©2018 Eddy Rogers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses

permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-54394-149-4 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54394-150-0 (ebook)

Contents

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Epilogue

My novel, a sequel to The Lucky Strike, is a work of fiction and is not autobiographical. However, some personalities and events in the book are similar to people and events that I have encountered over the years, with the names and events altered. John Mariner, the main character, and his friend Larry Wagner, characters in this novel and in my prequel, The Wrong Choices, are figments of my imagination.

This book is dedicated to my three faithful editors, Pat, Rachel and Laurel. They have been of great help in suggesting changes and corrections, although any remaining errors are of my own doing. Enjoy!

Eddy Rogers

August 2018

1

John Mariner sat dozing in his lounge chair under the gazebo above his big pond, “tanque” in Texanese. “Life’s good,” he thought to himself. His cell phone rang.

“Hey, John, long time no see. Saw your name in the paper today.”

“Larry! Good to hear your voice. Don’t tell me that word of the Longstreet murder has gotten all the way to Houston.”

“Sure has. Believe it or not, a decade has passed since we solved those suicides and murders in Houston,” Larry Wagner said. “You’ve gotta give me background on Longstreet. Pretty much all the paper said was that she was rich, alone and killed in the dark of night up there on her ranch in her bedroom. No suspects. It’s got my juices flowing. Retirement’s driving me crazy. I’ve been idle since 2012, but for chuckles I’ve kept my law enforcement certification current and signed on as a part-time private investigator for Crowe and Cassidy.”

Larry had been a good friend of mine when I lived in Houston, a senior HPD detective. He’d been mentored by my dad, who’d also been an HPD detective. We’d teamed up to solve a riddle involving four people who had died under mysterious circumstances, two of which were clients, presumed to be suicides that turned out to be murders. When I moved to Blanco County seven years ago, we lost touch.

“So how did you get involved in another murder?” Wagner asked.

“The new sheriff, Bob Hauffler, called me. He’d been the chief deputy for the previous sheriff, Joe Garza, for years. Joe was sheriff when the Lucky Strike killings went down. He retired just last month. Bob called Monday morning a week ago with the smartass greeting, ‘Hey John, you gotta be a snakebit lawyer for sure. Lost another client.’ I said ‘What are you talking about?’ and he told me that Betty Longstreet had been murdered. He knew that I’d handled her purchase of the Lucky Strike ranch.

“It’ll take a while to do a brain dump on Longstreet, but I can give you the highlights. As the newspaper indicated, the murder’s frustrating the police. Too many suspects. Betty Longstreet Johnson grew up the daughter of a mega-wealthy Houston oil baron, Byron Longstreet, the youngest of his three children. The others, two sons, joined the business, BAL Resources. Over the years, Betty accumulated a lot of wealth, as did her father and brothers. The family successfully rode the cycles of the energy industry — one of the few — precisely selling assets at the peak and buying in again at the trough. Their oil and gas holdings multiplied many times over as fractional drilling — “fracking” — became a mainstay in Texas.

“Betty led a volatile life, however. She got married at twenty, had two sons, then divorced, calling her husband an unproductive n’er-do-well. Betty, gorgeous, lithe, and young, drew men like flies. Tall for a female at five ten, she had engaging grey eyes, light brown hair, and a figure men die for. She worked out often. Her social life hit the society pages regularly, and not always in nice terms. She had a number of prominent boyfriends until she settled on Carroll Johnson. Her antics over time cooled her relationships with her father and brothers.

“Johnson’s another whole story. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, rich people are different from you and me. Johnson’s a wealthy investment banker. He works for an energy-oriented regional investment banking firm, rounding up money for people like Byron Longstreet. He’s the model of an investment banker — tall, dark and handsome, as they say. Hollywood good looks and always, at least in Houston, dressed to the hilt. Bright blue eyes. Nothing in common with the likes of us.”

“Sounds like quite a pair. Can’t see them fitting in up there,” Larry said.

“Betty and Carroll appeared be a normal, happy, high-society couple, even though he emanated from Chicago and she grew up in Midland during her father’s wildcatting days in the Permian Basin. About four years ago, Betty decided to buy the Lucky Strike. You and I talked about the ranch when all that happened. The ranch and main ranch house are magnificent. She thought the thousand-acre working ranch near Blanco could be purchased at a deep discount because of the killings that happened in the mansion, but Carroll couldn’t get enthused about staying at a remote ranch in sparsely populated Blanco County. She tried to convince him that he could work from San Antonio, almost fifty miles away, but Carroll preferred the busy pace that that his Houston lifestyle offered. Even so, in late 2012, Betty used her own money — ten million — to buy the Lucky Strike from Gerald Alexander’s estate.

“The crown jewel of the property is an eight thousand square foot hacienda, or rather mansion, on the top of a hill overlooking the Blanco valley. Betty had seen my name in the paper when the Alexander killings happened, noted my involvement, and when she decided to buy the ranch, she hired me to do the legal work.

“As you’d expect, the estate sold the place at a low price because few people want to buy a place where people have been murdered. As you well know, Miles Richter, Alexander’s henchman, shot Alexander in his own living room after an ugly confrontation over who was responsible for killing my client, Charles Davis. I was there for that and ended up shooting Richter before he killed me too, after he’d turned his pistol on Alexander and then me.

“Back to Betty. She spent more and more time at the ranch after she bought it, which she renamed the Longstreet Land and Cattle Company Ranch. Carroll, however, commuted every other weekend between Houston and Blanco and continued his investment banking thing in Houston during the week, leaving Betty alone much of the time except for the people who kept up the place. Two weeks ago, Thursday, the twenty-third of October, Betty didn’t follow her usual mid-morning routine of calling down for coffee in her bedroom. Concerned, the maid found her in her bed, sprawled face down in her expensive silk nightgown, a bullet in the back of her head. No one but Betty is at the mansion at night. No signs of forced entry. No fingerprints. Nothing missing except for her cell phone and some gold. I’ll explain that in a minute. The windows and doors are all Andersen brand, double-lock fixtures, so no one could have forced entry without leaving some tell-tale signs. The sheriff’s deputies found the French doors to an outside porch unlocked when they got to the murder scene. The gutters had some scuff marks, but the forensics guys couldn’t tell whether the marks were recent or not. They could have been made earlier, for instance when the ranch employees were trimming trees away from the house.

“Carroll Johnson came up here right after they told him about Betty. He called and asked me to handle the probate, since I knew the ranch and knew Betty personally. He seemed quite emotional on the phone, but in a distant way. Hard to describe. Given the amount of money involved, I jumped at the chance despite the murder.”

“Hell, John. That’s one for the books. Being rich doesn’t exempt you from violence. Remember my HPD homicide motto? Murders involve either greed or perverted love. I betcha one of the people who stood to inherit something killed her.”

“The cops have multiple suspects, but none stand out so far. My job’s not to figure out who did it, but to get Betty’s money to the right place. I’d love to see you, Larry. Seems like forever since I saw you last. We’ve got a guest bedroom, and you can bring your wife up with you. You can help me unravel the murder. Carroll’s the executor, but he lives in Houston so I have to do all the dirty work. I’ve got to make sure that the killer doesn’t get any of her money. As you know, anyone involved in a murder is automatically disqualified from benefitting from the victim’s estate.”

“We shoulda kept up better,” said Larry. “My wife, Helga, passed two years ago. That’s another reason I’m bored. And lonely. No companionship.”

“Sorry to hear, Larry. When can you come up?”

“Got nothin’ on my dance card here. Mind if I come up tomorrow?”

“Sure, come on.” I felt sorry for Larry. Until I got involved with Carla, I was all alone. Lonely, rather. Loneliness is different than being alone.

•••

As sheriff of Blanco County, Bob Hauffler headed up the murder investigation. The Texas Rangers and the FBI lent help where they could with forensics and lab work. I called Bob to find out if anything new had popped up that could help me.

“Nope, nothing new except one thing. You know, Betty had two ranch hands managing the cattle on the ranch. They’ve done a pretty good job keeping the brush and cedar down over that thousand acres. Their names are Gus and Jake. Gus Binion even has a college degree, in English, from Kentucky Tech. They live in one of the eastern barns Alexander was using to grow pot. Fixed it up a bit, but still not a party palace. Just the essentials. The striking thing about their abode is the number of empty Milwaukee Best beer cans piled up behind the barn where Betty couldn’t see them. Anyway, as the two of them were checking the outer game fences yesterday, they came to a ten-square-foot piece of fence that had been cut. Someone carved out a section of the twelve-foot high game fence, starting at eight feet high and then across for eight feet, and down one side. They said the cut part had been bent back and then put back. I don’t know what that means, but there it is.”

“Sounds like a way for a four-wheel ATV to get into the property. Think it’s associated with the murder?”

“Who knows? Too many frickin’ poachers and hunters around here looking for deer and feral hogs, trespassing on other people’s properties. The game warden and I get complaints every week. Then again, it may have been the way in and out for the murderer. The entrance gate’s pretty awesome, not anything that a stranger could get through.”

“So who’s made it onto your suspect list at this point,” I asked.

“It’s pretty long, actually. The most logical suspect is her husband, Carroll, but he appears to have an airtight alibi that he was in Houston. He could have found someone else to do it. Then there’s Jake and Gus, but they don’t seem likely. Betty Johnson had two kids by her early first marriage. The younger one, Paul Scranton, lives in the other long barn Alexander built. Scranton’s customized it. He’s an artist and seems to be living the life of Riley. The older one, Frank, is nowhere to be found, and Gus told us that he’s a druggie, he thinks homeless, living in Atlanta. That Scranton doesn’t keep in touch. We’re trying to find him. Next, we have the Reverend Charles Blaise. Betty goes to an evangelical cowboy Bible church south of town where Blaise presides as the pastor. Both Johnson and Gus say that she spent a lot of time with Blaise. She told each of them several times that she gave the church a lot of money. Carroll thinks that Blaise is a charlatan, an Elmer Gantry wolf-in-sheep’s clothing kinda guy, but he doesn’t have anything specific to base that on. We have to check out all the possibilities.”

Bob continued. “This could just be a robbery, but it had to involve someone close to Betty. Turns out she loved owning hard assets, that is, gold and diamonds. Mind you, she didn’t think that the economy would collapse; rather, she feared that, with all the debt owed around the globe, currencies would inflate big time at some point, like what happened in Germany in the 1930’s. Thankfully, Carroll thinks she kept the diamonds in a safety deposit box at the Blanco National Bank, so you and Carroll will have to get to that when he’s up here. The gold is another story. According to Carroll, she’d buy one ounce coins and ten ounce bars every several weeks from a wholesaler. He could access her accounts online. Over the past year, based on her payments to the wholesaler, she’d bought more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars of coins and bars. Carroll told us she’d keep the gold in a safe room that has always been a part of the house, accessible through a metal door behind her dresses in her big bedroom closet. When Carroll came to the ranch after the killing, he opened the safe room door —it wasn’t locked — and there was only one coin worth about twelve hundred dollars. Hard to think that a common thief would stumble on the safe room and the gold. Someone else, someone who knew how to get in and where the gold was, has to be involved. If the killer was there to rob her, he had to know in advance where she stored the gold. And why they’d leave anything doesn’t make sense.”

“Well,” I said, “I can add to the mystery. I’ve got three different will provisions here, sent to me by my friend, Cloyd Baker at Brown and Cutsinger. The first one Betty executed right after she got married. That one, a fairly standard will, left everything to her boys. The second one Betty executed fifteen months ago and created specific bequests. That one leaves a substantial amount to Blaise and a nice sum to Gus, but not a lot. She also created a trust for the rest of it to be administered by her brothers for the boys. The third one, which she executed almost a year ago, revoked the previous codicils. That document’s odd, first leaving a tidy sum to Gus and then the rest, one-half to her husband and her son Paul in equal shares and the other half each to Blaise and his church, again in equal portions. Carroll thinks that counting the ranch, the diamonds, several trusts, and her other assets, we’re talking about an estate of twenty or thirty million.”

“That’s enough dough to put all those beneficiaries and ex-beneficiaries on the suspect list,” Bob said. “Next thing for me to do is retrieve her emails and analyze them. She had automatic backups of her emails in the cloud. I’ll see what cell phone records we can find from her provider.”

“I’ll help any way I can. Say, a long-time friend, Larry Wagner, is coming up for a visit. He was head detective for HPD before he retired four years ago. I’ll brief him and see what he thinks. He’s got good instincts. Let’s see if we can have lunch.”

“Good. I’ll make you buy. Mexican food.”

“Larry’s into barbeque. We’ll see what he thinks of the Old 300.”

“Good. Let me know if you guys figure this out.”

2

The entire Longstreet story boggled my mind. Clearly out of my usual domain of wills, petty disputes, real estate purchases and divorces. I felt strangely disengaged from Betty’s murder. I didn’t know her as a person, and her lifestyle and wealth differed starkly from mine. I figured I’d concentrate on getting the money she had to the right people, the ones who weren’t involved in killing her. Just a lawyer doing his job. None of the beneficiaries seemed to be very stellar human beings. Besides, I had my own problems to worry about.

I’d married Carla three years ago after we’d been together a while. Charles Davis, the guy who Miles Richter killed for cheating Alexander, was Carla’s father. She had no one else but me left. I loved her as much for her beauty as for her intellect and personality. As tall as me at five ten, her bright hazel eyes always seemed to sparkle. Trim, athletic and feminine. An ideal mate. As we fell in love, we both wanted to get married. However, with her past male friends all breaking up with her without explanation and with my divorcing Mary after she made my life miserable by drinking too much, both of us worried that marriage would ruin an otherwise splendid relationship. Nonetheless we’d tied the knot quietly at the Johnson City court house right before we ran down to Puerto Vallarta for a quick honeymoon, then announced the knot had been tied to the world when we returned.

Carla was now brooding. Her biological clock had started ticking loudly. At thirty-eight, she wanted to have at least one child. But at forty-nine, I had trouble thinking about having a baby in the house again after all these years. Brett and Amy, Mary’s and my children, were in their mid-twenties. I could see myself several years from now taking our child to nursery school, with the teachers thinking that the kid’s grandfather had delivered him or her to school. I knew that all Carla wanted was for me to say yes. I felt trapped, but I couldn’t do anything about that. Saying no would certainly harm our otherwise blissful relationship, so that evening, when I came home from work, I told Carla we should start trying for a baby. She was ecstatic.

“I expected you to say no.”

“Well, I love you and have warmed to the idea. The bad news is that once you’re pregnant you’ll have to be a teetotaler.”

“I can live with that. Tonight, let’s celebrate.”

And I received reward enough for my decision that evening.

•••

The mind works in strange ways. My head was spinning with everything going on. First the Longstreet estate, addressing both the murder and attending to the million mundane details that come with a substantial and complicated estate. Then the possibility of becoming a father again after more than twenty-five years. Both happy and anxious, I felt oddly inadequate on both scores. To add to that, Larry on his way to visit. I needed to get him set up with things to do so that I could get some work done.

The Longstreet estate and my search for the rightful heirs had to take priority. I had to get a handle on everything that Betty owned for the probate inventory. Carroll Johnson showed no enthusiasm for his role as executor, so he didn’t push me to get matters settled quickly. On the other hand, he didn’t want to put out much effort as executor. Johnson must have reasoned that I was waiting to determine the rightful heirs until the police figured out who murdered her. What I’d do if the murderer wasn’t caught troubled me.

Larry arrived the next day. To complicate matters, Carla had volunteered to help Jenna Capp, her friend and the only tax accountant in town. Although Carla was still a CPA, she was a bit rusty on taxes, but Jenna was desperate and promised to check her work. October’s tax return filing season for individuals who’ve filed for extensions and for businesses whose fiscal year ends on June 30. Carla agreed to work on the simpler returns, spending forty hours a week poring over numbers. Just two weeks of that, so I couldn’t count on her to help me with Larry or the Longstreet estate.

Tuesday began pleasantly enough with lunch at the Old 300 with Bob Hauffler and Larry. Blanco’s a small town. Most everyone knows everyone else. The restaurant patrons, both the ones who knew Bob or me as well as the strangers, observed us with curiosity. Perhaps seeing the sheriff in full regalia and me, a lawyer and the city attorney in coat and tie, sitting with a stranger dressed casually, meant that something important was afoot. We talked in hushed tones over the din of everyone else talking. Bob and Larry took an immediate liking to each other and soon began telling each other war stories that had happened to them as peace officers. I enjoyed the stories, particularly one involving a drunk ex-convict running away from the Blanco cops after a traffic stop at a hundred miles an hour. After a short pursuit, the guy left the highway and catapulted over a fence into a herd of cattle, almost killing himself. Involved a lot of blood — both cattle and human — and destruction.

