Stag Party (Blanco County Mysteries Book 8)

by Ben Rehder

  “Jesus,” he said.

  The cabin was surrounded by white-tailed bucks. Dozens of them.

  The previous time Red had come out, there were eight or ten deer hanging around, which was impressive, but the old man had said he was tinkering with an even more potent formula. Obviously it was working.

  “Never seen nothing like that before,” Billy Don said.

  “Told you so,” Red said, feeling much more confident than he had a few minutes ago.

  “That’s just crazy,” Billy Don said. “If it works like that every time, you’re sitting on a dadgum gold mine.”

  Red was beaming. It was nice to hear someone give a positive opinion on the investment Red was about to make. Billy Don wasn’t so dumb after all.

  Red gave a tap on the horn—announcing their arrival—then eased forward on the short caliche driveway leading to the cabin. A couple of the largest bucks reluctantly moved from the truck’s path, but they didn’t go far.

  Red stopped the truck in front of the cabin, intending to park, but he waited a minute. One big buck was no more than ten feet from his truck door.

  “This is freaking me out a little,” Red said.

  “They’s rutting like hell,” Billy Don said.

  “I swear to God that buck right there is glaring at me. Like he’s waiting for me to get out of the truck so he can make a run at me.”

  “Better pull up right snug against the porch,” Billy Don said. “Don’t wanna get gored.”

  Red did exactly that, maneuvering until the driver’s door was parallel to the porch steps.

  Just as he was about to kill the engine, Billy Don said, “Hang on a sec.”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s that by the front door? That what I think it is?”

  Red turned and looked. Took a few seconds to process what he was seeing. It was the old man, lying flat on his porch. Red watched for a few seconds to see if the old man moved. He didn’t.

  3

  When Game Warden John Marlin arrived at Harley Frizzell’s remote cabin on the banks of the Pedernales River, the scene was exactly as described by Sheriff Bobby Garza thirty minutes earlier on the phone.

  Dozens of large white-tailed bucks were lingering on the wooded tract around the cabin, despite the fact that three county cruisers and the coroner’s personal vehicle were parked out front in a wide bed of gravel. Garza and several of his deputies were standing on the porch, near the front door.

  When Garza had called, Marlin had had a tough time believing the sheriff wasn’t exaggerating, even though Garza wasn’t prone to hyperbole. Marlin had thought, Dozens of deer? Wild deer? Really? And they don’t even run when you get close to them?

  But there they were, despite all the human activity in the area. Peculiar. Even unsettling.

  Marlin parked his state-issued Dodge truck behind one of the deputies’ units and killed the engine. Then he simply sat for half a minute and scanned the area. In those thirty seconds, he counted 47 bucks within 25 or 30 yards of Harley’s cabin. Behind it, to the left, to the right.

  Garza had said the deer had behaved in such a threatening manner to the first deputy on the scene—Ernie Turpin—that Turpin had had to call for back-up. Only when several other deputies had arrived did the deer reluctantly retreat a reasonable and safe distance.

  Still, Marlin wasn’t taking chances. Why would he? When he stepped from his truck, he carried a high-powered 36-inch cattle prod in his right hand. The prod could give an ornery 1,500-pound bull an attitude adjustment, so Marlin was confident that it could ward off any buck that might get too close.

  Marlin heard the crunching of gravel behind him and turned to see who was arriving. Trey Sweeney, the state wildlife biologist, had just pulled in behind Marlin’s truck. Good. Sweeney was eccentric as hell—some would say nutty—but he was highly intelligent and widely read in his area of expertise. It would be interesting to see what Sweeney made of the situation.

  “This is really fucking bizarre,” Sweeney said as he walked toward Marlin, keeping a close eye on one large buck less than twenty yards away.

  “You PhDs always have to show off your vocabulary, don’t you?” Marlin said.

  Sweeney grinned. As usual, he wore his brown hair long. Several years back, he’d lost an ear during an encounter with a black bear. The hair concealed the missing pinna. “Hell, yeah,” he said, then went serious again. “Never seen anything like this before. You?”

  “Big herds of bucks, yes. Behaving this way, no.”

