Shoot, Don't Shoot (33 page)

He grinned and nodded. “Good taste buds. Got some in special, just for you. Ask for it by name. Joanna Brady Private Reserve Diet Coke. If I’m not here, tell Phil it’s in the fridge next to my A and W of beer.”

It was hard to persist in believing that someone that thoughtful would also be a serial killer. Joanna raised her glass in salute. “Thanks,” she said.

“You bet,” he said. But then the grin disappeared and Butch shook his head. “I just can’t seem to get Dave Thompson out of my head today. He came in here all the time, you know.”

Joanna studied Butch’s face. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” she said. “Not until last night. Remember the first time I came in here asking about the night Serena Grijalva died? Why didn’t you tell me then that Dave Thompson was a regular?”

“I don’t recall your asking me that question straight out,” Butch returned easily. “Besides, if you had asked, I probably wouldn’t have told you. I don’t even tell wives and girlfriends who comes and goes around here. Why would I tell anyone else?”

“You don’t tell? Why not?”

Dixon smiled. “Client/counselor privilege.”

“You’re no lawyer, are you?”

Dixon shook his head.

“Since when do bartenders have the protection of client privilege?”

“You’re right,” he said. “It probably wouldn’t hold up in court, but I do try to protect the privacy of my clientele, for business reasons if nothing else. Dave was one of my broken birds. I was hoping that eventually he’d get his head screwed on straight. And he was working on it. That’s why this so-called suicide crap doesn’t wash. Ol’ Dave maybe imbibed a bit more than was good him...,’

“A bit?” Joanna questioned, raising an eyebrow.

Butch shrugged. “So okay, maybe a lot more than was good for him. It’s bad business for me to run down the drinking habits of some of my very best customers. It doesn’t pay. But still, mentally, I’d say Dave was in much better shape in the last few months than he was when he first started coming here. And if he drank too much, at least he was responsible about it. If he was planning to tie one on, he always had me keep his car keys. If I asked for them, he always handed them over without any argument. Whenever he ended up too smashed to drive, I’d keep his car here overnight and get someone else to drive him back home.”

“Did he talk about his wife much?” Joanna asked. “About his ex-wife?”

A curtain seemed to fall over Butch’s face. He didn’t answer right away. “The man’s dead,” Butch said finally. “It doesn’t seem right for us to be picking him apart when he isn’t even buried yet.”

“Don’t go invoking client/bartender privilege on me again,” Joanna said. “Dave Thompson is dead all right, and I’m trying to find out who killed him.”

“Hey, barkeep.” Three stools down the bar, a grizzled old man raised his glass. “Medic,” he said.

Butch hurried away to fill his thirsty customer’s drink order. He returned to where Joanna was sitting with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“As in murder?” he asked. “That’s right.”

Butch shook his head. “What the hell’s going on? First Serena Grijalva and now Dave Thompson. Does someone have a grudge against my customers, or what?”

Joanna reached in her purse and pulled out the videotape. “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me. Would you take a look at this and see if there are any other familiar faces on it?”

“You think someone’s knocked off more of my customers? If that’s the case, before long, I’ll be out of business completely,” Butch said. But he took the video and slipped the tape into the VCR that sat on the counter behind the bar. “What is it?” he asked as the television set blinked over from an afternoon talk show to the tape.

“The news,” Joanna answered. “From Tuesday night.”

“Oh, that,” he said. “I think I already saw it.”

Moments later, the now-familiar face of the studio anchor came on the screen introducing the equally familiar reporter, Jill January. As the taped newscast ran its course, Joanna watched Butch Dixon’s face for any sign of recognition. There wasn’t any in the first segment. Both Rhonda and Dean Norton’s flashed across the screen without any noticeable response from Butch. That changed when Ceci Grijalva’s face appeared in the second segment.

“Damn!” he said. “That poor little kid. What’s going to happen to her?” Then later, when Joanna’s name was mentioned, he looked and nodded. “I’ll bet this is the part I saw already.”

The taped Joanna Brady was just beginning to answer Jill January’s question when Butch Dixon clicked the remote.

“Wait a minute. Let me play that back. I don’t want to miss anything.”

