Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (17 page)

Dan parked in the handicap space and walked through
the front doors like he owned the place. He did. I pulled off the
road next to a pasture and tried to look inconspicuous.

Think cow, I told the VW.

Carl and I had a nice long chat about local politics
while we waited. He told me the socialist environmental types at the
Edwards Aquifer District would probably bring about the end of
Western Civilization. Then he mentioned the new bond initiative for a
fine arts complex that Councilman Fernando Asante had recently pushed
through in special election. Carl was skeptical.

"The last thing the taxpayers need," he
said, "is another city-funded Travis Center pork barrel."

Then he read the figures on how many double-digit
points Asante’s popularity had gone up since that first brainchild
of his—Travis Center—had opened on the edge of town. Proof
positive, Carl said, that the voters have been deluded. Another pork
project like that, combined with Asante’s new push to be the "law
and order” candidate, and old Fernando might actually attain his
dream of mayorhood. Carl was even more terrified by that thought than
I was.

Dan came out after about an hour and stood at the
door with an older Hispanic man. White hair, white mustache, dark
blue suit.

Dan’s body posture told me he wasn’t thrilled
with his employee. He stood back as they talked, arms crossed,
shifting his weight impatiently from foot to foot. The white-haired
man spread his hands in a placating gesture. He did most of the
talking. Finally Dan nodded. Gold rings flashed as they shook hands.

We drove north again until Dan’s BMW turned onto
I-10, heading toward home. I exited at Crossroads Mall, then drove
back to Alamo Heights.

"Money," said Carl. "It all boils down
to money, my friends."

I drove through Terrell Hills, past the Country Club,
then into the forested shade of Elizabeth Street. Tall white houses
and old old money. I had a flashback to Senior Party (Alamo Heights
had been too cool for a prom back then) when I’d driven down this
street bringing Lillian a dozen roses and a dozen balloons for her
mother.

“
She likes balloons," Lillian had said.

"You’re not just setting me up, are you?"

She laughed, then kissed me for a long time. So I
brought balloons.

Sure enough, Lillian’s mother and I became fast
friends after that, bonded by balloons, much to the chagrin of Mr.
Cambridge. Until June fifth in 1985. That night at 8 P.M. I was
supposed to meet the Cambridges for dinner at the Argyle with an
engagement ring for Lillian. That night at 8 P.M. I was on a
Greyhound somewhere outside El Paso, heading west. I hadn’t seen
Lillian’s parents since.

The beige Spanish villa hadn’t changed, just sunk a
little deeper into the forest of pyracantha. The rough-hewn oak door
barely registered my knocks.

"Oh, my, " said Mrs. Cambridge.

She tried to frown at me but it wasn’t in her
nature. The ice melted between us in a matter of seconds, then my
neck was wet with her tears, my cheeks well kissed, and my hands
filled with ice tea and banana bread. She made the best banana bread.
We sat down in her small shadowy den, surrounded by photos of Lillian
and a dozen bird cages filled with parakeets, while Mrs. Cambridge
began patting ten years of stories into my kneecap.

“
Then after college," she was saying, "it
was so difficult for her. Oh, Tres, I know it’s not your fault,
but--well."

Mrs. Cambridge had always been a thin woman, but now
she was almost skeletal. Age had left her eyes milky and her skin
spotted with chocolate. She held on to my knee like I might disappear
any minute. She gave me a genuine smile.

If scum had knees, I was scum. She could’ve called
me any name she wanted, just not that smile again. Her love for me
closed up my throat like alum powder.

"Mr. Karnau took such an interest in Lillian’s
work, you know. They used to go on trips in the country,
photographing everything under the sun." She pointed proudly to
Lillian’s hand-tinted photos on the wall. When she mentioned Karnau
she tried to keep her tone lighthearted. I think it was an effort for
her. "I didn’t know—a young lady and such an older man
together alone in the woods, but well—they had such high hopes for
the gallery. They needed to have that chance, I suppose. Still, she
wasn’t really happy."