  “Fear usually trumps aggression,” Sweeney said.

  “Agreed.”

  “But just look at these bucks.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “It’s like they’re almost on the verge of making a run at us,” Sweeney said. “It’s...unreal. Like some sort of mass hysteria. Reminds me of the movie The Birds.”

  The biologist was brilliant, yes, but he also had an overly active imagination. The bird attacks in the Hitchcock movie were never explained, if Marlin remembered correctly, but he was confident there would be a perfectly logical reason for the behavior of the deer. In fact, he already had an idea what it might be. Marlin didn’t want to go into it with Sweeney just yet, so he remained quiet for the moment. But he did notice a cotton ball hanging from a nearby tree limb. Marlin suspected that the deer would move along if he disposed of that cotton ball.

  Crime-scene tape had been stretched across the stairway to the porch, so Marlin waited for Garza or one of the deputies to come over and give them an update. Marlin wasn’t planning to be part of the investigative team; he was busy enough already, since bow season had begun and rifle season would follow soon. “Just come out and see what I’m dealing with,” Garza had said on the phone, meaning the bucks. “Maybe you can tell me what’s going on.” Marlin had to wonder if the deer had had something to do with the death of the old man on the porch.

  “Yellow tape,” Sweeney said.

  “Yep,” Marlin said.

  “Means it wasn’t an accident or a natural death, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. Or they think it does.”

  Marlin had been sniffing the air every few seconds, but he hadn’t detected any odors. Didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe the wind wasn’t right.

  “Crap,” Sweeney said. “Why would anyone hurt an old geezer like Harley?”

  Harley had been profiled in a newspaper article a few years earlier when he’d turned 100 years old. Marlin remembered Harley saying something like, “What’s all the fuss about? Ain’t like it’s some great accomplishment. All I did was keep breathing.”

  Before Marlin could reply to Trey’s question, Sheriff Bobby Garza descended the stairs and ducked under the tape. Keeping a wary eye on any nearby bucks, he joined Marlin and Sweeney beside the game warden’s truck. There were no handshakes or other greetings. Instead, Garza launched right into it, saying, “Lem says Harley took a blow to the head, probably sometime yesterday. He’ll narrow it down.”

  Garza was of average build and six feet tall at most, but he had a strong, square jaw that made him look like a lawman, along with eyes that could pin a suspect to the wall during an interrogation. Thick salt-and-pepper hair. Handsome. Extremely popular and well liked by the residents of Blanco County—except the lawbreakers.

  “Any chance it was from a fall?” Marlin asked.

  “Lem says it was a most likely a blunt object to the forehead. Somebody hit Harley with something—not real hard, because it didn’t even break the skin. But it killed him, whether they meant to or not. Henry’s on the way to process the scene, but I’m not expecting much. Too rocky around here for tire tracks or shoe prints. Hoping he’ll find some fingerprints. We’ll see.”

  Marlin glanced toward the porch. “Who called it in?”

  “Red O’Brien,” Garza said. “Tatum is interviewing him and Billy Don Craddock at the station.”

  “Anything inside the cabin?” Marlin said.

  “Ernie poked his head inside
when he first got here,” Garza said, “and everything looked fine, but we’re holding off on the search until we get a warrant—probably within the hour. The reason I called—can either of y’all shed any light on these crazy bucks?”

  Marlin let Trey Sweeney go first.

  “You only see behavior like this during the rut,” Sweeney said. “I think you know that. And these bucks are definitely rutting. Look at their swollen necks. The bachelor groups have disbanded and now it’s every buck for himself. Sometimes you see several bucks in a small area competing for a doe in estrus. But this...” Sweeney looked around, shaking his head. Forty yards away, two large bucks were facing off, about to do battle, unless one submitted and ran away.

  “Think a lure scent might create this kind of reaction?” Marlin asked.

  “A scent?” Garza said.

  “If it did,” Sweeney said, “it would be the most successful scent in the history of hunting. Or chemistry.”

  “What’re you thinking?” Garza asked Marlin.

