Cinnamon Skin (12 page)

He studied his notes and said, "Of the four students who could have been Evan Lawrence, we have eliminated one: Rodefer. Of the remaining three, the one most likely to be fluent in Spanish is Cody T. W Pittler. Eagle Pass was his home town, apparently. On the border. And he went to the branch of the University of Texas at El Paso, also on the border. That, of course, does not eliminate Wyatt and Broome. Nor does it mean that any one of the remaining three could have been Evan Lawrence. All it does mean is that if it took an equal amount of effort to check out Wyatt, Pittler, and Broome, it would be logical to try Pittler first."

"I think Allie was probably a pretty nice woman."

"We should inquire in Freer about a Mr. Guffey, if indeed there is one."

"And change our act, I think."

"To what?" he asked me.

"We don't have to have an act to go around asking where the Guffey place is. And when and if we find it, we'll think of something."

I found some shade to park in and went inside. There was a small office and display room, with a maintenance floor out behind it. Meyer wandered over to the line of tractors and stood there, studying them, his cowboy straw shoved to the back of his head, kitchen match in the corner of his mouth, thumbs hooked into the side pockets of his ranch pants. He looked almost-not quite-authentic. But I was glad to see him improvising. He was beginning, in small ways, to enjoy the small arts of deception. As in the old days, before Dirty Bob.

I sauntered in and angled obliquely over to two men leaning against a monstrous piece of yellow equipment. I had no idea what it could be used for. It looked designed for the uprooting of trees and the mashing of small buildings. One was old, dressed in a yellow jumpsuit. He was the shape of a toby mug, had wild white hair sticking out in all directions, and wore a red embroidered Bunky over his left breast pocket. His face was almost as red as his embroidery.

The other man was swarthy and much younger, and huge. Size of a nose guard. Six-seven, maybe, and two sixty, thereabouts. He had a round amiable face and a nose that had been mashed almost flat.

As I came closer I heard Bunky say, "Now I'm not trying to tell you the bank will go for it, Miguel. You know how the times are. What I can't do, honest to God, is go on the paper with you. We're up to our eyeballs on the building here and the floor stock. I know you got a good record, and I'm sure that counts with the bank. But you should go talk to them first. I gave you the figures, the allowance and all."

Miguel muttered something I couldn't hear. They shook hands and Miguel left.

Bunky watched him go and then shook his head, smiled at me, shrugged. "What happens to too many of these farmers, they turn into machinery junkies. They get three dollars ahead, they want to go deep in hock to buy something about half again too big for the piece they're working. Bigger tires. Sit higher. A hundred more horsepower. Then suppose they drop the support level on his crop. He can't meet the payments on all that equipment, and pretty soon he gets foreclosed and loses the land too. And everybody from John Deere to International Harvester helps push them into bigger stuff. Fancy advertising. Know the smartest man in the county? Old Lopez. He's down on the Benavides Road. He's older than me, which means older than God himself. Old Lopez has got three husky sons. He had tractors and cultivators and all that shit. But when the gas price jumped out of sight-it takes eighty gallons to work one acre of land-he sat down on his porch a whole day thinking it over. And then he went right back to the way he used to do it. He works his spread with six mules. He drives the county agent crazy. He's making more money than anybody else in this part of Texas. Now he's got his land all free and clear. Doesn't owe a dime. You take Miguel there that just drove away. If he don't owe two hundred thousand right now today, I'll eat one of old Lopez's mules. Now wouldn't it be funny if you come in here to buy a thirty-thousand-dollar tractor and I turned you off before you could even ask? But I don't think so. You're no farmer. If you want to sell me something, forget it."

"No, sir. What we want to know is, would you know anybody around this area name of Guffey? A farmer, rancher, whatever."

He kneaded his pink chin. "Guffey? Guffey. Guffey. Last name?"

"Last name."

"Know anything else about him that could give me a hint?"

"A long time ago, more than fifteen years ago, he had a young fellow working for him who covered the whole area in a pickup truck, selling those stone Japanese garden lanterns that stand about so high."

