Murder Takes a Break (28 page)

It told me something, all right.
 
I wasn't sure just what, however.

"So all that about Randall drinking maybe a little but certainly not a lot, all that was a lie."

She smiled.
 
It wasn't much of a smile, but at least it was a try.

"Let's call it an exaggeration," she said.
 
"An exaggeration by an overindulgent parent."

"Whatever we call it, Randall was probably drunk at that party," I said.

"I would say so.
 
Not in front of Tack, of course."

"Of course," I said, though if she had it might have made a difference.
 
It was far too late to worry about that now, however.

"So I guess there's no chance your husband came down here to The Island during spring break to check up on your son," I said.

"No chance at all.
 
Why check up on someone you knew was behaving in a mature and responsible way?"

She had a point there.

"There's just one other thing," I said.
 
"Have you been with your husband all evening?"

"No.
 
I rarely am.
 
For some reason he doesn't seem to want my company when he's getting drunk.
 
For most of the evening he was most likely doing what he does best, entertaining whatever two or three men he could find in the bar who would listen to his stories about the good old days, when men were football players, when there was by God a Southwest Conference, and when quarterbacks could take a hit without crying to the ref.
 
When God was in his heaven and all was right with the world."

"But you weren't with him while he entertained those two or three men."

"No.
 
I was in the room, reading a book.
 
Do you read, Mr. Smith?"

I admitted that I did, occasionally, read a book.
 
I could have told her a little bit about John O'Hara, but she wasn't really interested in a literary discussion.

"I read a lot of books," she said.
 
"I find that it helps."

I knew what she meant.
 
I thanked her for her talking to me and told her that I'd call when I found out anything more about her son.

She stood up.
 
"Why were you so interested in Tack's whereabouts?" she asked.

"Someone got shot tonight.
 
I thought maybe Tack had a hand in it."

She smiled wistfully, almost as if she wished he'd been involved.

"Tack isn't a man of action," she said.
 
"More a man of words."
 
Another smile, so brief that I could have been imagining it.
 
"Most of them slurred."

I thanked her again, and she went back to her room.
 
Her shoulders were slumped when she began to walk away from me down the hall, but they were squared again before she'd gone ten feet.

B
efore I left the hotel I went by to have a brief chat with the bartender, a young man who resembled Willie no more than the bar in the Galvez resembled the one in the Hurricane Club.
 
He looked more like a moonlighting Eagle Scout.
 
And he remembered Tack Kirbo, all right.

"He's a nice enough guy," he said.
 
"Comes in every night and drinks too much, talking about football to anybody who'll listen to him."

"You let him drink too much?"

"I try to cut him off before he gets too far gone.
 
He's not driving, and he always walks out in a straight line.
 
I'd say he keeps a bottle in his room, though.
 
Lots of guys like that do."

I didn't doubt it.
 
I left the bar and went outside, where a cold wind was blowing, sliding under my sweatshirt and chilling me to the bone.

I got in the truck, started the motor, and turned on the heater.
 
I knew just about everything I needed to know now, or at least I had all the pieces.
 
I didn't know how they fit together, but I thought I could get them into some kind of order if I thought about it long enough.
 
I should have figured it out earlier, but it would have been easier if everyone had been honest with me.

There was just one big problem remaining.
 
If I was able to figure things out, someone else could do it, too.
 
And someone else had a slightly different idea about how justice should be done.

It was awfully late, but I was sure the Hurricane Club would still be open.
 
I thought I might as well drive by and see if Big Al was still there.

S
he wasn't at her table.
 
There were only three customers, and Willie.
 
I walked over to the bar, little pieces of Christmas ornaments crunching under my shoes.
 
I was sure they'd still be there next Christmas, crushed so fine that they'd become part of the sawdust.

Willie was looking at a glass he was drying, and he didn't look up at me when I stood in front of the bar.
 
I waited for a few seconds but he was really interested in that glass.

So I said, "I need to see Big Al."

"She's not here," he said.

"I'll just drop by her house, then," I said.

Willie stuck the glass under the bar and located another one to dry.
 
It didn't even look wet.

"You do that," he said.

I
didn't go by Big Al's house because I was certain she wouldn't be there.
 
What I did do was stop at a convenience store and call the police station to ask for Bob Lattner.
 
He wasn't there, which didn't surprise me.

"I need to talk to him," I told the dispatcher.
 
"It's about the shooting tonight."

The dispatcher was really sorry, but he couldn't get in touch with Lattner.
 
That didn't surprise me, either.
 
I said "thanks" and hung up.

I
nterstate 45 between Houston and Galveston is never quiet.
 
Even after midnight, the cars stream up and down it, all of them going somewhere, I suppose, though I have no idea where.
 
What business could all those people possibly have in Galveston at that time of night?
 
