In Big Trouble

datebook. She worried for a moment that some police officer might be pawing through it even as she and Guzman spoke, then remembered the datebook was back at La Casita. With Esskay and the double bed with the polyester spread, which suddenly seemed the most wonderful bed in the world to her.

'He was trying to strike out on his own, make it as a musician. Nothing sinister.'

'How did he hook up with Emmie Sterne?'

'They met in Austin.' Had she just been lulled into telling Guzman something he didn't know? 'Or maybe here. I'm not sure. She was looking for a guitarist, he was looking for a singer.'

'What about Gus Sterne, her cousin. He have any connection to this band?'

'Not to my knowledge. Someone told me they were on the outs.'

'Yeah? Everyone in this town loves her cousin, and she hates his guts? That's pretty strange, don't you think?'

'I'd say it was about par for the course as families go.'

Guzman extended his index finger, as if awarding a point.

'So you know the whole story about Emmie Sterne, then? The poor little princess, orphaned before she was even three years old? A daddy she never knew, a mommy she barely remembers.'

'Marianna Barrett Conyers told me how both Emmie's parents died in accidents.' If he had already spoken to Marianna about the shotgun, he knew she had been there. She wasn't giving him anything new.

'Accidents?' Guzman did a double-take, neat as any professional comic. 'I suppose you could call it that. I mean, rich people have fancy words for everything, so why not? Horace Morgan shot his head off after his wife left him. I guess you'd call that an accident. Meanwhile, Lollie Sterne died in a really big accident. An accidental triple homicide that Tom Darden was going to help me solve.'

Tess suddenly remembered where she had learned that invaluable bit of trivia about British secret service agents and sleep deprivation: It had been on the VH1 'popup' video for Duran Duran's 'A View to a Kill.' Gee, if only VH1 had provided more invaluable training for the up-and-coming private investigator. For example: what to do when you got hit with a fact so important, so central to everything that you had been doing, that it felt like someone had slapped you across the face with a wet towel.

'Emmie's mother was murdered?'

'Uh-huh.' Guzman was really enjoying himself now. 'Killed in what looked like in a botched robbery at her restaurant, Espejo Verde. It was a big deal. If you were older, I bet you'd remember it. Some local sleaze even got a book out of it. I was the first cop on the scene.' He waited, as if used to people reacting when they heard that fact. 'Someone had heard a child crying from the restaurant late on a Monday night, when it was supposed to be closed. It was Emmie, in a playpen in a room off the kitchen.'

'Where were…Could she?' Just trying to form the right question made Tess felt queasy and prurient. Emmie's strange preoccupation with dead bodies and blood suddenly made more sense. Everything about Emmie suddenly made more sense.

'Her mother was in the dining room, along with the cook. One shot each. The third victim, a man, had been left in the kitchen. Technically, I shouldn't have touched anything, not even Emmie, but I couldn't leave that baby alone in there. My oldest boy had just been born. She wasn't crying, she wasn't even awake, but there was blood on her. Not much, just streaks on her arms and hands. As if she had crawled through it.'

'The killers put her back in her playpen?'

'I don't know. There's a lot of stuff we don't know about Espejo Verde, things as basic as the motive. It looked like a robbery, but the weekend receipts would have been in the bank Monday morning, and the restaurant was closed Monday nights. Even two robbers as stupid as Darden and his buddy Laylan Weeks should have known that.'

'Are you sure they did it?'

Guzman shrugged. 'They were lowlifes, they ripped off convenience stores for beer money. Then, out of nowhere, they get popped for this botched kidnapping and get sent away to prison. They dropped some hints, in Huntsville, like they knew something about Espejo Verde. Twenty years is a long time, you run out of stuff to say, and they might have been bragging, trying to seem tougher than they were. But they were the only leads I had, and now one is dead and the other is missing. Meanwhile, the rifle that probably killed Darden just happens to be in the house where Lollie Sterne's daughter lives.'

Tess wasn't really paying attention. She was thinking about a crying toddler, traces of blood on her baby hands. Jackie's Laylah had lost her biological mother at an even younger age, but she hadn't seen anything, and the child psychiatrists were already heaping sermons on Jackie's head about how and when to tell her about her past.

Guzman was still talking to her, she'd better listen.

'So you see, when Tom Darden turns up dead on a ranch where Emmie Sterne has been known to go, and a gun from that ranch ends up under your friend's bed in the house he shares with her-well, a person has to make some connections, don't you think?'

'Only if Emmie knew about Darden and Weeks.' Her response had been automatic, but something twitched in Guzman's face, and she knew she had found a weak spot. So she pressed. 'She doesn't, does she? The family doesn't know about this lead you developed. You probably sat on it, waiting, hoping to surprise them with an arrest.'

'I'm not telling you everything we know,' Guzman said sullenly.

'And I don't know anything. It's Emmie Sterne you need. Not me, and not Crow.'

'Good idea. Do you happen to know where we can find her? There are only two roads into that neighborhood, and I've had a cop stationed at each one all night, waiting for the two roomies to come home. You swam into our net eventually. But she never came home.'

Breakfast at the Alamo, Tess thought, but she didn't volunteer the information. At this point, she wasn't sure if finding Emmie would help or hurt Crow.

Guzman was still waiting for her answer, allowing another silence to fill the room, when the policeman who had been watching the door poked his head in and motioned to the detective. The two left the room together, shutting the door behind them. Tess couldn't make out the words, but she heard Guzman's voice getting louder and angrier. The door opened again, and his kind face had been transformed into a furious one.

'You can go,' he said curtly.

'Go where?' Her car was at Crow's duplex, which she wasn't sure she could find again. She knew the place was close to La Casita, somewhere in the folds of the park, but she didn't remember much from the trip, except the feel of Crow's hands on her body, his mouth on her neck.

'An officer will take you to your car.'

'No, we'll take her, Detective.' Rick Trejo was leaning against the door jamb. He wore the preppy clothes and cowboy boots of the night before, but Tess was sure these were different, cleaner versions. He was freshly shaven, too, and his face had the smooth, rested look of someone who had enjoyed at least a few hours of sleep. If she hadn't been so relieved to see him, she might have hated him for looking so well-rested. She hated everyone who had slept in the last eight hours.

'It's no trouble,' Guzman said.

'I'm sure it's not. I'm sure you'd love to have her in a patrol car just a little while longer, ask her a few more questions. I'd prefer to have her come with me and my client. It's her choice, of course. But if she's free to go, she's free to choose how she goes.'

'Yeah, well, tell your client not to leave town anytime soon. I bet we have him back down here before the week is out.'

'Detective, you can talk to him anytime you want-as long as I'm with him. I only hope you won't drag him down here again unless you're prepared to charge him.' Trejo smiled at Guzman. 'Cheer up, buddy. It's not my fault that the DA says you fucked up. He sounded kinda mad, by the way. Not that I talked to him. I just could hear how loud he was screaming when your boss was on the phone with him. C'mon, little Yankee gal. Vamanos.'

Tess, thoroughly confused, followed him. She felt guilty somehow, as if she had chosen the slick lawyer over the earnest cop, but she didn't see what choice she had.

'How did-' she began to ask in the hall.

'Not here,' Rick said quickly. 'We'll talk in the car.'