Longnecks & Twisted Hearts (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 3)

by George Wier

  “I had to tell him who was coming, Bill. I wanted to scare him.”

  “Why should he be afraid of me?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  I held her screen door open, one foot on the front porch and one inside the front door.

  “How well do you know Mike?” I asked her.

  “He’s been over for barbecues more than a few times. And just about every time that Brad got distracted for more than a minute, Mike would hit on me.”

  She easily read the expression on my face.

  “No, Bill. I’d never do that. And I didn’t. I wasn’t attracted to him anyway. I’d never hurt Brad. He and Brad would usually get into a contest to see who could kill the most longnecks in an evening. Brad usually won.”

  “Does Mike know anyone at the police department over in Bryan?”

  “Well... Yes. I think so. I think his father is the Chief of Police.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I like things nice and neat. For some reason I never seem to get them that way.

  First, somebody didn’t want me in town, and given the information I’d just gotten from Mary Jo, that person was either Mike Fields or his father, the Chief of Police. Second was the fact that neither Mary Jo nor I had seen Brad’s body. I put that about number two on the agenda.

  So first was to drop in on Mike Fields, Brad’s longneck buddy.

  *****

  Mike Fields and I had a bit of a history. In junior high and high school he’d been a bully, the kind who kicks kids’ chairs out from under them in the cafeteria or who goes out of his way to find the geekiest kid around and cajole him into taking a swing at him and then punching the kid’s lights out. When I was in my mid- and late-teens, I had an average build and quick wit. Also, I’d taken kick-boxing lessons for a full summer between eighth and ninth grade just for the hell of it, so I had enough confidence to stand my ground when guys like Mike came around. One evening I found myself waiting for my father to pick me up after school. There was no one else around until I turned to see Mike leaning against a low concrete wall not thirty feet away.

  “What’re you looking at?” he asked me.

  “I just wanted to see what a class clown looks like outside of class,” I replied.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, shifting forward into a fast walk in my direction.

  “Just a little IQ test,” I said. “I wanted to see if you knew when you were being insulted. Looks like you passed.”

  His walk turned into a run. I stood there. At the last moment I stepped to the side, stuck my leg out, caught his back with a hard shove and watched him plow up ten inches of grass and sod with his face.

  About that moment my father pulled into the parking lot.

  I walked over and climbed inside the family car.

  “What’s his problem?” my dad asked me, gesturing towards Mike Fields, who was trying to gain his feet.

  “Some people like to eat grass, I guess,” I said.

  “Oh,” my dad replied.

  *****

  I stopped at a local Quicky-Mart, gassed up my Mercedes, and borrowed the store’s phone book. Mike Fields had a listing. I jotted down the address, and even as I did, that action seemed familiar to me; as if I had written down the address before. A long time ago, maybe.

  Back in the car, wending my way through familiar streets and main thoroughfares, I pegged the sensation that was gnawing at me. It was that Mike Fields lived on the upper middle-class side of Bryan on the exact street where a girl I had worshipped back in my high school days used to live. Back then, about the time I left Bryan for my first semester at Sam Houston State in Huntsville, I had persuaded myself that I’d never again find myself on Morning Glory Lane.

  So much for that wish.

  The sun was climbing down the back side of the sky and undulat-ing shafts of fading sunlight played through willow and pin-oak trees and danced upon well-manicured lawns. I had arrived in the land of the status-conscious. There was a fine cool breeze blowing and I had the windows down on my old Mercedes.

  I slowed and looked at a couple of mailboxes and front curbs with painted house numbers until I had a bearing on which side of the street the house was on and how far away it was.

  I sailed down another two blocks.

  Sure enough, it was the same house as my old high school flame. Hence the old rhetorical question, “What are the odds?”

  There was an uneasy feeling in my gut.

  I realized I was sweating, but it was a cold sweat.

  *****

  “Bill? Bill Travis?”

  “Hello, Heidi.”

  “My God, I haven’t seen you in... forever.”

  She looked good. There were tiny crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, and she looked slightly more hollow than she had decades past, if that was possible. Back in high school she had been on the wispy side — just a thin slip of a girl and not “pretty” in the conventional sense. To a Byronic high school kid, namely yours truly, she had instead borne a sad beauty. Of course the woman before me was older than I remembered her, but the sadness was still there even as she smiled at me.

  “Come in, Bill” she said.

  “Are you Mrs. Fields now?” I asked her as she led me into the heart of her home.

  When I was younger I had fantasized about being inside the place, had dreamed up furnishings and wall hangings and placed them just so. Heidi’s home on the inside was nothing like what I had imagined.

  “Yes. Do you know Mike? He never mentioned that he knew you,” she said. “I would have remembered.”

  The Fields’ tastes ran to nineteenth century antique. A large foxhunt mural hung in the living room area, a room that looked un-lived in — a place to sit guests down and chat; nothing more. The furniture was imitation Queen Anne, enough to appear pretentious, if not uncomfortable. It was all crushed velvet and old leather and had an unused feel about it.

