“I prefer to think of it as persistent and committed.”
“You need to be committed.”
“Well, I’m so glad I took the time out of my busy evening to help with the investigation.”
“Look, Reyn, all gossip holds a grain of truth. Where the grain is here, we don’t know. Is it federal involvement? Is it drug kingpins? It could be that Percy is doing the taxes for a pharmaceutical salesman who is being audited by the IRS, and it got blown into these other stories by the fact that his wife was unrelatedly murdered. You see what I’m getting at? I am concerned that I hadn’t heard this before. But, frankly, if the feds are already investigating, they might not tell us. They’d let us turn over the rocks for them and see what crawled out. They are not famous for their cooperation with us locals.”
“So, thanks for nothing, is what you are saying.”
There was another long pause during which I felt him grappling to control his temper. I got another sigh in my ear. “I like having the heads-up, but it may come to nothing, is what I am saying. And if drugs, Mexican ‘businessmen,’ and the feds are involved, I like it even less that you are involved. All three are dangerous. So get uninvolved.”
“Control freak,” I muttered. Trudy shot me a glare. Tessa shook her head. Jon got a cat-that-got-the-canary look. What was that about?
“By the way, where are you going?” Scythe asked.
“How do you know I’m going somewhere?” I responded suspiciously.
“You’re calling me from your cell phone, and you said you were in the middle of a busy evening. What are you so busy with tonight, Reyn?”
“I have a date.” I punched the connection into oblivion. Take that, bossy britches.
I hadn’t been to Sixth Street in nearly ten years and things had changed. Back when the drinking age was still eighteen in Texas, students from the relatively liberal University of Texas filled not only the sidewalks but the street itself, drifting from club to club, serenaded by street musicians, sidewalk circus acts, and palm readers. Live bands played next door to each other, sending their music out into the crowded streets. Rock mixed with country, jazz, and reggae floated together on the humid night air that was laced with beer and tequila fumes. You could elbow your way into a club, but half the party took place on the asphalt outside. It was a Lone Star Mardi Gras every night. When the state legislature upped the legal age to twenty-one, more than half the nightly crowd had to go underground with their partying, so Sixth Street grew up. Downtown Austin was still a music mecca, just not such a wildly drunken one. Cars could actually get down Sixth Street on a Saturday night now, and even though the sidewalks were crowded, it was nowhere near the chaos of the eighties and early nineties.
We parked the eggplant and walked three blocks to Bangers. I kept looking behind us. For some reason, I was on edge. It was Scythe’s fault. He’d made me paranoid about bogeymen. I brushed it off in irritation. I refused to be manipulated. I focused ahead of me instead and smiled. Tessa and Rick held hands and shared a tender look. They were an odd pair, he tall and gawky, she short and curvy. But they weren’t nearly as odd as Trudy and Mario—beauty and the beast—who were nuzzling each other, as usual unable to keep their hands off each other. If you wanted proof that love was blind, you needed to look no further than my best friend and her husband. They had convinced me the whole love thing was purely chemically controlled—we were at the mercy of our pheromones. That made me think of Scythe again, an arrogant asshole if there ever was one and still he could make me wriggle just by his tone on the phone.
I was an adult, lots older than either of these pairs of friends when they married. I could overcome some silly hormonal attraction. I needed to find a mate who would be a good life partner, not some package of testosterone who made me hot every now and then and made me mad more often than not.
I smiled at Jon, who walked next to me. With his dark soulful eyes, black wavy hair, and chiseled features, he was handsome and good-hearted, a young man who would make some woman a wonderful, attentive husband. I reviewed the list of my available friends and clients. I thought of a couple of possibilities, including Jessica (if she ever got over her Bizkit obsession), and chastised myself for not inviting one of them to join us. I made a mental note to give him their phone numbers before the night was over.
A pack of giants in letter jackets stumbled out of the club to our right, and Jon grabbed my waist to save me from being trampled. Rick turned around up ahead and motioned us to hurry. He’d found Bangers. We gathered out front. The pounding music was deafening, even outside the door. I winced and wondered if whatever we found out was going to be worth permanent damage to my eardrums.
