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

by Anna Castle

  I am not a spreadsheet wizard, but Tillie is, and this one was pretty straightforward anyway. The leftmost column was labeled Clients and sorted alphabetically by last name. The second column was labeled Crime; the third was labeled Punishment. After that were many pairs of fields labeled Date and Payment.

  I ran down the left-hand column with the mouse pointer. We saw all the names we’d expected, including Cameron and Trigg, and a few we hadn’t, including one of Tillie’s uncles, Jerry Reznicek. He was married to Tillie’s third auntie and was the owner and operator of Reznicek Repairs It All.

  “Not Tío Jerry!” she cried.

  His crime was gambling, like Finley. His payments were odd repair jobs, six in the past year.

  Finley had two penalties: cash and protection. Several installments of five hundred bucks were listed.

  “Look,” I said, pointing at the word ‘protection.’ “What do you think that means?”

  Tillie made a little popping noise with her lips while she thought about it. “How about, ‘Protect me from people who try to find out about my blackmailing?’”

  “He was doing that, all right. And what if Jim figured out what Greg was doing and threatened to publish it in the newspaper?”

  “Then maybe Finley protected Greg by killing Jim.”

  We exchanged dark looks.

  “I don’t want it to be Finley,” Tillie said. “And not because he’s so good-looking. It’s too scary if it’s one of our deputies.”

  I was right there with her. Society works better when the good guys and the bad guys are two different sets of people.

  I studied the names again, reading across each row. Mr. Ahlstad, whose crime was cross-dressing, which seemed like a total exaggeration to me, was paying in nut-and-fruit baskets. Krystle’s crime was secretly married. Every foot massage was duly logged. A Notes column contained this frightening entry: “Feb 14 — start working her way up. Full body by Mar 1. And then?”

  “He was escalating with Krystle,” I said. “That gives her more of a motive.”

  “I wish this never happened,” Tillie said. She sounded like some favorite thing had been broken and couldn’t be fixed, not even at Reznicek Repairs It All.

  “Look at Burrie,” I said. “Her crime is she’s a bastard.” I laughed. “I would have said, she’s a bitch.”

  Tillie laughed with me. “She’s not that bad.” Then she gasped. “No, it means that Burrie is a bastard bastard. An illegitimate child. Not Judge Burwell’s daughter.”

  “After she went to all that trouble to protect him, too.” I shrugged. “She would hate it, sure, but how bad is it really, in this day and age?”

  “Not bad to me.” Tillie glanced at me from under her extra-long lashes. “You know, technically, I’m a bastard.”

  “You are? Since when?”

  She giggled, pink spots brightening her cheeks. “Since always. My mom was only seventeen when she had me. She and my dad were engaged, but they hadn’t gotten married yet. He died in a car crash and so that’s why my name is Espinoza and not Ortega.”

  I leaned over in my chair and gave her a hug. “Tillie, that is unique and romantic and perfectly you.”

  She laughed with pleasure. “Not everybody sees it that way. But I don’t mind. I had Papi. Plus, now I’m married anyway so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Not a scrap. I wonder if that’s what the deal was with Burrie.”

  “Maybe the Judge and his wife didn’t get married until after she was born and he never really adopted her.”

  I frowned. “That would be pretty harsh, him being a judge and all. You’d think he’d be up on that sort of thing.”

  “Something was wrong about it. Look at her payments: a hundred bucks, two hundred, then five hundred. And then look: credenza, mahogany table, garnet necklace.”

  “Sounds like the stuff that was missing from her house.”

  I opened up the folder labeled ebay. It held receipts from online purchases. I opened one and we learned that Greg had made a sweet nine hundred dollars selling an antique oak credenza.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “That’s a lot of money,” Tillie said.

  I flashed back to our visit to Burrie’s house that morning. “He was sucking everything worth money out of her house. Just because she wasn’t really a Burwell.”

  Tillie agreed. “It fits. I couldn’t see Deputy Finley baking cookies. What if somebody came over? Plus, he’d have to buy brown sugar and everything, so people would know. Men don’t have brown sugar in their cupboards.”

