The Devil Went Down to Austin (17 page)

"What did you tell Ron?"

"I haven't returned his calls."

This was so unlike Maia, I didn't know what to say.

She closed her fingers around her knees, took a breath.

"Forget all that," she said. "What I really came to tell you— Dwight Hayes called me this morning. The Techsan sale seems to be weighing on his conscience. He said you'd spoken with him last night, encouraged him to call me." She hesitated, steeling herself. "I guess I should thank you for that."

I tried to stop thinking about Maia's job—the junior partnership she'd worked so many years to get. "Dwight give you anything good?"

"He was still pretty cagey, but he said in a couple of days we could expect AccuShield to announce they'd fixed Techsan's software problem.

"A couple of days?"

"Dwight said they'd wait just long enough to make the announcement seem plausible."

"Then they've known what the problem was all along."

Maia moistened her lips. "Another little secret Dwight let slip— Pena has made a very sweet little deal with his client, AccuShield. Apparently they're a lot more impressed by Techsan's security product than they let on. If Pena manages to turn Techsan around, get the betatesting back on track, get the investors lined up, AccuShield has promised to let him spin off the company as a separate IPO."

"Meaning what?"

"Money, Tres. Lots of it. AccuShield would keep seventy percent of the stock. Pena gets thirty percent. And Dwight thought the IPO—with the proper backing—could be huge."

"Huge like family size or economy pack?"

"Total valuation? Think billions, with a B."

My hands went numb on the steering wheel. "A company Pena paid four million for.

Garrett's company."

Maia nodded. "I'd say this is the careermaker deal for Mr. Pena."

I pulled into the parking lot at Waterloo Records, stopped the truck. The neon cows were dancing above the Amy's Ice Cream sign. Even in the daytime, in the middle of June, Christmas lights blinked in the palm trees.

I replayed every word I'd said to Garrett the night before, about how he should sell his company. Now, despite the ranch, despite my best rationalizing, I felt like those words should be tattooed on my back with a hot needle. Billions.

I wondered if Ruby had known the real value of what she was signing away. I wondered if she'd made some inside deal with Pena. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. It was easier to get mad at Ruby than at myself.

"Dwight won't go on record with this," I guessed.

"Even if he did," Maia said, "it's nothing we could take to the police. Dwight had nothing to say about Jimmy Doebler's murder. Or Adrienne Selak's drowning."

I told Maia about my morning phone call with Lopez, about the call Jimmy had made to homicide two months ago. I told her about the family research Jimmy had been starting.

Maia stared out the windshield. "The fact Lopez knew Jimmy, had talked to him recently, might be enough to taint his investigation. If I had to, I could use it. That and the fact he coerced you and Garrett into making initial statements without a lawyer."

"Coerced?"

"Sure. You remember. You said Jimmy was asking about his mother."

I started to tell her about Clara Doebler's suicide.

"I know," she interrupted. "You think the family history is important?"

Her tone told me it wasn't just a processofelimination question. She was testing, putting out a line. I wondered how she knew about Clara's death.

"His cousin W.B. runs the family company," I said. "He wouldn't tell me anything, but I got the feeling there might be something about Jimmy's death—something that makes the family nervous."

Maia watched the neon cows. "Garrett and Jimmy had a long history—a lot of bad blood between them. Lopez will use that for motive."

"I know."

"We have to be sure Lopez doesn't have a point."

I didn't like the silence between us—a heavy feeling, like the beginning of a landslide.

I didn't like the fact that neither of us felt confident enough to leap to Garrett's defence.

"Jimmy has an aunt in town," I said. "On the phone, she seemed a little more pliable than W.B. We could go see her, try running the family angle."

Maia studied the palm trees.

"We," she said, like she was testing the word, seeing how much weight it would hold.

I waited through a full rotation of the Sixth Street light, but Maia said nothing more. I figured I'd gotten as much of a yes as I could hope for.

I put the truck in drive and headed north again, toward Hyde Park.

Faye DoeblerIngram's house was a small folk Victorian on an unmarked residential half block, tucked behind a vegetarian restaurant and a lesbian gift shop. I drove past, Uturned, and parked across the street at the base of one of the city's moonlight towers.

