“Okay,” I said. “Let’s make sure they’re videotaping the entrances and exits and that they scan the audience in the auditorium with the cameras. We could get lucky and get this guy on tape.”
“Good idea,” David said.
“What if he is there?” I asked. “How do we respond?”
“With twenty-thousand screaming fans, mostly kids, we can’t close the place down,” David said. “Our best option is to man the exits, search anyone leaving who looks the part, a man, maybe carrying a large bag, something that could hold audio equipment.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’re all set then. One o’clock tomorrow, I’ll meet you at the airstrip.”
“One o’clock,” he said. I walked him to his car, and then watched him drive away. It made me feel lonely. I went inside and found Mom spreading whipped cream over her last armadillo cheesecake.
“You look like you’re down in the dumps,” she said. She stood there for just a moment, sizing me up, I’m sure able to see as clearly as she could in grade school that I was upset. With that, she cut a wide slice of the cake on the counter. “Try this. It always works for me. As a matter of fact, I’ll join you.”
Mom cut herself a piece, I grabbed two forks and two napkins, and we went out onto the porch, sat in the rockers, and ate. Late afternoon, there was a briskness in the air. The cheesecake was made with crème de menthe, and it tasted like the old grasshopper drinks my pop used to make after dinner.
“You need to talk to the man,” Mom said, as if reading my mind.
“I’ve tried,” I said. I closed my lips around the fork and peeled off another rich bite. “The man isn’t talking.”
I took another forkful, skinned it off with my teeth and let it dissolve in my mouth. This probably wasn’t a good food day nutritionally, but for pure comfort, it’s hard to beat a Dove bar and
cheesecake. Yet as good as Mom’s cake tasted, it didn’t make up for what was missing in my life. That I knew. I wondered about how the world was set up, if folks really ever get second chances at happiness. My pop died, but now Mom had Bobby.
“Is it the same with Bobby as it was with Dad?” I asked.
“Well, it’s good,” she said. “But in a different way.”
“How different?”
“Different because I’m different, older and wiser,” she said. “Different because we’re not kids, and we’ve both been batted around by life.”
“But different is good?” I asked, sincerely wanting to know.
“Sure,” she said. “We don’t have the heat of a younger love. But maybe it’s sweeter, because we know we don’t have all the time in the world to enjoy it.”
I nodded. That made sense. I’d been head over heels with Bill from the day we met, and he’d been the same way with me. Maybe I expected too much to hope for that again. It had been different with David. An early attraction, but I was more cautious. Maybe that wasn’t bad. Maybe it was even understandable. But maybe that was why I’d lost him. The truth was that I’d never stopped thinking about David, but I had to accept that maybe the kind of love I had with Bill only comes once in a lifetime. The thought tasted bitter, but the cheesecake went down smooth and sweet. For just a little while, it masked the pain of remembering David driving away.
M
aggie wound her way upstairs to bed about nine, after we spent the evening rotating between Emma Lou’s shed and Warrior’s stall. Mom and Bobby were at the barbecue cook-off on the rodeo grounds, most likely mingling with friends, and, I hoped, working in a few swings across the dance floor. Mom had worn a denim skirt and a suede top with fringe. She loved to two-step. Thinking of the old days, I closed my eyes and imagined the feel of Bill’s arm around my waist, the sway of our bodies across the dance floor, in unison yet apart. At its best, love was like two-stepping to a strong-beat country song. When the dance was good, two folks had someone to lean on and hold onto, someone who knew when the other needed space and when all a person wanted was to be loved.
I closed my eyes and thoughts of Bill faded as I remembered David’s embrace, the smell of him, and the heat in his touch.
“Oh, heck,” I thought, and minutes later I rooted through the fridge, where I discovered a second slice of armadillo cheesecake. “Gotta love Mom,” I whispered. I grabbed a fork and the file on the top of the stack we’d seized from Billie Cox’s office and made myself
comfortable at the kitchen table. The lab had called earlier in the day, and the dirt on Billie’s shoes was common in the Houston area, leading nowhere. I hoped the boxes of records proved more helpful. It turned into a long night. I combed through the files, inspecting each, skimming every page, without finding anything that appeared the least bit like evidence. Finally, I made my way down to Billie’s expense reports and credit-card bills. I passed up the older documents and started six months earlier, two months before Lena Suarez said she noticed “Miss Billie” going out more than usual.
