Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

I went past him and up the steps. They seemed solid enough to me, though they creaked a little. I could hear Dino behind me, so I didn't look back.

  At the top of the stairs there was a small landing, not much more than three feet square. I stood on it and knocked on the screen door.

  A light came on, and I looked into the kitchen through the glass door top. Sharon was coming toward me across a worn and cracked yellow linoleum floor that had probably been laid down fifty years previously.

  She looked better than the last time I'd seen her, but the circumstances had been quite different. None of us had looked too good then.

  She snapped on an outside light, looked out at me. She was obviously surprised, and when she saw Dino standing on the step just below the landing, her eyes widened even more. She threw a deadbolt on the door, unlatched the screen, and pushed it open. I should have said something about the security value of a deadbolt on a door that was half glass, but I didn't want to upset Dino.

  "What are you two doing here?" Sharon asked, as if she didn't know. She knew, though. I was sure of that.

  "Tru wants to talk to you," Dino said. "Can we come in?"

  She stepped aside to make room for us to come through the door.

  "Sure," she said. "Come on in. Welcome to my happy home."

  We went into the kitchen. The countertops were in worse shape than the linoleum. The porcelain on the side of the sink was cracked, and a big rusty spot was developing. The tiny refrigerator and stove were practically antiques, and I could see a couple of roach traps along the baseboard. The table was small and square with a red formica top. Around it were four chairs with curved steel frames and red vinyl seats and backs.

  "Have a seat," Sharon said. "We can talk in here."

  "I hope we're not interrupting anything," I said, taking one of the chairs.

  She shrugged and sat opposite me. "I was just watching The Simpsons, but it was a rerun."

  Dino sat beside her. "Tru wants to talk to you about that party. The one I called about last night."

  Sharon looked at me. "He said you'd want to know about it. I guess I should have talked to the cops before now."

  "No you shouldn't," Dino said.

  "'We don't go to the police,'" I said to Sharon. "Ever hear that one before?"

  Sharon almost smiled. But not quite.

  I've heard it more than once," she said. "Look, Mr. Smith, I —"

  "Wait," I said. "Let's just make it 'Tru,' all right?"

  "I . . . guess so. It's just that I'm a little uncomfortable talking to you."

  I didn't blame her. If our positions had been reversed, I'd have been uncomfortable, too. Our last meeting hadn't been exactly under the best of conditions.

  "Don't worry about it," I said. "Anything that happened was a long time ago. We've all changed since then. I've forgotten all about it."

  I'd never forget it, but she didn't have to know that. Dino knew, though. I could tell by the way he was looking at me, but he was smart enough not to say anything.

  "I wish none of that had ever happened," Sharon said. "I'm not proud of it."

  "It's over and done. I'm not interested in the past. Well, not that particular past. I'm more interested in what happened during spring break."

  "I don't mind telling you about that, but I didn't do anything. I didn't really know that girl who died."

  "Kelly Davis," I said. "That was her name."

  "Like I said, I didn't really know her. She was with some guy, a football player. I didn't know him, either."

  "Randall Kirbo," I said.

  She thought about it. "I guess that was his name. There were lots of guys there."

  I showed her Randall Kirbo's picture. "Him?"

  "Yes, for sure."

  "His name's Randall Kirbo. What about one named Chad Peavy?"

  "I remember that name, too. I'm not sure which one he was."

  "Another football player. He remembers you. There were a couple of others that you might have met. Patrick Mullen and Travis Bittner."

  "I don't think so."

  "It's not important right now. What I want you to tell me is what happened at that party."

  "I don't remember much about it." She looked at Dino. "Why don't you go in the other room and see what's on TV?"

  Dino wasn't much of a father, but he could take a hint. He stood up and said, "Do you have cable in this place?"

  "That's about the only luxury I allow myself," Sharon said. "You can watch just about anything you're interested in. I get three different shopping channels."

