After The Fire (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 9)

by George Wier

  AFTER THE FIRE

  A Bill Travis Mystery

  By

  George Wier

  Copyright © 2014 by George Wier

  Published by

  Flagstone Books

  Austin, Texas

  After The Fire—A Bill Travis Mystery

  First Ebook Edition

  July 2014

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes written in connection with reviews

  written specifically for a magazine or newspaper.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It started with Sol Gunderson’s goats.

  Gunderson runs ten acres of Spanish goats east of Austin, Texas. I never could abide goats, and it’s not just the smell. I mean, they’re disgusting creatures, and to look at their eyes one would think they were some ancient alien biological experiment gone awry. The only time they bathe is when it rains. They’ll eat anything, by which I mean anything. Gunderson’s goats were like any other, they smelled and they had stripped his ten acres practically bare such that the place more resembled the surface of the moon—drab grayish-brown with what could have been impact craters scattered everywhere. The damned things even ate the mesquite brush, thorns and all. But then Sol Gunderson’s favorite goat ended up dead.

  “I know what killed Bebe,” Gunderson said.

  I stood on the brow of the hill out back of his place, surveying the stark landscape. Gunderson had forty or more of his goats penned up close to the house where they couldn’t get to the rear of the property, and it looked as though the grass was trying to make a come back down there—little green shoots were everywhere.

  I’d only been out to the place once before, when I first signed him on as a client. Back then Solomon Gunderson may have appeared the nondescript goat-farmer to anyone seeing him in public—he tended toward overalls, checkered or houndstooth shirts, a floppy hat, and old black rubber boots—but his balance sheet told a different story. Gunderson was a millionaire, many times over. I was sure he’d never met a dollar that he didn’t like enough to keep. As I’d heard it from his ex-wife, he’d also never met a bill he cared to pay. He’d nearly lost the farm to the tax man half a dozen times in the past twenty years.

  “Maybe I’d better take a look,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, “but I’m not going down there.”

  “Hurts too much to see him?” I asked.

  “Naw.” He rubbed his stubbled chin, “I believe it’s radioactive down there. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  I nodded—what the hell else was I supposed to do?—and walked down the hill alone to inspect the body of a dead goat.

  *****

  I’m Bill Travis. I advise my clients—and not a few friends—on financial matters, including how much to invest or not invest, where, when and how. Quite importantly, I usually have a good sense of when to get out—and more important than that, when not to enter in the first place. All by way of saying that just about anybody else should be looking at a dead farm animal and making some kind of assessment. But then again, anybody else Sol Gunderson would have to pay, and I didn’t see that in the cards.

  Bebe had lost most of his fur. It was scattered around him in little tufts, and blown against the base of the hogwire fence fifty feet away. That one brief look at him was enough for me—I knew I had to get out of there.

  Normally the body of a dead animal—or even a person, for that matter—would begin to bloat after a few hours. It’s the effect of the natural cycle of things: the enzymes and bugs inherent in a body beginning the process of conversion of organs and tissues to fertilizer. Bebe wasn’t bloated. In fact, Bebe appeared very nearly mummified. Bebe’s eyes, though. His eyes were open and were not glazed over. They appeared to be regarding me.

  According to Sol, he’d found Bebe the morning before. After two days dead the animal should be beginning to smell. I couldn’t detect a whiff of anything. Anything, that is, except goat.

  I turned and walked back up the hill, and as I did, I shivered. In my mind’s eye I was still returning the goat’s steady gaze.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I sat at Sol’s dinner table and sipped bad coffee. No one can make coffee half as badly as an old goat farmer with no sense of smell, taste, or the sense not to purchase the cheapest generic brand canned coffee grounds off the supermarket shelves and then water it down. I didn’t complain. It’s not in my nature.

  “What are you going to do, Sol?” I asked.

  “I want soil samples taken is what I want,” he said, right after an incommodious grunt.

  “Why?” Stupid question.

  “ ’Cause. It’s something bad.”

  “You spend much time down there at the bottom of the hill?” I asked.

  “Naw. Never had reason to. Maybe the house is far enough away.”

  I paused, then asked the next question—the damning one, hoping for not the wrong answer. “How’s your health been lately, Sol?”

  “Fair. I don’t think you want a description of any...elimination stuff.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s fine. No hair loss, no blurred vision?”

  “Uh uh.”

  “Okay. What about fatigue?”

  “I’m as strong as a billy goat.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But maybe you should get a check up. Don’t suppose you have a doctor.”

  “Why in the Sam Hill would I want a doctor? The blood-suckers charge out the ying-yang to tell you you’re sick, and then try to prove it by killing you. All of which you pay for.”

  “I got it. You don’t care for doctors.”

  “It’s not that. I’ve just never seen one, except when I joined the marines. That was back in ’67.”

