by Ben Rehder
Mia kept driving.
“Same with KXAN and KVUE,” I said. “Nobody knows anything yet.”
“Can’t be a coincidence that Lutz is dead,” Mia said. “Has to be tied in with the Boz Gentry case.”
“Agreed.”
We stopped at a red light in Oak Hill. There was plenty of traffic, even on a Sunday evening. The sun wouldn’t set for another two hours.
“If Boz Gentry is alive, as we suspect...” Mia said, and she left that thought hanging in the air.
“And if Boz and Lutz were working together on the fraud—except it wasn’t working out right, and so Boz got pissed... Or maybe Boz decided he needed to get rid of the one person who can finger him. Is that where you were headed?”
Mia said, “No, actually, I was thinking maybe Boz got mad that Erin hadn’t received the money yet, so he took it out on Lutz—but I like your angle better.”
Mia stayed left at the Y, following U.S. Highway 290 west toward Dripping Springs.
“Those are all good hypotheses,” I said. “I can imagine a scenario where Boz Gentry comes up with this hare-brained idea to fake his own death—with or without Lutz’s help—but then the cops don’t buy it. So now he’s really screwed, because Erin doesn’t get the money, and he can’t return to his normal life without getting arrested. And it’s hard to start over somewhere else without any money.”
“Think Erin knew what he was planning?” Mia asked.
“Good question.”
Mia said, “Boz had to know the cops would interrogate the hell out of her, so he’d almost be doing her a favor if he didn’t let her in on it until after the money was in the bank. That way she wouldn’t be pretending to be a grieving widow, because her reactions would be genuine.”
“Cruel, though, making your wife think you’re dead,” I said.
Mia laughed. “Depends on what type of husband he was, now doesn’t it? She might’ve been thrilled that he was dead and that three million was coming her way. If and when he reappeared, she might’ve been disappointed.”
“Good point,” I said. “So what we’ve decided is that Boz might’ve worked alone, he might’ve worked with Lutz, he might’ve worked with Erin, or all three of them might’ve worked together.”
“Don’t forget Albeck,” Mia said.
“Depressing. We haven’t really made any progress at all. One thing we do know,” I said, looking at my laptop, “is that Albeck’s SUV hasn’t gone anywhere today, and neither has Erin’s car. For what that’s worth.”
We had finally made it through the congestion of Oak Hill, onto open highway, and Mia kept the Mustang at a steady 65. I loved the rumble of that car’s big engine.
I said, “I talked to Lucian earlier this afternoon.”
Mia glanced over at me. She was giving me a look like a schoolteacher who was disappointed in a pupil’s misbehavior—but she wasn’t outright angry. “I appreciate your concern,” she said, “but you need to focus on this case, not my personal troubles.”
I didn’t reply. We drove another mile in silence.
“But you might as well tell me if you learned anything,” she said.
“I learned that Lucian has impeccable design sense and a dog that snores louder than I do. Other than that, not much.”
We had the windows down and the air was crisp and cool.
“You know what else just occurred to me?” I pulled out my phone.
“What?” Mia said.
I looked at the list of incoming calls and found the one from earlier, when I’d been searching the parking lot near Hula Hut.
“Know any numbers with a 393 prefix?” I asked. “That’s San Marcos, right?”
“I think so.”
San Marcos—the Hays County seat. I Googled the incoming number. My hunch was right. The first hit listed was a link to the sheriff’s office.
“They’re going to want to talk to me,” I said, “because I had brunch with Lutz earlier today. I called him this morning. They’re probably calling everyone who comes up on his phone.”
“Ooooh,” Mia said. “You are so busted. You killed him, didn’t you?”
“Please don’t tell anyone.” I pointed. “You’ll need to turn right in about a hundred yards.”
There were half a dozen county vehicles—some marked, some unmarked—outside Lutz’s home, along with several news vans. We parked beside a curb forty yards away and walked toward the house. Crime-scene tape had already been stretched across the driveway and along the front of the property. Two uniformed cops were stationed at the foot of the driveway, keeping people off the premises.