We finally got down to the Longstreet matter. “You know,” I said, “the lady who comes to clean our house once a week always arrives with the latest town gossip for Carla. I’ll bet the women who keep Betty’s house know who’s come and gone, and what each one’s like.”

“Good idea,” said Bob. “We’ll interview them first. We should go to them.”

Larry piped up. “I speak Spanish if they aren’t fluent in English. Mind if I come along?”

“Not at all,” said Bob. “First I’ve gotta call Carroll Johnson and make sure he’s okay with our going to the house and interviewing everyone.”

Then Bob surprised us. “Frankly, I’m short-handed. We’re not set up to do deep investigations. Larry, I just got in a six inch stack of emails from Betty’s computer that one of my deputies printed out. Do you have some time to look them over and separate the wheat from the chaff?”

Larry leapt at the opportunity. At seventy, he didn’t cotton to hikes, fishing or wine tours. “I’d be happy to do that for you. For an old gumshoe like me, the job’ll be the same as oldsters do with crossword puzzles or solitaire. It sure beats the PI work I’ve been doing in Houston documenting human infidelity.”

Bob thought for a moment. “I can’t let the documents go out of headquarters in Johnson City, but if you’ll come up there, I can deputize you and let you go to town. Anything that might give us a clue to who did Betty in and why needs to be flagged. If you do find something, it could break this case wide open. Right now we’re stymied.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow at nine. Thanks.”

That evening we ate at the East Main Grill in Johnson City. For seventy miles along 281 between Bulverde and Marble Falls, there’s not one white tablecloth place to eat. Nonetheless, Larry attested that the food was as good in the hill country as in Houston. After we got home, Larry was at peace in one of the bedrooms, snoring loudly. I sure did enjoy my constant effort to get Carla pregnant, knowing that there would be a time I would have to be celibate.

•••

Good to his word, Larry arrived at the sheriff’s office in Johnson City promptly at nine. He left our house before eight so that he could stop at El Charro for breakfast tacos, a treat not available in Houston. I didn’t hear from him all day but looked forward to a de-briefing when he returned for dinner.

“That sure was an interesting day,” Larry said as he got out of his Buick SUV at our house that evening.

The October weather made the gazebo an attraction. Nice and clear, the temperature in the mid-60’s. “Let’s go down to the gazebo and talk about the emails over some beer I got from the local brewery up the road.”

Larry couldn’t wait to brief me as quickly as we sat down. “John, it’s like reading somebody’s diary, those emails. I’ll save the best till last. Bob’s already been updated. I talked him through the emails as I went and marked the significant ones. Lots of them are not important, but a few popped up that will help. She was ordering gold online, and each delivery order had a paid invoice attached. I marked each one, so somebody can total them up to see what she bought. Nothing indicated she ever sold any, but she was buying one ounce coins and ten ounce bars from a certified dealer named Standish Metals, usually twenty coins or five bars at a time. Must’ve had more than ten orders. What’s two hundred ounces times the price of gold?”

“Hmmm. More than two hundred twenty-five thousand, if I remember the market right,” I said.

“Quite enough to interest a thief. Does her husband know anything about the diamonds?”

“Bob said that Johnson told him that the diamonds were a collection of antique jewelry from the nineteen-twenties, made by a French company named Van Cleef and Arpels. He said she bought them before they were married but doesn’t know how much they’re worth. Quite valuable, he said, since yellow diamonds are in demand these days. He thinks the diamonds are still in a safety deposit box at the bank.”

Larry continued. “The next thing I looked for was emails relating to people coming into the property for repairs and that sort of thing. We should look at her calendar — I don’t know whether she had an old fashioned paper one or kept it on her computer. According to Bob, after she bought the Lucky Strike, instead of a having a live guard at the entrance gate as Alexander did, she put in a remote gate opener so that people wanting in could call the main house and someone from the house could just punch a button and the gate would open. The entry thing also had a keypad so you could enter a code to open the gate. Who knows who had that code. When she added the remote entry stuff, she had a wireless video added to the gate entrance in addition to the ones that Alexander had to monitor other parts of the ranch.”

Larry shrugged his shoulders. “Lots to follow up on,” I said. “I wonder if the videotapes work at night and whether the tapes are stored for very long. Most of them are on a twenty-four-hour loop.”

“The videos may or may not help. The emails mention people coming into the ranch and to the main house. They’re all service people . . . alarm system and HVAC. Must have been problems with the monitoring system and air conditioning. I’ll follow that If a poor repairman saw that wealth and then stumbled onto a bunch of gold bars, maybe he’d think about coming back to get it.”

“One other thing we need to find out,” I said. “Did Betty give any social events at the main house, a house tour or a meeting? That would allow a visitor to case the house.”

“Yeah. Nothing on that score. But those are not the big thing, John. Betty Longstreet didn’t like to be alone, it appears. You wouldn’t believe the number of emails between her and the preacher, Chuck Blaise. And the emails were very personal, not at all religious. Shit like ‘I miss you and want to be with you’ kind of emails. The emails from Blaise were reciprocal, but he was always complaining how he didn’t have any money to do the Lord’s work as well. I got the feeling that Blaise was manipulating her.”

“Any emails between her and Gus and Jake?” I said.

“Not many. I bet she texted them, but because the phone’s missing, we can’t tell what those were. Those aren’t backed up in the cloud. All we’ve seen in the emails are various instructions for projects and chores they were to take care of around the ranch when she wasn’t there. Must have done most of the ranch discussions face-to-face. There’re also emails with a guy named Matthew Middlecoff. Best I can tell, he was a friend of the family, and he has a ranch toward Stonewall. Seems whenever Carroll left to go back to Houston, she emailed Middlecoff and arranged to set up a visit with him.”

“My mom always told me that no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. Hard to fathom all those male relationships.” There was a lot more to Betty than I thought.

“You know my opinion,” Larry said. “After forty years on HPD and then my PI work recently, I have a low opinion of human beings. I’d bet that one of these guys is the culprit.”

“Not Carroll Johnson?”

“Oh yes, he might be the one. He could be the vengeful husband if Betty was running around, but he was in Houston. He’d have to have found someone to do her in, and I doubt he’d know where to start. A rich investment banker in Houston doesn’t associate with the lower class that does those things….”

“Bob needs to interview the maids first to get the lay of the land, and then Gus and Blaise to find out what relationship each had with her. Also this Middlecoff guy. Jake too, but we should interview the maids at the house first. And Betty’s son, Paul. We need to give Bob a call.”

“Yeah. I’d like to be a part of those interviews. Need to give each one of them a Miranda warning since any one of them might be the killer.”

“Let’s see what Carla’s up to and get dinner. Enough shop talk for now.” We finished our beer and strolled back to the house.

3

As expected, Bob set up a meeting for Friday, two days later, with Gloria Sanchez and Rosa Morales, the two maids who took care of the Longstreet mansion. He made the appointment for eleven, figuring that having the interview then would give the women time to finish up their duties around the house. He told me that after he did that, he might as well interview Gus, Jake and Paul Scranton, so he told each of them he’d call them after he talked to Gloria and Rosa.

“Two or three heads are better than one,” Hauffler told me over the phone. “You and your friend Larry should be at the meeting. The two of you could get a sense who’s telling the truth and who’s holding back.” We accepted the invite enthusiastically. Friday morning, Larry and I drove up to the magnificent ranch entrance. Not just a regular gate, but a huge stone arch, with large wooden doors the same height as the fifteen-foot game fence that enclosed the entire property. The entrance must have cost over a hundred thousand dollars. I entered the four-digit code that Hauffler had given me on the touchpad, in this case Betty’s birthdate — 1974. The road inside the ranch wound through big live oaks and around one of the many hills on the ranch. Familiar territory for me. I got goose bumps thinking about the time I almost got killed here after having gotten wrapped up in Alexander’s dirty business.

Finally, after a half-mile drive, most of it on the ascent, the ranch house appeared at the top of the hill. In front of the building, a gated entrance to the massive two-story mansion led to a courtyard with a crushed granite circular drive. The gate to the courtyard opened automatically, and we drove in. A fountain at least twenty feet high stood in the middle of the circle. The main house was rectangular but joined midway along the long side by a circular, castle-like minaret that contained a winding staircase to the upper floor and Betty’s bedroom.

Gloria greeted Larry and me at the front door. She smiled. Warm and friendly. Short, no more than five feet tall and a bit heavy-set for her age, which I figured was around twenty-eight. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she did have a cute button nose on top of rather ordinary facial features. She had her dark black hair pulled back in a bun, and her dark brown eyes sparkled. As with many local Hispanics, she’d married early and had four children, all healthy and her pride and joy. I liked her.

She led us to the kitchen area, where Bob had begun setting up a video recorder on a tripod. Rosa Morales observed the process. She looked like Gloria’s sister in a way, but taller, with dark brown hair and dark blue eyes. Like Gloria, also a bit heavy-set. She too appeared friendly and relaxed, more curious than anything. She and Gloria chatted in Spanish, not appreciating that Larry understood all they said.

“Let’s get started,” Bob said. “Ladies, we can talk to both of you at the same time. We’re trying to figure out who killed Betty and why. I’m just recording this so that I don’t have to take notes and so that people back at the office can review it later if we need to. Is that okay with you?”

The women enthusiastically said “Yes!” in unison. I don’t think they’d ever been interviewed by a peace officer, or for that matter, by anyone at all.

“All right. First, which one of you found Betty when she was murdered?”

Gloria piped up and said with a heavy accent. “I did. It was terrible. Every morning, when Miss Betty woke up, she would call me on my cell phone, and I would take coffee and sweet rolls to her. Her bedroom is very beautiful — you will see it — and she had a large television to watch the morning news. She had a desk with a computer that she would work at in the mornings. She almost always spent the whole morning in that bedroom. The police told us not to touch anything in the room, so we’ve left it as it was that day and locked the door so nobody else could get into the room. That terrible day, since Miss Betty had not called by ten, I began to be worried, so I decided to check on her quietly. I walked inside, and she was lying on the bed in a funny way. She was lying face down. I had never seen her that way. Then I saw the blood on her hair and called Mister Gus. He told me to call 911 and to leave everything alone. I did.”

“Did anyone visit her the night before?” Bob looked intently at both women.

Both Gloria and Rosa shook their heads and said no.

“Okay. Who normally visited Betty, especially in her bedroom?”

The two women looked at each other with worried faces and began talking to each other in Spanish. Oddly, they smiled as they talked.

Larry leaned over and said, “They’re talking about what to tell us. I’ll tell them that they need to tell us everything, whether they think the information is important or not.”

Then Larry said in Spanish, “Ladies, it’s important that we are told everything you know, whether it’s embarrassing or not and whether you think it’s important or not. We’ll figure that part out. Please tell us everything.” Gloria and Rosa were surprised that Larry understood and spoke Spanish, and replied that they understood. Both of them looked at each other and giggled.

Gloria, obviously the leader, proceeded. “I guess it doesn’t matter now that Miss Betty has passed, but she had a number of visitors. Always in her bedroom. Mister Gus came every other morning, we guess to talk about the ranch, but he always stayed there two or three hours, into the lunch hour. Rosa and I are both married, and we know what goes on. We don’t think that the two of them just discussed ranch business. I found Miss Betty on Thursday morning, the twenty-third. I remember that Mister Gus had been there the day before, Wednesday. Another man, that minister, Reverend Blaise, visited Miss Betty often, also in the morning in her bedroom. Pastor Blaise came on Tuesday. I brought them coffee and sweet rolls whenever he visited, and they always sat at the round table next to the windows. Mister Gus and Pastor Blaise didn’t talk when I was in the room. Mister Gus wouldn’t look at me, but Pastor Blaise did. Not at me but at my body, you know? ”

Interested, Bob continued to probe Gloria for more information. “Did you ever overhear any of their conversations? Did you ever hear them talking loudly?”

“The kitchen is pretty far from where we could hear anything, but last Tuesday, when Pastor Blaise came to see Miss Betty, I was cleaning the living room right below her bedroom. I heard them talking loudly, and then he came down from the bedroom on the circular staircase in a hurry and seemed upset. I don’t like that man. Whenever he was near me he looked at me the wrong way, you know, the way men look at women and their bodies. I noticed that his shirt was unbuttoned, and he had his collar in his hand and left in a hurry without saying goodbye. I asked Miss Betty if he was all right, and she just shrugged her shoulders and said that he’d gotten upset over a church matter but would get over it.” I figured that what bothered Gloria was a man of the cloth doing unsaintly things.

“Is there anything else that you or Rosa can tell me that might help? For instance, who else came to the house the week before Betty’s death?”

“Let me see. There was Gus and Pastor Blaise, as I’ve told you. An air conditioning guy was here but he was inside only a little while, in the kitchen. He was working on the outside part of the air conditioner.

Rosa picked up. “There was the security service man. He was from Austin Security Company. His name was Harold. He looked mean and didn’t talk much. He said he came to check the alarm system to make sure it was working, so he went all over the house looking for the trouble. He came in the afternoon, the Monday before Miss Betty died.”

“Do you think that he went into in her bedroom closet?”

“Oh, yes,” Rosa said. “I go into Miss Betty’s closet to hang up her clean clothes once in a while, and I knew about the safe room . . . in fact Miss Betty told Gloria and me about it in case we needed to get away from somebody breaking in. Inside that little room there’s a big metal box on the wall that looks like the one outside that controls the electricity. It has a sticker from Austin Security on it, so I’m sure Harold was in there.”

“We’ll have to run him down. Anything else? Have you heard of a guy named Matthew Middlecoff?”

“I can’t think of anything else,” Gloria said. “No, I haven’t heard of Mr. Middlecoff. Rosa?”

“No. Nada. Oh, we forgot to mention that Mister Carroll came to the house the weekend before Miss Betty died. He usually came here every other weekend.”

“Interesting. Anything out of the ordinary?”

Gloria spoke up first. “No, just like usual. Miss Betty and Mister Carroll didn’t seem to be close. I’ll show you the upstairs when we’re done, but Mister Carroll always slept in the bedroom down the hall from Miss Betty’s big bedroom. Miss Betty told us that he snored too loudly, but I never heard him. Every once in a while, Rosa or I would hear the two of them arguing either in the living room or in her bedroom. We were too far away from them to tell what they said. Miss Betty was a strong woman. We figured that the two of them couldn’t agree who the boss, the jefe, was.”

“Did the arguments get violent? Do you think they were doing something other than arguing, like hitting each other?” Gloria looked around, thinking.

“I don’t think so. Sometimes the arguments sounded louder than others, but they didn’t last long. I think they argued and then went to their separate rooms.”

“Do you remember anything they said to each other?”

Gloria looked down, embarrassed. “I didn’t think we should listen. I’m not sure what they said, but I heard a lot of things that married people should not say to each other. Very personal. They called each other bad names. I can’t remember exactly what.”

“One final question. Did either of you ever talk to your friends or relatives about Betty or her stash of gold, even casually?”

“Oh, no,” Gloria said. Rosa nodded her head in agreement. “Miss Betty told us never to talk to anyone about her, the ranch, or her visitors. She told us that even small talk could hurt her safety. So I never talked to anybody about anything other than what the two of us did at the ranch.”

Satisfied, Bob stood up. Gloria and Rosa automatically got out of their chairs as well. “If there’s nothing else, we can end this for now. Ladies, thanks for agreeing to the interview. You’ve been very helpful. Would you mind showing me and my friends the upstairs?”

“Sure,” Gloria said.

The five of us walked up the circular stairs to the bedroom area. The master bedroom, quite large, spanned more than twenty by thirty-five feet, with a king-size bed at one end and a built-in desk and a large table with, oddly, three chairs at the other end. The master bath as well was very large. The outside long wall had French-style doors, with access to a small porch that looked out over the entire valley. Betty had decorated the room with what I’d call feminine stuff, including frilly curtains and bed coverings and girly knick-knacks. A woman’s room.

On the corner of the far interior wall, the door to Betty’s closet grabbed our interest. We went into the closet. It belonged to a woman of wealth. Plenty of clothes, both dressy and informal. Must have been fifty pairs of shoes. The closet measured fifteen feet by twenty feet, and at the end of the closet, to the left, the metal door stood ajar. The safe room, ten by ten, had nothing in it but two small chairs. On the back wall, a big metal security box with the Austin Security Company sticker and a telephone were mounted at eye level. On the carpeted floor in a corner rested one gold coin. While Bob and I examined the safe room, Larry studied the bedroom, the furnishings and the French doors.

