Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(31)

A week earlier we’d had another one of our epic fights. I’d stormed out of the Dixie Chicken in the middle of dinner. Lillian shouted at my back that she’d never talk to me again. Now she just stared at me as I walked closer.

When I came up to her she brushed my face with her fingers, lightly, and left sticky red acrylic streaks on my left cheek. Then, keeping a straight face, she decorated the other side, like war paint. She laughed.

“Does this mean I’m forgiven?" I said.

Her eyes turned bright green. She put her head so close to mine that her lips brushed my chin as she talked. Her breath smelled like cherry Life Savers.

“Not even close," she said. "But you can’t get rid of me. Remember that next time you walk away."

The phone was ringing.

I woke up sideways on the futon with the receiver already in my hand. The blinds above me were open and sunlight was pouring onto my face as strong and hot as gasoline. I squinted. Before I could make my voice work, Robert Johnson was on my head talking for me.

"Mur," he said.

Maia Lee said: “Oh, good, Robert Johnson, you’re home."

"Sorry," I croaked. “Should I get off the line?"

She laughed. The sound was a hard one to wake up to; it brought back Sunday mornings on Potrero Hill, drinking Peet’s coffee, watching the fog recede from the Bay. It made me remember a city for runaways where you didn’t have to think about the past, or home, or who had disappeared from your life.

"You’re a hard person to get in touch with, Tres," Maia said.

I sat up, knocking over the empty tequila bottle. Then I looked across the room and noticed the kitchen window.

Maia was waiting for a snide remark. When I didn’t offer one, her tone changed. "Tres?"

I walked into the kitchen as far as the phone cord would go. The rusty metal frame window above the sink was hanging wide open at a crazy angle. Its bottom hinge had been neatly pried away, so the ancient turn-crank that was supposed to hold the window shut could be stripped.

"Tres?" Maia said again. “What is it?"

I sat on the kitchen counter and stared out into the crape myrtles. A few of their pink petals were floating in yesterday’s coffee cup next to the soap dish. A few more were smashed into the single muddy footprint that was in my sink--110 grooves, pointed toe, a large boot, maybe a ten and a half wide.

"Maia," I said, "how much time have you got?"

21

I blamed Robert Johnson for not being a Great Dane. Maia blamed me for being a heavy sleeper.

"I told you so often," she complained, “if a burglar had ever come in while we were sleeping—" She caught the we part of that statement a little too late. Her voice tangled on it like silk on barbed wire.

When she spoke again it was in her professional tone, careful and even. "All right. Tell me the whole story."

I told her what little I’d learned about my father’s death. I told her about Lillian’s disappearance, my talk with Guy White, the threats against me, Beau Karnau’s mystery photos and his ride with Dan Sheff, the boot print at the gallery and in my sink.

Maia was silent for a minute. Behind her somewhere, a foghorn sounded.

“Did they take anything? These photos you found, for instance?"

"Whoever it was came and left quickly. I don’t think they were looking for paperwork. None of it was touched. Nothing else was taken."

"Not even your life."

I tried to believe there was no disappointment in her voice.

“It’s nice to be loved," I said.

After she had fumed silently for a while, she said:

"Tres, your friend Drapiewski is right. Leave this to the police. Get the hell out of there."

I didn’t answer.

"But naturally," she said, "you’re not going to."

I didn’t answer.

She sighed. "I should’ve left you where I found you—tending bar in Berkeley. "

“I was the best person you ever trained."

"You were the only person I ever trained."

It’s hard for a Texan to argue with someone who insists on sticking to the truth. Robert Johnson jumped onto the counter and started smelling the boot print in the sink. He gave me an insulted look that was probably a close approximation of Maia’s expression right then. Two against one.

"All right," Maia said, “let’s assume, even if I don’t agree, that you pull on the two ends of this, Lillian’s disappearance and your father’s death, and you find out they connect somewhere in the middle. That would mean someone besides this dead convict—"

“Halcomb."

"—it would mean someone besides him was involved in the killing ten years ago, and is now nervous about your questions. Whoever it is, they’re worried enough to threaten you, perhaps to kidnap someone you--someone you know, but not willing to kill you. Why?"

I picked a crushed crape myrtle petal out of the sink and looked at it. Thinking about why I was alive this morning didn’t help the empty acidic feeling the tequila had left in my stomach. The half memory of somebody looking down at me in the night had started to crawl across my skin like the smell of dead javelina and the sticky feel of red acrylic paint.

“I don’t know," I said. “Why does someone search the art gallery, then Lillian’s house, then my apartment? Why does Dan Sheff hang around Lillian’s front yard ready to beat up new boyfriends when Lillian’s datebook declared the relationship dead months ago? Why does Sheff give Karnau a ride? I don’t know yet."