The front porch was outlined with lacy white trim. The screen door was peach, the porch swing green. Her sidegabled roof had recently been sheeted in galvanized steel. Her yard was a quarteracre garden—every square foot cultivated with herbs and wildflowers, pathways made from broken flagstones. A good deal of money had gone into making the house look quaint and rustic. It didn't look like the kind of place where the resident was accustomed to being rocked by tragedy.

Maia opened the passenger's side door, bringing in the scents of the neighbourhood—cut grass and garden herbs.

"Tu es pres?" she asked.

"Just like old times."

Even a hint of her smile gave me more pleasure than I wanted to admit.

Maia led the way. The white cotton straps of her dress made an X across her shoulder blades. Her hair had grown longer than I'd realized. Gathered in a white scrunchietie, her glossy chocolate brown ponytail didn't look so much girlish as formidable—like the mane of a T'ang warrior.

The garden was hazy with the smells of catmint, thyme, and sage. We climbed the front steps, ducked under a trellis of grapevines.

The lady of the house opened her screen door before we reached it. "May I help you?"

She was a slight woman in her sixties—stick arms, a pleasantly wrinkled face surrounded by enormous permed hair the bright colour of new pennies. Her jeans and blouse were covered with a gardener's apron, but she wore full makeup and silver jewellery. She looked like a friendly earth gnome who'd just been to the beauty parlour.

Maia said, "Mrs. DoeblerIngram?"

"Just Ms. Ingram," the woman replied gently. "Yes?"

She held a spade, a clod of mud stuck to the point.

I said, "We spoke on the phone. I'm Tres Navarre. This is Maia Lee, a friend."

Faye Ingram's eyes got smaller, more wary. "I don't . . . you mean about Jimmy's death?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "There've been some developments since we spoke, Ms.

Ingram. We thought you'd want to be prepared if the police contact you. May we come in?"

She wavered, but refusal wasn't really an option, the way I'd phrased it. She let us in.

The house had the same wildly cultivated look as the front garden, clumps of floralpattern sofas, sprigs of end tables blooming with houseplants, tall pedestals topped with artwork, even one of Jimmy's large ceramic pieces. The smell of freshbaked cinnamon bread wafted from the kitchen. Somewhere in the back rooms, Dylan's Blood on the Tracks was playing. Faye Ingram may have looked nothing like her nephew, but being in her house, I could believe they were related.

Yet something struck me as out of character—something that told of fear. There was a blinking sensor by the door, discreet wires running up the sides of the windows, a keypad next to the light switch. Laidback Ms. Ingram had one of the finest security systems money could buy.

She led us through a hallway, out into the backyard.

The sun was filtering through the branches of an enormous oak tree. On the sidewalk, a circle of five sun tea jars glowed like some weird, translucent Stonehenge. Lining the fence were tomato and

pepper cages, mansized sunflowers slouched in their last weeks of life—leaves curled brown and seed faces blasted from heat and the work of birds.

We sat in patio chairs under the oak.

"So," Ms. Ingram said uneasily. "You have something to tell me?"

"We wanted to ask about Clara's suicide," I said.

If I was expecting a strong reaction, I didn't get it. Ms. Ingram's smile stayed polite, colourless, wavering no more than her hairdo. "I'm sorry. I don't understand what this has to do with Jimmy."

"In the weeks before he got murdered," I said, "Jimmy was researching his mother's past. I know he called you and W.B. and several other relatives. He also called the police, asking for the files on Clara's death. I know Clara's relationship with the Doebler clan was . . . rocky. It may have nothing to do with Jimmy's death. It just strikes me—"

Ms. Ingram's eyes were watery, unfocused, courteous. I suddenly felt guilty, as if I were forcing something unpleasant into a fragile container.

"It unsettles us," Maia said. "The way Clara died, the place. Jimmy dying in the same spot, the same way."

Faye Ingram laced her fingers together, set them like a little igloo on the mint green patio table. "The police tell me they are close to an arrest."

"They are," I agreed. "And once they have a convincing possibility, they won't look elsewhere unless they have their arms twisted. The rest of the Doebler family isn't likely to twist, are they?"

"Your brother—he is the one they will arrest. Yes?"

