by Kit Frazier
Logan sat staring out over the skyline. He was quiet the way my stepfather, the Colonel, is quiet when he’s got something to say.
I waited.
“After today, we’re going to have to limit contact until the Obregon trial is over.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling like the breath got knocked out of my lungs. I hadn’t seen that one coming. I tried to swallow my disappointment. “Because we’re both witnesses in the Obregon trial?”
He nodded, and we sat there in silence.
“When you say limit contact, does that mean reduce contact or no contact at all?”
He smiled at that. “Let’s try reduce and see how that works.”
I felt a little better, but not much. Logan had finally waltzed back into my life, and now he was waltzing right back out.
We sat for what seemed like a very long time.
“Puck’s sister’s got a gig on Friday at the Pier. They’re shooting some kind of music video there and it’ll be Puck’s last official public appearance. Maybe you could come and we can see how the reduce thing works out,” he said, and I smiled with my whole body.
“Did you see that?” Logan said.
“Hmm?” The only thing I’d been looking at was Logan.
“There,” he said, nodding toward the still-dark sky.
“What? I don’t see anything ” but then I did see it.
A shooting star.
And then another. My breath caught, and I watched as bright stars streaked across the early morning sky. “Wow…” I whispered. “Shooting stars.”
He smiled.
“It’s incredible. They must be late this year,” I said, watching as tiny bits of comet blitzed the sky. “I’ve always had a thing for stars. Daddy used to say you were never really lost because you could navigate by the stars. One time I asked him what happened when the stars fell, and he just smiled, and I’ll never forget this: he said that the important stars didn’t fall that they were always in the same place in the sky, even when the sun came up. He said, ‘The stars are always there, Cauley Kat. You may not always see them, but they’re always there…you just have to have a little faith.’
My voice trailed off, and my cheeks warmed with color. I looked back at the sky. “I used to think it was magic.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Logan said, and I smiled.
“A philosophical fed.”
“A literate one, anyway. This is one of my favorite things the Perseid meteor shower. We won’t see another Perseid this active in our lifetime.” He nodded toward the sky. “One of the most beautiful sights in the world and it only lasts a little while,” he said, but at that last part, he was looking at me.
Our gazes caught and I swear I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.
“There must be hundreds of shooting stars,” I whispered, leaning into. “I don’t think I have that many wishes.”
“You only need one good one.” Logan smiled, and his eyes did that crinkle thing at the corners that made my stomach drop right down to my doo dah.
We were sitting close, so close I could smell the leather of his shoulder holster, his lips just a few inches from mine, and in that moment I thought he was going to kiss me.
I jumped when his cell phone rang.
He cleared his throat and went for his phone.
“Logan,” he said by way of greeting. His voice sounded gruff, like he’d swallowed sandpaper.
He was quiet for a moment as he listened.
“About thirty minutes,” he said and waited some more. “Right,” he said, and disconnected.
Logan blew out a breath and clipped his phone back on his belt next to his badge. “Well, kid, we gotta go.”
That was so not my wish.
I gazed up at the stars still streaking across the sky, but I felt a lot less enthusiastic about it. Somebody up there owes me a wish.
He tucked the Polaroids in his pocket. “The obit needs to be dated for Tuesday. I’ve got a mug of Puck on a CD. Can you do this yourself or do you need me for anything?”
Did I need him for anything? Clearly he didn’t understand the whole wish thing.
“Um, no,” I said, trying not to stare at his lips. “Just his vitals name, age, where he was born. I know you want the pub date marked Tuesday, but I’ll need the time and day of death…’
Logan nodded, his eyes still intent on mine, and I felt like I was right back on the edge of the cliff, dizzy and about to fall.
The bushes behind us rustled, and Puck came tromping though the undergrowth. My heart dropped, and the reality and the unreality of what we’d done came flooding back.
And Logan was leaving. Again.
Puck came into the clearing, snapping his jeans as he walked. “Hey! Did y’all see all those stars?”
