Black Oil, Red Blood

by Diane Castle

  “I thought I told your paralegal I was busy.”

  Crap. So much for my “I’m not a lawyer” ruse. “You did, but—“

  “You thought you’d come down here anyway and charm me with your feminine wiles.”

  Wow. I hadn’t felt this out of control of a conversation since I was a zitty teenager trying to get up the courage to talk to my first crush. To make matters worse, Detective Nash was, in fact, the sexiest man I had seen in a 200 mile radius. He was even sexier than Dorian. He had Rob Lowe good looks. Even through his black suit jacket, I could see that he was incredibly fit. If he possessed even an ounce of personal charm, I might have fallen instantly in love. Instead, I found myself stammering and irritated.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “I’m a detective,” he said. “I know things.”

  “Would you care to share?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  I bent over his desk, resting my weight on my elbows, chin in my hands, desperately trying to think of a way to get him to engage.

  “Your victim was my expert witness,” I said. “I knew him pretty well. We should talk.”

  Nash steadily refused to look at me. “I don’t think so.”

  “I can help you,” I said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then maybe you can help me,” I said.

  “I doubt that, too.”

  Okay. Now he was starting to piss me off. “Well if you won’t help yourself, and if you won’t help me, how about helping Gracie Miller? Or are you just a heartless sonofabitch who doesn’t care about old lady widows and their kittens?”

  Nash looked up in surprise. “Kittens? What do old lady widows and kittens have to do with anything?”

  I took advantage of the opening. “My client Gracie Miller used to be married to a guy named Derrick. He worked for PetroPlex in the benzene unit for forty years, starting right out of high school. When opposing counsel deposed him a year ago, his wife Gracie, who he married when he was nineteen, had to push him through the doors and into my office in a wheelchair. I had to wheel in his oxygen tank. He had no hair, not even eyebrows or eyelashes because of chemotherapy. He had radiation burns on his face and chest. He had to take off his oxygen mask and gasp for breath just to answer questions for the jackass PetroPlex attorney who spent the entire day trying to prove that even though Petroplex never warned Derrick that benzene causes cancer, that even though PetroPlex was too cheap to install the safety devices that would prevent benzene leaks, and even though PetroPlex never supplied respiratory masks or safety equipment, they were not to blame for my client’s cancer and subsequent death.”

  I had finally succeeded in gaining Detective Nash’s attention. I still couldn’t quite read his face, though.

  “Derrick,” I said, “slaved away for years to save up for a down payment on a tiny farm. He took Gracie out to dinner at Olive Garden once a year for their anniversary because that was the best he could afford. And on my birthday last year, Gracie baked me a cake. From scratch. With homemade chocolate icing and real butter. And incidentally, my birthday was the day before Derrick’s funeral, which was also the day after he died, at home, gasping for breath in his wheeled-in hospital bed. Gracie is thoughtful like that.”

  Nash’s eye twitched almost imperceptibly. What did that mean? “And the kittens?”

  “Gracie has a cat,” I said. “The cat had kittens, but they all drank water from a toxic pond near the refinery and died.”

  He was silent for a few moments. I waited. Finally, he said, “All right. So your client’s sob-story notwithstanding, I have to know. Are you a particular fan of Ramen noodles?”

  “What?” My eyes went wide. “What kind of a random question is that?”

  “Do you buy Ramen noodles because you like the way they taste?”

  “I love them,” I lied. I folded my arms and glared at him, nonverbally daring him to imply otherwise.

  “I couldn’t help but notice the redhead in the grocery store last Sunday wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of designer clothes and buying fifteen or twenty packages of Ramen. Closer to twenty, I think, because you didn’t check out in the express lane.”

  I’m not sure, but I think that if Nash had had a mirror on the wall in his office, I might have seen my face turn as red as my hair right about then.

  “A woman like you buying food like that. I thought it was strange. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that I’m a detective, and I’m trained to notice things that seem. . . off. So I was wondering whether or not you have a genuine love for all things Ramen.”

  “Well, I just, you know. . . the spice packets come in so many varieties.” My fingers tingled. My head felt like it was floating up off my neck. I could feel my body shrinking. I thought I might die of embarrassment at any minute.

  “I asked the checkout clerk if he knew your name. He did.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said sourly.

  Nash smiled. “So did you come down here dressed like that because you’re looking for a dinner date?”

  My jaw dropped open, but only for an instant. “You’ve got a lot of nerve accusing me of strolling around like a hooker in search of her next meal.” Okay, of course I was cruising for dinner, but I’d been hoping not to be totally obvious about it. “I went to law school. I passed the bar exam. I am a professional.”

  “So is that a no?”

  I stopped short. “A no to what?”

  “A no to my dinner invitation.”

  “You didn’t extend a dinner invitation,” I snapped. “And if you had, I wouldn’t be inclined to say yes.”

  Nash laughed. “But you would go.”

