Stag Party (Blanco County Mysteries Book 8)

by Ben Rehder

“Thanks.”

  Earlier, they’d gone out for some breakfast, then returned to the motel room and napped for a couple of hours. Now he was well rested and had tons of energy. He was going to use that energy to go through the plan again and again in his head, studying every detail, looking for flaws.

  “What time do we need to leave?” she asked.

  “About eleven forty-five,” he said. “Check-out is at noon anyway, so it works out perfect, since we’re going to leave town right afterwards.”

  “This is going to be so cool,” she said, and he could hear the excitement in her voice, and he wondered which part of her body she was toweling off at the moment.

  Damn it. He needed to focus. No distractions.

  “Can’t you just picture it?” she said, her voice slightly husky. “Dousing the side of the house with gasoline and then lighting the fuse? I only wish we could be there to see the fire start. That would be so awesome.”

  She appeared in the bathroom doorway in red panties. Wow. He didn’t think he would ever get tired of seeing her body. Her face was slightly flushed, and he didn’t think it was from the shower. Simply talking about the mission was making her aroused.

  “How, uh, how high do you think the flames will go?” he said. He couldn’t help himself. What a scumbag. He was taking advantage of her condition.

  She moved closer.

  “High,” she said. “Very high.”

  “I bet you’ll be able to see them from miles away,” he said. “We might even see the fire from the highway.”

  “You think so?”

  She was standing beside the bed now.

  “At a minimum, we’ll see the smoke. We can pull over and watch it,” he said. “Maybe shoot some video. Nobody will know we started it. We might even see some emergency vehicles drive by.”

  She crawled into bed, under the blankets, on top of him.

  He checked the clock on the nightstand.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered into his ear. “We have about forty minutes. And then it will be time to get this show on the road.”

  “Seems a little weird that an Endicott would be driving a beat-up old Sentra,” Billy Don said.

  That hadn’t occurred to Red yet, so he said, “I was thinking the same thing. Probably one of their employees.”

  They had caught the Sentra well before it had reached Highway 281. It had turned left, heading toward Blanco, and now Red was following at a safe distance.

  “Wonder how many employees they got,” Billy Don said. “If I was rich like that, I’d have a dozen. I’d never do another chore again. I don’t think I’d even cut my own damn toenails.”

  Red didn’t like picturing Billy Don’s toenails, but he forgot about that when the Sentra suddenly coasted to the paved shoulder and came to a stop. Red slowed for a moment, but had no choice except to drive on by.

  “Smoke comin’ from under the hood,” Billy Don said as they passed.

  “Don’t stare.”

  “Woman inside. Nobody else.”

  “Don’t stare.”

  “She’s good lookin’.”

  Twenty minutes later, somebody arrived to help the woman in the Sentra.

  After driving past the Sentra earlier, Red had pulled over on a side road—close enough to keep an eye on the Sentra through binoculars, but far enough away that the woman inside wouldn’t notice them watching. Red had been about to give up on this operation and go get something to eat when a grey Mercedes SUV pulled over and stopped behind the Sentra.

  Red watched as the door of the Sentra swung open and the woman stepped out. She was pretty, just as Billy Don had said—about fifty years old, with a slender build and short brown hair. She was wearing a red apron. The woman climbed into the Mercedes SUV, which then drove north on the highway. Red let them pass, then he fell in behind and followed them into Blanco. The SUV pulled into the Super S grocery store and parked, while Red found a spot about thirty yards away. The pretty woman exited the passenger side, now without the apron, and walked inside the store. The driver of the SUV stayed put.

  “This is the most exciting thing that ever happened to me,” Billy Don said. “Thanks for including me in this adventure.”

  Red didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what to do. In the detective shows, the people being followed usually did something more suspicious than make a trip to the grocery store.

  “We gonna follow her inside or what?” Billy Don said.

  “Nah,” Red said, trying to sound as if he knew exactly what he was doing. “She’s an employee, just like I said.”