“Yeah, we saw ‘em,’ Logan said. ‘We’ve got to go.’
At that moment, an enormous star blazed through the sky, so close to the earth that it looked like it might set the trees on fire and plummet into the lake.
“Will you look at that?” Puck said, staring as the star flamed toward the earth. “Ain’t that the shit?”
“Yeah,” Logan said. “It is.”
But he was looking at me.
Chapter Four
The sun had already begun its assault on the horizon as Logan dropped me off at the Austin Sentinel’s West Austin satellite. It was a little after six and he sat idling in the parking lot, waiting for me to get inside the office safe and sound. I smiled. Luckily, some things don’t change.
Part of me was jazzed at the idea of getting to work on official FBI business, and part of me the bigger part wanted Logan to take me home and see if we could instigate a little criminal mischief of our own…
I swiped my keycard through the security slot and turned and waved to Logan. Marlowe was sitting next to him in the freshly vacated passenger seat with his head out the window. Puck was in the back, his head bobbing over the console. I watched as Logan put the car in gear and the three of them pulled out of the parking lot, and I got that weird little pang I always feel when Logan leaves.
Logan said he’d take the dog and the weasel to the FBI field office, with the promise that he’d be back to pick me up when I was ready to go home. I was ready now.
But I’d made Logan a promise, and I intended to keep it.
*
For once I was glad I didn’t work at the main office downtown, with all its bells and whistles and computers that don’t require a sledgehammer to reboot. Despite all the hand-me-down equipment, the satellite had what I needed: the model printing press, a laid-back atmosphere, and an incredible lack of supervision.
To be honest, an office downtown at the Sentinel was my goal. It’s a huge, Frank Lloyd Wright-style building that presides over the city on a bluff above Town Lake, where it watches over the capital city like a wise old uncle. Editors at the Sentinel take lobbyists to lunch, reporters have offices with walls, and all of the news that goes through the City Desk is the real thing stories that matter. Stories that can change people’s lives for the better. Not the fluff, filler, and birdcage liner we churn out at the satellite.
The satellite is the Sentinel’s redheaded stepchild once removed. It’s located west of Austin in a strip mall between a bank and meat market. It’s a journalistic purgatory where reporters do time. Staffers at the satellite are either paying their dues on their way up or doing their time on their way out.
Unfortunately, I was doing time.
I’d been sentenced for life as an obituary writer for sins I’d committed when I accidentally slept with my boss at the Austin Journal, the Sentinel’s bigger, better-funded rival newspaper. Okay, it wasn’t so much an accident as a monumental mistake.
Sighing, I swung open the interior heavy glass door, trying not to think about Logan as he pulled out of the parking lot. In the lobby I badged Harold, the heavyset guard who hulked behind his big, round desk eating powdered-su
gar donuts and watching an infomercial about a miracle weight-loss pill.
“Well, if it ain’t the Obituary Babe,” he mumbled around a mouth-ful of donut. He looked down over his considerable belly for a peek at his watch. “What are you doin’ here so early? You’re never early. Hell, you’re never even on time.”
I scowled, signing into the off-hours log. “I’m usually on time.” He stared at me.
Okay. I’m rarely on time. But I’m working on it.
“So what’s got you chompin’ at the bit?” he said, powdered sugar puffing from his ample lips.
“I have something on my desk that can’t wait.” “A dead guy can’t wait?”
“Not this time,” I said and headed through the interior doors and down the main hall toward the Bull Pen, the maze of cubicles where budding young journalists pounded out filler and ferreted out mind-numbing research for the City Desk downtown.
At this time of day, the place was like a tomb. The nightside copyeditors were winding down, getting ready to go home, and the dayside shift hadn’t even started smacking their snooze buttons. Perfect.
Tossing my purse under my desk, I booted up my computer and shook my head. Ethan Singer, the Sentinel’s hard-drive jockey, had been messing with my system. I knew this because he’d changed my screen saver from “Shut up and write” to “I see dead pixels.”