  “Ah. You were in Viet Nam?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Listen, I gotta run, Sol.” I pushed my coffee cup forward, half finished. “I’d take your tractor and push some dirt over your goat and then turn around and come back. In the meantime, I’ll ask somebody I know about what could kill an animal...in that way.”

  “Thanks for coming, Bill.”

  I stood up.

  “By the way,” he said. “When was the last time you talked to Eloise?”

  “It’s been awhile,” I replied. “Maybe six months.”

  “Did she ask after me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did she even mention my name?” he asked.

  “You may have come up, Sol. Don’t worry. I’m sure she won’t hate you forever.”

  He nodded. “Thanks, Bill. It means a lot you saying that.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “She won’t speak to me anymore. Not since the fire.”

  “What fire?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Sol said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  *****

  I thought about Sol Gunderson and his former wife during the drive back to my office. Eloise Gunderson had remarried after her twenty-five year marriage with Sol—what she liked to call her twenty-five year divorce—and her last name was Gallencamp now. I suppose she got to keep all of her monogramming. To hear her side of things, marrying Sol was the worst decision she had ever made. No, he wasn’t a drunkard, a philanderer, a liar or any of the sundry reasons some women dream up to justify leaving their spouses. She had left him because Sol was too tight with money for her taste, and one day she realized that she would never be able to spend a dime of it, even though she had earned a great deal of it during the intervening
years. So she sued him for divorce, hauled him into court, won hands down, then had him thrown in jail for six months for failure to comply with the court-ordered payment plan. She eventually got a huge chunk of his money—after Sol realized he wasn’t getting out of jail until he forked it over—and spent most of it in the first year. Not long afterwards she came to me with what was left to see if I could salvage some semblance of a future for her. I had managed to help, at least a little. Mostly, though, the damage had been done. Some holes are tough to climb out of.

  By the time I got back to my office I had decided to call Eloise.

  Penny, my secretary, was sitting at my desk, trying to shuffle things into neat piles. Maybe she had struck upon some kind of system for my paperwork. Hope springs eternal.

  “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for something, Mr. Travis.”

  “What, exactly?” I asked.

  “My W-4 tax form. I’m having to fill out your taxes again this year, and—”

  “I thought Nat was going to do that,” I cut her off. Nat Bierstone is my business partner, and he runs the actual bookkeeping half of the concern.

  “No, sir. Mr. Bierstone is nose deep in the legislative session. He’s caught up on everything else except the firm’s taxes.”

  “I’ll handle it, Penny,” I said.

  “Oh. You want your desk?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I just did, Penny. Why haven’t you gone home for the day yet? It’s already getting dark out.”

  “I must love my job.”

  “Yes,” I said, and chuckled. “You must.”

  Penny left and I took a seat in my chair. I would have to call home, see if Julie wanted me to bring anything home for dinner—or see if she needed me to fetch anything, for that matter, which was typically the case—but I had Gunderson and his dead billy goat on my mind.

  I found Eloise Gallencamp’s phone number and called her up. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Eloise. It’s Bill Travis.”

  “Well, hello. It’s good news, I hope.”

  “Have I ever called you with bad news?” I asked.

  “All the time. What is it this time?”

  “Oh. Nothing. Nothing, really. How have you been getting on?”

  “You are so full of crap, Bill. I’ll bet it’s something about Sol.”

  I sighed. Why is it that practically anybody can read me so well, even over the phone?

  “Ha. I knew it!” she exclaimed. “Okay, what has he done this time?”

  “Um...nothing. Not really. He hasn’t...uh—”

  “Out with it, Bill.”

  “Okay, it’s like this. So I get a call from Sol and he’s all distraught. Says he needs me to come over right away but won’t tell me what it’s about. I get there and it’s his favorite billy goat.”

  “Clyde?”

  “No. Clyde died years ago, Eloise. It was Bebe. Bebe is now a very dead billy goat.”

  “Oh crap. What happened?”

  “I dunno. Looks like all his fur fell off and he dropped in his tracks at the bottom of the hill out back. Not far from Boggy Creek.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  I let it sink in. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  “Eloise—”

  “I go by Ellie, now.”

  “Okay. Ellie. Something tells me you know something about this.”

  “I haven’t set foot on the place in like ten years, Bill. How could I possibly know anything about what caused Clyde—”

  “Bebe,” I interjected.

  “Bebe, to drop in his tracks?”

  “I dunno how you could know anything. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me. Ellie.”

  She hung up. Just like that.

  I called back. Listened to the phone ring. It’s kind of funny how it makes you feel when there’s no answering machine on the other end when you call and they don’t pick up. If I sat there for the next two weeks with the phone pressed to my ear, would it ring and ring and ring? That’s the feeling.

