The widower’s two step tn-2

by Rick Riordan

  Allison straightened up, smiling slightly, indicating that either option was just fine by her.

  Frank stood. He looked around the tossedup cabin one more time, then decided on a third option.

  He picked up the walkietalkie and turned on the volume. "Yo, Elgin, I'm trying again. I thought I saw something."

  He took his finger off the button.

  "You folks got one minute."

  Allison pouted. It took a look of absolute steel for me to persuade her away from the kitchen counter and out the door.

  As we walked past Frank his eyes stayed fixed on the back window. When I turned around in the doorway he was still standing like that, like a soldier at attention.

  39

  Allison and I hardly spoke on the boat ride back.

  We docked at Turk's, thanked Bip for the rental, and sloshed into the store with our lakewater filled shoes. We went our separate ways in the little dusty aisles, then met back at Eustice's cash register.

  I had nachoflavoured Doritos and a Nehi orange. Don't ask me why-when I'm stressed and disoriented I pick orange food. Never planned. It just happens. Sort of a dietary mood ring.

  Allison had a twentyounce bottle of fortified wine.

  I stared at the bottle, then at her.

  "What?" she demanded.

  "Death wish?"

  "Fuck you."

  Eustice shifted uncomfortably, tried to smile. "Ya'll have a nice evening."

  We drove south, skirting the lake and heading toward the dam. The late afternoon sun was slicing through the tops of the live oaks, making the road furry with shadows and the lake glaring silver. Allison drank her grade A stomach destroyer and pushed my mother's purple glasses farther up on her nose and watched the scenery.

  She only spoke when we failed to take the turn that led back to San Antonio. "We going somewhere?"

  "One more stop on the Les SaintPierre tour."

  "His body, I hope?"

  I paused before answering, trying to keep down the irritation. "He's alive, Allison."

  "Those deputy guys must've found him."

  "They found the cabin. Knowing Frank and Elgin, they blew the surveillance somehow, let Les spot them before they spotted him. Les got out. He left Frank and Elgin sitting on the place, wondering when he would show up. That means Sheckly didn't kill Les, doesn't know where he is, and is anxious to find him."

  "That makes one of us."

  We drove over the dam. On the lefthand side the lake stretched out, twisted and glittery and dotted with little red racing boats trailing lines of wake. On the righthand side the dam's cement walls sloped down to a valley of limestone chunks and tiny scrub brush and a much reduced Medina River, strained of everything except the sludge.

  "Les left in a hurry," I said.

  "Mmm."

  "He was using the cabin as a stopover, someplace to complete his paperwork, collect his funds, settle into his new identity. Since he was flushed out prematurely, he'd need a place to go."

  "Uhhuh."

  I glanced over. Allison's head was starting to loosen on her neck, her jaw drifting up and down with the bumps in the road. She was frowning and underneath the purple sunglasses her eyes were closed. The wine bottle was empty.

  "You okay?"

  "I'm angry." She said it calmly, her face so relaxed that she almost didn't look like herself.

  "Les left you. You can be angry."

  "I didn't ask for your permission, Tres."

  I raised my fingers off the steering wheel. "No, you didn't."

  She wiped her cheek. "And I am not crying any tears for that bastard."

  "No, you aren't."

  We crossed the dam and headed around the east side of the lake. On the side of the road barefoot fishermen were making their way back to their cars. College kids were loading their water skis onto trailers. Allison continued not crying over Les SaintPierre and wiping her cheeks furiously. I kept my eyes on the road.

  We were almost to the village of Plum Creek before she said, "So where did he go?"

  "What?"

  "If he got chased away from his hideyhole before he was ready, where did he go?

  Hotel?"

  "Too dangerous. Hotels remember longterm guests. There's a high risk he'd randomly run into somebody he knew. And he couldn't pay the bill without attracting notice-either by leaving a paper trail with a credit card or being conspicuous by using cash. No. More likely he'd pick somebody he trusted to put him up for a while. A best friend."

  "Les has forty thousand of those."

  "But people he'd trust to hide him?"

