Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  Henry J. wasn't wearing a pistol, though. Not that I could see. And I would have seen it if he'd been wearing one. His jeans and T-shirt were skin tight. I was sure he didn't think he'd need a gun for me.

  He started toward me, still grinning, completely relaxed, light on his feet, his hands swinging loosely at his sides, ready to snap me in two just like he'd done the toothpick. He knew I wasn't going to get away from him this time.

  His problem was that he wasn't a fast learner. He should have known from his experience in Seawolf Park that I was a tricky son-of-a-gun.

  I pressed the clasp on the clipboard, and the legal pad fell to the sidewalk.

  "You dropped something, Smith," Henry J. said. "Or did you just piss your pants?"

  "Damn," I said. "Those are my notes. I gotta have those."

  I bent slightly forward as if I were going to pick up the pad, and in the same motion I flung the clipboard toward Henry J. as hard as I could. It flew at him like some kind of deformed Frisbee.

  Henry J. was the kind of guy who could probably catch flies out of midair with his bare hands, given the opportunity. But he'd been distracted by the thought that I might have some important notes, which Big Al would certainly want to see, and his eyes were on them.

  So he didn't quite see the clipboard coming at him in time to do anything about it. Its edge cracked against the bridge of his nose with a sound like a tree branch breaking. His nose hadn't been beautiful before. It was going to look a lot worse now.

  Henry J. screamed and dropped to his knees. His hands went to his face, and I could see blood running between his fingers as I stepped by him.

  "You can have the notes," I told him as I got in the truck. "The clipboard, too."

  I don't think he heard me, though.

  I left West U by way of Bissonett Street. At Kirby I drove by a store with a giant shoe rotating above it. Just beyond it I passed a store called Murder by the Book, and before long I was at the Museum of Fine Arts, then the colorful Children's Museum, and then at the edge of the Medical Center. When I came to Highway 288, I crossed over, turned left and headed for the interstate.

  I looked in the rearview mirror, but there was no sign of the Cadillac Seville. I wasn't surprised. I didn't think Henry J. would be up to driving for a while. For all I knew he was still kneeling on the sidewalk, feeling his nose.

  Henry J. had never liked me, and I had a feeling that the events of the last couple of days weren't going to elevate me in his esteem. I wasn't going to worry about it, however. I had too many other things on my mind.

  Like Chad Peavy, who had admitted being at the party that Randall Kirbo and Kelly Davis had attended, as I'd guessed he had been. He'd eventually told me most of what he knew about what went on there. Unfortunately, he didn't know as much as I'd hoped, or pretended that he didn't.

  He did tell me where the beach house was, however, so I could probably confirm whether it belonged to Big Al, not that I had any doubts.

  He also admitted that he'd seen Davis and Kirbo together there. They hadn't been together at the beginning, because Chad and Randall had gone in Chad's car.

  And Chad had stopped short of saying that his earlier memory lapses had come about because he'd been threatened by Henry J. I wondered if Henry J. would be paying him a little visit that afternoon. It didn't seem likely, considering the condition of Henry J.'s nose.

  According to Chad, there had been plenty of drinking at the party, as I'd suspected, and a few drugs other than alcohol had been ingested, though not, of course, by him.

  "There was some Ecstasy," he said, "and some other stuff. I don't mess with those things."

  I didn't really believe him, but I didn't think it mattered what he'd done. I wanted to know about Davis and Kirbo. And that's what he couldn't tell me.

  "They weren't there long," he said. "They must've left. Or if they were there, they went upstairs. I don't know what was going on up there."

  "Sure you do, Chad."

  "Nope. I was downstairs the whole time. I don't have any idea about the upstairs. I don't even know if they went up there."

  Somehow I didn't believe a word of it. Both Chad Peavy and Patrick Mullen knew more than they were telling, and I was afraid that Henry J. was the reason. I would have been afraid of him, too, if I'd still been a college kid. For that matter, I was afraid of him, and I was long past my college days.

  The S-10 sailed down the interstate, taking me back past League City, Dickinson, and Texas City. The traffic on my side of the highway wasn't bad, but I was glad I wasn't on the other side, which was three lanes of bumper-to-bumper automobiles, all of them tourists who had spent a day at Dickens on the Strand, and all of them now on their way back home. Their average speed was probably around fifty-five, which must have been torture to most of them. I cruised along at a steady seventy, thinking.

  When I wasn't thinking about Chad Peavy and Patrick Mullen, I was thinking about Dino, my old buddy Dino, my childhood pal, and about what I was going to do when I saw him. I still hadn't quite made up my mind when I stopped the truck in front of his house.

  It was a good thing I'd left the Mauser at home, though. If I'd had it with me, I might have shot him.

  18

  Dino opened his door and I shoved past him and into his living room.

  "You're looking spiffy, Tru," he called after me. "What's the occasion?"

  When I didn't answer, he followed me in and said, "Hey, Tru, what's the matter?"

  "You," I said. "You're the matter."

  The giant television set was playing some infomercial on which an incredible irritating young man with a long pony-tail was screaming about the wonders of some weird piece of exercise equipment. Dino went to the coffee table and touched a button on the remote control. The pony-tailed disappeared as the TV screen went black. I was grateful for that, at least.

