by Maria Lima
She stepped forward, her smile bright and extended her hand. “Pleased to meetcha."
I looked into her blue eyes and smiled back. “Likewise.” Her handshake was short of the proper ladylike limp, but not dead-fish worthy. Tanned skin felt like leather underneath my own. She'd spent too many days in the sun. Easier to remove that evidence from your face via surgery. The hands will always tell. I revised my age estimate from thirties to early forties.
"Hope your client likes the place,” Bitsy said, as we concluded our ritual of greeting.
"Oh, I'm not a realtor,” I replied. “My ... friend asked me to take care of the business end of the deal since he has other commitments during the day."
"Oh, okay then.” Confusion flashed across her pretty face as she worked this through. “Anyhow, that's real nice. You seen my phone?” This last was directed at Kevin, who'd dropped into what he did best, evidently: staring at Bitsy's bits. Not that I really blamed him. She did have most of them on display and it was rather difficult to ignore the expanse of smooth tan above the low-cut top.
"Uhm, yeah, here.” Kevin fumbled on the desk and handed her the bright pink (naturally) cell phone.
She took it from his hand and deposited it in her purse, a gold leather monstrosity studded with silver buckles and trim. “Thanks, sugar,” she said with a smile. “Wouldn't do to lose that."
"No, no it wouldn't,” Kevin agreed. “Thank you again for stopping by, Mrs. Pursell. Now that Keira has the final paperwork, once Mr. Walker signs it, we're nearly there. About a week or so for the title search and we can close."
"That sounds great, Kevin. Then I can concentrate on getting that poolhouse built.” Bitsy giggled. “It's been such fun picking out the tile and stuff. Shoot, I might have to build me something else when it's finished."
I nearly rolled my eyes at that. She sounded like some giddy ten-year-old girl with her first Barbie dollhouse and unlimited funds to buy accessories at the toy store. I would never understand the attraction of empty-brained arm candy wives. Never.
"Well, gotta run,” she said. “I'm meeting the girls for lunch at the club.” Of course she was.
"If you don't mind,” I said. “I'll walk out with you. Kevin, we're done here, right?"
"Yes, of course. Thank you. When you've got the signatures I need, drop off the paperwork or give me a call and I'll come get it."
"Will do."
Bitsy and I walked out together.
"Nice to meetcha,” she said, heading toward her car, an overbearing white Escalade.
"Mrs. Pursell, if you don't mind ... could I ask you a couple of questions before you go?"
"Why sure, I suppose."
"I'm sorry this is kind of blunt, but I have my reasons for asking. Can you tell me why the Judge fired Pete Garza so quickly? I kind of figured that he'd keep him on for a bit, at least until we close on the sale, seeing as how he's related and all.” I tried to mitigate the question a little. “You know, we might have worked something out for the hands, even though Adam, Mr. Walker, isn't going to live on the ranch.” Not really, but it didn't hurt to pretend.
Bitsy fiddled with her key fob, a leather and metal piece matching the handbag. She dug her other hand into her purse and pulled out her sunglasses, putting them on and effectively hiding her eyes from me. Was she doing this consciously or was this a sign of nerves?
"How do you know that?” she finally asked. “He called me this morning. I didn't even know."
"Sorry, I don't mean to pry,” I said. (Yes, I do). “But I was up at the Diamondback a bit ago and Pete was there. He was drunk and angry. Saying things about getting fired and about the judge and his fag son. He says the Judge kicked Greg out for being gay. Is that true?"
"No!” Bitsy's exclamation was immediate. “Carl didn't kick him out. Greg ran away."
"I'm sorry, I thought he went missing in a caving accident."
Bitsy sighed. “Yes, that's what Carl wanted people to think. He didn't like folks thinking that his son ran off. But he didn't go caving. Carl told me the truth right after we were married. He's real honest that way.” I kept my mouth shut. Honest, yeah. Like lying to everyone as to what happened to his son.