  "Julie Kearnes," Allison decided. "Or the Danielses."

  "The Danielses?"

  She nodded, stretching out her legs and crossing them at the ankles. She stared down at her feet, now bare and white and wrinkled from the lake.

  "Les started out treating them like pets or something. You know-simple folk. They needed to be groomed and cared for. Eventually he started liking their company. Willis is a sweet old fart most of the time, and Miranda's an angel. And Brent's a good listener, a little selfdestructive like Les. Les became attached to him pretty quick."

  "But you and Brent-"

  Allison shrugged. "For the last month or so. I'm not sure Les knew and I'm not sure he would've cared if he did. With me and Brent it's just-it's not love or anything, sweetie."

  She sounded like she was trying to reassure me, trying to explain away a minor illness she'd been fighting off. j

  "That the way Brent sees it?"

  Allison laughed for the first time since we'd entered Les' cabin. "I imagine Brent sees me as some kind of trial to get past. I guess you haven't spent much time around him, Tres. He's sweet. He's also sensitive as a raw blister with all the stuff that's happened to him, tries to punish himself every time he thinks he might be enjoying life again.

  Been in his rut so long he's scared to come out, I guess. Sometimes I can't stand him.

  Sometimes it feels good to be with him."

  "That's disturbing," I said.

  "That I've slept with him?"

  "No. Your assessment of who Les trusts enough to hide with."

  "Because?"

  "Julie Kearnes was killed. And the Danielses-is this phone number what I think it is?"

  I read her the number on my hand, the last number that had been dialled from Les' cabin.

  Allison stared out the side window. It was a quarter mile or so before she said, "The Danielses' ranch."

  "Of course it may have been dialled months ago," I said, "before Les disappeared. It may have been an ordinary call to a client."

  "Mmm."

  We drove along, both of us trying to get comfortable with that idea.

  We turned past the Plum Creek Dairy Queen.

  The boat storage facility was uphill, a good fifty yards from the water. It was a gravel clearing fenced off with chain link and barbed wire with a large drivethrough gate.

  Inside were storage sheds of corrugated metal and plywood, each just big enough to house a boat on a trailer. When I drove up, the gate was open and a family was hitching up their outboard to a Subaru fourwheeler. Or Mom was doing it anyway. The two kids were making like a trampoline in the backseat and the dad was studying a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition in the driver's seat. Allison and I got out and helped Mom get the hitch in place and connect the brake lights. Mom gave us a nice smile and asked if she should just leave the gate open. We said sure.

  Les' boat shed was A12.

  The chain and padlock on Les' shed door were new. Fortunately the back wall of the shed was not. The metal peeled up easily on the bottom, giving us just enough space to crawl underneath.

  The walls of the shed didn't go all the way to the roof. There was about a foot of space at the top to let in light, enough to see by. Les' boat was just like Kelly Arguello had said, a twentyfivefooter with a collapsed mast and the deck covered with a blue tarp.

  The tarp was tied on haphazardly but with a lot o
f knots and enthusiasm. We finally had to cut our way through.

  I climbed onto the aft deck, then gave Allison a hand up.

  The bench seats on board were white rubbery material embedded with silver glitter.

  There was a small empty cabin below, a closet really. No way more than one person could fit down there.

  "Okay," Allison said. "So it's a boat. So what?"

  "Hold on."

  I went below and searched. Nothing. On the tank of a tiny toilet was a copy of Time, August three years ago. Not encouraging.

  When I came back topside Allison was prodding the deck floor with her foot. Whenever she pushed down, the blue plastic showed a square of seams about two feet by two feet.

  "Life vest compartment," I said.

  She and I exchanged looks.

  "Why not?" I agreed.

  Two minutes later we were sitting on the bench with an unearthed ice chest between us.

  It was a green Igloo big enough to hold two sixpacks. When we opened it there was no beer, though. There were stacks of money. Fiftydollar bills, the same as Milo had paid me with. About fifty thousand dollars' worth. There was also a computer printout of addresses-some in San Antonio, some in Dallas and Houston. Next to each address was a date.

