Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(21)

Her answering machine didn’t pick up after ten rings. Lillian should have been home from Laredo by now. It was almost ten o’clock. She was there, I decided glumly, choosing to ignore the phone.

I stared at the coffee table, at the packet of old news clippings Carlon McAffrey had given me that afternoon, my father’s grinning face still on top. Looking at his picture, I realized how badly I needed to see Lillian tonight. I needed something clean and physical with her that wasn’t part of our past. I pushed the news clippings onto the floor.

Then I went to the refrigerator and got two items I’d picked up at Pappy’s Grocery in a moment of whimsy: a six-pack of Big Red and a bottle of tequila. I went out to the VW. A summer thunderstorm was coming in over the Balcones Escarpment, but I took the top down anyway. Then I drove toward Monte Vista, thinking about the future.

15

There is no place in San Antonio quite as lonely as the Olmos Basin. You can drive across the dam road at night, looking over an ocean of live oaks, and see no sign of the city that surrounds you. Just you, your car, and the dam. Unless you are my mother’s old high school chum, Whitley Strieber. Then I guess you have the UFOs to keep you company.

Tonight, diffused flashes of lightning illuminated the Basin, turning it from black to deep green. Thunder rolled over the tops of the trees like oil over the surface of a hot pan.

Up and down Acacia Street, dogs were barking at the storm. Lillian’s house was dark except for the small cranberry glass lamp she kept on her bedstand. Fuchsia light seeped out through the closed miniblinds. Her car was in the driveway.

Next door five or six Rodriguez children, fearless and unattended, roller—skated up and down the sidewalk in semidarkness, screaming with joy every time the thunder cracked. The music from inside their parents’ living room was muted tonight, as if in deference to the storm.

I pulled up to the curb and got out, carrying my Big Red and tequila up to the front porch. Two grinning Rodriguez children almost sideswiped me as I passed them.

In the basket Lillian used for mail was a stack of letters and ad circulars. Two newspapers on the porch. She could’ve come in through the back. Or maybe she hadn’t taken her own car to Laredo; maybe she was still gone. I thought about whose car she might’ve taken to the border instead, and I didn’t like the options I came up with.

The buzzer didn’t work. I knocked as loudly as I could on the frame of the screen door but it was very possible she wouldn’t hear me. The wind was picking up. Ripped from their branches, petals from Lillian’s crape myrtle and antique rosebush were thrown across the yard like pink confetti.

After three knocks I tried the door and found it open.

“Lillian?"

I put my six-pack and Herradura bottle down on the coffee table and called her name again. There were magazines strewn around the floor by the couch, typical of Lillian’s "read and dump” method.

Still the only light was the pink glow under the bedroom door. I stuck my head in slowly, half expecting her to be curled up under the covers. An unmade bed, a half-open underwear drawer, but no Lillian.

An uncomfortable burning sensation started building strength in my chest.

I checked the back room, then the kitchen. A small AM radio was talking to itself on the cutting board. The sinkful of dishes wasn’t surprising in itself, but they’d been scrubbed and never rinsed.

Possibilities started occurring to me that I didn’t want to entertain. I checked the front door again, then the windows for signs of forced entry. Nothing obvious, though very little would’ve shown up on tie scuffed and scarred doorjamb, and the window latches were woefully easy to work open. The stereo equipment was untouched. The answering machine had been turned off. No messages to replay. Computer disks and files were strewn around her desk, but no equipment seemed to be missing. Someone had been looking for something here recently in a messy fashion, but it could easily have been Lillian. I checked for toiletries in the bathroom and looked in her closet. No signs that she’d packed for a trip, but no definite proof that she hadn’t.

Then I heard the clump of skates on the hardwood floor behind me. One of the Rodriguez children rolled into the bedroom doorway and grabbed the doorjamb to steady herself. She had stringy hair and small dark eyes, glittering as she looked at me. She was wearing a red and white striped dress with teddy bears on it.

I must have had a startled look on my face. She giggled. as I was still trying to frame a question when she skated back toward the front door, letting out a happy squeal as if she expected to be chased. She turned at the door and looked back, grinning mischievously.

“Do you know Lillian?" I asked, still in the bedroom doorway.

I’m not great with kids; I can’t handle the eerie resemblance they bear to human beings. She cocked her head like a curious dog might.

"You’re not the same man," she said.

Then she was gone, the screen door slamming behind her.

Now what the hell had that meant? I should’ve followed the child and asked her more questions, but the idea of chasing a group of prepubescents on roller skates down the sidewalk in the dark was more than I could handle just then.

Maybe she was talking about Dan Sheff. The neighbors would have seen him here many times, no doubt. Or maybe she’d seen someone else come into the house. I turned and stared at Lillian’s bed. The burning feeling got stronger in my chest.