Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) (19 page)

It would have been a fine thing for the economy around here if the plan had worked, but I have questions that I wonder if Coldwater and the city council took into account when they were considering it. I’ve seen pictures of water parks, and they look like elaborate contraptions with a lot of water involved. Where was the water going to come from? This is a fair-sized lake, but in Texas we’re always subject to drought. If the water to run the park rides was to come from here, what would they have done when we had water rationing, as has happened a few times since the lake was built?

It seems to me the liability would be high, too, with the danger of kids drowning or being hurt on the slides. So between insurance, water, and the need for lots of alert employees to make sure no one got into trouble in the water, they’d have a pretty high overhead. That means they’d have to charge high prices for tickets.

The question is, why would the state okay a permit, given those constraints? People around here come to the lake because they can have a cheap vacation. The state has kept it that way. There are nice little state-maintained areas at various places around the lake where people can camp out in tents or hook up their RVs. I wonder if those people would be willing, or even able, to pay the price to bring their kids to a fancy water park.

If an unsophisticated bystander like me can figure out the limitations, how come those who were supposed to study the pros and cons didn’t figure it out? There must have been some heavy persuading going on. I wonder if that’s where Gary Dellmore’s participation came in. I hate to bother Rusty Reinhardt again, but I need to find out what kind of state involvement there was in the deal and who their liaison was.

I walk down to the water’s edge and I’m looking out over the lake when I hear a familiar voice behind me. “Yo, Chief, what are you doing out here?”

I turn and say, “How are you doing, Louis? You fixing to do a little fishing?”

“Yeah. Gotta eat.” He scratches his head. It looks like Louis Caton is wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he was sitting in jail, and that he hasn’t had an opportunity to clean them up. He’s carrying a fishing rod and a tackle box that looks like they might be somebody’s cast-offs. But he looks as cheerful as he did before. I guess there’s something to be said for being young and not beholden to anybody, even if it means you sometimes don’t have enough to eat.

He’s shifting from one foot to another, like he’s got something on his mind. “I wanted to thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For not arresting me when I was driving a stolen car.”

I smile. “Louis, I’d say you should count your blessings that you happened to commit a crime in a town that can’t afford to put you up in jail. But if you want me to arrest you so you can get a square meal, just say so.”

He grins. “No, sir, if it gets that bad, I’ll go on home. My mamma would be glad to see me anyway.”

I laugh. “What possessed you to take the car in the first place? You don’t have any criminal record and you don’t seem like much of a criminal, otherwise you would have taken off for parts unknown with that car and we never would have seen it again.”

He turns on that lazy grin again. “I’d had a few beers and I was tired of walking. When I saw that it was still there when I was walking home, I thought, ‘Hell, if somebody is going to just leave it there unattended, I might as well use it.’”

I laugh and he continues to talk, telling me that it was nice to have a car for a few days. “Mine is down at the cabin I’m staying in. It needs a battery and I can’t afford to buy one.”

I’m only half-listening. Something Caton said earlier tickles my thoughts. I hold up my hand. “Wait a minute. You said the car was still there. What do you mean ‘still there’?”

“I mean it was parked there when I was walking to my friend’s place earlier in the evening, and it was still in the same place when I came back by.” A little worry line appears between his eyes. “I thought I told you that.”

“If you did, the information didn’t stick.” My heart has started to pump a little faster. “What time did you pass it the first time?”

He squints out over the lake. “Had to be before nine o’clock. I was at my friend’s place by nine.”

The meeting we had that night didn’t let out until nine thirty. Gary Dellmore’s car was sitting in the parking lot when I left, so it couldn’t have been on the dam road. “You’re sure it was the same car?”

“What?” He’s half-smiling, searching my face for a clue to what I’m after. “Why would it be a different car?”

“Give it some thought. Same car?”

He blinks at me a few times. “Damn! I don’t know. It was pretty dark out and the car was dark-colored, that’s all I can tell you. I assumed it was the same car.”

“Was it facing the same direction the second time you came by?”

He chews on his lip while he considers it. He begins to shake his head. “You know, it could have been a different car. I couldn’t swear to it either way.”

I think I’ve just had my first break investigating Gary Dellmore’s death. “One more question,” I ask. “Did you see anybody walking along the road?”

He hesitates and then shakes his head. “No, it would be unusual to see somebody walking along there and I think I would have remembered it. Sorry, I wish I could help you out with that.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I clap him on the shoulder and nod out toward the lake. “I hope you catch something today.”

“So do I.” He grins and ambles away.

My impulse is to give him some money for a decent meal, but he’s told me he has a family to fall back on. He’s on an experiment with himself to see how far down he has to go before he’s had enough. Who am I to disturb that?

I walk back to my truck, turning over in my mind what I’ve learned from Louis Caton. Whoever killed Gary Dellmore didn’t do it on the spur of the moment. He left his car up in that rarely used park on the dam road and walked the mile to the American Legion Hall to lie in wait for Dellmore. After he shot Dellmore, he drove his Crown Vic back up to where he’d left his own car. Then he left Dellmore’s car and took off in his own. I’m thinking “he,” but it could just as easily have been “she.” It’s a small thing, but at least now I have an idea of how it could have been done. And I know this was no argument gone wrong; it was premeditated murder.

I’m not back at the house ten minutes when I hear a knock at the front door. “Mr. Craddock?”

Ellen Forester is standing on my porch. She’s dressed in jeans and a jazzy black-and-white blouse with a black jacket. I can’t help thinking of Loretta asking me what Ellen looked like, and I realize I should have said that she’s pretty and has a nice figure.

I open the screen door. “So you found your way to my place.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you. I was over at my shop getting some of the art unpacked and I needed a break, so I thought I’d see if you’d mind showing me your collection. I didn’t have your number or I would’ve called.”