  In case of drowning, look up addresses. Throw large quantities of money. Les SaintPierre, the safety conscious ship's captain.

  Allison hefted a stack of fifties. "What the holy fuck-"

  "Later. Right now we get this to the car."

  Allison looked dazed, but she helped me repack the ice chest, get it over the side of the boat, then wedge it under the storage unit's tin wall. On our way back to the Audi, each of us carrying one handle of the Igloo, we left the gate open for another family that was coming in to collect their boat.

  Maybe they too were stashing money and addresses in their shed.

  They smiled and waved their thanks. I smiled back.

  Everyone is so damn friendly in the country.

  40

  The drive back started out well enough. Allison was coming down off her twenty ounces of bad wine and was starting to warm up to the realization that we had fifty thousand dollars stashed under the backseat. By the time we got onto the highway she was recapping the afternoon in glowing terms, throwing out casual insults about her idiot husband and the Avalon County Sheriff's Department. She suggested we drive out to Miranda's gig at the Paintbrush, see if we could find any more deputies to beat up.

  "But first better clothes," she insisted. She tugged on my Tshirt sleeve. "I'm not going with this. And you've got to have cowboy boots."

  "I've worn cowboy boots exactly once. It was not a success."

  "Tell."

  "No thanks."

  But she kept nagging until, reluctantly, I told her about the photo my mother still shows off whenever I'm foolish enough to bring friends over-me two years old, thighdeep in the Sheriff's black Lucheses, trying not to fall over, my cloth diaper sagging obscenely.

  Allison laughed. "You're due for another try."

  We didn't tell Rhonda Jean at Sheppler's Western Wear about the diaper photo. We didn't tell her we looked so bad this evening because we'd been breaking into places all around Medina Lake. We just told her we needed a quick change of clothes before the store closed, in fifteen minutes.

  Rhonda Jean smiled. A challenge.

  Fourteen minutes later she had me outfitted in boot cut Levi's and a cotton pieced red and white shirt and size eleven natural tan Justins. I vetoed the hat and the rattlesnake belt that she promised me she could have engraved with TRES on the back at no extra charge. Allison came out sporting a white fringed shirt and black boots and tightfitting jeans that only a woman with an excellent figure could've gotten away with wearing.

  Allison got away with it pretty well.

  Rhonda Jean nodded her approval, then sent us on to the cashier. I paid with the last of the fifties Milo had given me at Tycoon Flats.

  Allison watched as I emptied my wallet. "You're paying out of pocket? With all we've got stashed in the car?"

  The cashier gave us a very funny look. I smiled at Allison and said, "Let's go, darlin'."

  Back in the Audi we drove with the windows down. The wind was almost cool now, whipping around the front seats and sending the medicine pouch beads on the rearview mirror into a little jellyfish dance. Allison had taken off the sunglasses and her eyes seemed softer and darker than they had been before.

  I was starting to turn some things around in my head, ideas about the addresses we'd found and the money and the trail Les SaintPierre had left.

  "You know much about the record industry?" I asked.

  Allison held her hands far apart, like she was bragging about a fish. "Two years with Les SaintPierre, cowboy. What you wanna know?"

  "CDs."

  "What about them?"

  "If you were importing them from overseas in large quantities, how would they be packed? Boxes? Crates?"

  "Uhunh. Spools."

  "Cylinders."

  "Yeah. Big ones. The jewel cases and covers are only added in the destination country, with local suppliers. It's cheaper that way. Why?"

  "So much for keeping the business modest."

  "What?"

  I waited a half mile before responding. "We should talk about the money."

  "What's to talk about? Les was stupid enough to forget it when he ran, it reverts to me.

  You want a finder's fee, sweetie?"

  "Les probably embezzled that money from the agency."

  Allison stared at me. "So?"

  "So it isn't yours. I'll store it for a while, until I know what's what. Then, most likely, it'll go to the debtor's court."

  "You're kidding."