She continued. “Greg and he kept fighting. Carl says it was a father-son thing. I remember a bit about this. I was working up at the club then. I'd see them fighting down by the locker rooms, out by the pool. Carl would want Greg to come play golf and Greg wanted to stay by the pool. I thought he was sick. We all talked about how sick he looked. Dottie English told me once that she'd heard Greg was under the treatment of some sort with a doctor in Austin. I know he kept getting skinnier and skinnier losing lots of weight and looking pale.” Bitsy played with the fringe on her bag. “Carl never talks about it, even now. I'm pretty sure he had it."
"It.” The disease that no one talked about back then. AIDS. In many places, including Rio Seco, obituaries often stated the cause of death as “long illness.” No one faced the truth until it was too real not to.
Bitsy scrabbled in her bag and pulled out a small leather book. She flipped it open to the back. “Look, here's a picture of Carl and him at the lake."
"Why do you keep a picture of Greg?” I asked. After all, she'd not been married to the Judge until recently, long after Greg's disappearance.
She smiled widely and pointed with a pink tipped finger. “Carl. He's so handsome in this, I couldn't bear to let him toss it."
"He was going to throw it out?"
Bitsy nods. “Oh yes, he cleared all the reminders of Greg out of the ranch house when we decided to sell it. I rescued this picture from the trash."
"May I?” Bitsy handed me the book and I studied the photo, trying to see if I could tell from a years-old grainy picture if Greg Pursell had been gay and/or stricken with AIDS. Two men beaming at the camera, each of them holding one end of a line on which a huge striped fish of some sort hung. Greg squinted out under a billed cap that nearly hid close-cropped fair hair. His build was slender, not muscular, small bones in his wrist prominent, and both hands held up his end of the line. A loose tee, cargo shorts and a fishing vest matched those of his dad's—an older and sturdier copy of the young man. Did Greg ping my gaydar? I had no idea. I wasn't all that good at this with real live people standing right in front of me. For all I knew, Greg could as easily have been a dyed-in-the-wool neo-Nazi as a card-carrying member of the Nancy squad. Being gay doesn't automatically mean you have a pink triangle sewn on your clothing ... at least not here and now.
"They're both quite handsome.” I returned the book to her. She shoved it in her bag and smiled.
"Yes, they are."
"By any chance, do you know anything about a worker that went missing from the ranch about three months or so ago?” I kept my tone casual, as if this was simply a random question.
Bitsy twisted her lips a little, seeming perplexed. “Why, I don't rightly know,” she said. “I do know that over the years, though, there've always been one or two guys up and leave without notice. Carl was really way stressed about that. He'd come home to San Antonio after coming here to check on the place. Pete would tell him someone else left and Carl would be all grumpy and moody for days. I mean, poor Carl. He's so good to those workers. They really are ungrateful. After all, he provides free room and board and pays them on top of all that. That's a lot more that they'd get back home."
Oh, yeah, Judge Carl Pursell was a real Daddy Warbucks and Norma Rae all mashed together. Why I bet that he even paid those boys in cash so they didn't have to deal with a bank. Mighty kind of him. I fought the urge to whap Bitsy with a clue bat. She wouldn't get it. In her mind, her husband was the epitome of a kind landowner, saving those poor ignorant Mexican workers. Yeah, definitely clue-challenged.
I forced a smile. “Well, thanks, anyway,” I said. “I appreciate your time."
Bitsy scrunched up her face again, frowning, then quickly smoothing it out again. “You're welcome,” she responded automatically, and with that, g
ot into her SUV.
I watched her drive away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"So Bitsy lived up to her name,” Tucker chuckled as he drove.
We were headed out to find the crossroads, going by the directions Jolene gave us earlier. After I picked Tucker up at the café, I'd filled him in on the conversation with Pursell wife number three.
"Yeah, pretty much,” I agreed. “She wasn't much help, really."
"At least we know what happened to the judge's son,” Tucker said. “Not that it has anything to do with anything."
I shrugged. “Oh well, it was an opportunity and I took it."
