The apartment’s on the second floor. Lorenz and I descend the stairs a little ways, letting her sit on the top step. I show her the photo I took from the house.
“Can you identify this man?” I ask, tapping Ford’s face.
“It’s Brandon,” she says. “My ex.”
“And when was the last time you talked to him?”
She stops to think. “Maybe a week ago? I’m not sure. I can find out, though.” She digs a phone out of her pocket and thumbs through the menu. “No, it was more like two weeks ago. He was doing a show and called from the road.”
“A gun show?”
She nods. “Down in Corpus Christi. He wanted me to go pick up the house keys from his mother, in case the Realtor did any showings. We’ve been trying to sell our house. When there’s a showing I go over and bake some cookies so the house smells good.”
“Was he planning to be out of town long, then?”
“He travels a lot.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since that call?”
“If you’re trying to find him,” she says, “I’m not really the person to ask. You should check with his mother-that’s her in the picture.” She takes the photo and holds it toward me, her finger on the older woman with the red eyes. “Hilda. That’s where I drop the kids when he’s supposed to take them. The two of us don’t really keep tabs on each other. We have our own lives. It’s better that way.”
Lorenz crouches down and takes his sunglasses off. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we have some bad news.”
As he goes on to break the news, Miranda’s lip starts to tremble. A thick tear slides down her cheek and she wipes it away. I watch her, convinced the reaction is genuine. He explains when the body was found and where, but doesn’t go into detail about the mutilation or torture. He doesn’t need to. The shock of her ex-husband’s death is enough.
Lorenz glances my way, gives me a questioning shrug. I nod for him to continue with his questions. Like a trouper, she endures them, answering in as much detail as she can. After a while, I tune them both out. I’m back in Bea Kuykendahl’s office, reviewing everything the FBI agent said and left unsaid. None of it really makes sense. There’s no way Brandon Ford isn’t real, no way this shaken, bereaved girl isn’t really his ex-wife.
I need to get out of here. I need to think. I need another talk with Agent Kuykendahl, too, and I want real answers this time around.
Miranda clears her throat, wipes her eyes one last time. “Am I-? I mean, is it me that’s responsible for the arrangements? I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, but if we’re not married anymore. .”
“You mentioned his mother?” Lorenz says. “Hilda. . was that her name?”
She nods and gives him an address and phone number, looking very relieved. But then her face clouds again. “What am I going to do? I rely on him to make ends meet.”
“How long were you married?” I ask.
She stops to think. “He proposed after Tate was born. It lasted three years almost. We weren’t happy, though. Brandon saw other women.”
As we start to go, she watches us from the top step, her entwined hands pressing down against her stomach. She’s looking at us, but I don’t think she sees us. Her eyes are focused on the past. She seems to have forgotten us entirely, so I’m surprised when she calls down.
“Other women,” she says, like she’s finishing her thought from before. “There was somebody with him the last time. Somebody new. She waited in the car while he dropped off the kids. This was at Hilda’s, and I’d been waiting inside for almost an hour. When he showed up, he didn’t say anything about her, but I knew she’d been with my kids.”
I climb the steps again, pausing beside her.
“This was a new girlfriend?” I ask.
She shrugs. “While we were talking inside, I looked through the window and saw her. She got out of the car and was standing on the curb, talking on her phone.” Her eyes moisten. “That’s who you should track down. She’d know better than me where Brandon’s been.”
I ask her to describe the woman.
“She wasn’t pretty,” she says quickly. “Kind of small and bony. Androgynous. She had choppy blond hair, and kind of dressed like a man. .”
“Did you ask your boy-Tate? Did he know her name?”
Her face hardens. “She told them to call her Trixie.”
“Like in Speed Racer?” I ask, showing my age.
She just shrugs. I thank her for the information and promise to get back in touch if we learn anything more.
On the way to the car, Lorenz scribbles down the name. “It’s not much to go on.”
“No, it’s not,” I say.
But it is. Given the fact that I met the woman she was describing just a few hours earlier, and that Trixie must be a preferable nickname for a woman whose parents saddled her with a name like Beatrix.
CHAPTER 6
As biker bars go, this one’s pretty tame, sandwiched between a supersized Spec’s Liquor and a retail chain cantina. The crowd packed onto the outdoor deck doesn’t look particularly tough, mostly white suburbanites. The only cowboy boots are on the miniskirted ladies, the only motorcycles plastic imports with bold racing stripes. I pick my way through, dodging a waitress loaded down with sweating Dos Equis and Coronas.
The music inside is live. That’s all it has going for it. Even the early evening drunks are having a hard time with the dancing. There’s a lot of neon on the walls, a lot of yelling from table to table. It takes me a moment, scanning the darkness, to single out Bea Kuykendahl.
She may be small, but she knows how to take up space. She sits in a lazy sprawl, one arm draped over the back of her chair and her crossed legs resting on the opposite seat. Thick-soled work boots, faded jeans, and a tight, cap-sleeved black T-shirt revealing more muscle definition than I would have expected, reinforcing my earlier impression that she looks more like a teenaged boy than a grown woman.
Circling around, I approach her table from the side. I grab the back of the chair her feet are under, then yank it free.
“Hey, that seat’s taken!” she barks. Then: “Oh.”
I spin the chair around and sit, crossing my arms over the back. “You can say that again, Bea. Or do you prefer to go by Trixie?”
“You followed me here?”
“I’m a man of many talents. I think we need to have a talk. I figured we might be able to converse a little more freely outside the office.”
She leans forward over the table. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t intimidate very easily. Throw your weight around all you want, Detective. Just be careful you don’t throw your back out.”
For a crazy moment I wonder if she’s heard of my fall. But there’s no way that could have reached her. Just a lucky jab.
“That story you told me, it doesn’t add up. When I got back to the office, we had a match on Brandon Ford. I have a hard time believing you’ve got enough pull to make the computer spit out false identifications. If you could, why bother bringing me and my lieutenant into the picture at all?”
“You tell me,” she says.
“At first I thought you had to, because with a little digging we’d have poked enough holes in the cover story to realize Brandon Ford wasn’t a real person. But he is real, isn’t he? I spoke to his ex-wife today, then I walked through his house. After that I did some asking around. The local gun dealers say he’s been around on the scene a couple of years. Either this is the most elaborate cover story in history, or. .”
“Or what?”
“Or you lied to us this morning.”
“I lied to you? Knowing that you’d see right through me the moment you did a cursory check. Give me more credit than that.”
“Ford’s ex-wife gave me a description of a woman who was with him before his death. This woman told Ford’s kids to call her Trixie. That was you.”