What hit me right off was the size of the balance on Cox’s platinum American Express card. It was paid off every thirty days but had a new balance in the twenty-thousand dollar range every month. Twenty grand a month on a credit card? When I thought about my paycheck, I felt embarrassed. For what must have been the tenth time that day, I thought about the price of gas and shook my head. Somehow I felt pretty sure I was getting ripped off at the pumps.
First, I took out a sheet of paper and charted where all the money was going. Judging by what she wore in the crime-scene photos, I wasn’t surprised that a bunch went for clothes, at least three grand a month at Saks and Neiman Marcus. Maybe the woman didn’t wear anything more than once? Then there were the classy restaurants, little French bistros and the fancy steak houses I’d read about in the newspaper but never been to. When it came to travel, Billie made short hops to Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, a two-day trip to Midland and three days in Amarillo. She, of course, stayed at the best hotels. Many, I figured, were business expenses, reimbursed by Century Oil. I wondered what the captain would say if I used my expense account to hit a steak house in Dallas on Saturday, while I was there on the Collins case. I’d order a thick porterhouse, one of those wedge salads, asparagus, and a good glass of cabernet.
Nah
, I thought.
That bird won’t fly
.
A couple of hours into it, I had Cox’s credit cards charted, and I pulled out her expense reports and bank statements. As I’d suspected, much of the Amex card was paid for by Century, including most of Billie’s clothes, which surprised me. Maybe when one is the head of an oil company a chichi wardrobe is a fringe benefit? Since the company was privately owned, it wasn’t illegal. If anyone had a right to complain, it was Carlton Wagner, but he’d approved and signed all the reports.
One check in Billie’s bank statements caught my attention, written a month earlier to a geological consultant. For some reason, Billie had paid fifty grand to the guy out of her own money-market account, and I couldn’t find an entry for it on any of her expense accounts. Why would Cox lay out those kinds of funds to pay for what appeared to be a business expense and not be reimbursed, unless she didn’t want anyone, even Wagner, to know she’d hired the company?
I made notes on everything and put it into a file folder. The grandfather clock in the hallway struck midnight, and I decided to check on the horses and then go to bed. In the shed, Emma Lou was still awake, her eyes drooping and sad. She must have been exhausted. Mom said she’d hardly slept, just paced back and forth in the shed. I ran my hand over her long, muscular neck, and pushed her white mane to one side, then nuzzled up against her. “He’ll be here soon, girl,” I said. “You’ll see. Warrior will be here soon.”
In the stable, Warrior looked small and fragile. Maggie had fed him right before bed, but when he woke up and whinnied at me, I went inside, fixed a bottle, and sat with him while he slurped it up. He was undersized, that was true, but if the colt had as much thirst for life as he did for that bottle, he’d make it, I decided. I planned to go up to the house to bed, but instead I sat with the colt, on a pile of straw, thinking we’d keep each other company. Before long, his head lay on my lap, and we both drifted to sleep.
The next thing I remember I woke up and found David standing over me. It must have been morning, because daylight filled the stable, but Warrior was still asleep, his narrow head on my lap.
I thought at first that I might be dreaming, but then David knelt down, pulled a piece of straw out of my hair, and dropped it on the shed floor. He had the saddest look in his eyes, as if he saw me from very far away. He gazed at me longingly and brushed his hand over my cheek. Then he leaned forward and pulled me close, wrapping me in his strong arms. He felt as inviting as I remembered. His lips gentle, he kissed me long and hard, hungry, and the feelings I remembered from a year earlier, the ones I’d fought so unsuccessfully to bury, stirred.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, when our lips finally parted.
“No? Why not?” I said. “Tell me why not.”
David said nothing, and I pulled him toward me, and this time I kissed him. His body responded, yielded. He held me and returned every bit of my passion. Then, suddenly, Warrior jostled awake, and David pulled away, jolting up to his feet.