“We left this room like we found it,” Rosa said. “We’ll take you next to Mister Carroll’s room.”

We went next to Carroll’s room, at the other end of the upstairs. Beyond the room a stairway appeared, leading down to the kitchen area. His room was substantial too, twenty by twenty, but not as plush or decorated as Betty’s. Nothing significant. Not a place for anyone who planned to live there. More like a hotel room. Johnson only had a few changes of clothes in his closet, “country casual” outfits. Larry wandered around looking in drawers, the closet and the separate small bathroom.

After our little tour, Bob called Gus to come to the kitchen. He must have waited for us nearby, since he arrived in less than five minutes. Gus looked like a typical ranch manager — tall at six-four, slender, tanned and muscular. Mid-forties. Light brown hair with little speckles of gray. Clean-cut, and, unlike most ranch people, no facial hair. Thin lips, usually in a smile. Handsome. Reminded me of the Marlboro man. People like Gus always wear starched jeans and a western shirt, with dress cowboy boots. Ranch managers are usually quiet introverts, since they spend most of their time alone. Gus was the exception, especially after three or four beers. I’d met Gus before, right after Betty bought the ranch, and again after Johnson hired me to represent Betty’s estate. When he strolled in, he was affable and relaxed.

“Hi, John, how are you?” Gus asked me.

“Pretty well, considering,” I said. I introduced him to Bob and Larry.

We sat down at the kitchen table, and Bob turned on the video recorder. He began with his standard warning, reading from a card. “This is a standard police department interview, and our protocol requires a special introduction, so I have to read you your Miranda rights, Gus. Here goes: You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to me and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning. If you decide to answer questions now, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time. Gus, do you understand what I have said and are you willing to proceed?

“Hell,” Gus said. “Am I a suspect?”

“Everyone connected with Betty is a suspect right now, so don’t be alarmed.”

“Well, I’m okay with this since I haven’t done anything wrong,” Gus said with gusto.

Then Bob began with a few softball questions. “I’m making a video of our interview so I can remember what we talked about. Hope you have no objection. Let’s start with a few questions. I can’t understand why anyone would cut a ten-foot hole in your game fence. Why do you think that happened?”

“No tellin’,” Gus answered. “There are a lot of poachers in the area, and we’ve got a number of exotics on the ranch. On the other hand, that could have been the way Betty’s killer came and went.”

“Do you have wire cutters that could cut the fence that way?”

Gus’ tight-lipped answer showed that the question bothered him. “Sure. As a matter of fact, several, ranging from hand cutters to large leveraged ones. We need them to install and repair fences. Nobody but Jake and I know where we keep them in the barn though.” Hauffler smiled. Gus was open, direct.

“Tell me what you do at the ranch and your relationship with Betty and Carroll.”

Gus was half slumped in the chair he was sitting in, relaxed. “You got all day? It’ll be a long story but I’ll make it short. Jake and I have been business partners for six years, spending most of our time building fences for people and leasing pastures for hay to sell during the summers. When Betty bought the Lucky Strike, the Alexander estate had already hired us to keep the ranch up, and Betty just kept us on. The Alexander estate had let us move onto the ranch so that we’d be around to discourage poachers and thieves. We converted part of the big western barn into two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living area, and we’ve been staying there for free.

“Betty wanted the ranch to make enough money to break even. Everyone around here knows that’s impossible, but we try. We’ve got seventy-three head of cattle, pure-bred Brahmas whose calves sell for a premium since Brahmas are known for their fertility. We grow our own hay and maintain the ranch generally. I keep the books on the ranch business, and we still lose slightly more than five grand a month. Jake gets fifteen hundred a month, and I get two thousand because I’m in charge and I’m keeping the books. The two of us take odd jobs like fencing and fertilizing hay fields too. Maintaining the ranch is not a full time job, and what Betty paid us doesn’t go a long way.

Gus relaxed and slouched in his chair. He took a deep breath. “That’s the business side. Betty wanted to be involved in the ranch business, so every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I had to have breakfast with her in her master suite. Smart lady. I taught her a lot about ranching, keeping up the ranch, and the dollars and cents of ranching. Hard to make a profit, but as you know, keeping the ag exemption on all but the mansion compound tips the scale toward explaining what I do. The agricultural exemption reduces property taxes a huge amount. For her thousand acre ranch, not counting the homestead part, taxes would have been seventy-five dollars an acre without the ag exemption and two-fifty an acre with it. That’s over seventy thousand less in taxes a year.

“Anyway, we got to be friends over time, and almost six months ago she said she was very lonely and needed male companionship, commenting that she understood the time we spent together wasn’t all necessary just for business. We started talking about a lot of other things like local politics and such, and then we started hugging each time I arrived and when I left. And then you can figure out where things went from there. Let’s say I got more than breakfast each time I came to the main house.”

Bob and I looked at each other, digesting Gus’ surprising admission. Bob frowned. “Did she discuss how she felt about what you two were doing?” Bob asked.

“Nope. We sort of slid into a physical relationship. She told me that she and her husband had an open relationship. I knew she wasn’t in love with me and she knew I wasn’t in love with her. And I don’t think either of us expected the relationship to go anywhere else. We just enjoyed each other.”

“Did you ever get into arguments?”

“Not really. Never over money. She paid me fairly. She had pretty liberal political beliefs, and we argued a little over that since I’m more of a libertarian than anything. Sure, we disagreed at times on expenses for the ranch, but she was the boss, and if she wanted me to buy or pay for something, I did it. I could have saved her a lot of money, but she wanted to go first class on everything—equipment, fencing, technology and feed—so I just went with it.”

“Did you know that Betty had gold stashed in her house?”

Gus squirmed in his chair and looked down. “I’m kinda embarrassed about it, really, but on occasion, not only the times we were having a morning delight, she’d go into her closet and come out with a gold coin to give me. Krugerrands mainly, one ounce. I’m just a poor cowboy and don’t know what to do with them. Each one’s worth over a thousand dollars, I’m told. I have eight of them.”

“Did you ever go into her closet to see where she hid them?”

“God, no. Never had any business going into her closet.”

I could tell that Bob was being more aggressive than normal, probably because of Gus telling us about their physical relationship. I knew Bob was very religious and probably didn’t like hearing about one of the Ten Commandments being broken. “Did you ever fight physically?”

Gus sat up in his chair. “You’re beginning to sound like I might be the one who killed her. Look, Bob, I’ve had a friggin’ ideal life at the ranch and with her. No reason to fight with her or even argue with her. ”

“Calm down. Naturally you’re a suspect,” Bob said. “We’re talking as friends here. You can understand. I’m just trying to figure out who killed Betty.”

“Okay, but just don’t look my way. Now I have to deal with Carroll Johnson about ranch operations, and he doesn’t want to spend money like Betty did, so I get in arguments with him the other way. And don’t look Jake’s way, thinking he might be involved. He hardly knew her, and I didn’t tell him about my little get-togethers with Betty.”

“I understand,” Bob said. “Hey, Gus, don’t get irritated. I’m just doing my job. I have to ask you these questions. Do you or Jake have a pistol?”

“Yeah, both of us have .32’s. Revolvers. They’re always loaded with shot to kill snakes and critters. Coons and possums can get distemper, or worse, rabies, and on occasion we need to put them out of their misery. We have regular ammo too. Might need to defend ourselves, unlikely that that is. A couple of deer rifles and shotguns too. They’re down at our barn right now, and you can look at them if you want. Haven’t been fired in months.”

“No need for that. Just wanted to know. That’s all the questions I have. By the way, do you know two other guys we have to talk to? Chuck Blaise or Matthew Middlecoff?”

“I know Blaise a bit. He came out to the ranch one time, and I met him when Betty was showing him around the ranch in her Polaris ATV. I’d see his car parked at the house from time to time, but I tried to stay away whenever Betty had visitors. Seemed to be a good friend of hers. Not very talkative, but I didn’t have anything in common with him. Betty said he was the preacher at her church. I don’t know the Middlecoff guy.”

“Okay. Right now you’re off the hook. I’ll let you know if we have any other questions. Thanks for talking to us.”

Gus’s boots echoed on the kitchen’s marble floor as he walked out.

4

We called Jake Saunders and Betty’s son, Paul Scranton. Jake looked like a carbon copy of Gus, but blond and a long stubble of whiskers. He confirmed what Gus had already told us. Jake repeated the story about discovering the cut in the fence and claimed not to have any relationship with Betty. “She was a female, ten or fifteen years older than me and had all that money. We had nothing in common even to talk,” Jake said.

Scranton was a different case. A weird dude. Several tattoos on each upper arm. Dark complexion, dark eyes and long, dark brown hair. He was vertically challenged, as they say, five-five, with effeminate mannerisms. Scranton didn’t look a bit like his mother. Very average looking, even homely. He had a large, flat nose and pasty skin. He appeared very thin, to the point of looking emaciated. I didn’t want to judge him on the front end, but druggies often looked anorexic. He walked nervously into the kitchen, especially when he saw the video recording set-up.

Bob read him his Miranda rights. This time Bob started with an explanation for the warning, noting that everyone was a suspect in the as-yet unsolved murder. That made Scranton even more nervous. “As you might expect,” Scranton volunteered, “I’m very upset and troubled over my mother’s death. She was everything to me, but she disapproved of my lifestyle. The reason she let me live here was that I’m almost penniless. You see, I’m an artist. I’m happy to show you my paintings. But as with most artists, I have a hard time making ends meet. I don’t know what I’ll do if Mr. Johnson kicks me off the ranch. I don’t have any money and I have nowhere to go.” Bob must have appreciated that I’d kept the provisions of Betty’s will and codicils confidential.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Bob said. “Where were you the night of your mother’s death?”

“Where I almost always am, in my home and studio. I didn’t work that night, so I was watching television. I enjoy old movies.” As he talked, I noticed that his teeth were dark and short. Either Scranton wasn’t taking care of himself, or more probable, meth was at work on his choppers.

“Did your mother and you ever argue?” I sensed that Bob didn’t like Paul.

“A little. More than a little. She didn’t approve of my lifestyle, as I said, and told me that I needed to get a real job and move on. I knew she was right, but I’m comfy where I am. I get enough cash from working three days a week in the art gallery on the square in Wimberley to buy food and necessities. I spend most of my time painting, and the gallery sells my work on consignment. It’s a pleasant life.”

“I mean did you ever get into violent arguments. Do you own a pistol?”

“Heavens no, on both counts. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Never have had one.”

“How often did you go to the big house to visit her?”

“She almost always came to my place, I guess to check up on me and see how I kept my pad. Once in a while we’d have supper and watch TV — always an old movie she liked — but we hadn’t really done much of that in the past three or four months. I guess she was busy.”

“Were you familiar with the layout in her bedroom and the so-called safe room?”

“Hmm. I never went to her bedroom and have never heard of a safe room.”

“Did you know she collected diamonds and precious metals?”

“No, she never shared that sort of thing with me.”

“Okay, that’ll be all. Thanks for answering my questions,” Bob said rather grumpily.

“Mister Mariner,” Scranton said, “What’s going to happen to me after Mother’s estate is settled? Will I have to move? Did she leave me anything?”

“I’m not at liberty to give you details, but yes, she did leave you a portion of her estate, and it could be a substantial amount. Please keep that confidential.”

“Oh, good. Mom did love me after all.” With that Scranton left.

“I’ve gotta get back to the office now,” Bob said, turning toward me. “Help me with the video equipment and we’ll call it a day. Doesn’t look like we should keep either Saunders or Scranton on our suspect list. No motive in either case. Scranton’s a problem for us police, but not for this one I’d guess. We should get the autopsy report back next week, and then I want to talk to Johnson. At headquarters. Should be interesting hearing what he knows about Betty and the way she lived.”

And with that we were done. As the three of us were standing by our cars to say our goodbyes, Larry said, “His bedroom was interesting. No personal items, no nothing. Just a couple of changes of clothes. Carroll Johnson has always been a short-term guest here.” So far, Betty, Carroll and Paul came on as three of the oddest people I’d known. I wondered what the others would be like.

•••

The next Wednesday I called Bob. “Bob, here’s my problem. The beneficiaries under the codicil to Betty’s will are all suspects. I’ve got to hold up distributing anything to make sure that the right people are getting her money, but I’ll bet there’ll be some sort of lawsuit over her estate and the changes to her will whether or not one of them killed her. Greed brings out the worst in people, and I can see a food fight over Betty’s millions between these characters. I’d appreciate your letting Larry and me tag along during the investigation. At least it’ll give me an excuse to explain to the beneficiaries why they’re not getting any money right away. For people like Gus, I’m sure his share will look like a fortune to him.”

“You’ve got a gravy train going for you,” Bob said, chuckling. “I understand. Tell you what. I’m going to interview each of the other guys, Blaise, Johnson and Middlecoff. I want each of them to come to headquarters. We’ve just finished a state-of-the-art interview room. The room next to it has a one-way mirror so that you and Larry can sit in there and watch the goings-on. I’ll have a list of questions for each on my laptop, and if you think of additional questions, you can text them to me. After the interviews, you can tell me what you think of each one of them and his answers. I’ll be videotaping the sessions for future use, like showing the tapes to a body language expert if the guy seems nervous. I’ll set up the interview with Blaise for next Monday.”

The weekend passed quietly. Larry sensed that he needed to take a break from us, so he announced that he was off to San Antonio to stay by the Riverwalk and see the Alamo, the missions, and the Menger Hotel. Carla and I felt a sense of relief. As Gus had pointed out a month ago when I checked up on him, a visit is different than a stay. A stay is more than three days, more like a week or two. Stays can bring out the strains that require separate households. A visit is short, a day or two. If you’re on a visit, all’s well, since you’re not to interfere with the good order of your sponsor’s home and hearth unless specifically asked to do something or give your opinion on a matter. A stay invites difficulty. If you’re in another’s household for a week or two, you inevitably disrupt the good order of the family. Every human has his or her own needs, opinions, foibles, prejudices, and general way of doing things, both guests and sponsors. And each shows his or her real life — arguments, politics and prejudices. To add to that, adults develop lifestyle differences in the aspects of daily living, especially eating, sleeping and drinking. Not a good recipe for stays. Stays should be avoided. Larry was an ideal guest, but having him under foot all the time did create a small amount of stress. He had his own foibles, such as his high-fat eating habits, and Carla and I wanted to be alone. Still, his talents and experience could help Bob and me figure out who killed Betty. We celebrated when Larry volunteered to get out of our hair for a while and give us our privacy. He came back late Sunday night after we had had a quiet, restful weekend, just the two of us. The only anxious moments occurred when we talked about raising children….

•••

I felt good getting back into the swing of things Monday morning. We got to the sheriff’s office early and chatted with Bob and his assistant. The Reverend Charles Blaise was a one-off. He strolled into headquarters right on time at nine. Seeing our little group, he introduced himself to each of us. Impressive looking guy. Over six feet, muscular, with salt and pepper brown hair, bright gray eyes, and clean-shaven. He wore a shirt like the ones Catholic priests wear, but it was light blue with a round white collar. A large silver cross hung around his neck. The dissonant parts of his outfit were his blue jeans and fancy cowboy boots, which were expensive ostrich leather with a two-inch heel. He shook our hands firmly and looked us straight in the eye, but there was something that made me uneasy. I could see him wondering why I was there with Bob.

“I’m glad to come in and see whether I can help. We need to find out who killed Betty. What can I do?” Blaise seemed sincere, but after what Gloria and Rosa had said, I thought it might just be a front.

Bob said, “John and Larry are long-time friends of mine. John’s the executor of Betty’s estate. We were just catching up, but we’re done. We can go into the other room. I need to get a video of our interviews since the crime’s unsolved at this point. Follow me.” They walked into the interrogation room and closed the door. Larry and I took our places in the adjoining room and looked at Bob and Blaise through the one-way mirror. Bob read Blaise the standard Miranda warning.

“I’m not sure I like this,” Blaise said, sitting upright in his chair. “If I’m a suspect I’d need to know that. Do I need a lawyer?” The self-confidence Blaise showed when he arrived slowly eroded. An Elmer Gantry he was not in the face of authority.

“That’s up to you. We have an unsolved murder here, and everyone who was close to Betty is a suspect.”

Blaise hesitated, thinking. “Okay. Let’s get this done.” I figured that he understood that if he refused to go ahead, Bob would be suspicious.

Bob got down to business. “The best place to start is your relationship with Betty. Also, tell me about your church.”