  Marlin said, “You might remember that Harley retired a long time ago—like forty years ago, literally—and he became an inventor. Sort of a hobby, but he had a knack for it, and most of his inventions revolved around hunting.”

  “Yeah, he invented that turkey call,” Sweeney said.

  “The Turkey Charmer, right. Anyway, he’s also been fooling around with deer scents for years, trying to come up with his own formula. And, well, this makes me wonder—did he do it? Did he create an incredibly effective scent?” Now Marlin pointed. “See that cotton ball hanging from that limb? That’s one way to put a scent into the wind. You spray the scent onto the cotton and just hang it.”

  Garza made a soft grunt in acknowledgment, showing that he thought it was an interesting theory.

  Then he said, “Hey, if a scent did bring all the bucks running like this, wouldn’t it be worth a fortune?”

  4

  Dirk Endicott studied his face in the mirror and wasn’t sure he liked what he saw.

  He still wasn’t used to the pork chop sideburns, even after three years. Itchy as hell. Hot. Made him look like some sort of scruffy backwoods rube. Which was the idea, of course. The sideburns had become sort of an Endicott trademark. All of the Endicott men on the show sported them.

  Instead of the polo shirts Dirk used to wear, nowadays it was flannel or pearl-snap shirts—often with the sleeves torn off. And a stained and creased straw cowboy hat always rested on his head—winter, summer, spring, or fall. In fact, it was written into his contract that he was never to be seen without it—no matter where, and no matter what the circumstances.

  Jasper, on the other hand, always wore a battered camo-pattern baseball cap with a large fishing hook clipped over the bill. Correction. Not wore. Used to wear. Still a shock to realize he was gone.

  But today, Dirk and his entire family were being forced to remember, because they had to recreate Jasper’s funeral and get it on film. The director of Endicott Empire, little fucking dictator that he was, had insisted on it, saying it would make the perfect first episode in their upcoming season. Nobody wanted to do it, but the language in their contracts was on the director’s side. They couldn’t refuse.

  The actual funeral had occurred several days earlier, but the crew was on hiatus, scattered all over the country, and there hadn’t been enough time to gather everyone together. So here they were. A do-over. A sham. Show-business bullshit. They’d shoot this morbid scene, and then go back on break.

  Dirk saw in the mirror that his eyes were bloodshot. Too much whiskey last night. It had been one of those strange evenings when Dirk’s crazy brother Aaron had shown up with a bottle of Jack Daniels and they’d sat, mostly in silence, and drunk it dry. Fine. The red eyes made Dirk look like he’d been crying, which would work for this episode.

  Melissa, the bubbly production assistant, stuck her head into the open door of Dirk’s trailer and gave a low whistle.

  “Well, lookee there. You clean up real nice,” she said. She had a thick Southern accent. Genuine, unlike Dirk’s. Not that Dirk’s was fake. Just embellished quite a bit.

  “Why don’t you come tie this tie for me?” Dirk asked.

  “Really? You need help?”

  “And close the door behind you,” Dirk said.

  She gave him a tsk-tsk and a grin. Dang, she was cute. Dirk was a sucker for dimples. “Ain’t falling for that,” Melissa said.

  Dirk had a reputation for seducing PAs every chance he got. It was fun, but it wasn’t smart, and the PAs generally had to get the boot shortly thereafter. They’d get clingy. Or they’d pout when it became obvious Dirk had no more use for them. Which created tension on the set. The lawyers told him to stop or he’d get slapped with a sexual-harassment case eventually.

  “We’re still going through with this charade?” Dirk asked, making eye contact in the mirror.

  “Don’t be a grouch,” Melissa said.

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Think of it this way,” she said. “Jasper would have loved every minute of it.”

  And she was right. Jasper had taken to the cameras like a catfish to stinkbait. From the first episode, it had become clear that Jasper was going to be popular as hell, just like he always had been, in any atmosphere. Always so easy for him. Good-looking kid with a huge personality and a goofy grin. Likable as all get out. The fans had eaten him up.

  Then, in the middle of the first season, there was the staged incident that later came to be known as “the bulge,” and Jasper had immediately become the show’s top star, no question. Everyone else in the family had taken on a slightly diminished role. That had bothered Dirk at first—in fact, he had seethed about it—but he’d eventually accepted it. Hadn’t he?

