by Anna Castle
I found a spot where my toes barely touched the sandy bottom and stood moving my arms in slow arcs to stay upright. The water smelled like fresh rain.
Nick had climbed up on the ledge that ran part way around the back wall. “Banzai!” He cannonballed into the middle of the pool, splashing water in my face and rocking my bliss. Banzai was the battle cry we’d adopted during the year we were stationed in Japan. We’d kept it going for a couple more years in the Philippines, where we liked to play Forgotten Soldier, stumbling around on the beach, discovering strange modern inventions like plastic cups and flip-flops.
The three of us paddled around, exploring the pool. “This place is awesome,” Nick said. “I totally get the spa idea now. This pool alone will draw people like—”
“Bees to a bake sale. I know. Except now there isn’t going to be a spa.”
“Sure there is. Or there could be. A little prison time doesn’t slow down your modern CEO. In some circles, it counts as a recommendation.”
“Are you serious?” In all my miserable imaginings last night, it never occurred to me that Ty could serve his time and come back to start over as if nothing had happened. “Don’t they take your property away when they convict you of a felony?”
“Not unless you stole it.” Nick pulled himself onto a rock and stood in one smooth motion. When had my brother gotten so buff? He used to look like a scrawny junkie; now he was all sleek muscles and glowing skin. I needed to get some updated pictures of him.
He struck a Pioneer Pose with one hand shading his brow. “It’s the land, young Penelope. The Land is Our Heritage.” It would have been more impressive if he hadn’t been wearing sopping wet boxer shorts with pink and yellow fishies on them.
He performed a flawless Sun Salute and then grabbed an apple out of the snack pack we’d dropped by the towels. He sat on the edge of his rock, dabbling his toes in the water. He launched a splash in my direction and I splashed him back.
Nick said, “Ty probably won’t be gone for more than a couple of years. He’s charged with manslaughter, right? You should ask that lawyer, but I think the max is only something like fifteen years.”
“Only!”
I undid my braid and dove under the water to smooth back my hair. I waded out, re-braiding as I walked. Jake followed me and pawed up a cool patch of sand in the shade for himself. I grabbed a couple of towels and spread one of them over my rock. Lying back with my head on a folded towel and one arm crossed over my eyes, I let the sun warm the gooseflesh from my skin.
The only sound was Nick crunching his apple and the riffle of wind in the tops of the trees. The sun was pressing me into the warm rock, smoothing out the kinks in my back.
“Can I throw this apple core in the woods, or do I have to pack it out?”
“Throw it,” I murmured. “A critter’ll eat it.”
I heard the swoosh-plop of the apple core landing in the woods above the creek bed and Nick’s feet shifting pebbles in the direction of the snack pack.
“He won’t get the max, though,” he said. “He’ll have an extreme lawyer. Say he gets six years. He could be out in three.”
“That’s not much.”
“It’s nothing. He might not even get six. If they can paint it as an accident, he could be out this time next year.”
“No way.” I sat up. Hot now. “It wasn’t an accident. The autopsy report will show that. He hit the guy more than once, Nick.”
“Ugh. Was he drunk?”
“He doesn’t drink; not much, anyway. Shades of the old man and all that. Plus Diana’s trying to stay sober, so they don’t keep booze in the house.” I waded back to my spot in the pool, making circles underwater with my arms.
“It’s hard to picture,” Nick said. “I don’t know the guy, but I’ve never heard any gossip about Ty Hawkins having a bad temper. And that kind of thing gets around. The year before I started at MageMatica, they had this manager that used to pitch these major fits. People said he used to get so mad his face would turn bright red and his neck cords would stand out like a Cardassian.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got fired. You can’t let the suits go rampaging around, rattling the talent. It slows up the work.”
Now I was cold again. I snagged a bottle of water from the snack pack on the way back to my sunning rock.
“Which is why I don’t get it,” Nick continued. He tucked the Clif Bar wrapper back in the pack and started in on the cookies. “Ty Hawkins is famous for being cool in a crisis. Here we are, the night before the big demo and nothing works. Does he go around knocking people’s heads together? No. He sends out for pizza and pumps everybody’s energy up, telling them what geniuses they are.”
“That sounds like the guy I know.” I settled back into Sloth Pose. “Or thought I knew. But people can be very different at home from how they are at work.”
“True. You could keep working for him, though.”
“Three years from now?”
“He can keep the project going from the inside. He could hire a manager or work through his lawyer. The grass is going to grow, wherever he is. I’ll bet he’ll want you to keep on documenting.”
I sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Last night I seriously considered packing up and leaving town.”
“A time-honored strategy for the Army brat. But I thought you liked it out here in Hicksville.”
“I love it. Having the run of this place, cruising out to shoot whatever I want, whenever I want, with no crowds or admission fees.”
“Hard to beat.”
“I like the town too. That’s why I kept coming back to visit Aunt Sophia. I love running around the square every morning. I love walking to work. And I deeply love my studio.”
