Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(53)

"I reckon," I said.

32

"Bats?" I said.

"Bats," said my half brother Garrett.

"I’ll admit," I said, "it’s a word I often think of when your name comes up."

"I’m not shitting you, little bro. You have to see this. It’s f**king unreal."

I covered the receiver and looked over at Maia.

"How’d you like to take a little road trip?" I asked her. She stared at me. "What?"

"Just to Austin. My brother wants to show us the sights."

Maia’s arms folded. "How many ‘no’ reasons do you want? Detective Schaeffer wants you in town, your car stands out on the road like a neon advertisement, you’ve been shot at and almost run over—"

I uncovered the receiver.

"We’d love to," I told Garrett.

"Cool," he said. "You remember what the Carmen Miranda looks like?"

"That would be kind of difficult to forget."

"The bridge at eight, little bro."

Instead of terminating my life, Maia compromised with me. She agreed to go to Austin; I agreed to let her rent a car for the trip. By early afternoon we were heading north on I-35 in a brown Buick so nondescript it was almost invisible. Maia kept having to honk at people to keep them from drifting into us on the highway. By the time we passed Live Oak I was convinced we were not being tailed.

"I would’ve preferred a white Cadil1ac," I protested.

"Asshole," she said.

When we hit Selma I discovered that the universe as I knew it had come to an end—the old Selma Police Department building had been turned into a bar and grille. For decades the terror of all motorists wanting to drive above fifty-five and a half mph, the town had finally cashed in its speed trap reputation for tourist dollars. The sign out front promised free appetizers with any proof of moving violation. And that was only the first surprise. The 1-35 corridor was almost nonstop developments now. There were outlet malls where cow pastures and ranch houses had once been, fast-food restaurants in knolls once filled with barbed wire and stands of mesquite trees. As we moved along the edge of the Hill Country I found myself less and less sure where I was. Even the few remaining cattle along the side of the highway looked confused.

When we stopped for a late lunch at a restaurant I remembered on the San Marcos River we found the place had closed four years ago. So we settled for a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and a billboard of Ralph the Swimming Pig in the park across from Wonder World. Paddleboats went by on the river; a few unambitious wet suit divers braved the ten-foot-deep green waters; Ralph the Swimming Pig and Maia kept looking at me.

"You haven’t told me what you’re thinking," Maia said.

I chewed on my bread and cheese and watched the river. It had taken me a few minutes to realize why I felt so bad being here again. Then I’d remembered that time with Lillian, Christmas break, when we’d gotten stupid drunk and gone skinny-dipping around midnight just a few yards upriver from here with a band of coked-up bluegrass players. The water had been so cold our lips turned purple. I remembered Lillian. Then I looked at Maia, sitting there in the sunlight, her eyes almost gold. The part of my mind that was trying to put the facts together felt like it was threading a needle with a pair of cooking mitts on.

"Tres?"

"Yeah, I know. I just don’t have an answer yet."

She ran her finger along the edge of her wineglass.

"Do you want to hear mine?"

She waited. I kept eating flavorless bread. Maia looked back down at her wineglass and swore under her breath, something about me being a stupid white devil. "Damn it, Tres. Do you think Lillian gave you that statue accidentally? Do you think she didn’t know what would happen when it turned up missing? How can you keep seeing her as just the victim?"

I stared out at the river. “Maybe."

"Maybe," she repeated. "What if, just maybe, Lillian disappeared on purpose? If it were me, once I realized the person I’d been trying to blackmail was really the mob, I’d admit I was in over my head and I’d run like hell. Maybe first I’d send up the only distress signal I could think of—to you. How are you going to know the truth when you see it?"

"The truth." I looked at her. "Maia, I know you’re trying to help. The truth is you’re distracting the hell out of me."

I think I wanted it to sound angry, but it didn’t come out that way.

Maia started to answer, then pressed her lips together. For a moment she looked cold in the sunshine, hugging her knees and curling up her toes under her beige sundress.

“Tell me to go home then," she said.

I looked down. We sat silent for a while and threw bread to some sickly-looking ducks. Sometimes they ate it. Most of the time they just stared at us and let the pieces hit them in the face. No points for intelligence. At the moment I empathized.

"Okay, then," Maia said. "Tell me you’ll come back ."

The paddleboaters laughed. Ralph the Pig grinned at me. I looked at Maia’s sad half smile and listened to the devil talking on my shoulder. I was chasing ghosts through a town I barely remembered, dealing with people I could barely see through emotional scar tissue. Maia could be right. I’d only made things different for the worse. And a beautiful woman was offering me escape from the first twenty years of my life. It would’ve taken a stupid man to tell Maia Lee no.