more opportunities to tell someone about the inquisitive Yankee who had come in looking for local candy and some dark-haired fellow, and left with directions to the old Barrett place.
The sheriff also seemed anxious to get back to business. 'So anyway, you find this body, which you know, from the smell, has been dead a long time because you watch a lot of television, and you called 911 on your little cell phone. Why do you have one of those things, anyway? You running drugs through my county?'
'The Baltimore drug market doesn't have to look to Texas for its supplies.'
'Yeah, everybody's on crack up there, right?'
A conscious self-mockery edged his every word. The sheriff was playing with his role, Tess realized, shifting in and out of the stereotype as it suited his purpose. He was joking now, and testing her to see if she got the joke.
'Just about. Although heroin's making a comeback. It's sort of like the rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.'
He opened his desk drawer, rummaged around, and pulled out a pack of Dentyne, took his time unwrapping a piece. 'But even though you had a cell phone, you said you went inside the house, right, to see if there was a phone connected there, right? Did you notice that pane of window cut out of the back door?'
'Of course I did.' Tess sensed he was trying to lead her someplace, someplace she didn't want to go. She had admitted to being in the house in case she had left a print behind, but she wasn't fool enough to admit to being the one who had broken in. She straightened up, throwing her shoulders back and showing her Cafe Hon T-shirt to what she hoped was full advantage. It was the one T-shirt she had brought from home, back when she thought she was making a quick overnight trip to Charlottesville. She and Crow had bought their Cafe Hon shirts together, and she had donned hers that morning, thinking that it would remind him of the times they had shared. She had been so sure that she was going to find him today.
'And the reason you just didn't use your cell phone to begin with-?'
'The roaming fees on my service are really high.'
'Uh-huh. Now here's the thing I'm wondering. Who cut the glass?'
Tess wondered if it was possible to leave too few fingerprints behind. Did he need a warrant to open her trunk? She had the presence of mind to hide her tools in the spare tire well, and she put her gun there, too, as she still wasn't sure if her license to carry was good in Texas.
'Who cut the glass, Miss Monaghan? You can tell me.'
'But I don't know.'
'Well, who do you think? What would be logical?'
'The dead guy?'
The sheriff pretended to think about her answer. 'Okay, I see what you're saying. This guy was trying to break in when someone came along, shot him, and then put him in the shed. Or maybe Mrs. Conyers was up here from San Antonio one weekend and shot a prowler, then forgot to mention it to me.'
Tess had been nauseous so long now that it was beginning to seem normal to her. She wondered if her stomach would flip and jump inside her for the rest of her life. 'I thought it was the Barrett place.'
'Really?' He grinned, sure he had her. 'Who told you that?'
'You did. Remember? You asked me what I was doing up at the old Barrett place.'
The sheriff had a poker face, but his body was not quite as disciplined. His chest seemed to collapse a little, and he rubbed his index finger and thumb together, almost as if he had felt the fabric of her shirt in his hand, only to have her wriggle free.
'Barrett was her maiden name. The Barretts go way back in this county. They go way back in Texas.'
'What's that-thirty, forty years?' Of course, no one in Tess's family had arrived until the 20th century was well under way, but the sheriff didn't know that.
'Texas was a free-standing republic in 1836.'
'That's right,' Tess said agreeably. 'You seceded from Mexico so you could have slaves, right?'
The sheriff was not impressed that she knew this particular bit of Texas history. 'Now here's the thing. That old boy up at the Barretts' wasn't killed there. No blood. No blowback. You know what that is, don't you? You shoot a man in the face with a rifle, there's going to be brains and stuff everywhere.' He held up the trash can, but Tess shook her head. She had nothing left. But moon pies, through no fault of their own, would be forever banned from her diet. 'So he was killed somewhere else, maybe not even in my county, and left here for me to clean up. Now that kinda pisses me off.'
'I can see that.'
'You got any idea who that ol' boy is, by the way?'
'
'So you didn't go poking around in his pockets.' The sheriff grinned at the way her mouth thinned and tightened, her gag reflexes working again. But she just shook her head and swallowed.
'Well, given the condition of his body, we'll have to send him to the medical examiner, but his papers say he's Tom Darden, a recent guest of the state prison system over to Huntsville. A San Antonio boy. Cops down there tell us he's been hanging out with an old buddy of his, Laylan Weeks, who was sprung at the same time.'
The sheriff leaned toward her, hands clasped in that prayerful position again, trying to look kind and concerned. But whereas a genuine good ol' boy might have been able to pull this off, this technocrat was nothing more than a virtual Bubba. Tess stared back at him, unmoved, determined to say nothing unless necessary.
'Now if you happened to have a glass cutter and you happened to use it to get into the house after you found ol' Tom, that wouldn't be quite the same as breaking and entering, see? We'd call that a mitigating circumstance.'
His words offered no comfort to Tess. Who needed legal terms unless one was going before a judge?
'I've thought of something,' she said suddenly.
The sheriff smiled.
'I guess his
'Laylan and Tom weren't burglars. According to what I've been told about them, they're the kind of boys who'd put their fists through the glass, and enjoy doing it.'
'People change in prison. I mean, that's the point, isn't it?'
'Are you asking me or telling?'
She met his eyes directly. 'Just guessing. That's legal, isn't it?'
'It depends on what kind of guesses you make.'
'Here's one: I'm guessing you don't have any reason to hold me and I'd like to go now. Unless you're going to detain me and charge me. In which case, I'd like to call a lawyer.'
'Why would I charge you?'
'I don't know. That's what I've been wondering for the almost two hours you've held me here. I got lost. Okay, I trespassed up on the old Barnes place. Fine me, I'll pay it.'
'Barrett.'
'I found a dead body and I called the police.
'Did you know Tom Darden or Laylan Weeks, Miss Monaghan?' The sheriff was no longer taking the time to mispronounce her name, and what little drawl he had was gone, replaced with a clipped, precise voice. 'You one of those girls who likes bad boys? Did you hook up with these two and find you were over your head? Because they're pretty bad. They've done things that you don't want to know about.'
'I've been in Texas for less than seventy-two hours. I haven't had a chance to make any new friends.' She stood up, reached for the Dentyne pack he had left on the desk. 'I have been staying with some friends of my aunt up in Austin, and they'll be wondering where I am. So if you don't mind-'
'I'll want a number where you're staying up in Austin,' the sheriff said. 'And one back home.'
'Sure,' Tess said. She gave him her own home phone number. Let him talk to the mechanized version of herself. As for Keith's number-well, if the sheriff called there, Keith would tell him she had gone back to Baltimore. Because that's what she planned to tell Keith. Her work was done, she was heading home, taking the scenic route, stretching the 1,600-mile trip over several days. Let the sheriff call out the highway patrol in every state between Texas and Maryland. They'd never find her there-because she'd be here.