Blaise sat up straight in his chair, gaining confidence. “Betty was a dear friend and the rock of my church. We’re a Bible-based, cowboy church, one that serves rural people. Most of us are strict fundamentalists, that is, we believe in the literal words of the Bible. That causes problems with non-believers and more liberal Christians, as you might expect. I hope not with you. We’re not affiliated with any national church or other organization, and a lot of what we do is to bring people together in harmony. Our theme is love and grace, if you know of the concept of the Lord’s grace. Many of our people have had hard times. A few have criminal records, but that doesn’t bother us. It’s an opportunity. I did a lot of prison ministry in Houston when I lived there. I advise my flock to avoid drugs and alcohol. After Sunday services, we always have a pot-luck lunch and socialize. We’re a family.”

Blaise paused and took a drink from a bottle of water he had brought with him. “Betty made my church possible. She gave the church enough to support me and my mission church. By far the largest financial supporter of the church. Most of our congregation members are lower-income people. You probably know that average family income in Blanco County is half the national average, so there are plenty of people in need. Without Betty’s support, the church wouldn’t have survived, and I’m not sure it can continue now that Betty’s gone.”

“Tell me more about your relationship with Betty. Did you see her other than on Sundays?”

“Yes, frequently” Blaise said. “We had lunch off and on, and I normally visited with her once a week. We talked about all sorts of things, as friends do.”

“Did you ever have a physical relationship with her?”

Blaise moved around in his chair and looked indignant. “What kind of minister do you think I am? Sure, we hugged occasionally when we greeted each other. Nothing else.” Good thing that the video recorder was on. His body language told me that there was more to the story. I’m sure Bob picked that up too.

“Did Betty ever talk confidentially to you of her other relationships, for instance, with her other male friends?”

“If you mean confessions or something such as that, my church doesn’t believe in such things. That’s between God and each person. Besides, if she told me she needed forgiveness from the Lord, I couldn’t tell you. To answer your question directly, though, I know nothing of any other relationships she had with people outside our church family.”

“Were you aware that Betty kept gold in her house?”

Blaise chuckled. “I never knew where she got them, but from time to time, she gave me a gold coin. Never at church. Only when I visited her. She always had one ready in her pocket.”

Bob was suspicious. “How many did she give you?”

“I’m not sure, since I sold most of them right after I got them. Sold ‘em for over a twelve hundred a piece. Probably got a dozen of them over time. Once in a while I would give one of the coins to a church member in need. That’s one reason why I’m always short of money.” Blaise sat back in his chair, relaxing.

“Did you and Betty ever get into arguments over the church or anything else?”

“Heavens, no. I respected her and she respected me. She enjoyed supporting my church and my efforts as a minister.” Blaise looked uneasy and avoided Hauffler’s eyes. If his body language was any clue, he wasn’t telling us everything. Bob honed in on him. I could tell that Bob wasn’t believing Blaise.

“One of Betty’s maids told us that the last time you were with her, you left in a hurry, your shirt askew. You sure there wasn’t something going on?”

“That’s between Betty and me. She was in a frightful mood that morning and told me she had re-thought how our church mission should be pursued. She wanted me to grow the church, but recently membership had declined. She felt the church wasn’t going anywhere, but I told her that every church has its ups and downs. While I appreciated her financial support, I couldn’t let her run things. I saw our conversation going the wrong way, so I felt it best to leave and let things cool down.”

“That does it, Reverend Blaise. You sure there was nothing other than hugging going on? We have your contact information and we’ll keep in touch as our investigation continues. Thanks for coming in.”

“No. Just hugging. Not a bother at all. See you!” Blaise almost rushed out of the room, obviously relieved that Bob’s interrogation was over.

After Blaise left, Larry and I got with Bob in the interrogation room.

“Blaise was too casual, too rehearsed. That can’t be all to the relationship,” said Larry the skeptic.

“Even if there was more to the relationship,” Bob said, “that’s no reason Blaise would want to kill her. Both Gus and Blaise had gravy trains going for them, regardless of their personal relationships with Betty.”

“Unless Betty planned to pull the plug on his church or had lost faith in his fundamentalist beliefs,” I countered. “That would threaten his deal.”

“I didn’t like his evasiveness and don’t believe his saying they just had a casual relationship, nothing physical,” Larry said.

“Me too,” I said. “I guess you’re going to interview Johnson next. He may have a motive. If he found out about Betty’s little trysts with other men, he might want to do something to her.”

“But we’ve already established that Johnson was in Houston when the murder occurred, in a meeting that afternoon with a drilling company,” Bob reminded me.

Larry intervened. “Yeah, but if he found some fool to carry out the murder, it’s logical that he’d establish an alibi by being with somebody when it happened. And then again, it’s not too far-fetched that after his meeting in Houston, he hauled ass to the ranch, less than three hours away, did his thing, then ran back to Houston, all by seven in the morning.” Far-fetched as both those scenarios sounded, I couldn’t stop thinking that Johnson might be involved. I couldn’t tolerate the thought of either of my wives bedding down with other men.

“Pretty far-fetched,” said Bob. “I’ve seen stranger things. We have to interview him. Okay, which one of you’s gonna buy me barbeque at Ken’s Pit Barbeque today?”

Lunch was great fun, replete with each of us telling war stories. Bob hadn’t ever heard the details of the multiple murders I’d been involved in when I practiced law in Houston and met Larry. We regaled him with how we eventually stumbled on the killers. Larry always said he’d take luck over IQ any day.

When Larry and I got to the house, we had a few beers and reviewed the events of the day. In the process, we brought Carla up to date, and she surprised me by her reaction. “Look, guys. No married woman has all those male relationships. I don’t care that one of them’s the ranch manager and another’s a minister of the cloth. More than you’ve been told’s gone on. You need to dig into those relationships. My female instinct. Count on it.” Carla wasn’t normally that forceful. Maybe it was that time of the month.

Sunday afternoon, as we watched the Houston Texans lose yet another game, Larry said, “I ought to get back to Houston. I appreciate your letting me stay here and noodle over the Longstreet murder. The next step’s to interview Johnson and Middlecoff, but I can always look at the videos Hauffler makes. My sense is that the suspect list will get narrower.”

“Yeah. I’ll check with Bob and let you know when Johnson and Middlecoff have agreed to an appointment. I need to discuss the estate with Johnson anyway. The ranch is a beautiful place, but since the mansion’s been the scene of three killings over the past seven years, Johnson may want to keep the place until memories fade a bit. That means the estate has to stay open for years. Maintaining the ranch isn’t cheap,” I said.

Larry laughed, echoing Bob. “Sounds as if you’ve got a nice retirement account going.”

5

Monday morning Larry left for Houston and I drove to the office. I thought about Carla. We needed to have some quality time together. We’d been lacking that ever since I’d gotten mixed up in the Longstreet mess. Not an hour passed before Carroll Johnson called my office. “Hey, John. It’s been a while. As you can tell, I’ve been avoiding going to the ranch. I’m coming up to take care of Betty’s estate business and check up on the ranch to make sure everything’s stable out there. Besides that, Sheriff Hauffler called me this morning and asked me to go to his office for an interview. I’m okay with that, but I wanted to make sure that you could be with me when I do that. Can you represent me as well as the estate?”

Knowing the conflict of interest, I told him what he probably already knew. “I can’t do that since I represent the estate. You’re a beneficiary, one who’s a suspect at least with Hauffler. I’ll be happy to be at the meeting as an estate representative. Not sure you need any advice given your experience. If things get serious, we can always get you a lawyer.”

“I’m sorta there already. I talked to a criminal defense lawyer I’m familiar with. Robert Maldinado. He helped me out when I was stopped for a DUI. Got me off scot-free. Good guy.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “I know him from my Houston days. When are you coming up?”

“Wednesday morning. I set up the appointment with Hauffler for one. Want to have a quick lunch in Johnson City?”

“Sure. What kind of food do you like?”

“Let’s go to El Charro. I hope you like Mexican. It’s close to the sheriff’s office.”

“Deal. I hoped we’d go there. See you there at eleven-thirty. We can go over estate details. I need to talk to you about filing deadlines and other boring stuff.”

The next few days passed quickly, and I looked forward to meeting with Johnson, if only to find comfort in his not being the killer. I got to El Charro and sat down in a booth at the back of the restaurant so no one could overhear our conversation. Carroll Johnson’s entry wasn’t what I expected. Amusing. He looked bigger than life, and all heads turned to look at him. He’d tried to dress in local garb, but his neatly ironed Western shirt and designer jeans, along with colorful and expensive looking cowboy boots, made him stand out, along with his six-four frame and handsome good looks. People probably thought he was a movie star or politician. Or a plaintiff’s lawyer.

Hand outstretched, he gave me a boisterous greeting. “Hi, John! How’re you doing? Miss being in the hubbub of Houston?”

“Not really. Very comfortable with the slower life here. Was your drive up here routine?”

“Yes. Lots of State troopers on the other side. They may have been looking for drugs transiting to Houston. Going to have to watch my speed on the way back.” He picked up the menu and said, “Let’s order. I didn’t get any breakfast.”

Johnson ordered a full plate of chicken fajitas with rice and beans. I’d had breakfast, so ordered a couple of beef tacos. While we ate, we talked the usual. Women, politics and the stock markets. Like Austin, Houston’s a liberal Democratic stronghold, but Blanco County’s voters always vote for the most conservative candidates. No room either place for a moderate. Johnson was non-committal about his politics. Could be that he didn’t care about anything except money and investments. He just grunted as he ate when I made a few conservative political comments. Trained to avoid controversy.

“So, John, what’s the process for getting the probate moving forward?” Carroll asked.

“Texas has a very enlightened probate law, one that minimizes legal expenses. You’ve been officially appointed as the executor, so now you’re supposed to do what the most recent codicil and the will say to do, including distributing the net assets to the heirs. Step one requires the estate to advertise in the paper, advising anyone owed money by Betty to file a claim with me. I’ve done that. You or I should go over her checkbook and any business records to see whether she owes anybody any money. Once we make distributions, it’s unlikely that the other heirs will be willing to reimburse you for any liabilities that pop up later. The big issue you’re presented with is what to do with the ranch. The ranch is more than half the value of her estate, but she left her estate in one-quarter proportions. You don’t want to consider having Blaise and his church being co-owners. You could sell it or personally buy it out of the estate. Then again you could leave things the way they are now. If you buy it or sell it through a broker, that has some complexities, for instance, in what to do with Paul Scranton. The other problem, as you know, relates to the killer. We can’t distribute to anyone involved, and until that has been determined, I’d advise not paying out anything to anybody.” I stopped talking to eat my lunch.

“The ranch equation’s tough,” Johnson said, putting on his investment banker hat. “We could list it for sale now at a low market price and see what happens, but if the property sits there for very long, the listing’ll go stale and people will stop looking. Keeping the property going for a year or two may be the best alternative. That’ll let people forget the killings that happened there. We’d list it later, hoping for a buyer who doesn’t care that murders took place in the main house years ago. A simple equation of balancing the costs of keeping the ranch up against the hoped-for increased price we can sell it for in a few years.”

Johnson paused to gobble down the tacos he’d ordered. After taking a long drink of tea, he continued. “If I keep it, I don’t think I’d keep coming up here. Not my thing — I like the tempo of the big city. Since the probate’ll take a while anyway, I’ll hang on to the ranch for now. Besides, I have to figure out what to do with Paul. I can’t kick him off the ranch before he gets his share. I hate to let him continue with his drug problem, but he’s not family. We could give him an advance or even his full share early. No reason to think that he committed matricide. He’s had an easy life and wouldn’t do anything to end that. I just don’t want to deal with him long term.”

“Well, let me get back to the probate process. The mundane part of probating an estate is all the detailed stuff. Each asset, except small value items, needs to be valued. Expenses have to be summed up, including funeral expenses and probate costs. Within a year of Betty’s death we have to file an inventory of the assets and liabilities. I figure you’ll want me to ask the judge to seal the inventory so it’s not public,” I said. Johnson was smart, but I didn’t know how much he’d ever had to deal with probate matters.

“Yeah, I’d want the inventory sealed,” Carroll said matter-of-factly. “As to the detail on the records, I can make speedy resolution of most of this. My secretary is smart and detailed. I’ll take the bank statements and the other records you got from Gus and get her to put everything on spreadsheets, along with an index of documents. We can digitize the documents, as we do in a public offering. We can then search for anything we want in the database.”

I had to remember that the murder investigation was in high gear. “That’s great, but I’ll have to check with Bob if you want to take anything out of the house right now. He may want a deputy to look over the records for clues. Given the size of her estate, there’ll be an IRS audit of her estate tax return. The more they see that we’ve dotted the i’s and crossed our t’s, the quicker that audit will go. One more thing. We need to go to the Blanco National Bank and see whether the diamonds are still in in the safety deposit box. If they are, we need to get them appraised.”

“Agreed.” Johnson replied. “We can run down to the bank after we meet with Hauffler.” Then he furrowed his brow and talked in a low voice. “I need to tell you about Betty and me and our arrangement on the front end here. This has got to be confidential, okay?”

“Sure. I need to know.”

“Betty and I loved each other but in an odd way. When we married, we were lovers and were close. As time passed, I realized that Betty was unique in many ways. She got a lot of wealth from her family, so she didn’t need any financial support from me. Or emotional support either, for that matter,” he said sadly. I felt sorry for him. He continued. “That made her quite independent. Being a wild extrovert, she loved to be in the company of others, particularly other men. Mind you, I’m no angel. I appreciate other women, and I’m exposed to temptation from women almost every day in my business. As time passed, I discovered that Betty had an intimate affair with one of our Houston friends. She also found out that I’d been having my own affair at the office with one of our junior analysts. Believe it or not, she found out through one of her girlfriends whose husband is a client of the firm. Amazing how people talk!”

Johnson finished his plate and pushed it aside. “That happened more than two years ago. Both Betty and I had had enough of the sneaking around. That led to several long discussions about our future. We both realized that a divorce would be the worst outcome since we both cared for each other, perhaps in an unconventional way, so we agreed to live together but lead separate lives. We had already kept our assets separate, so we didn’t need a separation agreement. Not one of those “open marriage” sort of arrangements, but both of us realized that the other was going to have significant others. I hate to say it, but the relationships I’ve had since then have been enjoyable, discreet and easy to break off, since each of my woman friends knew I was married. We just enjoyed being with each other.

“When she moved up to the ranch, according to the help, she started spending a lot of time with several men, particularly a minister and a distant cousin of mine who lives in Stonewall. Matthew Middlecoff. Maybe even Gus and Jake. I didn’t want to know the details. I wanted Betty to be happy. The arrangement worked well, with Betty coming to Houston periodically to show up for a local society bash or non-profit gala. For all that people in Houston know, we were a happy couple with a normal marriage. Believe me, I’m not the only guy in Houston living his life in posh River Oaks the way Betty and I did. Incidentally, I’m not at all unhappy with the way Betty left her money. That was her choice. My will was changed a long time ago leaving my estate to my siblings. But this discussion about our rather unique relationship doesn’t get us any closer to who killed her and why. Hauffler might shed some light on who he suspects.”

Carroll’s soliloquy made me feel good. He’d make a good witness with Bob and, if need be, the probate judge. Everything he said made sense to me. “I’m glad you told me that up front, Carroll,” I said. “Since you’re not in need of money, we can wait on any distributions until we find out who killed her. The main estate question is going to be what you do with the ranch, but we can wait on that.”

“Time to go see Bob Hauffler,” I said. I paid for our lunch and we got in my car, the good one, to go up a block to the sheriff’s office. The interview began routinely. Bob started off with the same Miranda warning he had given everyone else. Johnson didn’t react, remaining relaxed and confident. Being smart and world-wise, he didn’t need me to caution him about anything.

Bob launched right in. “Mr. Johnson, tell me where you were the day that your wife was killed.”

A bit taken aback by the abruptness of the question, Carroll replied. “I’ve thought back. That day, Wednesday, was like most days. I met with two clients, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Both clients were looking for money to do more drilling in the Permian Basin. I had lunch with the clients at the Coronado Club after the morning meeting. Then after the afternoon meeting, I caught up on my emails, texts and a few letters, prepared a few engagement agreements, and then gave it up and went home. Then I changed into casual clothes and drove to the River Oaks Country Club to meet a friend for drinks and dinner. I got home, alone, at nine, watched the news and went to bed.”

“How about the next day?”