I saw news teams from three different stations either shooting B-roll footage or simply waiting for something to happen. They had probably delivered live reports for the six o’clock newscast, and they might hang around to give an update for the ten o’clock newscast. One of the teams was from the station I used to work for. I recognized the cameraman who had replaced me, but we hadn’t ever met.
As was the case with any crime scene I have ever visited, there was a cluster of neighbors lingering in a yard across the street. The majority of them were in their forties or fifties. Most of them would stay right there and watch until the last cop had left the premises. It’s just human nature to be curious or even entertained by morbid events.
Mia and I tried to casually blend in with the crowd, but we were strangers, so the conversation came to a halt as we got closer. The residents were wondering who we were. Cops? Employees from the coroner’s office? Evidence technicians?
“Any news?” I said to a man on my right. Act like you belong and people will generally go along with it.
“Uh... I’m sorry, who are you?” he asked.
Or sometimes they don’t.
Everyone else was waiting to hear what I said.
I stuck a hand out and the man shook it. “Roy Ballard. This is my partner, Mia Madison. We do freelance work for various insurance companies. I just met Tyler a few days ago... and now this. Damn shame.”
The man’s eyes were still on Mia as he said, “Ted Barber. Nobody seems to know what happened. Just that Tyler is dead.”
“Who called 9-1-1?” I asked.
A bearded man in his fifties said, “None of us did.”
“I think it was Carla,” said a tall blond woman.
“Who’s Carla?” I asked.
“She left,” said Ted. “About thirty minutes ago.”
“My next-door neighbor’s cleaning woman,” said the blond.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“We saw her talking to one of the cops earlier,” said the bearded man, “but that doesn’t mean she made the call.”
“Could’ve been Gary,” said Ted. “He and Tyler were friends.”
“I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” said yet another man in khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He had a can of beer in his hand.
“I thought Gary moved away,” said a petite brunette girl behind me. She was in her late teens or early twenties. Maybe somebody’s daughter.
“No, Gary Tate. Not Gary Brauner. The new Gary. He moved in last year.”
“Oh.”
“On the corner with the blue boat?”
“I think so. His wife is Diane.”
“No, that’s my wife,” said Ted. He looked at me and shrugged. “Some of us are just meeting for the first time tonight.”
The bearded man said, “All of us know some of us, but none of us know all of us.” He gave me a big grin, pleased with his own wit.
“Did anybody hear or see anything?” I asked.
“Are y’all investigators of some kind?” the man in the Hawaiian shirt asked. I noticed he was a little unsteady on his feet.
“We investigate insurance fraud,” I said, “and that’s how I met Tyler.”
“Like Magnum?” the bearded man asked.
“Who’s Magnum?” said the petite brunette girl.
“I don’t think Magnum investigated insurance fraud,�
� said a slender man with a receding hairline.
“I don’t mean exclusively,” said the bearded man.
“I remember an episode like that,” said the man in the Hawaiian shirt. “A rich old broad supposedly had all her jewelry stolen, but it turned out she gave it all to some young dude she was banging, and she didn’t want to tell her husband.”
The blond woman looked at me and rolled her eyes. Not a fan of the man in the Hawaiian shirt.
“There’s one of the cops from earlier,” the bearded man said.
Sure enough, a man in dark slacks and a golf shirt had exited the house and was coming down the driveway. He had a badge hanging from a lanyard around his neck. I was elated when I saw who it was.
21
The detective’s name was Victor Dunn, and he owed me a favor.
Not long after I’d started my new career as a legal videographer, I was trailing a subject—a forty-year-old math teacher—who surprised me one night by driving past a house in a quiet Wimberley neighborhood and firing a shotgun through the living room window. It was a nasty way of saying hello to his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. He might’ve simply been intending to rattle them, but the boyfriend caught a round of buckshot in one eye, losing vision permanently. My video of the teacher speeding away from the scene made Victor’s case a slam dunk. He and I had stayed in touch, off and on, and we’d developed a mutually beneficial working relationship.
