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

by Anna Castle

  “Let’s find out.” Nick whipped out his phone and flicked his thumbs across the keys. In a few seconds, he said, “According to Wikipedia, rigor mortis sets in about three to four hours after clinical death, with full rigor being in effect at about twelve hours, and eventually subsiding to relaxation at about thirty-six hours.”

  I scowled at his luxury device. “I wish I could still afford a smartphone.”

  Nick chuckled as he tucked the phone back in his pocket. “You do have a birthday coming up. But if I solve your crime for you, you won’t deserve another present.”

  “I’m solving the crime. You’re my technical assistant.”

  “The faithful sidekick?”

  “No, that’s Jake. You’re more like the outside consultant, except that you don’t get paid.”

  “Hm. I need to talk to my agent. Now, where were we?”

  “Roger was curled up in the back of his car for three to four hours. Longer maybe, if full rigor means he can’t be budged out of that position by the time he gets buried.”

  “I think it does. Okay. Here I am, Mr. Big Shot, worried about my reputation, with a stiff tucked away in a big red vehicle. What do I do? I chill for three to four hours or maybe longer.” He shook his head. “I’m having trouble with my motivation here, Boss. What do I do for three to four hours?”

  “Maybe you take a nap. You’re exhausted from the stress of it all.”

  “More like I’d be pumped up with adrenaline. Murder never makes people sleepy in the movies.” He stared down at the yard in front of Ty’s house. “Maybe I get a shovel and dig up the blood-soaked dirt to scatter it in the woods, and then tramp around smoothing out the mess. That could take a few hours, if I were thorough about it.”

  “And you pick up the bloody rocks, which weren’t there in the first place, and carefully wash them with soap.”

  “Yes, I do. Because I’m a tidy guy.”

  “Okay, we’ve found something for him to do. Not plausible, but possible, in a pinch. But the clock is ticking. You’ve got a meeting in Austin at nine o’clock and it’s a three hour drive. And you have to drop Jakey off at Doggy Day Care on the way.”

  “Doggy Day Care! Aren’t we the pampered pet?” He bent to pat Jake on the head. “Okay, let’s see. Somehow, I am stricken with remorse and decide not to leave the obnoxious developer deep in some lonely canyon for the rest of eternity. Instead, I will bury him properly in a place with a view. So I take him out of the car and load him onto the Gator.”

  He started making putt-putt noises, turning his hands like he was driving, and jogged over to the stone enclosure. The yellow tape still sagged around the irregular broken wall. Evidently nobody was in a hurry to clean up the scene. Maybe the authorities left it for the land owners: one last, sad task.

  Nick walked around inside the enclosure, stepping carefully over the tape. Jake sat and watched him with his head cocked to one side.

  Nick looked at me over his shoulder. “I must have quite a sentimental streak to bury a guy I famously did not like here in the old Indian graveyard, scene of so many happy childhood games.”

  “How long would it take, do you think?”

  Nick stared at the ground. “I have no idea. I’ve never dug a hole in my life.”

  “Me neither.” That seemed funny somehow. Did normal people—by which I mean non-Army—know about hole-digging? “Let’s say an hour. Ty’s in great shape.”

  “What time did the sister leave?”

  I shrugged. “Sometime after nine. Say nine-thirty, to give her time to get clear. Unless the theory is that she was on her way out when Roger turned up and assaulted her in the driveway, with Ty watching, which sounds really awkward, now that I walk it through.”

  “Uh-huh.” Nick nodded. “Now you’re getting it. I can’t see the sister anywhere in the Ty-based scenario. Unless we roll all the way back to the house, before she leaves. Then Roger could come into the house and they have a free-for-all.”

  “But then there would be blood in the house, which there isn’t.”

  “If you believe the cops, which you are apparently willing to do. Okay, I’m not believing any of it anymore, but let’s take it all the way to the end. It’s now around nine thirty. I crack the guy’s skull and take my four-hour nap. That puts me up here after one a.m., digging by the light of the moon, assuming there was a moon, or the headlights of the Gator would do. I put the body in the hole, hold my hat over my heart, and say a few words.”

