That isn’t true, of course. Over the past decade, the Hill Country has been filling up fast, with gated communities swallowing up the woods and prairies and small towns pushing out their boundaries farther and faster every year. But drought is a constant threat and water has become a major problem. Even the grow-baby-grow crowd has to admit that there are limits. Most counties are tightening their building and well-drilling restrictions and putting the brakes on development.
But this house has been here for a long time, and the land around it has stayed wild. Our nearest neighbors, the Banners, are well out of sight, and Limekiln Road is far enough away, and buffered by trees, so that we rarely hear a vehicle. From our porch, McQuaid and I can look out onto an expanse of grass and an old stone wall overgrown with greenbrier, our native Texas species, Smilax bona-nox. (If you have ever tangled with this thorny vine, you will appreciate two of its common names: cat’s claw and blaspheme-vine.) Beyond the wall is a wide meadow, rimmed with juniper, live oak, and mesquite trees. Tonight, in the shadows under the distant trees, a doe and two fawns, still wearing their baby spots, were cropping grass. Low in the west, the sun was about to duck behind the hills. The high-pitched song of the cicadas filled the air, and the honeysuckle at the near end of the porch scented the slight breeze. It was a lovely summer evening, almost too hot to sit outdoors, but not quite. When you live in Texas, where there’s too much air-conditioning too much of the time, you learn to go outside whenever you can, even if it is a little too hot.
I picked up our before-supper conversation where we left off. “You said there’s more to tell about Charlie.”
“Yeah.” McQuaid leaned back in the rocker and propped his sandaled feet on the porch railing. “Turns out that he and Christine Morris were . . . involved.” He gave me an oblique glance. “Romantically involved, that is.”
I stared at him. “Are you kidding? I understood that she sued for divorce on grounds of adultery. And that Charlie was her attorney.”
“Nope. Not kidding.” McQuaid shrugged. “Wouldn’t be a first, you know. Happens all the time.”
“Well, maybe,” I muttered. But while love affairs between lawyers and their clients may make for stimulating television drama, they are a very bad idea—in spite of the fact that the State Bar of Texas has never quite managed to bring itself to specifically prohibit them. I found it hard to believe that Charlie would be stupid enough to get himself into that kind of situation.
And there was something else. From everything I’d heard about Christine Morris, she was a consummate fashion plate—clothing, hair, jewelry all flawless, a beautiful woman. But in the decade or more that I’ve known Charlie Lipman, he’s looked like the quintessential Texas country lawyer, given to wrinkled suits and coffee-stained white shirts. He is not what anybody would call a hunk. And definitely not a suitable escort for a fashion queen.
“You’re surprised?” McQuaid asked, eyeing me. “Hey, sex happens, China. Love, too, sometimes—although maybe less frequently than sex. And Charlie didn’t always look and dress the way he does now.” He paused thoughtfully. “He didn’t drink, either. At least, not so much.”
“How would you know?” I challenged. “You’ve only known him for as long as I have. And all that time, he’s been . . . well, just the way he is now. Just Charlie.”
“Blackie told me,” McQuaid said. “Charlie used to be the sharpest tool in the box. But something happened in his personal life—Blackie isn’t sure what. After that, he started going downhill. Of course, as a lawyer, he’s still plenty good. He’s just . . .” His voice trailed off. “He’s just Charlie.”
I sighed. “So Charlie told you that he and Christine Morris were involved. I assume that this went on while he was representing her in her divorce action.”
“He didn’t say when. It could have been after the divorce was granted, for all I know.”
I went back to the point. “So how does this . . . romantic involvement play into the current situation?”
“Don’t ask me,” McQuaid said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say that he thought of something in the course of his interview for the documentary—something he had forgotten about or maybe decided not to pursue. He thought more about it and concluded it was something he wanted to investigate, because of his involvement with Christine. So he called me and asked me to look into it for him.”