I peered at the napkin trying to reconcile the sort of map with where we were. I hoped we were on the right track. Jolene's recollection of a place she'd driven to after a night of sex, speed and liquor three months past might not pan out. There were dozens of similar crossroads in the local area, and by local, I meant anywhere within thirty minutes driving distance of the Diamondback.
Tucker maneuvered the car over a short rise, squinting into the sun. “Hey, am I totally off base here, or are we heading towards the Wild Moon from a different direction?"
"What?” I looked up from the directions. “Are we?"
"I think so.” Tucker pulled the car over, the non-existent shoulder making it difficult for him to get completely off the road. We'd been on a winding two-lane back road for a few miles, having had to drive to Jolene's place first so we could follow her directions precisely from point of origin. “Are we in the right place?"
I squinted at her writing. “Fuck if I know,” I said. “This woman has no sense of direction. She has us going east on Hawaii, but that road runs north-south."
"Let me see that.” Tucker leaned over and peered at the napkin. “I think that's not Hawaii but Valley."
"Oh for...” I looked around. We were on a small rise in the road, about to reach the intersection of Mauna Loa and Waikiki. I'd always thought these were stupid names for streets in the middle of the Hill Country, but some long-ago developer had purchased the land, planned a subdivision around some sort of island theme, and the roads had been named appropriately. After one too many oil busts, the money for the housing development vanished, leaving acres and acres of unimproved land intersected by roads with tropical names.
"If you take this road for another half a mile or so, we should find Valley,” I said. “It's that windy bit that parallels the conservation area for a while and becomes a county highway when it curves around—"
I stopped as I realized where Jolene's map was leading us. “Shit, Tucker. Look at this.” I pointed to a smudged bit of the map. “She's got the proportions all wrong. That short piece here that I thought was Hawaii. If that's Valley, then that crossroads she told us about sounds like one particular place.” I looked at my brother.
"Well, shit is right,” he said. “That's the main crossroads at the back end of the Wild Moon."
"Yeah, up by the old cemetery."
We looked at each other.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?” I asked.
"I'm thinking that I am,” Tucker replied.
* * * *
Less than half an hour later, we were there, having bypassed the crossroads for the old cemetery. It wasn't Restlawn Burial Park, which folks around here tended to use, but a semi-historical (read abandoned) and nameless place where the newest grave was about fifty-some-odd-years old. Once at the intersection of three large ranches and the place where these ranch families laid their beloved dead, time and modern sensibilities had turned it into a long-forgotten garden of cracked stones and long-dusty remains. The locals knew about it, but no one ever really came out here, not even kids on a dare, it was too damn hard to get to for a casual make-out session or Hallowe'en hijinks.
The land the cemetery occupied no longer belonged to the ranch families, but was part of a no-man's land tucked into a curve of foothill, on the extreme opposite of where we'd been earlier and only accessible by a good off-road vehicle and some hiking, or, someone walking from a deserted crossroads trying to get back to the Pursell ranch. Not a horribly tough haul and conceivably doable even under the influence. If the moon had been out that night, Alex could have probably seen fairly well and may have sought shelter. The cemetery was directly in the crow's flight path from the crossroads to the Pursell land.
Adam could probably claim the cemetery as part of the Wild Moon holdings, as it was completely surrounded by the ranch but, legally, it belonged to no one. The original three families had owned the land jointly. Two of them had sold portions of their adjoining properties to the state, and those properties eventually became the conservation site. The remaining pieces and the third family ranch had sold to the original owners of what was now the Wild Moon. The cemetery itself remained in legal limbo, none of the distant descendants willing to pay for the red tape laden paperwork to establish ownership.
"I can't believe I forgot about this place,” I said as we approached the entrance. “It's been years.” I stopped and took a deep breath before I went in, reinforcing my mental shields. Although no one had been laid to rest here in decades, I still could feel the whisper-tug of death at the edges of my awareness. Not really strong enough to matter, but enough to distract me a little.
Tucker nodded and walked up next to me, his face somber. “I think this was my first babysitting chore with you,” he said. “You were what, twelve?"
