The Widowers Two-Step Read online

Page 12

 

  I sat on the sofa and went through the mail. Bills. A letter from Tom and Sally Kearnes in Oregon and a pix of their new baby girl. The note said Cant wait for you to see Andrea! Love, T & S. I stared at the pink wrinkly face. Then I placed the photo and letter upside down on the coffee table.

  I did a quick sweep of the back rooms. No messages on the answering machine.

  Nothing to look at in the garbage can except moulding coffee grounds. The only thing interesting was on the top shelf of Julies bedroom closet. Buried under a down comforter was a twotone brown suitcase like youd see in a vaudeville act.

  Inside on top were photos of Les SaintPierre. There was Les drinking beer with Merle Haggard, Les accepting an award from Tanya Tucker, young Les in a wide collared pink shirt, big curly hairdo, lots of polyester, standing next to a similarly dressed disco cowboy who was probably famous once but whom I didnt recognize.

  Underneath the photos were lots of mens clothes, packed more like someone had been emptying drawers than picking things for a trip. It was all socks and jockey shorts. Or maybe thats what Les SaintPierre wore when he travelled. Maybe Id been going to the wrong vacation spots.

  I put the suitcase back.

  In the den a green, hungrylooking parrot was sitting on its polished madrone branch.

  He told me I was a noisy bastard and then went back to scratching ravenously at his cuttlebone.

  I found some pistachios for him in the kitchen. Then I sat down at Julies IBM PS/2 and stared at a dark screen.

  "Dickhead," the parrot croaked. He cracked a pistachio.

  "Pleased to meet you," I said.

  The corkboard behind the computer was cluttered with paper. There was a dogeared picture of Julie Kearnes as a young fiddle player, her auburn hair longer, her body slimmer. She was standing next to George Jones. There was a more recent picture of the Miranda Daniels Band with Julie in the forefront. The photo was surrounded by concert reviews clipped from local papers, a few sentences about Julie Kearnes fiddle playing highlighted in pink. One frontpage feature from the Statesman entertainment section showed just Miranda Daniels, standing between a standup bass and a wagon wheel with a fake sunset backdrop behind her. The title boldly announced: "The Rebirth of Western Swing: Why a new breed of Texas talent will take Nashville by storm. "

  A smaller corkboard to the left was more downto earth. It displayed $250 check stubs from Paintbrush Enterprises, also Julies schedule and hourly pay scale for several jobs shed taken through Cellis Temps in the last few months to make ends meet—basic word processing and data entry for an assortment of big corporations in town. Whether or not Miranda Daniels was going to take Nashville by storm, it didnt look like Julie Kearnes had been in any immediate danger of becoming affluent.

  I looked through Julies floppy disks. I opened the horizontal cabinet and took out a thin stack of mildewed blue folders. I was just starting to look through one labelled

  "personal" when the front door opened and a mans voice said, "Anybody home?"

  Jose tiptoed into the study, smiling apologetically, like he needed to pee real bad.

  He looked around at the decor and said, "I had to see. "

  "Youre lucky I didnt shoot you. "

  "Oh—" He started to laugh. Then he saw my face. "You dont really have a gun, do you?"

  I shrugged and turned back to the files. I never carry, but I didnt have to tell him that.

  Jose unfroze and began looking around the room, picking up knickknacks and checking titles on the bookshelf. The parrot cracked pistachios and watched him.

  "Dickhead," the parrot said.

  I gave the bird some more nuts. I believe in positive reinforcement.

  On a quick look, Julies "personal" file seemed to deal mostly with her debts. There were plenty of them. There was also some paperwork from Statewide Credit Counselling that suggested Julie had entered into debt negotiation about two months ago. The house, the parrot, and the 68 Cougar she was murdered in seemed to be her only assets. It looked like she had two mortgages on the house and was about one of Shecklys pay checks away from becoming homeless.

  I started Julies IBM, figuring Id do a quick check, take the hard disk with me and look at it more leisurely later on if anything seemed of worth.

  There was nothing of worth. In fact, there was nothing at all. I sat there and stared at an empty green screen, a DOS prompt asking me where its brain had gone.

  I thought for a second, then turned off the machine and pried off the casing. The hard drive was still in its slot. Erased, but not removed. That was good. I wrestled it out, wrapped it in newspaper, and stuck it in my backpack. A project for Brother Garrett.

  "What is it?" Jose asked.

  Hed come up behind me now and was peering over my shoulder, fascinated by the open computer. The cologne was intense. The parrot sneezed.

  "Nothing," I said. "A lot of it. Somebody has tried to make sure theres nothing to be found on Julie Kearnes computer. "

  Jose said, "It mustve been that man who came over. "

  I stared at him. "What man?"

  Jose looked exasperated. "Thats what I was talking about outside—the man who came over Saturday night. You said you knew about him. "

  "Wait a minute. "

  I did a mental checklist. Saturday night, the night before Id confronted Julie myself.

  There hadnt been any man. Id pulled standard surveillance, methods even Erainya couldnt have found fault with. Id watched the house until elevenohfive, which had been lights out plus thirty minutes. At that point you can figure the subject is down for the count. Id chalked Julies tires, on the off chance shed go somewhere during the night. Then Id driven home for a few hours sleep before heading back to Austin at fourthirty the next morning.

