Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  I remembered how she'd looked the day I met her. I'd wondered then if there wasn't more to the story of Randall's disappearance than I was getting. Now I knew that there was, and she was going to tell me about it.

  "I'm never going to see my son again, am I, Mr. Smith?" she asked.

  I didn't much want to tell her what I really thought, but I didn't think this was the time to lie to her.

  "I'm afraid not," I said. "I'm pretty sure something's happened to him. Something bad."

  "I'm sure, too. I've been sure from the beginning, but there was no way I could convince Tack of that. He kept telling me that Randall was a mature and responsible adult, that he knew how to handle himself, that he could control any situation he found himself in. Maybe Tack believes that, along with everything else he believes. But then he thinks he's a mature and responsible adult. That should tell you something."

  It told me something, all right. I wasn't sure just what, however.

  "So all that about Randall drinking maybe a little but certainly not a lot, all that was a lie."

  She smiled. It wasn't much of a smile, but at least it was a try.

  "Let's call it an exaggeration," she said. "An exaggeration by an overindulgent parent."

  "Whatever we call it, Randall was probably drunk at that party," I said.

  "I would say so. Not in front of Tack, of course."

  "Of course," I said, though if she had it might have made a difference. It was far too late to worry about that now, however.

  "So I guess there's no chance your husband came down here to The Island during spring break to check up on your son," I said.

  "No chance at all. Why check up on someone you knew was behaving in a mature and responsible way?"

  She had a point there.

  "There's just one other thing," I said. "Have you been with your husband all evening?"

  "No. I rarely am. For some reason he doesn't seem to want my company when he's getting drunk. For most of the evening he was most likely doing what he does best, entertaining whatever two or three men he could find in the bar who would listen to his stories about the good old days, when men were football players, when there was by God a Southwest Conference, and when quarterbacks could take a hit without crying to the ref. When God was in his heaven and all was right with the world."

  "But you weren't with him while he entertained those two or three men."

  "No. I was in the room, reading a book. Do you read, Mr. Smith?"

  I admitted that I did, occasionally, read a book. I could have told her a little bit about John O'Hara, but she wasn't really interested in a literary discussion.

  "I read a lot of books," she said. "I find that it helps."

  I knew what she meant. I thanked her for her talking to me and told her that I'd call when I found out anything more about her son.

  She stood up. "Why were you so interested in Tack's whereabouts?" she asked.

  "Someone got shot tonight. I thought maybe Tack had a hand in it."

  She smiled wistfully, almost as if she wished he'd been involved.

  "Tack isn't a man of action," she said. "More a man of words." Another smile, so brief that I could have been imagining it. "Most of them slurred."

  I thanked her again, and she went back to her room. Her shoulders were slumped when she began to walk away from me down the hall, but they were squared again before she'd gone ten feet.

  34

  Before I left the hotel I went by to have a brief chat with the bartender, a young man who resembled Willie no more than the bar in the Galvez resembled the one in the Hurricane Club. He looked more like a moonlighting Eagle Scout. And he remembered Tack Kirbo, all right.

  "He's a nice enough guy," he said. "Comes in every night and drinks too much, talking about football to anybody who'll listen to him."

  "You let him drink too much?"

  "I try to cut him off before he gets too far gone. He's not driving, and he always walks out in a straight line. I'd say he keeps a bottle in his room, though. Lots of guys like that do."

  I didn't doubt it. I left the bar and went outside, where a cold wind was blowing, sliding under my sweatshirt and chilling me to the bone.

  I got in the truck, started the motor, and turned on the heater. I knew just about everything I needed to know now, or at least I had all the pieces. I didn't know how they fit together, but I thought I could get them into some kind of order if I thought about it long enough. I should have figured it out earlier, but it would have been easier if everyone had been honest with me.

  There was just one big problem remaining. If I was able to figure things out, someone else could do it, too. And someone else had a slightly different idea about how justice should be done.

  It was awfully late, but I was sure the Hurricane Club would still be open. I thought I might as well drive by and see if Big Al was still there.

  She wasn't at her table. There were only three customers, and Willie. I walked over to the bar, little pieces of Christmas ornaments crunching under my shoes. I was sure they'd still be there next Christmas, crushed so fine that they'd become part of the sawdust.

  Willie was looking at a glass he was drying, and he didn't look up at me when I stood in front of the bar. I waited for a few seconds but he was really interested in that glass.

  So I said, "I need to see Big Al."

  "She's not here," he said.

  "I'll just drop by her house, then," I said.

  Willie stuck the glass under the bar and located another one to dry. It didn't even look wet.

  "You do that," he said.

  I didn't go by Big Al's house because I was certain she wouldn't be there. What I did do was stop at a convenience store and call the police station to ask for Bob Lattner. He wasn't there, which didn't surprise me.

  "I need to talk to him," I told the dispatcher. "It's about the shooting tonight."

  The dispatcher was really sorry, but he couldn't get in touch with Lattner. That didn't surprise me, either. I said "thanks" and hung up.

  Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston is never quiet. Even after midnight, the cars stream up and down it, all of them going somewhere, I suppose, though I have no idea where. What business could all those people possibly have in Galveston at that time of night? Or even in Houston, for that matter. I knew what I was doing there, but surely all those other cars weren't filled with valiant investigators bent on preventing crime. Whatever their business was, they were all in a hurry, as usual, and this time, so was I.

  I could see the Union Carbide plant from the interstate, its thousands of twinkling lights in perfect harmony with the season, but this time I wasn't stopping in Texas City. It was probably already too late to help Patrick Mullen.

  The way I had things figured, Chad Peavy was the key to everything. His behavior should have been a clue, but I'd been so sure that he'd been threatened by Henry J. that I attributed his actions to his fear. He'd been afraid, all right, but not of Henry J. Or at least not for the reasons I'd thought.

  Chad had told me that he and Randall Kirbo had driven out to the beach house together. If Randall hadn't come home from the party, Chad would have known about it.

  And Chad was the one who'd told me about Sharon when I'd led him to believe there was another witness. He had to be the one who'd taken a shot at her, and the one who'd killed Henry J. He'd probably killed Randall Kirbo, too, but I wasn't sure about that.

  And I wasn't sure just why he'd done any of the other things, though I thought I had at least some of the answers.

  Big Al had some of the answers, too. She'd known that Henry J. had been tailing me, so she must have known where we'd gone. She might even have known why Chad would have a reason to go gunning for Henry J. In fact, I was pretty sure that she did.

  Hadn't she told me that she knew about Henry J.'s drug activities and that she'd straightened him out? If she knew about the drugs, she might very well have known everything that had happened at her beach house that nig
ht. She might even have been blackmailing Chad Peavy. It wouldn't have been out of character.

  And now, if she got to Chad before I did, Chad, to borrow a phrase from one of our distinguished former presidents, was going to be in deep doo-doo.

  I was afraid that even Bob Lattner was on his way to Houston. He was obviously mixed up in things, though just how wasn't clear to me. As I drove along at fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit, I tried to think of all the different ways the pieces could be moved around and made to fit together.

  Everything would have been much simpler if people had just told me all they knew right from the beginning, but no one ever wants to do that, not even Dino, who was supposed to be my friend.

  OK, he was my friend. But he'd withheld information that might have helped me. It might have helped Patrick Mullen, who was probably dead by now if I was right about Chad.

  It might have helped Henry J., too, not that I was going to spend a lot of time mourning his loss.

  I wouldn't mourn Chad Peavy for very long, either, but I didn't want Big Al or Bob Lattner to get to him before I did. I wanted him punished, but not the way they'd go about it.

  When I turned onto Coleridge, I saw that I wasn't the first to arrive. There was a big black Cadillac parked at the curb near the Peavy house. The night was quiet, however, and there were only a few lights on in the neighboring homes. It clearly wasn't a war zone, not yet at any rate. Maybe the Cadillac belonged to someone who lived nearby.

  Right. And maybe there was no salt water in the Gulf of Mexico.

  I parked the truck about a block from the Peavy house and got out. The sky hadn't gotten any less cloudy, but in Houston there were plenty of street lights. As I approached the Caddy, I thought I could see the bulky outline of someone sitting in the driver's seat.

  When I got to the car, I bent down to look inside. Big Al stared back at me. I signed for her to roll down the window. She switched on the key, pushed a button, and the window slid down.

  "What're you doing here, Smith?" she asked.

  "Shopping for a house. I thought a move to the city might give me a different perspective on things."

  "Henry J. told me once that you used to be a football player. A pretty good one."

  "I played football. I'm not sure how good I was. What's that got to do with anything?"

  "I was wondering if all football players were smart-asses or if it was just you."

  "All of them, pretty much," I said. "There's something I've been wondering about, too."

  "What?"

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I think you know the answer to that one. I'm going to feed the kid that lives in there to the crabs."

  "Are you going to tell me why?"

  "You know that one, too. He killed Henry J."

  "I know that, but I don't know why."

  "There's a lot of things you don't know, Smith. You're not near as smart as you think you are."

  "Why don't you help me out, then? Tell me what's going on."

  "You'll find out soon enough," she said, bringing her hand up from her lap.

  There was a snub barrel Colt Python in her fist, and it was pointed at my head. Some women would have found the a .357 Magnum uncomfortably large. Not Big Al.

  "Back away a little," she said. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

  I did what she said. Just thinking about what a .357 bullet could do to my head was enough to make me very careful.

  Big Al opened the door of the car and got out.

  "I was wondering how I was going to get in the house," she said. "I'm glad you came along. The Peavys know you."

  "What if I won't help you?"

  "You will," she said, waggling the Colt, and of course I did.

  Mr. Peavy didn't look nearly so happy to see me as he had the last time I'd paid him a visit.

  "What are you doing here at this hour?" he asked, looking at me through a crack between the door and the facing. "Is this about getting Chad back in school?"

  It was about something a lot more unpleasant than that, but I couldn't say so because Big Al was standing behind me, ready to blow a hole the size of a softball in me.

