Flash Memory: A Lost Hat, Texas, Mystery (The Lost Hat, Texas, Mystery Series Book 2)

by Anna Castle

“You’re not going in there, Thompson. That’s a crime scene.”

  “I’m the senior deputy in this county. Stand aside and let me do my job.”

  “No way in hell am I going to let you in there.”

  “What are you hiding, Hawkins? What have done to her?”

  “Me!” Ty’s face flushed with anger. “Are you insane?” He leaned forward with his fists clenched.

  “I’m ordering you to stand aside. This is a crime scene and I’m taking control.” Dare grasped Ty by the shoulder to turn him away.

  Bad move. Ty jerked himself free and pushed back. Dare grabbed his arm and gave it a yank. Ty pulled his other arm back and swung his fist smack into Dare’s jaw. Dare staggered, almost falling, then recovered his balance and came at Ty with his head down and grappled him around the waist.

  Jake lunged to the end of his leash, rocking the Gator and barking furiously. Never attack a man in front of his dog.

  “Hush!” I went around the Gator to calm him down, but he was as out of his head as the two angry men.

  When I turned back, they’d somehow knocked each other down and were rolling around on the stony ground whacking each other, cursing and grunting. I danced around them, flapping my arms like an idiot, shouting, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” to no avail.

  Then the sheriff’s gold and white vehicle pulled up onto the hilltop, followed closely by another black and white. Doors flew open. Lawmen leapt out and ran toward the brawling men. Two deputies took hold of Dare and bodily hauled him up and over to the cars. The sheriff got his hands under Ty’s shoulders and raised him to his feet, standing behind him with one meaty hand gripping his arm.

  Ty, a busy executive who burned stress playing racquetball and pickup hoops, pivoted sharply on one toe, shouting, “Get your goddamn hands off me!” He shoved unseeing at the man behind him, hard. The sheriff went down with a grunt, flat on his butt in the dirt.

  Everyone stopped. Silence wrapped the hilltop for three, four, five seconds, broken at last by the click-click of handcuffs snapping around Ty’s wrists and Deputy Penateka’s dry twang. “Tyler Hawkins, you are under arrest for assaulting an officer of the law.”

  The sheriff lumbered onto his feet and planted his hands on his hips. “Everybody just calm down,” he said in a bullhorn voice. Sheriff Willard “Hap” Hopper was a big man, as tall as Ty and twice as wide, more beef than fat. When he wanted volume, he had the system to produce it.

  The crisis had passed, but the sheriff’s words leached the last of the aggression from Ty’s posture and wiped the smirk off Dare’s face. He nodded at them, satisfied, and turned to me. “Where’s the body?”

  I pointed into the enclosure.

  He walked over and stood outside the tumbled rock wall, studying the ground in that intent way cops have. Then he turned around and walked slowly back to the group. He cocked his head at Dare and Ty, each still guarded by a deputy. “I don’t know what you boys think you were fighting about. Whoever that is under there, it sure ain’t Diana. That arm belongs to a man.”

  “What!” Dare glared at me. “You told the dispatcher it was Diana.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said it was Diana’s bracelet.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, Sheriff,” Ty said. “Why would a man be wearing Di’s charm bracelet?”

  “No point in speculating,” the sheriff said. “But there are black hairs on the back of that hand and the shirt’s a man’s blue oxford, as far as I can see. That’s not your sister, son.”

  “Thank God.” Ty hung his head, but not before I caught the flash of tears in his eyes. I felt the sting of salt water in mine as well. A knot of dread held tight by all the tumult loosened in my chest. A dead body in the ground was still plenty bad, but the authorities were here to deal with it and we knew it wasn’t Diana.

  We could breathe again.

  The sheriff started handing out orders. “Deputy Freshwater, take Mr. Hawkins downtown to enjoy a night at county expense.”

  I thought Ty would protest, but apparently he knew better. He seemed resigned, now that his worst fears had been allayed. He caught my eyes and said, “Take care of my dog.”

  Jake had stopped barking when the fighting stopped. Now he watched his master be led to the county vehicle and tucked into the back seat. When the car drove down off the hill, he whined a little and lay down in the shade behind the Gator with his nose pointing after the car.