"Well, hell yes! That was closer to twenty years ago. Two sizes. My Mabel bought two of the little ones for two corners of her rose garden, and I wired them for her and put the switch on the side porch. Pink bulbs she put in there. Turns them on these days only when company is coming after dark. Nice fellow sold them to us. Obliging as could be. Toted them to right where she said to put them, and she changed her mind three times. Now who in the world was he working for? Let me think."

"I was told he lived right around here."

"Right around. here can cover a lot of land, friend. It's starting to come back. He run off with the daughter. Crazy old coot bought tons of those lanterns. They came into Galveston by ship, and he freighted them on up here. What the hell was his name? Hold on. I know somebody that would know. I'll give them a ring."

He went back into the office, and I could see him in there through the glass, talking and laughing. He came out, shaking his head, after a very long conversation.

"There was a lot to that story that I'd forgot. I called a woman that remembers everything forever. Seems that over near Encinal, few miles east of the town on State Forty-four, there was a couple named Larker. She was close to thirty and he was closer to fifty. No kids. Mr. Larker, he worked in Encinal at the automobile agency there. His wife bought one of those lanterns when he wasn't home. And about two months later, he started coming down with the flu at work, and he headed on home, about a fifteen-minute drive, and when he put his car away, he saw that pickup with the stone lanterns in it parked behind a shed. There was a good enough wind blowing so nobody heard him drive in. He tippytoed to one window after another until he looked in the parlor and there they were on the carpet having at it, with her big long legs hooked over his shoulders, and her butt propped up on a pillow her mother had needlepointed for them for their fifth anniversary. Their two pair of pants had been flung aside, and he could hear Betsy Ann crying out over the sound of the wind. Hume Larker, he said afterward he just felt so terrible, what with having a chill from the wind blowing, teeth chattering, he just turned and sat down and leaned his back against the house and cried like a baby, sitting there hugging his knees. Then he got back into his car and drove out, and apparently they never noticed. He drove around for about an hour, and when he came back the truck was gone. Betsy Ann was in the kitchen, and she asked him why he was home so early and he said he was sick. He said he was going to go to bed, but before he went to bed he had one thing he wanted to do and he wanted her to watch him. She tagged along, looking puzzled, and he got a sledge out of the barn and went out to the kitchen garden and, with her watching, he sledged that stone lantern down into gravel. She didn't say a word and she didn't look at him. The next day and the next, he was too sick to go looking for the salesman. He had a high fever and he was out of his head part of the time. Nearly died, his sister told me. He sort of remembered hearing Betsy Ann yelling at somebody to go away. By the time he could rise up out of his bed and load the Remington and go looking for the salesman, the salesman had gone for good. And he had taken Walker Garvey's youngest daughter with him."

"Garvey?" I asked. I felt a presence behind my left shoulder and glanced back and saw Meyer there, listening with a rapt expression. I was glad to see him, because it was beginning to be too much to remember and repeat. But Meyer would remember it, word for word. He has the knack.

"Garvey, not Guffey." Bunky said. "Walker Garvey. Crazy stubborn old coot. Seven kids, all girls. They married and moved out soon as they could, until just Izzy was left. Isobelle. Jumpy little thing about sixteen when she left. Scrawny. Hardly even any boobs yet. Little old lively girl with buck teeth and hair so blond it looked white. Joe the salesman had a way with the ladies of all ages."

"Joe?"

"Wait a minute. It was Larry Joe. That's right. Larry Joe Harris."

"Is Mrs. Larker still in the area?"

"Last I heard. Hume had a stroke about three years ago and it was a bad one. Sixty-eight, I think he was. He lasted about three months. She sold the place to a family named Echeverria. She moved into Encinal, and I think she stays with her mother and takes care of her. The old lady is about eighty and got bad arthritis. You ask around Encinal for Betsy Ann Larker, somebody is bound to know her. Big tall pale woman."

"Is Walker Garvey still living?"

"He's been dead years. I can't even remember what he died of. He wasn't much loss to anybody."

"Where was his place?"

"Up near Cotulla. I think it's still in the family, one or the other of those daughters of his living there, but I don't know the name. I can tell you how to find it. The quickest way is take State Forty-four west to Encinal, get onto I Thirty-five, and it's nearly thirty miles up to Cotulla. Get off the interstate there and take County Road Four Sixty-eight back southeast. It runs along parallel to the Nueces River. Four or five miles down that road you'll see a couple of houses and some sheds and so on set well back, on your right-hand side. They still call it the Garvey place, I think. Pretty good land there, a couple miles from the river.