“It being the possibility that Doug Clark hid some—or a substantial portion—of his assets during the property settlement.” I shook my head. “If Charlie was sleeping with Christine, maybe even wanted to marry her after the dust settled, I would have thought that he would have dug for those assets with every spade and shovel he could find. And if he didn’t do it then, why bother now?”
“Dunno.” McQuaid shrugged. “But they weren’t sleeping together when this happened, apparently. According to Charlie, some time after Christine got her divorce, the two of them ended their relationship and she began seeing someone else.”
“Anybody I know?” I asked curiously.
“A guy named Roberto Soto,” McQuaid said.
“No kidding.” I was mildly surprised. Soto was an art dealer based in San Antonio. Some years before, he had been indicted by the feds for wire fraud, conspiracy, and the sale of a forged painting. I couldn’t remember the artist at the moment, but it was a name I recognized at the time.
“Yeah,” McQuaid said with a chuckle. “That Roberto Soto. The one your friend Justine took to the cleaners.”
I knew about Soto because Justine Wyzinski, a San Antonio attorney in private practice, had represented one of his customers in a civil suit against him. Soto hadn’t admitted guilt in the federal case, but he pled to a lesser charge in return for a fine. And he paid court costs and restitution in the civil case Justine had brought. Interesting, but ancient history by now, and most people had probably forgotten it. Still . . .
“Ruby told me that Christine was collecting Mexican art, in a big way.” I paused. “I wonder if she bought any of her stuff from Soto.”
McQuaid shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not sure Charlie knew very much about that part of it. Christine was still his client, even if they were no longer otherwise involved. Shortly before she was killed, she came to Charlie with the claim that her ex-husband had hidden some of the marital property in a complicated business arrangement. She wanted him to look into it. Depending on what he found, she wanted to get the divorce settlement readjudicated or file a civil fraud suit. At her insistence, he began the investigation. When she was killed, he dropped it.” He paused. “And now he’s reopened it. And hired me.”
“Did Doug Clark know that his ex-wife was looking into his business affairs?”
“It wouldn’t have been smart to let him in on the secret.” McQuaid frowned at me. “What are you thinking?”
I shrugged. “Oh, nothing. Except that this is shaping up to be a more complicated matter than it seemed at first.” Doug Clark and hidden assets, Roberto Soto and Mexican art. Briefly, I made a mental note to ask Justine—a friend from law school—if she knew what Soto was doing with himself these days.
McQuaid gave me a curious look. “I thought the neighbor killed her. What’s his name—Bowman?”
“Dick Bowen.” I tsk-tsked. “Don’t forget. The jury found him not guilty.”
“Which doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it,” McQuaid pointed out. “As you very well know, China, juries acquit for all sorts of reasons. They might have believed he was guilty as sin but let him walk anyway.”
He was right, of course. The jury’s “not guilty” didn’t necessarily mean that Bowen was innocent. But judging from what I’d heard from Charlie that morning, I’d say that the smart money was on somebody else—on Johnnie’s alternative suspect, maybe. That trail of clues sounded like it was laid down for the benefit of the investigators, who had followed it obediently—without a warrant.
“Aft
er Christine was killed,” I said, “did Charlie go to the police with what he knew about those assets?”
“He didn’t know anything,” McQuaid said. “All he had was Christine’s suspicions. And at the time she asked him to look into it, Charlie says, she was pretty unbalanced. This was when she was causing a lot of trouble, haranguing the city council and making wild claims all over the place. He didn’t quite believe her.”
“But he does now? I wonder why he’s changed his mind.” I leaned forward, itching to get into this. “Listen, McQuaid. Charlie told me some interesting things about the Morris murder investigation. Turns out that the lead investigating officer was—” I was interrupted by a light rap on the door into the living room.
“May we join you?” Gretchen asked, and a moment later, she and Kitt were seated on the porch swing.
