Black & White & Dead All Over: A Lost Hat, Texas, Mystery (The Lost Hat, Texas, Mystery Series Book 1)

by Anna Castle

  “Well, he wrecked his car, but not too bad. He ran into the dumpster in the DeGroot’s parking lot and sort of passed out. Or maybe he passed out first. They think he OD’d on something but they don’t know what yet.”

  I asked, “Did he eat any strange cookies?”

  Krystle shrugged. “Lydia went to see if he’s awake. If he is, I can go talk to him.”

  “I want to go, too,” I said.

  “Me, three,” said Tillie. “I don’t want to sit out here by myself.”

  The nurse reappeared and beckoned to Krystle. We all walked forward but she held up a hand to stop me and Tillie. “Sorry, family only.”

  “She’s not family.” I pointed at Krystle’s back as she disappeared behind the doors.

  “She’s listed on his insurance as next of kin.” Nurse Lydia had a bright gleam in her eye. They swung through the doors and left us.

  “I didn’t know they were related,” I said in a low voice to Tillie.

  “They can’t be,” she said. “I know all the Camerons.”

  We walked across the plum carpet into a zone of plum-colored chairs engineered to make sure no one could fall asleep in them. We picked the two farthest from the reception counter.

  Tillie drew in a sharp breath and said in a faint whisper, “Ohmigod!” She grinned at me, her eyes dancing.

  I stared at her. “What?” I looked back at the swinging doors and back at Tillie and light dawned in my tiny brain. “Oh, my God,” I said slowly.

  “Marriage makes you next of kin.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” I told her about the gold ring on Jason’s left hand.

  “That must be her secret.”

  “I guess it must. But what’s so bad about it? I mean, sure, Jason’s a goof, but we all make mistakes.”

  “No, it’s a disaster,” Tillie said. “You can’t be a Bachelorette if you’re already married.”

  I wagged my finger at her. “You are so right. But is it worth killing for?”

  “It’s pretty serious.” She unzipped her pink down jacket and scooted forward to slide out of it. She pulled it from behind her and folded it puffily in half and set it neatly on the seat beside her, with the abstracted air of a person deep in thought. Finally, she said, “I think Krystle would totally kill Greg if it came to that and it seems like it was coming to that. But I don’t think she would try to frame you, and I don’t think she would eat cookies she knew were drugged. And if she were going to kill Jason, you’d think she would have done a better job of it so he would actually be dead. And also, she would have done it way before tonight.”

  I unbuttoned my barn coat, but left it on. “I agree with all of that, except I don’t think she would really kill Greg, not on purpose, with poison. She might push him into the street where he might get crushed by a truck, but she wouldn’t have been counting on the truck part. She’s got a cold side but she’s not that frosty.”

  “I’m glad,” Tillie said.

  I knew what she meant. I could see being desperate enough to kill Greg, but not cold-bloodedly killing a sad little pseudo-hipster like Jason. I would not want to spend the day driving around with a person who could even seriously contemplate such an act.

  We tossed around the Krystle-as-murderer idea for a while, then revisited everyone else we’d talked to that day. That kept us busy for nearly thirty minutes, by the clock over the reception desk. I was getting antsy and also hungry.

  I was about to suggest we make a food run when a man walked in and headed straight for the reception counter. He was blond, a bit older than me and built like a guy who works out for health, not ego: strong and limber, but not bulky. He wore Clark Kent glasses and a V-neck cardigan under an open corduroy jacket to identify himself unambiguously as a high school science teacher.

  “Now that’s a Cameron.” Tillie waved her hand in a tight arc next to her shoulder.

  He noticed and smiled and walked over to meet us.

  Tillie said, “Hi, Mannix.”

  He pointed a finger at her. “Hey, Tillie. How’s Ben?”

  “He’s fine. I’ll tell him I saw you.”

  Mannix turned to me, holding out his hand. “You’re Penny, right? Penelope Trigg? The photographer?”

  “That’s me.” He had a warm, steady shake.

  “I’m Mannix Cameron, Krystle’s brother. I was at Jim’s wake, at your studio.”

