by Rick Riordan
"Ruby or Garrett?"
"Not that I know of."
"UT," I said. "That's where you and Pena met. That's where Jimmy and Garrett and Ruby met. No crossing of paths?"
"We must've graduated at least ten years after the Techsan folks."
He was right. There really wasn't much coincidence-a school with fifty thousand students. It was hard to find five people in Austin who hadn't gone there.
"What about before college-you know anything about Matthew's past?"
Dwight hesitated. "I know he was from a welloff family. I know he hated his parents."
"Because?"
"He said- I don't know why this would help you. His parents were doctors, lived in Marble Falls, did a lot of charity work in orphanages, homeless shelters, places like that. According to Matthew, he was like their trophy child. They gave him everything but never paid attention to him. When he turned eighteen, he pretty much severed all communication with them."
"Parents still alive?"
"No. They died while we were in college. Car accident."
I stared into the parking lot.
I wondered whether my urge to dig up Pena's past was really my investigative instinct, or just the desire to find a weak chink in Pena's armour, a place he could be hurt. I didn't trust myself to stop if I found the latter to be true.
"W.B. Doebler," I said. "How tight were he and Pena?"
Dwight shook his head. "An occasional meeting. I wouldn't describe them as tight. The only person Matthew spent any real time with in Austin besides me-"
He stopped himself.
"Dwight?"
He ran his knuckle along the windshield. "I was going to say, Ruby McBride."
I'd looked through Pena's appointment book and seen only one meeting scheduled with Ruby-the one Dwight had already mentioned in the spring, when Pena had first approached Techsan.
I decided against asking Dwight about this discrepancy. For one thing, I didn't want to admit having the datebook. For another, Pena might not have written down every meeting for his secretary to see.
Dwight apparently took my silence for disapproval.
"I wasn't implying anything," he assured me. "Miss McBride… I mean, I never saw them talking business. Matthew just got along well with her socially. She was a lot like Miss Selak-same personality, same interests. It probably just made Matthew feel better, being with her."
Dwight's assurances about Ruby left me ten times more unsettled than I'd already been, but I didn't tell him that.
"Last question," I said. "Did you tell Pena about Jimmy's call?"
Dwight nodded slowly. "I told him that if Jimmy was right about the sabotage, I would go to the SEC. Matthew just laughed, told me I was crazy and I should stick to what I do best-finding him fresh blood."
"And a week later, Jimmy was murdered."
Dwight's eyes were small brown points of pain. "Why do you think I'm talking to you?"
In daylight, Ruby's property looked much less romantic-a series of eroded limestone shelves, dotted with twisted live oaks, sloping down toward the shore.
I'd noticed the illuminated sign at the gates the night beforePOINT LONE STAR, docking services, day trips, eats. Back from the road was a much older sign-deep block letters burned into a weathered square of wood. It was barely readable now, but the underbrush and tree branches had been carefully trimmed away from it. MCBRIDE
FARMS-pecans, peaches, in season.
The giant padded forklift was bringing a yacht out of the warehouse. On the deck of the floating restaurant, couples were having lunch. Up the hill, construction workers were taking a soda break in the driveway of Ruby's tower.
I parked my truck in the marina lot, watched the boat jockeys, and pondered my next move.
I grabbed my backpack, got out of the truck, and took a stroll toward the pier.
It was easy enough to get past the boat jockeys. The security gate was open. When I asked one of the dockworkers where Ruby was, he told me she'd gone into town on business. I tried to look disappointed.
"Tell her Mr. White would like to see her on his yacht when she returns," I said. "Tell her it's about the purchase of the new sixty footer."
The dockworker let me pass.
I walked down the pier, scanning names of boats without slowing down. Fortunately, Ruby's was conveniently named the Ruby, Too-a white Sea Ray with bright red trim, docked in wet slip 12B.
I climbed aboard, dropped into a squat next to the main cabin door, out of sight unless another boat happened to come up from the stern. I put on surgical gloves and opened my backpack, spread out my leather roll of lockpicking implements. I chose the one for deadbolts-a thin metal rod curved like a W at the end.