  “Thompson,” the sheriff said, “I want you to get on the horn to the Rangers. We need a crime scene team out here pronto. I want the rest of my people to seal off this ranch. Then you go back down to the station and coordinate.”

  “Sheriff, I can—”

  “No, Deputy, you cannot. I don’t want you anywhere near this ranch until I know exactly what’s been going on out here.”

  Dare’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened, but he said, “Yes, sir,” and got into his vehicle. He had his phone out of his pocket and was punching buttons before the car began to roll. We watched until he disappeared down the road.

  That left me and Deputy Penateka. The sheriff chewed on his lip while he considered me and the camera hanging around my neck. “Well, we can’t wait for the Rangers. Could be hours before they get here. News’ll be all over the county by now. Half the folks’ll be calling the other half and flying into a panic if anyone fails to pick up on the first ring. I don’t have the manpower to keep them off this ranch.”

  He nodded to himself, thinking it through. “The Rangers won’t like it, but we need to know who that is. We’ll do it by the book. Penateka, you do the digging—crumb by crumb, slow and careful. Let’s not miss one scrap of evidence. Penny, I want you to photograph every spadeful. You’re the best I’ve got right now. Think you can handle it?”

  I gulped. I’d expected him to send me home; in fact, I’d been hoping for it. I wanted to holler, No way! but my mouth opened and out came the words, “Yes, sir.” Sometimes I have more courage than sense.

  Deputy Penateka went to the sheriff’s car and got a shovel, a whisk broom, and a stack of numbered cards out of the trunk. We marked out a ten-by-ten perimeter with loose rocks. The ground inside the enclosure had been thoroughly disturbed by me falling on it and Jake digging in it. Small rocks, clods of clay, and loose dirt were scattered in a wide area around the arm. Oak leaves were mixed in there too, even though the closest tree was several yards away outside the low wall. Someone might have scattered those leaves over the dirt on purpose.

  The sheriff stood outside the enclosure and took out his phone, keeping an eye on us while he made a series of calls. Penateka and I got to work, settling into a rhythm. He removed a thin layer of dirt, turned it over outside our designated area, and set down a numbered card. Then I moved in and snapped a couple of shots.

  Weirdly, I can look at anything through the lens of a camera, however horrible. It’s a Zen thing, or maybe an art school thing. Balance, proportion, rhythm, unity: everything becomes a pure composition of form and light, even when the goal was absolute realism.

  “This dirt sure is easy to move,” Penateka said. “Loose pretty far down and not as many rocks as you’d expect.”

  Yes, let’s focus on the soil.

  “Ty said his old gang thought it used to be an Indian graveyard.” I winced, remembering that he was half Comanche. “No offense.”

  He shrugged one shoulder to say, None taken.

  We made good progress, if anything about this could be called good. We avoided the head at first, working around the perimeter of the torso and then exposing each limb. The limbs moved too loosely—the joints were decomposing—but the clothes were still in good shape and kept things together. The legs were clad in dark denim with nothing but a pair of black socks covering the feet.

  “Somebody must’ve taken his shoes,” I said. “Does that make sense?”

  “Some boots can be pricey,” Penateka said.

  He carefully uncovered the rest of the torso. The body lay curled, knees to chest. T
he blue oxford shirt was buttoned to the neck. Both sleeves were neatly rolled up, revealing bloated skin turning greenish-black under a fine coat of black hair. I snapped my pictures with my brain set to professional mode. I’d acquired that trick during a senior seminar on documenting humanitarian crises, during which we’d looked at hundreds of photographs of truly appalling things.

  I focused on anything that might help explain what happened. Diana’s feminine bracelet looked incongruous on the now obviously masculine arm. The silver charms winked in the bright sunlight: a big heart, a little horsey, a capital D, a Texas.

  I took a deep breath and regretted it instantly. A foul odor emanated from the hole. I gagged and Penateka handed me a tube of camphor to smear under my nose. That was better, in the sense of giving me a different intense odor to contend with.