“Same old same old. I got to the office a little after nine in my uniform — suit and silk tie, dress shoes, suspenders — you know. That day in the morning I caught up on my reading. A lot’s going on in the oil patch, not only fracking, but cost reductions and automated drilling, this time deeper. Blows my mind. Everything’s becoming digitized and put up in the cloud. Drilling superintendents can direct horizontal drilling from anywhere and don’t need to babysit a well being drilled anymore. Then I had lunch with several of my partners at a nearby restaurant, and in the afternoon at two I played golf with a couple of clients. That evening I went to my friend’s house for dinner. Left her a little after ten. I can give you the names of the people I’ve mentioned if you want them, so long as you keep the information confidential.”

“Please do so,” said Bob. “It sounds like you have a close relationship with this friend. What’s her name? Tell me more about your relationship with her.”

“Cynthia Carter and I are good friends. She’s an investment banker too and doesn’t want to get into a marriage, children and all that. We just enjoy each other socially . . . and physically.”

Bob reacted to the physical reference. He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. Johnson then repeated what he told me of his relationship with Betty, including the implicit agreement that each of them could have extra-marital affairs. Bob seemed skeptical. I knew he was pretty traditional, a church-goer on top of that.

“Those kinds of outside deals don’t lend stability to a long term relationship as far as I’m concerned,” Bob said. “Did you and Betty ever get into arguments, especially physical ones?”

“Not really. Our greatest enemies were independence and apathy. Both of us had separate lives, friends and lifestyles, lifestyles that differed from that of most people. Gradually we both grew apart and went our own ways. If we got divorced, there’d be this stigma for both of us, and we both knew that divorces of high net worth, socially prominent people always turn bitter and expensive. Lawyers promote contentiousness in divorces, not focusing on the need for cordial, post-divorce relationships, especially if kids are involved. The bottom line’s that we had no reason to get a divorce, as far as both of us were concerned, so we kept on as good friends.”

Trying to provoke Johnson, Hauffler asked, “You mean you didn’t mind Betty sleeping with multiple other males?”

Johnson stiffened in his chair and then composed himself. “I’m not sure that’s what was going on. At the beginning I was irritated and angry, but as I said, I’m no angel myself, and as we grew apart, it just didn’t matter. I thought of Betty the same way I would think about a sister or first cousin sleeping around as she did.”

“Okay. Final question. Please don’t be offended. Do you use drugs? Do you own any pistols? Any criminal history?”

Carroll chuckled. “No on all counts, unless you classify alcohol as a drug. I’ve never owned any firearms, especially pistols. I have to be registered with the SEC because of what I do, and they keep a record of everything. You can check it out and run a criminal history on me, but you won’t find anything except a couple of speeding tickets. I got stopped once for DUI but the charged was eventually dismissed. I can’t afford to get in trouble, and the people I know who’ve gotten into drugs end up losing everything.”

Apparently satisfied, Hauffler gathered up his papers on the table. “That’s all I have. Thanks to both of you for meeting with me.”

We adjourned, and Carroll and I drove to the bank to open the safety deposit box. That’s always a hassle with any bank, especially one known for being particular. I gave the teller the death certificate, a copy of the will, and a certified copy showing that Carroll had been appointed as the executor. We finally got into the box, and sure enough we found probably twenty brooches, necklaces, rings and bracelets. They all looked as if they’d been made during the Art Deco period, and most were marked Van Cleef & Arpels. Carroll asked me to take them to a jewelry appraiser for valuation. I nervously accepted but only after we scrawled out a rough inventory of each of the items.

Johnson relaxed then. He felt that his meeting with Hauffler had gone well. He must have felt the same way with me and the estate business. I couldn’t think of anything more we needed to talk over.

“If there’s nothing else, I need to talk to Gus and the help,” Johnson said. “Then I’ll head back to Houston. As you can understand, I’m not comfortable sleeping in the house Betty was murdered in. Boring here too. Thanks for your help. He looked at me straight in the eyes. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly because of the way I live and the way Betty and I got along.”

“I’m the last one to judge people. I’ve had my ups and downs too.”

“Goodbye then.” And with that he was gone.

6

I rolled up into my driveway twenty minutes later. I’d been thinking all the way home from the bank about my lunch with Johnson and his interview. All very smooth. If he and Betty were good friends, he sure didn’t seem all that upset over her death. Could be that Carroll Johnson was wearing a mask, hiding the real Carroll Johnson. On the other hand, he might just be cold and hard, like most investment bankers. Cocktail time at least for me, but today a front had blown through, pushing temperatures to the low fifties, too cool for hanging out in the gazebo.

Carla rushed up as I got out of the car, excited and radiant. “What’s up?” I said.

“I did a pregnancy test a while ago, and it says we’re going to be parents! Congratulations, Dad!”

“That sure didn’t take long!” I said awkwardly. I didn’t know what else to say, so I hugged her and congratulated her. My mind was reeling. I calculated that I’d be sixty-three when this one got his or her driver’s license. After the excitement abated, Carla put two big potatoes in the oven, and I was deputized to grill steaks. Carla wouldn’t even have a glass of wine, but I feasted on a whole bottle of Becker chardonnay in celebration.

The next day, I turned to taking care of city business. Being the Blanco city attorney involves two things: municipal court prosecutions and advising on the city’s business stuff. The latter involves contracts, employment issues, municipal law rules, and most importantly taking heat for the mayor and city council on controversial issues. Easy work, but it didn’t pay much. I think of what I do as my civic duty.

The mayor wanted to meet. To get a little privacy, we lunched at the Blanco Bowling Alley Café, sitting in the back next to the lanes where no one could hear us. They don’t make many like Mayor Jim Roberts. Jim’s a great guy, devoted to the city and his family. His day job as athletic director at the Comal County High School gave him time to address city matters. He was pushing fifty-five, and his hair, what was left of it, was still dark brown. He had the physique of a thirty-year-old. Energetic and personable, everyone liked him, but he had a certain toughness of mind that allowed him to get things done without pissing everyone off. A great coach for his football kids. Like most men in their fifties, he carried a bit more weight than he should have, in part because he was devoted to Miller Lite as his main source of fluids and potassium. Not that he drank to excess. I never saw him affected by his beer.

“I could spend my whole day, every day, handling problems here at the city, but my school job won’t let me,” Jim said. “My biggest city problem? Some fool in the distant past figured we needed a comprehensive building code, so the city council passed the ‘Uniform Development Code’ without thoroughly vetting it. Turns out it was a carbon copy of the code for Katy, Texas, a suburb of Houston, and it has all sorts of things wrong with it. There’s no end of disputes over what types of homes can go on property — trailers the most controversial — and how many homes can go on one piece of property. It’s the Planning and Zoning Commission’s job to take flak for me and the city council. They’re supposed to make recommendations, but lately, facing controversy, they and the council have been tossing the decision-making to me. That’s not making me popular.”

“Couldn’t we set up a task force to review and revise the UDC to fit our small town?” I asked.

“That’s the practical and reasonable solution, but the P and Z won’t take it on, and if we set up a task force, it’ll be populated by the town’s busybodies, retired people who’ve moved in here and have big city ideas.”

I laughed. “Do what our Presidents and governors do then. Duck and delay the issues and leave them for the next poor soul in your office.”

Jim groaned and looked at me with an air of resignation. “Good advice, but the people who want my job would be terrible for the city.”

As Jim talked, we heard major siren blasts from the fire engines leaving their building, not a block away. Sounded like every available vehicle in the Blanco Volunteer Fire Department. “I wonder what that’s about,” I said to Jim.

“I’ll check.” He called city hall. “A fire south of town. Big building. Outside the city limits.”

•••

Blanco is so small that nothing that happens here ever hits the evening news on the Austin TV stations. This one was different. None other than Blaise’s Cowboy Church had burned. I found out later that his church, three thousand square feet, had been built by church members themselves, with the materials costs provided by Betty Longstreet. Bob called me after the fire and related the details of the fire just as Carla and I were getting ready for bed.

“Doesn’t take a forensics team to tell what happened,” Bob said when he called. “The building was made almost entirely out of wood—two by fours, wood planking exterior, that sort of thing. Pier and beam deal with wood flooring. The fire started in the back of the building near where they put their trash. We found an empty metal gas can at the back, burned up with the rest of the place. Literally everything that wasn’t metal burned up. Blaise arrived not more than ten minutes after the fire trucks came to the scene. He had trouble controlling himself from crying, saying, ‘First Betty and now this. How am I going to get along?’ Seemed sincere. I had a hard time not believing him, but this could be an insurance fire he started himself.”

“Blaise looks worse as a suspect in Betty’s killing with this happening,” I said. “He counted on Betty funding his church operation. With her arguing with him about God and the church, with her threatening to cut off her funding, it could be that he had to find a way to close out his deal and move on.”

“My thought exactly. We’ll get Blaise back in for another interview.”

After the call, I added up all the loose ends and the numerous suspects Bob had to deal with. We hadn’t made any progress. The next morning, however, I had an epiphany. We needed more information on each of these guys, so I called Ed Crowe of Crowe and Cassidy Private Investigations. Ed had been a critical player in Houston helping Larry and me sort out the people I was dealing with after four people died. Thanks to Ed, we discovered that one of the supposed suicide victims we dealt with had a serious criminal history. It changed the whole direction of our investigation.

After exchanging the usual pleasantries old friend do, I launched in. “Ed,” I said, “I’ve got another assignment for you. I understand Larry’s been doing PI work for you off and on, and he’s already been digging around on the one I’ve got up here for entertainment. Our sheriff, Bob Hauffler, is a close friend, and I’m the executor of the estate of a wealthy woman named Betty Longstreet, who was murdered two months ago in her mansion here in Blanco County.”

Ed laughed. “You don’t have to tell me anything more. I know all about it. Not from Larry, mind you. It’s been in the Houston Chronicle over and over again. The reading public loves to follow unsolved murders involving rich people.”

“I can’t distribute any of the money until we find out who killed her. Our problem’s simple. All the beneficiaries have made the suspect list. I need you to do in-depth searches and records on each of them to see what makes each one tick. The prime suspect right now is Charles Blaise, who claims to be a minister, but his church just burned down, and we think he had an especially close relationship with Betty. Then there’s her husband Carroll Johnson, who’s been mentioned in the papers and lives in Houston. Finally, we need to have information on four minor characters, Gus Binion and Jake Saunders, the ranch managers; Paul Scranton, Betty’s son by a first marriage; and Matthew Middlecoff, a cousin of Carroll Johnson. Off the record, we think Betty had physical relationships with at least Blaise and Binion, and maybe Middlecoff. Scranton lives on the ranch and follows what might be called an alternative lifestyle. Rumor has it that he’s into drugs. I’ll send you as much data on each as we can find — social security numbers, previous addresses, and so on. I’d appreciate your getting this done quickly. I understand that with so many people to look up, the searches will take a while. Larry may be able to nose around HPD to see whether there’s any information on Johnson, and Betty for that matter.”

“Sounds like you have your hands full. I’ll get my partner, Bill Cassidy, involved,” Ed said. “We’re getting a little long in the tooth, but we’ve kept up with technology. We can do a lot of this online now. We’ll check with HPD and, if it’s okay with you, we’ll chat with Hauffler to see if any of the candidates up there every got into trouble.”

“Sure. I’ll give Bob a heads up. When you talk to him, tell him we’ll share any information we dig up with him.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell Larry you called and brief him. This should take no more than ten days.”

“Okay. Appreciate the help.” I felt a wave of relief knowing that Ed and Bill were on board.

7

Life around the house changed as soon as Carla found out she was pregnant. She started talking about redoing one of the bedrooms for the newcomer and looked forward to a sonogram telling her the sex of the kid so she could start with either blue or pink furnishings. Then she started mentioning birthing classes. I wasn’t ready for that. For Brett and Amy, my twenty-something kids, I made myself available in a waiting room while the births came — Mary didn’t want me in the room with her when that was going on. I have no idea why people think that the male in a marriage should be involved, as there’s nothing he can do but watch and pretend he’s being useful. Hearing suggestions that the family join in and take videos of the process turned me off. The birth of a child should be celebrated appropriately, but not while the birthing is going on.

Nonetheless, I knew I had to play the game. Listen. Agree with most everything. Object only if the issue affects me directly in a bad way. Open the checkbook. Even go to birthing classes if absolutely required. The journey could make me feel young again.

•••

When Bob called to tell me he’d set up a second interview with Chuck Blaise, I jumped at his invitation to listen in. The interview was set for ten on Friday. I got to the sheriff’s headquarters early so that Blaise wouldn’t see me there. Bob put me in the observation room right away. Five minutes before ten, Blaise and Bob came into the interview room, along with one of Bob’s deputies, Charlie Becker. Blaise’s mode of dress made me wonder, since he had on the same clothes he had at his first interview, a light blue short-sleeve shirt with a round priestly collar, the same large silver cross around his neck, jeans, and ostrich leather boots. Blaise looked nervous. Bob started in.

“Reverend Blaise, in our first interview, I read you the standard warning and we proceeded. Do you remember that warning?”

“Sure do. Made me nervous.” Blaise’s self-confidence had returned.

“I won’t go through the warning again, and you have the right not to have this interview at all, if you want.”

“I’m okay to go ahead. If I didn’t go ahead, you’d think that I had something to hide, right?”

“Not necessarily, but the main reason for us interviewing you again relates to your church burning down under suspicious circumstances. You understand.”

“I do. I want to find out who did this to me. If it wasn’t enough to lose Betty and her financial support, the loss of our building is crushing.”

Bob nodded. “Let’s start with your whereabouts last Wednesday.”

Blaise leaned forward in his chair attentively. “I was at home preparing my sermon for the next Sunday. My sermons are Biblically based, so I have to do a lot of research relating to the Bible readings we do for our service. Takes most of a day. When I heard the sirens, I worried that it might be a parishioner, or worse yet, another crash on 281 where people were hurt. I called the Blanco police department and they told me my building was burning. I jumped in my car immediately.”

“You know we can look at your credit card charges. Did you buy any gasoline or diesel fuel in the past week?

Blaise thought. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t have anything other than my car, and it runs on gas. I haven’t gone very far in the past week. I can check.”

“Is there insurance on your church building?” Bob was still suspicious of Blaise, although I felt he came across as open and truthful, frightened of the future without Betty and her money.

“Yes, Betty made me make sure I got it. It’s replacement value insurance, but I think there’s a dollar limit on the furnishings. The face value is four hundred thousand, but I’m not sure what it will cost to rebuild. On top of that I’m in a bit of a crunch without Betty’s monetary support. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I know how Job felt.” Blaise looked at the floor.

“One more question,” Bob said. “Do you own any firearms?”

“My parishioners tell me I should have one for protection, but I have never owned one and wouldn’t know how to handle one, like loading, firing and cleaning it. I trust in the Lord to keep me safe.”

As I watched Chuck Blaise through the mirror, I felt sorry for him in a way. He answered clearly, sincerely and simply. He was a man bereft. But Betty’s murder, followed by the insurance fire, made him suspect number one.

Bob continued. “We’ve interviewed a number of people relating to Betty’s murder, and to put it mildly, she enjoyed close relationships with men. We know that something was going on the last time you were with Betty. The maids said your shirt was askew and you looked troubled. What was going on?”

A flash of anger crossed Blaise’s face. “I don’t know what those women told you, but there’s more to the story. Could we turn that video thing off?”

“Not going to happen,” Bob said.

“Can we keep this confidential then?” Blaise said pleadingly.

“This is part of a police investigation, so every bit of this is confidential and won’t be disclosed except to people involved in solving the crime and those who need to know. In a trial or litigation over her estate, what you say here might be admissible as evidence.”

Blaise looked down, thinking, and then looked up. “Let me be frank with you. It will help your investigation. I loved Betty. We spent a lot of time together. I always fantasized that she would eventually get divorced and we could get married. She evolved into the light of my life, and when she came nearer to God, I tried to believe that she was in a better place. I knew quite well that she and her husband had an open relationship and that both of them understood that the other might have physical relationships outside the marital bounds. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m one of them. Betty and I had both an emotional and a physical relationship. We knew that the relationship couldn’t go anywhere unless she divorced Carroll, but neither of them wanted to end it. That is, until recently.”

He went on. “Betty became alienated from God. She read a lot and started reading a number of those modern tracts that claim that God is dead, that God never existed, and that everything can be explained in scientific terms. Over the past two months, we had deep discussions about God. As you know, I believe in God. It’s too hard for me not to. If there was a ‘big bang’, for instance, who started it and why? I can’t believe the universe just happened randomly. And this earthly island we live in even scientists agree is unique. Nothing else like it in the whole universe, its complexity in many ways remaining unexplained. The human body is a masterpiece of uniqueness. We humans, as complex as we are, didn’t happen randomly either.”

