The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(75)

A tentative voice in back said, "The Gourd Festival?"

"Exactly," I said. "Just like the Gourd Festival."

A collective "Ohh." Satisfied nodding. We had bonded.

Father Time grinned at the ceiling, as if he were getting signals of approval from his friends in Roswell.

"Think of a Gourd Festival put on by the Catholic Church," I suggested. "A religious holiday, and all the entertainment based on something from the Bible."

"Dude," said a guy in the back. "That would suck."

"But if it's all you had," I countered, "if that were the only festival you were allowed every year, you'd make it count, wouldn't you?"

With that we launched into the Gourd Festival rendition of the Wakefield Noah.

It took most of the class period just to get the students used to the language, but we were rolling along pretty well by the time Noah and his wife started arguing about getting on the ark.

"Why won't she get on?" a student asked.

I let another student answer. "Typical woman. She doesn't trust her husband."

The first woman looked incredulous. "She's going to drown? She'd rather sit there and nag him than get on the boat?"

"Yeah," a younger girl in the back said. "She's cool."

A few lines later, another question stopped us. "What's Noah calling her there?

Ramskit?"

"Ram shit!" Father Time interpreted, thoroughly delighted.

We read through the fistfight between Noah and wife, the kicking and screaming, the insults. Uxor, the wife, sat down to knit in the rain while the flood came up around her ankles. Once the pleading family finally herded the old matriarch on board, the class was almost sorry to see her lose the argument and live.

"She should've held out," one contended. "Noah's a bastard."

We got to the end. The wife sent out a raven to find land. Noah sent out two doves. The raven's hunger for carrion kept him from returning, but the dove's gentleness and true heart brought it back to the ship with the olive branch.

There was a moment of silence after we read the last line.

"So women send out ravens," the girl in back said. "Is that an insult?"

We could've talked for another hour just on that point, but we were out of time. I told them we'd continue to discuss Noah tomorrow, then asked them to read the next play, The Crucifixion, on their own.

Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in Texas French Bread on Guadalupe, the rain beating down outside. My Bevington Medieval Drama was open, a blank yellow pad and portable Middle English Dictionary on top. My cell phone, a cup of coffee, a ham and cheese croissant, and a bottle of extrastrength Tylenol filled up the rest of the tabletop. All the comforts of home.

I stared at the phone, then at the Bevington book.

Planning for tomorrow's class seemed a lot safer than the other things I needed to do today.

And then the phone chirped.

Maia Lee said, "Hey."

"We win the lottery?"

"Finding Garrett—no luck. And nothing on Ruby. The search divers aren't going back in until later in the day."

I wasn't sure whether to be relieved by no news, or not. "Where are you? "

Rain static hissed on the line. "Tres, I went back to Faye DoeblerIngram's house.

She's gone."

"Gone as in gone?"

Maia told me how she'd found the Hyde Park house locked up, dark, no car in the driveway. Maia had taken a discreet look around

inside and found empty clothes hangers, missing toiletries, everything else clean and tidy, nothing perishable in the refrigerator.

"She left under her own steam," I said.

"Or it's been made to look that way."

I ran down the mental list—Jimmy, Jimmy's exwife, Jimmy's aunt. Five years ago, Jimmy's mother. Except for my good friend W.B., every Doebler I knew had been taken out of service. And even W.B. had hired a bodyguard.

"Jimmy's family history," I said. "That tip he got about a lost sibling. What are the odds, Maia?"

Maia was quiet so long I thought I'd lost her.

"I know what you're thinking," she said at last. "There was one case like that in North Carolina. A woman went to court to open her adoption files. Gave medical reasons, but really, she'd harboured years of resentment, felt she'd been abandoned to abusive foster care. When she found her birth family, she tracked them down—murdered her mother and two sisters. But she was caught immediately, Tres. The paper trail was clear. The consent of the birth family had to be given for her to track them."

"That assumes the paper trail is legitimate," I argued. "We're talking about South Texas in the 1960s. An unmarried society woman getting in trouble with the wrong man, going off to a 'resort,' paying a little money for the baby to vanish. Better on the family's conscience than abortion. That was anything but rare, Maia."

The rain was letting up outside, coming down in random cupfuls on the sidewalk. A street person shuffled by in a green parka made of Hefty bags.

I took Maia's silence for disapproval.

"All right," I relented. "So it was a long shot. What made you want to check back with Faye?"