Two Bits Four Bits (16 page)

“I’m sorry I haven’t been
completely honest with you. The truth is terribly embarrassing, but
I can see now I should have told you everything from the
start.”

“Kandy,” Clemmer said.
“Detective Puckett and I have been doing police work for a lot of
years, and we’ve probably heard just about everything at least
once. Please, continue.”

“First of all, let me
explain about Eva. For several years now, Russell and I have had
what some people refer to as an open marriage. It all started
innocently enough, a weekend away with another couple when we all
had a little too much to drink and ended up changing partners for
the night. And then Russell found out about a group of swingers in
Midland, so we went to a few of their parties. Russell really
preferred being the only male in the situation though, so we fell
into a pattern of threesomes, with another woman. One of us would
find a prospective partner, seduce them and then introduce the
other into the mix. Sometimes it was women I met, and sometimes it
was women Russell came into contact with at the bank, either
employees or customers. That’s how we met Eva. She worked for
Russell at the bank.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,”
Clemmer said. “But what’s Eva’s last name?”

“Trout. Eva Trout. She had
worked for Russell about a year or so, and we had developed a very
close relationship, the three of us.”

“Do you mean close
physically? Or emotionally?”

“Physically. Sexually.
Sometimes it was the three of us together. Sometimes it was only
Eva and Russell. Sometimes Eva and myself alone.”

Kandy paused for a moment,
letting the impact of what she had said sink in. It was as if she
were enjoying a sort of voyeuristic thrill on some level. Over the
years I had forgotten about that aspect of her personality, a
tendency to try to shock others with her worldliness.

“Anyway, Friday night, or
I guess it was actually Saturday morning, before Russell and I left
the country club, we decided to call Eva and invite her over. She
got to our house before we did, and her car was in the driveway
outside the garage behind the house when we pulled in. She used the
alley entrance like she always does. We usually keep the gate that
leads to the back yard from that driveway locked for security
reasons, but we had the pool cleaned that day, so it was unlocked.
Eva was sitting at the patio table beside the pool.”

“I brought some drinks out
and we sat and talked by the pool for a while. Then Russell decided
we should all go skinny-dipping. So, we all just dropped our
clothes right there on the patio and jumped in the pool. I was
really tired and beginning to get sleepy. But Russell and Eva were
making love in the pool and I just decided to leave them there. I
went inside and went to sleep almost immediately.”

“So, Russell and Eva
stayed in the pool when you went inside,” Clemmer said.

“Yes, and as I was saying,
I fell asleep almost immediately and was sleeping pretty soundly I
guess. I thought I heard some knocking on the door leading out to
the pool, but it was so hard to wake up. By the time I did, there
was nobody at the door, and I fell back to sleep. Later on, after I
showered and went out to check on Russell, I realized I had locked
the door when I came in to go to bed.”

Clemmer stopped
her.

“Now you said you all took
your clothes off outside on the patio before you got in the pool.
We didn’t find any clothes out there when we came to
investigate.”

“After I got out of the
shower and went out and found Russell, I realized Eva had dressed
and left. I knew how it would look if our clothes were left there
on the patio, so I brought them inside after I called the police. I
don’t know why. I keep telling myself that I was in shock. Maybe I
was, or maybe I was just embarrassed about people knowing the three
of us were swimming in the nude. I really can’t tell you why I did
that and why I didn’t tell what really happened right from the
start, about Eva being there. All I could think about was what a
terrible scandal it would be and how that would affect the girls.
How people would whisper behind their backs and speculate about
what went on, and talk about what horrible people their parents
were.”

Donnelly spoke up at this
point.

“So, the traces of blood
the investigators found on the carpet just inside the door leading
to the patio may have been tracked in when you went outside to
retrieve your clothes?”

“Yes, I guess so,” she
answered. “That would have to be what happened.”

“Did you ever stop to
think that Eva might be responsible in some way for the shooting?”
Puckett asked, his face red and menacing.

“Eva? God, no. She would
never do anything to hurt either of us. As I said, the three of us
had a very close relationship.”

“Have you seen or spoken
to Eva since Russell was killed?” Clemmer asked.

“No. But we’ve talked
about how we need to be discreet before. About how word would
spread around town like wildfire if we weren’t careful about the
amount of time the three of us spent together.”

“How can we get in touch
with Eva?” Puckett asked.

“I can give you her phone
numbers,” Kandy said.

The detectives spent the
next hour going over Kandy’s story with her, asking the same things
over and over again in different ways to bring out additional
details, gathering more information about Eva Trout. I decided as I
listened that it would be best to talk to Detective Clemmer alone
about my own investigation into Eva Trout’s
disappearance.

I lingered for a few
minutes after John Donnelly and Kandy were gone, and waited until
Reese left the room before talking to Clemmer. I told him that Eva
had not reported for work since Russell’s murder and that her house
had been broken into.

“So, you don’t have any
idea where she is?” he asked.

“I have some things I’m
checking out, but nothing definite. If I find her, I’ll let you
know.”

“Are you sure there’s
nothing you care to share with us right now? Based on what Kandy
told us, and the fact that she initially lied to us, I would have
to say we consider her a person of interest.”

I thought about it for a
few seconds before speaking.

“Have you got time for a
cup of coffee?” I asked.

“Only if lunch comes with
it,” he responded.