Rick leaned toward us and shouted, “The manager was supposed to save us a table. We’ll get settled, then I’ll go looking for him.”
We all acquiesced and followed him into the throng of thong-wearing, gyrating bodies. Jon put his arm proprietarily around me as he forged a path behind Rick. A band was onstage, and I scanned the members for a dark-haired, pale, skinny bassist. Bingo. It was hard to tell about the old-world manners thing right now, however, as he was throwing his head around like he was having convulsions, his chin-length, sweaty locks slapping across his face. The throbbing, unintelligible music gave me a headache, but everyone around us seemed to like it. Mario and Trudy detoured to the dance floor while Tessa and I sat down at a table that said RESERVED. Rick waved at us and wandered off toward the bar. Jon went with him, but returned after a few moments with a vodka gimlet for Tessa and a glass of white wine for me.
“It’s pinot grigio. I remembered you liked it.” There was something stray-puppyish about Jon that was alternately endearing and irritating. I swear, was I never satisfied—criticizing one guy for being too macho, another for being too cloying? Jon could be forgiven, as he was just acting with respect for his elders. Even though I was only seven years older than he was, he was like my nephew.
“Thank you.” I nodded at his glass of clear liquid. “What are you having?”
“Club soda. I told Rick I’d drive home.”
“Good Boy Scout,” Tessa said in the dry way she sometimes had. I gave her a double take, still not sure from her poker face whether that was slightly facetious or not. Jon grinned winsomely, apparently taking it as a compliment.
“Wretched Roadkill!” the man Rick had been talking to shouted with a sweep of his arm as he jumped onstage and grabbed the microphone from the lead screecher. “Let’s hear it for our Austin boys made good!!! They opened for Limp Bizkit just a few weeks ago, and now they’re back at their home bar. Do you know how lucky you are?”
The earsplitting answer was almost more than I could take. I put my hands over my ears. Wretched Roadkill? What the hell kind of name was that? I began to rethink my dismissal of a Wilma suicide. If Lexa was involved with the bassist for a band with that horrid a name, Wilma might very well have ended it all before he became part of the hallowed Barrister family.
Nah. I looked at the sweaty, scraggly half-dozen waving at the crowd. She’d be more likely to blow away this whole Black Bart bunch than herself. I thought they wore the color of night to match the circles under their eyes. What would cause those? Living like vampires and singing like dying dogs?
These were all burning questions I wanted to ask Tessa, Trudy, or Mario but it was too damned loud. The screeches had turned into a chant for the name of a song that sounded like “Drag Me Bloody, Love Me Dead.” Ack. I thought we’d found a whole new group of murder suspects. What was Lexa thinking? Maybe Jessica was wrong. Maybe that wasn’t Lexa she’d talked to backstage. Maybe the party animal had nipped into the mushrooms and had been hallucinating.
I hoped so.
Wretched Roadkill started the bloody, dead song. Mario dragged Trude back on the dance floor. Rick finished up with the manager and returned to our table. “Aaron wanted to make clear that there are a lot of music groupies in Austin, the girls come and go, so he can’t be sure. But he did admit that
the bassist of Wretched Roadkill has kept one girl in particular around since they started playing here a year ago. The girl matches Lexa’s description.”
My heart fell. “Is she here tonight?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Can I talk to Aaron?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Reyn,” Jon piped up at my left shoulder. Who asked him?
Rick shook his head anyway. “He doesn’t want to get involved. He said after the band goes offstage, I can slip back there and check things out.”
“Was the band playing two nights ago?”
“Saturday night? You bet. They started at ten o’clock. And, I asked, all members of the band played all night.”
I relaxed a little in relief. It didn’t eliminate Lexa’s boyfriend. After all, a haul-ass drive from Austin to San Antonio could be done in an hour, but it sure would have cut it close. “What’s the bassist’s name?”
The left side of Rick’s mouth quirked in a half grin. “He goes by Asphalt.”