In a few minutes, the lock clicked? the door slid open with a sigh.
At the bottom of the stairs was a large living room/workroom with a kitchenette in the back. One wall was devoted to computer equipment-two highend Dell workstations, a portable power generator, a wireless modem setup, a colour printer, and several backup tape units. The trash can was full of Pecan Street Ale bottles. An incense holder on top of one monitor was loaded with a halfburned stick of copal. Sticking out of a CD tray was Buffett's latest live recording. All the signs that Garrett and Jimmy Doebler had once worked here. This was the room where Techsan had been born.
I spent too much time booting up the computers, only to find I couldn't get past the first password.
I went down a narrow hall into the sleeping cabin. Open boxes were filled with winter clothes-sweaters, longsleeve shirts, things Ruby wouldn't need for months. The bed was made, though there was an impression like a snow angel in the centre, as if Ruby had lain there looking at the ceiling.
On the dresser were photographs. One showed a young Ruby in graduation robes, standing next to an older, rustyhaired man in a tuxedo-her father, I assumed. Ruby was smiling brilliantly, as if to make up for her father, who stared out at me with a slightly dazed expression. The next photo showed Ruby midair during a parachute jump. Another photo was Ruby in scuba gear, underwater, waving as she floated over a bank of coral. The final photo showed Ruby and Jimmy together, standing on a beach. I compared the photos, didn't like what I saw. In each, Ruby had the expression of a thrillseeker. Her excitement seemed forced, her eyes too wild, as if her desire to have fun was almost desperate-as if she'd never yet caught fire with anything, and was beginning to fear that she couldn't.
What I liked least was my own imagined addition to her photo collection-Ruby standing next to Matthew Pena, signing away her company. Garrett's company.
I checked the nightstand drawer. It was locked. I picked it open. I found a. 38 calibre automatic and a halffinished pint of Jack Daniel's.
I sat on the bed, deliberating whether to call Lopez about the gun. By breaking in, I'd rendered all potential evidence useless, of course. If it became known that I broke in. I wondered if Travis County would serve a search warrant based on an anonymous tip.
I doubted it.
I turned my attention to the moving boxes, found that a few of them contained archived paperwork-more than I could possibly read. There were orders for boat repairs, personnel files on boat jockeys, maintenance records for numerous yachts. Letters from an accountant documented financial troubles the marina had been suffering from in the early 1990s.
From a box marked 1990 AND PRIOR, I pulled a stack of yellowing brochures that announced the opening of the marina in 1975. POINT LONE STAR, Rouell McBride, Proprietor. Behind these was a whole folder full of photographs that Ruby's father had apparently considered using for promotional materials. Many of them were ancient black and white shots showing the family orchards before they'd been flooded. In one, a large family sat under a pecan tree, rows of other pecans stretching out behind them, a split rail fence running along one side. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the branches. The darksuited patriarch sat on a folding chair, his wife beside him in a white Edwardian dress. Children of various ages fanned out on either s
ide, sitting crosslegged on quilts-the boys in coat and tie, the girls with bobbed hair and 1920s dresses. It was obvious they were all McBrides. I could imagine the photo in colour-so many green eyes, so much red hair.
A note paperclipped to the back of the photo was written in what I assumed was Ruby's father's handwriting: The McBride name has been an institution-Here a few words were scratched out-The McBrides have been landowners on Lake Travis-more scratch outs-No one knows the lake better than the McBrides. Trust us for all your boating needs.
I looked at the brochure. Mr. McBride hadn't used the old photo. He'd opted instead for glossy colour aerials of the marina.
A little more digging in the clothes boxes got me something I had not been anxious to find-a letter from Matthew Pena, folded into the pocket of Ruby's winter coat. It read: Next weekend, then. I'll see about the Farallons. Fondly, Matthew.
Hardly damning evidence of anything illegal, but it meant that sometime during the winter, very possibly before Matthew approached Techsan, he'd been corresponding with Ruby McBride. And while Ruby was still married to Jimmy, she'd been talking to Pena about a weekend trip to San Francisco-a boat ride out to the Farallon Islands.
