Two Bits Four Bits (21 page)

“You bet. Angie’s looking
forward to it. Is Melba making tamales like you
promised?”

“Oh my God, you wouldn’t
believe how much time she’s spent talking about making them on the
phone to her mother. I’m telling her make the damn things already
and quit talking about it and running up the phone bill so much. Is
Angie making potato salad?”

“Well, we’ll be bringing
the potato salad. It may come in a plastic tub with an H.E.B. label
on it though.”

“Oh, man? Grocery store
potato salad? I should have told Melba just to stop off at Taco
Bell and get a six-pack of burritos. How could you let her bring
grocery store potato salad dude?”

“Ray. I mentioned to Angie
that we were bringing the potato salad but I didn’t order her to
make it. Are you trying to tell me you have the least bit of
influence on what Melba decides to do?”

I pulled out my cell
phone. “Maybe we should give her a call and ask her whose idea
making the tamales was.”

“I’m not saying that, man.
Besides, the only time her number don’t give off a busy signal is
when she’s in the shower. She called me at work one day and I swear
to God I heard this little tinkling sound, like water you know?
And, I’m thinking no way is she taking a dump while she talks to me
on the phone, but sure enough she flushes the damn commode before
we hang up.”

“Ray, there are some
things that happen between a man and his wife that probably
shouldn’t be shared with other people.”

“Thank God I didn’t hear
any other noises besides the tinkling sound. You know what I mean,
Bro?”

“If I buy you breakfast
can we change the subject?”

“Now you’re talking. Hey
dude, did I ever tell you about Melba’s toenail
problem?”

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

Angie met me at the door
wearing a silk robe and an exotic scent that made me want to attack
her. She stood with the door open a few inches, leaning on it and
looking me straight in the eyes.

“Are you sure we’re ready
for this?” she asked.

“I’m ready if you
are.”

“But, we’ve never done
this together,” she said, running a hand seductively along the
neckline of her robe.

“There’s a first time for
everything,” I said. “And besides, you said you have a lot to teach
me.”

“Oh, I do indeed. Are you
sure you’re willing to do everything I ask tonight?” she
said.

“Not only willing, but
eager.”

She smiled and stepped
back, opening the door wide.

“Okay, big boy. You know
where the kitchen is. I’m going to finish changing clothes and you
can either start peeling the potatoes or open the wine, your
choice. There’s a Shiner Bock with your name on it chilling in the
freezer.”

By the time she joined me
in the kitchen, I had Angie’s wine poured and was slicing potatoes
while sipping beer and listening to Alejandro Escovedo on the
stereo. The silk robe had been replaced by a Midland Rockhounds
T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

“Ah, a minor-league
baseball fan,” I said.

“More of a major-league
fan,” she said. “But a minor league game in the park beats a major
league game on TV any day.”

“I hear you. We should go
see them play sometime.”

“The schedule’s right
there on the refrigerator, mister. I’ve got the stadium cushions if
you’ve got the beer money.”

“That reminds me,” I said.
“When I paid a visit to Eva Trout’s house the other day I was
talking to the father of a guy I knew who was a star on our high
school baseball team.”

“Anybody I might
know?”

“Maybe. His name’s Ham
Burnett.”

“Does he still play
ball?”

“Oh, no. The baseball
player was Ham’s son. He apparently died a few years back. Got
mixed up in drugs I think. Anyway, Ham lives alone and I get the
idea he’s probably pretty lonely there by himself.”

“Well, if he likes
baseball we could take him along,” she said. “But he gets to sit on
your stadium cushion. My butt is too tender for me to give mine
up.”

“I wonder if he’d go,” I
said.

“Sure, he’d go. Who would
pass up the chance to spend time with two people as intelligent and
attractive as we are? In fact, maybe you should call and see if he
wants to go to the picnic tomorrow.”

“You think?”

She shook her head. “How
is it you can spend twenty some odd years chasing down ruthless
killers but are too shy to pick up the phone and call a kindly old
senior citizen?”

“I’m not shy, I’m just
trying to think this through first.”

“Give me his damn number
you big wuss.”

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE

As a tradition, the
population of Elmore gathered annually for the Elmore Fourth of
July Picnic at Veteran’s Park, which was located on the northeast
edge of town. The park was built in the 1950’s on land donated by
the widow of a local war hero who died on D-Day in 1944. There were
acres of green grass and big healthy trees, fed from years of
constant watering by the water wells drilled on the property. The
original agreement to donate the land for the park mandated the
drilling of the wells and the watering schedule. Before shipping
off to war, the benefactor’s husband had brought her to West Texas
from eastern Missouri where trees and green grass weren’t such a
novelty and didn’t require daily watering during scorching summer
months to keep them from burning to a crisp. The gift of the land
to build the park was her way of trying to make sure the children
growing up in Elmore always had a place to play that looked like a
real park.

A four-foot thick wall
made of caliche rock and concrete surrounded the park, and there
were large barbeque pits made of the same material. The grounds
were dotted with concrete picnic tables, some of which were located
under shelters constructed of pipe, corrugated metal and the same
caliche and concrete mixture. There was a larger covered seating
area constructed of the same materials and open on the sides for
larger groups to use. Today, local civic groups were set up and
selling cakes, cookies and homemade Mexican food dishes alongside
the contestants in the annual chili cook-off.