  “Mike and I know each other.” I said. “Heidi, do you remember Bradley Fisher?”

  “God, yes. Mike told me about that. He and Brad were pretty close.”

  “How close?”

  The question had the effect of a small slap.

  “They were weekend drinking buddies. That’s the only thing I never liked about their friendship. I’m not sure who was worse. I mean... who was the bad influence on whom, if you know what I mean. How’s Mary Jo taking it?”

  I took a seat on a tawny-colored leather sofa, and she sat across from me in a wing-backed chair. She crossed her legs. Heidi looked nice in form-fitting blue jeans and white sweater.

  “About as well as can be expected,” I told her. “Her husband is dead, and she thinks somebody killed him.”

  I waited. Let the news sink in.

  Truth to tell, at one time I had been deeply in love with the woman in front of me. When a young man reaches the chasm that lies between adolescence and manhood he finds the gulf to be far wider and the depths to be far deeper and darker than he ever could have imagined. And smack dab in the middle of that narrow bridge is usually the ghostly figure of a young woman on her way to adulthood. But Heidi’s bridge and my bridge never truly intersected. She had passed me by. Close, but nonetheless gone. Instead of befriending her I’d asked her out one fine day before lunch near the end of our junior year of high school. She demurred. I was crushed. I spent the next several months acting like a wounded hound dog, too pathetic to shoot and little good to anybody. Then, one day during the summer I woke up.

  I had spent that summer between junior and senior year mowing lawns, edging around tombstones in outlying cemeteries with an old weedeater and hauling hay — anything to make an extra buck. By the time school rolled around again I had bought a car with my own money, had muscled up to fighting physique and bore a bronze tan from head to toe. I suppose when I returned to school that final year that I was something to behold. Also I had money in the bank.

  When Heidi approached me that first day of school, ob
viously interested and wanting to talk, I ignored her and turned and walked away.

  We spent that entire year ignoring each other’s existence. We must have passed each other a thousand times in the hall with never a flicker of the eye in the other’s general direction.

  “About high school,” I began, before she could respond further, “you do know how I felt about you, right? Before that last year.”

  Her head did the slightest little bobble, as if unconsciously. It was her eyes, though, that held my attention. The same sad blue eyes of the young and shy girl that I had enshrined as a sacred image for the better part of a lifetime, suspended as if frozen in liquid glass in my memory. There is no love quite like a first love.

  “I knew, Bill. The whole world knew. You wore your heart on your sleeve.”

  Yeah. I supposed that she was right.

  “We’re both married now,” I said.

  “Yes, we are.”

  Was it me, or was the room getting warm?

  I got a picture in my head. A picture of Julie, her face close to mine, looking into my eyes. When was that? Some hotel room a long time ago. Maybe it was right after we first met.

  “You don’t, anymore,” Heidi said.

  “What?”

  “Wear your heart on your sleeve.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Somebody else has the keeping of it.”

  And as the last syllable hung in the air between us, the front door opened.

  Mr. Fields was home.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Oh. Hello. And who might you be?” Mike Fields asked, and then a tenth of a second later recognized me.

  “Mike, you remember Bill Travis? He’s Brad’s friend. He’s here about Brad.”

  I stood, turned toward him, just as I had that day so long ago.

  I found that after all the years intervening between our last meeting and this that I still didn’t like Mike Fields, and the feeling was mutual.

  His expression changed from surprise and puzzlement to shock and something else. His face began turning beet red. I was reminded of a bear that had been awakened too early before spring.

  Mike Fields was a large, tall man. He had a good six inches on me and at least seventy pounds, and despite the fact that his gut stuck out a few inches over the top of his belt, I was sure he wasn’t all fat. I got the image of an unstoppable mass if he was in a hurry, with the speed, force and pulsing red anger of a charging bull when he was furious. I was in his living room and there were breakable things about. Hopefully, with his wife there, I was safe.

  Mike struck me as the kind of guy who didn’t look forward to visitors, even despite the furnishings, and especially to visitors who’d once made him eat a patch of school lawn. I understood the sentiment. There is often a fine line between being a visitor and being a trespasser. As we stared at each other, I knew which category I had been relegated to.

  Something Brad had told me once came back to me while I found myself returning my steady gaze to a man whose wife — once the object of my full, unrequited attentions — stood two feet to my left. Brad had said: “Mike’s the kind of guy that could go hunting with just his fists. That’s why I made friends with the guy.”

  “Mike,” Heidi said. “Say something. Make it something nice.”

  Mike began breathing again. He deflated, slowly.

  “How’s Mary Jo doing?” he asked me.

  It was my turn to be nice.

  “She’s gonna be okay. I’ve just got to see her through the funeral. After that, life begins anew for her.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “When is the funeral?” Heidi asked. Mike dropped a well-worn suit jacket over the back of the sofa and came on into the living room. He didn’t bother to offer to shake hands. That was fine by me.

  “Well,” I began. “There won’t be a proper funeral until Mary Jo gets the body.”