"Thirteen ... barely.” I wiped my hands on my jeans. “I'm a little surprised Gigi didn't leave someone behind or hire someone to keep up the place."
"I suppose she had her reasons,” Tucker said. “Although, I do wonder a bit. They may not be family, but many of them were friends."
"Which is why I had to come once a week and clean up the place,” I remarked.
"With my help."
"With your help.” I closed my eyes a moment, remembering myself as a somewhat stubborn newly-minted teen, arguing with my aunts about having to clean up some moldy old graveyard when all my friends were going out to the lake. It took about three seconds of Gigi's intervention and I had trudged out here with Tucker at my side, still fuming and still resentful. After I spent about five months of prime spring and summer Sunday afternoons in the company of the long-dead, Gigi released me from that duty.
"You know, I think I was eighteen or nineteen before I realized why she made me do this.” I looked over at my brother, who was still regarding the graves in silent contemplation.
He smiled at me. “Obedience?"
I shook my head. “No, more like exposure."
Tucker gave me a quizzical look.
I motioned to the gravestones. “To the dead. To the fact that no matter how much we look like them, we're not them. They die."
"Ah."
"Yeah."
Tucker squeezed my shoulder in understanding. I smiled back at him, ever the practical, yet sympathetic big brother. He'd always been there for me. When I'd first arrived in the company of our father, when I'd first realized that I wasn't like the other kids in school, when the reality of human death hit. He'd even been there for me during all my silly teenage crushes and subsequent heartbreaks.
I covered his hand with mine and squeezed back. “Thanks,” I said quietly.
"For what?"
"Being here, then and now."
"No problem.” He grinned. “So. Shall we?"
"Let's to it,” I said.
There really wasn't much to the place, nothing at all like modern acres-large burial grounds. This unnamed place of rest measured slightly over an acre and was studded with old-fashioned standing markers interspersed between a few live oaks. The whole place was overgrown, prickly pear and cholla vying with mesquite for dominance, and sat in a natural hollow semi-surrounded by limestone outcroppings. A decorative wrought iron fence enclosed the entire graveyard, its opening ungated, marked by a pair of matching trumpeting angel statues, their heads a bit higher than the fence line. The fence was short, a couple of feet hi
gh, and for the most part, still intact. The gravestones within ranged from the typical round-edged flat-surface kind, carved with names, dates and sometimes a Bible verse or two to more modern markers (and by modern I meant in the last century). A few elaborate statues stood out in proud testament to those whose deaths they commemorated.
"You know,” I remarked, after pushing through a particularly vicious mesquite bush and skirting the tall leaning stone marking the grave of Sidney Jeremiah Halfstock, Beloved Husband and Father, d. 1835. “I don't even think we need your special tracking talents for this one, Tucker. I'm thinking that there's one real place to look.” I brushed some loose dirt off the top of Sidney's stone as I passed, the old cleaning and tidying habit returning. I felt nothing when I touched the warm stone. Sidney had been dead much too long and whatever was left of his essence long since dissipated into the Texas air.
"If you were lost, confused, highly intoxicated and definitely not in your right state of mind, plus you were brought up in what I presume was a traditional Catholic household, where would you go?"
"I've never been Catholic, but I've definitely been all the rest.” Tucker chuckled and motioned forward. “But I get your point. On to the grammatically incorrect La Angel, I presume?"
"Got it in one."
I avoided a nasty clump of cactus and headed northeast to the far corner of the cemetery. There, shaded by three old-growth live oaks and tucked into a natural alcove formed by a limestone outcropping was The Angel. Known as “La Angel” by the locals, dubbed so somewhere in history by someone who didn't know the word “angel” was always masculine in Spanish, she was a typical angel statue one would find in many graveyards—this one, like the famous Urrutia angel in San Antonio, was intentionally headless. I had no idea if this particular statue was a tribute to the more well-known one, which was modeled after Nike (the Greek goddess, not the shoe) or if, at some point in history, headless angels were all the rage. In some cemeteries, weeping angels dominated the landscape; obelisks were fashionable monuments at one time.
