Dinero Del Mar (The Drifter Detective Book 5)
Page 8
"Just one," Jack said. "You and your partner swapped out Ma's new will with a fake, probably with Emmett's help. Then you dosed her on LSD and brought her here. My guess is you've been working up the courage to shove her out the window. An autopsy would show drugs in her system, and police would figure it either an accident or a suicide, following in Manuel Cisneros's footsteps."
Dessau uttered a nervous laugh. "That's crazy."
"Oh it's nuts, alright. Ma dies of mysterious causes a day after she changes her will? What's your rush, Marta?"
"The timing wouldn't look as strange as you think," she said, unfazed. "Ma changes her will like she changes clothes. She's already rewritten it five times over the past three months. Taking me and Phil out, or putting us back in, or leaving grants to ridiculous new causes … it's how she manipulates people. Gets her petty revenge. As to killing her now versus later, well, that's because of you, Mr. Laramie."
"Me?"
"You got rid of Lucas. He'd suspected something was up, and kept an eye on me and Dessau. When he wasn't drunk, or screwing one of the maids, that is. But I know he'll make his way back here, eventually. Try and re-insinuate himself."
"Window of opportunity, huh?"
"That's right."
Dessau buried his face in his hands. "Why don't you give them a signed confession, Marta?"
"Quiet. I don't see any tape recorders here. And no one's been killed."
Despite the gun being trained on him, Phil's fear was evaporating. His face reddened, and the chain on the spiked mace made clinking sounds as his hands shook. "You were going to write me out … my share of the estate …"
"Slow down a second, brother." Marta looked from Phil to Jack. "There's no reason why we can't all profit from this. I'm the main beneficiary, true, but I can cut you two in just like Dessau. We can all work out alibis that will stand up to investigation. Emmett can help, too."
"It won't work," Jack said. "Any halfway competent detective will see right through it."
"I can't kill my mother," Phil said, a tear starting to slide.
His plaintive voice seemed to rouse Ma. She put the quartz crystal down. "Manny, is that you? Are you here with me, Manny?" Ma stood up. Her dilated eyes darted from one corner of the room to the other. Jack could only imagine what she was seeing.
"Calm her down," Marta told Dessau.
But Ma was already moving, stumbling toward Marta. Her face lit with recognition when she saw the shotgun. Maybe it triggered some memory of her husband. She reached a gnarled hand out to touch the stock, and Marta drew back, her attention momentarily divided.
Jack lunged. He grabbed the long barrels and thrust them upward. Marta jerked a trigger by reflex. The gun boomed; shot struck the ceiling and ricocheted down in a lethal rain. Jack felt pin-pricks sear his back. He lost control of the gun.
"Duck!" Phil yelled from behind him.
Jack let himself fall. Something passed over his head with a whoosh of air. He glanced up and saw the spiked iron ball strike Marta in the temple. She whirled with the impact, the ball, stuck fast, whirling with her. The heavy iron must have crushed her skull, but she had consciousness enough to thrust the shotgun past Jack and pull the remaining trigger. The second boom sounded, muted to his ringing ears. Warm gore showered the back of his head.
He got to his feet. Dessau, unscathed, cowered in a corner next to the window. Ma had not been so lucky. She'd caught errant birdshot in her neck and face, leaving long red streaks. The injuries didn't seem to bother her much, though. Her attention remained fixed on the spent shotgun, now lying in a pool of blood between Marta and her brother.
The smell of copper and cordite wreathed the air. Jack didn't want to, but he forced himself to look at Phil. Shot had gouged a rat-hole sized wound in his chest, a little right of center. He lay on his back, gasping like a fish. Every breath made a horrible sucking noise. Marta, too, still breathed, lying on her side. The one eye Jack could see rolled back to white as the rest of her body shook. Her athlete's legs made scissor-motions, running to nowhere.
Jack shut his eyes. Opened them. He picked up the Colt, telling himself if this didn't end soon he'd shoot them both and end their misery. To hell with the consequences. A moment later he heard twin, shuddering breaths. The room filled with the smell of fresh bowel.
He returned his attention to Ma. Blood was welling from a small hole in her neck. He yanked the sash out of her kimono and tried to staunch it.
"What're you waiting for?" he yelled at Dessau. "Go down and call an ambulance."
"But—what're you going to—"
"I'm not a cop, goddammit. Two people are dead and there might be a third. Now go get an ambulance."
"Y-yes."
Dessau lurched past him. The top of the trapdoor dripped red as he gingerly pulled it open. He went racing down. The iron gate screeched a minute later, and shortly after a car went roaring away.
"Worthless son-of-a-bitch," Jack said. He'd managed to tie the sash around Ma's neck in a makeshift bandage. "Come with me," he told her, grabbing her by a skinny wrist.
The first switchback down the steps she balked, becoming distracted by patterns in the stonework. Jack cursed and picked up her old body. He carried her the remaining distance, out of that tower of horrors.
