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

by Anna Castle

  “We’ll talk about this back at the station,” the sheriff said, tilting his head toward me, signaling his men to shut the heck up in front of the killer’s naive girlfriend.

  The four men exchanged worried looks, glanced at me, shook their heads, and frowned at their feet. It was ridiculous. I had half the lawmen in the county, plus a future county commissioner, trying their best not to ruffle my girlish feelings. Maybe I should sit in the front row of the courtroom at Ty’s hearing, looking all fragile and shocked and pitiful. Maybe the judge would give him a break and let him go, for fear of wounding my bitty baby heart.

  Maybe I wouldn’t want him to.

  “I’m not going to explode.” I faced the men, turning the lens cap on my camera around and around. “I’m not going to cry either. Not now, anyway. I get it, I do. Y’all think Ty set all this up to implicate Carson. Then he sent me out here to find it, on schedule, to get himself released and get Carson locked up in his place.”

  My voice sounded shrill in my ears, but I did not cry. The top of my head might fly off and my hands might shake themselves free of my arms, but I would not cry in front of these men.

  “Now, Penny,” the sheriff said, stepping toward me with his big, flabby palms up, no doubt to pat me on the shoulder and say, “There, there.”

  I waved him off with a broad sweep of my arm. “I’ll bring you the photographs tomorrow.” I turned away from their worried faces and stalked down the road—walking, not running. Tears began to stream down my cheeks, but I held my head up and my back straight and I did not run.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday was a dark day. Not outside, of course. Outside it was a typical, sunshiny, June day in Central Texas, full of bees and birds and flowers and happy trees, dancing and singing nature’s unending song of joy. Inside my house, however, a deep, depressing gloom prevailed, especially under the covers with pillows heaped over my head.

  My thigh hurt where the barbed wire had snagged me. My arm hurt too, where they’d jabbed the needle for the tetanus shot. But neither hurt as much as my pride, whenever I thought about my stupid Old Flames list and my deluded investigation.

  What a towering fool I’d been! Penelope Trigg, the Queen of Fools; the Empress of Idiots; the Nabob of Nincompoops.

  At some point, Jake rousted me out of bed and made me take him for a walk. We went to the studio. Where else would we go? I wore a floppy hat and walked fast to avoid having to talk to anyone. We didn’t meet a single soul, but I did stub my toes on a lamppost, thanks to the hat.

  The unlit light on the answering machine signaled the lack of messages, but someone had propped a folded sheet of notepaper in the keyboard at the front desk. Tillie, of course.

  She wrote that she wouldn’t come in today because she needed to think. She might or might not come in tomorrow, depending on how the thinking went. She didn’t want to quit, not yet, but she was very definitely not happy with the way her boss had meddled in her marriage and wanted me to know that.

  Wonderful. Perfect. I’d lost my boyfriend, my only paying gig—which also happened to be my dream photography job—and my best friend in one fun-filled, action-packed week. Less than a week. With a whole week, maybe I could break a leg and burn down my house as well.

  * * *

  The next morning I woke up aching for a good, hard run through the leafy lanes of Lost Hat to burn off my crying hangover. Running gave me energy; maybe I’d keep running. I could be packed in an hour if I took only my own stuff, not Aunt Sophia’s antiques. I could load up the Hulk and go to Austin and stay with a friend, if I could find a friend with a fenced back yard. I had a dog, now. My housing requirements were stiffer.

  But what about my studio? My beautiful studio, whose floors I had sanded with my very own hands? My artwork framed on the walls, my darkroom, my computers? I’d trapped myself in this town, investing my savings and a sizeable chunk of my soul.

  I didn’t like feeling trapped. Now we’d have to run twice as far.

  I opened the front door with Jake at my side and nearly barreled into my brother Nick. “Wha-huh!” I backed up and trod on Jake’s foot. He yelped and barked at Nick, placing the blame where it belonged.

  “Pardon me, Ma’am,” Nick said. “I must have the wrong address. I was looking for a sister who doesn’t have a dog.”

  “He’s a guest. I mean, I’m taking care of him for a friend. Or he was. A friend, I mean.” Even my relationship to my dog was complicated.