“No way.” I laughed.
“It’s better than Corpse,” Tessa offered straight-faced as she sipped her vodka gimlet.
Jon just shook his head as if he was saddened by the creeps of the world in general. Or maybe he was in shock—after all, the boy had spent his entire life in private schools, raised as the son of a U.S. senator. Maybe this dark side was too much to take. If he stuck with me, he’d see more than he knew inside a week.
My throat was beginning to feel raw from having to shout over the music. “How ’bout I go with you to check things out?”
“No way,” Rick said. He chugged some beer.
Tessa shook her head once, decisively, and I could see she would be tougher to get through than her six-foot-two husband. Then there was Jon, who’d slid his chair over until it was touching mine. He was probably stronger than he looked, but I bet I could take him. Hmm. Maybe I could find a distraction. Maybe one of the thong-wearers on the dance floor. I would have to get creative once Rick went backstage. I couldn’t let him do it all alone.
The wretched bunch had started the last verse of their last song, “Mama in a ’Dillo.” The armadillo had actually been flattened by a tractor-trailer rig, but the hitchhiker who had kept it company for hours finally saw his mother’s face in the shape of the dead critter.
“Nice,” I said, sarcasm thick.
“It’s supposed to be symbolic,” Rick offered in generous defense of his music compadres. “I think.”
“Maybe they’d be a market for your songs,” I teased. “They seem to like armadillos. Your ’dillo could fall out of his limo….”
Rick stuck his tongue out at me, and Tessa hid a smile behind her gimlet.
Roadkill sauntered off the stage after a lot of flashing of their wet armpits and flipping of their sweaty, overly long hair. It didn’t take much to imagine they were smelling like their name about now. Rick took a final swig of his beer before following them backstage.
Speaking of sweaty, Mario and Trudy returned to the table, giggling and gasping for air. I don’t know if they danced that hard (my bet was on Trudy) or were that out of shape (my bet was on Mario), or whether the pressure gradient of the number of bodies per square inch put the temperature up around two thousand degrees out on the floor (all bets were on this one). Jon rushed to get them a pitcher of water. Then they started telling us about their adventures—how someone had grabbed Mario by his family jewels and wouldn’t let go until Trudy agreed to dance with her. Okay. Then three women invited Mario to an orgy in the women’s bathroom.
“Did you go?”
“Dios mío, Reyn!” Mario blushed and crossed himself.
“Cat’s claws and dolphin’s dongs, Reyn. Would you have gone?”
“Never been asked,” I said truculently.
Jon, returning with the water, drilled me with a questioning look that I ignored. The shocking auntie, no doubt.
But they weren’t finished. Apparently, a Hollywood talent scout was here visiting his sister-in-law and had seen Trudy. He’d tried to convince her during the squished armadillo song to move to Hollywood and work as a body double for Nicole Kidman. He named a healthy six-figure salary for official features, with more off the books for whenever Nicole might want to use her to fake out the media in order to sneak someplace else herself.
“That’s something to think seriously about,” Tessa said, reviewing the scout’s business card Mario had handed her. “That would be a good living.”
Trudy looked aghast and shook her head. “Why would I want to go around my whole life as someone else?”
Every now and then, I was reminded of why she was my best friend. We shared a smile.
Tessa put the card on the table and shot a nervous look at the backstage door. I’d noticed she’d been fidgeting, which was unlike a woman who could sit as still as the Rock of Gibraltar. I put my hand on her forearm, and she jumped.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m worried about Rick.”
“He’ll be all right. You know Rick, he’s just palling around before he gets to the point.”
Tessa nodded uncertainly. “But it’s been a half hour already.”
I hadn’t realized it had been that long, but the Trujillos could drag out a story. I leaned toward Tess. “We’ll give him a little more time, then I’ll go looking for him.”
“Not much more time, please, Reyn.” Tessa was almost in tears. “What I’m going to tell you, please keep between us.”
I glanced around and saw that Jon was being entertained by Mario’s reenactment of the crotch-grabbing incident. I nodded. “Of course.”
