Bone Dry (Blanco County Mysteries) (36 page)

Sal Mameli was drinking scotch, watching the evening news and waiting for Maria to serve dinner—but his thoughts were wandering. Once again, he was daydreaming of a tropical island—now more than ever—but he sure as shit didn’t like the dark clouds looming on the horizon. There wasn’t any goddamn sunshine in his life right now, that was for certain.

Everything should have been so easy.

Buy out Emmett Slaton, get every goddamn brush-cutting contract from here to Houston, then grab every last dime and get the fuck out. Screw the clients. Screw the creditors. But no, Slaton had to be a hard-ass, giving Sal no choice but to take him out. And this tree-hugging duo from who-the-fuck-knows-where. It was like they were sent here as a practical joke by some jamook, just to give him a major pain in the balls. At least the little leg-breaking bastard was out of the picture, on the run from the law. But the broad…she was still hanging around town, according to Vinnie. Sal had told Vinnie to give her a good scare—an
I’ll kill all your loved ones
kind of scare, the type that makes people leave town in the middle of the night. Apparently, she didn’t scare that easy. Sal had asked Vinnie about her this morning, and Vinnie had said,
She’s a tough bitch, Pop. I’m still working on it.

Sal hadn’t liked the way that sounded. But, truth be told, that broad was on the back burner now, ever since this afternoon. He had more important things to do, like keeping a lid on this Slaton thing. He had to laugh, really. A shitstorm had hit Blanco County, but he had managed to keep his own dirty laundry buried. So far, anyway. He didn’t like those two cops—well, that cop and that game warden—coming to his house. What was their problem, anyway? Sal’s fingerprints on an envelope?
Get the fuck out of here with that
—that’s what any decent attorney would say.
It proves nothing.
But it was Sal’s piss-poor luck that Gammel had gone and gotten himself whacked, and that the cops had had to come nosing around about it. Yeah, so maybe he
had
bribed Bert Gammel, but Sal was in the clear on the murder beef. He’d had nothing to do with that. But the big question was, after the cops had asked him about Bert Gammel, why in the fuck did they bring up Emmett Slaton? That was the one thing that made Sal nervous. It didn’t make sense.

Sal turned up the set as KHIL cut to a reporter—a good-looking broad with nice-sized jugs named Kitty Katz.

You gotta be kidding,
Sal thought. Sounded like a stripper, not a reporter. Kitty was trying to look all serious and dramatic, standing in front of the courthouse.

“There has never been a chain of events quite like the past few days here in Blanco County—that much everyone can agree on. It all started nearly forty-eight hours ago when Jack Corey, a suspect in the murder of Blanco County employee Bert Gammel, shot a sheriff’s deputy and began a standoff in the building you see behind me. For days, Corey has remained holed up with the wounded deputy, refusing to negotiate a surrender. But just moments ago, we received word that there is another suspect in the homicide, and the new suspect has indeed confessed...”

Sal watched as the station cut to a clip of an earlier interview. Some goofy-looking deputy standing there, looking cocky in front of the camera. His name—DEPUTY ERNIE TURPIN—was superimposed on the bottom of the screen.

“We do have a full confession on record, but I’m not at liberty to identify the suspect at this time. But this does mean that Mr. Corey is no longer a suspect, and we are encouraging him to end the standoff immediately.”

The camera cut back to the reporter.

“So far, however, neither Corey nor the deputy have emerged. Meanwhile, there is still no development in the disappearance of local rancher and businessman Emmett Slaton, who has been missing since Wednesday. Anyone with information pertaining to the case is asked to call the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department. Remarkably, another odd story has made headlines lately in this small, normally quiet county—the escape of a suspect in an assault-on-an-officer case. The suspect, Thomas Peabody…”

Sal gave an involuntary yelp as a photo of Peabody appeared on the screen.

“... remains at large. He was arrested after an altercation at an assembly in the Johnson City High School gymnasium. He resisted arrest, assaulting an officer in the process, and later escaped in the confusion when the officer—you guessed it—brought his prisoner to the sheriff’s office here, just after the current standoff began.”

The camera cut back to the reporter.

“Strangely, Peabody is credited with breaking up an attempted rape late last night, then disappearing once more before deputies arrived.”

Sal winced. An attempted rape? What was that all about? Goddamn—could they be referring to Vinnie? Did he try to rape that bird-loving broad? That’s all he needed, the cops breathing down his neck on account of his hard-dick son. Time to have a talk with the boy, tell him to ease off till further notice.

And what about this new suspect in the Gammel case? It could take the heat off Sal, stop the cops from digging into his connection with Gammel. Then all he’d have hanging over his head would be Emmett Slaton—and Vinnie had sworn on his grandmother’s grave that there wasn’t anything to worry about there.

“This tastes great,” Marlin said, slurping down some spaghetti.

Inga nodded. “Thanks. I thought venison would be—I don’t know—kind of gamy. But it’s not.”

“Oh, you’ll get a batch now and then that’s pretty strong, but not this one. Sometimes, it’s all in how you prepare it.”

“Anyway,” she said, “you were going to tell me about this case you were working on.”

As they finished dinner, Marlin told her everything he was at liberty to reveal, without using any names. He left out the remark Vinnie Mameli had made, and he also didn’t mention anything about the dam. Garza wanted to keep that information under wraps until the dam had been inspected, in order to avoid unfounded panic about a damburst.

By the time Marlin finished his tale, Inga had stopped eating and was staring at him. “So you basically solved a murder investigation by yourself?”

“No, not by myself. The sheriff—”

“Yeah, but you were the one who kept digging around and found all the evidence.”

“Got lucky on a couple of things. But Bobby Garza was the one who got the confession. He has these questioning skills that they can’t teach you at the Academy. Played the guy just right.”

“Well, I’d say he was awfully lucky to have you around.”

Marlin was embarrassed, and he tried to conceal it with a nod. “It was interesting,” he said. “But now it’s almost over and then I can get back to my regular patrol.”

They cleared the dishes and made their way to the sofa in the living room. It was a beautiful evening, and a cool breeze drifted in through the open windows. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Marlin felt at peace. He had been wondering if it would be awkward to have Inga in his home—but it felt completely comfortable. He knew there was an unspoken attraction between them, but there was also the beginnings of a friendship. He thought it would be best to keep it that way.

That’s when Inga suddenly leaned over and kissed him.

It was gentle at first, but then their lips parted and their tongues found each other. Wordlessly, their mouths still pressed together, Inga straddled him and began to unbutton his uniform. She ran her fingers through his chest hair and moaned softly deep in her throat. Marlin pulled her shirt free from her shorts and she slipped it off over her head. She gazed into his eyes as she removed her bra, then placed his hands on her breasts, the nipples round and hard. They kissed again, and a few seconds later, he could feel her hands tugging at his belt buckle.

Angela finally went to bed after the weather report, as usual. Smashed on vodka, also as usual. Sal had tuned to an Austin station instead of KHIL because he was getting tired of hearing about all the shit happening in Blanco County. The last thing he needed right now was an update on the Emmett Slaton case. His nerves couldn’t take it.

He had to get that shell, there was no getting around it. It was the only piece of evidence linking him to Slaton. Once it was destroyed, he could relax, let the cops sniff around all they want. But the thought of going into Maria’s cottage sent chills down his spine. If she had half the powers of Aunt Sofia, she could put some kind of wicked-ass curse on him and make him fall dead in his tracks. And there was that damned cat, too. A thing of pure evil. If it attacked, he’d be done for.

On the other hand, he’d rather be dead than go to prison. If he could just talk some sense into Maria, keep her calm, maybe the cat would stay calm, too. It was the only option Sal had.