Get Busy Dying (Roy Ballard Mysteries)

by Ben Rehder

  “People get desperate when they’re looking at long prison terms,” I said. “Boz will, too. And when that trial comes, for your own sake, you don’t want to have a history of lying to people. If you get caught in a lie, Boz’s lawyers will bring that up and try to blame everything on you. They’ll say the entire thing was your idea, and when you deny it, they’ll say, ‘But look at the lies she’s told. She can’t be trusted.’ And your affair with Tyler Lutz is a good example. Honestly, nobody really cares if you were sleeping with him—it’s none of our business. But if you were, you’d better believe the cops will prove it, and it will come up in trial. And both of us—Mia and me—will be called as witnesses, and this conversation right now will go on record. You just said you weren’t cheating on Boz, and if that’s true, then fine. But if it’s not true, now’s the time to come clean.”

  “That way,” Mia said, “they can’t make you out as both a cheater and a liar. That’s one thing jury members really get judgmental about—liars. Once you get labeled as a liar, it’s hard for anybody to think of you as anything else.”

  Erin Gentry was about as tough as they come, but I noticed that the stubborn set to her jaw had softened. The fire was cooling in her eyes.

  Mia and I remained silent.

  Then Erin gave a very slight nod. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Fuck it. Everything is so screwed up. I need a cigarette.”

  She turned and disappeared somewhere in the house, leaving the door open.

  I looked at Mia and made a gesture that said, Are we supposed to follow her?

  Mia gave me one back that said, Let’s wait a minute.

  So we did wait, and after a few moments, Erin came back, sucking away on a filtered Marlboro. Then she exhaled a long plume of smoke and launched right into it, saying, “Boz cheated on me first. I’m mature enough to know that don’t make it right on my part, but that’s what happened. I knew something was going on, so I went to Tyler and asked him what he thought.”

  “Why, uh, talk to Tyler about Boz cheating on you?” I asked.

  She frowned like I’d asked a stupid question. Then she realized she’d left out an important part of the story—and I was pretty sure I knew what that part would be. “Because Boz was cheating with Tyler’s secretary, Candice.”

  Outstanding. Another piece had just fallen into place. A small revelation like that isn’t quite as rewarding as those moments when you totally bust a fraudster on video, but it was close.

  Truth is, Candice had been at the back of my mind since I’d seen her on Albeck’s ranch on Saturday afternoon, but I hadn’t had time to dig any deeper. There had been the fire at Mia’s place, then Sunday had been eaten up by meeting with Lutz, talking to Mia’s neighbor Lucian, then driving over to Lutz’s house after learning that he’d been killed. But now it was time to take a closer look at Candice.

  “How did Tyler find out what was going on between Boz and Candice?” Mia asked.

  Erin snorted. “He followed her home at lunchtime and saw Boz over there. When he asked her about it, she totally caved and admitted it. And she cried, if you can believe it. Didn’t want to lose her job.”

  “When was this?” I said.

  “January?” she said. “February?”

  “And what did you do about it?” I said.

  “Kicked Boz out of the house for a couple of weeks. Worthless son of a bitch.”

  “And how did you end up with Tyler?” Mia asked.

  Erin rolled her eyes. “Look. I don’t really want to go into a lot of details, okay? I wouldn’t say I was ‘with’ him. I basically slept with Tyler a couple of times to pay Boz back. Revenge sex. Wasn’t like I was in love with Tyler. Then Boz came crawling back, swearing he wouldn’t do it again, and that was that.”

  “He stopped seeing Candice?” I said.

  “Yeah, and I stopped seeing Tyler.”

  “Did it help?” Mia asked.

  “Did what help?”

  “Was your relationship stronger after you both stopped seeing other people?”