  We all paused for a moment of genuine grief. Tears stung my eyes. The pain of missing Jim came as sharp and surprising as a paper cut.

  I blinked away the moment and smiled at my new acquaintance. Mannix’s eyes turned up at the corners like Krystle’s and his lips were bow-shaped, too, but his face had been drawn with a heavier hand and a darker palette. His eyes were more summer evening than sapphire and his hair was caramel rather than pulled taffy. He had a dark blond shadow of stubble across the base of his cheeks that accentuated the bone structure.

  “Did Krystle call you?” Tillie asked.

  “No. I’ve been working for the sheriff at Greg Alexander’s offices, helping to analyze his computer business.” His eyes cut to me briefly. “I overheard the patrol car calling in Jason’s accident and I remembered he was staying with Krys. I thought she might need a ride.”

  “You’re a good brother.” I wasn’t sure my brother would be so helpful, all voluntarily like that.

  Mannix shrugged. “It’s on my way home.”

  We laughed, sharing a moment of understanding that siblings deserve our loyalty and support, but not if it takes us out of our way. I liked this guy and I could tell by his sparkly vibe that he liked me, too.

  Mannix said, “Is Krystle in with Jason? How is he?”

  “He’s going to be OK,” Tillie said. “They think he might’ve OD’d on something.”

  “Drugs?” Mannix’s face showed his revulsion.

  “Or maybe poison.” Jason may have been a twerp, but he didn’t deserve the treatment he’d gotten since he’d come to Lost Hat.

  “Poison?” Mannix cocked his head. “You don’t think this could be related to all the other…” He trailed off, at a loss for a way to refer to criminal events allegedly involving present company.

  “Maybe.” I couldn’t tell him about the drugged cookie business, not if he was working with the sheriff. “So, are you a computer expert?”

  He nodded, but modestly. “Good enough for local purposes. I teach comp sci at the high school.”

  I smiled brightly. “Have y’all found anything interesting on Greg’s computers?”

  He smiled brightly back. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  I gave him my cutest oh, you can tell little ol’ me look. His eyes flashed, acknowledging the flirt. “I heard about the blackmail story.”

  Now I pleaded with him. “Didn’t y’all find anything? Not even a list of names?”

  He shook his head, obviously wishing he had something to offer me. “Not even any unusual payments into his bank accounts. His finances are on the up and up.”

  “Even his online account?” If the cops found the vault and the blackmail evidence that must be there, they would have a whole raft of suspects better than me. Then I would never have to speak to Ty again. And if we broke up, I could go out with Mannix and let him sparkle at me.

  He was shaking his head, more slowly this time. “An online account? Are you sure he had one?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t see any signs of one, but I wasn’t looking, either.” He smiled at me again, but his eyes were wary.

  For the record, I said, “I did not murder Greg.”

  “Of course not.” He reached out to pat my arm. “I’m sure it was self-defense.”

  My jaw dropped in sheer disbelief. “He was poisoned!”

  The swinging doors opened abruptly as Krystle made an entrance into the waiting area. She spotted us chatting in our corner, hesitated a moment as if steeling herself, and then walked over to join us. “He’s going to be all right.”

  “D
o they know what it was yet?” Tillie asked.

  Krystle shook her head. “But he said he ate spice cookies.”

  Mannix asked, “Does he have allergies?”

  “Not allergies,” I said. Then to Krystle: “Where were they?”

  “On the picnic table in front of my trailer, in a plastic container with a stick-on Christmas bow on top. Jason came home from picking up his car and found them sitting there, looking all innocent.”

  “Innocent cookies.” Mannix sounded confused. Didn’t he know about Jim and the poisoned snack cake?

  Krystle gave him a sisterly shut-up look. “Since he’d eaten everything else and he was hungry, because he’s always hungry, he ate like half of them. Then he decided to go get some groceries with the money left over from paying for the car.”

  Mannix said, “Not innocent cookies?”

  “Not innocent,” Krystle said. “Get with the program, Manny. He was drugged. Jason said he started feeling woozy before he got halfway to the store.”

