In Big Trouble

long after her lemon chicken was gone.

The paperback for which she had paid twenty-five dollars had sold for two dollars when it came out, and that was still a dollar more than it was worth. The Green Glass: An Inside Look at San Antonio's Unsolved Triple Homicide was a failure even on its own low terms. Much too late to be a quickie book-it had been published almost five years after the murders-and without the virtues found in great true-crime writing, it was a shallow, vapid piece of work, with more padding than a training bra. Then there was the bonus of those black-and-white photos from the murder scene. Yummy.

The writer, a local journalist named Jimmy Ahern, spent the first hundred pages explaining-repeatedly-how important the Sternes were in San Antonio, and how common tragedy was in the family. 'Bad luck stalked them,' he had written, 'as relentless as any serial killer.' It was one of his more inspired lines.

The Sterne money had started in meat: They had been butchers whose small shop had grown into the supplier for the city's finest steakhouses after World War II. August Frederick Sterne and Loretta Anita Sterne-Gus and Lollie-had been first cousins, raised as brother and sister by their grandparents when both sets of parents had been killed in a private plane crash off Padre Island. Lollie-'the vivacious blond beauty,' as Ahern wrote reflexively at every mention of her name-had married Horace Morgan of El Paso while in college, but they separated while she was pregnant with Emmie. He had not left a note when he committed suicide in his family's hunting camp, which freed Ahern to speculate freely that he was despondent over Lollie's desertion.

Meanwhile, sober, serious Gus had skipped college and gone straight to work at Sterne Foods. This made him 'the last of the self-made men,' although Tess couldn't see how bypassing school to run your grandparents' business qualified one for Horatio Alger status. But Gus had put his mark on Sterne Foods, convincing his cautious grandfather to move away from supplying other restaurants and to start their own steakhouses.

A string of small diners had followed, then a successful German restaurant that Gus had tried to take national. That venture had failed so miserably that the privately held company almost had to seek outside investors. Then Lollie opened Espejo Verde and its cash flow, although relatively modest, helped Sterne Foods regain its footing. 'People flocked to Espejo Verde not just for the food, but for Lollie, whose vivacious blond beauty drew them like moths to a flame,' Ahern had written. Torturous prose, yet Tess thought she understood what he was trying to say. Emmie had that same quality.

'Lollie brought a new brand of showmanship to San Antonio's restaurant business, and a new kind of flair to her family's business.' Sadly, Ahern didn't provide many examples of that showmanship, although he did note that Lollie once had her hands insured by Lloyd's of London for one million dollars. A publicity gimmick, it was intended to counter another restaurateur's bitter claim that she was a spoiled rich girl who spent all her time in the dining room, playing hostess, while others prepared the meals for which she was celebrated. 'But nothing could dim Lollie's success-until the night of December third.'

Cue the spooky organ music. Now that she finally had arrived at that seminal event, Tess found herself less than eager to read about the murders. She skipped ahead to the inevitable 'Where are they now?' epilogue at the book's end. Five years after the murders, Gus had started the Barbecue King, with such great results that the Sterne fortunes had quadrupled, and he was one of the city's leading philanthropists. The baby christened Emily Sterne Morgan was now known as Emmie Sterne, although she had never been formally adopted by her cousin. Patrolman Al Guzman had made detective. Marianna Barrett Conyers had become a virtual recluse, who would never speak of the night in question. That was Aherne's phrase, the night in question. Tess couldn't see how Emmie's godmother figured into the story, even if she had been Lollie's best friend. More padding on Ahern's part, she assumed.

Sighing resignedly, Tess flipped back to the descriptions of the murder, which took up the middle third of the slender book. Ahern's prose puffed and panted, but his ability to describe blood in varied ways could not disguise the fact that he had no firsthand information-and that the investigation of the crime had stalled almost immediately. The murder scene was all Ahern had, and he kept returning to it. The word 'grisly' figured largely.