Kitt wore a pair of narrow, hip-looking glasses, and her pink-streaked brown hair gave her the look of an untidy child. “Thanks for inviting me to sleep over tonight,” she said, pulling her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs. “Jerry will be home tomorrow night, which is good. After everything that’s happened, I don’t mind telling you that I’m just not real crazy about staying by myself.”
Gretchen’s eye was several colors of purple and green, and the abrasions on her arms were bandaged. “Kitt and I have been talking about the documentary.” She pushed the swing with the toe of her sneaker, setting it swaying. “We really do feel responsible for what happened to Dr. Prior.”
McQuaid cleared his throat. “I didn’t get all the details about your film,” he said in a kindly voice. “Maybe you could fill me in on what you’re up to. Words of one syllable, please. I don’t know the first thing about moviemaking.”
Gretchen and Kitt exchanged glances, and Gretchen spoke. “A documentary is a requirement of the master’s degree in the film program. We do the whole thing ourselves, start to finish. We’re supposed to choose a topic, do the research, create a storyboard, shoot the interviews and other scenes, dig up the archival footage we want to use, do a rough cut and the final edit.”
Kitt picked up the story. “Then we have to screen it for a critique team, go back and rework wherever necessary, and do a final screening for the public. We get graded on all the steps along the way.” She stopped, chewed on her lip, then added, “We actually thought we had a good shot at a national distribution for this project. My uncle works with a company that distributes independent films, both home video and broadcast. He’s seen some of our footage. He’s been encouraging us.”
Ah, I thought. If somebody knew about a potentially wider distribution of the film, that person might be nervous enough to make a threatening call to the filmmakers. But why would he—or she—attack Karen? She was only the filmmakers’ supervisor. It didn’t make sense.
A mockingbird flew to the top of the small yaupon holly at the far end of the porch and began to chirp in a bossy tone, as if he were lecturing us for sitting on his porch. The sun was gone now, but the western sky was tinted with pastel lemon and pink. The meadow was empty. The doe and her fawns had melted into the purple shadows of the trees.
“I’m curious about the topic,” McQuaid said. “What made you decide to choose the Morris murder for your documentary?”
Gretchen spoke up. “I was in your class one day—Criminal Investigations, I think it was—when you lectured about cold cases and the reasons why some crimes are never solved. I thought that was really interesting. When Kitt and I started talking about the documentary, I went to the newspaper morgue and glanced through old copies of the Enterprise. That’s when I stumbled over Christine Morris’ murder. I was still a girl when it happened, so I didn’t remember anything about it. But when I told Kitt, she liked the idea because Ms. Morris collected Mexican art, paintings, mostly, but other stuff, too. Which gave it a really interesting angle. Some of the paintings in the museum are spectacular, and since it’s private, people don’t know much about it.”
“I have an undergraduate major in art history,” Kitt put in. “And Dr. Prior was interested in the concept because it involved the museum. She was on the board of directors.”
“She was?” I asked, surprised. Ruby hadn’t mentioned that—or maybe Ruby hadn’t known.
Kitt nodded. “Just for the last six months or so, I think. And she had done a documentary of her own on art fraud, a couple of years ago. It was shown on PBS and got quite a lot of attention.”
McQuaid nodded. “Now I get the connection.”
“But basically,” Kitt said, “we liked the idea of making a film about this quiet, sleepy little town, not at all the kind of place where you’d expect a murder—especially a sensational murder. There were plenty of newspaper photos we could use, and people who remembered it and might be willing to talk about it. Apparently, the victim was quite a character, a troublemaker, according to some people. And the fact that the killer got off—”
“The accused killer,” I corrected gently.
“Oh, yeah, right.” Kitt nodded. “The accused killer was acquitted, which we thought was a curious kind of twist. Everybody said it was because Ms. Morris was such a bitch and the killer—excuse me, the accused—was a really nice guy who did a lot of volunteer work around town. The jury liked him, even though he killed—” She stopped and glanced at me. “Even though he was accused of killing this woman. It seemed like a good story.”