We caught up to Victor just as he was opening the door to his plain-vanilla sedan, after he had waded through the throng of news reporters without giving them a comment. Using an artificially cheesy newscaster voice, I said, “Can I get a statement, Detective Dunn?”
He turned, ready to rebuff me, but then he saw me and grinned. He was a lean, short, balding guy in his mid-thirties. Tremendously fit. He ran five or six miles several times a week, and he lifted weights on the other days.
“Hey, Roy,” he said. “How ya doing?”
“Better than Tyler Lutz, apparently,” I said. “Jeez, that sounded like dialogue out of bad movie. Victor, this is my partner, Mia Madison.”
I always enjoy watching the reaction as I introduce Mia to just about any male between the ages of eleven and one hundred. Even the most respectful and well-mannered among them has a tendency to stare, or to even look surprised, like he’s thinking, Is this a practical joke? This supermodel can’t really be your partner, right? Victor managed to keep his gawking to a minimum, probably because Mia was wearing jeans and a fairly modest chambray shirt.
“You still chasing insurance cheats?” Victor asked.
“Until the Astros give me a tryout,” I said. “Actually, I had brunch with Lutz this morning about a thing we’re working on. My number will be in his phone records, just so you know. One of your guys called my phone earlier today.”
“Yeah? What’re y’all working on?”
“The Boz Gentry case. Tyler Lutz was his insurance agent.”
That statement had the effect I was hoping for. I didn’t need to tell Victor who Boz Gentry was—not just because of Victor’s line of work, but because Gentry’s name had been repeated dozens of times in the news the past few weeks. I could tell from Victor’s raised eyebrow that he and his team hadn’t yet made the connection between Lutz and Gentry. I had just given him a great lead, and I was hoping to get something in return, assuming Victor had anything to give.
“Interesting,” Victor said, drawing the word out.
“Lutz sold Gentry a three-million-dollar life insurance policy just three months before he supposedly died.”
“I guess I need to talk to Travis County,” Victor said.
“Ruelas has that case,” I said. “Amazing. I spoke his name and didn’t turn to stone.”
Victor grinned again. He pointed a thumb at me and said to Mia, “Think Ruelas says the same thing about him?”
“Of course not,” Mia said, “because they are so completely different, right? For instance, Ruelas is snide, but Roy is sardonic.”
“I see how that works,” Victor said. “Ruelas is hard-headed, but Roy is... determined.”
“Exactly. Ruelas is cynical, but Roy is simply realistic.”
“Ruelas is obnoxious,” Victor said, “whereas Roy has a strong personality.”
“Having fun?” I asked.
“Ruelas is impatient,” Mia said, “but Roy is keenly focused.”
They both laughed. I waited. They laughed some more. Mia bumped me with an elbow.
I said, “If we’re done with the witty repartee, can I ask one question?”
“How can I turn down a request like that?” Victor said.
“What happened to Lutz?”
He glanced over my shoulder, toward the reporters, even though there was nobody within earshot. “Off the record.”
“Of course.”
“Looks like he took a knife between the ribs. Several times.”
“Inside the house?” I asked.
“In the doorway. Died on the porch.”
“Find the weapon?”
“Nope.”
“Got a time of death?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Who called it in?”
“Wait. Didn’t you say, ‘One question’?”
“Yes, technically, one question, with a few minor follow-ups. It’s because I’m persistent, rather than pushy.”
Victor said, “Neighbor’s cleaning lady. She said Lutz had asked her about cleaning his place, and they were supposed to talk this afternoon. So she stopped by and found him.”
“Got any leads?” I asked.
“Well, I understand this might be linked to the Boz Gentry case in some unspecified manner.”