  Neither did I, come to think of it. But the observation stood. “You know what else fits?”

  Tillie shook her head.

  “Didn’t the Judge die of cancer?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, they found OxyContin at my house because Gertie died of cancer. So maybe Burrie had leftover OxyContin at her house, too. She could’ve swiped one of Greg’s pink cakes, injected it with drugs, and put it back in the box some other day. She was at that meeting and—” The memory of that evening rolled through my mind. “She said ‘Don’t eat that’ to Jim, too, like Marion did. That’s seems very guilty, in retrospect, don’t you think?”

  She took a minute to work it through and then nodded, her big silver earrings bouncing. “I’m thinking it might not be an accident she looked so much like my Tía Nacha back in high school.”

  I clicked into the burwell folder and found a file called bastard.txt. I opened it and we read it together. It was an email Burrie had sent to her sister in San Diego.

  Frannie,

  I know it’s odd for me to be writing to you this way, but something Father said shortly before he died is preying on my mind. I need to ask you about it but I can’t bring myself to talk about it on the phone. Not yet.

  It could be a lie, you see. He was in so much pain toward the end. It made him so bad-tempered sometimes. He would lash out at me. I’m not complaining, that’s not why I’m writing. I know you couldn’t be here and, frankly, I’m glad you weren’t. Then he would have had two targets for his meanness.

  I don’t know how much of what he said could be true. One day when he was more irritable than usual, I was trying to get his bit of wispy hair clean and nicely combed. He snatched the comb away and threw it right across the room, snapping at me to leave him alone. He said, “You’re not even my daughter, you stupid woman, though you’ve never known it. You’re a bastard.”

  Well, I was shocked. I assumed he was raving. I told him to calm down and offered to bring him a cup of warm milk. He grabbed my wrist and held it with more strength than I’d thought he had left. He grinned a horrible death’s-head grin at me.

  ‘You’re a bastard, Edie. The proof is in the safe in my study. You’re the illegitimate child of Emiliana Espinoza and that flyboy she met near the end of the war. He left her pregnant, but we never found him. Emiliana was only sixteen. Your mother felt sorry for her and wanted to help and she also wanted another child, which she couldn’t have. So she arranged it all. She took Emiliana to Mexico for a year, telling everyone she was going to study art history. People believed whatever we told them. Then she brought you home and raised you. What did I care? It gave her something to do.’

  Vicious old man! I was sure the story was a lie. But that night I looked in the safe and found my birth certificate, with Father and Mother where they were supposed to be. Then I found an old manila envelope in among a stack of newspaper clippings from his early days on the bench. Inside, there was another birth certificate from a Mexican hospital for a girl child named Edith Espinoza, born on my birthday, to Emiliana Espinoza and Father Unknown.

  It can’t be true. Please tell me it’s just the ravings of a mean old man.

  Your loving sister, at least I hope so.

  Tillie and I sat in silence for a minute, staring at that letter. She said, “Papi had an aunt called Emiliana. I think she married a guy in Mexico a long time ago.”

  “Wow, Tillie. This means that
Burrie is your, uh…” We tried to work it out with a piece of scrap paper, but the genealogy defeated us. “She’s Papi’s cousin, anyway.”

  Tillie said, “Is it so horrible to be an Espinoza? Would you sell everything you owned to keep it a secret?”

  “Heck, no. I’m hoping y’all will adopt me.” I remembered Greg talking about charging people what they were willing to pay. He had ended up going too far. “And you know what else?” I said. “Burrie really doesn’t like me. Or Krystle, come to think of it. She thinks we’re brash. She wouldn’t hesitate to frame us.”

  “She’s mad because Krystle’s a true seventh-generation Texan, but she treats it like a fashion accessory.” Tillie voice faded off and then she shouted, “Hey! Burrie’s still a Daughter of the Texas Republic! There was Espinozas here before Ezekiel Burwell came along.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think that would make it right for her.” I got up and found a 500 GB flash drive in the closet. “I’m going to copy this stuff. Burrie’s a better suspect than me on all counts. I don’t have any brown sugar, either.”

  “Is one suspect enough?”