  "It's urgent that I talk to Chad," I said, which was certainly true.

  "You don't look so good," he said. "What happened?"

  I hadn't had a chance to clean up much in the last few hours, so I'm sure I didn't look at all like someone who was trying to keep kids in school.

  "That's what I need to speak to Chad about. Can I come in?"

  "Who's that with you?" he asked.

  The porch light was on, but Big Al was standing behind me in my shadow. I'm fairly big, but Big Al is bigger, hence her name, and there was no way she could hide herself completely.

  "It's one of the school counselors," I said.

  "Well, I don't know," Mr. Peavy said. "This is a pretty strange time to be conducting business if you ask me."

  Big Al stepped out from behind me and pointed the pistol at him.

  "Nobody asked you, asshole. Open the damn door."

  Mr. Peavy was quicker than I'd have thought, but Big Al could move fast for her size. When Peavy tried to shut the door, she snatched open the screen and kicked the door into his face. While he was still staggering backward, she darted into the room with the Python in a two-handed grip, sweeping it to cover the whole area.

  I went in right behind her, and by that time I had my own pistol in hand, hoping I could control the situation before it got out of control.

  "Where's the kid?" Big Al asked.

  Peavy didn't answer. He was holding his hand to his face where the door had hit him. He was going to have a really bad black eye in the morning.

  "Time to forget about the boy," I told Big Al.

  She turned around and saw my gun. It didn't seem to bother her much.

  She laughed and said, "You think you can stop me with that toy?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I do."

  "Maybe so," she said, wiggling the Python, "but mine's bigger than yours. It'll take you two or three shots to drop me, and by then, you won't have a spine left."

  "You wouldn't want to kill me," I said, wondering how true it was. "So far you've stayed out of jail. You don't want to spoil your record."

  "Too late for that," Bob Lattner said as he came through the front door.

  35

  I have no idea what Mr. Peavy thought was going on. I wasn't even sure what I thought, except that there were a lot of guns being shown around.

  Lattner had a .38 revolver, and for a minute I thought Big Al would play the "mine is bigger than yours" game with him, too. It seemed to give her a lot of satisfaction.

  She didn't want to play, however. She said, "You're a little out of your jurisdiction, Lattner. There's nothing you can do about me here."

  "We'll see about that. Where's your son, Mr. Peavy?"

  Peavy was looking from one pistol to the other as if he'd wandered onto the set of some movie he hadn't even known was being made. He still had one hand up to his face.

  "Chad's upstairs," he said. "Asleep."

  "No I'm not," Chad said from above us.

  He was standing on the landing, and just to make things perfect, he had a pistol, too. Another .38. All we needed now was for his mother to come wandering in with an AK-47 and the evening would be complete.

  I've discovered that there's one big problem with having four pistols scattered around a room, even if one of them is yours: You really can't watch all three of the others, not at the same time.

  The one I wasn't watching at the moment belonged to Big Al, and naturally she was the first to pull a trigger. The noise was as loud as you would expect an explosion in a living room to be, and it was rapidly followed by another explosion and then another.

  The good news was that no one had shot me.

  The bad news was that by the time I realized I hadn't been shot, I couldn't have heard the U. S. Marine Band if they'd been playing a Sousa march in the next room. />
  Everyone was ducking for cover except for Mr. Peavy, who just dropped to the floor and assumed the fetal position.

  Big Al was behind the sofa, while Lattner and I had opted for chairs.

  Chad fired a couple of shots at the room in general and dashed back upstairs.

  That still left three of us armed and dangerous, but none of us was willing to make the first move to come out from behind the furniture.

  It seemed to me that someone had to do something eventually, but I hated to be the one. Shooting at people bothers me. I don't like the results.

  On the other hand, if someone had to get shot, I'd prefer that it not be me, so I rolled out from behind the chair, fired a shot under the sofa, and hit Big Al in the foot.

  She didn't make much noise, no more than a mild groan, or that's what it sounded like to me. Maybe she screamed in agony. I couldn't really hear, so I wouldn't know for sure. Say what you will about her, though, she was tough.

  So was Lattner, who'd apparently been hit by Chad's first shot. There was a dark stain spreading on the back of his jacket, but with Big Al out of the picture for the time being he took the opportunity to charge across the room to the stairs.

  Sometimes people can fool you. I would have said that Mr. Peavy wouldn't move for about a week.

  I would have been wrong.

  He rolled in front of Lattner, who tripped over him and fell forward, striking his head on the first step of the stairway. His pistol flew out of his hand and landed four steps up.

  I headed for the stairway. Big Al was still behind the couch, and Lattner wasn't moving. If anyone was going to catch up with Chad, it was going to be me. Mr. Peavy tried to trip me the way he'd gotten Lattner, but I was too quick for him and dodged out of the way. Having seen him in action, I was ready for him.

  I stooped down and grabbed Lattner's pistol on my way up the stairs. You never knew when a spare might come in handy in a crowd like the one I was fooling with.