I pointed a finger at him. “You’re clever. Don’t go changing.”
“I guess we learned a couple of things, but I’m really not seeing how it helps us any,” Mia said.
We were in the Mustang again, driving back to my apartment.
I said, “Maybe we don’t see the value of that information right now, but I’m sure, in due time, it will appear even more worthless.”
The sun had dropped below the horizon behind us, and the oncoming cars had their headlights on. It was the kind of glorious spring day tailor-made for tooling around at dusk in a classic muscle car with a gorgeous woman at the wheel.
I said, “One thing we know now is that if Boz Gentry killed Tyler Lutz, that means Gentry is still hanging around in this area, rather than in, say, Calcutta or Des Moines.”
“True,” Mia said. “Here’s another if. If Lutz and Gentry were working together, wouldn’t Lutz have warned Boz that we were looking for him?”
“Sure, but so what? He already knew the cops were looking for him.”
“There’s a difference,” Mia said. “Ruelas and his crew would’ve needed Albeck’s permission—or a warrant—to search his ranch. Same with his residence. And they wouldn’t have been able to get one. No probable cause. You, on the other hand, had no qualms about trespassing to check your hunch.”
“Not a one,” I said. “And stupid me—I said something to Lutz at our first meeting about not being limited by boundaries as much as cops are.”
“Stupid you.”
We came to the Y in Oak Hill, which was much less congested with traffic now.
“So if Lutz was involved,” I said, “he might’ve given Boz a heads-up about us, and Boz might’ve been expecting us to show up at the ranch at some point. So he would’ve been very conscientious about making sure the house appeared empty.”
We both let that sink in for a minute.
“How many ifs, maybes, and might’ves is that?” I asked.
“Does it really matter?” Mia said. “None of it takes a huge leap of faith. Besides, we’re good at this sort of thing—filling in the blanks. Hypothesizing. Unless we hear that Lutz was murdered for some other reason, I think it’s safe to assume it’s related to this Boz Gentry craziness, and that there’s a strong possibility Lutz was in on it.�
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Mia stayed left and went north on MoPac.
“I do, too,” I said.
22
“One thing I sometimes forget is that we don’t have to figure out who did what, or why. All we have to do is prove that Boz Gentry is still alive. Video would be great, but even audio would work.”
Now we were back in my apartment, facing each other from either end of the sofa. My right hand was soaking in a large bowl of ice water that Mia had brought to me, insisting that I take care of my injury. My left hand was wrapped around one of the bottles of beer I’d brought home a few hours earlier. Neither of us had had anything to eat since lunchtime, and I could feel the effects from the one beer I’d already had. Three years without alcohol had lowered my tolerance more than I would have ever imagined. Buzzed from a single beer? What a lightweight.
“But speculating on who might’ve killed Tyler Lutz could help us do just that,” Mia said.
“Well, sure. It’s just nice to remember that we don’t actually have to solve the crime.”
“Except the crime of fraud,” Mia said.
“Right.”
The TV was tuned to some drama I had never seen before. I wasn’t following it. I did notice that virtually every member of the cast was strikingly attractive.
Mia said, “Fraud is an odd word, isn’t it? Hey, a rhyme. Odd fraud.”
“Are you buzzed?” I asked.
“Like you aren’t?”
“It feels nice.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Mia said. She downed the last of her beer, then went to the refrigerator and got us two more. I wasn’t going to argue.
“When I was working at the bar,” she said, “I could out-drink just about any man in the place.”
“I remember,” I said. “I spent a few evenings in your company prior to my, uh, legal challenges.”
“Well, I know that. I’m just sayin’. You tend to drink more when you work in a bar.”
“Do you ever miss it?” I asked.
“What, tending bar?”
“Yeah.”
“God, no. Well, I miss seeing some of the people that worked there, and some of the customers, but the actual work? Hell, no. I love what you and I do together. You and me.” She frowned. “You and I?”