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY

After Clemmer told Reese
he’d meet him back at the station after lunch, we walked a block
down the street to a place that sold bagels and sandwiches next
door to the long-closed Derrick Theater. The little shop was
beginning to fill up with downtown workers and a group of jurors
from a trial taking place at the courthouse across the street, each
of them conspicuously decorated with buttons declaring Juror in
bold letters.

We ordered our food and
compared notes about our experiences working in law enforcement.
The conversation finally came around to his partner, Reese
Puckett.

“He’s sure got a hard-on
for me,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

Clemmer shook his head.
“Don’t take it personally. That’s just the way he works. He’d have
a hard-on for his own brother if he’d been in town when Russell
Chilton got shot.”

“Treat everybody like
they’re guilty until they prove otherwise?”

“Something like that. He’s
a lot better than he used to be though. He’s mellowed.”

Our food came and we were
too busy to talk for a few minutes. Then, I quietly broached the
subject of Sandy Doyle, without mentioning my discovery of his
connection to Eva Trout.

“He’s probably behind a
lot of the drug traffic here, but he keeps himself well-insulated,
so we’ve never gotten anybody to give us anything we can use on
him. Why, do you think he’s a player in this?”

“It’s too early to tell,”
I said. “There may not be any connection at all to Russell
Chilton.”

“Hard to imagine that
there would be,” he said. “But stranger things have happened, as
I’m sure you’ve witnessed yourself working murders in the big
city.”

“Naw,” I said. “People
aren’t that much different in big cities than they are in small
towns. They manage to kill each other all over; there are just more
of them doing it in the city, so you notice it more.”

“Oh, yeah but around here
they just usually use a gun or a knife,” he said. “Nobody gets real
creative with how they do the job. Now after it’s over, that’s a
different story. Sometimes they really use their imagination when
it comes to disposing of the body. We had a case a few years ago
where they found this poor woman’s body in one of those big steel
tanks out on an oilwell location. I guess they thought nobody would
ever find it.”

“You think you’ve seen it
all and then something new comes along. We had a case one time
where we found a body in a septic tank under a trailer house,” I
said. “Can you imagine killing somebody and then going right on
living in the trailer parked right over their body like nothing
happened?”

“Safest place, really when
you think about it,” Clemmer said. “You don’t have to keep going
back somewhere to see if anybody’s found it yet. Plus, each time
you flush that old commode you get to heap a little more insult on
top of injury.”

“You’re one sick bastard,
you know that?” I said.

“Hey, sometimes you gotta
think like a nutcase to catch one.”

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

After leaving Bob Clemmer,
I drove an hour and a half to Pecos, Texas and located the address
for Eva Trout’s grandmother Lenora Reynolds, whose name I had
gotten from Monica Kendricks, Eva’s friend and former roommate. It
was a small, older house on a street a few blocks from the main
drag. An elderly woman with a kind smile opened the inside door
just enough to talk to me through the screened opening of the glass
and aluminum storm door. As she listened while I told her who I was
looking for, she held the inside door in place, making it
impossible for me to see inside the house from where I
stood.

“I’m sorry, but she’s not
here,” she said, and started to close the inside door.

“Can you give her my card
if you see her?” I said, holding one up.

She eyed it hesitantly and
then opened the storm door a few inches to take it.

“Tell her I urgently need
to talk to her about Kandy Chilton.”

Eva’s mother continued to
study the card, then looked up at me for a few seconds before
speaking.

“You’re not with the
police?”

“No, I’m a private
investigator. Kandy Chilton asked me to help her locate Eva.
Kandy’s worried about Eva and wants to make sure she’s
okay.”

“Is Eva in some kind of
trouble?” she asked. “She’s acting just like she used to years ago,
before she got her life straightened out. And, she won’t tell me
anything about what’s going on.”

“I’m trying to find out
what’s going on myself,” I said. “But, I promise you she’s not in
any trouble with me. In fact, I may be able to help her if she’ll
talk to me.”

“She’s not here right now.
She was, and I expect her to come back, but she won’t come around
if she sees anybody she doesn’t know here.”

“Can you ask her to call
me?”

“Tell you what. I’ll see
if I can get in touch with her and get her to call you.”

“I certainly appreciate
it.”

“I can’t guarantee
anything. If you don’t hear from her within a couple of hours I
think you can assume she won’t be calling.”

I thanked Eva Trout’s
grandmother and drove around until I found a coffee shop where I
did what seemed the correct behavior under the circumstances; I
went inside and ordered pie and coffee. I’d just started on my pie
when my cell phone rang.

“Who is this?” a woman’s
voice asked.

“Buddy Griffin. I’m a
private investigator. Eva?”

“Yeah. Why are you looking
for me?”

“I’m trying to help Kandy
Chilton and I need to ask you some questions.”

“What kind of
questions?”

“Listen, Eva. I know
you’re scared, but I’m not a cop and I’m only trying to help Kandy.
Is there someplace we can meet and talk?”

She was quiet for a few
seconds and then asked me to hold on. I could hear muffled talk in
the background.

“I can’t meet you alone,”
she said after a couple of beats. “And, I’ll have to pick the spot.
I’m a little weirded out right now and I don’t know who I can
trust.”

“No problem,” I said.
“Just tell me where to go.”

She told me to hold and
passed the phone to a man with a hoarse voice who gave me
directions to a location outside Pecos. Ten minutes later, after
driving down a long dirt road off of Highway 285 southeast of town;
I spotted the rusted, partially collapsed Quonset hut the man on
the phone had described. I parked in the weedy dirt area in front
of the structure and stepped out of my pickup.