It really annoys me when he lurks in my hard drive.
Growling, I retrieved the CD and the note Logan had given me out of my back pocket and got to work. On the computer, I opened the obituary layout, popped in a photo of Puck, and wrote a generic cutline with Puck’s name, date of birth, and supposed death.
Studying the notes Logan had given me with Puck’s info, I settled in and began the obituary. I decided to post Puck’s bogus demise as a family-placed obituary.
A family-placed obituary is different from the funeral home’s generic, twenty-five-word death notices, in that they’re longer and more elaborate because the family writes the obit and pays for the space through the Classified Department.
It annoyed me that the paper made the bereaved buy a few pitiful column inches to give their loved ones a decent sendoff.
My gaze dropped to Puck’s photo flickering on the monitor, and I flinched. This obituary was different. I was writing a death notice for a person who was very much alive, and it gave me a big case of the creeps. Shoving back the jitters, I put my nose to the digital grindstone and got down to official FBI business.
There are some unwritten rules about writing obituaries. You use euphemisms. People don’t die in obituaries; they pass away, pass on, get called to Jesus, or go to play the banjo in the All Boys Choir. But the euphemisms don’t always stop there.
While it is true that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, an obituary is often rife with euphemisms. If the dearly departed had an ebullient personality, he probably spent a lot of time staring at the bottom of a highball glass. A confirmed bachelor is code for gay. Never met a stranger means he screwed everything that moved. I leaned in and began tapping away at the euphemisms.
Wylie Ray Puckett, 29, of Blackland, Texas, passed away after a tragic accident (mob hit) on Mount Bonnell on Tuesday, August 15. Puckett was an unusually successful accountant (an embezzler) and was a gifted storyteller who regaled friends and family with tales of adventure (a big fat liar).
Puckett is survived by his mother, Kimberly Ray Ainsworth, stepfather Cullen Wallace Ainsworth II, sister Faith Milam Puckett, and stepbrother Cullen Wallace Ainsworth III.
Puckett was preceded in death by his father, rodeo cowboy (flat broke loner) R. L. “Tuffy” Puckett and grandparents Joseph and Nellie Milam Puckett, who managed the family ranch until the day they died (were good, God-fearing, gun-toting, land-poor Texans).
I sat back, tapping my pen to my lips, mentally wording the kicker for a big finish. Leaning in, I tapped out:
The family has requested cremation (nobody wanted to spring for a funeral). In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Animal Friends of Austin.
I figured if a guy like Puck had any friends at all, they could use a dose of good karma.
Nodding after a quick re-read, I popped a generic article about the Texas legislature’s non-progress on school finance for the backside of the obituary page and sent the whole shebang back to Cronkite.
Finished, I sat staring at Puck’s freshly typed memoriam, tapping my pen to my lips.
There was something familiar about Wylie Ray Puckett that had been bugging me all morning. Not that we ran in the same circles I prefer that my friends have opposable thumbs but there was something familiar about the name…
I glanced up at the clock above the editor’s office opposite my cubicle. Six thirty. Plenty of time. No harm in a little snooping. I Googled “Wylie Ray Puckett” and got what you usually get on the information highway thirty-eight sites on sure-fire stock options, sixty-two sites guaranteeing amazing male enhancement, and an interesting site on honorary lesbianism.
There was also the obligatory bazillion hits that had nothing to do with Wylie Ray Puckett. I frowned. No matter who you are or how sheltered your life, you usually get at least one shout-out from Google.
Undaunted, I accessed the Sentinel’s morgue the archive of dead stories and ran the same search.
Nothing.
Puckett. Wylie Ray Puckett. I could’ve sworn I’d heard that name before. I did a split screen and skimmed the obituary for relatives’ names. Entering Kimberly Ray Puckett Ainsworth into the morgue, I got seven legitimate hits three mentions in the society pages about charity balls she’d recently attended, three wedding announcements for previous and current marriages, and two for business-related articles about the sale of an old family ranch.
