The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(59)

Date: Mon 12 Jun 2000 20:03:12 0400

ReplyTo: The Original Jimmy Buffet* List <BUFFET@LISTSERV.

MUOHIO.EDU> Sender: The Original Jimmy Buffett List <BUFFET@LISTSERV.

MUOHIO.EDU> From: Automatic digest processor <LISTSERV@LISTSERV.

MUOHIO.EDU> Subject: Clara/First Show of the Season

She was sitting by the water, on the tailgate of the truck, not twenty feet from me.

Her hair had gone almost steel gray. Her face was swollen, no longer delicate. Fifty years of crying will do that to you. She wore a white blouse and white shorts, so she fairly well glowed in the night.

She would write a word or two, then look up and talk for a while, but she would look through me—dazed. I couldn't be sure if I was still there to her? I could only hope. I hoped she heard me tell her that this was a reunion.

The fact that she had the gun made it all the more exciting. I wasn't quite sure what would happen, how long I had. My recipe was still pretty new.

She was apologizing. She was crying.

It wasn't everything I wanted, but it was close. I felt that painful sting in my mouth, the tension of waiting, like I'd bitten into a lime and couldn't yet swallow. I wanted to step out of the darkness. I wanted to close the distance between us, embrace her, kiss her forehead.

But then, the intrusion.

I'd timed things as best I could, tried to err on the side of caution, but here came company, much too early—boots cracking twigs.

"Ma'am?" he called."You all right?"

She turned toward the voice.

She could've ended things for me right there. But in her mind, the deed was already done. She'd signed her name.

She raised the gun, and the intruder's voice got frantic. He ordered her to drop the weapon.

And then she turned the barrel, raised it to her mouth for a kiss.

A thousand tons of pressure, an entire miserable lifetime, escaped in one tremendous burst.

The intruder's face saved him then, it really did. I wanted to show myself. I wanted to destroy him. But his expression told me that Providence had spoken.

He was meant to see what he saw. I couldn't have hurt him any worse than that.

P.S. Sorry for the offtopic post.

It's going to be a great tour this summer.

First show tomorrow night, and I am pumped.

CHAPTER 24

Despite how close Jimmy's dome looked from the water, it took me half an hour to get back on the winding lakeshore roads.

I found no new presents on the front porch, no signs that anyone had tried to get past my newly installed lock. The minicam timer I'd placed on the door—set for motiondetection, three freezeframe shots per hit—had not been triggered.

Then I looked down toward the water.

Docked at Jimmy's pier was a white and red Supra Conbrio—a twoseater racing boat, sleek and fast, a midlife crisis killer.

Ruby McBride was sitting on the pier, her back to the shore.

I thought for a few heartbeats, then went inside the dome and pulled two beers from the fridge. Robert Johnson circled my feet, sniffing, murring. He seemed to approve of my visit to Miata the Doberman. I took my two beers outside and made my way down to the water.

Ruby didn't turn when I walked up. She was sitting crosslegged, and in her lap was one of Jimmy's unfired pots—a large eggshaped vase Ruby must've pulled from the storage shelf by the new kiln.

"We need to coordinate our plans better," I told her.

She glanced up, squinting into the sunlight. "How's that?"

"I just came from your place."

"I suppose I should've expected that."

Her tennis shoes were wet, her cotton pants rolled up midcalf. She wore a onepiece bathing suit for a top, her bare back a tan expanse of freckles.

"Well," she said. "Despite our best efforts, we seem to have found one another. You wanted to tell me something?"

"At the risk of being oldfashioned, ladies first."

I offered her one of the beers.

"I shouldn't have alcohol," she mused. "Not good with my medication."

But she took the longneck.

"I phoned Garrett an hour ago," she said. "I tried to apologize for the sellout, the way things ended. Like most of my conversations with Garrett, it didn't work out the way I planned. Left me feeling like crap."

"Why apologize?"

She shot me an angry look. "You think I don't know how he felt about the company?"

"Five days ago, I didn't know you existed. Today I found out you and Garrett go back twenty years. I don't know what to think."

The wind picked up, carrying the smells of rotting wooden planks, crayfish, and cedar.

Ruby balanced her beer bottle on the wet toe of her shoe, turned it around in a pirouette. "I was a sophomore in college, Tres. Your brother was one of those people you meet and you think, 'He's going to be important. He's going to rise above.' Believe me, when you come from a family like mine, you appreciate potential. You don't see much of it. Garrett and I dated for six months. We talked about marriage the way stupid college kids talk—like you can pick out the rest of your life delistyle from the undergrad catalogue. Then Garrett had his accident."

She was silent, watching the water.

"I know it shouldn't have mattered. I know he was still Garrett. But physically, I couldn't deal with it. The next time I saw him was five years later, a chance meeting. And Garrett was the decent one. He said he forgave me. I guess I believed what I needed to believe."