Murder Takes a Break (4 page)

When I was getting out of the car, Dino said, "I hope you can do something for them, Tru."

I ducked down and stuck my head inside.
 
"'Them'?"

He squirmed a little on the seat.
 
"Why are you saying it like that?"

"No reason."

"You were always a smart-ass, Tru.
 
Even in high school."

"So you keep reminding me."

"Only because it's true."

My neck was beginning to hurt, so I got back inside the car and sat down.

"You knew her in college didn't you?" I said.

He didn't have to ask who I meant.
 
"You guessed, huh?"

"I'm a trained detective, and we trained detectives don't like the word
guess
.
 
We prefer
logical deduction
."

"Yeah.
 
I'll bet you do."

"So are you going to tell me or not?"

"There's not much to tell.
 
I knew her a lot better than I knew Tack, let's put it that way."

"So I logically deduced."

Dino stared out through the windshield.
 
Where he was parked there wasn't much to see.
 
Just my — his — front porch.
 
The house itself was camouflaged by all the bushes that grew so closely around it that it was hard to see from the road.
 
The Gulf breeze was whipping their branches against the bricks and the windowpanes.

After a while, Dino said, "I went out with her a time or two.
 
But then she started seeing Tack.
 
He was a little bit more of a solid citizen than I was."

"A time or two?"

"Maybe three or four.
 
I wasn't counting."

"Sure."
 

I didn't say anything for a few seconds.
 
Both of use stared at the porch.
 
Nameless sped across it in hot pursuit of something I couldn't see, maybe one of the geckos that lived in the bushes.
 
Or maybe it was nothing at all.
 
Maybe he was just running for the sheer joy of it, though he was getting a little old for that.

"He's not exactly a solid citizen now," I said.
 
"Tack, that is."

Dino nodded.
 
"He drinks a little.
 
But he's got money that he made the old fashioned way, in the West Texas oil fields.
 
His daddy was in the business to begin with, but it was Tack that hit it lucky.
 
He was just getting started when that oil shortage came along in the 'seventies."

"No one mentioned a ransom note," I said.

"There wasn't one.
 
This isn't a kidnapping, Tru. Something funny's going on."

I had a strong sense of
dèjà vu
, and I thought again about the time Dino's daughter had disappeared.
 
I hadn't mentioned it the first time I thought of it, and I didn't mention it this time, either.

"Maybe he just didn't want to go home again," I said.
 
"Lots of tension there."

"You noticed."

"Trained detective, remember?
 
We're observant as well as logical."

"Right."

There was something else very familiar about the situation, and it wasn't as touchy as the bit about Dino's daughter, not quite anyway, so I thought I might as well say something about it.

"You know, getting involved with old girlfriends isn't always a good idea.
 
They might not be the way we remembered them."

"Not everyone's like you, Tru.
 
In the first place, I'm not getting involved with an old girlfriend.
 
And in the second place, she's married.
 
And in the third place, I'm still seeing Evelyn."

Evelyn was the mother of Dino's daughter.
 
She and Dino hadn't spoken in years, not until the daughter disappeared, but now they were slowly developing some kind of relationship.
 
I wasn't sure what kind.

"I just wanted to be sure I knew where we stood," I said.

"Well, now you know."

"All right."
 
I got out of the car again.
 
"You want to come in?"

"I think I'll go on home, work out a little.
 
Maybe watch a little TV."

I knew he was eager to get back home.
 
He'd been out of the house a lot longer than he liked.
 
I tightened my grip on the copy of the police file as the breeze flapped my sweatshirt and ruffled my hair.
 
I smelled salt and sand and seaweed.

"I'll call you," I said.

"You do that."

I shut the car door, and as I watched the big old Pontiac crunch away down the oyster-shell road, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into this time.

I'
d been reading from a collection of John O'Hara's Gibbsville stories when Dino had come over to talk to me about the Kirbo disappearance.
 
Not too many people read O'Hara these days, which was part of his appeal to me.
 
The other part of his appeal was that he wrote good stories.

I didn't go back to the stories, though, good as they were.
 
I had something else to read.
 
So I put the Kingston Trio's
The Twelfth Month of the Year
on the CD player and sat in the broken down recliner to look over the police report.

Tack Kirbo had been right.
 
There wasn't much in it.
 
I could tell from reading it that the investigating officer, Bob Lattner, had never developed much interest in finding Randall Kirbo, no matter what Dino had said about the pressure on the police.
 
His interviews with Randall's friends were perfunctory at best, and he had simply accepted everything they said with hardly any probing or follow-up.
 
Oh, Lattner had tried to make things look good, all right; he'd checked several times to see if Randall had used his credit card, which he hadn't.
 
Lattner had even gone to Lubbock to do the interviews, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it.
 
His conclusion, based on his "experience and instinct" was that Randall Kirbo had dropped out of sight for reasons of his own and that he hadn't come to any harm.
 

He might even have been right, but Randall's parents didn't think so, and it was possible that their experience and instinct were just as pertinent as Lattner's.

I closed the file and looked at the photo of Randall that his mother had given me before I left the Galvez.
 
