The Good, the Bad and the Guacamole

by Rebecca Adler

  Honestly, after some of the things she shared about her past dates, I found her reaction surprising. . . and refreshing.

  Cruz raised a hand. “Don’t say that, even in jest.”

  “She had no reason to kill him,” I said.

  “The sheriff’s department has found a witness who heard you and Clark arguing in the parking lot,” Cruz continued. “Says she heard you say you would kill him if he touched you again.”

  “Yeah, but that’s stupid.” Patti ground her knuckles into her temples. “Why would I say that out loud if I was about to help him meet his maker?”

  “That’s what I said. The county prosecutor thinks otherwise.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Jackson Cline, head prosecutor for Big Bend County.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.” Pretty much everyone who was anyone had graced one of our tables in Milagro at least once a month.

  Cruz glanced at Deputy Pleasant, who pretended to ignore us and continued to stare at the opposite wall. “He was elected about a year ago—after his father retired.”

  “Oh.”

  Leaning forward, Patti’s lawyer lowered her voice. “Someone’s leaning on him to settle this case, and fast.”

  Patti and I looked at each other. “Mayor Cogburn,” we said in unison.

  “Did you have a motive to kill him?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “How did your relationship end when you two were previously together?”

  “He was seeing other women on the side, so I kicked him down the road with the rest of the tumbleweeds.”

  Cruz nodded. “You don’t think it’s suspicious that you would go out with him again after he humiliated you so badly last time?”

  Patti’s cheeks flamed. She swallowed. “He said he’d changed, but he lied.”

  My hands began to shake beneath the table. She wasn’t guilty. Why was this happening to her?

  “And that made you want to do him harm?”

  “But I only wanted to kill him.” Realizing too late what she’d said, the color drained from Patti’s face.

  “I’m taking your word for it.” Gretchen Cruz lifted a finger to her lips, her eyes wide. “That’s what I do.”

  “Thank God. I’ve explained twenty times to the sheriff that I wouldn’t kill anybody. I’m”—she shot a glance at me—“all talk and no action.”

  “Can they make the charges stick?” I asked.

  “We hope not.” Cruz turned to a blank page in her legal pad. “A lot will depend on their witness.”

  “What about a hearing? Don’t we have a few weeks to prepare?” Patti owned the first ten seasons of Law & Order. She was nobody’s fool.

  “You’ll have a hearing. That’s the law.” Patti’s attorney glanced at the deputy. “As far as how long we have to prepare, that’s up to the judge.”

  “What do they have on me? Why am I still here, putting up with this crap?”

  I interrupted, not wanting Patti to hear the worst. “Could they withhold our evidence?”

  “I don’t expect any shady business.” Gretchen Cruz waited for Patti’s full attention. “It isn’t like what you see in the movies.”

  “Time’s up.” Deputy Pleasant moved to the table, towering over us like a professional female wrestler.

  “You can’t kick us out.” I folded my arms across my chest. “She’s allowed to meet with her attorney twenty-four/seven.”

  “You don’t have a law degree, Callahan, last time I checked.” Pleasant unlocked the cell door and held it open.

  “I’ll walk her out.” Cruz placed the slender folder in front of her client. “You can read through your file while I’m gone.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said, wishing I could give my friend a hug. “Don’t eat anything fried. You know how it gives you reflux.”

  Patti’s mouth twisted as if fighting a smile. “Don’t forget about me, okay?”

  “How could I do that? You have to play in that contest on Thursday so you can pay me the twenty dollars you owe me.” I gave her a two-fingered salute.

  Once we exited the cells and stood alone in the waiting area, Cruz moved closer. “Sometimes things in this town don’t go according to the strictest interpretation of the law.”

  “This is insane,” I said. “Wallace knows she’s not guilty. Cogburn does too, if he’d just get his head . . .” I forced myself to stop. My voice had risen until it was echoing down the hall.

  “Someone wants this to go away and quick. Any ideas?”

  Ken Price came to mind. How much influence could a smarmy agent from Los Angeles, and a midlist one at that, have on a small-town sheriff? Not much . . . not unless he offered Cogburn something in the way of money or influence that would benefit his campaign for reelection.

  * * *

  Instead of driving back to Milagro, I headed for Two Boots. I found Uncle Eddie in the storeroom, counting bottles of beer.

  “How’s Patti holding up?”

  “Okay . . . I guess. She’s keeping her head high, but you should see her. That place has worn her confidence down to a nub.”

  Waving his pencil in the air, he finished counting a towering pallet of Budweiser and entered the total on his order form. “Has that brain of yours come up with any suspects?”

  “Not unless you know someone who drives a Land Rover.”

  “Ty was talking about buying one until the bank tried to repossess his El Camino.”

  I perked up. “Any chance he bought one in the past week?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself, darlin’?”

  Ty Honeycutt strolled in, and I hurled my question into the air. “Did you buy, borrow, or steal a blue Land Rover over the past few days?”