I crumpled up the letter, made it into as small a ball as I could. I had an irrational impulse to overturn Ruby's nightstand, dump her boxes on the carpet.
The only thing that sobered me was thinking what Garrett would do if he'd found the letter instead of me. If he blamed Ruby for abandoning him, then watched her marry Jimmy Doebler, and then, on top of it all, suspected Ruby was spending time with Matthew Pena… betraying both of them. I thought about the night Jimmy had died-Garrett getting so angry upon hearing Ruby's name that he'd shot off the kiln goddess' arm.
While I was thinking about this, I found myself staring at a poster on Ruby's bedroom wall. It was a huge topographical map of the lake with longitude and latitude coordinates. Depths were noted. Boating hazards. I got up to take a closer look.
There was a green pushpin marking Point Lone Star, and out in the water, five red pins, making a curve from the shore to a point close to the boating channel. The pins were equidistant-about one hundred yards apart.
Her flooded family land, I guessed. I remembered what she'd said about mapping the old property lines, and about taking Matthew Pena down there.
And then a voice behind me said, "There is no Mr. White at this marina."
Clyde Simms stood in the doorway. His nose had a butterfly pattern of bruises around it from our encounter at Scholz Garten. There was a tire iron in his hand.
"Thank God," I said. "I must've taken a wrong turn. I was on my way to Jimmy's-"
"If I liked police," Simms snarled, "they'd be hauling your ass away right now."
"And since you don't?"
He lifted the tire iron, patted it against his palm. "You're walking with me over to my place. Nice and friendly, no scaring the customers. No joint locks. And then we'll see."
CHAPTER 23
Clyde's homestead was set back in the woods about fifty yards from the marina, just enough to be out of sight of the paying customers.
Along the gravel path, we passed two Chevrolet carcasses, three cow skulls nailed to mesquite trees, and a bikinied store manikin who'd been given a lobotomy and an appendectomy by shotgun. The joys of simple country living.
The house itself was an overgrown portable shed with a plywood porch and a corrugated tin roof heaped with fuzzy brown cedar fur. Parked out front was a HarleyDavidson hog. On the front porch post, a sign read FEROCIOUS DOGS -NO UNANNOUNCED VISITORS.
"Come in," Clyde told me. "And don't think I won't kill you, you try any more of that kung fu shit on me. You know how much I snore when I get my nose broke?"
Clyde opened the screen door and the smell of burning pork and beans came wafting out.
He cursed, pushed past me toward the stove. Apparently he'd forgotten a culinary experiment in his haste to apprehend me.
I stepped into the dark kitchen area, and one of the advertised ferocious dogs appeared from the hallway.
It was a Doberman-sleek black, tan muzzle, little devilhorn ears. It took one look at me with its sad, milky eyes and squeaked the toy in its mouth-a pink rubber bunny.
Then the Doberman plodded forward a few steps, collapsed on the rug as if it had been shot, and sighed.
"Vicious," I said. "Terrifying."
Clyde glowered at me. He picked up a spatula with baked bean crust on the edge, took his black, smoking pan of lunch off the electric stovetop.
"I had me two other asseating Dobes," he growled. "Mean ones-Harley and Davidson. Both died since Christmas. Now all I got left is Miata."
"Let me guess. Ruby named her after her car."
His ears turned bright red. "Fucking disgrace. You don't go out of here talking about this, you understand?"
I crossed my heart.
Clyde's living room was a cozy combination bike garage, poker den, and army surplus centre. Tables overflowed with greasy wrenches, nuts and bolts, cartridge boxes, and pieces of disassembled weapons. Somebody had played 52pickup across the rug.
There was one sofa that looked like a piece of chewed gum.
Clyde told me to sit down. I chose the edge of a table. Clyde offered me a drink-raw egg shake, Gatorade, or beer. I declined.
He plopped himself onto the chewing gum couch, popped open a beer. "Before I kill you," he said, "what were you doing on Ruby's boat?"
"Just visiting. Finding out Ruby's a lot closer to Matthew Pena than she lets on."