  Truth was, ever since they were kids, Dirk had always wondered why everyone seemed to like Jasper better than they liked him. But what purpose did jealousy serve, especially when the money started rolling in? All the paychecks were equal, and that was the important thing. Now, of course, the unspoken question hung in the air. Could Endicott Empire survive without Jasper?

  “Makeup in five minutes,” Melissa said, and she was gone.

  Fine. Makeup usually didn’t take long, thanks to the goddamn hair covering most of Dirk’s face.

  Dirk had just turned to leave when his cell phone vibrated. He checked the screen. An incoming text message from Ron Rosen, the Endicotts’ brilliant, risk-taking manager.

  You doing okay, buddy?

  “See, I can tell from your calluses,” Red said, gesturing toward Chief Deputy Bill Tatum’s hands across the table. “Bet you work outside a lot, huh? Or maybe you’re a carpenter. Think how nice it’d be to get a manicure from an attractive woman. An attractive young woman, rubbing you up with lotion. Cold beer, sports on wide-screen TVs, jalapeño poppers to snack on. Like that. ‘Spa’ isn’t even the right word for it. More of a man cave where you get a little pampering from a smoking-hot babe. Uh, a nice-looking lady.”

  Billy Don had to shake his head. Sometimes Red couldn’t let things go.

  “What?” Red said. “I’m telling you, somebody’s gonna take that idea and make a solid fortune.”

  “For the moment,” the chief deputy said, “why don’t we focus on your dealings with Harley Frizzell?”

  “Fair enough,” Red said.

  “What exactly was the nature of your business with him?”

  Tatum was older than either Red or Billy Don, but he’d kept himself in shape. He had a weightlifter’s physique—a thick torso and biceps that bulged under the sleeves of his khaki uniform. Billy Don wasn’t afraid of many men, but he’d think twice before messing with Deputy Tatum.

  Red said, “I run into Harley at the feed store early last week and we started talking about this, that, and the other. Then I asked about his deer scents, because he’s been working on those for as long as I can remember—since I was a kid. He was a little tight-lipped, but he finally said he’d done it—he’d invented the best sc
ent ever made, and it brought big bucks running from miles away. Said he was gonna refine it and make it even stronger. I could tell he was serious. And I still have that pig-bounty money, so I’ve been looking for something smart to do with it. Of course, first, I wanted to see the scent in action, so we went over to Harley’s place, and damn, he was right. It worked. Then, this morning, when we went over there again, it was the craziest thing I ever seen. Deer everywhere.”

  “Big ’uns,” Billy Don said. “Wallhangers everywhere. It was something.”

  “So you and Harley had decided to become partners?” Tatum said to Red.

  “Well, he knew he couldn’t do it alone,” Red said. “He didn’t have any cash to get the product out there. He invented that turkey call a long time ago, but to hear him tell it, he got screwed on that deal and didn’t make hardly any money. See, when you put a product out on the market, you got a lot of expenses—marketing and advertising, public relations, distribution, and whatnot. Harley said he’d been in touch with some of the bigger hunting manufacturers, asking if they was interested in buying the scent outright, because he wasn’t going with any kind of royalty deal this time around. Plus, he’s old. Was old. Made sense to get the money up front. And if that didn’t work—selling the formula—he’d put the scent on the market himself. Just bottle it up and sell it.”

  “Any idea which manufacturers he contacted?” Tatum asked.

  “Don’t know for sure,” Red said.

  “Ain’t but about five or six that would be worth talking to,” Billy Don said.

  “Okay, what happened next?” Tatum asked.

  Red said, “I discussed it with my attorney—”

  Billy Don let out a snort. Red glared at him.

  “—and he said it sounded like a great opportunity. So we drew up a contract and I was taking it out there for Harley to sign. Except we was too late.”

  Tatum said, “I’m unclear on something: Had Harley already agreed to a partnership with you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said you had a contract drawn up, but prior to that, did you and Harley have a verbal agreement to be partners?”