  “What’re you, Doctor Phil?” Erin said. “Boz was still the same old Boz. He can be sweet, but he can also be an asshole. Probably wasn’t the first slut he’d slept with. But I’ll tell you this much—if this whole fraud thing is true, I’m done with him. And I’m done talking to people—cops, reporters, and both of y’all. Nobody listens to me anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I keep telling people I had nothing to do with the wreck, or with Boz disappearing—and I don’t know where he is or whether he’s even alive—but does anybody listen?”

  “So he wasn’t inside when I talked to you on Thursday?” I said. “He’s not in there right now?”

  Erin stepped aside, inviting me into the house. “Knock yourself out. Invade my privacy and take a look, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  She didn’t look the least bit worried that I might take her up on it. But I’d already learned she was a pretty good actress.

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “But remember I offered. And from this point forward, you and everybody else can kiss my ass. How about that?”

  This time she did close the door.

  30

  “You believe her?” I asked Mia as she was backing out of the driveway.

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure she would let you kiss her ass.”

  “Well played,” I said.

  She dropped it into forward gear and gassed it up Riverhills Road.

  “I think I do believe her,” Mia said. “Do you?”

  “Hard not to,” I said.

  “But there’s still one question. If she wasn’t involved—if it was just Boz, or Boz and Tyler, or even Boz and Candice—how would he, or they, get the money from Erin?”

  I didn’t know the answer. I said, “Last week, a fairly well off middle-aged woman approached a bunch of teenagers in a seedy neighborhood and asked if they wanted to kill her husband for five grand. Not discreet about it at all. Didn’t even know the kids personally.”

  “I heard about that,” Mia said. “And?”

  “Sometimes people do really stupid things—so stupid that you find yourself wondering, ‘Can this be real? Can anyone really be that much of an idiot?’ And the answer is yes. So maybe Boz was just stupid. Maybe he hadn’t thought it through all the way. Maybe he jumped into it without ironing out all the details.”

  “Where are we going?” Mia said.

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Or maybe you were right yesterday.”

  “About what?” she said.

  “When we were driving to Lutz’s house, you wondered if Boz had kept his plan from Erin so that she could get through the police interrogation more easily. She wouldn’t be lying, because she honestly wouldn’t know anything. She could even pass a polygraph, if they asked. Then, later, Boz would let her know he was alive, and they could take off to some foreign country together with the three million bucks.”

  “I don’t remember saying anything about a foreign country.”

  “I added that part,” I said. “Wouldn’t it have to be a given? They couldn’t very well plan on staying in the States.”

  “Except people can be really stupid.”

  “As a wise man once said.”

  “Maybe Boz is already out of the country,” Mia said.

  “Oh, crap. I meant to ask Erin if Boz had a passport.”

  “I think by the end of the conversation she probably would have told you to stick his passport where the sun don’t shine.”

  “She’s a feisty one, huh?” I said.

  “Sure is. Cute, too.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And what is it about a mole on a woman’s face that is so sexy?” Mia asked.

  I kept quiet.

  “And hanging around the house in a bikini top all day,” Mia said. “Classy. But I’ll admit she looked pretty good in it.”

  I could feel her looking over at me, waiting for a re
sponse.

  “She’s no Mia Madison,” I said.

  “Ha. I should hope not.”

  “Besides,” I said, “it’s not a mole, it’s a beauty mark.”

  “Semantics,” Mia said.

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  “Changing the subject?”

  “So you’re not hungry?” I said.

  “Starving.”

  Mia drove west to the village of Bee Cave and stopped at Rosie’s Tamale House. There had been a lot of growth in this area, with plenty of trendy new restaurants popping up, but Rosie’s—a longtime tradition with the locals—still managed to draw a good crowd, despite the fact that it was housed in a large metal building and had velvet paintings on the walls.

  I hadn’t been to Rosie’s since the previous summer, when I’d briefly dated a woman named Jessica who had played a critical role in the Tracy Turner case. But that didn’t last. I’d woken up in a hospital room and found myself relieved that the woman sleeping in a nearby chair was Mia, not Jessica. That told me all I needed to know about that relationship.