Clyde sipped his beer, got some white foam on his moustache. "Ruby's a good woman. Don't judge her."
"She sold out her company, went behind Garrett's and Jimmy's backs-"
"If I thought Ruby had done something to hurt Garrett, I'd talk to her."
"You must have a pretty narrow definition of hurt."
Clyde studied me, the tape on his broken nose making him look slightly crosseyed.
"Your brother's a standup guy. The Buffett summer tour this year-he got tickets, swung some for me and some friends, too. You think I like this shit with the police? I want him free to go."
He said free the way a con says free-like it was a kind of weather.
Miata the ferocious dog was closing her eyes. She was just about to go to sleep when the weight of her snout closed her jaw around the pink bunny and made it squeak. She lifted her head, looking around sleepily for the intruder.
"There's a thing about Matthew Pena," I told Clyde. "People think they can work with him. They find out they're wrong."
Simms scratched the Doberman's muzzle with his toes. "Ruby knows enough to call her own shots."
"You care for her."
His eyes got dangerously hot. "She's a good boss."
"That's not what I meant."
He finished his beer, crumpled the can, tossed it somewhere behind the pink sofa. "I got discharged from the Marines in '82, Navarre. I spent a few years hanging with bikers, striking with the Diablos. Then I started bumming with dock rats at the lake. I met all kinds of people. You know what I figured out? Only friends worth having are the ones who can hurt you, man, hurt you worse than any random shithead in a bar fight. I hang with Ruby because she stands by me? she tries to be good to me. Is she dangerous? Fuck, yes. Is she a little screwed up, all that shitty family history? Sure.
But you want to boil it down to-hey, Clyde's got the hots for her, well you go ahead, man. That's how you think, you'd never understand anyway."
The Doberman was looking at me mournfully, chewing her pink bunny.
"I apologize," I told Clyde.
He grunted.
"You mentioned Ruby's family," I said. "You knew them?"
"Only stories. The grandfather was the one that sold out, left them with this little piece of land. He sat on the money he'd made from the sale, pretty much pissed it away on drink and gambling. What Ruby's dad inherited wasn't a third of the value. He tried a lot of things, ended up starting the marina, never m
ade much of a go of it. Toward the end of his life, Ruby was running the place, trying to make it pay off for the sake of her old man. Ruby did it, too. Wasn't her dream to get rich, or to keep the land. But by the time her dad was gone, she couldn't get away from the place. Building that house up there on the hill-you don't understand what a big deal that is for her, Navarre. It's Ruby admitting she's here for keeps? she ain't going to get away."
The sound of a motorboat went by out on the lake. The smell of burnt pork and beans was slowly giving way to cedar from the open windows.
"Where is she now?" I asked. "Do you know?"
Clyde gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "Yeah, I know. She don't always let me tag along."
"Like when she goes to meet with Matthew Pena?"
Clyde shook his head. "I ain't your enemy, Navarre. I ain't Garrett's enemy. But you ask me, you're barking up the wrong pole. I seen Garrett around Ruby, how they dance around each other. I seen how Garrett looked when she told him she was marrying Jimmy Doebler. You want to help your brother-maybe you should start by thinking: Hell, yeah, he killed the guy. Go from there. You understand me?"
"This advice from you, who wanted to kill Matthew Pena months ago?"
But when I met Clyde's eyes, I understood what he was saying. Clyde could believe Pena deserved to die. He could also believe Garrett had murdered Jimmy Doebler. He could also believe that Garrett was a decent man who deserved to be free. These ideas were not mutually exclusive. For Clyde, murder was no more astonishing than chicken pox, certainly no reason to judge a man.
I stood. "I'll keep your advice in mind, Clyde."
"And I won't kill you," he decided. "But stay off Ruby's boat, hear?"
I left Clyde on his chewing gum couch, Miata the ferocious dog sleeping at his feet.
Outside, the lake spread out glittering and blue, but for once I couldn't help seeing it the way Ruby must've seen it all her life-as a cool heavy funeral cloth over a million acres of land.
Date: Mon 12 Jun 2000 20:03:12 0400
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