  I hung up. Picked it up and redialed. She answered.

  “I don’t like your tone,” she said.

  “And I don’t like yours. I wasn’t accusing you of anything. But it sounded like there’s something you know that you’re not letting on.”

  “Listen to me, Bill Travis. The surest way to wind up dead is to go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. I almost wound up dead once over the same thing. It won’t happen again. I’d advise you to stay clear. Forget Sol’s dead goat. Forget Sol. I know I have.”

  “You’re a liar, Ellie,” I said. “But not a good one.”

  Silence.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sorry for saying that. It almost felt like you were threatening me, and that’s not the dear friend and valuable client I remember. I want just the shortened version of what is going on. You do that for me, I promise, if it looks dangerous, I’ll leave it alone. I won’t poke my nose where it doesn’t belong. But you can’t tell me something like that and expect me not to go turning over stones to see what it’s about. Now can you?”

  Her turn to sigh. “I suppose not. Okay. You didn’t hear this from me, dammit. You got that?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Alright. So, there’s a subdivision across the valley from the back of Sol’s place. All I’ll tell you is that there’s an alarming cancer rate in that subdivision. The people are dropping like flies. I forget the word for it, but there’s this specific term the CDC doctors use for when stuff like that happens.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve heard it, but I forgot, myself. You know what’s causing it?”

  “I’m not going that far, Bill,” she said. “And I don’t want you to, either. The last I heard you have a wife and two kids at home.”

  “Three, if you count Jessica. But she’s practically grown now.”

  “Okay. So, three kids. The people who did this wouldn’t stick at wiping you from existence, Bill. Nor your whole family.”

  My stomach lurched and a coldness settled itself down deep inside me.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Too far,” she said. “Money can buy a lot of things, Bill. It can almost even buy happiness. But in this culture...this culture of greed, it can buy life and death. Bill, I gotta go. James is coming in. I just heard his car in the driveway.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Sol said something about a fire. Sounds like it was a long time ago. Can you fill me in?”

  “No, Bill. I can’t. Gotta run. “Take care of yourself, Bill. And...don’t.”

  “Okay,” I said, and hung up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Don’t.

  I decided not to. Instead I decided to go see Chuck Holland, right after I called Julie.

  “You’re going where?” Julie asked over the phone.

  “You remember Chuck Holland, right?”

  “I think so. The conspiracy guy?” She sounded disbelieving.

  “He’s not exactly a conspiracy guy. He knows things, is all.”

  “Yeah, but isn’t selective in what he knows. Okay, when will you be home?”

  “Not too late. How are the kids?”

  “They’re fine. Jessica is getting ready to leave to take her written test. If she passes that, she says she’ll have to qualify on the gun range tomorrow. I’m not sure I like the idea of her being a sheriff’s deputy.” I heard some rattling around in the background, and wondered what she was doing. Maybe it was better not knowing.

  “I don’t like it either,” I said, “but we both know it’s what she wants to do. Besides, they’ll make her serve at least a year as a reserve deputy. A year of riding around with a partner, working only part-time and not being paid. They’ll make her earn her spurs.”

  “Still, it’s dangerous.”

  “Can’t disagree with you there. But in this instance, I think it’s the cro
oks that will be in real danger. Have you seen her shoot that thing?”

  “No. And I’m not going to.”

  “She puts five in the center in four seconds. She’ll pass the range test. Mark my words.”

  “You could talk her out of it,” she said.

  “I can’t talk her out of anything. Neither of us can.”

  “I know,” she sighed.

  “How about Michelle? What’s my little rugrat up to?”

  “Your little rugrat is four years old. She’s helping me clean out the garage.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Jennifer is at Trudy’s house, as usual. For Pete’s sake, where’d you get all this junk?”

  “Most of it from you,” I said. “Listen, honey. I’ve gotta run now. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  We hung up together.

  I thought of Eloise’s words about making a whole family disappear, and shivered again.

  *****

  Outside it was a full moon.

  I locked up the office and climbed into my Mercedes. The thing creaked oddly. Hmph. Either it was getting older or I was getting heavier. Regardless, it would have to go up on the rack sometime in the future. I can’t abide little creaking sounds from a car.

  I headed north through downtown Austin, past the University of Texas along the drag—that’s Guadalupe Street—and on past all the shops that cater to the local student population. There is a lot of history on that street. To my left was a place that used to be called the Cadeau, where Farrah Fawcett used to shop back when she was a Sweetheart at UT.

  I turned east on Dean Keaton and skirted the University to the north, wending my way around the curves and up and down hills until I had to turn again. I pulled into the parking lot of the Copy Store and caught Chuck as he was locking the place up to leave for the night.

  “Hey, Holland!” I called.

  He walked a few feet toward my car, squinted. “Oh. Hey, Bill!”