  Well, yes. But no way was I about to fall all over myself rushing to admit it. “Let me tell you something,” I said. “Every other girl in this town may be falling all over themselves trying to get a date with you, but I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t just keel over in the face of good looks. I am a strong, confident, individual, highly accomplished professional, and you would be lucky to get a date with me.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” he said, glancing at me sideways. “So you think I’m good looking, then?”

  “I didn’t say that!” I said. “I was talking about other people. The ones who might think you’re good looking. Not me.”

  Nash laughed again. I was really starting to feel like the village idiot, and that was saying a lot, considering that I lived in Kettle.

  “Chloe Taylor,” he said, “may I buy you dinner?”

  I groaned. “Yes. But only because I need to ask you some questions about Dr. Schaeffer, and I feel like you’d be more talkative over margaritas. Pick me up in an hour.”

  I scrawled my address on a Post-It, flung it at him, and hurried out the door.

  CHAPTER 3

  Judge Delmont’s cell phone buzzed. He picked it up. “Talk to me.”

  “The police chief said Nash is about to leave town with Chloe Taylor,” said a gruff voice on the other end of the line.

  “You got a tail on them?” Delmont asked.

  “All my manpower is on the files. Schaeffer’s laptop is encrypted, and there are ten boxes of stuff in print. That’s just the stuff we got. There are thirty more boxes where that came from. We have to find out exactly how much he knew before we’re certain we’ve plugged the leak.”

  “Thirty more boxes?”

  “There wasn’t enough time to get them all before Nash and his guys got there. We need to secure the rest before Taylor does.”

  “I see. You got any idea where Nash and Taylor are headed?”

  “Some place for dinner. Nash is going to pick her up at her house at 6:30.”

  “A date?” Delmont rearranged the cigar ashes in the tray with the end of his pen.

  “Not according to Chief Scott.”

  “How would he know?”

  “He’s got Nash’s office bugged, as of yesterday. You know Nash and his goody-two-shoes reputation. If he happens to get wind o
f us, no telling what he might do.”

  “You think Taylor will find out anything we don’t want her to know?”

  “Unlikely. I don’t think she’s aware anything out of the ordinary is going on.”

  Delmont snorted. “Please. Her expert turns up dead the night before a summary judgment hearing, and you don’t think she thinks anything out of the ordinary is going on? Get real. She’s a big city lawyer. She ain’t stupid. And you’ve got piss poor timing. You should have called me first.”

  “It wasn’t your call to make.”

  “Maybe not, but just FYI, Taylor ain’t playing by the rules anymore, either.”

  “What do you mean?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.

  “If I don’t grant her motion for continuance tomorrow morning, I’m gonna lose my wife—that’s what I mean.”

  The person on the other end of the line grunted. “Huh. Well, is that altogether a bad thing? Thought you were getting tired of her anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I’d just as soon the local tongues not go a waggin’.”

  “I’ll cut you a deal.”

  “A deal! You’ve been hanging out with Dick Richardson too much lately. I’m sick of you guys and your deals.”

  “A deal,” the voice said. “Here’s how it is. You get somebody to man all the roads back into town, and I’ll get somebody to go through her car and her house. There’s gotta be something there you can use to get her to back off. Nobody’s perfect. When you see Nash’s vehicle, call me and warn me to get out. Things go my way, and you can deny that motion for continuance come tomorrow morning.”

  “Fine. I’ll call you,” Delmont said. “But I don’t like it. Frankly, I think you and your guys are getting careless.”

  “I don’t care what you think, and even if I did, you’re not in a position to judge here. Just remember who put you where you are.”

  “I was elected fair and square.”

  “Sure, on my campaign money.”

  Delmont held his tongue. He’d always thought it was stupid that Texas elected their judges instead of appointing them. On the other hand, the system did offer certain advantages for people like him.

  But now he was starting to feel a little out of control of the situation. “Listen here,” he said. “I want you to keep me in the loop on all this. I don’t want to get caught by surprise on this case, understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “All right. Just so we’re straight. Otherwise you may find you start disliking some of my more important rulings.”

  “That would be inconvenient,” said the gruff voice.

  “Darn straight.” Delmont hung up the phone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nash drove me to the nearby town of Rosethorn, which was slightly larger than Kettle and had a better variety of restaurants. We needed to leave town for dinner, seeing as how the exhaustive list of places to eat in Kettle included Dairy Queen, McDonald’s, Grandma’s Fried Chicken, and a place called Caliente, where the only flavor of food is jalapeno. I love jalapenos, but I haven’t eaten at Caliente, mainly because I haven’t been able to afford it lately. I’ve heard they serve jalapeno-flavored goat, and you can even get jalapeno-flavored rattlesnake there if you want to. (Apparently, some people actually like to eat rattlesnake—a fact I find hard to comprehend.)

  When we got to the restaurant, Nash pulled out my chair and unfolded my napkin. I was just on the verge of thinking some nice things about him when he sat down and pulled a pen and small notebook out of his pocket.

  An interrogation. Not a dinner date. Wow, how naïve was I? This guy was a real pro. He had gone out of his way to put me off balance so that he could ask me questions. Not the other way around.

