Bite the Moon: A Texas Hill Country Mystery

by Fanning, Diane

  Staying out of the line of sight of the windows as much as possible, I went room to room turning off all the lights. I stood to the side of the windows, peering out in every direction. I saw nothing.

  I feel asleep in a chair near the front window, gun in my hand, sweat on my palms.

  Chapter Forty-One

  He smiled as the lights snapped off one by one. Her fear was so strong, he imagined he smelled it. He sniffed the air and inhaled deeply.

  He felt a twitch and a throbbing in his pants. She was far more exciting than the three men before her. He never anticipated this thrill, this sexual charge. The others were quick and efficient—necessary kills but nothing more.

  Toying with her was an experience beyond comparison. The anticipation had been such an intense pleasure. The kill would be exquisite.

  Would curiosity get the best of her tonight? Would it propel her outside and into his arms? The possibility that tonight would be the night was exhilaration as well as a disappointment. He knew he would miss the game when it was done.

  He saw fleeting shadows of her movements through the house. He ached to be inside with her, watching each cautious step, seeing the soft trembling in her hands, feeling the adrenaline course through her veins.

  His breathing grew labored. His heart beat a tattoo in his chest. He reached down and rubbed himself. He jerked his hand back. Not here. Not now.

  Then, for a long time, he saw no sign of life in the house. Every unidentified sound made him tense with longing. He waited until the hope that she would step outside died a natural death.

  He crept around to the back of the house and dismantled the rifle he had rigged to the back door. Had she opened it, a dummy round would have struck her in the chest. It would not kill her, but it would knock her off her feet, giving him time to move in on her.

  Tonight was not the night. He sighed. But that night was near.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I sipped on my second cup of coffee, trying to recover from a night spent in the chair. A quiet knocking broke the morning’s silence. I approached the front door wondering if it might not be a better idea to crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head. A young woman with long brown hair pulled back and clasped at the nape of her neck stood on my porch. Her face glowed with an aura of serenity, the kind of peace won only after hard battles with personal demons. She looked far too young, though, to have made that journey.

  I eased the door open a crack. She spoke at once. “Hello. I’m Jenny Kriewaldt. Are you Molly Mullet?”

  How did she know my name? And in knowing my name, how did she know where I lived? Was she related to Jesse? He had a sister. Could this be her?

  Before I could ask, she added, “I’m Jesse’s twin sister. I understand you’re looking for whoever killed my brother.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “We stopped in Austin before we came here,” she said as she fumbled in her purse. “And we spoke to him,” she said, flipping a business card in my direction.

  It was Sergeant Barrientos’ card. “And he told you where I live?”

  “Oh, no. He said he couldn’t do that.”

  That was a relief. “So how did you find me?”

  I found your address on the Internet and got directions from Mapquest. Or I should say he did, she said, pointing to a car parked at my curb.

  I looked out and saw a shadow behind the tinted glass. Unease roiled my stomach. “Who is he?”

  “Just a friend. He drove me up from College Station. Say, can I come in and talk to you for just a minute?”

  I felt comfortable with Jenny, but a stranger lurking outside my door made me edgy. Then again, a stranger lurking inside my house wasn’t on my list of favorite things, either. But at least I could keep my eye on him. “He can come in, too, if he’d like.”

  “No. That’s okay. He’d rather sit in the car and smoke.”

  With reluctance, I invited her inside and offered her a seat. I sat in the chair that offered the best view of the car and her “friend.”

  “Do you know anything about Jesse’s murder?” I asked.

  “No. Not really. But I thought it might help if you knew something about Jesse.”

  “Tell me about your brother.” I doubted if she had any significant information to offer, but if she needed to talk, I could do my good deed for the day and listen to what she had to say.

  “Jesse and I are orphans. We were sixteen when our parents died in an automobile accident on an icy road. Our dad was a state employee. He worked for the comptroller’s office for twenty-two years. Mom was a teacher—elementary school—third and fourth grades.

