Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(84)

Dan tried to look defiant, but his voice got quivery.

“It’s my damn company. My fiancée. When Lillian,. . .when she told me to go away, it just made me more determined to resolve things. I confronted Beau. I told him he’d gotten all he was going to get and I wanted the photographs. I just didn’t know—"

He rubbed his eyes slowly, like he couldn’t quite remember where they were. A sleepless night and too many pitchers of Lone Star were catching up with him.

"You didn’t know what?"

"Beau kept stalling. He asked for more money, then promised he’d bring the disk, then asked for more. He promised if I came to the Hilton that would really be it. He was leaving town. But already he’d done something with Lillian, and then that carpenter, then Garza. It just kept getting worse. If I hadn’t pushed on him so hard—"

“Wait a minute," I said. “You think Karnau killed those two men. You think he kidnapped Lillian."

Dan stared at me. “It’s obvious." .

"Obvious," I repeated. “Who killed Karnau then? Who else knew you were going to the Hilton, Dan?"

"No one."

“Except your mother?"

He didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure he was even listening.

“When Lillian turned up missing," I said, "your mother talked to the Cambridges. She insisted on no

police."

He frowned. "We both did. We knew it wouldn’t help."

"That’s not why she wanted the police out, Dan."

His eyes became unfocused. "What the hell do you know about her? You have any idea how much strength it takes—her husband about to die, some lowlife black-mailing her family, a hundred damn cousins and second cousins and nieces and nephews ready to take over the company as soon as they see the chance? She kept a million-dollar business together, Navarre. She’s done that for me."

It sounded like a speech he’d heard a thousand times. He recited it without much conviction.

I tried to imagine the world as Dan saw it: Beau Karnau capable of shooting Eddie Moraga through the eyes, but scared enough of Dan to not try anything even alone with him in a dark alley. Dan able to save the family business single-handedly, even though he’d looked at the books maybe once. Lillian ignorant of her mentor’s darker side, just too delicate to handle dating a man who was being blackmailed. The fact that Karnau was the one who’d been blackmailing the Sheff family for a year nothing but an odd coincidence. Dan’s mother a frail and besieged protector of Dan’s inheritance. I wondered how many of his mother’s speeches it had taken over the years to make that vision of the world seem obvious to Dan. I wondered how much longer it would be before that vision caved in on him.

“I’d talk to your mother, Dan. She’s been protecting you again."

The Merle Haggard song ended. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Carlon staring over at us, trying to look like he wasn’t.

Dan drained his beer glass.

"Get away from me," he mumbled. "Just leave."

I stood up from the bench. I threw down a five and started to go.

"Ask her, Dan. Go to your party tonight and ask her if the blond man in the picture is named Randall

Halcomb."

When I stopped at the exit and looked back, Dan was slumped over in the booth, his forehead cupped in his hands, furrows of blond hair sticking up between his fingers. The waitress with the beer gut and the golf hat was trying to console him, giving me a dirty look. Carlon had left his table and was walking toward me as quickly as he could without actually breaking into a run.

We went out together and stood next to Carlon’s car in the nighttime heat. The blue Hyundai was parked on McCullough with two wheels on the curb.

"So what do we know?" Carlon said.

"We don’t know much, Carlon. just that Dan’s a victim."

Carlon laughed. “Yeah, poor guy. Forced to put a bullet in Karnau’s head. Give me a break, Tres."

"Dan didn’t kill Karnau. He just isn’t capable."

Carlon took off his inconspicuous tie, rolled it up, and shoved it in the front pocket of his khakis, never taking his eyes off me.

"I’m listening."

"Carlon, what would it take for you to give up on getting a story out of this?"

He laughed again. “You don’t have that much, Navarre. This is the spiciest shit I’ve had since the last Terlingua Cook-off. Murder, blackmail, the mob. We’re talking 40-point orange headlines here."

“I don’t want it like that."

"It’s already there, man. It might as well be me that pops the cherry on it."

I looked over at him. just for the moment I wished I had a bayonet.

“Friday, then," I offered. “At the earliest. This is more complicated than I thought."

“Getting publicity has a funny way of making things unravel, man. I’ve still got about an hour to make copy for the morning edition."

"Look," I said, trying to keep my voice even, “if you stir things up now, if you get the wrong kind of heat onto the wrong people, somebody else is going to die. I need time to make sure that doesn’t happen."

"Lillian, right?"

“Yeah."