Mourning Gloria Read online

  Bob, a burly, red-haired Nam vet, has owned Beans’ for the past five years or so. His furry red brows meet in the middle of a rugged, pockmarked face, and he sports a tattoo of a broken heart on one thick forearm and a coiled snake tattoo on the other. He lives in a trailer outside of town and raises goats, some of which occasionally put in a featured appearance on the menu. Bob’s grilled cabrito kabobs—marinated with lime juice, soy sauce, and garlic and grilled with cherry tomatoes and chunks of onion, pineapple, and green peppers—are justifiably famous. His Drunken Goat Stew is even better, but he makes it only for special occasions. It’s like Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon, only more so.

  “I think I’ll have the tortilla soup and a salad,” Jessica said, when we had settled at one of the farther tables, away from the crack of pool cues and the wheeze of the ancient Wurlitzer.

  “You might want to reconsider that soup,” I said. “It’s heavy on the cilantro.” The four bunches Bob had bought on Saturday were enough to last ordinary people for a couple of weeks. Bob would go through them in a few days.

  “What’s cilantro?”

  “It looks like parsley,” I said. “But it has its own unique taste. It’s used heavily in Mexican cooking.” I was being evasive. I am not a cilantro fan, but I didn’t want to prejudice Jessica. To each her own.

  Jessica nodded carelessly. “The soup sounds fine.”

  Well, okay, I thought. “I’ll have a burger.” There’s nothing not to like about Bob’s burgers, which are thick and juicy and beyond reproach. He gets his beef from a local rancher over in Blanco County. Grass-fed. No factory-farmed animals.

  A moment later, Bob himself was standing beside our table. “China Bayles!” He dropped an exaggerated kiss on my head. “Ain’t seen you in a dog’s age. What’cha been doin’ with yerself?” He stepped back for a closer look. “And what’n the hell did ya do to them eyebrows, girl?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Got too close to a bonfire, huh?” He chortled merrily. “Where’s yer old man these days? Ain’t seen him lately, neither.”

  I grinned. “He’s in Knoxville, digging up dirt on somebody for Charlie Lipman.”

  Bob rolled his eyes expressively. “Prob’ly divorce dirt. Charlie makes a bundle off them divorces. Sure made a bundle off mine, years back.” Bob was married to the woman who used to own the Resale Shop, until he caught her stepping out with an oil rig worker. For his friends and bar buddies, the episode rivaled As the World Turns. He tilted his head, regarding Jessica with a teasing leer. “And who’s this purty little lady? You got a name, sweetheart?”

  Jessica blushed. I introduced her, adding, “She’s working as an intern at the Enterprise this summer.”

  I was impressed by the speed with which Jessica turned off the blush and switched to reporter mode, all stations alert. “Actually, I’m covering the trailer fire out on Limekiln Road on Saturday night,” she said. “Have you heard about it?”

  Of course he had heard about it—probably two minutes after the fire trucks went out. He pulled his furry brows together. “Turr’ble thang, that fire, jes’ turr’ble,” he muttered. “Somebody said the girl that died was a student over at the college.”

  “Oh, really?” Jessica asked intently, leaning forward. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Jessica probably didn’t know this, but Beans’ is one of Pecan Springs’ gossip centrals, along with the Nueces Street Diner and the mayor’s biweekly prayer breakfasts. When Hark wants to catch up on the news, he drops in here.

  Bob stroked his chin. “Might’ve been Scott Sheridan told me. He was in here yestiddy afternoon. He owns the place—the place that burned, is what I’m sayin’.” He took an order book out of the pocket of his greasestained apron and a pencil from behind his ear. “So what’ll it be for y’all? Them cabrito kabobs is really good today, if I do say so m’self.”

  We resisted the cabrito kabobs and gave him our orders. When he had gone, Jessica said, in a low voice, “I talked to Scott Sheridan this morning, China. He didn’t say anything to me about the victim being a student. In fact, he told me he had no idea who she was or what she was doing in the trailer.”

  “Maybe Sheridan was just blowing smoke for the boys at the bar,” I said. “Or maybe it was somebody else who said it. Bob might not be remembering accurately.” Or maybe Sheridan just didn’t feel like giving an eager girl reporter something she could turn into a story. Me, I was impressed by the fact that Jessica had followed up with him. “Did Sheridan tell you anything helpful?”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he did. At least, I think so.” She took a reporter’s narrow notebook out of her bag and leafed through the ruled pages, scanning her scribbles. “He said he bought the place because he thought the land was a good investment. The trailer was pretty run-down, but a couple of students were living there, a guy and a girl, on month-to-month. He would’ve let them stay on until the end of the semester, he said, but they were doing drugs. He told them he wanted to work on the place and get it ready to rent for the summer. He was planning to start repairs next week.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. That pretty much squared with what Sheridan had told McQuaid. “Did he give you the names of the renters he evicted?”

  She flipped a page. “He couldn’t remember the guy’s name right off and was going to look it up for me. But the girl was . . .” She flipped another page. “The girl was Lucy LaFarge. He remembered, because it sounded like a name in an old B movie. The good thing about a name like that,” she added, “is that it’s easy to track down.”