“Let’s stay on point, Reverend,” Bob said gently. “No need for a theological debate right now. Tell me how you found out that the fire had started at the church.”

“There’s nothing much more to tell you that I didn’t tell you when we were at the fire. The paper said that the fire was suspicious because of a gas can. Not me. I don’t own a gas can. Somebody else set fire to the building. I’ve gone over the members of our church in my head, as well as those who’ve left us, and none of those people popped up as so alienated from me or my church that they’d burn the place down. Sure, we have a few members who’ve been in serious trouble. Bruto Rivera for instance. Bruto’s spent time in prison for drug dealing and attempted murder, but he says he’s straight now running an auto repair business. He wouldn’t have any reason to torch our church building.”

“Okay, back to your last visit with Betty.” I mused that Bob was not the kind of guy who wanted to hear theological ideas intermixed with reports of Betty’s adulterous engagements with a man of the cloth.

“The day that the women keeping the house saw me running away from Betty was a bad day for me, all right. After we made love, Betty started another long theological discussion. Betty told me that she loved me and wanted to maintain our relationship, but that she was going to cease financial support of my church. To make me feel better, I suppose, she said that she’d continue sending me a check for two thousand a month, as she’d been doing for the past two years. I can’t tell you how upset I was. I felt like Betty was paying me for our relationship. We started to have words with each other, words that lovers shouldn’t say. That’s why I ran out and left, thinking that later we could talk again without anger.”

Bob leaned back in his chair, digesting the story. Blaise’s litany seemed believable, but Bob had seen more bad people than me and continued his skepticism.

“Did you kill Betty?”

The question shocked Blaise, and again anger bioiled up in his face. “Absolutely not! She was my best friend. My lover. My soul mate. We were working through a down period. That’s true. Questioning God is not a sin. Many times the questioning periods lead to stronger beliefs. I just don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”

Either Charles Blaise was a consummate actor or he was not the one who killed Betty, I thought. Bob wrapped up the interview with him, dismissed him, and came into my room.

Bob let out a loud sigh. “The two main suspects here, Blaise and Johnson, both opened up when we questioned them, admitting to their rather strange and unconventional relationships with the victim. The facts point to both of them, but neither of them had any reason to kill her. Neither of them comes off as the sort of person who would sneak around in the dark of night and kill Betty in cold blood. On the other hand, if Betty was my wife, I’d be angry at the other relationships, and Blaise knew he and his church were threatened. People usually don’t have a conscious plan to kill. Premeditation is actually a pretty fuzzy term. Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree with the two of them, however.

“We still don’t know why the game fence was cut open. The killing might have been done by an outlier who wasn’t close to Betty, heard about her and her wealth, and came to the ranch looking for money or gold. I’ll have Deputy Becker go out to the ranch, check in with Gus and have him show us where the fence was broken into and see whether there are any tracks or disturbances in the vegetation.”

“Seems like we’re still nowhere near figuring out who killed Betty,” I said.

“Yeah, and I don’t think bringing the Texas Rangers in for help would move this along right now. I’ll complete the interviews and finish my investigation, and if we’re still stymied, I’ll call in for reinforcements. I’m hungry. Barbeque or Mexican?”

“I guess Mexican. El Charro down the street?”

Both of us avoided going over the Longstreet matter at lunch anymore, so we spent our time talking about the weather, the politics of the county and the city of Blanco, and the large number of retirees moving into our rural county, bringing change with them. I didn’t mention my impending fatherhood yet. Carla wanted to keep that confidential for a while. I needed to get that, as well as the Longstreet estate, off my mind for a while. Too bad El Charro didn’t serve beer, or lunch would have been longer. I migrated back to my office after saying my goodbyes to Hauffler, relaxed. I started on a will I was due to deliver to a client, but the beef fajita tacos made me sleepy. For the first time in a long time, I took a half-hour nap.

8

The next ten days were quiet. No new developments. Hauffler had tracked down Matthew Middlecoff, who volunteered to come to the sheriff’s office for an interview the next Monday morning.

“I feel nauseated all the time,” Carla said. “Morning sickness, no doubt, but it gets better as the day goes on. The good news is that I’m not hungry, so I can avoid ballooning during our pregnancy.”

“Our pregnancy?” I thought. As a male, I’d done my part, and the old man in me reacted to being a part of the whole process. I had to play along. Why did I have this attitude problem? I needed to be more kind and supportive, not resisting an impending change, a positive one, that I couldn’t alter.

“This’ll make me into a high-end chef. Since you’re not hungry, I’ll take over the kitchen every other evening and give you every other night off.” My offer wasn’t motivated solely by altruism, since our dinners had become sparse and rather bland. A look of alarm surfaced on Carla’s face. Time to let that idea rest a while. I looked forward to Carla’s delicate condition ending soon. Not enjoying her food or having the ability to consume even one glass of wine didn’t put her in a particularly good frame of mind, but her excitement over a child made up for her down periods.

I felt good getting out of the house Monday morning as I drove to Johnson City for the Middlecoff interview. The late December weather was clear and bright. High forties. I expected more stories regarding Betty’s male relationships, and I wasn’t to be disappointed.

Like Betty’s other male friends, Matthew Middlecoff strolled into headquarters, relaxed and smiling. Tall, over six-four. Sandy brown hair, muscular, clean-shaven, forty-five or so. Standard hill country dress— Western shirt, starched blue jeans and a working man’s cowboy boots. He introduced himself to Bob and me, shaking our hands. “Good to meet you. I’m not sure I can help in any way, but here I am.”

This time Bob let me sit in on the interview. He explained to Middlecoff that I was the executor of Betty’s estate and had to sort out who was going to get what. I made clear to him that he was not an heir, but explained that we needed to make sure none of the beneficiaries were involved in Betty’s murder. He nodded acknowledgment.

Bob started with his standard Miranda warning and explained the video recorder. Middlecoff reacted in the same way as the others, so Bob had to explain to him that everyone was a suspect until he figured out who had been involved in the murder.

“Tell me a little about you, Matt.”

“Not much to tell, really. I’m a second or third cousin of Carroll Johnson, on my father’s side. Like a lot of people up here in the hill country, I inherited a large ranch. I don’t have any siblings, and after college, I came back to the ranch. You guys are from here, and you know that cattle ranching’s at best a breakeven proposition, so I rent out the ranch during hunting season to deer hunters. They pay me a thousand per gun per weekend, so that little endeavor puts food on the table. Besides, I found that keeping up a two-thousand-acre ranch stressed my bank account and my abilities, so ten years ago I sold off all but five hundred acres. Thanks to Carroll, I found a money manager who’s conservative. The bottom line’s that I can live off the money I get from the ranch and the income I get off my investments.

“By the way, if you’re wondering, I’m not close to Carroll. Even when we were younger, I only saw him at family reunions. Our great-grandparents were brother and sister. When Betty started looking around for property in the hill country, Carroll called me and introduced me to Betty. I liked her, and when she started traveling around, I showed her all the possibilities — Fredericksburg, Johnson City, Wimberley, Blanco, and Stonewall. We became friends, and as you know, she decided on the Blanco-Johnson City area because of the hills and oak trees. I got her in touch with an agent in Blanco, and the rest is history.”

Bob honed in. “Tell me more about your relationship with Betty.”

“That’s kind of embarrassing, really. A year or so after Betty bought the Lucky Strike ranch, she looked for other things to do. Sitting around all day in a house must get pretty boring. Betty loved visiting the wineries between Johnson City and Fredericksburg, so she invited me along, saying she didn’t enjoy tasting wines alone. That’s when our relationship got more serious. A year or eighteen months ago we started getting physical, you know, hugging and kissing, whenever we were touring wineries. Betty told me that she and Carroll had an open relationship that allowed both of them to have relationships with others. Sounded odd to me. Everyone I know is pretty much monogamous up here, but then again that subject isn’t something people talk openly about. One day we ended up at my place and started up a sexual relationship. We both knew the relationship wouldn’t be going anywhere. We stayed good friends, with side benefits. I never thought it would end this way.”

“Did Carroll know the details of your relationship with Betty?”

“Probably so, but I haven’t talked to him in months and I certainly wouldn’t have mentioned the physical relationship to him. He knew we were wine touring, since I invited him the last time I talked to him. Betty must have told him we’d been together, although I doubt she gave him any detail.”

“Did you guys ever argue or get into fights?”

“Betty had a strong personality, with strong beliefs. We always argued over politics, since I’m pretty much of a libertarian, and Betty was pretty liberal. Nothing serious, though. We quit as soon as we saw we couldn’t agree.”

“Did she try to break up with you?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, but, no, we stayed close.”

“Did she act unusual in any way? Did anything seem to concern her?”

“Nope. I went to visit her at her ranch the week before she died. Just the normal Betty.”

Not getting any new hard information, Bob was ready to wrap up the interview. “Any questions, John?”

“Not really. Matt, did she ever mention her estate plans or her kids?”

“We mostly steered clear of that. She sure talked about Paul and the other son, Frank. She didn’t know where Frank was, and she suspected that Paul was into meth and weed pretty heavy, but she had no idea what she could do to stop that. Since I never had kids, I couldn’t help her on that score. I was married for twelve years a decade ago but lost my wife to breast cancer before we could have kids. As you know, chemo rules out any future possibility of having children.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Bob said somberly.

“Betty and I never talked about where our money would go if we died. I’m in a quandary myself, but I have several first cousins. No telling what Betty had in mind.”

“All right,” Bob said. “Matt, thanks for coming in to talk with me.” The two stood up, shook hands and Matt left. After he left, Bob and I noodled on where we were. “I vote to scratch Middlecoff from our suspect list,” I said.

“Agreed. That leaves Johnson himself and Blaise. I’d like to re-interview Scranton, however. If he was deep into drugs, no telling where that could lead.”

“I didn’t think about that,” I said.

“I’ve bored you with this before, but you know we have a big drug problem here in Blanco County. Mostly meth and weed, but our biggest fear is that fentanyl will find its way up here. That stuff’s deadly. Especially when even a little of it is mixed with meth and heroin. There’s a group of local young guys, between twenty and thirty-five, into that stuff. Lost souls. They work only when they are out of money. No skills, no careers. They just get along. They do drugs and party hardy. Weed and beer. More than a little meth. Our deputies know every one of them since we get to bust up their late night parties two or three times a month. I didn’t tell you before, but Paul’s been at most of those bustups. May not be a charter member, but with what Matt said, Scranton’s a druggie, using his art stuff as a cover with his mother. We’re working on interdicting the group’s dealer.”

“We’ve got to go out to the ranch to look at the cut up fence anyway. Should we drop in on him without calling him and see what he can tell us? We might get a better fix on his attitude toward his mother that way.”

Bob was thinking the same way that I was. He said, “We could get a better idea of him as a suspect if we don’t set up another formal interview. Let’s plan on that. Confidentially, our department is part of a task force made up of ATF specialists, Texas Rangers, and the FBI, along with the police in Blanco and Johnson City. We’re aware of a tight-knit band of drug dealers, every one Hispanic. They’re not part of any cartel we don’t think, just a group of guys who supply meth, weed and heroin to local first-level drug dealers. One of our prime suspects is Ernesto “Bruto” Rivera, the guy Blaise mentioned. Rivera’s got a record a mile long. Small stuff except for an attempted murder charge that got dropped. Our goal is to get him on a major federal drug charge. He moved into the area three years ago, and we think he’s the one who supplies Paul’s little group. I don’t need to tell you how amoral Bruto and his kind are.”

Too early for lunch, Bob and I said our good-byes. Back to the paper mill grind.

9

Tuesday morning I got an email from Ed Crowe. “Attached is our report. Please review and then call me to discuss.” I couldn’t wait to download the report. It was revealing. What a cast of characters. It read:

This report and its contents must be held in confidence and cannot be disclosed without the written permission of Crowe and Cassidy and the Estate of Elizabeth Longstreet. We have prepared our report on behalf of the Estate. While Crowe and Cassidy has made every reasonable effort to insure the accuracy of the information contained herein, since information has been obtained from numerous sources, Crowe and Cassidy cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information in this report.

The following information has been obtained on the persons named:

Carroll Johnson. Johnson is a partner in Corbin and Streeter Associates, LLC, a Houston-based regional investment banking firm specializing in energy companies. He’s 46 and was born and raised in Chicago. He graduated from Washington and Lee in 1992 with honors in economics and received an MBA from UT in 1997 after a two year stint in Houston with an investment banking firm. He owns a home in River Oaks in Houston worth $3.2 million (no mortgage recorded) and has a mid-eight-figure net worth, according to confidential information obtained from banking sources. He has no criminal record. River Oaks police have stopped him twice on suspicion of DUI. He cleared a breathalyzer on both occasions, and the arresting officer on one occasion said that he thought Johnson was under the influence of drugs. A confidential source with HPD suggested that Johnson may be doing cocaine, as he was caught up in a drug sweep on Dowling Street in Houston six months ago in possession of a small amount of cocaine, which he said he bought from a street drug peddler whose name he did not know. Police chose not to charge him due to his prominence in Houston. HPD’s drug team also arrested Orlando Pena near Johnson’s home a month ago. Pena’s a known major drug dealer and has a long rap sheet, including several assaults with a deadly weapon. He’s also a suspect in several murders, all drug-related. When arrested, Pena refused to talk, and after a search of his vehicle, no drugs were found, so he was released. Police called Johnson, and he claimed not to know Pena and denied any connection with any drugs.

Augustus ‘Gus’ Binion and Jacob Saunders. Gus Binion, 45, has a clean record other than minor traffic violations. He has a college degree from Kentucky State, class of 1993. He moved into the Blanco area in 2008 from Kentucky, where he worked on thoroughbred horse farms as a trainer and assistant manager. He has been a ranch manager since his arrival. Before he moved to the Lucky Strike ranch after Gerald Alexander’s death, he lived at six different places, each time being asked to leave due to his failure to keep up his place of living. He partnered with Jake Saunders around 2010, and when free rent became available at the Lucky Strike, Jake and Gus moved into the western barn. Like Gus, Jake has a clean record and very little reported history (no owned real estate, no voting record, multiple rented addresses, and no credit history except for one credit card with a $1000 limit). He’s a native of the area, born and raised in Kendalia, a small town near Blanco, and has been ranching since graduating from Blanco High School. Based on input from local police and deputies, Gus and Jake have not been involved in any criminal activity, are hetero and don’t have any known history of drug use or possession.

Charles Blaise. Blaise is more interesting. He was born and raised in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1970 and attended Mississippi State for several years. He moved to Houston, Texas, when he dropped out of college, in 1990. He’s had multiple occupations. For four years after attending college, he sold used cars for a car dealer, and then worked as a stock broker for a small penny stock broker in Houston. He has kept his securities broker registration license active. In 2008, he moved to Richmond, Texas, forty miles southwest of downtown Houston and opened an evangelical church that grew to thirty or forty regular Sunday attendees. He also started a prison ministry at the State prison in Sugarland, Texas, close by where he had his church. His people registered the church with the State, and we contacted the man who signed the incorporation papers. He said the church closed when Blaise moved to the hill country. Blaise closed the church and moved because attendance had gradually declined. Our contact related that many members were turned off by Blaise’s constant requests for money and by his approaches to women. Significantly, the man said that several couples left the church after Blaise touched the female involved inappropriately and made innuendos that a preacher shouldn’t make. He also said that a few parishioners grumbled when several prisoners who’d served their time joined the church. With what resources he had when he arrived in Blanco, he opened the cowboy church in 2014 and built up a small congregation. We contacted the man who filed financial reports with the State for that church, and he said that Blaise’s primary attraction was his message that God forgave all transgressions and wanted his children to work hard and seek wealth and happiness. He said that the forgiveness thing was the main attraction since many in the congregation regularly sinned in many ways. Blaise has a spotty credit history and has no credit cards. His bank account is below $1,000. He has a sparse criminal history, including two DUI’s and one arrest for public intoxication. He also was arrested once for alleged sexual assault, but that charge was dropped for lack of prosecution, which usually means that the victim refused to testify. Blaise is not certified by any church organization and has no history of religious studies that appears of record.

Paul Scranton. Scranton is twenty-eight. He was born and raised in Houston and attended Kincaid, the widely known and expensive private school. He attended Rice University and graduated with a degree in fine arts. After college he worked for the Houston Museum of Fine Arts as an attendant while pursuing graduate studies in modern art. Gus Binion says that he has talent, having seen a number of his paintings. Gus says they are colorful abstracts that he has trouble appreciating. Scranton is another story with the police. He has been arrested multiple times for possession of drug paraphernalia. According to a deputy with the city of Blanco, Paul Scranton runs around with a group of seven guys who work as needed when they are out of money, but who spend most of their time doing drugs and partying. Based on our discussions with local sources, we have concluded that he has a serious drug problem.