  I backed into the living room. Nick gave me a one-armed hug as he negotiated the screen door and the dog and entered my humble abode. “You look awful. Rough night?”

  “Thanks ever so.”

  When I didn’t elaborate, he took himself on a mini-tour of my cluttered living room. “Holy Yard Sale, Penny! How can you live with all this stuff?”

  Nick had given up swearing two years ago, along with the speed, the coke, and the booze. Now every time I saw him he was trying on new interjections. He appeared to be on a Batman kick at present.

  “Hey, it’s a lot better than it was. I’ve moved at least half the kitsch into the back room.”

  “Half, really? Yowza.” He turned a lime green fluted vase around in his hands, frowned, and put it back on the shelf like a man distancing himself from an unsavory object. “Could be hazardous, you know. A single woman, living alone in Little Old Lady Land. Might be catching.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Busy. Artist-entrepreneur, remember? I’ll get around to the house one of these days. Besides, what am I supposed to do with all this junk?”

  “Give it away. There must be needy people out there with no kitsch to call their own.”

  “I can’t do that, not without an appraisal. What if that little shepherdess thingy is an original Whatsis? It could be valuable.”

  “Right. Because the Whatsis thingies are worth so much more than the non-Whatsis thingies.”

  We grinned at each other. I needed a friendly face right now more than anything in the world. And his face was so much like mine, with the brown eyes and the wide smile, topped by wheat-blond hair. I invented the look, being the firstborn, but he did a decent masculine version.

  “Want some coffee? Or would that mangle the alignment of your chakras?”

  Nick chuckled. “It might, but reaching for perfection is more challenging, and thus more satisfying, than maintaining the exalted state. Besides, the dark brew is legal, so thank you, I will indulge.”

  I led him to the kitchen. He sat at my chrome dinette and held his hands palms out between his knees for Jake to inspect. “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Jake.”

  He ruffled the dog’s ears and thumped his shoulders. “Jakerino, what a fine brown dog you are.” He looked sideways up at me. “He’s the dog of our childhood dreams.”

  “Isn’t he?” I took two of my infinite supply of Holland America Cruise Line coffee mugs out of the cupboard and set them on the table. “I guess he’s my dog now.”

  “You guess?”

  I shrugged. “He’s Ty’s dog.”

  “Ty, your boyfriend? Is he the one who’s no longer a friend? What’s the what, Penny?”

  I gave him the Cliff Notes version of recent events in Lost Hat while the coffeepot chuffled and dripped. Then I asked, “What brings you here? Not that I’m not glad to see you. Your timing is perfect.”

  He flashed me a grin. “I came to lend you money.”

  “I’ll take it.” He owed me, who knew how much. He used to show up at my doorstep at all hours, wasted, hungry, and broke. Back then I was Responsibility Gal, the one with the steady paycheck. Now he was pulling in big bucks designing mystic mojo video games and I was the one living hand-to-mouth.

  “Seriously? Whenever you need it. But I’m here because the folks called me. You have failed to return Mom’s calls, not once, but twice. Nor have you answered her email in a day and half. She’s assuming you’re lying in a ditch or unconscious in a hospital. I needed a break, so I said I’d buzz o
ver and look at you with my own two eyes.”

  “Mom called you because she was worried about me?”

  “And the wheel just keeps on turning.” At least he had the grace to recognize the irony.

  Enough coffee had dripped through for two mugs, so I poured and sat down opposite Nick. I doctored mine with cream and sugar; he took his black. He tasted it and smacked his lips. “Ah. Coffee from a can. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything so regulation.”

  “You can’t get fancy coffee in Lost Hat. You have to order it online or bring extra bags from the city.” I sipped and stared out the window. I loved my little breakfast nook. It had windows on two sides of the table, so I could look at my green back yard while I drank my coffee. I liked thinking about what I could do out there: build a patio or a deck, plant some native shrubs, hang a hammock or two.

  I’d never owned a back yard before. It made me feel rooted, like I’d unpacked my last box. And now I had a dog to run around in it and everything.