  We frowned at each other. “Let’s go for two.”

  I dragged the burwell folder onto the drive and opened the finley folder. The first file was a bill from an online casino for twenty thousand dollars.

  “Holy catfish!” I hadn’t expected anything that huge. “That’s like half a year’s pay.”

  “You can probably get fired for that.”

  “Or worse. Don’t casinos have guys that beat you up if you don’t pay?”

  “On TV they do,” Tillie said. “So that’s two good ones.”

  “Two is plenty.”

  We downloaded everything in Greg’s vault onto the flash drive. Tillie got a manila envelope and wrote Sheriff Hopper: private on it. Once I delivered it to the sheriff, we were done.

  “So which one do you like best?” I asked Tillie.

  Our eyes met, eyebrows raised, as we considered the data we gathered. We both spoke at once: “Burrie.”

  “Why do you think so?” I asked.

  She wagged her head from side to side. “Mainly, because I think Deputy Finley could leave if things got too bad. He didn’t have to kill anybody. He’s young, he’s a man, he’s not even from here in the first place.”

  I agreed. “He could move to Dallas or Chicago and get a job as a private security guy or something and change his name. He wasn’t at the end of his rope. But Burrie—”

  “Burrie is all about family history and being the principal and the chair of everything. Being the daughter of Judge Burwell is her whole world. She could never leave and she couldn’t stand to be anything less than the First Lady of Lost Hat.”

  Tillie’s eyes were liquid with sympathy, but I wasn’t feeling any. Remembering the night Jim died made me madder than ever. She could’ve jumped up and knocked the cake out of his hand. Instead, she let him eat it. She let him die, while she stood there and watched.

  “So, Burrie’s our gal.” I blew out a big breath, signifying a job well done. “All that’s left is to deliver the goods to the Law. And then, I vote a Girls’ Night Out.”

  “Me too! I’ll call Krystle.” Tillie got up and went into the kitchen, since her phone was in the pocket of her coat.

  I had mine in the thigh pocket of my pants, in case Ty should happen to call to tell me he was a big fat jerk and would I please forgive him if he took me to Cancun for a week at a luxury hotel with all the trimmings?

  Which I might or might not.

  Tillie came back from the kitchen. “Krystle says she’s on her way. Mannix will drop her off. She’s buying the first round.”

  “I’m two.”

  “Then I’m three.”

  “Three margaritas will put me in the bag.”

  “We can call Ben to come get us. You can both stay at our house tonight if you want.”

  That sounded wonderful. I don’t normally drink much, what with the parents in AA and the brother not long out of rehab, but tonight I needed to cut loose a little. I felt buzzed with unspent energy. Clicking mouse buttons didn’t give me the closure that clicking handcuffs around Burrie’s scrawny wrists would do.

  Chapter 45

  I went out the front door. The widely spaced streetlamps shed enough light for walking, even when the storefronts were dark. A cold breeze ruffled through my hair, blowing out the cobwebs with a fresh-smelling, open-country tang. I breathed deeply and strode down the walk with my arms swinging, envelope clutched in one hand, feeling free.

  The nightmare of the past two weeks was almost over. Tomorrow morning I’d wake up with no blackmail and no murder hanging over my head. Whatever would I do with myself?

  Oh, yeah: take pictures.

  I walked around the square and bopped across the parking lot of the law enforcement center. The glass front doors shone like a beacon. I could almost hear the angelic chorus swelling grandly in the background as I marched up the walk.

  Cue the violins.

  My boots echoed loudly as I crossed the marble floor to the front desk. The night sergeant was Tillie’s youngest aunt, Gumersinda. She was my age, also single and child free. She was determined to make a successful career in the male-dominated field of law enforcement.

  “Evening, Penny,” she said.

  “Hey, Sinda. Is the sheriff here?”

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  I reached the counter. “What, does he always work late?”

  “No, he usually goes home at six on the dot. But all hell’s breakin’ loose in this town tonight. We got domestic disturbances out the wazoo. I’m the only one left here.”

  “Uh-oh.” I was not surprised. People were confessing their cyber-crimes, hoping to earn points for honesty before their loved ones found out from other sources and the loved ones were reacting with less-than-saintly forgiveness.