  "I hope that damn 'juiceman' isn't on," Dino said, as he headed for the living room.

  I found it hard to believe that someone who watched that manic exercise-machine pitch man could object to someone who sold juice, but maybe Dino just didn't like juice.

  When he was gone and I could hear the TV from the other room, I said, "Now that he's gone, tell me why your memory seems a little impaired."

  She looked over her shoulder as if to assure herself that Dino wasn't listening from the other room. When she turned back to me, there was a concerned look on her face.

  "I want to help you," she said. "I guess maybe I feel like I owe it to you. But there's something you have to promise me."

  I thought I knew what she wanted to hear. "Private detectives are like priests. Whatever you say to me is absolutely confidential. I won't even tell Dino."

  "He might try to make you."

  "You don't know Dino very well if you believe that."

  "I don't know him very well. That's the point. And I don't want him going all fatherly on me."

  "I'll keep him in line," I said, with more confidence than I felt. Obviously I wasn't the one who could predict what Dino might do.

  But Sharon seemed to believe me. She said, "He was worried about me and about the drinking and drugs at that party. I might have exaggerated a little bit when I told him about it."

  "How?" I asked.

  "I didn't do any drugs. I told the truth about that, but I drank more than I told him. I wasn't drunk or anything, but I'd had more than just a glass of wine. So I don't really remember everything too well. I was worried about a term paper, and I guess I thought a few drinks would loosen me up."

  "Did they?"

  She laughed, but there wasn't much humor in it. I wondered how the term paper had turned out.

  "I got pretty loose, all right," she said. "So loose, I wasn't even sure where I was for a while."

  "But you saw Kelly Davis and Randall Kirbo together."

  "I know I saw her. I know I even spent some time talking to her and some boy. It's what happened after that I'm not sure of."

  "What do you think happened?"

  "There were some things going on upstairs," she said.

  "What things?"

  "That's where the drugs were."

  Her eyes shifted, and I thought there might be more to it than that, but I couldn't figure out what.

  "What kinds of drugs? Anything dangerous?"

  "Ecstasy, I think. That can be weird. And pot, but that's all. Nothing really dangerous."

  I was disappointed. I was hoping that the death of Kelly Davis could be tied into some kind of illegal substance. That would explain why Big Al was so eager to keep things quiet, and why Henry J. was paying visits to everyone involved.

  Except Sharon. Something wasn't quite right here.

  "You know Henry J.?" I asked.

  She looked wary. "I've heard of him."

  "Was he there that night?"

  "Why should he have been?"

  "Because he works for Big Al Pugh, and the party was at one of her beach houses."

  "I wouldn't know about that," Sharon said. "Nobody said whose house it was."

  I wasn't sure I believed that.

  "So you didn't see Henry J.?"

  "I don't think so."

  "And he hasn't been around to see you since the party?"

  "No. Why should he want to see me?"

  "Beca
use he might not like the idea of you talking about what went on there that night. Are you sure you didn't see him? He's older than any of the kids who were there, and probably bigger. His nose has been broken a lot."

  More now than then, I thought.

  "I might have seen somebody like that. I'm not sure. I was pretty wrecked, like I said."

  "What about those drugs you mentioned? Who provided them? Could it have been Henry J.?"

  "I don't think so. The drugs were just there, the way they are, you know?"

  I didn't know, not really. Drug use hadn't been quite that casual when I was Sharon's age.

  "How often do you go to parties like that one?" I asked.

  "Not often. And I don't drink that much, either. It was just a one-time thing." She smiled. "You sound more like my father than Dino does."

  "I don't mean to. I worry about people sometimes."

  "Thanks, but you don't have to worry about me. I'm doing all right."

  For some reason I believed her, at least about that. She wasn't the same young woman she'd been when we'd first met, and the change was for the better. I thought maybe she'd come to terms with who she really was, which is something a lot of us never quite manage.