“You took a risk, moving out here. Money-wise, I mean.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. But so far, so good. I think I can make it, even without Ty’s job. The portrait business is going okay and I have an inkling that commissioner guy might hire me to do a photo spread of his ranch. It’s big, they run hunts and stuff. He says he wants to promote tourism, which sounds like a photo op to me. And I can design websites and start going around the Market Days fairs with posters and stuff.”
“It’s a living,” Nick said, “but is it art?”
“I find time for the art.” I turned sideways, propping myself up with a folded towel under my elbow, working on that well-rounded tan. “More here than in Austin, and on my own terms. I had to work overtime at Monster Wedding Studio to make the rent and commuting gobbled up the best part of the day. The traffic gets worse every year.”
“You should try it on a bike. Seriously scary!”
“Mostly though, the noise in my head from other artists drove me batty. Trends sweep through the art world, but most people are oblivious to how fashion-driven their own work is. ‘It’s pretty, Penny, but it’s not political enough. It’s not provocative. Where’s the anger?’”
Nick grinned. “You’re facilitating the capitalist hegemony by pandering to a bourgeois conception of beauty.”
“Exactly. I need to find my own vision. There’s something…I don’t have it yet, but there’s something in the intersection of the natural, the agricultural, and the creative…”
“Something like an eco-dude ranch and spa.”
“Well, yeah.”
I suddenly remembered that I didn’t have any sunscreen on my chest or legs. Enough roasting for this little white girl. I got up, put on my T-shirt, and stood with my feet in the water, letting the chill rise up my body.
“This project has been incredible for me already. I’m seeing things I never noticed before. It’s intriguing and challenging. I thought I might even get a book out of it.”
“You don’t have to be sleeping with the guy to do your book.”
I turned smooth pebbles with my toes, considered Nick’s words. I truly did love this place—the pool, the county, the town. I still had faith in the dream of making a l
iving and making my art, my way, in my own studio. Even if I could afford to move, even if I could find another situation as good as this one, I would always know I had run away when trouble turned up, instead of digging in and defending my dream.
“Okay,” I said. “If there’s still a job when all this gets resolved, however it gets resolved, I’ll do it.”
My tummy rumbled. Life-changing decisions burned a lot of calories. I searched the pack, but there was nothing left but an apple and a couple of Milk Bones. “You ate everything.”
“You had cereal.”
“That was hours ago.” I considered the Milk Bones—they were crunchy and nutritious—but opted for the apple. “Let’s go.”
Jake jumped to his feet, shook the sand off his back, and splashed back into the pool with his tail held high.
“Oh, great,” Nick said. “I vote the wet dog rides in back.”
I studied the light reflecting off the green pool onto the gray rock wall. “Someday, I’m going to get the perfect shot of this place.”
Nick raised a finger high over his head. “But it is not this day. Let’s go look at the scene of the crime.”
* * *
We parked in the middle of the field on top of Mt. Keno. Nick did a slow three-sixty with his arms spread wide. “Now that’s a view!”
His reaction pleased me as much as if I had built the landscape myself. Sunrise and sunset offered better light. The noon glare tended to flatten the contours of the hills and valleys. But cloud caravans cast shifting shadows and the wind sent riffles through the trees and turned the blades of the windmill, which added interest.
“Ty’s going to build a yoga pavilion up here.”
“Sweet.” Nick looked up at the windmill approvingly. “Hey, I should check my mail.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and waved it at me. “Got my own Blackberry.”
“Very funny.”
He typed rapidly with his thumbs and I took a few pictures of him. He looked so urbane in his high-fashion shades, his ethnic cotton trousers, and his hip Hawaiian shirt, standing on the top of the windswept hill with his sleek black gadget. He could have been in one of those ads that are so suave you can’t figure out what they’re selling.
He flipped his phone shut and flashed a big smile at the camera. “One for the folks.”
“Do you have unlimited data?” I liked to hear about the latest toys, even though I couldn’t afford them. I’d switched to basic service, calls and text only, pay as you go. I didn’t miss the extras—much. “You must have a good service provider. People say the signal is pretty dismal out here.”
“Not on Ty Hawkins’ home place.” He jerked his chin at the windmill. “See that little black zigzaggy thing? That’s a wireless antenna.”
“I thought it was a lightning rod.”
Nick laughed heartily. “Foolish girl. Why would you care if lightning struck your non-functioning windmill?”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying you can send email from up here, through Ty’s service?”
“Of course.”
“How did you log into his account?”
“I didn’t. I logged into his guest account.”
“Guest account!” I gaped at him. “Guest account! Why didn’t anybody mention a guest account before?”
Nick gaped back, but then he said, “Ah! The messages from the dead guy.”
“Could someone have sent them from the guest account?”
“No, they’d have to log in as Diana, if they came from her account. But they wouldn’t have any trouble connecting or finding the login page.”
Ty had said it wouldn’t be hard for someone who knew her moderately well to figure out her login and password. “Do you have to be right under the zigzaggy thing?”