  He wrinkled his forehead. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in a blue one. What am I? A sissy? Mine would be black with gold trim, a sweet leather interior, and a hundred fifty-two horses under the hood.” He sighed and stared off into the distance with a dreamy smile.

  “Have you seen anybody driving one in town?”

  He paused, looked back and forth between us. “Maybe?” He grinned and scratched the blondish growth of beard on his chin. “Seems like I saw one a few weeks ago.”

  “Nothing the night of the murder?”

  “No.”

  “What color was the one you saw a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Geez, I don’t know. Black?” His eyes darted around the room as if the answer lay hidden in one of the corners. “But it might have been green.”

  I walked over and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “Hey.” He backed away, staring at me as if I were out of my mind.

  And maybe I was. “This is Patti, in jail, arrested for murder. Did you actually see one, are you pulling my leg, or were you too drunk that night to know what you were seeing?”

  He had the decency to look sheepishly at the two of us. “Probably the latter.”

  “Jo Jo, you haven’t figured this out yet?”

  “I’m trying.” I studied Ty. “But it’s hard to find any solid information.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Yes, a couple.” I wasn’t about to unload my innermost observations to Uncle Eddie in front of Ty Honeycutt, cardplayer, country musician, and freeloader.

  Ty smirked. “And you’re not going to tell him with me around, that right?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  He shook his head. “Look, little sister, you should know that Jeff Clark wasn’t no saint. In fact, he was a bit of tomcat. I met a couple of women on his tour bus who are more than ready to put a bullet in his you know what.”

  “You met them? Do I dare ask under what circumstances you met these women?”

  Like the country boy he was, Ty crossed his arms and stuck his thumbs under
his armpits. “You hang out in bars, you hear every gal’s sad tale of woe. Ain’t that right?” he asked Uncle Eddie.

  My uncle nodded. “Reckon so.”

  Ty was just warming up. “He was horrible at cards, lost a pile of money. If you need a suspect, I’d wager on someone he owed money to.” Without warning, he slapped his hands together. “Eddie, the new game film in your office?” He headed off without a good-bye.

  “You betcha.”

  Just when I thought I’d heard the last of him, Ty spun toward me. “Hold on for a special bulletin from yours truly: Jeff Clark not only owed a guy money, but slept with his wife. And that fella killed him deader than a cell phone in Carlsbad Caverns.” He pointed to his rather expensive footwear. “Betcha my new alligator boots on it.” Would wonders never cease? Ty Honeycutt had either recently won at the poker table or managed to save his hard-earned cash.

  “I’ll dump that in my circular file,” I said.

  He frowned and thought about my comment. “Huh. Well, don’t forget it was me who helped you find the killer.” He bent down, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from one boot, and then exited the storeroom, headed for the office. How he and Uncle Eddie never tired of passes, fumbles, tackles, and touchdowns for hours on end was a mystery to me. Cavemen and gladiators. Enough said.

  “One of the members of Jeff’s band was hoping to take over the spotlight from Jeff,” I said.

  “Enough to kill him?” Uncle Eddie asked.

  “The job was supposed to belong to Dustin Akers. Ken Price, their agent, told him the lead singer position was his, but Price gave the job to Jeff.”

  Uncle Eddie shook his head. “You want to find someone who’s guilty, I understand, but Dustin Akers isn’t that guy, no matter how badly you want him to be.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “The other night I was tending bar and he was warming a stool.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “He told me just what you said. The job was supposed to be his, but he’s at peace with that.”

  “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

  My uncle just stared at me for a long moment. “He’s got throat cancer, Jo Jo. He’s finished his chemo, but he’s only been in remission three months.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “You said it.” Uncle Eddie slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “They’re not going to offer him Jeff’s job. He’d never expect them to.”

  I wasn’t buying it, not completely. “If I were dying, I might want to settle old scores.”

  “You’d do no such thing.” Uncle Eddie chuckled. “You’d be praying for your enemies and making peace with your soul before you climbed that stairway to heaven.”

  “Say what?”

  “The song by Led Zeppelin? Oh, forget it. You know what I’m trying to say here.”

  “Hm.” If Uncle Eddie was correct, there went my only real suspect.

  He continued. “Dustin Akers told me over two double scotches that he’s retiring at the end of the tour.”

  “Bless his heart,” I said, and meant it. I couldn’t imagine dying or suffering such a horrible illness. What if I were a singer and found out I had cancer? What then? How would I feel to realize I’d never be able to sing again or not with the same musicality? To see my dreams of fame and fortune go sailing off in a cloud of pain and frustration?

  “I hate to burst your water tank, Jo Jo, but what can I say? Even if I don’t want Patti to stay in that jail one more minute—and I don’t—Akers didn’t do it.”

  I glanced at my uncle’s order form. “You missed the Coors.”

  “Since when?” he demanded.

  I pointed to the bottles of Coors hidden beneath the Budweiser at the very bottom of the tower of brews.

  While he knelt to count them, I continued. “Someone’s putting pressure on Wallace to stop looking for other suspects. Who would do such a thing?”