“Come on in. I just put some coffee on.” She’s wearing running shoes and looks fit enough so that I suspect she uses the shoes as they were intended.

As she enters the living room her eyes widen. She’s looking right at the Diebenkorn on the far wall facing her. The Neri sculpture is next to it. I see the duo through her eyes, and they look complete together, like a couple of old married people. “Oh, my.” Her voice is almost worshipful.

“Come on back to the kitchen and we’ll get coffee first.”

She trails me into the kitchen.

“You left me a note. Sorry I haven’t had a chance to get back to you.”

She looks a little panicky standing in the kitchen. “Are you sure I’m not disturbing you?” I wonder what makes her so timid. I’m pretty easygoing, and yet every time she looks at me, she seems jumpy.

I gesture to the kitchen table. “Not a bit. Sit down. When the coffee’s ready we’ll take a tour around the house.”

She pulls out a chair and sits at the table. “Several people have told me you’ve got a great art collection and that I should see it, but I had no idea.”

I smile. “They’re making conversation. Most people haven’t seen my art, and most of those who have don’t have a clue what they’re seeing.”

She laughs and sounds like she means it. “I got that impression. People could tell me you had a wonderful collection, but they couldn’t tell me what was in it.”

I pour us some coffee and say, “Let’s go take a look.”

I lead her to the hallway, where I’ve hung the paintings I feel least connected with. First is the Hans Hoffmann that I liked so much when we first bought it, but now it looks gaudy to me. When Jeanne and I got married, she had a few pieces that her mother gave her, and those are here, too.

“I love this Calder,” Ellen says, clasping her hands to her chest. “It’s so exuberant.”

“The colors are nice,” I say, although that’s the best I can come up with. Calder doesn’t do a thing for me—and it didn’t for Jeanne either. She felt we had to hang it somewhere out of loyalty to her mother, but as she said, that didn’t mean we had to like it.

I tell Ellen how Jeanne persuaded me to graduate from blue-bonnets and cactus to abstract art by dragging me to art galleries in Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin. “One day we were in a gallery in Houston and I spotted this.” I point to a piece and tell her it’s the first picture Jeanne and I ever bought together, a small but lively abstract that reminds me of Kandinsky. “The artist never became famous, but I still like the picture.”

We wander through the house, me pointing out my old and new favorites, everything from my beloved Wolf Kahn to the work of a young boy whose career is just being launched and whose grandmother was a good friend of mine. I find Ellen easy to talk to. She makes comments that are smart, but not pedantic.

“We have to organize an event here,” she says. She’s standing in front of the Bischoff that Jeanne’s mother willed to us. “It’s not right for people not to be able to see these things.”

“Maybe so,” I say.

“Don’t you agree?” she says. “I get so mad when I read that some rich collector has bought a masterpiece and plans to hide it away in a vault so no one ever gets to see it.”

“My collection isn’t in that league.”

“I’m not going to let you off the hook,” she says. “You have some wonderful pieces that should be seen.” She moves back to the Wolf Kahn. “This one right here is my favorite.” And then she laughs. “But if I came back tomorrow, I’d probably choose a different one.”

She doesn’t know she’s chosen my favorite and for some reason I don’t tell her so.

“My wife Jeanne and I used to host tours. But I haven’t felt much like it on my own. Maybe sometime I’ll be ready to have another tour.”

“You won’t be on your own,” she says briskly. “You’ll have me.” She turns and sees the look on my face and claps her hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’ve let myself get bossy, haven’t I? My best friend tells me that happens when I get carried away talking about art.” She sets her coffee cup down on a table and moves toward the door as if she wants to escape.

“Wait a minute. You don’t have to go—I’m not going to bite you. Yes, you were a little bossy, I’ll grant you that. But it’s for a good cause. I’m not quite ready yet, that’s all. Give me a little time. Besides, you haven’t even moved into your new place yet.”

She looks more upset than I think my words deserve. “You’re being nice. I hope when you see my art you won’t think it’s silly.”

“No, it takes all kinds of art to make people happy. Now let me calm you down a little bit by taking you to see what I spend the rest of my time on. That is, until I got hooked into being chief of police.”

I escort her out the back door, and we head down to the pasture so I can find out what my cows think of the new art dealer.

“They’re back.” Loretta can only mean Gabe LoPresto and Darla Rodriguez.

We’re sitting at the kitchen table. It has turned cold overnight again, and Loretta is bundled up like she’s off for a ski trip. We’re all wondering if this winter is ever going to let go of its grip.

“Don’t you want to know where they were?”

I want to say I don’t care, but it would be mean to steal Loretta’s thunder. “Okay, I give up. Where were they?”

“They went off to some fancy resort in Galveston to celebrate Darla’s birthday.”

I take a bite of Loretta’s coffee cake. It’s my favorite of all the baked goods that she makes. “That was a nice thing to do.”

Loretta smirks. “I don’t know how nice it was. The way Darla’s mother tells it, Darla shamed Gabe into taking her away for a long weekend. Apparently he got her a diamond necklace and she didn’t think it was enough of a birthday present, so he agreed to take her to Galveston for a few days to make up for it.”

“So they’re back and pretty pleased with themselves?” I’m trying to think of something to say, because the subject of Gabe LoPresto’s affair has ceased to interest me. I’ve got too much else on my mind.

“At least one of them is.”

I set my coffee cup down. “Loretta, tell me what’s going on.”

She slaps her hand down on the table, her eyes sparkling. “They had a big fight and they broke it off. The question no one seems to know the answer to is which one of them wanted out. Either way, he’s out the money not only for the necklace but for the trip, too. Serves him right.”