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

by Anna Castle

  What I could do was find out more about Diana’s past and present admirers. I could also find out who Roger had been hustling in Long County. Ty hadn’t been the only local landowner getting the hard sell. You wouldn’t murder a man to keep him from buying your property, but maybe Roger had been romancing other women with an eye on their acreage. Thanks to Tillie, I had a better source of local gossip than the cops.

  And I would be double-dog damned if I was going sit on my lily-white butt while my boyfriend sat in jail, wrongfully accused of a horrible crime. At the very least, I could come up with a good alternative suspect for Ty’s lawyer to wave at the judge.

  I sent the proof sheets to the printer and got up to rummage in the storage closet for a spiral memo book. I wrote Things to Find Out on the top of the first page and started listing everything I could think of, leaving blank spaces for the answers.

  First and foremost: why there? That hilltop had the best view in Long County, but otherwise, it was not exactly convenient. And why go to the trouble of burying the guy? Why not toss him into the scrub oaks alongside any highway you chose? We were in the western half of Texas, after all. Open country everywhere.

  And what happened to Roger’s car? I vaguely remembered it being big and red and expensive looking. It would stick out like a—like a big, red car. Where were his shoes, or his pricey boots? Where the heck was Diana and how did she fit into this?

  I wanted to keep an open mind, like Carson had said, but one person stood out a mile already: Deputy Dare. He loved Diana more than she loved him; you could see it in the way they walked, the way they set the table, the way they loaded the dishwasher after supper. She moved, he followed. She laughed and talked with everyone around; he kept his somber agate eyes on her.

  Dare had spent a lot of time on the ranch. He’d been given the full tour by Ty himself. He knew about Roger’s efforts to horn in on the project and about the tug-of-war Ty and Diana were having over the contract. He must have known Roger was making a major play for Diana’s affections. Worse—much worse—he was in a position to see that no real investigation took place.

  I didn’t know what I could do if the answer turned out to be Dare. But I couldn’t be certain anyone else would even bother to ask the question. The least I could do was poke around, see if anything squeaked.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, I woke to find myself clinging to the edge of the bed with Jake sprawled full length down the middle. He twisted his head around and gave me a big slurp up the side of the head.

  Slimed. What a lovely way to start the day.

  I let him out in the back yard while I put the coffee on and drank a cup to get the motor running. Then I suited up for my morning run. I might not have proper dog food, but I could provide dog-appropriate entertainment. We took the three-mile loop around the center of town, circling the jail twice. I couldn’t see anything through the wire-meshed windows, but maybe Ty could see us and know we were thinking about him.

  Jake seemed content to hang out with me, though he padded up to the front windows now and then to look out onto the street. I understood. I kept picking up my phone to check the screen, hoping to find a call from Ty that I’d somehow managed to miss.

  I fixed cereal for breakfast for both of us, using the last of the milk. How long could a dog get by on people food? He must be missing crucial nutrients. I’d hit the grocery store first thing and then go over to the sheriff’s department to deliver the prints. Then perhaps, if I was a good girl and said, “Pretty please,” they’d let me visit Ty.

  The parking lot at DeGroot’s Groceries was empty except for an enormous black pickup truck with red flames painted along the sides in the center front row. I found a patch of shade under a hackberry tree at the back of the gravel lot and pulled into it.

  As I walked across the lot to the store, a guy came out dressed in redneck Goth from head to toe: black hat, black jeans, black leather belt with silver studs, and black boots with silver-tipped toes. His black T-shirt had red flames on the front—to match the truck, one presumed. Very stylish. He had a pack of smokes rolled up in one sleeve, displaying a tattoo of a skull and crossbones with a cowboy hat, and carried a carton of beer under one arm. He was as thin as a length of twisted steel cable, wiry muscles stretched over long bones. He had sandy blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and a full General Custer moustache. His eyes were too close together, which I noticed because he glared at me like I was the reincarnation of Sitting Bull.

  If he was trying to scare me, it worked. The short hairs on the back of my neck rose and I shivered in spite of the June sunshine.