Frank Scranton. We were told that that Betty thought he lived in Atlanta, but we have not found him. We believe he might have changed his name and is off the grid. May be homeless. No police record on him and no reports of credit or banking.

Matthew Middlecoff. Middlecoff is forty-eight, born at, and a long-time resident of, Stonewall, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M in 1992. He has no siblings. In 1999, he inherited a two thousand acre ranch from his parents. In 2007 he sold fifteen hundred of those acres, fronting on US 290, to a California vintner that has established a winery and vineyard near the highway. He’s engaged in cattle ranching and, like many other ranchers, rents out his ranch during hunting season to supplement his ranching income. Middlecoff rents back a thousand of the acres he sold to raise hay and for his cattle to graze. He married in 1994, but his wife died in 2006 of breast cancer. He has no children. He has a low eight-figure investment account with a major investment banking firm and an excellent credit history. No criminal record, not even minor traffic violations. Local authorities stated that he has an excellent reputation.

Quite a thorough report. An excellent report on the characters we had to deal with. I sent it along to Hauffler. At least we confirmed that we could scratch Middlecoff from our suspect list. The report on Johnson troubled me. I called Larry to make sure he had gotten a copy of the report. “Hey, John. I had you on my call list. I want to come back, if it’s okay, but I have a few things to work up here in Houston. Ed Crowe is pushing me a bit on my spending so much time on the Longstreet thing when his firm could be charging you for it and I could get a little compensation out of it.”

It was true and hit me hard. “I’m sorry. I should have considered that. When we started this, I didn’t think your time investment would be very large, and I hoped we’d identify the culprit right away. Since this has dragged on, and since the estate can pay you, let me know what the charges would be and give me a feeling for the time you’ve put in so far. I’m hoping you won’t be charging me when we’re drinking beer on the gazebo talking through the case.”

Larry laughed. “Not ever while I have a beer in my hand. Besides, I won’t write down half of my time. Ed wants me to charge a hundred an hour. Is that okay?”

“Sure. That’s more than fair. What’s up in Houston?”

“We heard from one of our jailhouse snitches that word’s on the street about one of the major Houston drug runners killing a rich woman and stealing her gold. Too similar to Betty’s murder to be ignored. I’m trying to get more detail, but that ain’t easy.”

Intrigued, I said, “You think it’s true?”

“Could be. The major drug runners make fifty grand for each round trip to Mexico, but they don’t want to set a pattern. The suppliers make them lay off for a month or two at a time, and the runners get bored and look for things to do. Most of them are violent and ready to beat people up and even kill for peanuts. Like ten grand.”

“That’s crazy.” That kind of information got my mind running in a bunch of different directions.

“Yep. The rumors I have are no good if we don’t have names. Let me see what I can do. If it’s okay I’ll plan to be up there next Monday. And keep this information quiet. Not supposed to be leaked outside HPD.”

“Gotcha.” This murder keeps escalating in complexity.

•••

Deputy Charlie Becker and Gus surveyed the hole in the game fence the next day. Like many peace officers, Becker was older, in his fifties, and quite rotund. When I’d met him, I’d wondered what impression he made on people he stopped for traffic violations. Suspects wouldn’t need to have worried if they ran away from him, as hot pursuit on foot for Becker wasn’t on his skill list.

Gus had given him a short tour before they looked at the fence. “This is quite a place Mrs. Longstreet had here,” Becker said, taking in the expanse of the ranch and main house.

“To say the least. Let’s get in the Polaris and head over to the break in the fence.”

Instead of going through the ranch, Gus left through the main gate and drove down county road 423 several hundred yards. “I came this way so we wouldn’t disrupt any evidence of a vehicle going through here. I came out a week after the murder to look from the inside. As you can see, the area on the other side of the fence is limestone rock with no vegetation, so I couldn’t see any evidence of either human or vehicle tracks. On this side of the fence I could see the tracks of either a small truck or large UTV going up to the fence where they cut it. The rain that we had ten days ago doesn’t help things. This time of year the grass and weeds are dry, so when somebody drives or walks over the stuff, it gets bent down. When rain comes, however, the grass springs back. Now there aren’t any tracks, but since Betty was killed almost a month ago, I’m not surprised that there’s nothing here now.”

Becker walked over to the fence, looking for any evidence of disturbed grass or dirt. Then he opened the fence by himself after taking several pictures with his phone and walked through the opening, examining the ground. Gus stayed nearby, fiddling with his iPhone. After ten minutes of walking around, Becker returned through the fence, replaced it and got in the Polaris.

Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “I don’t see anything. Can’t tell one way or the other.”

“Yep. I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever did this cut the fence, bent it back, then got cold feet and put it back. I presume that Jake and I can repair it now so no one can come through here.”

“Yes,” Becker said. “Go ahead and repair it.”

10

Bob called to relay the results of the foray to the break in the fence. “No real information. Whoever cut the fence could have gone through there on foot or on a four-wheeler. Then again there’s no real evidence of anyone or anything going beyond the fence.” He was obviously aggravated. “This investigation pisses me off. I wish we could find hard evidence for a change. My deputies also interviewed the three motels in Blanco and the two in Johnson City, asking about their guests around the time of the murder, and none of them could give us any useful information. Seems that all the motels have single males who stay there from time to time. Many Hispanics, most without IDs, paying cash. They check in for one or two nights and then move on. They’re probably day workers. None of them unruly.”

After the brief call, I went back to my work, choosing to find other clients to work on since, frankly, I tired of the quest for Betty’s murderer. Johnson called in the afternoon. “John, I’ve been thinking. The murder investigation hasn’t yielded any results as far as I know, and both Blaise and Scranton have to be running low on funds. I may regret it down the road, but we don’t want either of them going anywhere right now. Would you send each of them a check for five thousand out of the checking account you set up for the estate? That should take care of them for a while.”

“Sure. They’re both beneficiaries, and you’re in charge. If either of them turns out to be the killer, we can paste over the payment. Only the other beneficiaries could object.”

“Good. Please do it. Thanks.” Needless to say, Johnson surprised me. Perhaps he had a heart after all.

Carla and I spent the weekend enjoying our privacy and talking of the happy events to come. I could feel that our having a John junior or a little girl had already made us closer than ever, notwithstanding Carla’s being obsessed with the pregnancy. Shopping for baby stuff. Everything had to be planned in advance. No problem. Since her doctor urged her to exercise, we both got on a fitness regimen. The spinoff benefits so far outweighed the added burdens.

Larry came back midday Monday, all pumped. As he got out of his car, he said excitedly, “We finally have progress. HPD has a source deep in the druggie crowd who gives them information in exchange for their not prosecuting him on multiple minor drug charges. He knows he needs to cooperate and tell the truth or he’s toast. HPD heard that a key member of Houston’s MS-13 boasted that he’d killed a woman for sixty grand. They followed up with their inside source. That guy identified the braggart as Orlando Pena. Pena’s a known drug runner, bringing drugs up from near Brownsville. Quite a wily character. He’s been stopped a number of times along I-10 between San Antonio and Houston. His vehicle’s always different but searched top to bottom, and the police never find any drugs. Dogs don’t smell anything. And yet, HPD says that DEA knows that major quantities of meth and weed arrive whenever Pena returns to Houston from the border. They think that Pena may be acting as a decoy, with the real carrier following behind him close enough to get by when Pena’s been stopped. Either that or the drugs are hidden in the gas tank where they couldn’t be detected in a search.

“I’m close to the detective who replaced me. Jim Peterson. He wants our murder solved too but can’t be officially involved until we have something hard. Word is that Pena was hired by a gringo. Being bored and laying low for a while, Pena agreed to do the hit. He said he broke into the home of the victim and bragged that he got sixty thousand for doing her in. HPD can’t right now haul Orlando in without exposing the source, since they don’t know who else Pena told. Our source didn’t have a name for the victim, so it may or may not be Betty. I’ve checked with Dallas, Austin and San Antonio and there are at least two open cases involving women murdered at home, one of them in Houston. We need probable cause to pick him up. He’ll deny everything when we confront him. Right now we don’t have enough concrete information on him. We need that to confirm whether he’s tied to Betty’s murder.”

“Can we get a picture of Pena? That way we could go to the motels and see if anyone can identify him.”

“Already on that. He’s posed for the State police and HPD photographers multiple times, so I’ll get Jim Peterson to email us mug shots. You should get Bob to send us a mug shot of Rivera too One or the other of them may be involved. Both are bad guys, especially Pena.”

“Since whoever killed her took her gold, is there any chance of the police finding out whether Pena is selling gold?”

Larry laughed. “If he did steal the stuff, he’ll let any gold cool off before he starts selling anything. After that he’d go to a pawn shop rather than a precious metals dealer. HPD has good relationships with the pawn shops in Houston. They report anything suspicious.”

“Let’s go in and talk with Carla. She has news for you, and we can get a sandwich and a beer while we relax.”

“You’re the perfect host!”

When we got inside, Carla smiled with the look of someone about to reveal a secret and said “Larry, we wanted you to be one of the first to know. John’s going to be a father around the Fourth of July next year.”

Larry smiled broadly, taking on the demeanor of a grandfather. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations. John sure needs another heir. Do you know whether it’s a boy or girl?”

“Not yet, but as soon as we know, you’ll know. We may have to have you change bedrooms when you visit so I can do baby decorating,”she said, brimming with excitement.

“Happy to do that, but be careful enlisting me to take care of the young’un. I haven’t held a baby in decades, and I have no idea how those new-fangled disposable diapers work.”

“You’re excused. At least until we can train you,” I joked. Larry went to his room to get settled, and Carla went to to our bedroom to take a nap. The pregnancy made her tired. I seized the opportunity to run to the office to work on Betty’s asset inventory. Not one response to my newspaper ad calling for people to let me know if she owed them anything.

I called Bob to relay Larry’s information from HPD about Pena. I said, “If the story pans out, we have the murderer identified, but who else was involved remains in question. Both Johnson and Blaise, we now know from Ed Crowe’s report, had criminal acquaintances. Have you had a chance to read it?”

“Not yet. Too much going on here.”

I knew that Bob had a full caseload to deal with. I went on anyway. “If Betty told Blaise the details of her last codicil, and if Blaise worried that he’d be cut off by Betty, he had the motive to arrange a hit. Rivera went to his church. Same considerations for Johnson. You and I couldn’t tolerate our wives having sex with multiple other partners. Johnson may know Pena, so he could have gotten Pena to do the dirty deed. I could see Johnson getting fed up with her lifestyle. If Johnson knew the provisions of her codicil, that he was the executor and a one-quarter beneficiary, he might be motivated to arrange her demise. The estate lawyers who do the wills at Brown and Cutsinger always advise their clients to give a copy of their wills to the executor so he or she isn’t taken off guard if the maker of the will dies. So if either Johnson or Blaise expected to inherit five or six million, money alone would give us the motive. Blaise certainly knows Rivera, and well. He may be the culprit, not Pena. And then there’s the random possibility that the culprit is Harold at Austin Security. I keep forgetting to check him out. All this makes my head spin. I wish we had this damn thing solved so we could move on.”

“Agreed,” said Bob. “Now we’ve got to close the connection between Pena and the others involved in the chain if we can. Let me think how we do that. Check with Larry and see if it’s okay for me to contact and work with Jim Peterson. Can’t do this by myself.”

•••

The next day Bob sent me the mug shots. I hoped that I never had to pose for one. Worse than the drivers’ license photos. Both of them look angry and sullen. Mean and ready for trouble.

For comic relief from the stress of the Longstreet matter, I had municipal court that Wednesday. To my surprise, when I parked by the Byars Building where court is held, a large crowd had gathered outside the building. I presumed that most of them wanted a place to smoke, but the crowd was too large for that. As I walked in, standing by the urn where people could dispose of their cigarettes, Bruto Rivera stood, leaning onto the side of the building. When he saw me in coat and tie, he took his cigarette, or rather cigarillo — one of those cigars shaped like a cigarette — and mashed it angrily into the sand of the disposal urn. The cigarillo had a bright silver band on it. Must have been expensive.

The courtroom was overflowing. The bailiff, Curt Koch, a retired police officer, sat at the table where Judge Green held forth, going over papers.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Drug dog,” he replied.

“What?”

“The police department’s gotten a drug dog and the officer who handles it, and the dog’s done his work in spades. Not only is the drug dog helping interdict drug traffic going from the border to and through Dallas, but Fido’s turned up a number of local offenders. When the police arrest someone with a minor amount of weed, they cite the person for possession of paraphernalia, since it’s just a misdemeanor. Arresting a violator for a felony requires a trip to the county jail and several hours of paperwork, and the police have bigger fish to fry.”

As usual, when Judge Green arrived, we stood up at attention. The judge then said a few words how the court and court proceedings worked, and then Koch took roll, reading down the list of he accuseds, all but twenty percent drug or paraphernalia charges. There were sixty people packed into the small room. Standing room only. When Koch got to the “R’s”, Bruto Rivera’s name was called, and he responded loudly. To add to my surprise, at the “S’s”, Paul Scranton’s name was called. Odd. I looked at the charge sheets and both had been cited for possession of less than four grams of weed, a misdemeanor. It seemed like forever before Judge Green waded through the others and got to Rivera. Younger than I had thought from the way he looked, Rivera presented himself as a clean-cut member of society. Forty-five or more. Clean-shaven, unlike most of his mug shots. Green asked him for a plea, and Rivera looked down. “No contest, your honor.” Not that a no contest plea would do anything, as in effect he was pleading guilty. Green asked him whether he had prior offenses and his means of employment, knowing full well that he had a long rap sheet and allegedly led a bunch of drug dealers in south Blanco County.

“I do car repairs and odd jobs,” Rivera said. “Just get by.” Green knew it was bullshit so assessed the maximum fine of two hundred dollars. Bruto pulled out a wad of bills, and Green reacted. “Don’t ever pay me or any other judge. Go to the court clerk next door and pay the fine.” I could tell that Green wished that the fine was larger.

“Wait a minute, Bruto,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. Who are you?”

“The city attorney and prosecutor here. Where were you the evening of the twenty-third of October?”

“How the hell would I know,” he replied. “I don’t even know where I was last Saturday.” The courtroom erupted in laughter.

“I’d like to interview you in the next day or two. Where will you be?”

“Are you a cop or something?”

“No, but one will be at the interview.”

“Not interested unless you got a subpoena.” You could see the audience wondering what that was all about. Bruto strolled out of the room to pay his fine.

Shortly after finishing with Rivera, Judge Green got to Paul Scranton, charged also with possession of weed. Asked for a plea, Scranton also said “No contest” and asked for deferred adjudication. If the judge granted that, the charge against him would be dismissed after a probationary period, during which time Scranton could not get any new charges filed against him. Knowing who he was, the judge said, “I don’t normally grant deferred for drug cases. Tell me your story and we’ll see.”

“I have no excuse,” Scranton said. “I was in town at the Saddleback Bar that night, outside. Bruto and I were talking and he offered to sell me the weed. I paid him for two joints, and right after that two cops jumped us, one with a drug dog, and they ticketed us for the joints. Bruto had two more. Then the drug dog sniffed over my car and Bruto’s pickup, but they didn’t find anything.”

“How do you know Bruto?” I was curious.

“I don’t remember when I first met him. He and I have been around town a long time. I don’t want this on my record. I shouldn’t have been seen with Bruto. He’s got a bad reputation I hear.”

The judge rolled back in his chair. “Paul, I don’t see any reason why I should grant deferred in your case. No mitigating circumstances, no excuses. Perhaps getting this misdemeanor on record will motivate you to stop doing drugs. I hear you’re a pretty good artist. Let that be your calling. Not a druggie like others around here. I’m finding you guilty and fining you the same two hundred I fined Bruto. You can pay the court clerk.” He slammed his gavel down. “ Next case. ”

That day in court I had little to do. Not a one pled not guilty. None of the druggies or speeders complained about the police who had ticketed them. Still, court took almost four hours out of my day. Interesting verification that Scranton and Rivera hung out together. A new thought occurred as I watched with boredom. If Betty had decided to cut Paul off, perhaps Paul enlisted Bruto to take care of her. Who knows?

