In Big Trouble

'That's not fair, Dad. She was only four at the time.' Now it was Clay pleading his case before Tess. 'We were playing Moses in the bulrushes. She honestly thought the wicker basket would hold me.'

'Right, a sewing basket was going to carry you down the Blanco River. It sank less than three feet from our dock. But at least Emmie admitted what she did back then, without falling back on excuses. By the time she was a teenager, she'd scream and sob when anyone tried to thwart her. I can't help how I am. I crawled through my mother's blood. I saw her dead body, even if I can't remember it, the memory is there. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that lament.'

'It's not a bad reason, as reasons go,' Tess said.

'True. But Emmie wants it both ways. If she can't control her own actions, she needs to be locked away until she can. I was happy to pay for whatever help she needed. She wasn't willing to take it.'

'Dad-'

'Clay, you don't know half the things that girl put me through.'

'Yes, I do,' Clay said. He was not as small as Tess had thought at first, it was just that Gus Sterne was so large. 'I know more than you think I do.'

'Have you been in touch with Emmie? You are strictly forbidden-'

'I'm twenty-two, Dad. I'm of age. I can drink, marry, go to war, and even talk to anyone I please. But, no, Dad, I haven't talked to Emmie.' He was speaking to Tess now. 'And I don't know where she is. Dad's right about one thing. This is the last place she would come. After all, there's been a restraining order against her for five years. She's not allowed within one hundred feet of this house, the office, or anyone in the Sterne family. But I guess that's old news, here in San Antonio. Not supposed to talk about it, not right now. Can't rain on the King of Barbecue's parade by reminding him how much he's hated by the girl he raised like his very own daughter-' Clay choked a little on the last word, as if he found it distasteful. 'No, we just can't have Emmie crashing this party, can we, Dad?'

'Clay-'

'Do you know that my father was a King Antonio twice? He's presided over two Fiestas, but it still wasn't enough for him. He had to make up his own event and crown himself king, forever and ever. Everybody loves Gus Sterne-everyone but his ex-wife and his blood relations.'

Except for uttering his son's name, Gus Sterne had not tried to speak throughout this rant. Now Clay looked at his father expectantly, as if he feared a blow. As if he would welcome one.

'Finished?' his father asked, putting a hand on the young man's shoulders, which were still heaving with emotion.

Clay flinched and nodded at the same time.

'Then let's go have our supper, son. Manuela made the hunter's stew you like.'

'With veal?' Clay asked.

'With veal.'

Tess watched them go down the walk. Gus's big arm lay lightly across his son's round shoulders, yet Clay walked as if the weight were crushing him.

Chapter 19

Technically, Tess awoke to the phone the next morning, but it was really Tyner's voice that roused her, its volume unaffected by the distance it had to travel. As she was no longer sitting in the back of a patrol car, she wasn't quite so nostalgic for the sound.

'You sure have made a mess of things here,' he began. No hello, no how are you. Tyner liked to surge into a conversation the way rowers jump across the start in shorter races. 'How is that everyone knows to call my office since you skipped town?'

'I changed the message on my machine, then used call forwarding, activated long-distance. Isn't technology great?' She drew out the vowel sound in the last word until it became two, three syllables, the way the women here did in the impossibly glossy grocery stores. Look at this mango. Isn't it great? Look at these tuberoses. Aren't they great? Look at all that Gulf Coast shrimp isn't it greaaaaaaaaate?

'Trust me, it wasn't that great when Mr. Cesnik showed up on my doorstep, yelling about sausages.'

'Pierogies,' Tess corrected. 'Cecilia's dad, remember? I told you about him. He added a little restaurant to his tavern this summer, started serving authentic Polish food. He did so well that Casimir Cudnik, his biggest competitor, copied him. But he's using frozen pierogies, and passing them off as homemade. I did a Dumpster dive two weeks ago and found the boxes. But you know, Cudnik could accuse us of putting them there. I guess it doesn't constitute proof. What do you think?'

'I don't give a damn about pierogies, frozen or fresh. You have a business to run, and you better come back here and run it. Why are you still there, anyway? Kitty told me you found Crow last week.'

'Crow wasn't the first thing I found here,' Tess sighed. She was beginning to understand Marianna's reluctance to repeat the same story over and over again.

Still, it was strangely clarifying to rehash everything for Tyner. She worked in a simple, chronological order, and in her mind she saw one of those old-fashioned movie maps, a dotted line tracking her progress from Charlottesville to Austin, then to Twin Sisters and San Antonio. Tyner listened without interrupting. When he wasn't shouting, he was a wonderful listener.

'So Crow has gotten himself mixed up in these murders, old and new,' Tyner said at last. 'And he keeps giving you every indication that something's going to happen this weekend, but you don't know what, or why.'

'You got it.'

'Has it occurred to you that Crow is being reticent about Emmie not out of misplaced chivalry or blind love, but because he's involved, too?'

'Crow would never be mixed up in a murder,' she said, hoping her voice conveyed more conviction than she felt. 'This is a guy who couldn't put out a mousetrap.'

'It wouldn't be so very hard to justify killing a man like Tom Darden, if you believed he was a killer.'

'But that was information Emmie didn't have, only the cops.'

'This detective, Guzman, said he didn't tell the family members what he suspected. But there are few true secrets in the world. San Antonio sounds like a small-big city, just like Baltimore.'

'I wish I were in Baltimore,' Tess said.

'Why?'

'Because then I could go to the Brass Elephant, rest my head on the bar, and moan softly until Victor made me a double.' A Victor double was another bartender's quadruple. 'Then I'd call Feeney over at the Beacon-Light, and he'd help me figure it out. He always has little bits of information stored away, like a squirrel.'

'So all you need is a South Texas Feeney,' Tyner said.

'Too bad I don't know one. There was this old hack, Jimmy Ahern, who wrote that book I was telling you about, but I haven't seen his byline in the Eagle. He's probably dead, or retired. On the other hand-' She felt like a deep sea diver, going after a tiny pearl somewhere deep in her memory banks. 'I do know a reporter down here who helped me, when I was doing that background check on Rosita Ruiz. He might still be around. A. J…Sheppard.'

'Now you're thinking.' Tess knew if she could see Tyner on the other end of the line, he would be tapping his forehead with his index finger. Add that to her list of reasons to be glad the videophone had never caught on.

'Silly me. I thought I was thinking all along.'

He wasn't finished with her. 'Now, how are your workouts going?'

'They're going. No shell, and no river even if I had one, but I'm jumping rope, running, doing pushups and situps.'

'How far did you run yesterday?'

'I didn't run yesterday, exactly-'

'Six miles,' Tyner said. 'Interval training. Are there any hills around there? I always imagine Texas as flat and dusty.'