  Unfortunately, however, she wasn't turning out to be exactly the mine of information I'd hoped for, and I was almost certain that she was holding out on me. I asked if she could remember anything else about the party, anything at all, but I didn't get any more out of her. After a few more minutes of trying, I called Dino.

  "See anything you wanted to order?" I asked when he came back to the kitchen.

  "Not a thing. Was Sharon any help to you?"

  "Not much," Sharon said. "I couldn't remember a whole lot."

  "So where does that leave us?" Dino asked me.

  "It leaves us needing to see someone else."

  "Who?"

  "It's a surprise," I told him.

  "Oh, boy," he said.

  20

  "I thought we'd be going to see Evelyn," Dino said after we'd negotiated the run-down stairway and settled ourselves in the pickup.

  "We are," I said. "I just didn't want to mention that in front of Sharon."

  "Oh.

  "I didn't want Sharon to think we didn't trust her," I said, starting the pickup and pulling away from the curb.

  "But we do, don't we?"

  "Mostly. But it never hurts to check."

  "If you say so."

  "I say so."

  He didn't respond to that, and I drove over to the residential area near the Bolivar ferry landing. The streets in Evelyn's subdivision were all named for fish. I didn't know whether I'd rather live on a street named for a Romantic poet or a fish, but I was pretty sure that "Tuna" didn't have the same prestige as "Coleridge." Maybe it all depended on your priorities.

  "How long's it been since you talked to Evelyn?" I asked when I stopped in front of her house.

  "Not long. Couple of days."

  "She'll be glad to see us, then," I said, and she was. She was also as surprised as Sharon.

  "I don't know how you got him out of the house after dark," Tru," she said.

  "It wasn't easy. I had to threaten to kill him."

  Evelyn laughed at that, sure that I was kidding. She had a nice laugh.

  "I'm afraid it's business instead of pleasure, though," I told her.

  She wasn't one to waste time on small talk when there was business to be done. Maybe it was her background.

  "Tell me about it," she said.

  I told her the whole thing while Dino sat and looked at his hands. Now and then Evelyn would glance over at him and shake her head.

  When I was finished, she said, "Old habits aren't easy to break. I hope you weren't too hard on him, Tru."

  "Not as hard as I should have been."

  "Good. But if anything like this ever happens again, he'd better go to the police or we'll both get after him. Now, what do you want from me?"

  "I want to know if Sharon told you anything about that party."

  "I wish she had, but she didn't. I suppose that when death is involved, she feels more comfortable with her father. He forgot to mention it to me, too."

  "Hey," Dino said, coming out of his trance. "It's like you said. Old habits, and that stuff."

  "I'd hoped you were doing better," Evelyn said.

  "I'm trying. It's tough sometimes."

  "I wish I could help you, Tru," Evelyn said. "But I don't know a thing."

  "I was afraid of that. Well, Dino, are you ready to eat supper?"

  "I guess so," he said.

  He couldn't work up any real enthusiasm for the idea, however. I could tell that he'd rather go straight home.

  "Can Evelyn go with us?" he asked.

  "I don't think that would be a good idea. We'll still be working."

  Dino grunted. "How can we work and eat?"

  "We're going to the Hurricane Club," I said.

  Dino nodded, as if he'd suspected as much. "Big Al's place."

  "That's the one. I wonder if she'll be there?"

  "With my luck?" Dino said. "Sure she will."

  We were only a short distance from the old downtown area, which had been going through something of a rebirth during the last few years. Of course, it would still be overrun by stragglers from Dickens on the Strand celebrations, but the place where we were going was a little east of all the activity, in a part of town the tourists usually steered clear of, thanks to the fact that the lighting was bad and most of the buildings appeared in imminent danger of collapsing. Not to mention that the people standing outside the buildings looked like they were answering a casting call for the sequel to Deliverance.

  The Hurricane Club had been in the same spot for almost as long as the Galvez Hotel had occupied its spot on the seawall, or maybe even longer. No one was really sure. It wasn't the kind of building whose owners were interested in requesting a historical marker from the state.