  “Oh,” Mike said. “That.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  His eyes flicked toward me, then away.

  “Is there some kind of a hold up?” Heidi asked.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I was hoping to find out what I could from your husband before I go blundering into trouble.”

  “Babe,” he said to Heidi. “Why don’t you rustle up some food?” Then to me: “Hot dogs and beer okay?”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “We’ll be out back,” he told his wife.

  She’d been given her marching orders and didn’t appear too put off by them. I followed Mike Fields out the sliding-glass patio door off their dining room and into a Japanese Tea Garden, the creation and maint-enance of which must have set the Fields back a pretty penny.

  “You know, Travis...” he began, but then trailed off.

  “I know. You could break me in half. Let’s call it quits on those days. We were both hotheads. Call me Bill.”

  “Bill,” he said, testing the word and testing the waters at the same time. “Okay. We’ll try first name basis, Bill.”

  “Fine, Mike,” I said.

  We sat down at a picnic table on the patio across from each other.

  “Bill,” he said. “I’m sure Mary Jo told you she thought Brad had been murdered. Also, you’ve no doubt learned that my father is the Chief of Police here, and you’ve probably put that together with being chased out of town.”

  “That was your doing,” I said, knowing I was right.

  “Damn right it was.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t stand a mystery.”

  “Oh. Well, now you know.”

  “Mike, I know diddly-squat. Which is why I’m here. Tell me a couple of things, will you.”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “About Brad. And trouble.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You don’t know what trouble is,” he told me.

  Each of us had a Shiner Bock longneck in our right hand, having been placed there by Heidi, whose timing was impeccable. When she disappeared back inside, the bull session resumed.

  “Oh? I don’t know about that,” I said. “I think trouble is what we make it. I used to make a lot of it. You think I’m making it now?”

  He thought about it for moment.

  “No,” he said. “But Bradley Fisher sure did. I tried to keep him from screwing up. He wasn’t having any of it. Some people you can’t help, you know? Now you, on the other hand. You’re a smart fellow. Accountant, right?”

  “Something like that. Right.”

  “Okay then. You know that there are some lines you don’t cross. Some people you don’t piss off.”

  I sat there, expressionless.

  “Brad never met a line he couldn’t or wouldn’t cross.”

  “Who killed him?” I asked.

  “See? There you go. I was hoping you were smarter than that.”

  “Mike. I need to know why my best friend’s wife is a grieving widow. And if there are some powers that be who are responsible, you’d better tell who they are. And why.”

  “I don’t better tell you a goddamned thing if I don’t want to.” He took a long draw on his bottle. I decided to use mine to keep my hand numb, at least for awhile. My hand wanted to make a fist.

  “You’re out of your depth,” he continued after he set the bottle back down, two-thirds empty.

  “How so?”

  “You ought to feel privileged. You know, I come home and find you sitting talking with my wife. That was either real dumb or real smart. I can’t pulverize you into dog meat while you’re here because of her.”

  “Old Indian trick,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Back in Old West days a white settler could walk into an Indian camp and expect food and drink and safety, even among his most bitter enemies.”

  “You’re like Brad,” Mike said. “Out of his depth. Never met a problem he didn’t like.”

  “He was your friend?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he s
aid.

  “Mine too,” I said. “There’s no reason you and I can’t be friends, then. That is, unless you had something to do with his early death.”

  “You two go back a ways, huh?” he asked.

  I thought about it. I’d had maybe three or four real friends during my forty or so years on planet Earth. The oldest, longest, was Brad Fisher.

  “He was my oldest friend,” I told him. “What about you?”

  He looked down at the table. The big man had small, twinkling eyes.

  “Bill, I thought my crying days were dead and done.”

  I waited.

  “But, when Terry Throckmorton gave me the word that Brad was dead —”

  His face reddened before my eyes. Probably he had a bullfrog-sized lump in his throat. Moisture was there at the inner corners of his eyes.

  I waited longer.

  “Then I had to tell Mary Jo that Brad was... gone. And later when she called me back and told me you were coming to town... I figured there had been enough, uh, trouble for awhile.”

  “You were protecting me, then? By having me run out of town.” I couldn’t help the dubious tone of my words.

  We both turned as the sliding glass door to the dining room moved back smoothly on its track. Heidi emerged again, this time with three longnecks. I could smell hotdogs cooking.

  She set one in front of us each and put the third one down to the left of her husband and took a seat beside him.

  “Don’t worry. The hotdogs are on low heat. I’m joining you two for a moment,” she said. Heidi looked at her husband as he turned to regard her. “Whether you like it or not,” she said.

  *****

  “You two better start talking soon,” she said after her first long draught from her bottle.

  Mike and I had been sitting there staring at each other.

  “Honey,” Mike began.

  “Don’t ‘Honey’ me,” she said. “Remember that I spent ten years teaching deaf kids. I can read lips when I have to.”

  Mike rolled his eyes.

  Heidi had just the hint of a smirk at the corners of her mouth.