  “When they died, everyone who knew them pulled together to help us finish our schooling. Between scholarships, grants and contributions, every penny of expense at a four-year state school was covered for both of us. I chose to attend Texas A&M. I really wanted Jesse to come out to College Station with me. But he said he had to be in Austin, the live music capital of the world. He enrolled at the University of Texas. I didn’t know it for months, but he dropped out of UT after six weeks. He said it distracted him from his music. He said he had to devote himself to his muse. He was such a dreamer.

  “After he moved out of the dorm, he never had a real place to live. He crashed on one friend’s sofa, then another. Sometimes he slept in the streets. I hoped in time he would get this songwriting stuff out of his system and settle down to the business of life.” She paused and flashed a rueful smile. “When I said stuff like that to him, he said I sounded like Dad and asked me when I’d start crunching numbers for the comptroller. I’d remind him that I was a genetics major, and he’d say I couldn’t deny my genetic destiny. I’d end up at the comptroller’s office one day. The numbers called to me from my blood.”

  She blew a blast of air up from her bottom lip, flaring the loose strands of hair on her forehead. “Anyway, I worried about Jesse a lot. Then, one day, I stopped worrying. He gave me this CD,” she said, handing it to me. “When I listened to it, I knew he had the touch. I knew he had the talent to make a living with his music. Not as a performer, of course. Jesse’s singing left a lot to be desired. But I knew he was good enough to make a decent living writing songs.

  “When ‘Bite the Moon’ hit the charts, I recognized it right away. Jesse had no phone number I could call, so instead of leaving messages with his friends, I drove down to Austin to celebrate his success. That’s when I found out that Trent Wolfe didn’t buy Jesse’s song. He stole it. I was angry. I told Jesse not to let Wolfe get away with it. I told him to hire a lawyer. But Jesse had to go it alone.”

  An involuntary sob escaped. Her body shook for a moment and I rose to offer her my arms. She waved me away, straightened her back, folded her hands in her lap and continued. “He called me on a Saturday afternoon. He was so excited he could hardly talk. ‘I saw the band manager,’ he said. ‘He’s going to fix everything. I get credit for the lyrics. I get credit for the composition. They’ll put ads in the trades and correct all future CDs in production.’ ‘But do you get money, Jesse?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘Yeah, I get a lump sum and royalties, too. But hey, my name, Jesse Kriewaldt, will be out there. I made my bones at last.’ I never spoke to my brother again. He said he would call in a couple of days but he didn’t. I called some of his friends. They hadn’t seen or heard from him either. Then I knew why.” She hung her head. Her shoulders rose and fell with a big sigh.

  “Anyway, I wanted you to have a copy of the CD, and I wanted you to have this,” she said, pulling a small photo album out of her purse. “I made reprints of my favorite pictures of Jesse and made a bunch of these. When I heard about you, I wanted to you to see him. I wanted you to be able to visualize him while you worked. Jesse was the only family I had. And now he’s gone. And I’m on my own. I’m having a hard time accepting that.”

  I said, “Thank you.” I wanted to say so much more, but could not find the words. She seemed so centered for one so young, but sh
e’d certainly paid a high price to get there.

  “Well, I’ve got to run. My phone number and e-mail address are in the front of the album. Let me know if you find out anything.”

  She stuck out her hand and I took it between both of mine. “Thank you, Molly,” she said, and I felt blessed. When she smiled at me, she looked like one of Botticelli’s angels.

  After she left, I slid in Jesse’s CD. Jenny was right about his singing, and just as she did, I recognized the song right away. I played the Wolfe Pack CD next. When Wolfe’s voice sang Jesse’s words, I felt the raw power of Jesse’s poetry. The full band added more instrumentation, giving the composition greater depth. There was a slight variation in the rhythm, but there was no denying it: this was the same song. The song Jesse lived for. The song Jesse died for.