  “Poor guy,” I said. Tillie hummed her agreement.

  Krystle regarded us each in turn with a mind-reading gaze. We nodded, giving her sympathetic grimaces. Her eyes narrowed. We shrugged helplessly. Tillie made the key-lock gesture next to her lips. I nodded to confirm. Krystle sighed, lifting her shoulders all the way up and hanging her head a moment on the downswing to signal resignation and acceptance.

  Mannix watched the whole thing like an anxious businessman struggling to interpret Japanese sign language. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll fill you in later,” Krystle said. “Why don’t you go get us some coffee or something?”

  He squared his jaw in a mulish stance but then decided to be mature. “Since you ask me so nicely.” He gave me a sparkly look. “What can I bring you, Penny?”

  I sparkled back, but said, “We have to get back. Work to do, lists to locate.”

  “Lists?” Mannix asked.

  “Coffee.” Krystle shoved him toward the corridor. “Give us a minute here, OK?”

  “I’m going, I’m going.” He took my hand and said, “I hope to see you again soon.” He bowed his head to Tillie, saying, “Mrs. Jernigan.” She blushed. And he took himself off.

  Krystle faced Tillie and me squarely, putting her hands on her hips. “So. You know.”

  We both nodded. Tillie said, “We won’t tell anybody, we promise.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Krystle jerked her chin toward the reception area, where Nurse Lydia was leaning across the counter whispering intently to another nurse. “CNN’ll have it by midnight.”

  Chapter 44

  “I’m starving,” I said as we walked into the kitchen at the studio. I hung up my jacket and headed straight to the fridge to start taking things out. I was getting tired of party leftovers, but at least we knew they were safe, since we’d been eating them for two days.

  “How long has it been?” Tillie asked. I knew she didn’t mean since we’d eaten.

  I checked the clock on my phone. “Little over an hour.”

  She sighed and started unwrapping foil packages. “Guess we just have to wait, huh?”

  “We’ve been fighting it all day, but yeah, that seems to be where we are.” I got out a big tray and loaded food containers and napkins onto it. “Let’s eat in there, where we can stare at the computer and encourage it to bring us mail.”

  “We can look at the yearbooks some more,” Tillie said. “It won’t be long.”

  Still no mail by the time we’d eaten all we could stuff into ourselves. We turned to the yearbooks for distraction. I copied a few choice pages and entertained myself by defacing them, drawing horns on Mr. M. and big burro ears on Burrie. Tillie started with the first volume and studied every page, looking for traces of the people she knew.

  “Here’s Papi.” She showed me the picture of her grandfather’s graduating class.

  Young people had been younger in olden days. No one nowadays could be as young as Papi looked in that picture. He was skinny, wearing a huge grin, with his hair parted in the middle and slicked down on both sides with something shiny. He had the same moustache, but this one was dark brown instead of salt-and-pepper.

  After a while, Tillie said, “Look, here’s one of my aunties. I think it’s Bennie, or maybe—” She tilted her head to one side. “Maybe Nacha. What do you think?”

  I studied the photo. She seemed a little prim for an Espinoza, wearing a twinset and a choker of pearls. “Are you sure that’s one of your aunts?”

  Tillie took the book back and read the caption. “Omigod! It’s Burrie!”

  “No way.” I snatched the book. She was right. There was the young Edith Burwell, long before the late Mr. Jones had come along and given her his hyphen. “She did kind of look like an Espinoza back then.”

  “Spooky.” Tillie flipped through other volumes until she found the one she wanted. “Look here.” She turned her book to show me a picture labeled Encarnación Espinoza. “Tía Nacha.”

  We interleaved the books so we could look at the photographs side by side. The resemblance was clear, once you looked. Burrie had the same long oval face and the expressive dark eyebrows. Without the big glasses she wore now and the forty extra pounds Auntie Nacha had gained, you could see the similarity in their bone structure.

  “How did nobody ever notice this?”

  Tillie shrugged. “It’s not like they hung out together. Especially in those days. They lived in different worlds.”