  “I’m not sure,” Uncle Eddie mumbled. “Cogburn, maybe?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “I’ll find out.” Uncle Eddie stood and placed his arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry. We’ll get her out of there.”

  “You’re the best.” I hugged him back. He smelled of Old Spice and beer, and he was the closest thing I’d had to a father for more than ten years.

  Ty sprung through the door. “How about a group hug?” he asked, his arms thrown wide.

  “I suggest you keep your hands to yourself unless you know how to play guitar with your feet.”

  Chapter 17

  The next morning my eyes sprang open without their usual blurriness. In fact, I was so wide awake I immediately noticed a crack in the ceiling above my bed—which led me to Jeff Clark’s cracked skull and who the murderer might be.

  On the way to pick up Lenny from Wilhelmina and Heather last night, I mulled it all over. In truth, I hadn’t met anyone in my interviews who struck me as the murdering type. Who else could have done it? And why?

  “Yip, yip,” Lenny said in his outside voice.

  “Okay, let me get dressed.”

  Then I heard it. Someone, an angry someone by the sound of it, was banging on the front door of Milagro. As we received our deliveries on Mondays, and we weren’t scheduled to open for another three hours, I ignored it. “Tell me about it.”

  “Yip,” Lenny complained.

  As I hopped on one foot, one leg in my jeans and one out, the banging stopped. Immediately my cell began to ring.

  I lunged for my phone and ended up doing a belly flop on my bed.

  “You up?” Deputy Lightfoot demanded.

  “No. And if that was you downstairs, trying to break down the door, you can come back later, after you go buy some manners, mister.” Lightfoot had no right to wake me up at seven thirty in the morning.

  “Open up. You and I need to talk.”

  I didn’t like his bossiness, but I was intrigued that he was so desperate to speak with me. Maybe he needed my help with the investigation, or perhaps he’d viewed a recent episode of Castle and changed his tune about needing a part-time journalist to tag along with him and brainstorm ideas.

  Hurriedly, I threw on a sweatshirt and a pair of boots and hustled down the steps.

  “Yip,” Lenny said, hurrying along beside me. “Yip, yip.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking.”

  I raised the blind at the front door and unlocked the bolts with the keys hidden beneath the cash register. “This had better make my day.”

  “Got any coffee?”

  I frowned. “What do you think this is—Waffle House?”

  “Point me to it. And don’t look so put-upon. I’ll make it.”

  “You’ll do no such thing.” I flounced over to the coffee urn, set up the coffee, and hit the button. “Sit down.”

  We found a booth. “What’s going on that you’re here so stinking early?” I rubbed the sleep from the corners of my eyes.

  “Have you been harassing Patti’s neighbors?”

  Ah, sugar snap. I forgot to call Lightfoot with an update. “Define harassing.”

  I could tell fire and brimstone were about to pour from his mouth. “Wait. I need coffee before you bring down the fist of doom. Wait.” I fixed us both a cup. I remembered he liked his black, deposited the cups on the table, and slid back across the vinyl seat.

  “Where’s the cream and sugar?”

  “You’re a deputy. You like it black.”

  “No. I take it black when there’s only artificial creamer around.”

  That wasn’t very coplike, taking cream in his coffee. “You’ll probably find some milk in the kitchen.” Anything to delay our little talk.

  But then my hostess genes kicked in. “Be right back.” I dragged my feet in the kitchen for as long as I d
ared.

  “Sit down,” he called. “You’re evading the consequences.”

  I placed the small metal pitcher on the table. “What consequences?”

  “For obstructing justice.” He stopped glaring at me long enough to add milk to this coffee.

  “I wasn’t obstructing anything. I was trying to help.”

  “By talking to a witness before he was interviewed by law enforcement.”

  Lightfoot was someone I respected. He was the strong, intelligent type. And he did his job without being all puffed up and arrogant. He had a way of looking at me, as if he knew what I was thinking and wanted me to be nobler.

  He stared at me and I stared back.

  Finally I broke. “You’re right.”

  Silence again. He was really dragging this out.

  “I apologize.” I was mostly sorry.

  “Who did you talk to?”

  Coming clean was good, but I thought it would be best to divulge my secrets in small increments. “The neighbor in the pink adobe house next to Patti’s.”

  He nodded and flipped to a page in his notebook. “He told Pleasant that he didn’t see anything that night.”

  I was lower than dirt. Lightfoot was sharing information. I had to make amends.

  “He told me that he was positive it was a blue Land Rover, but he couldn’t make out the driver.” Even as I spoke, I noticed how straight Lightfoot’s nose really was. It was perfect, if a bit too prominent. It worked nicely with his sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. It was if I were staring into a black-and-white photograph from the turn of the previous century.

  He stared at me over the rim of his cup. “What?”

  Unlike my ex-fiancé, here was a man’s man—a bit on the solemn side, but woven of honesty and integrity. “Why are you ready to talk to me about this case? Is your belt on too tight today?”

  One side of his mouth rose. “My belt’s just fine. Thank you.” He set down his cup and pushed it away. “I need your help.”