"Yes."

"And would it surprise you greatly if I refused to help you?"

"No."

Ms. Ingram read my eyes, then looked toward her garden—the giant, ruined heads of sunflowers. Ms. Ingram nodded, as if she'd made a decision.

"Excuse me a moment," she murmured.

She rose, almost trancelike, and wandered inside.

Maia and I looked at each other.

I shook my head doubtfully, by no means sure Faye Ingram would be coming back without the police.

Inside the house, a Bob Dylan track played through. Faye Ingram reappeared. She carried a brown leather binder the size of an Oxford English Dictionary volume. Two sweaty glasses of tea sat on top.

"My manners need polishing," she apologized. "Except for the herb society, I don't entertain many guests."

We thanked her for the tea.

Ms. Ingram's smile started to reform as she ran her fingers over the old brown binder, smearing the rings of condensation.

I finally realized why her face seemed familiar. She looked like the picture Jimmy had kept on his mantel—her sister Clara. The resemblance wasn't much—a faraway look in the eyes, frailness in the smile, features too delicate to maintain much emotion.

She opened the binder, carefully extracted a photograph.

"This is Clara and James—Jimmy's father."

The photograph paper was parchmentthick, the colours hand tinted in late 1950s pastel. Clara Doebler wore a satin bride's dress. Her smile was perfunctory, her hair done in a beehive the same unnatural copper colour as Faye's hair today. At Clara's side was the groom—a roughcut man with unruly Elvis hair and a rakish face that reminded me pleasantly of Jimmy's.

"James died of tuberculosis when Jimmy was only three years old," Faye Ingram told us. "More than anything, that event fractured Clara. She'd always been . . . brittle.

Prone to depression. She'd allowed the family to arrange her marriage with James, and then she blamed them for leaving her a widow. She refused to remarry, took back her maiden name for herself and her son—something you just didn't do in Travis County in 1960. She became extremely possessive of Jimmy, how he would be raised.

She became . . . contrary. Erratic. The family was concerned enough to bring legal action to gain custody of Jimmy. It was W.B.'s father, William B. Senior, who pulled most of the reins of power back then. It was a horrible mess, but finally, of course, the Doebler money won. Clara couldn't compete."

From her tone, I couldn't tell if Faye admired her sister, or was simply expressing fascination, the way a child is fascinated by peeling off BandAids.

She pulled out a second photo, handed it across. "That is the man Clara called her second husband, although they were never actually married. His name was Ewin Lowry."

Lowry—the name Jimmy had specified as the father's name on his search for birth certificates.

Ewin Lowry was as different from James Doebler, Sr., as two men could be. Lowry was small, slightly potbellied, darkcomplexioned. His hair and moustache were thick and black, his eyes predatory. The gypsy charmer. The man you watched carefully at poker, never introduced to your wife, and certainly never let marry one of your daughters. In the photo, Ewin and Clara stood together in front of a red '65 Mustang.

The two of them looked happy.

"Ewin was charming," Faye continued. "Something of a poet. Affectionate when it suited him. Sometimes violent, though never with Clara. The rest of the family—our parents, our grandparents, the aunts and uncles on W.B.'s side of the family—they tolerated Ewin and Clara, but only barely, and only for a while. When Clara became pregnant for a second time—this was in '67—she announced her intentions to marry Lowry."

"Pregnant," I repeated.

Faye nodded. "The family went into war mode. To make a long story short, Clara lost.

William B. Sr. drove Ewin Lowry away by a combination of threats and bribes. Clara was convinced to have an abortion. She never recovered from that. She cut all ties with the family, did a lot of travelling to the West Coast and to Europe, but she couldn't bring herself to leave Austin for good. She and I kept in touch, but I'm ashamed to say—Clara scared me. She was so . . . intense, so sad and angry. When she killed herself, I wasn't surprised. Reuniting with Jimmy was her only comfort for all she'd lost, and in the end, even that wasn't enough."

Daylight filtered through the oak tree, the leaves a mesh of green and yellow. Looking up, I felt like I was under the weight of a giant gumball machine.

Maia said, "I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Ingram."

The older woman smiled. "My loss is nothing, Miss—"