by Anna Castle
“How is that possible? I thought y’all didn’t know when exactly he died.”
“Not on Friday, we didn’t. But Ty has some influential friends. The medical examiner’s office faxed the autopsy report to us this morning. Bainbridge died between 7:20 p.m. last Wednesday, when he was seen leaving the barbecue place, and noon the next day. We figure it was most likely sometime late Wednesday night.”
“You have an alibi for that whole period?” The man lived alone and Lost Hat was not exactly Times Square at night.
“I have an alibi for the whole week. I was at a seminar in Georgia. The Internet Investigations Training Program at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“After that business last January, the sheriff thought we needed to upgrade our skills.”
“He’s not wrong.” I mulled that over for a minute while disappointment battled relief. Relief won. “Well, I had to ask.”
“I would’ve been disappointed in you if you hadn’t.”
Sheriff Hopper walked into the bullpen, heading our way. He poked his head through the door, flicked a glance at me, and grinned at Dare. “Did she do it?”
“She did. She didn’t pull any punches either.”
“Goldang!” The sheriff pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, fingered through the bills, and tossed a five on Dare’s desk. He looked at me like he was judging a heifer at a livestock show. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the brass, Missy.”
“You thought wrong. Sir.” I sat up straight, torn between pride and humiliation. I had done the right thing. Did I deserve this mockery?
The sheriff laughed heartily, bending backward from the waist with his hands on his hips and his face tilted toward the ceiling. He looked like a paunchy model demonstrating the Laughter Pose.
Dare lifted up his butt and took out his own wallet. He tucked his winnings into it and restored it to his pocket, settling back into his wide chair. “Who’s next on your list?”
I glanced at the sheriff. He had made himself comfortable, leaning against the window. What a good citizen I was, helping out the authorities by keeping them entertained on a Monday morning!
I didn’t much like having him in the audience, but couldn’t exactly ask him to leave. “Well, I’ve seen Hank Roeder out at that stone house, both times I’ve been up on Mt. Keno. Do you know the place?”
Dare’s brow creased. “That old house on the hill across the road? Hank works on the 3C. Why wouldn’t he be there?”
“I don’t know. But he glared at me the other day in the parking lot at DeGroot’s. Really hostile, like he wanted to scare me.”
“Glared at you! Lock him up!” The sheriff’s shoulders shook with amusement. “He was probably flirting with you.”
“Not hardly,” I said. “And then yesterday he shot at me.”
“No, he didn’t,” the sheriff said.
I gaped at him. How the hell would he know?
Sheriff Hopper made a frowny face, shaking his head at me.
“Were you trespassing?” Dare sat forward.
“Well, sort of.” I hesitated. This part wouldn’t go over too well.
“Sort of yes, or sort of no?”
“Well…” I scratched my head and shifted in my seat. “I was taking some pictures, down there near Ty’s southeast pasture. And suddenly there was this kudzu—”
“This what?”
“A reebok?”
Dare and the sheriff exchanged glances, like they were wondering if it might be time to break out the straitjacket.
“You know what I mean. One of those African deer things they have on the 3C.”
“A gemsbok, you mean? Or a kudu?”
“Whatever. Something in the antelope department, with big spiral horns. Jake saw it too. He got under the fence and ran after it. So naturally I had to go after him.” I told them the rest of the story, knowing it sounded lame, but hoping they would give me the benefit of the doubt.
They didn’t. Dare summed it up. “You trespassed onto the 3C to get a look at that stone house, imagining you were going to find blood, I bet, take some pictures of it, and bring them back here to show us. That about right?”
“I didn’t imagine anything and I wasn’t going to go inside. Unless the door happened to be open.”
The sheriff clucked his tongue.
“When did all this happen?” Dare asked.
“Yesterday morning.”
“Oh, that’s all right then,” Dare said. “You went to a crime scene that hasn’t been released and decided to add trespassing to your list of accomplishments. Is that when Hank allegedly shot at you?”