  I glanced reflexively at my chest, wondering if I’d accidentally put on one of my radical environmentalist T-shirts. Nope. It said, “Pedernales State Park,” surely as inoffensive as a shirt could be.

  The fiery redneck stomped past me, trailing a wake of stale cigarette smoke, and swung into his truck, gunning the engine and peeling out in a cloud of gravel dust.

  I let out a hoo as I entered the air-conditioned store. One of the girls I’d done a portrait of stood behind the check-out stand. A long-legged gal with yellow hair, she wore cut-offs, a camisole, and an apron. She stood on one foot with the other crooked onto her thigh like a stork, glaring out the window at the dust cloud and snapping her gum in disgust.

  “Hi, Alexis,” I said, fishing her name out of my memory.

  “Ms. Trigg!” She lowered her foot and slid it back into her flip-flop. “My family adores that portrait you did of me. I’m trying to talk my mom into getting one. It’s way better than a selfie!”

  “Anytime.” Faint praise, but I’d take it. “Hey, who was that guy who just left? The guy in the black pick-up?”

  “Hank Roeder?” She shuddered. “He gives me the creeps.”

  “What’s his deal? He seemed pissed off about something.”

  “He’s always pissed off about something. He thinks he’s this big super bad-ass—oops! Pardon me!”

  I smiled weakly. She’d assigned me to the fuddy-duddy generation. “I’ve heard worse.”

  “Ignore him. That’s what I do, except for ringing up his morning brewskis.”

  “Isn’t it a little early for beer?”

  “Not for Hank.”

  I got a cart and toured the aisles. I kept hoping that one day a natural foods section would magically appear, but so far, no luck. When Ty’s spa opened, maybe the owner would stock a few items to appeal to the tourists.

  Unless Ty went to prison, of course.

  DeGroot’s is not a big store, but the rows are tall and there are no signs hanging above them to tell you what’s where. Like everything else in a small town, you’re supposed to already know. I had never bought dog food before and I wasn’t finding it.

  I rounded the back of an aisle and came upon the little group that hung out at the market. On nice days, meaning not in the summer, they’d sit outside on the front porch. When temperatures rose too high or fell too low, they’d move inside to sit on metal folding chairs set up in a wide spot in front of the office, drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

  Two old farts—a fat one and a skinny one—and an old fartess. One of them was the owner, Willie DeGroot, but since I didn’t know if Willie was male or female, I’d never dared to hazard a greeting.

  There was one younger guy, Peter Schmidzinsky, the new owner of Mariposa Internet Services. He’d bought the business cheap from the former owner’s estate and moved it closer to downtown. Like every other IT guy on planet Earth, he was pasty and pudgy with ill-cut hair and dark-rimmed glasses. They must clone these guys in a laboratory somewhere. He’d gotten in the habit of spending his coffee breaks at DeGroot’s, sliding into the gang of old farts like an apprentice learning the trade.

  Usually, I’d smile politely and roll on by, but today they stared at me with such expectant looks, I felt compelled to stop. “Could y’all point me toward the dog food section?”

  “Got yourself a dog?” the old fartess as
ked.

  “He’s not mine. I’m taking care of him for a friend.”

  “Would that friend be Tyler Hawkins?” This was from the old fart with the super-sized belly bulging under green suspenders.

  “You were there, weren’t you,” the cubicle guy said. “Yesterday, when they found the body.”

  I’d been dreading this. I had no idea how to handle the gossip factor. I’d been the topic of the month last January, during the outbreak of internet blackmail and random murders, and had finally managed to shrink back down to normal. This would start it all up again, the endless speculations about my character, my history, my habits.

  If I’d been in Austin, I could have said something evasive and taken my business elsewhere for the rest of my life. But in Lost Hat, if I wanted to eat, DeGroot’s was pretty much it. The only way out of this was through.

  I took a deep breath. “I was there.”

  “It must have been horrible.” The old woman leaned forward in her chair, eyes shining and lips parted.