  “Boz was sleeping with Candice, so Erin paid him back by having sex with Tyler,” Mia said. She dipped a tortilla chip into the salsa and wolfed it down. She was going over the details again to spur conversation. We were seated near a painting of a riverboat with red and blue lights built into it, proving there’s a fine line between tacky and kitschy.

  “Lutz lied to me big-time,” I said. “Didn’t tell me about any of this stuff. I don’t think we can trust anything he ever said. And it makes me wonder if he was involved in the fraud, and that’s why he got killed, versus Boz or someone else killing him out of frustration that the money hadn’t been released.”

  “I just can’t imagine Boz and Tyler would be anything but enemies after all that sleeping around,” Mia said. “Even if Boz and Erin had grown apart or weren’t in love anymore, wouldn’t a macho guy like Boz be pissed that his wife had had an affair—even if he’d had one himself? That’s how guys work, right? It would be a matter of pride and honor, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s an ugly generalization—but I can’t really argue with it.”

  Our waitress arrived with our dinners—Willie’s Plate for the both of us. The dish was named for Willie Nelson, who ate at the restaurant occasionally. I immediately tore into my enchilada. Heaven. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  “We’re doing it again,” Mia said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Trying to figure out the ‘why’ and the ‘who’ instead of the ‘where.’”

  “But you know...” I said.

  “Yeah, sometimes the ‘why’ and the ‘who’ tell us the ‘where,’ but we’ve been trying that approach, and look where we are.”

  “At the best Tex-Mex joint in central Texas?” I said.

  “Sure. But we’re here instead of shooting video of Boz Gentry, because we still haven’t found him.”

  “As always,” I said, “I’m open to suggestions.”

  We were quiet for several minutes, just eating.

  “I think we’re back to speculating as to where he might be,” Mia said. “And it’s a pretty short list.”

  “Agreed. Not at Erin’s. Not at Albeck’s ranch. I wish we’d had a chance to mount that camera in Albeck’s backyard.”

  “Should we try again?” Mia asked.

  “At this point, probably not. Even if Erin isn’t a player in this, you’ve gotta figure she’s going to call her Aunt Shelley and tell her everything we said, including the fact that we saw her in Albeck’s backyard. She might even tell Alex Albeck. He’ll know we’ve been poking around.”

  “If Boz is holed up in there...” Mia said.

  She didn’t need to complete that thought. Boz Gentry could stay hidden in Albeck’s mansion indefinitely, and nobody could smoke him out.

  I said, “Time to talk to Candice, I think. What else can we do at this point? We’re running out of options. I’ll admit I’m very curious as to why Candice would’ve gone out to Albeck’s ranch. If she was—”

  Mia’s cell phone alerted. She had the ringer turned off, but someone had left a voicemail. She listened, then said, “Well, that was one of the fire investigators. The lab tests confirmed that it was arson, but I was expecting that. No progress on figuring out who did it. They’ve interviewed Jens Buerger, Shane Moyer, and those guys, and all of them have alibis that supposedly check out.”

  “I’d like to hear what those alibis are,” I said. I couldn’t help being skeptical. One of those lowlifes had to have been the arsonist. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d have a chance, very soon, to judge the quality of one of those alibis myself.

  Mia said, “The good news is, I get my house back now.”

  I received some news, too, a couple of hours later.

  First, though, Mia came back to my apartment to get her things, and then she left for her house. I offered to let her stay another night, or several, but she declined. I pointed out that her house might still be pretty smelly, but she said she’d live with it. I was honest enough with myself to know I wanted her to stay. Or maybe I just wished she wanted to stay.

  I simply sat for a few hours and watched television. Sometimes you have to let your mind work on a problem when you’re not actively concentrating on it. Let it sort of percolate in your subconscious. Come up with a brilliant idea while you’re watching the Astros. That’s bullshit, of course. It doesn’t really work that way. But it gave me an excuse to set the Boz Gentry case aside for the moment and relax.