  There were of course many differences in the Galvez and the Hurricane Club, the main one being that the Galvez received regular cleanings from a competent staff. I wasn't sure that the Hurricane Club had ever been cleaned at all.

  I parked not far from the front entrance, and Dino and I got out of the truck. The establishment's name had once been painted on the wooden front of the building, but the paint was so faded that it was impossible to read in the darkness. The old wooden canopy over the door sagged dangerously, but the music coming from inside was pleasant. It was Patti Page singing "Cross over the Bridge." Big Al kept the juke box stocked with things like that to keep out the riff-raff. The local gangbangers couldn't stand it. Big Al considered them amateurs and had nothing to do with them.

  Dino and I went inside, where it was almost as dark as it had been on the street, since most of the lighting came from four or five neon beer signs and the star on top of the little Christmas tree that stood on one end of the bar.

  The tree was about the saddest I've ever seen. It made the one Charlie Brown picks out on his Christmas special look like the deluxe model. About half the needles had fallen out and they lay all around it on the bar. No one seemed to mind.

  The dimness of the Hurricane Club's interior was probably just as well. There was no real way we could tell just how unsanitary the conditions were except by the smell, which was a mixture of stale cooking odors, cigarette smoke, wet sawdust, beer, and urine. In some places the sawdust was picturesque; in the Hurricane Club it was foul.

  There were tables scattered around the one big room, and a short bar that had most likely been there since around the turn of the century. There were even a couple of brass spittoons near the bar. The spittoons were actually fairly clean, mainly because everyone apparently spit into the sawdust on the floor. I wouldn't have walked barefoot from the door to the bar for a thousand bucks. And if someone had wanted to cast a pirate movie, the Hurricane Club would have been a good place to look for extras. There was even a guy wearing an eye patch.

  I fingere
d my tie. I knew that I was very overdressed, but I didn't think it would be a good idea to go home and change. If I did that, I wouldn't want to come back.

  A thin haze of smoke hung just below the ceiling. Nearly everyone I saw was smoking. I don't think the Hurricane Club had a non-smoking section.

  Big Al was sitting at a table in the corner. Tonight her T-shirt said, "I Love Animals. They're Delicious."

  Henry J. was there, too. His back was to us, but Big Al said something to him when we walked in and he turned around. He was wearing the same T-shirt he'd had on that afternoon, and I could see the bloodstains on it. They might have attracted attention at someplace a little more respectable, say a cheap dive in Tijuana, but they didn't look out of place in the Hurricane Club.

  Henry J.'s nose was covered with tape and something that winked in the dim light, some kind of metal brace I suspected. Although he didn't look overjoyed to see me, he started to get up to come over and greet me. Or to do something to me. But Big Al spoke to him and he sat back down. The two of them bent their heads together and whispered for a minute. Henry J. looked around at me once. He wasn't smiling.

  Then the conversation was over, and Big Al motioned to us to join them.

  "Be thinking about what you'd like to eat," I told Dino. "Remember, it's my treat."

  He looked around, taking in the floor, and then he sniffed audibly.

  "Treat?" he said.

  "Sure. I said I'd buy your supper."

  "I thought you were kidding when you said we'd eat here."

  "Kidding? Me? It's not like I never bought you a meal before."

  "Yeah, but not in any place like this."

  "Best enchiladas in town. Or so I've heard."

  "I'll bet you've never eaten one. Have you?"

  "There's a first time for everything," I said, and led the way over to Big Al's table.

  21

  I could tell by the look on his face, what I could see of it, that Henry J. didn't like me at all, but he didn't say a word to either me or Dino. He just sat there, staring at me as if he'd like to rip my heart out and feed it to a cat.

  There was a cat handy, too, a big white one that slipped in from the kitchen, but it didn't appear to be in the market for a heart. There was already a sizeable gray mouse dangling from its mouth.