The action on the screen slipped into reverse. Joanna Brady and Leann Jessup were walking, backward up the aisle at the end of the vigil rather than down it.

“Hey, looky there,” the old man down the bar exclaimed, squinting up at the television set. “Isn’t that there Larry Dysart?”

“Where?” Butch asked.

The old man pointed. “Right there, over that one broad’s shoulder. Nope, now he’s gone.”

Butch grabbed the remote and stopped the action once again. “Where?” he said.

“Right there,” the old man said. “Wait’ll they get almost up to the camera. See there?”

“I’ll be damned,” Butch said. “It is him. And he looks like he’s all bent out of shape. That sly old devil. He never once said anything about going to the damn vigil. If he had, I would have made arrangements to go along with him.”

Joanna felt a sudden clutch in her throat. “What did you say his name was?”

“Larry. Larry Dysart.”

“He’s a regular here, too? Did he know Serena?”

“Sure.” Butch nodded.

“Was he here the night Serena died?”

“I’m pretty sure he was,” Butch answered.

“If Larry’s a regular, then he knows Dave Thompson as well?”

“As a matter of fact, Larry drove Dave home several times. Larry doesn’t drink booze anymore, so I could always ask him to drive somebody home without having to worry about it. He never seemed to mind.”

“And what exactly does Larry Dysart do for a living?” Joanna asked. There was a tremble of excitement in her voice, but Butch Dixon didn’t seem to notice.

“As little as possible. He’s a legal process server. It was a big comedown from what he might have expected, but he never seemed to carry a grudge about it.”

Joanna fought to keep her face impassive, the way her poker-playing father had taught her to do. This was important, and she didn’t want to blow it. “Carry a grudge about what?” she asked.

“About his mother giving away the family farm,” Butch answered. “And I mean that literally. In the old days, his grandfather’s farm—the old Hackberry place—was just outside town here, outside Peoria. It was a big place—a whole section of cotton fields. If Larry had been able to talk his mother into selling it back when he wanted her to, he would have made a fortune. Or else she could have held on to it. By now it would be worth that much more. Instead, she and Larry got in some kind of big beef. She ended up giving most of it away.”

“Who to?” Joanna asked.

“TTI,” Butch answered. “Tommy Tompkins International. Tommy was one of those latter-day Armageddonists who believed that the world was going to end on a certain day at a certain hour. Before that happened, however, his financial world collapsed. He and his two top guys ended up the slammer for income tax evasion.

“Now that I get thinking about it, I believe the APOA dormitory is right on the spot where the house used to be. That’s where Larry lived with his mother and stepfather back when he was a kid. The stepfather died young, and Larry and his mother went to war with each other. They patched it up for a while after she got sick. Since she was the one who’d donated the land to TTI, she was able to wangle her son a job running security for Tommy back in the high-roller eighties, when he had the whole world on a string. Then everything fell apart. When the dust cleared, the world didn’t end as scheduled, Tommy was gone, and the property went into foreclosure. All Larry was left with was a bad taste in his mouth and what he had inherited directly from his grandfather.”

“What was that?”

“The old Hackberry house on Monroe.”

“Where’s that?” Joanna asked. “In downtown Phoenix?”

Butch chuckled. “A different Monroe,” he said. “This one’s right here in Peoria, only a few blocks from here. Listen,” Butch added. “If you want to talk to Larry, it wouldn’t be any trouble for me to find him. He was in for lunch a little while ago, so I don’t think he’s working today. Want me to give him a call and let him know you’re looking for him?”

Joanna stood up, dropping two dollars on the bar to pay for her drink and to leave a tip. “No,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Don’t bother. Could I have that video back, please? I’ve got some errands to run right now. I’ll get in touch with Larry later if I need to.”

Butch handed over the tape. “Here you go. Sure I can’t talk you into having another?”

Joanna shook her head. “No, thanks, but I’ll be back.”

“Sure you will,” Butch Dixon said, looking disappointed. “You and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Once in the Blazer, Joanna couldn’t decide what to do. For one thing, even though she had learned something important, it was all purely circumstantial. And although she might not be entirely clear on what it all meant, she recognized that the connections she had made were a good starting place.