“Rick had a problem with drugs, before we got married. In fact, that’s how we met. I was assigned to be his public defender on a possession charge. He ran with a bad crowd, but I saw he was a good person. I made him promise if I got him off, he’d go to rehab. He did, and he’s never touched them since. But he’s avoided the lifestyle since then, too. His agent is the one who deals with the musicians….”
“Oh, Tessa, I’m so sorry I asked for his help in this deal with Lexa. If I’d known, I never would have asked him to go somewhere that might tempt him.”
She shook her head, and shot another look at the backstage door. “No, Reyn, it’s not your fault. I could’ve made some excuse. We could’ve stayed home. I just thought it had been long enough.”
“Maybe it has. I’ll go find him.”
“Will you dance with me?” Jon walked up beside me. I looked at Tessa and nodded our secret pact. I could’ve asked Jon to go with me, but something told me my watchdog might need saving instead of the other way around.
“Sure,” I said, and he led me out to bump and grind to the canned rock music that had been playing since the Wretcheds exited. AC/DC. Journey. At least I recognized some of these songs. One verse into the second song, and I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. Tessa caught on and distracted Jon long enough for me to detour to the backstage door.
The only problem was that there was a man the size of the door standing against it. He watched me with the expression a toad wears when contemplating a fly dinner. None. “Hi, handsome! I need to get back there to see my boyfriend.”
No response. I don’t think he was even breathing. I reached into my purse to get a mirror, and one huge hand shot out and shackled my wrist in an iron grip. “No monkey business,” he growled.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I coughed out, and swallowed my shock. “I was just going to, uh, repair my lip gloss before I see, uh, Asphalt.”
“Asphalt? He has a girlfriend, and it ain’t you.”
“Oh, no. Really? How do you know?”
“’Cuz you got a lot bigger tits than her.” I looked down at the cotton spandex cowgirl-print blouse I was wearing. Wrong choice. The guard toad had his eyes right between the silk-screened rope and the girl’s Stetson. Gross. Wouldn’t you know, the only time I out-breasted somebody and the only one who noticed was the most abhorrent human in the pl
ace. “Oh, well, gotta go, I guess, if she’s beat me to him.”
I pried his fingers off my wrist and beat a path to the bathroom to come up with a Plan B. A cretin with greasy blond hair down to his fourth rib pushed out of the men’s room. I recognized him as the Wretched Roadkill bongo player, and an idea grabbed me as he tried to slink by. “You are so hot!” I rubbed my hand up and down his right bicep (what I could find of it) and tried not to puke.
“Yo?” For a second I wondered if he didn’t speak English; then I realized that rockers probably didn’t speak my kind of English regardless—I’d have to use the universal language of love.
I smiled and winked and rubbed. Against other parts. I had to get backstage. His bloodshot eyes tried to focus. I pressed against him. “I wonder if you could get me backstage?”
“No can do, Piece.”
I didn’t think he was talking about joy-to-the-world kind of peace. Too bad. Where were the sixties when you needed them? At least their free love had some moral high ground. This guy only got on high ground when it flooded or when he smoked some weed. I cleared the gag out of my throat and tried to sound sultry. “I’ll give you a piece to thank you if you can get me into the Roadkill dressing room.”
His grayish lips spread in a humorless grin. “Now, that might be fun. But I go first.”
Whoa. I thought I was starting to hyperventilate. “You go first,” I agreed, pushing him off me and turning him around to lead the way around the guard toad. I sneaked a look at Tessa and saw she was desperately trying to keep Jon from turning around to see me. Trudy saw me, though. She cocked her head and opened her mouth. I shot her a warning look.
“Hey.” The guard toad grabbed my arm. “I thought you wanted Asphalt.”
“I’m moving on. You’re the one who told me he had another girlfriend. Were you lying?!” I let my voice rise a little. The toad actually showed an emotion: pissed off.
“Asphalt? Why do you want him? I’m better,” blondie whined. “And bigger.”
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