* * *
The police were suspicious, as naturally they should be. With no other coherent witnesses, Jack told them the straight truth about what had happened. The butler and servants corroborated what parts they could. A homicide detective found more LSD-laced sugar cubes in Dessau's room, along with vials of Benzedrine. In Marta's, the same detective discovered several copies of Ma's latest wills, including the most recent naming Marta sole benefactor of the Cisneros estate. APB's were put out on Dessau, and the attorney, Emmett.
Jack had eight pellets of bird shot removed from his back and shoulders. He heard later from the police that Ma was in stable condition, being treated at a private hospital. There were concerns about damage to an artery close to her heart.
After Dessau and Emmett were nabbed, Jack was asked to testify against them at the Corpus Christi Municipal Court. He did so, wearing his charcoal blazer and giving a sober account of what the local press had seized as hot news. The tragic legend of the Cisneros clan added another chapter.
He skipped Corpus without waiting to hear the verdict.
* * *
Phil had paid him enough money to live off of for several months. Aimless, he drove north to the town of Victoria, and parked his trailer on a secluded bank along the Guadalupe River. From the trailer's strongbox he took out an old fly reel and several lures. Whipping the line out over rolling green water, he played and replayed the last moments of Phil and Marta Cisneros. Should he have lunged for the shotgun like that? Shouldn't he have waited until he saw what Marta was going to do?
Hindsight, he figured.
Two days later, and exactly six weeks since he'd been thrown into the drunk tank, a tapping at the back of the trailer woke him from an afternoon nap. It didn't sound exactly like a billy club, but he pictured a sheriff-type out there all the same. At least he had cash in his wallet this time. He rose, checking to make sure he was fully clothed, and opened the gate.
It wasn't a cop standing there.
"You're a hell of a man to track down," said the stranger, a jowly type in a too-tight suit. He had a day's growth on his round face. "My name's Jasper Ellis, and I'm a private detective."
"Good for you, Jasper."
"You're Jack Laramie, right? I'm assuming 'yes,' on account of the horse trailer and beat-up DeSoto."
"What's this all about?"
"Got a message for you. Didn't even open it, though I've been tempted to, these past few days."
The fat man removed a sweat-stained envelope from his back pocket. Jack tore it open with his thumb and slid out a damp letter.
"What's it say?"
"It's from an attorney representing the Cisneros estate. Ma must've died. It says …"
"Well, I'll be goddamned."
EPILOGUE
The town of Harlingen was all abuzz, the day the stranger showed up in a long white Cadillac. You couldn't help but whistle at the model, a factory-new Eldorado Biarritz, with gleaming gold trim and a leather interior the color of fresh cream. The Caddy took a slow cruise down Sunshine Strip, before pulling off onto a residential and coming to a stop before the Sayles house. Jolene Sayles was waiting on the front porch and watched as the stranger killed the engine and got out.
He made a fine sight, though she couldn't see much of his face. A battered black Stetson rode low over his forehead. But the rest of his clothing said 'Texas Showman' at its ostentatious best: white bolero-cut jacket, black silk shirt, silver belt buckle a hand's span wide, and the longest, meanest pair of snakeskin boots she'd ever seen. From his neck hung an obsidian arrowhead, mounted on a bolo tie.
He came clumping up the sidewalk, his boots so new they hadn't been broken in yet. "Over here," Jolene called, waving. A grin split the stranger's face.
"You got my message," he said.
"Prompt as ever, Mr.—"
"Just call me John."
She waved him over to an easy chair on the porch. "I don't understand why you insist on being so mysterious, after all you've done for us."
"I've got my reasons, ma'am. Is, ah …"
"My husband Homer's out at the groves, and Stella's upstairs, in her room. We're quite alone."
"How's the grapefruit business?"
"Steady as ever. Can I get you some coffee, John?"
"Please do. You want to put a little brandy in it, I wouldn't object."
"I wouldn't either, come to think of it."
She left him long enough to pour two doctored cups. When she came back out again, he had his feet up and both hands folded across his stomach. Something about those blue-gray eyes struck her as familiar. Now that she thought about it, he did look a little like that drifter, the one the sheriff had hauled in after Stella was attacked. But that man had been poor as dirt. They sipped. Jolene cleared her throat. "You know, the Good Lord has blessed the Sayles family. We're not without means. But we would've never been able to afford that hand specialist in Dallas on our own."
"How was the surgery?"
Jolene cocked an ear. From Stella's open window carried the strains of a bow drawing across strings. "Judge for yourself."
The music came floating down, sweet as memory. John, or whoever he was, thumbed moisture from his eyes.
It was "Ode to Joy."
†
About the Author
Garnett Elliott lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. He's had stories appear in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Reloaded (Both Barrels 2), Uncle B's Drive-In Fiction, Blood and Tacos, Battling Boxing Stories, and numerous online magazines and print anthologies. You can follow him on Twitter @TonyAmtrak.
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