  “I heard it was the dog that found him,” the skinny old fart said. He looked to be somewhere in his seventies. “I heard he dug him up and practically chewed his arm off.”

  “No,” I said, too loudly. I lowered my voice. “The dog found him, and yes, it was horrible, but no, there was no chewing of any kind, nor did any parts come off.”

  The old woman said, “I wouldn’t have that dog in my house. Now he’s got a taste for it.”

  That repulsive idea left me speechless.

  “If you ask me, it was that crazy will,” the skinny guy said. He reached for a donut from the box on an extra chair. He took a bite, dribbling powdered sugar on his stubbled chin.

  “That’s right,” the fat guy said. “Old Carl Hawkins must have been clean out of his mind to split up his land that way. Begging for trouble, you ask me.”

  Ty’s father had left the ranch divided between his two children. Divided geographically, that is; split down the middle, not half shares in the whole property. The trolls had leapt right over Roger’s body to the probable cause of contention. I couldn’t decide if that showed they were less stupid or more excitable than I’d thought.

  “Alcoholic dementia,” the cubicle guy said. “From what y’all told me.” They all nodded.

  “Carl Hawkins drank himself to death,” the skinny guy informed me. His lips were shaped in a pious purse, but gossipy malice glittered in his eyes. The rest of them nodded in unison.

  “That boy should never have left,” the fat guy said. “Should’ve stayed home and took care of the ranch, like a good son. Instead, he left his old man to become a drunkard and his sister to become a—”

  He broke off and they exchanged a round of knowing looks. What a lovely portrait they were painting of the Hawkins family!

  “You can’t think Ty killed that guy,” I said. “Because he didn’t. Nobody knows what happened yet. They haven’t even had time to do an autopsy. They don’t know when he died or even exactly how.”

  “Oh, they know,” the old woman said. “They brought the body straight to Doc Ladsworth. They’ll find whatever they need to find to convict that boy.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. What was this, The Night the Lights Went Out in Lost Hat? “They won’t find any evidence against Ty, because he didn’t do it.”

  “They wouldn’t have arrested him if he hadn’t done it,” the fat guy said.

  “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” the skinny guy said.

  I hated that expression. How did they know it wasn’t fog? Or dry ice? Or even dust? “There’s no smoke! Ty had no real conflict with Roger Bainbridge.”

  “Yes, he did,” the cubicle guy said. “Everybody knows Bainbridge was sniffing after Diana with an eye on her share of that ranch. He’d get to control her half against Ty. That’s a heck of a motive. What is that place, about five hundred acres?”

  “More like a couple of thousand,” the skinny guy said. “Hawkins have held that land for five generations.” He nodded sagely at the others. “Follow the money and it’ll lead you straight to the killer. That’s how it works.”

  “That’s a capital crime too,” the woman said. “Murder for profit.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous!” They were making things up as they went along.

  “Death penalty,” the cubicle guy said.

  “That’s right,” the fat guy said.

  Another round of knowing nods. Case solved. Execute the prisoner. Be sure to bring plenty of popcorn. I hoped none of these bloodthirsty trolls would be on the jury, if it came to a trial.

  “Ty and Diana were partners,” I said, trying not to sound pitiful. “They both benefited from working together and they both knew that. Sure, they had some arguments. Siblings argue. If Ty really wanted sole control, he would have bought Diana out.”

  “Couldn’t afford it, is my guess,” the fat guy said. “Land ain’t cash, little lady. Far from it.”

  “That’s right,” the old woman said. “He may drive a fancy car, but that don’t mean he’s as rich as he says. Nobody knows one small thing about what Tyler Hawkins has been up to, off in Austin all these years with never a visit home until the day his poor father was buried.”

  Now demented alcoholic Carl Hawkins was the wrongfully neglected father. If one shoe didn’t fit, grab another one and shove it on.

  “He was in the computer business,” the cubicle guy told the others, as if they didn’t know. “He probably lost his shirt in the tech bust and was forced to come back.”

  The others nodded, humming, “Um-hmm,” like a circle of financial sorcerers intoning fundamental truths.