  The sheriff slid his phone into his pocket and came over to stand at the edge of our perimeter with his hands on his hips. “All right, now. Y’all need to stop pussy-footing around and uncover his head.”

  Penateka and I traded glances. He said, “Yes, sir.” I took a shallow sniff of the camphor on my upper lip and promised myself a long, fragrant bubble bath later.

  Another deputy came into the enclosure. I hadn’t heard him drive up. A state trooper appeared too. The second deputy knelt to help Penateka carefully remove the dirt from around the head, both using only their gloved hands. All the men now gathered in a circle to watch as the face was exposed.

  “Well, I’ll be switched,” the sheriff said. “It’s that real estate guy. Roger Bainbridge. What the dickens is he doing up here?”

  Chapter 4

  The sheriff told me to make prints of the photographs—three copies—and two CDs of the digital files, and bring them over as soon as possible along with an invoice. Then he sent me home. As I was unhooking Jake from the Gator, I heard him say, “We’d better impound that vehicle. Penateka, you and Freshwater go get started on the house.”

  Search Ty’s house and impound his vehicle? For one hot-tempered shove?

  I fretted about it all the way home, with Jake panting by my side. I rubbed the camphor off my lip and opened the windows wide. We both needed the air. When we walked in the door, my house seemed as unfamiliar as if I’d been away for a month. It felt hollow and cool, like the inside of an abandoned cave.

  I took Jake straight to the back yard and let him off the leash, sitting on the back steps to watch him. I twisted a stem off the big rosemary bush by the steps and pinched the fragrant needles off one by one, crumbling them under my nose while I pondered the weirdness of my day so far.

  Ty would be spending the night in jail, not with me. This was sad, but not entirely bad. I’d been shocked by the wildness of his anger at Dare and was not altogether unhappy to have him held to account for it. Give him time to contemplate the downside of a loose temper.

  Then there was the body on the hilltop, Roger Bainbridge, murdered, one supposed, and buried on Ty’s ranch. I happily had acquired no knowledge about decomposing corpses thus far in my short life, but that body had seemed fairly intact and the clothes were fine, apart from being dirty. It hadn’t been underground for long. It had probably been buried sometime during this past week, while Ty was in Austin.

  The authorities would be able to pin that down, though I had learned it could take a couple of months for the Austin lab to get around to examining a body from the boonies. Hopefully, the need to catch a murderer would move us closer to the front of the queue.

  I couldn’t muster up much grief for Roger. I’d only met him once and his oily manner had put my back up. Still, he had been wrongfully killed and would never now have a chance to become a better man. That part made me sad, for sure.

  But the part that tied a knot in my gut whenever I came back to it was Diana’s charm bracelet fastened around Roger’s wrist. It seemed contemptuous, like it wasn’t enough to murder the guy and bury him in the middle of nowhere, you had to ridicule him on top of it. Or was it meant to connect him to Diana? A way to say, “This is why I killed him?” That thought had disturbing implications.

  Jake came over and thrust his head between my knees to be petted. I obliged him. Then we went into the kitchen where I found a big plastic bowl to serve as a water dish and filled it up for him. I poured myself a glass of iced tea and drank it leaning against the counter.

  What would I feed this big brown dog? Did I even have a dog-food compatible dish? I started opening cupboards, staring at the motley collection of stuff my great-aunt had left me, as if somehow one of the three mixers or the Fiesta ware pitchers would turn into a box of Milk Bones. I gave a Jake a Clif Bar to tide him over and ate another one myself.

  I needed to get over to the studio to print the photographs, but I felt drained, like I’d put in a long day building trails. The Kit-Kat clock over the door said 10:15. I’d only been up for five hours, but I desperately needed a nap. After that, I could run to the market for a couple of cans of dog food.

  “Come on, Jako.” I led my guest to the back bedroom, where we sprawled face down on top of the covers.

  I must have fallen sound asleep. When my cellphone rang, Jake barked and I practically levitated straight into the air. I fished my phone out of my thigh pocket and looked at the screen. Tillie.

  “What’s up?”

  “Penny! Are you okay?”