Mrs. Cambridge had begun crying silently again,
wiping away tears with the back of her hand as if it were an
old-established habit to cry while you entertained. The parakeets
chattered around us.

"Lillian was discouraged, you know, because her
own work wasn’t selling. More and more it became a business to her,
not something she enjoyed. Then she and Daniel had their falling out
. . ."

When she mentioned Sheff’s name she glanced at me
guiltily, as if she might’ve hurt my feelings.

I tried to smile. "Go on, please."

More knee patting.

"I don’t know, Tres. When she said she was
talking to you again, after all this time, I didn’t know. Ezekiel,
of course, well—"

She let that go unsaid. I remembered Mr. Cambridge’s
booming voice quite clearly.

I looked at Mrs. Cambridge. Her smile was as watery
as her eyes.

“
I’m sorry," I said, "but what have the
police said?"

"I have to let Ezekiel handle that, Tres. I just
can’t—"

I nodded, accepting her hand in mine.

"And the Sheffs?"

Even Mrs. Cambridge had trouble making it sound
genuine. "They’ve been very sweet."

For several minutes we were quiet, holding each
other’s hands. Her birds chartered. Then she closed her eyes and
began to rock, humming a song I couldn’t discern.

When she looked at me again, she seemed to have a
secret thought. Smiling weakly, she rose from the couch and went over
to the grandfather clock in the corner. From the bottom of the
pendulum closet she extracted a Joske’s shoe box tied with an
ancient ribbon. She brought the box back, setting it on my lap. She
removed the lid, then held up a yellowed photograph printed on the
thick paper they used in the 1940s. It was black and white but had
been lovingly hand-tinted, like the kind of photos Lillian did.

A rakish-looking pilot stared out at me, young and
confident. On the back of the photo, in faded blue ink, it said Angie
Gardiner + Billy Terrel. Vaguely, I remembered Lillian telling me
about this man. It had always seemed to me, though, that Lillian
considered Terrel almost a myth, someone her mother had made up.

"My first husband, " Mrs. Cambridge said.
When she looked at me then, I could see the multiple colors in her
irises, like Lillian’s, and in her smile that vaguest hint of
mischief that Lillian mixed so well with love. It was hard to look
at.

"Lillian’s father doesn’t like me to keep
these things around. He discourages me from talking about it."

Then she added, like a well-worn litany: "Ezekiel’s
a good man. "

"Mrs. Cambridge," I said, "Lillian’
may be in a lot of trouble. I’m not sure how much the police can
help."

She looked at the picture of Billy Terrel. "Lillian
couldn’t understand when you left. She’d never lost someone like
that before. Then so many years later, to have a second chance, like
it was all a mistake . . ."

I didn’t know what else to do. I bent over and
kissed her cheek, very lightly. Then I knew it was time to go.

"I’ll find her, Mrs. Cambridge," I said
at the door. I don’t think she heard me. Before I could turn away,
I saw her hugging that old shoe box, trying to smile and humming
along with the bright and senseless chatter of a dozen parakeets.

Then I went out to the car to tell Carl Wiglesworth
what was really wrong with the world.
 

25

I was just making Robert Johnson’s usual Friskies
taco lunch when Larry Drapiewski called from the Sheriff’s
Department.

"I’m pretty sure I don’t want to tell you
this," he said. "Beau Karnau had a restraining order issued
against him last year—to stay away from Lillian Cambridge."

I put down the heated flour tortilla and spooned the
chicken Friskies over it. Normally I would’ve sprinkled cheese on
top, but we were out. Then I did my best to convince Robert Johnson
that his food dish really was full. I shook it. He stared at me. I
pretended to sprinkle cheese. He stared at me.

"You get that, son?" Larry said.

"Unfortunately, I got it."