“Not allegedly. He shot at me.” They kept focusing on the wrong thing. The point was not that I had trespassed; the point was that Hank made as good a suspect as Ty. More, since he hung around out there with a rifle and obviously had poor impulse control. Bainbridge hadn’t been shot, but the general principle applied.
The sheriff unleaned himself and wagged a fat finger at me. “If Hank Roeder had shot at you, little lady, you’d be shot. He’s the best damned hunter in this county. He was just trying to scare you, most like, to keep you off his land.”
“Moral of the story,” Dare said, “don’t trespass.”
“Folks don’t like people wandering around on their property,” the sheriff said. “You need to learn to respect those fences.”
I hated being lectured, especially in Surround Sound. “I do respect them. But Ty said they used to play back and forth all the time as kids. I thought there might be something to look at over there. That little stone house is as close to the place where we found the body as Ty’s house, you know.”
Sheriff Hopper laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Best stick to the cafe and the beauty parlor for your investigations, Penny.” He said “investigations” the way you might say “Tupperware party.” He winked at Dare and left us.
I sank back into my chair, flopping my feet out in front of me, feeling thoroughly squelched. “You don’t think Hank could be a suspect?”
Dare lifted one shoulder about a millimeter. “I can’t see the connection. Hank runs hunts at the 3C. Good ones; I’ve been on a few. They get the fat cats from Dallas, business folks that have dealings with the Caines and such. They’ve got six thousand acres over there and they stock those exotics. Not to mention the feral hogs and lots of deer, including some mighty fine bucks. It’s a year-round job and keeps him pretty busy.”
“Hm.” He made sense, but I hated to strike Hank from my list. He was the only suspect I didn’t like personally. “Can’t you at least check the alibis for the guys who live around there? Hank, for sure, and also Sid Matslar and Carson Caine? They would know the terrain and whether Ty and Diana were home. Sid and Carson own land, so I’ll bet they had cause to become annoyed with Roger Bainbridge.”
Dare had started shaking his head before I finished. “I am not going to harass people like the Matslars and the Caines because they live within shouting distance of the crime scene, which is what your theory boils down to.”
I pouted at my meager list. My Spidey sense told me Roger had been killed in a conflict involving Diana, pointing at an old flame or a secret lover, but I couldn’t argue radioactive arachnid intuitions with Deputy Dare. I would have to dig up something more substantial.
I tucked my legal pad back into my backpack, getting ready to leave. “I will be going back to the Lazy H, you know. Ty wants me to keep working.”
“He’s an optimist.”
“He’s innocent. Which means you’re going to let him go, sooner or later. You don’t have much of a case.”
“It’s not a lot, but it adds up. It would help to find Bainbridge’s car, but it’s probably sitting on a back street in San Antonio or Dallas, stripped to the frame.”
“If it is, Ty didn’t put it there. He was at a meeting in Austin the very next morning. Wasn’t he?”
“He did attend that meeting. And he
dropped the dog off at the kennel at eight-thirty.”
“Well, there you go. There’s no way Ty could drive that car to San Antonio, drop it off on the wrong side of town, and then, what? Take a cab back? Ride the bus?”
“He had a week, Penny. That car could be anywhere. But it’ll turn up, and then we’ll see what we can see.”
Chapter 12
I dropped by the studio to check on the dog before going to Ty’s arraignment. Tillie had given him a big cookie and taken him out twice. She also had a message for me. “Ty’s lawyer called. Ms. Courtney Chambers?”
I gawped at her. “Seriously? That’s her name?”
“Can you believe it?”
“She sounds like a porn star.”
“Or a furniture store.” We laughed more than the joke deserved. “Anyway,” Tillie went on, “she said she’d meet you here at one o’clock for lunch. And that you shouldn’t be late because she has to get back to Austin. She sounded kinda, you know. Bossy?”
Something to look forward to. Maybe the judge would be impressed by a bossy out-of-town lawyer.
Turned out, he wasn’t.