She knew Larry Dysart’s name, the color of his eyes, and where he lived—the location at least, if not the exact address. She had established a definite link between the guy who had almost knocked Leann Jessup down at the candlelight vigil and Serena Grijalva. She had also learned that there was a link between Dysart and Dave Thompson—a man who might possibly turn out to be as much victim as he was perpetrator.

Even though Joanna’s quick trip to the Roundhouse had garnered a good deal of information, she had failed to accomplish her original purpose—to establish a link between the Roundhouse and the Nortons. Had she been able to find a connection from them to the Roundhouse, she would have automatically ended up with a connection to Dysart as well. Unfortunately, after watching the video, neither Butch Dixon nor his grizzled, permanent-fixture customer had been able to verify such a link with either Rhonda or her husband.

So there are a few holes in my thinking, Joanna thought, leaning forward to turn the key in the ignition. But that’s why there were real homicide cops in the world; why there were detectives like Carol Strong who would know exactly what to do with the vague patchwork quilt of information Joanna had managed to assemble. And as soon as it was humanly possible, she would hand what she had over to Carol and let the detective go after it.

At one-thirty, however, it was still too early for that. Four o’clock would be plenty of time to talk to her.

In the meantime, Joanna returned to the hotel to wait and think and to relieve Jim Bob Brady of his baby-sitting responsibilities. She stopped by the pool and was happy to find that the girls were finally out of the water. If they were spending the afternoon up in the room watching videos, it would give Ceci’s waterlogged braids time enough to dry out before she had to go back home to Wittmann.

But when Joanna stopped outside the door to room 810, there was no sound at all coming from inside. And when she opened the door, the room wasn’t exactly as she’d left it. There were two wet towels on the bathroom floor in place of the girls’ clothing, which was gone. Obviously, Jenny and Ceci had come back to the room long enough to change, but where were they now?

Joanna picked up the phone intending to dial the Bradys’ room, but the staccato sound of the dial tone told her she had voice-mail messages—three in all.

The first was from Jim Bob Brady.

“I don’t know where you two girls have gone off to,” he said. “I thought I told you to stay put. Maybe you’re in the bathroom with the shower on or a hair dryer goin’. Anyway, Grandma and I are gonna run across the street to Wal-Mart and do a little Christmas shopping. You girls stick around the room until your mom gets back, Jenny. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her today, so I don’t know what the plan is for dinner.”

A half-formed knot of worry began to grow in the pit of Joanna’s stomach. She replayed the message and listened again to Jim Bob saying, “You girls stay around the room ...” No, there was no mistake. Jim Bob had left the girls in the room and expected them to stay there. So where were they?

The second and third messages were from Carol Strong. Both of those had come in within the last ten minutes and both said Carol would call back later.

Once again, Joanna searched the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain all the way aside. She expected to find two wringing-wet bathing suits on the floor of the tub, but the tub was dry and empty. So was the sink. The drain plugs were still closed in the exact same way the housekeeper had left them earlier that morning.

Joanna stood in the bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror, trying to ward off a rising sense of panic, trying to think what to do. Don’t overreact, Joanna told herself firmly. They probably just went back downstairs. Strangely enough, the thought of possible disobedience made Joanna feel better.

Resolutely, she headed downstairs herself. In addition to the pool, the hotel’s recreation area boasted a hot tub as well as a sauna. Posted rules indicated that the last two were off limits to unaccompanied children, but that didn’t mean Jenny would necessarily regard that as the final word. In her daughter’s egocentric, nine-year-old view of the world, what she regarded as unreasonable rules were made to be badly bent if not outright broken.

Jim Bob probably got tired of hanging out at the pool and now Jenny’s trying to pull a fast one, Joanna reasoned grimly. Stalking through the recreation facilities, at first Joanna was more angry than worried. As she searched the hot tub and sauna, she rehearsed a carefully phrased dressing down. She couldn’t be all that hard on Ceci Grijalva because she was a guest. Most likely she didn’t fully understand the rules, but for Jennifer Ann Brady, there could be no such excuse.