"The way one of the reporting officers remembers
it, Karnau kept showing up at Miss Cambridge’s house drunk, yelling
at her, threatening her. He would go on about how she owed him big
and couldn’t leave the business. Broke a window once. Never
actually struck er."

I stared out the unhinged kitchen window. "What
about since last year?"

"The order was rescinded at Miss Cambridge’s
request in December. No further complaints. Could be old history.
There was never any—"

"Okay, Larry. Thanks."

I could hear him tapping his pencil. "Damn it,
son—"

"You’re going to tell me not to jump to
conclusions. Not to fly off the handle."

"Something like that."

“
Thanks, Larry."

I hung up.

Robert Johnson was chewing on my ankle. I shook my
fist at him. Clearly unimpressed, he started to bury his Friskies
taco under the kitchen rug.

When I called Carlon McAffrey at the Express-News he
sounded like he was in the middle of an especially noisy sandwich. I
asked if he’d heard anything interesting lately.

Carlon belched. "Like what kind of ‘anything’?"

"You tell me."

"Jesus, Tres, I’ll show you mine if you show
me yours. What the fuck are you talking about?"

I took that as a no. "Okay. How about the name
Beau Karnau?"

Carlon covered the phone and shouted to somebody
behind him. After a minute, without reducing the volume, he shouted
back into the phone. "Yeah. Karnau’s got a photography opening
Saturday, Blue Star, some cowboy shit. Why, should I be there?"

“
Please no," I said. I could hear Carlon
clacking the address and time into his computer calendar.

"Come on, Navarre," he said. He was trying
for the "old buddy" treatment now, the syrup in the voice.
"Give me something I can use. I’ve been talking with some
people about Guy White, working up that angle on your dad’s murder.
You thought any more about it?"

"I haven’t been thinking in terms of things
you can use, Carlon."

"Hey, all I’m saying is we could help each
other out. You come up with something that sells copies, I’ll see
about getting you compensated for the exclusive."

“
You’ve got the sensitivity of a rottweiler,
McAffrey."

He laughed. "But I’m a hell of a lot
better-looking."

"Sure. I’ll get you a bitch for Christmas."

Then I hung up.

At least I knew Carlon didn’t have a clue about
Lillian. Otherwise he would’ve barraged me with questions, and if
Carlon didn’t know, it meant nobody had talked to the press at all.
I grabbed my car keys, left Robert Johnson looking mournfully at his
buried lunch, and headed into the afternoon heat.

I had visited Zeke Cambridge at his bank exactly
twice in the years that I’d dated his daughter. The first time was
when I was sixteen, just before my first formal date with Lillian. I
remember sitting in Mr. Cambridge’s office in a two-ton leather
chair that smelled like cigars, waiting nervously while this
monstrous man with a white marble face, green eyes, and an
undertaker’s suit checked my driver’s license. Then he explained,
very politely, that he’d been quite a Navy marksman in his younger
days and had no compulsion at all against firing at intruders in his
home or young men who sat on his daughter’s bed. He patted me on
the shoulder, offered me a butter toffee from his desk, and told me
to have a good time. Of course that was before he knew me.

On my second visit, after Lillian and I had broached
the subject of marriage, Zeke Cambridge didn’t check my driver’s
license. He didn’t offer me a butter toffee. He just reminded me
that he had been quite a Navy marksman in his younger days and had no
compulsion at all against firing at young men who married his
daughter and then failed to get a good job following college. He gave
me a multiple choice test as to what my major at A & M
was—petroleum engineering, prelaw, or business. He was not amused
when I answered

“
None of the Above."

"He really likes you, in his own way,"
Lillian told me afterward.

In the later months of our relationship she had tried
to blame her father’s bad temper on the savings and loan crisis,
which had hit Crockett S&L just as hard as any.

"He just takes out all the bad investments on
the people around him, like you," Lillian explained.

"Sure," I said. "And he’s used
‘punk’ for the last three years as a term of endearment."