  "What do you mean I'm the matter?" Dino asked. "What are you talking about?"

  "You know damned well what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you hitting Henry J. in the gut with my fishing rod yesterday."

  Dino laughed, which just made me angrier. I could feel my face getting red, but Dino didn't notice.

  "I didn't break your rod, did I?" he asked.

  "No. That's not the problem."

  "Then what is?"

  "You know what it is."

  Dino sat down. "You keep saying that, but I really don't have any idea." He looked up at me. "Don't just stand there like a store dummy. Why don't you have a seat?"

  "I don't want to have a seat."

  "I guess you don't. Would a Big Red help?"

  "Not this time," I said.

  "Must be really serious, then."

  "It's serious, all right. You've lied to me right from the start. I expect clients to lie to me when I'm working on a case, Dino, but you aren't my client. You're my friend. You're supposed to tell me the truth."

  "Shit," Dino said.

  "I want you to tell me what's going on, and I want you to tell me right now. Otherwise, I'm leaving, and you can tell the Kirbos I'm sorry, but I won't be looking for their kid any longer."

  "Listen, Tru, it's not like you think."

  "That's what people always tell me, but usually they're lying then, too."

  "Look, I'm going in the kitchen and get you a Big Red. I bought some special, just in case you came by, so you might as well drink one. I even put the cans in the refrigerator so they'd be cold. I know you'd rather drink out of the can than pour Big Red over ice."

  I gave him a mature and reasoned response: "I don't want any of your damned Big Red."

  "It's not mine. I bought it for you. So sit down while I get it."

  He stood up and left the room. I fumed for a few seconds and then sat down. I'd drink his Big Red, but I wasn't letting him off the hook.

  It was Chad Peavy who'd clued me in. I'd wondered why Dino had slugged Henry J. There hadn't seemed to be a reason for it, and I probably should have asked about it after it happened
. When Chad told me that Sharon Matthews was at the party, I knew the answer.

  Sharon was Dino's daughter. She had lived with her mother, Evelyn, a former prostitute who was now completely respectable, and Dino had hardly known her until she disappeared one day a year or so back. I'd located her for him, and now their relationship was improving, just as Dino's relationship with Evelyn was improving. Evelyn was better at getting him out of the house than I was, and I hoped that eventually the two of them would decide to live together, maybe even get married.

  Sharon had been attending the local community college, and from what Dino had told me, she was doing very well. She was supposed to graduate that summer with her associate's degree and go on to the University of Houston to get a teaching certificate. It was hard for Dino to believe that someone related to him was going to be a teacher. It seemed too respectable, somehow.

  Apparently, Sharon wasn't so respectable that she was above going to a spring break party in one of Big Al's beach houses, however.

  Dino came back in the room and handed me the can of Big Red. He'd wrapped a paper napkin around it, but I could feel the cold of the can even through the paper.

  He sat back down and watched me take a sip of the drink.

  "I didn't put any poison in it, if that's what you're thinking," he said.

  "I wasn't thinking that. But I wouldn't put it past you."

  "Look, Tru, I never lied to you. I just left out a few things."

  "Just little things, though," I said. "Things anybody might overlook. Like a dead body."

  "Maybe I should start at the beginning and tell you the whole thing."

  "What a unique idea. Why didn't I think of that?"

  "You know what you said to me yesterday?" he asked. "About sarcasm?"

  "I remember."

  "Well, it doesn't become you, either."

  "I can't help it. I'm pissed off."

  "I don't blame you. It's my fault. I admit it. No wonder you don't trust me."

  "Oh, I trust you all right. I trust you to lie like a rug."

  "That's a pretty good one. Did you think it up right on the spur of the moment?"

  I took a drink of Big Red and set the can on his coffee table.

  "I thought you were going to tell me the truth," I said. "From the beginning."

  "Yeah, I guess I was." He stared at something just above my head for a while. "It's hard to know where to start."

  "At the beginning. Like you said."

  "I'm not sure what the beginning is."

  "The party," I told him. "Start with the party. I'd really like to hear about that party. And try to tell the truth. I'm going to check it with Sharon."

  "I wish you could leave her out of it, Tru. She's had a tough time, and this isn't going to help her any."

  "Maybe not. But she's in it already. Now tell me about the party."

  "All right," he said.

  Sharon had found out about the party the way kids do, through hearing about it from someone who'd heard about it from someone else. She didn't have anything else to do that evening, and she thought it might be fun. She'd been working on a term paper that was due in her English class the day after spring break ended, and she'd thought the party would be a good way to relax for a while.

  "She didn't know very many people who were there," Dino said. "Just a couple of kids from the college. She didn't know Kelly Davis or Randall Kirbo at all. They were there, though. She remembers hearing the names. There was another kid there that comes into this, too.

  I thought I knew who that someone was. Chad Peavy. But I let that pass. I'd ask Sharon.

  "Sharon didn't think anything else about them, though," Dino went on. "Not until she saw the picture of Kelly Davis in the paper."

  "But she didn't go to the police," I said.