  “But first you clip Diana’s charm bracelet around his wrist and remove his boots, although you probably took the boots when you put the body in the car.”

  “You didn’t mention any bracelet. That’s very weird. Why would I do such a creepy thing?”

  I shrugged. “All I can think of is that it drags Diana into the picture. Like she’s the reason Roger was killed or maybe to implicate her…”

  “This is the theory? That Ty tried to frame his own sister?” Nick blew out a long raspberry. “How is he still in jail?”

  “He did shove the sheriff and say rude things to the judge during his arraignment.”

  Nick grinned broadly. “I like this guy! I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to wait three years.” I grinned too. Ty would not go to prison. Once we spun this story for his lawyer, she’d be able to get a reasonable doubt on the grounds of sheer unbelievability.

  “Okay,” Nick said. “One last thing. I’ve buried the body, so I go back down in the Gator to figure out what to do with the dad-blasted car.”

  “It’s after two by now,” I pointed out. “You don’t have time to drive it to a canyon anymore, not if you have to walk back.”

  “Really? It seems like there’s canyons everywhere out here.”

  “On private property. You’d have to drive around via the county road and get through a gate somewhere.”

  “But I have my own private property, acres and acres of it. Why can’t I hide the car somewhere out here and deal with it after my meeting in Austin? I’ve hidden the body. I’ve had my clever idea about the emails, even if I haven’t sent them yet. People will think old Roger’s left town. What’s the rush?”

  “I don’t know.” I paced around the windmill, looking north and west. The country grew more rugged between here and Leaping Springs. “You could drive the car into a canyon off that way and then later dump boulders on top of it. It’d never be found. You could make sure of that, because it’s your place and you control what gets developed where.”

  Nick shrugged wide, raising both hands. “How is that not obvious, especially to me, the owner of this fine land? Instead, I put the big red SUV on my neighbor’s ranch beside a road to a hunting cabin where someone is bound to see it sooner or later.”

  “That’s what I was thinking last night—that Ty put it there on purpose, to make sure I would be the one to find it. He sent me to that particular pasture to take pictures. He practically told me to go find the damn car.”

  “But why?”

  “He told me that too, sort of. He said someone was trying to frame him, when in fact, he was trying to frame Carson. Or that’s what I thought yesterday. And I think it’s what the cops still think.”

  “A strike against the cops,” Nick said. “Why not leave the body in the car, in that case? Why hide the body and leave the car?”

  “The new idea is that he engineered the whole event. He planned for me to find the body and then later for me to find the car. But maybe he didn’t figure out what to do with the car until after he buried the body.”

  “He had at least four hours to think it through.” Nick shook his head. “No way, Penny. None of this adds up. You’re not going to convince me that Tyler Hawkins, the Wizard of Silicon Hills, spent the whole night spazzing around without once stopping to have a cup of coffee and think the plan through. ‘I’ll push the car and the body off a cliff somewhere. No, I’ll bury the body and hide the car somewhere else. No, I’ll make it look like t
he neighbors did it. Oh, no! Now somebody has to find the body or the story will never unfold as planned!’”

  “When you put it that way…”

  Nick shook his head again. “If he was tripping, maybe. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboudit. And why would he send email to himself if he was framing somebody else? Hawkins is in the industry, for crying out loud! You think he wouldn’t know better than to use his own account?”

  “Even I would know that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Okay, no, I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t do the email in the first place. I wouldn’t do any of it. I’m in good shape too, but just walking through this wears me out. He would have been up all night shifting dirt, lugging a stiff corpse around, finding the key to the 3C in the shed, driving vehicles hither and yon, cutting branches. And then a three hour drive to a meeting where everybody said he looked the same as usual.”

  “He didn’t do it. I’ll bet you a Blackberry he didn’t do it.”

  I tucked my tongue in my cheek. “You do mean a phone, right?”

  He chuckled.