  “I’m okay, physically. And fiscally, holding my own. But this situation…Roger’s murder. I think Ty really did it. And worse, I think he set me up to find the body and tried to frame his neighbor.”

  Nick whistled softly. “That’s harsh, Penny. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Sympathy without scolding—this is why we have siblings. “It pretty much sucks all the way around. The worst part is I’ve made such a fool of myself, barging around town hassling people, trying to come up with alternative suspects.”

  “Detective Trigg, eh? You’re all, ‘Where were you on the night of June the twenty-first?’ Tell me, do you have a magnifying glass or do you rely on your finely-honed intuitions?”

  Mockery, but with sympathy. Some of the knots in my chest loosened and I laughed. That brought a prickle of tears to my eyes, but good tears, like a release of emotional toxins. “What was I thinking?”

  “You thought someone would break down under the power of your penetrating glare and confess.”

  “Nobody did, though. And meanwhile the evidence kept piling up against Ty.” The laughter died, replaced by another stab of humiliation. “He really played me, the son of a bitch.”

  “You’re loyal, like the rest of our tribe. Your motives were good. You’re not responsible for his deeds, Penny.”

  “A fool, but an honest fool. I know. But all that sneaking around, planting incriminating evidence, sending those phony emails…It doesn’t seem like the guy I thought I knew.”

  “Whoa-ho-ho! Back up! ‘Sneaking around planting incriminating evidence?’ You didn’t mention any of that.” He got up, stepping nimbly around Jake, who had sprawled across the middle of the floor. He grabbed the coffeepot and refilled our mugs. “You’d better tell me the story in full detail.”

  “It’s a long story, Nickelodeon.”

  “I got all day, Penny-lope. That’s why I’m here.”

  So I told him the whole story, starting from the beginning, when I first met Ty. He’d heard some of the early parts, but he let me establish the context in my own way. Nick was a good listener, a skill he’d probably acquired in Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He didn’t interrupt until I got through the part about finding Roger’s body on Mt. Keno.

  “Let’s go out there.” He stood up and did a Half Moon to stretch his back. “I’d like to see the scene. I’ll do my Monk impression and catch something everybody else missed.” He held his hands out like he was framing my kitchen counters. Mr. Monk does Tai Chi in an over-kitsched kitchen.

  I groaned “I don’t want to go back out there. Bad things keep happening to me on that ranch.”

  “Yeah, but this time you’ll have me with you. I’ll stun the villains with my Warrior Pose.” He demonstrated, standing in the channel between the sink and the range, feet planted close around Jake’s body. Jake’s eyebrows twitched anxiously, but he stayed down. “We can’t sit around here all day. I drove all the way out to the boonies; I want to get outdoors. Let’s go swim in that spring you told me about.”

  “Oh, you don’t know, Nick. There’s bulls and hogs and rednecks out there. Mean ones. I haven’t even gotten to the exciting parts.”

  “You can tell me in the car. Besides, what good is a nature photographer who’s afraid to go out in the country?”

  He had a point. So we packed up all the snacks and portable beverages we could find. I put my swimsuit on under my hiking clothes and grabbed a stack of towels and my sun hat. And my camera, of course.

  “I get to drive the Hulk,” Nick said. “Let me move my car.”

  His iridescent blue sports car was parked in my driveway behind the Hulk. It looked like a dragonfly nudging a cow patty.

  “I want to drive the jazzy little sports car,” I whined.

  “No way, Bay-bay. I’m not risking the Corvette on your ragged ranch roads. It’s the Hulk for us.”

  We climbed into the cab, dog in the middle. Nick twisted the wheel and made boyish vrooming noises while I stowed the towels and pack behind the seat and buckled my seat belt.

  “Hey, Pen. Do you realize this truck is older than we are?”

  “I know. It’s my new mentor. Sturdy, reliable…”

  “Low maintenance, resistant to change…”

  I told the rest of my long story on the way out to the ranch. As we drove past Ty’s house, Nick clucked his tongue. I thought he was commenting on the crime scene tape still sagging around the front porch, but he said, “It’s hard to believe Starmaker Tyler Hawkins lives in that dump. I’d pictured him in something more Architectural Digest. He isn’t one to scrimp on image.”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “I wish. He’s a legend in Austin technology circles. If Hawkins agreed to come in on your project, you were almost guaranteed to get uber-rich. You broke out the champagne and did the Victory Macarena up and down the hall.”