  "My family doesn't go to the police," Dino said, which was true.

  It didn't matter that Dino wasn't involved in anything illegal and that he never had been, at least not directly. It didn't matter that his uncles had been dead for years and that during most of that time Galveston had been as tame as an afternoon social at the Baptist church.

  It didn't even matter that his daughter might know something that would help the police in their investigation into Kelly Davis's death. Dino and his family didn't go to the police under any circumstances. He didn't even like it that I occasionally helped out the police, or that they helped me.

  None of that mattered. What mattered was the time-honored family policy: no cops.

  "OK," I said. "She didn't go to the police. But I'm not the police. The least you could have done was tell me the situation."

  Dino shook his head. "I didn't know the situation. When Tack called me and asked me if I could help him out, I didn't know that his son had anything to do with that party. I didn't know until yesterday, when you started talking to Big Al. When you said you wanted to ask about a party at one of her beach houses, it was like everything just connected up right there in my head. So I clobbered Henry J. before we got to that part of it. It was just a gut reaction."

  I had to smile, thinking about it. "And he shoved you in the bay."

  "Yeah, but you got him back for me."

  "You should see him today. I got him again."

  "You did? How?"

  "I'll tell you later. Maybe. I want to know more about that party."

  Sharon had hung around the party with the young man she'd met, probably Chad Peavy, but she hadn't enjoyed herself. There was too much drinking. Too many drugs.

  "Sharon doesn't go for that kind of stuff," Dino said. "Sure, she drinks now and then, maybe a glass of wine, but nothing heavy. And no drugs, not ever."

  Dino was insistent on that last point, and it was a point of honor that his uncles had never been involved in the drug business. Gambling, yes. Illegal liquor, sure. Prostitution, no question. But not drugs. Never that.

  "Have you talked to her since yesterday?" I asked.

  "Yeah. I called her right after you brought me home."

  "But you didn't call me to tell me any of this."

  "Yeah. I know I should have, but I thought maybe you could figure things out without having to talk to her."

  I picked up my Big Red and took a couple of long swallows. I set the can back down and said, "Well, you thought wrong. Let's go."

  "Go where?"

  "To see your daughter," I said.

  19

  Sharon lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old house only a couple of blocks from the Galvez Hotel, down toward Broadway. It was getting late, and paying her a visit meant that we might be out after dark, so Dino wasn't keen on the idea. He didn't like going out at all if he didn't have to, and he liked going out at night even less.

  "It won't kill you," I told him. "I'll even treat you to supper."

  He looked longingly at his TV set. "I don't want supper," he said.

  "Look," I said, "I don't much care what you want. This is all your fault, and you're coming with me, whether you like it or not."

  His mouth hardened. "I'm not sure you could make me go if I didn't want to."

  "Jesus Christ, Dino, you really crack me up. You got me into this mess in the first place, and since then you've lied to me and held out on me. Now you want to pull some macho tough-guy crap with me instead of just coming along to help me talk to your daughter. OK. How do you want to handle it? Draw a line on the floor and dare me to step across it?"

  "You make it sound pretty silly when you put it that way."

  "It is pretty silly. We're grown-ups, after all."

  Considering what my earlier feelings and actions had been, I was now being a genuine hypocrite. But you do what you have to do.

  "Yeah, I guess you're right," Dino said. "Let me call Sharon and tell her we're coming over."

  "Let's just surprise her," I said.

  "What if she's not there?"

  "Then we'll go see her mother. I want to talk to her too."

  "You really know how to show
a guy a good time," Dino said.

  Finding out that her mother had been a prostitute had been quite a shock to Sharon, and one result had been the disappearance that had caused Dino so much concern. But that wasn't why she was living alone now. She and Evelyn had pretty much patched things up, but Sharon was twenty years old, and she felt that it was time for her to get out on her own. She had a job at one of the stores on The Strand, and she was making enough money to pay for her own place, so Evelyn had told her to go for it.

  It wasn't much of a place. The house was old, but it wasn't charming. In fact, it was pretty dilapidated. The steps sagged, and the Gulf Coast crud had eaten away at the paint and shingles. The yard was ragged, and the sidewalk was cracked and uneven. Christmas lights were strung along the gutter over the porch, and they blinked feebly in the twilight.

  "I tried to get her to let me set her up in a better place," Dino said when we got out of my truck. "She wouldn't take the money."

  The sky was darkening, and thick clouds were coming in from the Gulf. A damp breeze made it seem almost cold, and I could hear the shushing of the surf in the wind.

  "She wants to make it on her own," I said. "You should understand that."

  "I do. It's just that I want to help her."

  She didn't want his help, and he should have understood that, too, but I didn't want to bring it up. We were there to talk about a party, not to improve his family relationships. I wasn't Dr. Laura.

  "There's a light on up there," I said, "so she's probably at home."

  "Yeah."

  "You go first," I said, and he went to the side of the house where there was a staircase leading upward. He put a foot on the first step as if to test it.

  "Haven't you been here before?" I asked.

  "Just once. Evelyn brought me over right after Sharon moved in. I don't trust these steps."

  "They'll hold you. Come on."