  “You’re on.” I crossed my fingers. I couldn’t afford to pay up if I lost. “But we don’t have another suspect who makes any more sense. Dare is a smart guy too, and also a trained law enforcement officer. He loves training, in fact. He’s probably had courses in rigor mortis, identity theft, you name it. If he wanted to frame someone, he’d be consistent about it.”

  “What about the BullMeister?” Nick asked. “His marriage was on the line. Let’s say he’s having a secret affair with Diana. She gets mad fighting with Ty and runs off to meet Whosis—”

  “Ben.”

  “Ben, in their secret love nest, wherever that is. Somehow Roger the Developer is there too. The men fight over her and Roger falls down dead. Ben can’t call 911, because then the secret love affair would come out and his wife would leave him.”

  “Worse than that.” I’d forgotten a crucial detail about Ben. “He told me he was studying for his real estate license, so he could get a job with Tillie’s uncle. If she divorced him, he could kiss that career goodbye. Along with half the town. The Espinoza clan is large and closely knit.”

  “Even better. He’s got a lot to lose. So they’re off somewhere that’s not here when he kills Roger. Now it makes sense for him to hide him in the car and wait for hours before he buries him.”

  “He has to wait for Ty to leave.”

  “Yes, he does. Because Jake the faithful watchdog would bark if anyone drove past the house, wouldn’t you, Jako?” Jake wagged his tail in the affirmative. “But why does he send the bogus emails?”

  “To confuse things and make people think Roger is still alive.”

  “Exactly. The more delay, the better for the BullMeister.”

  I should have done another victory dance, but I wasn’t up to it. Get my guy out and put Tillie’s guy in. Is that what friends were for?

  A shadow fell across the field as a long bank of clouds moved over the sun. “We may actually get some weather,” I said. Rain in June was a treat, unless it turned into hail or tornadoes.

  “I hope it doesn’t rain on me on the drive home.”

  “You’re not going to stay the weekend?”

  He shook his head. “Gotta work. Worlds to build, monsters to slay. I came to a stopping point yesterday and decided to take a personal day.”

  A gust of wind nearly tore my hat from my head. It carried a foul stench with it. “Ugh! It smells like cat piss up here.” I hoped it wasn’t really cat piss, because it would have to be a mighty big cat. I’d never heard of any cougars out around here.

  I turned toward Nick, holding my hat on with my hand on top of my head. He was staring at the stone house with his eyes narrowed and a grim smile on his lips. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s move. Get in the truck.”

  “Why?”

  “Isn’t that the house where the redneck was? The guy that shot at you for no reason?”

  “Yep.”

  “He had a reason.” He whistled for Jake and headed for the truck. We climbed into the cab and I started the engine.

  “That’s not cat piss, Penny. It’s anhydrous ammonia. You’ve got a meth lab upwind from your yoga pavilion.”

  Chapter 21

  I used Nick’s phone to call Deputy Penateka when we got close enough to town. He said he was on his way over to the diner for a late lunch and that we should meet him there. We parked at the studio to leave Jake in the air-conditioning.

  Nick took himself on a tour, making complimentary noises, stopping to reminisce in front of familiar pictures. When he pointed at the ceiling and said, “Let’s go up and look at the junk collection,” I knew he was stalling.

  “He’s not going to arrest you, coward. You haven’t done anything.”

  “Neither has Ty.” He had a point. A tiny pinhead of a point.

  We walked down the street in silence. As I laid my hand on the door to the cafe, I turned to him and grinned. “You’re in for a fun surprise.”

  I got the reaction I wanted. Nick’s jaw dropped and his eyes popped as he took in the decor. “Holy SeaWorld, Batman! We’re underwater!”

  Perline met us with a tight little smile that relaxed into a welcoming grin when I introduced my brother. Had she thought I was stepping out on Ty with a near-identical twin? I waved at Cracker behind the pass-through, pointed at Nick, and mouthed the word “brother.” He grinned and saluted us with a spatula.

  Three of the tables were occupied by Lost Hatters lingering over pie and coffee. They all seemed to be having trouble with their eyes: lots of blinking and darting glances. I said, “Howdy,” in a general way as I followed Perline and Nick to the round table in the corner in front of the window. Penateka was getting his hands around a three-story Pearl Burger.