  “I’m the one who said that.”

  “Why do you always have to argue?” Red said.

  “Whatever,” Billy Don said. “Hey, what if she does something important, like buy a can of peas?”

  Red said, “Of all the jokes I’ve ever heard, that was definitely one of them.”

  Billy Don grunted.

  “Besides, I’m more interested in seeing who’s driving that SUV,” Red said.

  He raised the binoculars. “It’s a woman,” he said. “Gray hair, which means she’s older. She’s got her face turned away right now.”

  Red heard the flick of a lighter. He lowered the binoculars and saw that Billy Don was sparking up a joint.

  “Seriously?” Red said. “The police department is right behind the store.”

  Billy Don was holding in a hit and didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Finally he exhaled. “They got bigger fish to fry. And nobody knows what I’m doing. Here, check it out.”

  Instead of pinching the joint between his thumb and forefinger, now he cradled it between two fingers, the way most smokers held a regular cigarette.

  “Yeah, that’s genius,” Red said. “Nobody will ever figure that out.”

  Billy Don nodded toward the SUV. “Wonder why the gray-haired woman didn’t go inside.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” Red said. “I think you’re developing a problem, Billy Don. I really do. You’ve been high for the better part of the past three days.”

  “Hey, you’ve been smoking it, too,” Billy Don said.

  “A little bit, yeah, but not like you,” Red said. “Modulation is the key.”

  “Says the guy with a beer in his hand ’round the clock. Besides, it’s the last joint, so the supposed problem will take care of itself.”

  “It’s a gateway drug,” Red said.

  Billy Don kept smoking.

  Red raised the binoculars again. This time he got a good look at the gray-haired woman in the SUV. “I’ll be damned. That’s Donna Endicott.”

  “Yeah?” Billy Don said.

  “Didn’t expect that,” Red said.

  “Famous people got to get out occasionally, too,” Billy Don said.

  Red kept watching for another minute or so, and then he lowered the binoculars. Billy Don had smoked half the joint.

  “You never told me what Betty Jean has to say about your new habit,” Red said.

  He knew from the clouded expression that crossed Billy Don’s face that Betty Jean had been nagging him about it.

  “I sense that there is tension in the relationship,” Red said, repeating something he’d heard from Dr. Phil.

  “Last joint,” Billy Don repeated. He held the joint out. “Want some?”

  Red said, “You know what? Sure. But only so you can see what self control looks like. And just so there’ll be that much less for you to smoke. I’ll just take one hit...”

  Which he did. One long, deep, lung-searing hit. He held it as long as he could, and then coughed it out.

  “And then one more,” Red said, “because that will prove that—”

  “Thar she blows,” Billy Don said, nodding.

  The pretty woman had just exited the store with several plastic sacks swinging from her hands. She climbed into the SUV.

  Red handed the joint back to Billy Don.

  Then they followed the SUV south on Highway 281, west on 473, all the way back to the E
ndicott Ranch. Red had lagged far behind, so the Mercedes SUV was through the gate before he passed it. He continued down the county road until he reached the dead end, then turned around.

  When Red reached the chained driveway leading to the hidey-hole, Billy Don hopped out, without complaining, to move the chain. Red pulled through and Billy Don replaced the chain and got back into the truck.

  Red started down the dirt driveway, and when he reached the curve that went to the left, he braked, because he saw something he wasn’t expecting.

  A car.

  Liam and Jessi approached a sudden downward slope, and now they could see a rooftop in the valley below. One of the Endicotts’ houses, built alongside a broad, flat creek. The target.

  Jessi was a good navigator. She had gotten them here in less than fourteen minutes by using a map application on her phone. After they had stashed the car, they had cut a small hole in the Endicotts’ eight-foot fence with a pair of wire cutters. Easier than climbing over. Nobody would notice the hole right away, because it was behind a cluster of cedar trees.

  From the moment they had left the motel room, Jessi appeared to be having the time of her life. Liam, on the other hand, felt like throwing up. He was sweating profusely. Heat and nerves. Fear. Cowardice, if he was being honest.