To my disappointment, he ran the back of his hand over his lips, wiping away all evidence of my kiss.
“Doc Larson is up at the house with Maggie and your mom. They’ll be here any minute,” he said, his face flushed. Why did he pull away? “They were looking for you. I said I’d check the stable.”
“Lucky you found me,” I said. “Lately, I’ve been wondering if you saw me at all. It’s good to know that I haven’t disappeared.”
“Sarah, you are without exception the most . . . ,” he started but didn’t finish. Instead he grabbed my hands and brought me to my feet. As soon as I was upright, he let go and concentrated on removing the bits of straw that covered his pant legs and shoes. He brushed at his clothes, and said, “We can’t let them find us like this.”
My jeans and T-shirt were covered, and I picked off the larger bits, just as my family and Doc Larson bustled into the stable.
“We were looking for you, Sarah,” Mom said. “Why did you sleep out here?”
“Just keeping Warrior company,” I said. Maggie stared, first at me, then at David. Attempting to distract her, I asked, “So, what’s the verdict?”
Doc had a grin that gave away the news before he spoke a word. “It’s high time Warrior’s momma gets to know the little fella,” he said. “No more of that damn bacteria. Let’s introduce the colt to Emma Lou. Let them spend a bit of quality time together.”
Minutes later, we had Warrior moved into Emma Lou’s shed. The colt was done with the bottles and enjoying the real thing, courtesy of the mare who looked, if a horse can, proud as a new momma. As we stood and watched, I slipped my hand into David’s, but, to my disappointment, he pulled his away.
“I have a summary of the Internet reports on the Collins case I’d like to share with you,” he said. “Let’s take them to the picnic table, and I’ll show you what our lab guys sorted out.”
Trying to hide my disappointment, I nodded. On the way to the corral, I ducked into the kitchen, poured two cups of coffee, grabbed a breath mint, and then met him at the picnic table.
“Are you going to explain to me what’s going on?” I asked, once we were alone again. “That wasn’t the kiss of a man who’s lost interest.”
David took a long sip of his coffee, and then frowned at me. “Sarah, we made a mistake last time, allowing ourselves to mix our personal lives in with our work,” he said. “I don’t want to make that mistake again.”
“Is that really it?” I asked. I wasn’t convinced. Last time, during the Lucas case, we’d never let our attraction to each other get in
the way of the investigation. It never became an issue. What was different now?
“That’s it,” he said, looking me squarely in the eyes. “Now, let’s talk about these Internet records.”
An hour later, he’d walked me through a complicated maze of e-mail addresses and text message records that traced a pattern across the country, leaving no clues to where they originated. “This Argus knows how to work the Web,” David said. “Our computer lab guys have been working on this night and day without a break since I joined the case. They haven’t uncovered a single clue to where the text messages and e-mails are coming from.”
“Pretty disappointing,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“Well then, we go ahead as planned,” I suggested. “We leave for Dallas this afternoon and do our best.”
“What about Justin Peterson?” he asked. “Have you totally ruled that kid out as a suspect?”
“No,” I said. “The captain has two undercover squads on duty tonight to keep track of him. Since he’s our only suspect, I’m not ready to walk away yet.”
When I’d poured the coffee, I’d also retrieved the bag of teen magazines I’d bought at the convenience store. “David, we’ve got four hours before the chopper takes off, and I’ve got some research to do,” I said. “If there’s nothing more you’re ready to talk to me about, I guess you’d better leave. I’ll meet you at the airport at one.”
He looked at me for a moment but said nothing. Got up and left. Afterward, I thought about that kiss. I didn’t believe for a minute his reluctance was about work. Something was going on with that man, but I had too much on my plate at the moment to spend a bunch of time trying to figure it out.
O
ur chopper landed at a heliport in downtown Dallas late that afternoon, on the roof of the convention center. Dallas P.D. had an unmarked squad car waiting, and David and I were at the redbrick-and-granite American Airlines Center minutes later, where we were summarily ushered through a side door. To my great frustration, the only thing I’d accomplished on the Cox case before leaving the ranch that morning was a quick phone conversation with the geologist who’d run the study. He confirmed that Billie paid for the work personally.