  “Easy for a crack reporter, maybe,” I said with a grin.

  She was very serious. “Actually, I’ve already dug up an address for her. LaFarge has an apartment near the campus, 101 North Brazos. I don’t know that she’ll be able to tell me anything about the victim, but she can tell me what it was like to live in that trailer. That’s the angle I’m after, you know. Human interest.”

  “Sounds like you’re making progress,” I said approvingly, as Bob brought the iced tea we had ordered and a plate of nachos we hadn’t.

  “Nachos are on the house,” he said, and put a big hand on my shoulder. “You gotta come around more, China. You ’n’ McQuaid. Don’t see y’all near often ’nuff.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and smiled. Friends are one of the very nicest things about Pecan Springs. You’ll never catch a bar owner in Houston or Dallas giving away a plate of nachos just because he hasn’t seen you in a while.

  Jessica reached into her leather bag and took out a minirecorder. She put it on the table between us and flicked the switch. “Now it’s your turn, China. I’d like to hear all about that night—the night you found the trailer on fire. Let’s start with what you were doing earlier that evening and take it from there. Okay?”

  “It’s not a very appetizing mealtime story,” I warned. I didn’t want to go through the experience again, but I had promised. I made it quick and graphic. I was finished by the time Bob delivered my burger and Jessica’s tortilla soup and salad.

  But Jessica didn’t notice the food. She was totally engrossed in what I had said. Her eyes were wide, her expression horrified.

  “Omigod,” she whispered, as she turned her tape recorder off. “I thought the shooter killed her. I mean, I heard that she’d been shot and I thought she died right away. Nobody told me she . . .” She gulped. “Nobody told me she was still alive when you got there. That you heard her screaming. That she burned to death.”

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” I said. I looked down at my burger, which was thick and juicy and luscious-looking. But suddenly I was hearing the woman’s voice again. And discovering that I wasn’t very hungry after all.

  “She must have been . . .” Jessica’s voice dropped. “She must have been so . . . so frightened. Knowing that she was going to die, not being able to get out.” She pulled her soup bowl toward her and dipped her spoon into it. She took a large swallow and wrinkled her nose distastefully. “Yuc
h. Tastes like soap. Soap and aluminum foil.” She reached for her iced tea. “Is that the cilantro I’m tasting?”

  I nodded, refraining from saying I told you so. “Lots of people love the taste. But for some, even a little cilantro is too much.” I picked up my burger, thinking that Jessica most likely knew Terry Fletcher from her work at the farm, and wondering if I should tell her that Terry had been missing since Friday. I decided against it. There was no evidence, either direct or circumstantial, to tie Terry to the trailer fire. Her absence could be a coincidence. And for all I knew, she had already shown up back at the farm, in time for lunch. At least, I hoped so.

  There didn’t seem to be much else to say. Jessica abandoned her soup, focused on her salad, and finished off the nachos. I nibbled on my hamburger, and when Bud came with the check, I tipped him with a couple of fair-sized chunks of burger and a slice of dill pickle. Bud loves pickles.

  We got into Jessica’s green Ford two-door to drive back to the shop. I was planning to spend the afternoon alternating between weeding and dusting—two chores I can perform on autopilot—until it was time to take Caitlin for her violin lesson.

  “So how are you spending the rest of the day, Jessica?” I asked, as we swung around the corner.

  She answered my idle question with purpose. “I’m driving out to the trailer to take a few more pictures. On my way back into town, I think I’ll stop at the auto parts place and interview Scott Sheridan again—I want to see if he’s found the name of the guy he evicted. After that, I’ve got an appointment at the sheriff’s office to interview Sheriff Blackwell and see the crime scene photos. Then I want to see if I can get Lucy LaFarge to talk to me. After that, I’m going home and write the story.” Her face was serious. “I have the house all to myself this week. My roommate’s gone camping—which may not be as good a thing as I thought. I’m having trouble with a neighbor. He’s a real jerk. Last night, he . . .” She stopped. “But you don’t need to hear about that.”

  I wasn’t surprised to hear about her interview, but I’d bet that Blackie wouldn’t let her look at the crime scene photos. I had no great desire to see them myself. They wouldn’t be pretty.

  “You’re really digging away at this story, aren’t you?” I remarked. What did Jessica want? Was she simply a good journalism student, trying to do her best? Or an ambitious reporter, eager to add a juicy story to her portfolio?

  She shook her head, frowning. “Well, it started out being just a story. I mean, I wanted to do a really good piece. I need to do that, because there will be a lot of journalism grads out there looking for jobs. But when you told me what really happened—that made it even more real, China. More personal. The idea of that poor young woman, a student maybe, lying there on that sofa, knowing that she was about to be burned to death . . .” Her hands were clenched on the steering wheel, white-knuckled. “That’s how I lost my twin sister and my mom and dad, you know. They burned to death. It happened ten years ago this month. I wasn’t home that night—I was on a school trip. If I had been there, I would be dead, too. Like my sister, Ginger. Like the girl who died in the trailer.”

  I breathed out, appalled. Her family had burned to death? Her whole family? “Oh, God, Jessica—that’s awful! How terrible for you.”