  “Of course,” I said, but then I blinked and woke all the way up. Mt. Keno, Ty, the sheriff. The body. “I’m fine. Really. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay, I won’t. But, um—did you forget about Mr. Caine this morning?”

  “Mr. Caine!” Another politician wanting a billboard-quality portrait. This one was running for county commissioner. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven.”

  “Yikes! We’ll be right over.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Jake. Ty’s dog. I’ll tell you about it when I get there.”

  I took a fast shower and changed clothes, with Jake dogging me every step of the way. I thought about leaving him in the yard, but he acted so clingy, he might howl and drive the neighbors crazy. Plus it was already too hot and my yard didn’t have much shade. I decided to bring him with me. Tillie could look after him while I worked with the client.

  She met me at the back door, wrapping me in a giant bear hug. “Oh, Penny! I can’t believe it! It’s so horrible!”

  I disengaged myself and she bent to wrap her arms around Jake. He soaked it up, being basically a petting sponge. At least Ty wouldn’t have to worry about his dog. Jake had two women eager to attend to his every need.

  Tillie found a water bowl and filled it, then gave him some oatmeal cookies. Then she turned her large, sympathetic, black eyes to me. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m okay, really. I had a long nap.” Sleep worked wonders. The images of the morning had receded from my visual memory considerably.

  The bell rang over the front door and we both went out to greet the new client, closing the kitchen door behind us.

  Carson Cameron Caine IV was something of a big shot hereabouts. The Caine Ranch, which bordered Ty’s on two sides, was the largest in Long County. His family had been among the founders of Lost Hat; hence the Caine Savings and Loan, the Cameron Public Library, and the Caine Municipal Park, three well-groomed acres along the Mariposa River.

  I knew a couple of Camerons, both blond as sunshine. We Triggs are in the summer wheat division, hairwise. The Caines—at least this one—ran several shades darker, pushing into the toasted French bread end of the spectrum. He had blue eyes, a tennis tan, and an expensive aura, like rich people on TV.

  I held out a hand for shaking. “You must be Mr. Caine.”

  “Please, call me Carson.” He smiled affably. “Mr. Caine sounds like my grandfather.”

  “Carson, then. I’m Penny Trigg.”

  Tillie said, “Hi, Mr. Caine,” and he beamed at her. She slipped behind the front counter to sit at her desk.

  Carson t
urned the beam back to me. “I know all about you, Penny, thanks to the small town grapevine. You’re Marion Albrecht’s second cousin and Sophia Ernst’s great grand-niece, right?”

  That kind of trick had impressed me more when I first moved to town. Since then, I’d gained firsthand experience of the famous grapevine. News travelled fast and far, true, but often picked up a lot of glitches along the way.

  Carson made an expansive gesture toward the walls. “I can’t believe how different this place looks. It’s like a New York gallery.”

  “Oh, hardly,” I said, flattered. I’d busted a gut and burned most of my savings turning my great-aunt’s shabby antique store into a functional, yet attractive, photography studio.

  “What happened to all the stuff?” Carson asked. “I remember this place being crammed to the rafters. It’s lighter too, isn’t it? I remember it being sort of gloomy and mysterious.”

  “You remember right. I hired Marion’s son and one of his friends to help me haul everything upstairs and paint the ceilings. I sanded the floors myself.”

  “You must be Superwoman.” Carson gave me an admiring look.

  He assumed the Museum Pose, hands linked behind his back, and strolled around to look at the framed photographs I had hung to show off my work. Most of them bore discrete price tags, because you never knew. Somebody might buy one someday.

  I don’t like to hover, so I let him stroll alone. He lingered on some of the more difficult pieces, like the ones about the degradation of the native prairie, which impressed me. Most people grimace and slide on by. He lingered longest at a study of the fall foliage at Lost Maples State Park. Very pretty and a limited edition at three hundred and fifty dollars each. I crossed my fingers. If he bought one, I could pay Tillie for another week.

  “These are good, Penny. Really good.” He shot a discreet glance at the price tag.

  “Thanks.”

  He made the full circuit, ending up back at the front counter. Then his genial smile faded into a more somber expression. “I appreciate your taking me today, Penny, after all that’s happened.”