The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(57)

From a box marked 1990 AND PRIOR, I pulled a stack of yellowing brochures that announced the opening of the marina in 1975. POINT LONE STAR, Rouell McBride, Proprietor. Behind these was a whole folder full of photographs that Ruby's father had apparently considered using for promotional materials. Many of them were ancient black and white shots showing the family orchards before they'd been flooded. In one, a large family sat under a pecan tree, rows of other pecans stretching out behind them, a split rail fence running along one side. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the branches. The darksuited patriarch sat on a folding chair, his wife beside him in a white Edwardian dress. Children of various ages fanned out on either side, sitting crosslegged on quilts—the boys in coat and tie, the girls with bobbed hair and 1920s dresses. It was obvious they were all McBrides. I could imagine the photo in colour—so many green eyes, so much red hair.

A note paperclipped to the back of the photo was written in what I assumed was Ruby's father's handwriting: The McBride name has been an institution—Here a few words were scratched out—The McBrides have been landowners on Lake Travis—more scratch outs—No one knows the lake better than the McBrides. Trust us for all your boating needs.

I looked at the brochure. Mr. McBride hadn't used the old photo. He'd opted instead for glossy colour aerials of the marina.

A little more digging in the clothes boxes got me something I had not been anxious to find—a letter from Matthew Pena, folded into the pocket of Ruby's winter coat. It read: Next weekend, then. I'll see about the Farallons. Fondly, Matthew.

Hardly damning evidence of anything illegal, but it meant that sometime during the winter, very possibly before Matthew approached Techsan, he'd been corresponding with Ruby McBride. And while Ruby was still married to Jimmy, she'd been talking to Pena about a weekend trip to San Francisco—a boat ride out to the Farallon Islands.

I crumpled up the letter, made it into as small a ball as I could. I had an irrational impulse to overturn Ruby's nightstand, dump her boxes on the carpet.

The only thing that sobered me was thinking what Garrett would do if he'd found the letter instead of me. If he blamed Ruby for abandoning him, then watched her marry Jimmy Doebler, and then, on top of it all, suspected Ruby was spending time with Matthew Pena . . . betraying both of them. I thought about the night Jimmy had died—Garrett getting so angry upon hearing Ruby's name that he'd shot off the kiln goddess' arm.

While I was thinking about this, I found myself staring at a poster on Ruby's bedroom wall. It was a huge topographical map of the lake with longitude and latitude coordinates. Depths were noted. Boating hazards. I got up to take a closer look.

There was a green pushpin marking Point Lone Star, and out in the water, five red pins, making a curve from the shore to a point close to the boating channel. The pins were equidistant—about one hundred yards apart.

Her flooded family land, I guessed. I remembered what she'd said about mapping the old property lines, and about taking Matthew Pena down there.

And then a voice behind me said, "There is no Mr. White at this marina."

Clyde Simms stood in the doorway. His nose had a butterfly pattern of bruises around it from our encounter at Scholz Garten. There was a tire iron in his hand.

"Thank God," I said. "I must've taken a wrong turn. I was on my way to Jimmy's—"

"If I liked police," Simms snarled, "they'd be hauling your ass away right now."

"And since you don't?"

He lifted the tire iron, patted it against his palm. "You're walking with me over to my place. Nice and friendly, no scaring the customers. No joint locks. And then we'll see."

CHAPTER 23

Clyde's homestead was set back in the woods about fifty yards from the marina, just enough to be out of sight of the paying customers.

Along the gravel path, we passed two Chevrolet carcasses, three cow skulls nailed to mesquite trees, and a bikinied store manikin who'd been given a lobotomy and an appendectomy by shotgun. The joys of simple country living.

The house itself was an overgrown portable shed with a plywood porch and a corrugated tin roof heaped with fuzzy brown cedar fur. Parked out front was a HarleyDavidson hog. On the front porch post, a sign read FEROCIOUS DOGS —NO

UNANNOUNCED VISITORS.

"Come in," Clyde told me. "And don't think I won't kill you, you try any more of that kung fu shit on me. You know how much I snore when I get my nose broke?"

Clyde opened the screen door and the smell of burning pork and beans came wafting out.

He cursed, pushed past me toward the stove. Apparently he'd forgotten a culinary experiment in his haste to apprehend me.

I stepped into the dark kitchen area, and one of the advertised ferocious dogs appeared from the hallway.

It was a Doberman—sleek black, tan muzzle, little devilhorn ears. It took one look at me with its sad, milky eyes and squeaked the toy in its mouth—a pink rubber bunny.

Then the Doberman

plodded forward a few steps, collapsed on the rug as if it had been shot, and sighed.

"Vicious," I said. "Terrifying."

Clyde glowered at me. He picked up a spatula with baked bean crust on the edge, took his black, smoking pan of lunch off the electric stovetop.

"I had me two other asseating Dobes," he growled. "Mean ones—Harley and Davidson. Both died since Christmas. Now all I got left is Miata."