  I considered my options. Sinda was a decent person in every way, hardworking, honorable, and kind. Her oval face radiated good sense and seriousness of purpose. Surely she could be trusted with the evidence. If I left without delivering them to somebody, my role in this horror show would not be over and I deeply wanted it to be over.

  On the other hand, nobody, not even Sinda, was immune to the high gossip potential of Greg’s data. The only person in this county with the maturity to keep a lid on it was Sheriff Hopper. And Marion. But the sheriff had the authority to go arrest people.

  That made my mind up for me. If I gave the evidence to anyone but the sheriff, word would leak out and Burrie would have time to disappear. That sister of hers was in San Diego. She could slip across the border and start a new life, incognito, correcting young people’s diction in some remote fishing village in Mexico.

  Sinda was watching with me with an expectant expression. Her gaze flicked to the envelope in my hand. “Anything I can do for you?”

  I shook my head. “I kinda wanted to talk to the sheriff. It can wait.”

  “I’ll tell him you came by, but don’t hold your breath. Like I said—”

  “I know. The wazoo. If he gets a chance to call me,” I said, with all the dignity I could muster, “I will be enjoying a well-earned cocktail at the local liquorium.”

  Sinda chuckled. “Tell Tillie I said hi.”

  A brown-and-tan pulled into the lot as I walked out the door. It veered around me and parked in front of the building. I peered at the darkened windows, hoping it was Sheriff Hopper. I came up around the driver’s side as the door opened and a tall, slender, very non-Hopperish figure stepped out.

  “Hey, Penny.” Deputy Finley slammed the car door. “Whaddaya got there?” His voice was level but his eyes were hard. He placed himself squarely between me and the building.

  Adrenaline shot through my bloodstream, raising goose bumps right up to my scalp. I think my hair puffed up on top of my head. I backed up a step, my foot wobbling on a stray rock. If he were fatter and slower and wearing a big plaster cast on one leg, I could sprint
around him and dive through the front door. But he was lean and sleek and probably as fast as I was. His legs were longer, that was certain.

  “I think you found those files,” he said. “I want them.” He walked toward me, hands out, reaching for the envelope.

  I thought about twenty thousand dollars and how long it would take to pay it off and what sorts of things a man with access to secure county records could do to scrounge up some extra money. Maybe Finley was at the end of his rope.

  What did I know about ropes?

  I walked backward. He smiled, teeth together, and walked toward me. His head swiveled left and right, making sure we were alone.

  Recent events flashed through my mind. Finley brought that phony letter about the phony will to my house himself. He could have made the call about Gertie’s medicines, too. Once they’d learned that OxyContin killed Jim, of course they would have called the pharmacy to find out who else in Long County had ever had a prescription for the stuff.

  “But what about the brown sugar,” I muttered, still walking backward, aiming toward the courthouse square.

  “Huh?” Finley glowered at me. “Give me that envelope, Penny, and nobody has to get hurt.”

  “OK.” I held out my hand and glanced in the direction of my studio to make sure there were no obstacles in my path. All clear. I caught Finley’s eye as I gathered myself. Ready. Steady. Go!

  I flipped the envelope at him like a Frisbee and simultaneously turned on my heel, lighting out for the studio. I ran for the trophy: full out, no doubts, no looking back. Head high, arms pumping, focused on my breath: one, two, one, two. I didn’t hear footsteps pounding behind me. Maybe the envelope was enough. Then I heard an engine roar to life and tires scatter gravel.

  Fear put wings on my feet. I tore across the square. He’d have to drive around it. Two minutes and I’d be safe behind a locked door. The front of my studio was dark. Tillie and Krystle must be in the kitchen. I hoped they’d left the front door open because I didn’t have my key and I wasn’t sure I could beat Finley around to the alley.

  I skidded to a stop, holding on to the door handle. It turned and I dodged inside, swung the door shut and flipped the lock lever. I peeked through the blinds and saw Finley’s car slow to a stop. He couldn’t very well break down the door in the center of town. Someone might drive by.