  They were both dressed in camo from head to toe, including long-sleeved shirts. They had camo grease paint smeared on their faces, almost like war paint. Not only would it conceal them as they made their way through the woods, if they ran into anyone, that witness would have a harder time identifying them.

  “Oh, my God,” Jessi said, looking down at the house. “This is gonna be soooo good.”

  Liam had a gas jug in his right hand. A full gallon. That should do it. The jug had originally been red, but he had taken a couple of magic markers—black and brown—and scribbled random shapes and sizes all over it. Camo, of sorts. Not nearly as noticeable from a distance.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Liam said.

  “What we should do,” Jessi said, “is sit right up here and watch until the fire starts. We’d still have plenty of time to get away.”

  “We need to stick with the original plan,” Liam said.

  “But can’t you imagine?” she said. “We couldn’t have created a better place to watch the—”

  “The original plan!” he said, more sharply than he intended. Jessi looked surprised and maybe a little hurt. “If we stay and watch,” he said, “we’ll have to pass fire trucks on the county road. They’ll be able to give a description of my car. We have to reach the highway before any of the emergency vehicles turn on the county road.”

  “What if we—”

  “Jessi, seriously. We can’t fuck around. We need to light the fuse and get the hell out of Dodge. Otherwise, we might never get a chance to go to California.”

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  34

  “There’s a car,” Billy Don said.

  “I see it.”

  It was a gray Hyundai. It might’ve freaked Red out a little more if he weren’t halfway stoned. Where did this car come from all of a sudden? Did it belong to the owner of this ranch? The car was about forty yards away. Red saw no people in or around the vehicle, so he eased off the brake and moved forward slowly.

  “Wait a sec,” Billy Don said. “That’s the car from yesterday. Them kids from Nebraska. That’s their car.”

  Whoa. It was the same car. But Red wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “Think they’re still looking for a creek?” Billy Don said.

  “I kinda doubt it.”

  “Think they was lying to us?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “What would they lie to us for?”

  “I got no idea,” Red said. “Maybe they’re fans of the show.”

  “They sure didn’t look like they’d be fans.”

  Billy Don craned his neck and checked the dirt road behind them. Then he looked left. And right. “What do we do now?” he said.

  “Don’t know, but we can’t stay here,” Red said.

  “You want to leave?”

  “Not leave, but we can’t stay right here. We need to get to the hidey-hole before those kids come back.”

  Red began to drive around the Hyundai, but he stopped for a moment and took a photo of the car with his cell phone.

  “I’m going to run an idea past you,” Bobby Garza said. “But first, here’s the latest. We’ve gotten more than sixty calls in the past 18 hours. Just like you said, most were a waste of time. But there were a couple that placed a black Ford truck hauling butt out of Harley’s neighborhood around the time of death.”

  Marlin was parked beside a gate on Sandy Road, waiting for the landowner to show up. The man had called earlier to say that one of his game cameras had caught a couple of teenagers trespassing at the rear of his property. Probably just kids having fun, the man had said, but it’s hunting season, so it might be best if you can track them down and have a talk with them. Make sure they realize how dangerous it is to wander onto someone else’s property. Marlin would be happy to do exactly that—but the landowner was twenty minutes late and the gate was locked. Marlin would give it a few more minutes.

  “Either of those callers get a look at the driver of the Ford?” Marlin asked.

  “Nope. But when you add that together with Ron Rosen saying Aaron Endicott followed him out to Harley’s place, that’s some pretty good circumstantial evidence.”

  “Pretty good,” Marlin said. “Not great.”

  “Yeah, but for now, it’s all we got. Lawyer Ted won’t call me back, and we can’t force Aaron to do an interview, so I’m prepared to get a little more proactive.”

  Marlin saw a blue truck in the distance. The landowner coming back from town. Better late than never.

  “What’s your idea?” Marlin asked.