“And it’s set right here in Pecan Springs,” Gretchen put in, “which cut down our travel time and saved us money. Of course, the victim and the . . . the—”
“Defendant,” I offered, for the sake of variety.
“Thank you. Anyway, the victim and the defendant are both dead, and so are the prosecutor and the defense attorney. So we wouldn’t have to worry about defaming them. Not that we’d do that, of course,” Gretchen added hastily. “At least, not on purpose. But sometimes documentary filmmakers get into trouble for that.”
They certainly do, I thought. Even Michael Moore gets sued for defamation every now and again. And while truth is an absolute defense, it is sometimes difficult to prove. Not everybody agrees on what is true and what isn’t. Ms. Morris would probably not have used the word bitch to describe herself.
“Bowen is dead?” McQuaid sounded surprised.
Gretchen nodded. “After the trial, he quit his job, sold his house, and moved to Houston. He committed suicide three or four years ago.”
“He sat in his car in his garage with the motor running,” Kitt said. “Carbon monoxide poisoning.” She looked regretful. “We couldn’t interview him, but we shot some video of the house where he lived, and we got some archival material on his death from one of the Houston television stations.”
Suicide, I thought, after he was acquitted of murder. That was ironic. Remorse? Guilt? Did that mean he was really guilty? Or it could have been something else. Maybe he’d been sick, or he hadn’t been able to find another job. Maybe—
“So where are you on this documentary?” McQuaid asked.
“We’ve done most of the research,” Kitt said. “Dr. Prior approved our storyboard, and we’ve shot a lot of interview footage—not all, though. There are still several people we wanted to talk to. But we’ve got shots of the newspaper coverage and some really good archival footage from a couple of the Austin television stations. The next big step is the editing. Was the editing,” she corrected herself and pulled down her mouth. “As Gretchen said, we’ve decided that we just can’t go on with the film. It . . . it just doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s more than that, actually.” Gretchen’s voice was tight. “It feels dangerous. Dr. Prior is dead. I was attacked and my camera and memory cards were stolen. Next time, it could be Kitt. And one of us could end up—” She shivered.
“End up dead,” Kitt said, throwing up her hands dramatically. “Like Dr. Prior.”
I wanted to dispute her ass
ertion, but I couldn’t. She was right.
McQuaid stood up. “The reason it’s dangerous is because somebody apparently feels threatened,” he said, leaning against the porch railing. “Somebody has something to hide. He—or she—is afraid you’ll uncover it. Or that you already have.”
Finally, Gretchen spoke. “I just don’t get it, Ms. Bayles. In his interview, Chief Harris laid out all the evidence the police collected, piece by piece. Bloody shoes, the broken golf club, the matching clubs in Mr. Bowen’s garage, even blood on the garage door and a bloody rag on the floor. It all pointed to Mr. Bowen, every bit of it. The jury let him off, yes. But in his interview, the chief—”
“The former chief,” Kitt amended.
“Right. The former chief said that he got off because of a smart defense attorney and a sympathetic jury who liked Mr. Bowen too much to convict him. But that he was guilty, just the same.”
“The cops can be wrong, Kitt,” I put in firmly. “That happens, you know.” Worse than that, the police can lie on the witness stand, plant incriminating evidence, and deliberately overlook exonerating evidence. They can, and they do—although of course nobody would ever want to say that this could happen in Pecan Springs, where everybody always does the right thing, every time, in every circumstance. And if they happen to do the wrong thing, it’s because . . . well, because they just weren’t paying attention, or they had a momentary moral lapse. Or something.
“And if Bowen didn’t kill her,” I went on, “somebody else did. It’s possible that the killer is still here in Pecan Springs and is terrified of being found out.” The words hung like an ill omen in the quiet air.
“But it was such a long time ago,” Gretchen protested. “It’s ancient history. Surely—”
“There is no statute of limitations on murder,” I said.
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