Or even in Houston, for that matter.
 
I knew what I was doing there, but surely all those other cars weren't filled with valiant investigators bent on preventing crime.
 
Whatever their business was, they were all in a hurry, as usual, and this time, so was I.

I could see the Union Carbide plant from the interstate, its thousands of twinkling lights in perfect harmony with the season, but this time I wasn't stopping in Texas City.
 
It was probably already too late to help Patrick Mullen.

The way I had things figured, Chad Peavy was the key to everything.
 
His behavior should have been a clue, but I'd been so sure that he'd been threatened by Henry J. that I attributed his actions to his fear.
 
He'd been afraid, all right, but not of Henry J.
 
Or at least not for the reasons I'd thought.

Chad had told me that he and Randall Kirbo had driven out to the beach house together.
 
If Randall hadn't come home from the party, Chad would have known about it.
 

And Chad was the one who'd told me about Sharon when I'd led him to believe there was another witness.
 
He had to be the one who'd taken a shot at her, and the one who'd killed Henry J.
 
He'd probably killed Randall Kirbo, too, but I wasn't sure about that.
 

And I wasn't sure just why he'd done any of the other things, though I thought I had at least some of the answers.

Big Al had some of the answers, too.
 
She'd known that Henry J. had been tailing me, so she must have known where we'd gone.
 
She might even have known why Chad would have a reason to go gunning for Henry J.
 
In fact, I was pretty sure that she did.

 
Hadn't she told me that she knew about Henry J.'s drug activities and that she'd straightened him out?
 
If she knew about the drugs, she might very well have known everything that had happened at her beach house that night.
 
She might even have been blackmailing Chad Peavy.
 
It wouldn't have been out of character.

And now, if she got to Chad before I did, Chad, to borrow a phrase from one of our distinguished former presidents, was going to be in deep doo-doo.

I was afraid that even Bob Lattner was on his way to Houston.
 
He was obviously mixed up in things, though just how wasn't clear to me.
 
As I drove along at fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit, I tried to think of all the different ways the pieces could be moved around and made to fit together.

Everything would have been much simpler if people had just told me all they knew right from the beginning, but no one ever wants to do that, not even Dino, who was supposed to be my friend.

OK, he
was
my friend.
 
But he'd withheld information that might have helped me.
 
It might have helped Patrick Mullen, who was probably dead by now if I was right about Chad.
 

It might have helped Henry J., too, not that I was going to spend a lot of time mourning his loss.

I wouldn't mourn Chad Peavy for very long, either, but I didn't want Big Al or Bob Lattner to get to him before I did.
 
I wanted him punished, but not the way they'd go about it.

W
hen I turned onto Coleridge, I saw that I wasn't the first to arrive.
 
There was a big black Cadillac parked at the curb near the Peavy house.
 
The night was quiet, however, and there were only a few lights on in the neighboring homes.
 
It clearly wasn't a war zone, not yet at any rate.
 
Maybe the Cadillac belonged to someone who lived nearby.

Right.
 
And maybe there was no salt water in the Gulf of Mexico.

I parked the truck about a block from the Peavy house and got out.
 
The sky hadn't gotten any less cloudy, but in Houston there were plenty of street lights.
 
As I approached the Caddy, I thought I could see the bulky outline of someone sitting in the driver's seat.

When I got to the car, I bent down to look inside.
 
Big Al stared back at me.
 
I signed for her to roll down the window.
 
She switched on the key, pushed a button, and the window slid down.

"What're you doing here, Smith?" she asked.

"Shopping for a house.
 
I thought a move to the city might give me a different perspective on things."

"Henry J. told me once that you used to be a football player.
 
A pretty good one."

"I played football.
 
I'm not sure how good I was.
 
What's that got to do with anything?"

"I was wondering if all football players were smart-asses or if it was just you."

"All of them, pretty much," I said.
 
"There's something I've been wondering about, too."

"What?"

"What are
you
doing here?"

"I think you know the answer to that one.
 
I'm going to feed the kid that lives in there to the crabs."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

"You know that one, too.
 
He killed Henry J."

"I know that, but I don't know why."

"There's a lot of things you don't know, Smith.
 
You're not near as smart as you think you are."

"Why don't you help me out, then?
 
Tell me what's going on."

"You'll find out soon enough," she said, bringing her hand up from her lap.
 

There was a snub barrel Colt Python in her fist, and it was pointed at my head.
 
Some women would have found the a .357 Magnum uncomfortably large.
 
Not Big Al.

"Back away a little," she said.
 
"Keep your hands where I can see them."

I did what she said.
 
Just thinking about what a .357 bullet could do to my head was enough to make me very careful.

Big Al opened the door of the car and got out.

"I was wondering how I was going to get in the house," she said.
 
"I'm glad you came along.
 
The Peavys know you."