Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(33)

It was a thirty-minute drive from Queen Anne, forty with the VW fighting a hot north wind. As I passed Loop 1604 the land opened up and you could see the storm coming in. Blue-black clouds rolled off the Balcones Escarpment in a perfect line. The pastures turned dark green. A dry white branch of lightning cracked off from the sky and hit the horizon, then evaporated. I did what any sensible person would do. I put on my sunglasses.

When I pulled up to the development gates I stopped right in the entrance and got out to put up the ragtop. The condition it was in, it wouldn’t stop the rain but it might slow it down. And putting the top up here was just the kind of non-thinking thing a Dominion resident would do—not rude exactly, just not realizing anybody else of importance could possibly exist in your space.

Two Cadillacs pulled up directly behind me and waited. Nobody honked. The security guard wavered in the doorway of his little booth, not sure whether he should yell at me or help me. I could be a rich person in disguise. I could be a friend of George’s. I was wearing Ray-Bans in a rainstorm.

I got back in my car and drove up to the guard, slowly. I tried to look mortally bored.

“Hey," I said.

He had a vibrating smile, this guy, like it would jump right off his face. He was younger than me. Probably his first week on the job. The white uniform and his twitchy eyes made him look like the ice cream man after a nervous breakdown.

"Your destination, sir?" he said, laying petal-soft hands on the car door. He tried to hide his distaste when he caught a whiff from inside of the VW. It had been doused by plenty of rainstorms before now, and some parts had never completely dried.

“Yeah," I said, yawning. “Two--Aw shit, two—"'

I snapped my fingers helplessly. I gazed off like I was having a flashback.

Behind us the Cadillacs were starting to get impatient. The one in front flashed its high beams. He had places to go, golf games to start.

"Two—"

I almost thought it wouldn’t work. Then the second Cadillac honked. The guard jumped.

“2OO Palamon?" he offered, almost in tears. “The Bagatallinis?"

I grinned. "Yeah."

"Yes, sir, straight up, past the ninth green, your first right."

"Good deal."

And I drove through, wondering who the poor Bagatallinis were if they kept sorry company like me. Maybe I should drop by I’d been in the Dominion a few times before. Once, in the last days of their marriage, I’d been sent by my mom to pick up the Sheriff when he was puking Cuba Libras into somebody’s million-dollar cactus garden after a social hobnob. But I didn’t know the place well enough to locate the Sheff house on the first try.

After two passes around the swan pond, however, I finally found it. It was a modest place by Robin Leach’s standards—two white stucco wings that met in a three-story-high point at the center, the middle portion all glass so you could see the coliseum-size living room and the interior balconies that looked down on it. The front yard was all rocks. I looked at the glass house. I looked at the million stones in the yard. I shook my head. The joke probably hadn’t even occurred to them.

Dan Sheff’s silver BMW was parked a little ways down the hill. A brown Mercedes and a restored cherry-red ’65 Mustang were in the driveway. So was an honest-to-God chauffeur, black suit and all, washing the cars.

It wasn’t his first week on the job. He met me at the curb before I’d even taken off my shades.

"Can I help you?"

He was a small Anglo man, lean and well muscled, the kind of guy who’s five feet five with an extra six inches of attitude on top. The plastic sheen of his face told me nothing. He could’ve been anywhere between thirty and fifty.

"I don’t think so," I said. "I usually wait until after the storm to wash my Mercedes."

I’ve never seen anybody smile without making wrinkles somewhere on their face, but this guy managed it, briefly. Then he was Mr. Impassive again.

“Thursday morning like clockwork," he said. "I get paid anyway, man. And your business is with—?"

“Mr. Sheff," I said.

He gave me a quick scan from my Triple Rock T-shirt to my jeans to my deck shoes, which over the years, I admit, had come to resemble a pair of baked potatoes more than footwear. Mr. Impassive was not in awe.

"Which one?" he said.

"Dan."

He didn’t even smile. “Which one?"

Ah. A family with as many confusing duplicate names as mine.

"Junior," I ventured.

If he’d said "which one” again I wou1d’ve had to flog him with my Ray-Bans. Fortunately he just lied to me.

"Not here," he said.

I guess he didn’t expect me to buy it, because he didn’t move. He kept his chest between me and the house as if his chest were an obstacle at least the size of Kerrville.

I glanced over at the BMW.

"Dan’s taking public transportation these days? Or maybe carpooling in the neighbors’ Lexus to save gas?"

“Mr. Sheff doesn’t make appointments at home," he said. “Unless you’re a friend--"

The idea must have amused him. He made a small sound in the back of his throat that either meant he had a hairball or he was laughing.

"He’ll want to talk to me," I said. Then I tried to walk past him.