas Tech, I thought. Still, it was an interesting coincidence — a young man disappears, a young woman dies. If the two cases were related, or even if the cops only suspected that they were, Lattner's hostility was a little easier to understand.

  "The police investigated, of course," I said.

  "Of course. A friend of yours was in charge."

  "A friend?"

  "Gerald Barnes. You've crossed paths with him before, haven't you?"

  She knew very well that I had. I'd told her all about the disappearances of Dino's daughter and Outside Harry. In both instances I'd been involved with Barnes.

  "I know Barnes." I said. "I might even have to get to know him a little better."

  Sally didn't actually rub her hands together, but she gave the impression of doing so.

  "I'm sure he'll enjoy that," she said.

  "Has anyone told you lately that you're an evil old woman?"

  Sally laughed her dry laugh again. "How I wish that were true. I haven't had the opportunity to be evil in decades."

  "Sure you haven't. Now what else do you know that you haven't told me?"

  Sally thought for a second. "Well, you haven't asked me what she was wearing."

  "Right. So tell me, what was she wearing?"

  "Nothing unusual. Just shorts and some kind of T-shirt with an advertisement on it."

  "What kind of advertisement?"

  "I don't know. Could that mean anything?"

  Probably not, I thought. Everyone these days seemed perfectly willing to pay twelve bucks for a T-shirt that advertised some product or clothing line. Not only were the products and clothing lines making money, they were getting all kinds of free advertising. It seemed like a good racket to me.

  "I don't know about the advertisement," I said. "But she wasn't wearing a bathing suit. That might mean something."

  Sally agreed. "That's another reason the police believe the girl was put in the water after her death. She obviously wasn't out for a swim."

  "How long had she been in the water?"

  Sally hardly ever drank more than two glasses of wine during one of my visits, though I was certain that she had more after I left. Now she looked at the wine bottle and then back at me. I can take a hint, so I got up and filled her glass. My own glass, still half full, sat on the floor by my chair.

  "You've still hardly touched your wine," Sally said as I poured.

  "I'm not very thirsty," I said. I went back to my chair. "Did the cops have any idea how long the body had been in the water? Any estimate of the time of death?"

  "I've never been sure just how such things are determined." She took a dainty sip of Mogen David. "At any rate, they believe that she'd been in the water only a few hours. Most likely she was put in only a short time before she was found, probably not long before dawn. She must have died a few hours earlier."

  "What about her family and friends? Did anyone find out where she'd been, what she'd been doing, and who she'd been doing it with?"

  "You really must think I know a lot more than I do, Truman, if you think I know all of that. Even my sources aren't that good. In fact, I don't know any of it. I suppose that you'll have to talk to your police friend, Mr. Barnes, about it."

  I could think of several other things I'd rather do. Some of them weren't even especially pleasant things. But they were better than going to see Barnes.

  "Why should I talk to him?" I asked. "I'm not working on that case. I'm looking for a kid named Randall Kirbo."

  "You don't find it intriguing that he disappeared at about the same time a young woman's body was found?"

  "We don't know exactly when he disappeared. And we certainly don't know that he had any connection with Kelly Davis."

  She looked disappointed in me. "And we don't know that no one has talked to the police about her death, do we? But it seems very likely that no one has. Two strange events during the same week, and no one will talk about either one of them. I find that peculiar."

  So did I, but I was still hoping there was no connection.

  "Don't you?" Sally asked.

  I knew very well what she meant, but I said, "Don't I what?"

  "Don't you find it peculiar?"

  "Yes," I said. I sighed. "Yes, I guess I do."

  Somewhere inside my head I heard Dino's voice: "It'll be different this time."

  Sure it would. I'd hardly gotten started, and already it seemed pretty likely that there was a dead body involved.

  Goddamn that Dino, anyway.

  9

  "There's absolutely no connection between the disappearance of Randall Kirbo and the death of Kelly Davis," Gerald Barnes told me, so unconvincingly that I was immediately certain he thought there was.

  We were sitting at his desk in the police station. I'd taken the same parking spot I'd used earlier, knowing that I was pressing my luck but hoping that everyone was too busy watching over the money changing hands at the turkey-leg booths down on The Strand to give me a ticket. I was at least lucky enough to have caught Barnes in the building. He had too much seniority to pull guard duty.

  "How do you know there's no connection?" I asked.

  Barnes had thinning brown hair and wore glasses with heavy plastic frames, the kind you don't see very often these days. Buddy Holly would have been proud. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at me. He didn't answer my question.

  "Bob Lattner asked me about you earlier," he said. "You know what I told him?"

  "That I was a expert detective who'd solved a couple of really tough cases for you?"

  "That's part of your trouble, Smith. You think too much of yourself. You didn't solve those case. I solved them. You just hung around and got in the way."

  If that was the way he wanted to look at it, I wasn't going to argue with him. It wouldn't do any good, and I think we both knew better, anyway. Even if he didn't, I certainly did.

  "What's the other part of my trouble?" I asked.

  "You're a smart-ass."

  I was beginning to think that was a unanimous opinion among all my acquaintances. That didn't mean they were right, of course.

  "Thanks for sharing that with me," I said. "Now, let's get back to what we were talking about, the non-existent connection between the disappearance of Randall Kirbo and the death of Kelly Davis."

  "Someone might have hired you to look into the disappearance, Smith," Barnes told me, "but that doesn't give you the right to poke around in any other on-going investigations."

  His glasses had slipped again. I started to suggest that he go in and have them adjusted, but I decided he wouldn't appreciate the advice. So I kept it to myself.

  Instead, I said, "
Let's just pretend for a second that while I'm trying to find out what happened to Kirbo, I happen to discover that he knew Kelly Davis. What then?"

  "Then you inform me. I'll take it from there."

  "You haven't taken it any great distance so far."

  Barnes took off his glasses and set them on the desk. His eyes suddenly looked smaller. He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair.

  "You're right about that," he said.

  I knew then that he was weakening. Or maybe he'd just been setting me up. Maybe he'd been planning to tell me all along.

  "Just tell me what you do know." I said. "We can help each other on this. We've done it before."

  He picked up the glasses and slid them back on. He looked around to see if anyone was listening to us, but no one was. There was hardly anyone else there.

  "What I'm about to tell you?" he said.

  "What about it?"

  "I didn't say it."

  "Of course you didn't."

  "All right. We think there's a connection between Kirbo and Davis, all right. Hell, we know there is. We just can't get anywhere with it. We're getting stonewalled all around."

  "But you're going to tell me what the connection is."

  "Yes. Not that I think it'll do you any good."

  "You never can tell," I said.

  "That's right. You might accidentally stumble onto something. Otherwise I'd be keeping my mouth shut."

  "You're not, though. So what's the connection?"

  "We think that Randall Kirbo did know Kelly Davis, but we can't prove it. We think they met at a party at a beach house, but we're not sure who else was there. We've put a little pressure on a few of the ones we think might know something, but we can't get a thing out of them."

  "Why not?"

  "The beach house is owned by Big Al Pugh," he said as if that explained it all.

  Maybe it did. Big Al was into a little of everything — restaurants, beach property, illegal gambling, prostitution, and drugs — or so it was said. No one had ever proved anything about the illegal stuff, mainly because people who seemed likely to reveal any of Big Al's secrets had a way of turning up missing. No one wanted to mess with Big Al. Not even the police. Certainly not me.