  Only problem was, I couldn’t stop ruminating. Still so many possibilities.

  Boz acted alone.

  Boz and Erin.

  Boz, Erin, and Tyler.

  Boz, Erin, Tyler, and Candice.

  If we believed Erin and ruled her out:

  Boz and Tyler, which didn’t seem likely.

  Boz, Candice, and Tyler, which also didn’t seem likely.

  Boz and Candice.

  Wait a second. Boz and Shelley?

  I was just about ready to go to bed when I heard a text alert on my phone. I figured it was Mia, letting me know she’d gotten settled in back at her place, because she knows I’m a worrier. But then I realized it wasn’t “Brick House,” it was my generic text tone.

  It was from Laura.

  The trip is on. It was never Hannah, it was me. I’m sorry. Was just being a nervous mom. Talk soon to finalize the details.

  31

  As I was walking out to the van the next morning, under a gray sky that threatened rain, a voice said, “Yo, Ballard.”

  Most of the other residents in the complex had already gone to work, so there weren’t many vehicles in the lot. Three spots over from my van was a jacked-up Toyota Tundra, and Shane Moyer was leaning against the driver’s door. He appeared to be alone, but I was still going to be careful. I could see both his hands, and the clothes he was wearing—jeans and a faded T-shirt from a rock band called STARZ—didn’t provide a lot of options as far as carrying a weapon.

  I wasn’t happy to see him, but I wasn’t surprised that he’d found me. Even a pinhead like Moyer—or any of the other fraudsters I exposed—could use some of the same tools I used to track somebody down. It happened from time to time. The usual result was vandalism to the van, or even my apartment door. Cost of doing business.

  I approached him cautiously. If I had to punch him again, I’d do it with my left hand, because my right was still giving me problems.

  “You looking for a rematch?” I said. “I just found out I’m anemic, so you might have a chance this time.”

  “Naw, man, I’m not here for that. Don’t be a dick, okay? I came to talk.”

  Now I was about ten feet away, and I could see that Moyer still had blackened eyes. Some swelling, too, even four days later. Made me proud.

  “About what?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Cops came around hassling me about the fire at your partner’s place. I figure if they suspected me, you do,
too, and I came to say I don’t want any trouble. I had nothing to do with it. I told ’em I was in Houston on Saturday. And I was. You can ask ’em. Or check it out yourself.”

  I almost smiled. He was scared that I would come after him.

  “Maybe I will,” I said.

  “The cops got my credit card receipts and phone records. I checked into the Motel 6 on the Gulf Freeway an hour before the fire.”

  “Only the best, eh?”

  “Huh?”

  “What about the rest of your Boy Scout troop?” I said.

  “They all say they ain’t got nothing to do with it.”

  “But?”

  “Like I said, I was in Houston, so I don’t know what they was doing. I’m not saying they did or didn’t, ’cause I got no idea. I just wanted to make sure you knew it wasn’t me. I’m done with that sort of stuff. I’m trying to get my shit together.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “Meaning your life?”

  “It’s time. You know how much trouble you caused for me with that video you shot the other day?”

  “Of course I know,” I said. “You were committing fraud, and when you commit fraud, you run the risk of getting busted. It’s not some game. You’re lucky if you stay out of jail for that. Don’t blame other people for problems you created yourself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Moyer said. “My lawyer says I’m probably okay since we dropped the claim.”

  “And let’s not forget about the way you came after my partner in the parking lot outside your apartment,” I said. “Seriously, do you realize how dumb that was? People get killed for less than that.”

  I was getting worked up.

  “I wouldn’t have hurt her,” he said.

  “If you had—” I had to cut myself off. Take a deep breath. Leave some things unspoken—like what I would have done to him if he had injured Mia in the slightest.

  “I know, man,” he said, and now he was reluctant to make eye contact. “Between all that and this fire thing, I realized I need to make some changes.”

  “An all-new you, huh?” I said. “Just like that.”