"Gentlemen, a pleasure talking to you. Hope I've been of some help. It's coming upon closing time, and I don't stay around here one minute more than I need to."

We walked to the van. It was no longer in the shade, and hot enough inside to melt belt buckles. We talked it over and decided that the motel at Robstown had been comfortable enough and only about sixty miles away, so we decided to call it a day, but halfway there we came upon a motel in Alice that looked just about as good, and they had plenty of room, so we took a pair of singles out in the back wing of the place. The shower was a rusty trickle. The window air conditioners made a thumping roaring rattling sound, and the meat across the street was fried, but otherwise it was adequate. Good beds. Fresh clean linen.

Over a big country breakfast, Meyer said, "Larry Joe Harris. Same man?"

"Unless there's been a lot of people crisscrossing this part of Texas eighteen years ago, selling Japanese stone lanterns."

"That's sarcasm, I assume."

"I just think it's him. I have that gut feeling. The womanizing fits. And Guffey is close to Garvey. He tried to be too entertaining that night aboard the Flush. Told us too much, and gave us a good lead. What if he said he'd been selling lightning rods or weathervanes? We could have gone in circles without finding anything. We're narrowing it down."

"It might narrow down to the point where it disappears for good."

"You woke up cheery."

"Norma has been dead for twenty-three days. Did you wake up especially jovial?"

"I woke up trying to grab hold of a dream I had just had about Annie. She was on some sort of platform that was pulling away from me, and I was running, but the harder I ran, the farther away it got. She was waving and smiling. No, I am not especially jovial, and you are not particularly cheery. I feel as if my ordered life had suddenly turned random on me. The ground under my feet has shifted. I want everything to be as it was. But it won't be. Not ever again. Which do you like best, sincerity or sarcasm?"

He gave me a slow smile and the little blue eyes glinted. "On the whole, sarcasm is more becoming. Will we find Betsy Ann?"

"And we will show her the photograph."

We made the eighty miles to Encinal in an hour and a half. I was growing fond of the rugged old blue van. When it got up to speed, it was steady as the Orange Bowl.

I made my inquiries at a gas station just off the interchange. The attendant was a fat bald man in high-heeled boots. As he filled the tank he said, "Well, sure. I guess nearly everybody in town knows Betsy Ann." He looked at his watch. "She'll be going to work pretty soon now. She comes on at eleven and works lunch. You go down that street there, and turn right at the corner, and you'll see it on the right, with parking in front. Arturo's Restaurant. You should want to eat there, it's okay. But don't get the tacos. Get the chicken enchiladas. And they got draft beer."

We parked in front. There was only one other vehicle there, a dusty Datsun. There were beer signs in the windows, a rickety screen door, and three overhead fans down the narrow room. Booths on the right, counter on the left, tables in the back.

A tall woman in a waitress uniform was carrying a cup of coffee to a booth. She gave us a mechanical smile of welcome. She looked to be about fifty. She had long hair tinted an unnatural strawberry-blond shade and combed straight down in a young-girl style which emphasized rather than diminished the effect of the age lines in her pallid face. Under the blue uniform with its white cuffs on short sleeves, white collar, white trim on the pockets, her figure looked slim and attractive.

We took a table in the farthest corner. We had agreed that it would be best to get it over with before the restaurant filled up. She came back with menus. "The lunch special isn't ready yet, but he says it will be in another fifteen minutes. So if you want to have coffee while you wait… The lunch special is a Spanish beef stew."

Meyer by pre-agreement took over. He is better than I am at this sort of thing. "May we ask you a personal question, Betsy Ann?"

She frowned. "Do I know you? How do you know my name?"

"Believe me, we do not want to cause you any grief or any alarm. We want to be your friends."

"I don't understand. What do you want of me?"

"As I said, we want to ask you a personal question. We have to ask it, unfortunately."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Meyer. This is my friend, Travis McGee. We're from Florida. A man killed my niece three weeks ago. We have very little information about him. We're trying to find him by looking into his past."