  I played Jesse’s CD again while I looked through the pages of photographs his sister left me. A toddler Jesse with a plastic guitar dragging in the dirt behind him. A ten-year-old Jesse holding a full-sized guitar like a sub-machine gun. An early adolescent Jesse, hair hanging in his eyes as he struggled to look soulful and worldly slouched in a beanbag chair, a guitar draped across his lap.

  All of the snapshots hit me with a painful poignancy, but none as much as the most recent shot. There Jesse smiled and his eyes met mine. His face was a reflection of Jenny’s, with a sharper jaw and a hungrier look—a face too soft, too sweet, too pure to last.

  Until today, Jesse had been merely the third of three unsolved murders. Now I could see him, hear him, ache for him. He was a real person. I had to make sure he was not forgotten.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I didn’t know where to turn next. I needed to review what I knew and what it meant to me with another set of eyes and ears. I could bounce it all off of my quasi-employer, Arnie. I was sure he’d give me time and attention. But I wanted face-to-face interaction, and the thought of driving to Houston made my fingers twitch. It was like playing Russian roulette, and the gun was being held to the body of my little car.

  So, of course, my thoughts turned to Lisa. In her weird little way, she had a great knack for cutting through the crap. She agreed to grab a lunch along the way and meet me in Landa Park.

  It was my favorite place in New Braunfels. In one corner, the waters of the Comal River bubbled up from underground—clear, clean, cold water. The baby river ran under the road and split. One branch of the path of blue—incredibly blue—water raced in a beeline to the small lake. The banks were flat and low, nearly level with the surface of the fast flowing water. Overhead a canopy of trees—trees that in other regions of the country would tower like prehistoric giants—were squat and gnarled here, struggling to find nutrients in the rock-strewn soil. Every inch grown was a valiant triumph of determination over the elements.

  The other branch of the newly spawned river meandered through the park, artificially widened at one point for a kiddies’ wading pool and tapered back to a narrow six feet where a small, flat footbridge connected the two sides. Not much farther down, the distance was fifty feet and spanned by a graceful, arcing bridge. Then that branch, too, fed into the lake.

  On the lake, geese, mallards and teal floated and squawked while black swans drifted by, adding dignity to the noisy chaos. Egrets and herons of all kinds high-stepped on the banks, hunting for food. On the islets in the lake, black cormorants gathered in the trees, their wings spread wide to soak up the sun.

  The lake fed a naturalized community pool, then collided with a small dam and cascaded into a wide, deep, clear-as-glass river. During warm months, the river filled with tubers who floated on the steady stream of moving water, exiting just before the Comal crashed into its wilder, longer sister, the Guadalupe River.

  Between all this water lay huge swaths of green, the tortured shapes of ancient live oak trees and scatterings of picnic tables. On holiday weekends, the park was packed with families who reserved their tables in advance, and chock-full of huge barbecue grills towed in by truck. The smell of mesquite and the squeals of children filled the air, and for a brief span of time, the people outnumbered the squirrels.

  On this early spring day in the middle of week, the park was a peaceful place. A few people sat on benches contemplating the lake, singles and couples walked here and there and the squirrels ruled. I sat down and opened up my lunch, but only had time for one bite before Lisa joined me.

  After a little small talk—Lisa talked, I listened—I pulled out a piece of paper. “This is the suspect list I drew up early on in the investigation. I wanted to see what you think about all these people. Who should I eliminate? Who should remain?”

  “Who you need to add?” she asked.

  “If you think of someone, sure.”

  Lisa looked at the sheet I laid on the picnic table. “You can scratch two names off right away. If you’re right and the murders are connected—and I think you’re right about that—then none of the crimes were committed by Happy Parker or Jesse Kriewaldt.”

  I started to draw a line through Happy’s name, then I stopped. “Unless one or both of their deaths were a revenge killing for a previous murder.”

  Lisa scrunched up her face and shook her head. “Too complicated, Mija. The simplest solution is the right solution.”

  I scratched them off the list. “Now, I hate to divert us from the task at hand, Lisa. But what you said reminded me of something else. You know how you always call me ‘Mija’? ”

  “Yes, Mija,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, I checked with a Mexican-American woman I know down at the courthouse. She said that it is literally a contraction of ‘my daughter,’ but if a person is fond of any younger girl or woman, it is appropriate. She said that no one uses it for someone older—it would be disrespectful.”