Lollie had been found near the door, killed by one shot to the back of the head. The cook, Pilar Rodriguez, was nearby, also killed execution style. Frank Conyers, chief financial officer of Sterne Foods, was in the kitchen, where he had been going over the books at a long wooden table. Nearby cans of gasoline and a pile of rags indicated that the killers had planned to burn the restaurant, perhaps to hide their handiwork. Their failure to go through with this part of the plan could only be attributed to Emmie, not quite two, in her playpen in Pilar's small bedroom off the kitchen. She had blood on her hands, elbows, and right cheek, but it wasn't hers. Police had never said how Frank Conyers had been killed, only that he had been stabbed instead of shot.

Tess's tired mind caught the name on the second mention: Frank Conyers. Because everyone used all three names when they spoke of Marianna-and because 'Barrett' seemed to provoke so much more awe and respect than 'Conyers'-she had missed the connection. Frank was Marianna's husband. She had not only lied about the circumstances of Lollie's death, she had neglected to mention her own husband had been involved in the same 'accident.' But why? The book said only that Marianna, Gus, and virtually everyone in their social set were at a Monday Night Football party, watching the Dallas Cowboys play the Redskins. 'The party at Gus and Ida Marie Sterne's home on Hermosa had a ‘South of the Border' theme,' Jimmy Ahern had written, probably cribbing from the society columnist. 'The menu included fajitas, borracho beans, and, ironically, a guacamole salad made from Lollie Sterne's very own secret recipe.'

Just holding this book in her hand made Tess feel dirty. She would have tossed it into a trash can on her way out of the Vietnam, but it was hard to throw away something that had cost twenty-five dollars. She still couldn't fathom why Marianna had misled her so thoroughly, but Tess could see why Gus Sterne had tried to kill this ugly little book, as well as its publisher. The Barbecue King. She was reminded of another king, who had tried to rid his country of spindles so that Sleeping Beauty might not prick her finger. Ah, but there was always a spindle waiting somewhere in the kingdom, in some forgotten tower. In the end, kings could never protect their princesses.

A ringing phone woke Tess from a not very restful sleep. Her mind seemed to be stuck, like a video machine playing back the same scene over and over again. She kept hearing Crow's words, yet it was the black and white photos from the old murder scene that ran across her mind. Ruined everything, ruined everything, ruined everything.

'Hello?' she asked the receiver. Then she figured out it worked better if you picked it up. 'Hello?' With the curtains drawn, the room was dark, so the bedside clock proclaiming it was eight o'clock wasn't much help. She could have been sleeping for four hours, or sixteen, or even twenty-eight.

'Why do you sound so groggy?' Kitty asked.

'Napping,' Tess muttered, looking at her watch, still trying to anchor herself in time and space. All her instruments agreed: She was in La Casita on Broadway in San Antonio, Texas, a city of a million-plus souls, few of whom seemed to like her very much. Esskay was stretched out on the bed next to her. It was the last Sunday in October, unless it was Monday. And if Kitty were on the line, demanding to know why she sounded groggy, deductive reasoning meant it must be a time when normal people are awake.

'How'd you find me, anyway?' she asked her aunt. 'I didn't even wait for the machine when I called you yesterday.'

'I starred-69 your ass, as the expression goes. Maybe I should be the detective in the family.'

'You want my business, it's yours. What's up? Everyone okay?' The Sternes' tragic history had reminded her how fragile family happiness was, how quickly an unknown and unexpected evil could shatter everything one loved.

'Tyner called, so did Pat. I'm not sure which one is more furious with you.'

'Pat?' Her mind was still cluttered with the weekend's events.

'Patrick Monaghan, your father, my brother. Remember him? He seems to hold me personally responsible for you being in Texas. I tried to tell him you sneaked out without letting anyone know where you were going, but he wasn't mollified. And Tyner's over here every hour of the day and night, wanting to know if I've heard from you. I am not your answering service, Tesser. Call these people-and talk to them, not their machines. Write them postcards. All they want to know is that you're okay.'

'Okay,' Tess said, but she wasn't agreeing so much as repeating Kitty's last word back to her.

'You are all right, aren't you?'

'Sure, yeah. Just tired.'