  Liam and Jessi worked their way down the hill, and now they were navigating through a grove of cedar and oak trees, approaching the rear of the house, which was roughly seventy yards away, in an open area right on the creek.

  They knew there was a chance somebody might spot them and come out of the house, so they had a story ready to go. See, they were huge fans of the show and they couldn’t resist coming by to say hello. They didn’t mean to bother anybody.

  Why were they carrying a disguised gas can? Well, that would obviously be harder to explain. Liam hoped to have a chance to ditch it in the woods if things got hairy.

  Jessi whispered, “Isn’t this awesome?” She was positively giddy. She could hardly contain herself. Her body seemed to be vibrating with anticipation. Liam had seen less animated expressions on people who had taken Ecstasy.

  They reached the edge of the cedar grove and crouched in the shadows. When they stepped out, they’d be highly visible for the next forty yards.

  From here, Liam could see the house well. And it was a nice place. Not as fancy as he would have expected, but this family was a bunch of rednecks. Their tastes weren’t exactly sophisticated. For instance, the house itself featured red cedar lap-and-gap siding. It had a nice stain on it, but still, the appearance was intentionally rough and rustic. And it would burn like a son of a bitch.

  “See anyone?” he said.

  “No.”

  Liam wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told him there wasn’t another human being within a mile.

  “Hear anything?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  Now Liam was trying to remember: Did each cigarette burn for six minutes? Or was it seven? Fuck. He glanced at his wristwatch. Twenty-two minutes since they had left the Hyundai. They could probably make it back in twenty, now that they knew the terrain, and then they’d need twelve minutes to drive to the highway. So they’d need a fuse that would burn for thirty-two minutes.

  It was tempting to shorten that time because it would obviously take the volunteer firefighters a certain amount of time to respond to the call and reach the ranch. But what if one of the
firefighters happened to live nearby? What if that firefighter hopped into his truck as soon as the call came in and was on the county road when Liam and Jessi drove past? One little piece of bad luck could screw everything up.

  “Keep an eye out while I build the fuse,” Liam said.

  Five cigarettes. That was 30 minutes. Or was it 35? Fuck it. Did it really matter?

  His hands were trembling slightly as he pulled five cigarettes from the pack and began to splice them, end to end, with rolling paper. It occurred to him that he should’ve built the fuse in advance. Stupid mistake.

  “Hope nobody’s inside,” he muttered.

  “Maybe we can peek in a couple of windows,” Jessi said, watching the house. “Make sure we don’t see anybody sleeping. Would that make you feel better?”

  “Fine. Cool. Whatever.” He honestly didn’t care. His main concern was not getting caught.

  “How’s it going?” Jessi asked.

  “Getting there,” he said. The truth was, he was having trouble making good splices. The sweat from his hands was saturating the rolling papers. But it would evaporate quickly, because the paper was so thin.

  “Want me to do it?” Jessi said. She was glancing back at him. It was obvious that his progress was slow.

  “Just watch the house. I’ll be done in a minute.”

  He made another splice, but it was too loose, and he had to redo it, and his nerves were shot, and he was almost ready to break down and fucking cry, and that’s when he finally realized the solution to his problem had been staring him in the face all along.

  Phil Colby was driving in his truck, windows down, his entire body pulsing with a nervous energy.

  He had worked himself into a tight anger and now it was time to stop messing around. It was time to do something. So that’s what he was doing. Something. Would it work? Maybe. Or maybe not. Did he have other realistic options? None that would actually work. Was it stupid? Could be. He might even get arrested, if he followed through. But it was better than waiting around for Aaron Endicott to make his next move.

  The plan: Stop at the keypad. Probably talk to Caroline again. Tell her that he had had enough of this homicidal freak named Aaron. Tell her that Aaron had shot at his truck the other day, and Colby had found the slug. A lie, of course. Nobody would know that. Tell her the cops would get a warrant for Aaron’s guns, make a match to the slug, and Aaron would get arrested.