  “Oh, Mija, please, that is so rigid. I am not being disrespectful. Even though you are older, I look upon you as a little sister—my little sister. I love you like a little sister. Does that make you feel better?”

  I said, “Yeah,” but I wasn’t really sure. I had a feeling it did not reflect well on the level of my maturity. There was nothing to do but change the subject before I thought about it for too long. I pointed to Teresa Faver—now Tess Holland—and looked at Lisa.

  “The ex-wife?” she asked.

  I nodded my head.

  “Killing Rodney makes sense. But the other two? She wasn’t sleeping with them, was she?”

  “You sure have a jaded view of relationships, Lisa.”

  “Please. It’s always money or sex—without them, murder would be rare. So what’s the verdict, was she—could she have been—sleeping with them?”

  The picture of Tess I found on the Internet flashed before my eyes. I wouldn’t put it past Tess—but Jesse or Happy with Tess? Nah. “Not likely,” I said.

  “Mike Elliot?” she asked pointing to his name. “Why would you ever have his name on here?”

  “There’s a natural friction between the manager of a venue and the manager of the band. It seemed logical.”

  “Friction, sure. But the murder of Faver wasn’t friction. It was white-hot passion.”

  “Who knows what passion can erupt in a heated argument?”

  “Mija, Mike does not have that much passion. If he saved it up for years, he couldn’t accumulate that much passion.”

  “Lisa, that’s not a nice thing to say about any guy.”

  “I’m talking murder here, not sex. But, now that you mention it, there probably is a synergy there. Or maybe it’s a lifestyle choice. Murder or sex. One guy takes one road, the other is great in bed.”

  I rested my forehead in the palm of my hand and shook it back and forth. Heaven knows, I’d never be bored around Lisa.

  “Molly, look at me. I’m not joking. I would not joke about passion. You weren’t thinking of Mike as a possible boyfriend, were you? Look at me, Molly.”

  I raised my head. I felt the heat of a blush in my face.

  “Oh, Mija. No. No. No. It will never do.
He will never be able to satisfy you. Trust me on this.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Lisa. What is this routine? ‘I’m a Latina, I know all about passion, Gringa.’ ”

  “Just because it’s a stereotype doesn’t mean it’s not true. We have a gift.”

  I couldn’t argue with that one. I scratched Mike off the list.

  “Fingers Waller? Who is he?” Lisa asked.

  “The keyboard player.”

  “Oh, that’s his name. What about him?”

  “He disappeared right after the Solms Halle gig and I haven’t found anyone who has seen him since.”

  “He could be dead.”

  “Or he could be a prime suspect,” I said. I put an asterisk by his name.

  “Trenton Wolfe?”

  “He fed me a story about childhood trauma that was supposed to make me believe he was incapable of killing Rodney Faver in the way he was killed. But I don’t know. He’s an angry man. And he claimed credit for a song Jesse Kriewaldt wrote.”

  “Okay. That could be a motive for killing Jesse. Why would he kill Happy Parker?”

  “He knew something about Faver’s murder, maybe?”

  “All right. Why Faver?”

  “He made a deal that afternoon with Jesse. But he hadn’t the time to do anything about it yet.”

  “Prime suspect number two,” Lisa declared.

  I put an asterisk by his name.

  “Heather? Who’s Heather?”

  “Happy’s girlfriend,” I said.

  “Another Tess?”

  “Pretty much. But not exactly. Unlike Tess, she was broken up about Happy’s murder—or at least acted as if she was. And, unlike Tess, she knew Jesse. But I just can’t see it.”

  “Scratch her?”

  “Yeah,” I said. One more down.

  “Stan Crockett? Is he the one that looks too skinny to be alive?”

  “Yeah.” I laughed. “That’s Stan. But he really is alive.”

  “Are you sure?”