I promise. I-” Bob Don never got to finish. I heard the nasal sounds of the bee-hived receptionist and I recognized two other voices before the door flew open. Junebug Moncrief and Billy Ray Bummel. They hadn’t bothered with the niceties of knocking. Billy Ray looked at me like he’d caught me with my hands around a tender young throat. “I told ’em you were busy talking to Mr. Poteet,” the receptionist yelled from behind Mirabeau’s Law and Order. “It’s okay, Bernadette,” Bob Don eyed Junebug and Billy Ray critically. “Y’all come in.” Since they were already in, they stayed put. A glaring Bernadette shut the door behind her. “Afternoon, Mr. Goertz,” Junebug smiled. Billy Ray nodded and continued to scrutinize me as if I were a urine specimen. “Gentlemen,”
Bob Don wheedled in his closing-the-deal voice, “usually visitors wait to be announced. Y’all trying to make ever’ body here think y’all gonna arrest me?” He chuckled good-naturedly at the end. “We just wanted to ask you some questions, Bob Don,” Junebug said. “How you doing, Jordy?” I stood, setting my drink on Bob Don’s desk. “I’m fine, thank you.” I didn’t feel it. “You mind telling us what you’re doing here?” Billy Ray asked. “Not making a toast to Miz Harcher’s memory, I hope.” Before I could answer, Bob Don leapt into the fray. “Jordy here and I were just talking about him gettin’ a new truck.” “You must be a mighty cool customer, findin’ a dead body then going car shoppin’,”
Billy Ray observed. He didn’t bother to hide the vitriol in his voice.
“Billy Ray,” Junebug cautioned. He looked at me, then the drinks.
“Didn’t know you were interested in buying a truck, Jordy.” “I’m offering him a good trade-in on that car of his, but he reckons I’m trying to rip him off,” Bob Don laughed, as jovial as a host politely trying to remove unwanted guests. His verbal awkwardness was gone; the hallmark glibness that’d earned him that big car lot was back. “Since Junebug and Billy Ray obviously want to talk to you, Bob Don, I’ll be leaving.” I shook his hand. “I’ll consider your offer. Thanks.” “Give me a call and we’ll discuss it further.” His blue eyes bored into mine and there was steel in his handshake. I thought for a moment that he was reluctant to release my hand, but he did. Junebug and Billy Ray said nothing further to me as I walked out and shut the door. I went past the still fuming Bernadette, who was muttering about the poor manners of civil servants. I emerged into the heat of the afternoon.
Bob Don Goertz, unaccountably, was acting like my ally. But even though he had been forthcoming, he hadn’t seemed comfortable. Did I make him nervous? I’d half-expected him to point a finger at me and tell the officers that I was prying into Beta Harcher’s death. But he hadn’t. And I thought I knew why. I’d asked if Beta was the type to dig up dirt on people; his immediate response was She’s not blackmailing me. It seemed an odd answer for a smooth talker like Bob Don. Not a “Yeah, she was the type to do it” or “No, she was a good Christian woman who’d never commit extortion.” He just said he wasn’t being victimized. I wondered if that was a slip of the tongue, if Bob Don had been so jumpy that he’d logically leapfrogged ahead a couple of questions. Was he being blackmailed by Beta, or did he know of someone else who was? I was getting ahead of myself, I thought. But I’d definitely take him up on his offer of further discussion. He hadn’t said where he was last night. I felt that honest Bob Don wasn’t being entirely so. It didn’t make me want to buy a car from him.
The smell of marijuana hung faint in the air as I sat on Matt Blalock’s screened back porch. I wasn’t surprised that someone in Mirabeau would be toking up, but I found it disconcerting that a Vietnam vet sneaked a puff while staring out at the lush, dense growth of mossy woods that came up to his property like alien jungle. It seemed too much like a scene from an Oliver Stone picture. Matt Blalock wheeled back onto the porch, balancing a lap tray with iced tea glasses with little mint sprigs (I hoped they were mint) topping the tea. I’d have offered to help, but I knew from experience Matt liked to do everything himself. Stopping at the low table in front of me, he handed me a glass of tea and set one down for himself. He deftly whipped the tray around and tossed it onto another table. The tray clattered, but didn’t fall. “Good aim,” I offered. Matt shrugged.
He wasn’t a big guy; only five feet six or so, but his arm muscles bulged massively from years of acting for his legs. He kept his black hair cut military short. Matt’s uniform these days was jeans and some cause-related T-shirt, using his big chest to advertise saving the whales, disarming the populace, or promoting world peace. Today’s shirt invited us to plant a tree. His other nod to calculated Bohemianism was a perfect little trimmed triangle of beard that sprouted on his chin, pointing downward. It was like a small medal of hair pinned to his face. His eyes were dark, quick, and intelligent-without the haunted look one hears vets have. All I really knew about him was that he did occasional computer consulting for software companies in Austin and that he was involved in the Vietnam veterans movement. “Your farm’s looking good,” I offered by way of conversation. He shrugged again, an odd motion that evoked French schoolgirls more than burly veterans. “Credit my dad and my brother.
They do all the work. I just live here.” I couldn’t imagine my family letting me do drugs on the porch, but maybe the Blalocks figured Matt had earned special privileges. “I hope they’ll be reopening the library soon,” Matt observed in his lazy, drawling voice. “I don’t want to have to move our vets meeting on account of that bitch.” I loathed Beta Harcher, but even I wouldn’t have said something that insensitive. “She’s dead, Matt. Have some respect.” “Ding-dong, Jordy,” Matt laughed. “The witch is dead. Look, I’m not one to render tears or even one moment of fake sympathy over someone I despised. She hated me and I hated her and that was fine.” He turned his wheelchair to face me. “You may not think it’s fine now, Matt,” I answered. “You had a key to the library. You obviously didn’t get along with her. The cops have got your number.” He shrugged again. My shoulders would get tired if I only had one gesture to rely on. He kept his hands, wearing fingerless gloves, near his wheels. “They’ve already been out here.
Chief Moncrief and that snot-nosed prosecutor of his. Those two are useless. Whoever killed Bait-Eye is going to outfox them, I’ve no doubt. Junebug’s used to dealing with offenders who show him their monogrammed belt buckles when he asks for ID, and Billy Ray Bummel walks his kid to school ’cause they’re in the same grade. Jesus!” He laughed, a dry, rustling sound deep in his throat. “So. We’ve got us a clever killer?” “Yep. Someone got her into the library, conked her, and isn’t leaving a trace. Anyway”-he sipped tea-“it had to be planned. Can you imagine ol’ Bait-Eye causing a crime of passion?” He slapped his leg in amusement. “I’ve always thought of you as one of the smarter people in town, Matt.” I smiled. “Maybe you did it.” He considered the possibility. “Maybe I did. Although I heard she got it with one blow. I’d have been slower. Lots.” I wondered if he’d seen slow killing before. The look on Matt’s face made my throat tighten.