  Of course he would want to question me. I had been working with Dr. Schaeffer the day he was killed. As stupid as I had felt earlier, I felt infinitely more moronic now.

  “Really?” I eyed his notepad pointedly. “You could have just taken my appointment request and asked me what you wanted to know down at the station.”

  “Frankly,” he said, “I really didn’t have time to see you today. I had just gotten back from the crime scene when your office called, and there were more important people to talk to.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like people who actually had a motive to kill Dr. Schaeffer.”

  “Such as?”

  “The details of the investigation are confidential.”

  “But here I am. So what changed?”

  “Certain other people were unavailable. And you did show up in very skimpy clothes.” If he were resisting the urge to leer or grin, he didn’t show it. “And I’m hungry. A man has got to eat, and there’s nothing wrong with multi-tasking.”

  I folded my arms across my chest defensively. “Are you always all work and no play?”

  “Would you accept an invitation to find out?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Stop it. We both know this is not a date. I want information, you want information, so let’s have at it. Ladies first.”

  “By all means.”

  “What happened to Dr. Schaffer?” I knew he’d been murdered. I just didn’t know how.

  “The details have not been released to the public yet.”

  “I’m not the public.”

  “That’s right. You’re worse. You’re the deceased’s hiring attorney. My turn.”

  This guy was really a piece of work. “You don’t get to insult me and then ask me questions.”

  Our waiter arrived, asking us what we’d like to drink.

  “Two margaritas,” Nash said, without hesitation.

  “And you don’t get to order for me either,” I said through gritted teeth.

  The waiter, sensing my agitation, hesitated for a moment before turning to me and asking me what I’d like to drink.

  “Margarita,” I said. “The big one in a glass that’s the size of a human head. With Patron and a sangria swirl.”

  The waiter nodded and walked back toward the bar.

  Nash looked at me with one raised eyebrow.

  “And you don’t get to look at me like that, either.” In the looks department, he was adorable, which was seriously killing my game.

  “When you are finished telling me everything I may not do, I’d like to know why you’re so anxious to get inside Schaeffer’s house.”

  I blinked, surprised. How could he possibly have known that? “Who says I want in his house?”

  “Police Chief Scott. According to his buddy Judge Delmont, you haven’t got a case unless you can get your hands on his laptop.”

  I frowned. “Not his laptop. His file boxes. Everything we had was in cardboard boxes at his house. I was supposed to pick up a lot of it the morning before the hearing. Then I got to his house and the whole place was a crime scene, and nobody would let me in.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “I need in,” I said.

  “And I need to figure out who killed him, preferably in less than a week, and I can’t do that if you’re tromping all over my crime scene.”

  I groaned. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you get it? We can help each other.”

  “I doubt that our interests line up precisely.” Nash fingered the frosty base of his margarita glass thoughtfully. “What would you say if I told you his laptop was missing?”

  “I’d say there’s nothing on it worth stealing. He was low tech.”

  “Everything was in the file boxes?”

  I nodded.

  “How many were there?”

  A little shiver went up my spine. “Were?” I said. “As in past tense?”

  “There weren’t any file boxes in the house.”

  “There had to be,” I said. “Unless you’re telling me somebody committed a brutal murder and carted out forty boxes of documents without any of the neighbors noticing.”

  “Forty?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Nash leaned back and scratched his neck. “I will admit that’s u
nlikely.”

  “They’re there,” I said. “Maybe you just didn’t know where to look.” Schaeffer’s house was full of hidden nooks and crannies. And I knew where at least one of them was—a little nugget of information Nash didn’t seem to have. For the first time today, I felt like I was one step ahead of him.

  “Maybe you can tell me what I missed,” Nash said.

  “Only if you let me in.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  I sat abruptly back, exasperated. I had to get in. Some way, somehow. “Why not? I read detective novels! I watch Castle! I know I’m not supposed to touch anything! I will step where you step, touch only what you touch, et cetera and so forth. I swear.”

  “It would be a complete break of protocol.”

  “Sometimes you have to bend the rules,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just necessary.”

  Detective Nash narrowed his eyes. “It’s never necessary,” he said. “The rules are there for a reason.”

  “Give me a break,” I said. “The people who have the money make the rules, which means the rules are not always in the interest of the greater good.” This was a fact about which I had to thoroughly convince myself before deciding to go through with blackmailing Judge Delmont. Now that that deed was done, I refused to believe otherwise. And I would take anyone else I could get down that little mental path with me. Especially local law enforcement.

  “Go on,” Nash said.

  “For example, did you know the oil refinery safety statutes which apply to refineries in the Houston area do not apply to the refinery in this town?”

  “I did not know that.”

  “Well they don’t, and here’s why. There are only four-thousand people living in the shadow of our PetroPlex refinery, whereas in Houston and the surrounding areas, there are millions. The law dictates that more safety measures are required in places of higher population. In other words, the law says that the life of somebody who lives in Houston is more valuable than your life or mine. And all because some bigshot oil lobbyist funded some local representative’s campaign in exchange for a vote to relax regulation in the area.”

  “You can’t prove that.”