  “The bust was years ago,” I said. “Now he’s building a full-featured resort. That takes money, investors. He knows what he’s doing, don’t worry about that.” But as I said the words, I realized I didn’t really know anything about Ty’s financial standing. He could be rock-bottom broke and putting on a good front. Maybe he was in deep water. Maybe Roger had known it and had been applying pressure somehow.

  Then why bother to go through the charade of hiring me? It wouldn’t impress anyone and my services did not come cheap.

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” the old woman said.

  “That’s right,” said the fat guy. “Ty was always high-and-mighty as a young feller. Acting like he was too good for this county, when everybody knew he was just a Hawkins and never going to be nothing else.”

  “Never was much good in that family,” the skinny guy said.

  “Not a lick,” the woman agreed. “But Ty was a sly one. How’d he get the money for college, I’d like to know?”

  “He won a scholarship,” I said.

  She smiled at me pityingly. “Tyler wasn’t much of an athlete. He just did the 4-H and you don’t get scholarships for that.”

  Evidently she had never heard of academic scholarships.

  “He lit out of here the day after graduation,” the skinny guy said. “Took his diploma and walked straight to the bus station.”

  I didn’t blame him. These evil-minded trolls almost made me reconsider staying in Lost Hat and I mostly loved it here.

  The cubicle guy dusted sugar from his thin red moustache. “I’ll tell you what.” The others looked at him attentively. He pointed at me. “I’ll bet Diana did it.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous!” I realized I was repeating myself. I also realized the idea might not be totally off base.

  The old woman nodded, her wrinkled eyes shrewd. “Where is she? Hm?”

  “Ty’s gotten a couple of emails from her in the last week,” I said. “He thinks she’s in Dallas.”

  “But he doesn’t know for sure,” the skinny guy said.

  “Besides, you can fake all that stuff,” the cubicle guy said with authority.

  “All what stuff?” I knew better than to respond, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “She’s probably sitting on a beach in Mexico,” the fat guy said. “Drinking margaritas and laug
hing her socks off.”

  “That’s right,” the skinny guy said. “Escaping the law.”

  The old woman started snapping her fingers, palm down. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, excitement thrumming in her voice. “Those two Hawkinses are in it together. Like that Law & Order show with the twins. Remember that one? Nobody could tell which one of ‘em did it, so both of them wicked kids got off.”

  “That’s right,” the fat guy and the skinny guy said together.

  “They’re not twins!” I cried, my exasperation echoing from the metal rafters. I grabbed my cart and rolled away as fast as the crooked front wheel would let me, snatching at a bag of dog food as I went.

  Cackling laughter pursued me all the way to the front.

  Chapter 7

  I pondered the idea of Diana as Suspect Number One on the way over to the Law Enforcement Center, which wasn’t far enough to reach any conclusions. The center had been built in the early nineties with more thought to efficiency than aesthetics. Three stories tall, it took up a block southeast of the courthouse square, not including the parking lot, which reflected the summer sun off an additional half block. It seemed like overkill for a county with only 5,000 inhabitants, but law enforcement was a growth industry in Texas. Rural counties could earn significant extra revenues by renting out beds to overflowing jails in the urban counties.

  The reception desk stood in the middle of the ground floor, with the jail administration offices to the left and the sheriff’s offices to the right. I asked the woman at the desk about visiting hours for prisoners and she gave me a brochure. I would be able to see Ty in about an hour, enough time to talk to the sheriff first.

  I walked down a short corridor past the restrooms and entered a big open area with four desks in the middle and four glass-fronted offices around the perimeter.

  A lone officer sat at one of the central desks, talking on the phone. The other desks were empty. Two of the small offices were occupied, one by Dare and one by Deputy Penateka. Sheriff Hopper stood next to a printer, waiting for something colorful to emerge. When it came out, he held it up and grinned. He spotted me and came out to the bullpen. He’d made himself a flyer with a round space for a picture in the middle and the caption You’ll be Happy if you vote for Hap Hopper at the top.