It had been taken for his high school yearbook when he was a senior, and he looked uncomfortable in his jacket and tie, as if the collar of his white dress shirt was a little too tight.
 
It probably was.
 
He was the kind who'd find it difficult to get a collar big enough to fit.
 
He had wide eyes and his father's curly hair, but his face wasn't puffy like Tack's.
 
It was lean and angular but softened by a crooked grin that revealed a chipped front tooth.
 
The All-American Boy.

I wondered where he was now, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be the one to find out.
 
I'd told Mrs. Kirbo that I'd try to help, however, so I would.

As it happened, there was a place I could start.
 
I had run into Bob Lattner a couple of times during my short stint of working in a local bail bondsman's office.
 
Lattner probably wouldn't tell me anything, but I thought I might be able to convince him to meet me and talk things over.

Tack Kirbo had also provided me with Chad Peavy's Houston address, and it wouldn't be too much trouble to drive up and have a talk with him.
 
After talking to both him and Lattner, I could most likely use my experience and instinct to come to the same conclusion Lattner had reached.
 
Then I could call the whole thing off.

Except that I wouldn't do that, of course.
 
It wasn't that I felt that I owed anyone anything; it's just that for some reason I can't bring myself to do a job halfway, as Lattner had done.
 
Sometimes I think I'd be better off if I could.

Nameless scratched on the screen door, and I went to let him in.
 
It was dark outside, and I looked at my black plastic digital watch.
 
6:32.
 
I'd been reading longer than I'd thought.
 
The Kingston Trio had been silent for a long time now.

I opened the door, and Nameless ran directly to his food dish.
 
I'm pretty sure that the only reason he tolerates my company is that I'm a reliable source of Tender Vittles, which is fine with me.
 
I don't mind buying friendship when it's cheap.
 
I opened a packet of Seafood Supper and dumped it in the bowl.
 
Nameless began to eat, purring at the same time.
 
I don't know how he did it, but I thought it was a neat trick.

I found a can of Hormel vegetarian chili to fix for myself.
 
It was my kind of food — from the can to the microwave to the table in about five minutes. It tasted OK, too, but I didn't purr while I ate it.

By the time I finished and washed my bowl, it was too late to talk to Bob Lattner, so I took the Kingston Trio off the CD player and put on Elvis's
If Every Day Were Like Christmas
, which is the only other holiday album I own.
 
Then I flopped down in the recliner and spent the rest of the evening reading more O'Hara.
 

After a while Nameless came in and went to sleep on the throw rug under the coffee table.
 
The charms of Elvis singing about a blue Christmas were lost on him.
 
Around eleven o'clock I decided that Nameless had the right idea, so I went to bed.

I don't know whether Nameless dreamed or not, sleeping there on the rug, but I dreamed of running all night long, although I'm pretty sure I never got anywhere.
 
When I woke up the next morning, I was already tired, and the day hadn't even started yet.

Tired or not, I went out for an early morning jog.
 
The sky was covered with low clouds, and the fields that I ran past were thick with fog.
 
The sun would burn it off soon enough, but just then it was almost as if I were running through a fine gray mist.
 
Droplets clung to my sweatshirt and stuck in my hair.
 
I had to wipe water off my face.

I live on the west end of the Island, between the end of the seawall and the upscale developments, and I went a mile or so without seeing another soul before my knee began to hurt.
 
When I turned to go back home, a big heron lifted off a pool of water about twenty yards away and soared off into the fog without a sound, like a pterodactyl's ghost.

Nameless was watching for me at the door when I got back.
 
He'd spent the night under the coffee table, and now he was ready for breakfast.
 
Seafood Supper didn't seem appropriate, but it was all I had.
 
He didn't seem to mind.

I had shredded wheat with skim milk.
 
I was trying to avoid covering my belt buckle the way Tack Kirbo did.
 
While I ate, I listened to the news station on AM radio.
 
Traffic was backed up from Houston almost to Stafford by an accident on the Southwest Freeway, which was really Highway 59, though for some reason I never understood no one who lives in Houston ever calls it that.
 
I was glad I didn't have to drive to work in Houston every day.
 
For that matter, I was glad I didn't have to drive to work anywhere.

After I finished the shredded wheat, I washed out the bowl and left it in the sink.
 
Nameless jumped up on the counter and leaned over to see if I'd left any water in the bowl.
 
I hadn't, but he licked the bowl anyway.

"Now cut that out," I told him.
 
"It's not sanitary.
 
You might catch some disease."

He ignored me, as usual, but when I started toward him, he jumped down and ran to the door.
 
I let him out so he could terrorize the geckos, which reminded me that it might be a good idea to check my cereal bowl for lizard parts that might have dribbled out of his mouth.
 
There didn't appear to be any, so I figured I was safe from contagion.

I took a shower and pulled on a clean short-sleeved sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans that I'd worn only once or twice since their last washing.
 
Then I gave Bob Lattner a call.

L
attner didn't want to see me, not then, not later that morning, and, I got the distinct impression, not ever.
 
I finally persuaded him to talk to me by offering to buy him lunch.
 
I suggested the Chinese restaurant across from the police station, but he said that he preferred the drugstore, which was fine with me.
 
I knew which drugstore he meant.