  I didn't respond. We had come all the way back to Loop 410 to hit Sheppler's and were now heading north again, ostensibly to go to the Paintbrush. I missed the Leon Valley exit and kept driving, circling the city.

  "You're going to do Milo Chavez a fiftythousand dollar favour," Allison decided.

  "That's not what I said."

  "That's what it amounts to-bailing his ass out of debt and leaving me nothing. That's what you're thinking, isn't it? "

  "I'm thinking you're overreacting again."

  Allison stomped her shiny new boot against the floorboard. She crossed her arms and looked out into the hills. "Shithead."

  We passed I10, kept going. I exited on West Avenue and turned left, toward downtown.

  "Maybe I should just take you back," I suggested. "Let you collect your car."

  "Maybe so."

  We drove in silence. West Avenue. Hildebrand. Broadway. Saturday night was unfolding all along the avenues-neon bar signs and lowrider cars and slow cruising pickup trucks. The air was laced with the smell of family barbecues, pork ribs, and roasted peppers.

  When we finally got back to Queen Anne Street I cut the engine and the lights. We sat there, staring at Allison's crookedly parked Miata, until Allison began to laugh.

  She turned toward me. Her breath smelled faintly of fortified wine. "All right. Don't get the wrong idea, sweetie."

  "What wrong idea is that?"

  She reached over and pushed a couple of buttons on my new Western shirt. "That I didn't appreciate the day with you. I got a little upset, that's all. I don't want you thinking-"

  "The money is staying in storage, Allison."

  She blinked slowly, processing what I said, then decided to laugh again. "You think that's all I'm interested in?"

  "I don't know."

  "Fuck you, then." She said it almost playfully. She leaned toward me slowly, tugging my shirt, inviting me to meet her halfway.

  Something twisted in my throat. I managed to move her hand away and say, "Not a good idea."

  She pulled back, raised her eyebrows. "All right."

  When she got out of the car she slammed the door, then turned and smiled in the window at me. "You and Milo have fun dividing up Les' estate, Tres. Thanks for the good time.
"

  I watched her get in her car, start the engine and pull off the curb with a grind and a thump, and drive away. I reminded myself that was really what I wanted.

  I sat in the dark Audi, leaned my head against the back of the seat, and exhaled. Feel lucky, I thought. You just spent seven hours with that woman and neither of you shed any blood. But when I closed my eyes they burned. I tried to replay our afternoon ten different ways, going through all the placating things or the really nasty things I could've said. It made me feel even more dissatisfied and infuriated than I had been before.

  I should've gone out to the Indian Paintbrush. I had plenty of new questions for Mr.

  Sheckly, some reports to give Milo, a lady to see who would be singing "Billy's Senorita" right about now, looking out at the audience with some very fine brown eyes.

  Instead I got out of the car, my legs shaky from the long car ride, and wobbled toward my inlaw apartment with the feeling that somewhere under the waterline, somewhere toward the prow, I had just been torpedoed.

  I tried to treat Sunday morning like the start of any other day. I did my tai chi, had breakfast with Robert Johnson, made a fiftythousanddollar deposit under my landlord's antique rosebush.

  Then I drove to Vandiver Street before anyone would be awake at my mother's house, left the Audi out front and the key in the mailbox, and reclaimed the VW.

  I headed south toward the State Insurance Building.

  If the tower had been downtown it would've been invisible, but where it was-stuck in the middle of the flatlands south of SAC, surrounded by parks and one story office complexes, it looked huge. The parking lot only had a handful of cars, one of them being Samuel Barrera's mustard BMW.

  I punched the elevator button for level six and was deposited in front of a frosted glass door that still bore faint discoloured outlines from the stencil letters that used to read: SAMUEL BARRERA, INVESTIGATIONS. Now there was a classy brass plaque above a classy ivory and gold buzzer. The plaque read LTECH.

  I didn't opt for the buzzer. I walked into the waiting room and went up to the little sliding window like they have in dentists' offices. The window was open.

  The receptionist was so short that she had to crane her neck to see me over the top of the counter. Her hair was mostly calcified hair spray that curled away from her face in capital letter U's.