  "When did this guy come over?" I demanded.

  Jose looked proud. "He banged on Julies door at elevenfifteen. I remembered to check my clock. "

  The parrot ruffled his feathers and squawked, "Shit, shit, shit. "

  "Yeah," I agreed.

  13

  When it came to snooping Jose was a pro. He remembered that the visitor had woken up Julie Kearnes at exactly elevenfifteen on Saturday night. He remembered the man going inside and arguing with Julie in her living room for eight minutes twenty seconds.

  Jose had seen them through the window. He could describe the guy well—Latino, stocky, well dressed, in his late fifties. Around five feet eight, maybe 230 pounds. His car had been a BMW, goldish colour. Jose gave me the license, though after hearing the description of the visitor I was pretty sure I didnt need it.

  Jose apologized that hed only heard a few lines of their argument when the visitor came storming out of Julies house. Something about money.

  Jose said Julie Kearnes had been holding her . 22 Lady smith when she came onto the porch the second time, like she was chasing the guy out.

  "She didnt fire it. " He sounded disappointed.

  I told Jose hed done a great service for his country and hustled him out the door. He vowed to call the number on his hand if he remembered anything else.

  I went back inside Julies house and stared at the disassembled computer. I looked at Dickhead the parrot, whod just finished his last pistachio and was now eyeing my nose. Hungry, thirsty, alone.

  "Robert Johnson wouldnt like you," I told him.

  The parrot turned his head upside down and tried to look pathetic.

  "Great," I said, and held out my arm.

  Dickhead flew over and landed on my shoulder.

  "Noisy bastard," he said in my ear.

  "Sucker," I corrected.

  When I got to Guadalupe Avenue, otherwise known as the Drag, the sidewalks and crosswalks were clogged with students just getting out of their afternoon classes. The fiveblock stretch of shops and cafes bordering the west side of campus boasted an impressive selection of human flotsam—greying hippies, homeless people and street merchants, musicians and soa
pbox preachers, sorority girls. Across the street from the chaos, the big peaceful live oaks and white limestone buildings and red tiled roofs of UT stretched out forever, like Rome or Oklahoma City, someplace that had absolutely no concept of limited space.

  The Drag probably wasnt the best place in Austin to get some serious thinking done.

  On the other hand, nobody was going to bother me sitting on the sidewalk outside the Student Coop with a parrot on my shoulder.

  Maybe Dickhead would volunteer a few choice expressions for the passersby. Maybe if I put out a hat somebody would drop coins in it. Meanwhile I could watch time pass on the UT tower clock and think about my favourite dead woman.

  Julie Kearnes finances didnt look good. Reading through them a little closer I could see how much pressure shed been under. Shed been getting harassing reminders from the bank that held her mortgages, from all the major credit card companies, from a local Musicians Credit Union.

  The debt negotiation shed started might have helped, eventually, but not if she lost her biweekly pay checks from Sheck because shed been getting too close to Saint

  Pierre. Not if she lost her only paying gig with Miranda because of the Century Records deal. The temp jobs shed been doing to fill in the cracks wouldnt have been enough to sustain her and pay the debts.

  So maybe shed decided to do some dirty work. Maybe shed found herself getting crushed to death between Les SaintPierre and Tilden Sheckly and had to play both ends against the middle. Steal a demo tape for Sheckly or go bankrupt. Find some dirt on Sheckly for Les SaintPierre or lose your gigs.

  Shed known Sheckly for years, worked in his office for most of that time, took trips to Europe with his business manager. Shed been in a position to find dirt.

  Maybe what shed dug up had been a little too good. Les had disappeared before he could play his hand. Julie had gotten nervous. Shed been pressured by some unwanted visitors over the weekend, including me. Then finally she decided to set up some kind of emergency meeting Monday morning with someone she needed help from but didnt trust. Shed taken her . 22, driven to San Antonio, and walked into her own murder.

  People get desperate, play in a league over their head, they often get killed. Certainly not the fault of the dashing investigator whod only come in at the end of Act V.

  Maybe. The scenario didnt comfort me any. It also didnt explain the suitcase full of Les SaintPierres intimate apparel sitting in Julies closet two weeks after hed disappeared. Or the man in the gold BMW who knew enough about surveillance to spot me and outwait me at Julie Kearnes on Saturday night.

  On the street, three guys in studded leather coats and green porcupine hairdos walked by smoking clove cigarettes. A group of girls in matching wrinkled flannel, with long tangled hair and bleached white skin, stopped for a minute to ask me if I knew a guy named Eagle.

  Flannel in Texas requires a real commitment. Until the cold fronts start coming in, anything except shorts and flipflops requires real commitment. I told them I was impressed. Dickhead even whistled. The girls just rolled their eyes and kept walking.

  By seven oclock the sky was turning purple. The grackles started coming in from the south again and a curve of black clouds slid in from the north, smelling like rain. The last wave of college kids flooded across Guadalupe, dispersing to seek coffee shops or frat parties.

  I checked my brain for new revelations on Les Saint Pierre and Julie Kearnes, found I had none, then got up and dusted the street grime off my jeans. I went back to my VW