  “It was. It was unspeakable.” Her voice was flat, expressionless. “It took a long time, but I’m okay now. You can’t mourn forever.” She gave a little shrug. “You have to move on, you know. Get over it. Get on with your life.”

  She was okay with it now? Somehow, I doubted that. It seemed to me like the kind of thing you’d never be okay with—that it would run like a sad, bitter current through every thought, every choice, every action. Some of the things I knew about Jessica were beginning to make a little more sense, now that I knew this. Her interest in this story was making sense, too. But it was worrisome. She had lost both her parents and her sister, her twin sister, in a fire—and now she was covering a story about another death by fire, the death of a young woman? It had to awaken all those awful memories.

  “But doesn’t that make writing this story a lot more difficult for you?” I asked, perturbed. “Are you sure you should be covering it? Maybe it would be a good idea to let Mr. Hibler handle—”

  She turned on me fiercely. “Of course it’s a good idea! I have been involved in a situation just like this one. I remember how it felt.” Her voice was sharp and intense. “Which makes me exactly the right person to be writing this story. In fact, nobody else could cover it the way I can.”

  “Okay, okay.” I backpedaled. “I just don’t want you to get dragged into something that’s personally hard to handle. You have to stay objective.”

  “Objectivity.” Her mouth tightened. “That’s what they teach you in journalism school, yes. But that doesn’t mean that I have to stick to a just-the-facts-ma’am approach. This is a human-interest story.” We reached the shop and she braked to a stop at the curb. “This is about the girl who died, China. I owe it to her to find out everything there is to know about her. Who she was, where she came from, what kind of person she was, what she was doing in that trailer, who killed her—”

  “Whoa, Jessica,” I said firmly. The red flags were flapping all over the place now. “You’re a reporter, not a cop. Finding out who killed that woman is the sheriff’s job. He wouldn’t be very happy if you get in his way.”

  “I know all that,” she said impatiently, and hit the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. Her face was grim. “And I sincerely hope the sheriff gets the sonuvabitch. Shooting that girl and leaving her to burn to death . . .” She shuddered.

  “I hope they get him, too,” I said, “but—”

  “So I’m going to find out everything I can about the killer, as well,” she went on, paying no attention to me. “I want to know why he did what he did, how he did it, what makes him tick . . .”

  This was going too far. I opened my mouth to say so, but she barreled on.

  “Have you ever read In Cold Blood, China? It’s a true crime—the first true crime novel, really. It was written in the 1950s by Truman Capote, about a family that was murdered in Kansas. Capote interviewed everybody who knew the victims. He got really close to the killers. That’s what I want to do. I intend to find out everything there is to know about the victim. Then I want to find out as much as I can about the guy who killed her. I want—”

  I put up my hand, stopping her. There were two problems here, but I’d tackle the simpler one first. “A guy? What makes you think the killer was a man?”

  She shot me a skeptical glance. “You really think a woman would do something like that? Shoot another woman and then burn her alive?”

  Well, there was the prostitute in Florida, but that was beside the point. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just saying that you can’t jump to conclusions. There’s something else, too.” I tackled the other issue. “I know how Hark Hibler feels about keeping a story, any story, in perspective. If he were having this conversation with you, he would tell you to forget about using Truman Capote as a model. The way I remember it, Capote lost all objectivity on the Kansas murders. He wrote a very good book, a spellbinding book, but at a terrible cost to himself.”

  “Thanks.” Jessica’s voice had a sharp edge. “I’ll remember about Capote. And I’ll keep your warning in mind the next time I see a conclusion I’d like to jump to.”

  I sighed regretfully. I had alienated her, and I was sorry. But I wasn’t sorry I had spoken. Jessica was so passionate, so determined, so young. When I was her age, I had been every bit as determined as she was. I had felt things as fiercely as she was feeling this. In fact, that fierceness was one of the reasons I had gone into law in the first place. I wanted passionately to see justice done, to stand up for people who needed someone between them and the brutally dispassionate and sometimes unjust law. But I had learned—the hard way—that it was important to keep my distance. It’s dangerous to stand too close. You get scorched.

  But Jessica was
shifting impatiently in her seat, eager to get on with the things she’d planned for the afternoon, and I knew that nothing I could say would change her mind. I opened the car door. “Hey, thanks for the lunch. I enjoyed it.”

  She gave me a frowning glance. “No, you didn’t. You gave your hamburger to the dog.”

  “Just a couple of bites. But I guess I lost my appetite.” I smiled wryly. “You didn’t finish your soup, either.”

  “I didn’t like the cilantro. And I lost my appetite, too—after I heard that the girl was still alive when you got there.”

  Now I could finally say it. “I told you so,” I said. “About the cilantro, I mean. Bob always puts too much in. And you were the one who wanted to hear the story while we were eating. I told you it was horrible.”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “I guess we’re even, huh?”

  “I guess we are.” Impulsively, I leaned over and gave her a hug. “Be careful, Girl Reporter. And keep me posted on your progress. Okay?”

  She hugged me back, then held me at arm’s length. “You’re not just saying that, China? You really want to know what I find out?”