“The family ranch,” I whispered to no one.
Bingo.
I clicked the link and an archived article popped onto the screen. The photo at the top right of the article showed a crowd emerging from the Dawes County Courthouse.
I leaned forward for a better look. There, in crystal-clear clarity, was the youthful image of Wylie Ray Puckett. He was standing next to a beautiful, dark-haired waif who must have been his sister. I zoomed in on the photo and compared it to the photo in the fake obituary. The years had not been kind to Puck.
In the archived photo, Puck’s face was sharp and square, his hair dark and glossy. I zoomed again. There was no network of boozer’s veins criss-crossing his nose, no bloated cheeks, no unfocused, dilated eyes. His eyes were clear and gray, almost silver, the color of water in winter. I drew a quick breath. Wylie Ray Puckett had once been a hottie.
His sister was even more arresting. There was something about her something quiet and haunting. She had large, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and long, dark hair like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. I imagined the siblings got more than their share of cheek-pinching at the Puckett family reunions.
In the photo, Puck and his sister looked like they were loaded for bear and spoiling for a fight. Sometimes a photo really is worth a thousand words.
*
Family Feud Spurs Court Battle Over Old Blackland Ranch
By Rob Ryder
Austin Sentinel staff
Two generations of the Puckett family duked it out in court yesterday over the fate of the Blackland Ranch, located northwest of Austin off County Road 241 near the fork in the clear, clean waters of Blackland Creek.
Wylie Ray Puckett, together with his sister, Faith, have taken up the family feud over the proposed sale of property and mineral rights at the Blackland Ranch, a struggling family-owned cattle ranch that has been passed down through generations of the Puckett family since the Texas Land Grants. Flanked by supporters, the Puckett siblings took on Ainsworth Enterprises, an acquisitions company owned by Cullen Ainsworth II and third wife Kimberly Ray Puckett Ainsworth, mother of Wylie Ray and Faith Puckett. Development plans submitted to the Dawes County Courthouse include a proposed surface mining permit to extract clay used
to make kitty litter, which could compromise the habitat of the endangered Blackland Salamander…
My eyes flicked back to the photo.
In the background, protesters picketed the courthouse waving kitty litter boxes—empty, I hoped—and toted signs proclaiming “De-throne Kimmie Rae the Kitty Litter Queen.”
I shook my head.
You gotta love Austin. It’s an enclave of bunny-kissing, bug-loving environmentalists right smack in the middle of gun-toting, oil-drilling, refinery-hugging Texas.
I zoomed the photo and grinned. A young woman in the background brandished a sign that read Strip-Mining Stinks! Looking more closely, I saw that it was Mia.
In a town where gossip fuels society events like high-octane ethanol, my mother and her best friend, Clairee, got enough juice out of that scandal to power the Charity League’s entire holiday season that year. Never mind that the ranch deal never went through, or that Kimmie Ray later became Cullen Ainsworth’s third and last wife never received a dime of her kitty litter fortune. Kimmie Ray had never been able to shed the nickname.
“Kitty Litter Queen,” I muttered, and continued to read.
A bang sounded in the hall and my heart slammed into my throat, and I nearly fell out of my chair. I spun around to find Ethan Singer peering over my shoulder.
Ethan is a height-challenged geek with inquisitive, tawny eyes and a charming beak of a nose—cute in his own binary-code-writing, Jolt Cola-drinking, thermal-grease-smeared way. Today, he was wearing his favorite black Resistance Is Futile tee shirt and a pair of vintage Levi’s.
He was known around the newsroom as Wonder Boy, and he could make computers do things God never intended. Ethan and I had developed a bond due to my tenuous relationship with my piece of crap computer. Ethan says I exude a magnetic field that causes computers and other mechanical devices to lose their will to live.
“Good grief, E, make a noise or something!”
My heart pounded, and I propelled my chair to the left to conceal the monitor.
Ethan eyed me with interest. “Hey, what are you doing here so early?”