  He made a trumpet noise with his lips, doing the Macarena in his seat. I begged him to stop. We Triggs are a visual people. We are not gifted in the musical domain.

  We stopped long enough to change places. I took Nick on the ten-dollar tour, pointing out features of interest as we passed. One major feature was Old Blackberry, back in his own pasture, placidly browsing the sparse grass. He didn’t even glance at us as we idled in front of the securely fastened gate. He was totally faking it, though. He was way too casual, larruping up lashings of grass with his fat tongue, like he didn’t even know I was there.

  I kept my eyes on the bull as I told Nick about the guy in the white straw hat. “I barely saw him, if I saw him. I probably imagined it.”

  “If you think you saw it, you saw it. You’ve got a camera in your head.”

  He looked past me, surveying the terrain to the west. He turned and looked through the rear window and then moved his head to intercept my line of sight. His eyes gleamed and his lips curled in a smug smile. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  “What picture?” I shifted my head to look past him at the bull again, but he countered my move, holding my eyes. “What?” I hated this game.

  “Where’s the glitch in the story?”

  “Nick, if you have an observation to make, make it. I’m too stressed out to play guessing games.”

  “If I were a big black bull and my gate magically opened before me, would I walk up that dusty road—” He tilted his head toward the road behind us. “Around the bend, and down to the one pasture guaranteed not to have any grass in it? Or would I mosey across that lush swale right in front of me to go visit those nubile young heifers over there?”

  I turned my head to follow his gaze and saw the rest of the herd grazing within sight of the gate, beyond a gently rolling swath of knee-high grass and wildflowers.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like that kind of grass.”

  Nick rolled his eyes.

  “Or maybe he doesn’t like girls.”

  “Of course. He’s gay. That explains everything. He’s bound to be conflicted about it, since bulls are the very symbol
of masculinity. That’s why he walked away from the tasty grass and the luscious heifers and attacked you. Overcompensation. It makes perfect sense.” He flapped a hand at the steering wheel. “Drive on, James.”

  “No, you’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But why didn’t Ben notice? He should know something about animal behavior. More than we do.”

  “Hm, let’s think. Could it be because he’s the one that let the bull out and led him down to your pasture? Because he’s Suspect Number Two and he wanted to scare you out of asking any more questions?”

  I closed my eyes and groaned. “Back to the ping-pong match. And it’s Ty; now it’s Ben; no, wait! Hawkins is pulling back into the lead.”

  “I know one person who definitely didn’t let that bull out.”

  “Really, Mr. Monk? Who?”

  “Man, you must be stressed. It’s staring you right in the face. The guy in the slammer, dimwit. Your boy Ty.”

  Chapter 20

  I’d parked in the sun and between the two full-sized adults and the fur-bearing mammal, the truck was getting a mite stuffy. Gusts of wind tossed tree branches around on the hilltops, but precious little breeze made it inside the cab. The coffee had laid a veneer of jitter over my crying-jag headache and sweat glued my T-shirt to the seat.

  I put the truck in gear. “No more thinking. Let’s go for a swim.”

  Leaping Springs was a secret paradise, hidden in the northwest corner of the Lazy H. The limestone cap of the hill had collapsed, creating a wide circular well backed by sheer walls, about thirty feet in diameter and about twelve feet deep in the center. The water shimmered an inviting Coke-bottle green. Knotted roots of an ancient cypress formed a miniature pier into the pool, perfect for bare feet. The water bubbled up from a spring at a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees. It flowed east into a creek that eventually fed into the Mariposa River.

  Jake hit the water first, having no clothes to shuck. I was seconds behind him, leaving my outerwear in a heap on a flat rock above the beach. When the water struck my toes, a welcome chill flashed through me. I eeked and squealed until the water reached my knees and I couldn’t stand it anymore, then I dove in and swam underwater. The cut on my thigh stung at first, but the cool, clean water soothed it, dissolving my headache and the knots in my back as a bonus.