I sat in the fine old courtroom on the third floor of the fine old courthouse for over an hour, watching drunks and weekend brawlers get their bail assignments. When Ty’s turn came, I got to look at him, clean-shaven and tidy in a dark suit, but not speak to him. His lawyer hopped up and did her bit, but this was apparently not the forum for trotting out alternative theories.
Judge Bogusch suppressed her with a contemptuous sneer at her designer suit. She looked absolutely Law & Order, in sharp contrast to the local prosecutor, who sported cowboy boots and an oversized belt buckle.
Only two questions were asked: how serious was the crime and how great was the risk of the defendant fleeing before the trial? The answers were very serious and very great. Ms. Chambers argued that Mr. Hawkins had strong ties to the community, but since he had hardly been seen in the county for nearly fifteen years before last Christmas, the judge didn’t buy it.
He set the bail at one million dollars. I couldn’t remember how it worked exactly, but I thought that meant Ty would have to scrape up a hundred thousand in cash. I had no idea if he had it or not, but the point was moot. He banged his fist on the table and said, “No way,” loudly enough for everyone in the courtroom to hear.
His lawyer laid a hand on his arm and murmured something, probably trying to make him be quiet, but Ty pointed an angry finger at the judge. “That’s outrageous. It’s extortion. It’s bogus, Bogusch! Bogus!”
The gavel banged. The judge added a new charge of contempt of court and sent Ty right back to jail.
* * *
At one o’clock on the dot, the bell on the studio door jangled and Courtney Chambers walked in. As slender as a snake with custom-made breasts, she wore artfully restrained makeup, a silk suit, and four-inch heels. Her bevel cut mahogany hair probably cost her a hundred bucks a month. She looked as out of place in Lost Hat as a ballerina at a rodeo.
“You must be Penny.” She shifted her briefcase to her left hand and held out her right. Her grip was on the aggressive side of firm and her eyes glittered, wondering how I would take it. I gave as good as I got.
Her gaze took me in, from my cosmetics-free face to my Birkenstocks, though her smile stayed right where she’d put it when she walked in the door. The lip-liner probably helped hold it in place.
It was like meeting your top competitor before a race. You size each other up, but politely, so the coaches think you’re good sports. I gave her my best I-could-run-you-into-the-ground smile. “And you must be Courtney.”
She looked brightly around my studio. “Charming. A real Texas traditional.”
“Are you from Texas?” Her accent was Modern Standard Television.
“Houston. Although I’ve been in Austin for nearly ten years.” She shook her head. “Too long. I was on my way to D.C. for an interview when Ty called.”
That didn’t sound good. He needed a focused attorney, not a job-hunter. “You must have a lot of balls in the air right now.”
She looked me dead in the eye. “I will give Tyler’s case my full attention, until he is fully exonerated of these absurd charges.”
“Good. But I’m worried.”
“I am too.” She sounded sincere. “It is literally unbelievable. Ty’s got a temper.” She paused to roll her eyes. “But I’ve never seen him strike anyone or even menace them. He’ll pound a table, shove a chair, or go for a walk, but he does not hit people.”
I let out a sigh of relief. She might be an uptight, uptown, overdressed climber, but she was definitely on Ty’s side. We needed all the allies we could get.
“Shall we go eat?” I turned toward the door, making a face and wiggling my fingers at Tillie as I passed her. Courtney followed me out and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, gazing at the courthouse.
“Beautiful,” she said. “A perfect example of baroque architecture.”
The Long County Courthouse was one of the wedding-cake confections that were the pride of Texas counties, built in the early decades of the last century.
“Technically, that would be Romanesque.” I had expertise too. “Having my studio on this square is one of the great pleasures of my life.”
Courtney looked at me as though I had just confided to being a part-time bat wrangler. “It’s charming.”
We walked down to the Pearl Inn. “I hope the diner is okay with you. Ty’s cousin owns the place. But there’s Mexican or barbecue, if you’d rather.”