  I made the introductions, while Nick and I sat. We ordered chicken fried steaks with all the trimmings. Perline brought our iced teas and stayed to listen while I told Penateka about the stink coming from the stone house that Nick had identified as methamphetamine production.

  Perline gasped, put her hand to her mouth, and scurried off to tell Cracker.

  “How would you know what a meth lab smells like?” Penateka asked.

  Nick met his eyes squarely. “I have a checkered past. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Fair enough.” Penateka quirked a micro-smile. “Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised. We’ve had our eye on Hank Roeder for a while, but haven’t been able to get anything solid on him. We can’t snoop around on the 3C without a warrant and if he’s selling around here, we haven’t been able to catch him at it.”

  “He probably goes to the cities,” Nick said. “Bigger market, less risk.”

  “More important,” I said, “it gives Hank a motive to kill Roger. He could have found out about the meth lab the same way we did. Or maybe he was a customer and they got into a fight about money or whatever.”

  Penateka frowned and nodded. “He might have threatened to sell him out.”

  “Or maybe the guy assumed he would,” Nick said. “Meth heads are totally paranoid.”

  “If Hank killed him,” I said, “burying him on Mt. Keno makes perfect sense. It makes sense he would be in that curled-up position too. He could’ve left the body in the car while he waited for Ty to leave. He wouldn’t want to bury him on the 3C for fear that dogs would find him come hunting season.”

  “It’s always hunting season on the 3C,” Penateka said. “You can shoot feral hogs and exotics on your own land whenever you want.”

  “There you go, then. Signed, sealed, and delivered.” I sat back in my chair and smiled. I felt pretty clever, solving the biggest crime in Lost Hat history. And soon Ty would be back out in the world where I could play with him.

  Penateka worked on his burger and home fries in silence for a while, his gaze turned aimlessly toward the window.

  Nick flicked me a what-did-I-tell-you g
lance, and then leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed and his lips buttoned tight. He looked like a guy in an interrogation room waiting for his lawyer. I sipped tea and watched the heat shimmer on the street, trying to be patient.

  Finally, Penateka finished his hamburger and wiped his hands clean. “It’s not bad.”

  I grinned happily. “Will you go arrest Hank? And let Ty go? Soon?”

  “It’s not that easy, Penny. I have to get a warrant to go onto the 3C and Judge Bogusch is mighty keen on hunting. If Hank goes to jail, it could put a stop to the good times out there for a while.”

  “You can’t let him go! If you went out there right this minute, you could catch him red-handed.”

  “I have no intention of leaving him be, but I have to have a warrant.” He thought a bit. “Meth labs are a plague in Texas and Sheriff Hopper hates ‘em worse’n poison. Which is what they are. That house and the land around it will have to be decontaminated by guys in moon suits. I’ll ask the sheriff to call the judge today.”

  “Then you can charge Hank with killing Roger, right? The evidence against him is as good as the evidence against Ty.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Ms. Trigg. There’s still the blood in that Gator.”

  I huffed my disbelief. “Hank could’ve put that there, rubbed it on with that towel in the trunk, to implicate Ty.”

  “That’d be pretty crafty for Hank Roeder,” Penateka said.

  “Not if he was high,” Nick said. “Believe me, meth can do wonders for your ingenuity. He’d have the energy. He could’ve snuck around planting clues everywhere all night. Y’all haven’t found half of them because they don’t make any sense.”

  Penateka narrowed his eyes at him. “Must have been some checkers.”

  Nick held up his hands. “I never did any crimes, besides the drugs. We did get into some weird situations. Your brain goes into overdrive, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Penateka caught Perline’s eye and made a scribbling motion with his hands. She brought his ticket and he paid, counting out exact change plus a decent tip. As he stood up and put his hat on, he said, “Don’t y’all go back out there until I find a way to bring Hank in. I don’t doubt this’s why he was shooting at you the other day.”