“No, it’s line of sight. If I can see the antenna, I can connect. If that’s your key piece of evidence, you need to go back to the storyboard. Look.” He pointed back up at the windmill. “There’s your antenna, on top of the highest hill in the area, right? Pretend it’s a bird—a far-sighted eagle. What can it see from up there?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. “That house down there.” He pointed at Sid’s half-built house. “If that guy’s a cheapskate, he’ll put a repeater in his attic and coast off Ty’s service.”
“And the stone house too, right?” I pointed east.
“And the gate down there and Ty’s house. Pretty much everywhere we can see.”
Something cheerful turned a back flip under my heart. “All this communication stuff has been driving me crazy. Supposedly, Ty made some calls on Roger’s phone to Carson Caine, not leaving messages, to make it look like Roger tried to call Carson, presumably to demonstrate some connection between them.”
“What’s supposed to be the point of all that? To keep people from looking for Roger?”
“I guess. But in that case, why make sure Jake and I dig him up?”
Nick shrugged. “He would have made the calls when he stashed the car. Then sent the emails sometime later. Maybe he changed his mind about his strategy.”
“Twice? First, frame Carson. Then, make it look like Roger’s out of town. Then, no, oops—let’s go back to Plan A.”
We stared at each other for a long moment.
“I also don’t understand the car business.” I walked toward the eastern edge of the hill. Nick and Jake followed me. “Look.” I pointed down toward the road and the trees behind. “You can see the crime scene tape where the car was.” They had wound yellow tape all around the area with cut branches and car-crushed shrubbery. That stuff was getting to be quite a feature around here. I snapped a couple of shots for the heck of it.
Jake wandered down the slope, following the path we’d taken a few days ago. Nick stood with his hands resting on the small of his back, looking from Ty’s house to the place where the car had been and back up to the stone enclosure under the windmill.
“What’s the theory? That Ty and the real estate guy had a big fight down there at the house and Ty hit him, knocking him dead? Then he brought the body up here in the Gator. They didn’t find any blood in the house, right?”
“Right. And they looked; up here too. There was a lot in the back of the car, though. He must have been put in there right after he died.”
Nick drew in a sharp breath. “Sad. Poor guy. Then he was buried that way, right? You found him with his knees drawn up.”
“Yeah.” Then it struck me. “Why would there be blood in the car and in the Gator?”
“Maybe he put him in the car for a while, while he figured out what to do.”
“And then moved him to the Gator, wrapping the towel around his head.”
“But he wouldn’t be bleeding anymore by then, because, hello? He’d be dead.”
We blinked at each other. “Things do not add up.”
Nick grinned at me. “They really don’t. Your boyfriend may be innocent after all.”
I felt like dancing the Dance of Victory. So I did, holding on to my hat to keep it from blowing off while I hopped and kicked. Jake galloped up the slope to help me celebrate.
Nick watched me with a dry expression. “I’d stick to photography. Let’s walk through the whole scenario. Here I am, a wealthy venture capitalist, planning to build a high-concept resort on the old family homestead. My useless space cadet of a sister is giving me grief and getting in my way. We have a galaxy-class fight and she storms out of the house.”
He paced around the barren field while he talked. Jake trotted alongside him, trying to get the hang of the new game. “Then the biggest pain in my butt drives up and starts getting in my face. We argue. I haul off and let him have it. Pow! I knock him to the ground, where his head happens to land on a handy rock.”
“And then you pick him up and do it again, twice.”
Nick shook a finger at me. “That’s right. Luckily, there are rocks a-plenty, everywhere he falls.”
“Which there aren’t, if this is happening in the yard in front of Ty’s
house. It’s all mud and gravel and leaves. The big rocks get chunked into the woods.”
“Also, you’d think there’d be blood thick on the ground somewhere.”
“Which they found no trace of.”
“If they looked. Doesn’t sound like these yokels have been doing their jobs very well.”
“They’re not yokels, Nick.” My brother still had authority issues. “The sheriff isn’t stupid and the deputies have good training. But they’re used to crimes where the guy is standing right there saying, ‘Oops.’ This is Penateka’s first big case and he’s determined to do everything right. He said they looked and I believe him.”
“Ms. Citizen, so trusting. But okay, let’s say they looked. Has it rained?”
“Nope.”
“Then where’s the blood?”
I couldn’t answer that.
Nick raised both hands in an elaborate shrug. “A major point, but what the heck? Let’s move on. Here I am, with a dead developer on my hands. What to do? What to do? Should I call 911? Get an ambulance? Because, dammit, Jim. I’m a businessman, not a doctor. He might still be alive for all I know.”
I groaned. “Poor Roger! I hope he wasn’t. Still alive, I mean, while they were doing all this.”
“Ugly business, however it went down. Anyway, I suffer some sort of brain fusion and decide that no, I must hide the body, so that no one should ever know what evil lurks within my seemingly placid breast.”
“So you say, ‘Aha! I’ll put him into his own car!’”
“It is right in front of me, here in my own front yard. Maybe I’m thinking I’ll get rid of both the car and the body in one fell swoop. I can dump them into a nearby arroyo and walk away, dusting my hands and cackling with fiendish glee.”
“But you don’t do that,” I said. “You wait until rigor sets in and the body is stuck in a fetal position. I wonder how long that takes?”