We tried that, had no success. A few weeks later, a letter from Ewin arrived in the mail.
And that was the last we heard from him.'
Ms. Ingram sighed, fished around in her binder again. 'You'll think me a ghoul, but here it is, that letter.'
Sure enough, it was postmarked May 1987 from Waco, Texas. It was typed-no signature, no return address. It said,
Clara,
Don't think I have forgotten you. Soon we'll discuss retribution.
Simultaneously, Maia and I said, 'May we keep this?'
We glanced at each other.
Faye Ingram looked amused. 'You may keep it. You two are an interesting pair.'
'Ms. Ingram,' Maia said, 'is there anyone else in the Doebler family who might be willing to help us? Anyone who might've spoken with Jimmy about your family history?'
Faye reached toward her oak tree, plucked a brown pod from the creeper plant. The berries inside the pod were splitting out, fat and neon orange as jawbreakers. She cracked the pod, held up one orange orb.
'Coral bean,' she said. 'Can you imagine anything prettier? Hard to believe they use these as fish and rat poison, isn't it?'
'Ms. Ingram?' Maia asked.
'I don't know, dear. You could try to speak with W.B. He would merely refer you to his lawyers. I'm afraid that unlike Jimmy, unlike me for that matter, W.B.'s very much a Doebler. He's become just what the family wanted him to be.'
There it was again, the undertone of fear I'd heard the first time we spoke on the phone.
Maia said, 'How old would Ewin Lowry be now, Ms. Ingram?'
'I don't think Ewin is still in the world, dear. I can't imagine he would've lived to be this old, with his knack for causing trouble. The private eye we hired took our money and vanished, stopped returning our calls. He never told us a thing of importance, though he did seem a rather incompetent sort.' She looked at me. 'I'm sorry.'
'Don't be,' Maia assured her. 'Most of them never complete a proper training.'
We traded collegial smiles.
Faye Ingram said, 'You two work well together, don't you? Despite the bantering.'
Neither of us responded.
Faye closed her old leather binder. One hand still gripped her bean pod full of poison.
'I have a sense for these things. You're very pleasant people. Thank you for having tea with me.'
I looked at the tea glasses, which neither Maia nor I had touched.
We thanked Ms. Ingram for her time, left her sitting at her patio table, arranging coral beans into a loose necklace on its surface.
As we walked through Faye's house, Blood on the Tracks was winding down to the final, desolate chords of 'Buckets of Rain.'
Maia and I went out to my truck, Maia reading the police report as she walked. She got into the Ford. I got into the driver's side.
'Supposedly we work well together,' I said.
'An amateur's deduction.'
Maia flipped to the back page of the police report, scanned it, then handed it to me.
'The first officer at the scene of Clara Doebler's death-how do you read that signature?'
I looked at the bottom of the paper. The signature stood out like a familiar spider-one I'd hoped I'd squashed. 'Looks like Deputy Victor Lopez.'
'That's what I thought,' Maia said.
We sat there, watching dragonflies going giddy above Faye Ingram's sage plants.
CHAPTER 18
Detective Lopez wasn't answering his phone. Probably keeping his lines open for Garrett's confession.
After some deliberation, Maia and I decided to swing by Tech san's offices, see if we could find Garrett, maybe take a look around before Matthew Pena claimed his billiondollar prize.
If you think of Austin as a Rorschach test, downtown would be a little blob in the centre, framed above and below by enormous, mirrorimage crescents of black-Research Boulevard to the north, Ben White to the south.
Both were former country roads transformed into multilevel highways. Both had superheated with development over the last two decades, and there seemed to be some unspoken rule that the two areas had to be developed at equal speed. If a new chain store went up in the north, an identical store had to open in the south, as if the developers were afraid lack of balance would tip over the city.
Construction spilled into valleys and over hills like a stuccoand limestone fungus, leaving small islands of ranch land surrounded by apartment blocks, shopping centres, industrial parks. An occasional horse pasture gasped for life between a Starbucks and a Best Buy? turkey buzzards circled over ravines once full of coyotes, now crammed with office buildings.
Techsan Security Software had commandeered space in one such facility in the southern sprawl.
The building was a wedge of red brick and blackmirrored glass, rising from a hillside in the middle of ten wooded acres. The sign out front bore the name of a bankrupt software company.
Garrett's van sat at the curb in a red zone, the side door open.
I parked next to a Lexus with a SOUTH PARK bumper sticker and a Ren and Stimpy suckercup animal on the window. Give an adolescent screen head $80,000 a year to start and you'll get cars like that.
A few gangly developer types who looked like they hadn't seen the sun in months were shooting hoops on the outdoor basketball court.
In the front lobby, the directory was an object lesson in Austin high tech. The building's original occupants had confidently engraved their names on brass plaques. All those names had since been covered with masking tape. For the replacement companies, a newer set of cheap, plastic plaques had been mounted. These in turn were taped over, replaced with printed cardboard signs of the thirdgeneration businesses, and three of these were crossed out. One of the crossouts was Techsan.
Matthew Pena had wasted no time moving in, and he hadn't opted for cardboard. A large red and gold canvas banner, pinned above the elevator, read AccuShield, Austin Division, Top Floor.
'He commissioned that back in March,' I told Maia. 'What do you bet?'
She nodded. 'Probably got Tshirts made, too. Let's go see.'
The fourthfloor hallway was Lshaped, with the reception office at the crook. Maia and I walked past the entrance, turned, went to the other end of the hallway. Restrooms, a stairwell, an employee door with a combination lock.
Under normal circumstances, Maia and I would've gone through the front, simply asked the receptionist if we could see Garrett. AccuShield's banner out front had changed that. Without any discussion, Maia and I both understood we did not want to enter these premises on Mr. Pena's terms.
I tried the employee entrance. It was locked.
Maia punched 12345, turned the knob. No luck. We hung out at the stairwell for a minute, hoping somebody would come out the door. Nobody did.
'Plan B?' Maia asked.
I took off my tie, tossed it to her. 'Be right back.'
I walked down to the receptionist's office.
The receptionist had a novel propped on her desk like a shield between her and any potential interruptions. The cover said THROBBING EDEN in gold letters on a field of roses. Either a romance novel or a frightening new trend in inspirational literature.
There were two empty desks, an interior door with a deadbolt, and a corner table heaped with technical manuals and donut boxes and brochures. Draped over one of the empty desks was an extra red and gold AccuShield
