In Big Trouble

between you and Crow. I won't put a name to it, but whatever it is, it's like a divining rod. You'll find your way to him. Or he'll find his way to you. No other private detective can offer us that.'

He pulled something from his pocket. 'This is the last postcard Crow sent to us, before he disappeared.'

The card wasn't a photograph, but a hand-tinted drawing of blue flowers dotting a green field. 'Texas blue- bonnets,' said the legend on the front.

On the back, Crow had written: 'I feel as if I'm starting over. Things here are not as expected, but that doesn't make it bad, right? As Dad said, I am following in an outlaw tradition by coming here. GTT, Crow.'

'GTT?' Tess asked Chris.

'Gone to Texas. It's what outlaws wrote on their doors when they headed out to the frontier. ‘I've gone to Texas. Don't bother to look because you won't find me.''

'Is that so?' Tess said, lifting her chin. And they had her.

Tess called Kitty the next day from Abingdon, Virginia, just before crossing the line into Tennessee. She called the private line, knowing Kitty would be in the store and the machine would pick up. She didn't want to explain why she was going, she just wanted to go.

'It's Tess,' she said. 'If Tyner calls, tell him I'm headed for Texas. I'll call him tonight, when I've crossed the Mississippi.' She figured that was just far enough to be safe from Tyner's wrath, that the Mississippi was wide enough to keep the volume of his voice from reaching out and lassoing her home.

She had a generous per diem and a sizable advance. She had her Toyota and her overnight bag. She had a week's worth of clothing purchased in less than thirty minutes at an outlet mall with a Gap and an Old Navy. She had the sweats she always carried in her trunk, along with a jump rope and a basketball. She had her dog, her datebook, and her copy of Don Quixote, because she had gotten in the habit of carrying it around, thinking she still might finish it one day, if only by osmosis. She had seven pairs of heavy-duty white cotton underwear, which had cost only a dollar at some off-brand store, possibly because 'Wednesday' was spelled 'Wenesday.'

It was enough. Or at least plenty. Chris Ransome was right: You just had to change your definitions.

Chapter 4

Tess, who never paid close attention in seventh grade social studies, had expected Texas cities to spring out of vast, dusty prairies, then disappear quickly in the rearview mirror. But Austin seemed to begin in fits and starts as a series of strip centers along Interstate 35. Where were the green fields with little blue flowers? What had ever happened to Lady Bird Johnson's Highway Beautification program? Her eye was drawn to the strange names of local groceries and convenience stores. HEB, Circle K, Stop ‘n' Go.

Traffic was heavy, too, worse than any rush hour she had ever experienced back home. Even when the Toyota crested a hill on I-35 and she saw the Texas Capitol building ahead, the glimmer of a river or a lake beyond it, she was still unmoved. She also was overwhelmed and exhausted. What had she been thinking?

'You shouldn't be in Texas by yourself,' Kitty had scolded when Tess called her earlier that day. 'Tyner will have a fit when he hears. He's already called here twice, looking for you.'

'I'll call him pretty soon,' Tess said. She was at a roadside restaurant in Waco, the Health Camp, which seemed to specialize in spectacularly unhealthy food. A gas station attendant had given her the tip when she filled up her car outside Dallas that morning. She sucked up the dregs of her coffee milkshake, gave Esskay the last bite of burger and bun. More bun than burger, but Esskay was still grateful.

'Where are you going to stay?'

'Some fleabag motel that takes fleabags, I guess.'

'That won't do. You should be in a place where you have access to a fax machine, or even a computer if you need one. I know a bookstore owner down there. He might put you up, as a favor to me, and help you find your way around.' There was a strange, awkward pause, and Kitty laughed a coy, most un-Kittyish laugh. 'We…were together at that convention for independent booksellers a few years back. The one in San Antonio.'

'‘Together?' Aren't you shy all of a sudden. Why haven't I heard about this adventure before?'

'Keith was different.' Kitty sighed. 'He runs Quadling Country.'

'Come again?'

'Keith's store. It's like mine, a store for children and adults, only with an emphasis on fantasy, with a comics department on the side. Quadling Country. From the Oz books.'

'Oh, where Glinda lived. Right. But comic books and fantasy?' Tess made a face, even though Esskay was the only one there to see it. 'You mean sci fi and outer space and little green men and images of the future that almost always include some kind of monorail system?'

'Don't be a snob,' Kitty admonished. 'Besides, I can't remember the last time I saw a book of any stripe in your hands.'

'Hey, I'm almost finished Don Quixote,' Tess pointed out. Just five hundred pages to go. She had actually read a little bit here at the Health Camp. It was surprising how much of the famous stuff-the wind-mills, the muleteers, the barber-came at the beginning of the book. Or maybe not so surprising. Probably a lot of people lied about reading the damn thing.

'I'll call Keith as soon as I hang up,' Kitty said.

'But let me give you the directions to his store first.'

'You've been there?'

'Oh, yes. My last vacation.'

'You said you went to Atlanta for a bookseller's convention.'

'Did I?'

Tess left the highway and drove west along Sixth Street, which appeared to be home to a good portion of Austin's club scene. Wouldn't it be nice, Tess thought, if she could just see Crow striding along here, guitar case in hand? So easy and simple. But things had never worked that way for her. The long way around was the route she always ended up traveling.

About two miles west of the downtown district, Quadling Country sat on a small hill above Sixth Street. The two-story purple house didn't have the spick-and-span quality of Kitty's Women and Children First, but it was large and enticing, Tess supposed. As was the young man bounding down the crumbling concrete steps.

He was young, of course. Tess had expected that much, although this one was something of a record, even for Kitty. He looked to be nineteen, a strapping but very dewy nineteen. He must have needed instruction in all aspects of life, from bed to bath and beyond. But he didn't seem as hangdog as most of Kitty's castoff lovers. Maybe the distance, the whole gestalt of the convention fling, had inoculated him against the inevitable disappointment.

'Are you Tess? And this must be Esskay. Cool dog.' Esskay, ever the sucker for a compliment, promptly attached her face to his leg and began whimpering for attention. 'Kitty called to say you'd be here this afternoon. But you must drive kinda slow. That was almost two hours ago. I can make it from Waco to here in less than ninety minutes.'

'Well, I drive pretty fast, too, when I know a place,' Tess said, and instantly felt as if she were all of two years old. 'But the traffic was horrible, and I was worried about speed traps.'

'Speed traps? Like, only if you're going above a hundred. Let me get that for you.' He tried to lift the duffel bag of new clothes from Tess's shoulder.

'I can carry it,' she said, wrestling it back from him.

'Of course you can. But you're a guest here. You're just gonna have to take our courtesy even if it kills you.' He grinned at Tess, a little wickedly, and she sensed that his idea of Southern hospitality might include late-night visits to lady guests, if they were so inclined. Of all Kitty's young louts, this one was the youngest and most loutish by far.

'How did you come to have your own bookstore, anyway?'

'Well, I only run the comics section, but it's the best one in the city. I won the readers' poll in the Chronicle, even.'