  Different worlds, ten blocks apart. Not all the olden ways were golden.

  * * *

  Eudora bugled. I had mail, finally.

  I swiveled my chair so fast that I whirled all the way around and had to catch myself at the table’s edge and whirl back. I popped up my mail and read the message out loud:

  Your guy got no imagination. User name is al3xGr3g. Password is standard geek: vgy7ujm. Like running scales on the keyboard. Get it?

  An now I got real work to do. There’s more than one boss in this joint.

  Z.

  P.S. When you go in, you’ll leave traces. No way around it, unless you’re me, which you are not.

  “Woo-hoo!” Tillie pumped her fists in the air. We rah-hooed for a minute and then she asked, “What does he mean by traces?”

  “I don’t know.” I frowned at the message. “I guess it means when the cops go in, they’ll know I was there before them.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “I hope not, because we’re going in. I’m through waiting and wondering and worrying. I’m getting to the bottom of this right now.” I stretched out my hands dramatically, making knuckle-cracking noises with my tongue. Then I blew on my fingertips and wiggled them, loosening them up for my safecracking expedition. “Ready?”

  “Go for it.” Tillie turned a chair around so she could sit next to me and watch over my shoulder.

  I was glad for the company. I knew it was only a computer, but somehow it felt dangerous. Like creepy things might leap out at me and go “Bwaaaaahhhh!”

  I popped up Firefox. The front page of Greg’s online storage service was still on top. I typed in the username and password and hit Enter.

  “Ta-da!” The screen morphed into the home page for Greg’s account.

  There should have been trumpets. Heck, there should have been a mariachi band, twelve guys in glitter suits and big sombreros, with a video montage of a rocket launching and a flock of birds flying up and happy Swiss people dancing in a circle on a mountaintop.

  All we got was a folder with some more folder icons in it. This site didn’t even trouble itself to cook up a stylish interface: these were plain yellow boxy-looking icons with small square text labels beneath them.

  Tillie leaned in and we studied the labels: bank, ebay, misc and people.

  I double-clicked the people icon and got another folder full of folder icons with just a few doc files and one spreadsheet. The folders had names like trigg and finley.

  I clicked on t
rigg and got a trio of thumbnails: my figure studies and Greg’s vile mockery.

  “Gross!” Tillie squinted at it between her fingers. “No wonder you were so mad.”

  “Madder than mad.” I selected the thumbnails and started to delete them, but remembered we needed those files for evidence. So I navigated up again and found a folder named albrecht. It held a few text files, which I selected. I pressed my mouse button and deleted them all with one mighty click.

  It wasn’t enough. This virtual stuff was too passive. I wanted to bust things up: real things, big things, things that would go boom and make a mess.

  “Do we have to look at everything?” Tillie asked. “I mean, I kind of want to, but on the other hand, I kind of don’t, you know?”

  “I know.” I drummed my fingers lightly on the keyboard, thinking. “Let’s look at the spreadsheet. It’s probably a summary.”

  “Maybe we should tell the sheriff now,” Tillie said. “Then we don’t have to look and we don’t have to know. I know it sounds ridiculous coming from me, but I’m going to feel funny knowing real secrets about the people I see every day, like poor Mr. Ahlstad and his sexy underpants. How can I ever look at him again without laughing?”

  “It’ll wear off,” I said, not believing it. “We’ll forget about it eventually.”

  Tillie shrugged, but she didn’t believe it either.

  I twisted in my chair and faced her squarely. “I have to know.”

  She nodded.

  “Whoever it is has been laying the blame on me. They’ve been trying to poison me. And you and Krystle and poor Jason.”

  She nodded again.

  “I’m going to look. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  She hesitated for only a second. “I’ll look. Then you don’t have to be the only one.”

  We held each other’s eyes, grim-faced, ready to make the ultimate sacrifice. “Here’s hoping there aren’t any pedophiles in Lost Hat.” I popped open the spreadsheet.

  “Eeeewwww!” Tillie shuddered. “I didn’t think of that.”