Ray and I were sitting at
one of the tables; sipping beer and watching Angie and Melba try to
turn the great outdoors into something resembling a kitchen. It was
an age-old ritual women seem to fall into whenever food preparation
is required to take place outside of the territory of their own
kitchen. I had watched my mother do the same thing when I was
younger and my only concern had been to grab a hotdog and meet my
buddies to see who had been able to score some
firecrackers.

Angie had called Ham
Burnett the night before and he’d jumped at the chance to ride to
the picnic with us, but had started up a conversation with an old
friend he bumped into and wandered off soon after we’d
arrived.

“Did you ever notice how
some people just don’t look natural wearing shorts?” Ray asked,
gesturing towards a group of people next to the staging area for
the water-balloon fight.

“Are you talking about
yourself?” I asked. “I really think that’s what those
twelve-year-old girls that walked by a few minutes ago were
giggling about.”

“No, I’m talking about
John Donnelly over there. I’ve never seen him when he wasn’t
wearing a suit.”

I found Donnelly in the
crowd just as he turned our direction and we exchanged
waves.

“He’s an attorney, Ray.
People place their lives in his hands when they hire him to handle
a legal matter. He’s got to look sharp. In fact, you could probably
learn a lot by studying his wardrobe.”

“Shit bro, if I went
around looking any sharper than I already do women and men all over
town would be fainting dead when I walked by.”

After he finished his
beer, Ray excused himself and headed off toward the row of
Port-A-Potties that had been set up at the edge of the park for the
occasion. I saw John Donnelly walking my direction, so I got up,
pulled two fresh beers from the ice chest and offered him one. He
was there with his wife, who was watching their grandson compete in
the water-balloon toss at that moment.

Angie and Melba were still
fussing with the food, which I really didn’t think needed anymore
attention than unwrapping and plopping down on a Styrofoam plate,
but maybe I’d been living as a bachelor for too long. Donnelly and
I stood sipping our beers and watching the kids tossing the
water-balloons for a few minutes before he glanced around to see
who might be within earshot.

“I haven’t heard anything
from our friends at the police department since we met with them
last week,” he said. “Do you have anything new to
report?”

“So far, nothing that
helps Kandy. I’m still trying to piece it all together.”

“I heard you took my
suggestion and opened an office at Lita’s. You knew I was just
joking, didn’t you?”

“Actually, it was a stroke
of brilliance. They’ve always got a fresh pot of coffee going and
you’ll always know where to find me if you want to buy me
lunch.”

“By the way,” he said.
“Kandy did take my advice and is spending some time in Dallas
shopping with her girls. Maybe things will settle down a little bit
before she comes back.”

“How was she the other
day, after she told her story to Clemmer and Puckett?”

“Oh, you know Kandy,” he
answered. “She’s a strong woman.”

“She is that,” I agreed,
taking a swig of my beer. “Did you get the idea that she really
didn’t mind giving us all of those details about her personal
life?”

He was quiet for a moment,
then chose his words in the slow, deliberate manner he had learned
through decades of handling delicate situations with discretion and
billing hundreds of dollars per hour to do so.

“Mr. Griffin,” he said,
with a wink. “You might be shocked to know some of the things that
go on behind closed doors in this little town.”

“However,” he continued,
raising an index finger in the air. “I feel it especially
noteworthy to point out to you today, of all days, that according
to the Declaration of Independence, we are all endowed by our
Creator with the inalienable right to pursue happiness.”

“So, those threesomes
between Kandy, Russell and Eva Trout were really all about being
patriotic?”

“It’s the American
way.”

* * * *

CHAPTER FORTY

A few days later, I was
sitting in my office inside Lita’s Little Mexico Restaurant, which
I was pretty sure was the only private detective office actually
located inside a restaurant, at least in the state of Texas, when
The Three Amigos, also known as Jake Sutton, Sid Fuller and Louis
Rogers walked in.

“He’s busy,” Louis barked,
pulling the other two back toward the door.

“No, not at all. Come in
guys,” I said, putting the newspaper aside and gesturing for the
three of them to sit down.

“You got yourself all set
up in here it looks like,” Sid said, gesturing around at the
office. “I thought you said you just came to town for a class
reunion.”

“I did, but I’ve been
thinking about sticking around for a while. My folks passed away
and I’m getting their house ready to sell.”

“Who was your daddy?” Sid
asked.

“Woody Griffin,” I
said.

Sid and Jake both
acknowledged that they had known him from his days in the
oilfield.

“Your daddy was a good
man,” Jake said, and then launched into a humorous story about an
incident on a drilling location they were both working back in the
1970’s.

As he finished, my cell
phone rang and I saw that it was John Donnelly calling so I stepped
outside the office door to answer it.

“Can you come over to
Kandy’s house right away?” he asked.

“Sure, what’s going
on?”

“Somebody broke in while
Kandy was out of town and ransacked the place.”

“I’ll be there as quick as
I can.”

When I put my phone away
and stepped back into the office, Sid and the other Amigos were
standing at the back of the office where I had draped my butcher
paper diagram of the Russell Chilton murder investigation over a
stack of boxes.

“So, you really are
working on the Russell Chilton murder after all, huh?” Sid said,
with a look of disgust.

“Excuse me, boys,” I said,
gesturing toward the door. “I’ve got to leave the office, so I’m
afraid I’ve got to ask you to leave.”

They reluctantly began to
file out the door, with Sid bringing up the rear and letting one
last barb fly before leaving.

“A Texas Ranger would
never lie to the citizenry like that.”