“A diner is fine. I wouldn’t expect to find a real restaurant out here.”
“Maybe when we get Ty out of jail and he gets his spa built.” I was trying, honestly. Food snobs were way down at the bottom of my list, jostling tailgaters and litterbugs.
We walked into the Pearl and enjoyed the little rush that comes from moving into over-cooled air from a sidewalk hot enough to fry fish. Courtney’s jaw dropped as she took in the decor.
I braced myself. She was going to say charming.
“Charming,” she said, struggling to get her face under control.
“Penny!” Perline sashayed through the tables to give me a hug. “And you must be Ty’s lawyer.” She hastily wiped her hand on her apron and held it out. She winced a bit at the Chambers grip and Courtney’s smile regained its strength.
Perline hadn’t wiped her hands before hugging me. That made me family. I grinned at her. She ushered us to a booth, handing a menu to Courtney, whose smile faded as she studied the options. Nothing even remotely Mediterranean. Whatever would she eat?
Perline watched her a moment, pursing her lips. “The special today is blackened catfish.”
“Didn’t the board say chicken-fried steak?”
“We ran out of that. It’s the fish now. Fresh fish.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “With hush puppies?”
Perline beamed at me. “The best in the West.”
Courtney read the menu through again, her plucked eyebrows furrowing with the difficulty of the task. At last, she looked at Perline and delivered her order in the clear tones of a tour bus traveler speaking to a retarded foreigner. “I’d like wheat toast, no butter. And an egg-white omelet with two slices of tomato. Can you manage that?”
Perline gave in and let herself look offended. “Of course.” She whisked the menu away. “Anything to drink? Ice tea?”
“I never drink anything but water,” Courtney said.
Perline rolled her eyes. She brought me my tea and plunked a glass of ice water in front of Courtney.
“Could I have some lemon, please?”
Perline put a hand on her hip. “I thought you didn’t want anything but plain water.”
Courtney flashed a smile that bordered on friendly. She might have realized that Ty’s future jury probably ate at this diner and some of them might be here at this very moment. Time to be charming. “Just a bit of lemon, if it’s not too much bother.”
Perline sighed grandly and went to get a little dish of lemon wedges. Then she disappeared into the kitchen, no doubt to tell Cracker about the princess who had come to lunch.
“Really nothing but water?” I asked. “Not even coffee in the morning?”
“Oh, coffee, of course. I meant with lunch. Or maybe a glass of wine, but they wouldn’t have that here.”
“Certainly not. Ain’t nuttin’ but moonshine out here in the boonies.”
She glared at me. I busied myself with the sweetener. This was not the time to bait the lawyer; we needed to get along, for Ty’s sake.
“It’s good to know you don’t believe it,” I said. “About Ty’s temper, I mean. Since you were married to him and all.”
She gave me a patronizing smile. If she called me ‘child,’ I would smack her right across her Maybelline cheeks. Then I swallowed a gasp of horrified shame. That was probably what had happened to Roger. I swore a solemn oath to myself: no more of that kind of thinking, not even as a joke.
“Ty and I had a perfect marriage,” Courtney said, oblivious to the tiny battle in my soul. “For about five years. We met when I was in my second year of law school and he was in his last year of B-school.” She batted her eyelashes at me. I was so surprised I batted back. “That’s business school—the graduate program.”
“I know.” I might be an artist, but I didn’t live in a hobbit hole. I knew what a B-school was. Although I had flashed on a capitol-sized apiary for a moment.
“We were both so ambitious,” she said, with a fond smile for those long-ago days. “We had the same dreams, the same goals. He would rule the software industry in Austin while I ran for state congress.”
Those sounded like different goals to me, although they both involved large amounts of money. They’d had that in common, then: greed and a lust for power.
“Sounds perfect,” I said, with as much sincerity as I could muster. If I had met Ty a few years ago, I would have turned my arty little nose up at him, luscious eyelashes and lopsided smile notwithstanding. “But it doesn’t sound much like the guy I know.”