As court adjourned, I had another one of my epiphanies. I walked over to city hall and retrieved a small plastic sandwich bag from the kitchen. Then I returned to the Byars building with a needle-nose pliers and retrieved Bruto’s cigarillo, placing it carefully in the sandwich bag borrowed from the city hall office. If DNA evidence ever turned up at Betty’s murder scene, having Bruto’s sample might come in handy.

11

Bob had Larry check out Austin Security to close that loop. Instead of a phone call interview, Larry volunteered to meet with the manager of Austin Security and Harold at four thirty that Friday, at the end of the work day at their office. Larry recorded the interview, first with Greg Wall, the manager, and then with Harold Metzger, the guy who’d been at Betty’s several days before the murder.

“You can understand that we have to do a deep dive on any potential service employee,” Wall said. ”Each one of them goes into homes or businesses owned by people by definition worried about security. We did that with Harold. His record’s clean as a whistle. Army Special Forces verteran. He’s a bit of an introvert by nature, and his demeanor’s been a little problem. He looks like someone who’d be breaking into their house, but the truth is he’s a teddy bear. No trouble from him and no complaints so far. He’s worked for us for close to two years. Wanna talk to him?”

“Sure,” Larry said. Wall called him in.

Harold introduced himself, and Larry asked him several softball questions. His story describing his visit to Betty’s house matched the story the girls had told us. The visit was nothing more than a quarterly check to make sure that the surveillance cameras were working as well as the alarm systems.

“Did you notice anything unusual in the closet or safe room?” Larry asked.

“I go to a lot of homes, but this one took the cake. The safe room was pretty bare, but the closet was something else. All those shoes and clothes. To top it off, in the far corner of the safe room, a bunch of gold bars and coins had been stacked there neatly.”

“What and how much was there?”

“I didn’t take time to look very closely, but there had to be five or six bars and more than a dozen gold coins.”

“Did you pick any of them up?”

He looked surprised by the question. “No. That would have been way out of order.”

“Notice anything else out of order in the house?”

“No, nothing. Very routine. All systems working.”

“I appreciate your letting me talk to you and your boss. We’re looking for clues that might lead us to the murderer of your customer. I presume you know all about it.”

“Just what I’ve read in the paper. I’m no criminologist, but I’d say it was an inside job. They say eighty-five per cent of the murders in this country are committed by people who knew the victim.”

“We’ve gotta find out who that is. Thanks for your time.” We all shook hands and Metzger left. Another dead end.

•••

When Larry got home that evening, he related his visit with Harold to me, and it stimulated a thought. “Based on what Harold said, a lot of gold was lying on the floor when he was there Whoever killed Betty must have taken the gold, but left that one coin there as a poke in the eye. Wonder what happened to that coin.”

“Should be still there. We told the girls to leave everything as it is.”

I called Bob and related our conversation, then mentioned my getting Bruto’s cigarillo butt at municipal court. “It’s a long shot, but if we can get DNA from the coin, that could lead toward finding out who killed her.”

“I’ll send John Griffin, one of my deputies, out there first thing in the morning with an evidence bag and instructions on how to pick the coin up without damaging what’s on it. Can’t hurt to try anyway. We’ve got plenty of suspects, but no smoking gun, as they say.”

The weekend passed quietly. This time Larry decided to go to Austin to check out the Blanton Art Museum and the Bullock Texas State History Museum, spending Saturday night in Austin. Carla and I got quality time together. Her morning sickness had by now given way to a voracious appetite. She tried mightily to eat healthy but occasionally feasted on salty, fatty chips and salsa. I had a hard time avoiding mimicking her eating habits.

•••

That Monday Carroll Johnson called. “Just checking in. Any news? Did Paul get his advance?”

While I didn’t think that Carroll had been involved in the murder, I hesitated to tell him about the drug connections both in Houston and Blanco, especially the information Larry had gleaned from HPD concerning Johnson himself. “No, nothing hard at this point. The sheriff’s department still can’t figure out how the murderer got in and who he was. As to Paul, I haven’t heard a word from him. I put five thousand from the estate account into his account at the Blanco National Bank and emailed him the deposit slip. Told him you wanted to make sure he had money to live on.”

“Good. Thanks. I still think that Blaise guy did it, ” his tone a bit irritated.

“He’s sure still a prime candidate. I gave him a check for five grand too. He was overwhelmed. I made sure he knew it was your decision, not mine.”

“I’ll be back in Blanco in a couple of weeks. Nothing pressing right now at the ranch.”

“Okay.” We left things at that.

Bob’s deputy retrieved the coin carefully, and I took the cigarillo butt to the sheriff’s headquarters in Johnson City. Bob forwarded both to the State forensics lab the next day, putting an “urgent” note on the analysis. Still, best case, the results would take several weeks. That’d give me time to catch up on stuff I’d put off with other clients. Resolution of Betty’s murder would have to wait.

Ten days passed without incident. Then Bob called. “The DNA results came back. Your intuition’s right on track. The coin had Bruto’s DNA on it, the sample you got from his cigarillo. Then, understandably, Betty’s DNA, and a third sample not yet identified. No telling who that belongs to. Maybe the coin dealer.”

“Are you going to pick Bruto up on suspicion of murder?” I questioned.

“I’m torn. You know the old saying that what’s important is not who shot the bullet but who paid for it? Somebody besides Bruto is involved. Could be that whoever started this picked up on an innocent remark by Blaise or one of the maids about Betty having a gold trove in her closet. That could be how Bruto got involved. But he’s not the kind of guy who could pull off a murder as complicated as this by himself. I’d bet someone else put him up to it. Gotta be Blaise. I’ll have to think how I can get Bruto to come clean. He’ll be up for murder one. Keep this under your hat for the time being till I can figure out the next step.”

“Okay.” How stupid Bruto was to leave the one coin as an “up yours” signature. Now to find out why he killed her. I emailed Bob to see whether another session with Blaise was in order. If he’d told one of his flock, such as Bruto, about Betty handing out gold coins or if he gave a gold coin to one of them, that person might have figured out how to get the gold. Then, again, he denied that he told anyone where the gold coins came from. Maybe I was naïve, but to me, Blaise‘s whole demeanor in his two interviews pointed to his not being the killer.

12

Hauffler called the next afternoon, laughing. “I decided to hit this thing head on. I told the force to be on the lookout for Bruto and to bring him in on suspicion of murder. One of my deputies saw him hanging around the bar on the 360 bypass and engaged him. Bruto started bitching the deputy out, claiming he was being harassed and discriminated against, so the deputy arrested him on the murder charge. Bruto was shocked and refused to say anything else. When we booked him in Johnson City, he called his lawyer, Chad Gordon, who told him not to say anything to anybody. So there we stand. Next step is to interview Pastor Blaise again and then Bruto, with Chad present, to let them know about the DNA. Wanna sit in on the visits?” I could tell that Bob wanted to get to the heart of the matter and that he figured Bruto was the key to that.

“Of course, but I should sit in the observation room, out of the way. I know Larry would want to be there too. Is that okay?”

“Sure. I’ll let you know when they’re set up. Should be interesting.”

I’d given Larry the background on Bruto, his DNA sample, and the results. Pretty incriminating. Hauffler called the next day to tell me to show up at 9:30 on Thursday. The Blaise interview was set for 9:45, with the Rivera interview at 10:30. Bob figured that the interview with Blaise would be short, and that there’d be plenty of time for Blaise to leave headquarters without Rivera or his lawyer Gordon knowing that we’d had multiple conversations with Blaise.

Chad Gordon, like all the lawyers in Blanco County, took on anything and everything that would bring in a fee. I’d met him several times in municipal court, and once in a while he’d set up a jury trial when his client insisted on his innocence. Hard to make money at that since the maximum fines are almost always less than a thousand dollars even for multiple offenses, and defendants only stood for heavy attorneys’ fees if they thought principle was involved. Chad, that is, really Charles, presented well. In front of a judge or jury, he always came in a cheap suit with a white shirt and out of date tie. He also wore a straw Stetson to make sure that everyone knew he was one of them. The rest of him was quite average…average height and build, plain round face, thinning brown hair. Late forties. Juries adored him. Once in front of a jury, his demeanor and the way he talked changed dramatically from normal upstanding lawyer to poor ol’ country boy with a deep Texas accent.

Larry and I arrived early and were immediately shuttled into the observation room by Bob. Bob told us to watch body language. As usual, Blaise arrived right on time.

Hauffler began interviewing Blaise with his usual reminder that he was under a Miranda warning and didn’t have to do the interview. Blaise showed no concern.

Bob jumped right in. “We haven’t been able to solve the church fire yet, pastor, but we’re focusing in on one of your church members. Bruto Rivera. Tell me about him.”

Blaise sat, unperturbed. “I can’t tell you much. I do know that he served hard time in the Sugarland State prison for drug running and attempted murder. Something concerning a busted drug deal. I’ve counseled him over the past year, and he claims to be drug-free. He says he repairs cars for a living, buying wrecks in Houston and San Antonio and then taking them to Mexico for repairs. He says by buying them cheap and repairing them in Mexico, he can make good money.”

“Has he ever offered you drugs or indicated that he has been selling them?”

“Heavens no.” Blaise remained relaxed and curious about the focus on Rivera.

“Do you know where he lives?”

“Not really. Somewhere south of Blanco.”

“Okay. Have you ever gotten Bruto to do anything for you?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Car repair. Handyman stuff?”

“No. Bruto comes to church and enjoys our lunches after the service, along with the fellowship. I don’t see why Bruto would want to burn down my church. He’s always been nice to me.”

“Did you ever tell Bruto, or anyone else for that matter, that Betty had given you gold coins? When you gave a parishioner one of the coins, did you tell him or her where the coin came from? Did you ever give a coin to Bruto?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not to Bruto. The ones I gave the coins to didn’t know what to do with them. I had to tell them where they could sell them. I presume they did.”

“I’m outta questions. That’s all, Reverend. Thanks.”

After Blaise left, Bob came into the observation room. “Either he’s a great actor or he’s not in league with Bruto. Totally relaxed. On to the main event with Bruto.”

Larry and I stayed in the observation room. We worried when the appointed time came and went. Around ten forty-five, Gordon and Rivera came into the interview room with Bob. Bob read the full Miranda warning to him, and explained once again the reason for video taping the interview. Gordon asked that he be sent a copy of the video, to which Bob quickly agreed.

“Before we start,” Gordon said, “I don’t see any reason for this interview. I’ve instructed my client not to say anything, which is his right. So why are we here?”

Hauffler nodded and gave Gordon a weak smile. “We wanted to put our cards on the table. We know Bruto killed Betty Longstreet and we want to know the details, including who else was involved. Just so you know, we have a sample of Bruto’s DNA and we compared it with the DNA on the gold coin left in Betty’s bedroom. There was a match. As you know, DNA results are ninety-nine and ninety-one-hundredths accurate. So, Bruto, what were you doing in Betty’s bedroom when she was killed?”

The color drained from Gordon’s face. Both he and Bruto looked shocked. “I didn’t kill that lady!” Bruto almost shouted. He looked down. Gordon turned in his chair toward Bruto.

“I told you not to say anything!” Gordon shouted. Then silence. I thought it lasted an eternity, but no more than a minute or two had passed.

“All this information is new to me,” Chad said. “I have to confirm the DNA report before we go any further. Also, I need to talk to my client in private.”

Hauffler smiled. He held all the cards. Bruto fidgeted in his chair, looking very nervous. “I understand. You can talk to Bruto in one of the jail’s rooms for visitors, where you’ll have privacy. The room’s soundproof and there aren’t any cameras in there. From this point on you will need to work with Jane Semang, the DA. Perhaps you can cut a deal with her.”

The interview adjourned, and Rivera and Gordon were escorted to one of the visitor rooms. Then Bob came to our room.

“They sure were a bit surprised,” Bob said.

“That’s an understatement. If he’s smart he’ll come clean and work a plea deal so that he won’t get a ticket to death row.”

As we expected, Gordon spent close to a half hour with Bruto. When he came out of the interview room, he’d regained his composure and asked Bob to take him through the DNA evidence. Knowing that the DNA would be a part of any murder trial, Bob told him the entire story, including my part in getting the sample from Bruto. Looking distressed and downtrodden, Gordon left headquarters, telling Bob he’d be in touch with Semang.

•••

Since Bob had other fires to put out, he declined our offer of a free lunch, saying that his first order of business was to get Bruto back to his cell. Larry and I decided to pick up barbeque and share it with Carla. Two pounds would take care of the three of us. Carla was delighted. “I have an interesting secret for you.”

“Are we going to have twins?” I said playfully as I put my arm around her waist.

“Interesting that you should say that. Sorta. Amy called this morning while you were gone, and she’s not only pregnant but planning to have your grandson in August. Your new son will have a nephew just a month younger than he is!”

Larry rolled his eyes. More strange feelings sweeping over me. I felt weird. Could it be from embarrassment — or guilt in not spending enough time with my daughter, and Andy for that matter? I needed to spend more time with Amy. She’d been the rebel in our family, but college had straightened her out a little. She’d majored in childhood development and child psychology, and the best part of her education was her finding herself and understanding who she was. Returning from Texas Tech to Houston, she taught at Lamar Elementary and became friends with the Lamar High teachers. From there she met Andy Jones, a basketball coach and history teacher. Seemed to be a good guy, but neither I nor the two of them had taken the time to get close. That had to change.

I called Amy. “I can’t believe the news! Congratulations! How are you feeling? I’m excited for you. And you know it’s a boy?”

“Yes. Due August fifteen. Say, Dad, we haven’t seen each other for a while. Is it okay for Andy and me to come up next weekend?”

“Sure. I want to see you for sure. And Andy.”

“By the way, when we found out we were having a baby, we marched down to city hall and got a marriage license, then we got a judge to do the formalities. So now we’re married!”

“That’s great honey. You’re more than welcome up here. Come as soon as you and Andy can and stay as long as you want.” What a surprise. Great news. I hadn’t felt this good in months.

13

Amy’s pending visit could have caused complications, but as soon as I announced that Amy was arriving for the weekend, Larry said he needed to return to Houston to get things in order there. We told him that Amy and Andy would be staying in the other bedroom, but Larry persisted, then left mid-morning that Friday, giving us just a few hours before Amy and her husband arrived late that afternoon.

It felt wonderful seeing Amy. We settled down in the gazebo, just the two of us. She looked radiant, and our together time reminded me of the good times we had had as a family as she grew up. We’d only met Andy a couple of times and then only for short visits, but early on Andy met with our approval. He’s tall, six feet and good looking with blue eyes and light brown hair. Like most young men, he sported a stubble. I wish that the younger male set would either be clean-shaven or grow a beard. Half way makes them look disheveled. They don’t realize how they look. Amy, our blond and blue-eyed wonder, measured in at five-five, so Andy towered over her. Their kids would be good looking. I cooked steaks on the grill to go along with some baked yams and a salad, and we spent the evening visiting, getting closer, talking about the two pregnancies and then reminiscing. A great time.

Around three in the morning I heard a scream coming from Amy’s bedroom, then saw flashes of light by the garage at the back of the house. I ran out the front door to see flames coming from the far outside wall of the garage. I went back and called 911, put on my shoes and ran outside. I grabbed a garden hose at the side of the house and turned it on in the hopes that I could slow the fire down. After Andy ran out after me and took charge of the hose, I opened the garage door and noticed that the heat in the garage was still tolerable. I went back into the house, grabbed my keys, and nimbly pulled the cars out of the garage. Then more water on the flames. Fortunately we’d covered that side of the house with rock facing, so the fire had trouble spreading quickly. As the flames started spreading into the roof, the Blanco volunteer fire department arrived. All three units, including a water truck, critical in the hill country. I remembered that when I ordered up insurance on our newly-built home, the agent asked how far I was from the nearest fire hydrant. “About nine miles,” I said. Must have driven my premiums up even with water trucks showing up at fires.

Within a half hour, the flames were out and the garage doused with water. What a mess! Grant Moore, the fire chief, strolled up with a concerned look on his face. “This fire is an arson fire,” he said. “Leave everything as it is since the sheriff’s boys will want to be here in the morning. Come over here.” He directed me over to the side where the fire had started and took out his flashlight. “See there,” as he shined the light on a gas can. “That’s the accelerant whoever did this used to start the fire. Smelled like diesel. The gas can looks a lot like the gas can that fired up that pastor’s cowboy church south of town.”

Chills went through my spine. The truth might be coming out on who murdered Betty, but whoever it was didn’t want me to know more. Bruto was in jail. Did whoever set this fire want to kill me and my family? Was it nothing more than a threat? Whoever it was could have gotten rid of me in other ways.

Moore said, “I’ll let Bob Hauffler know. I’ll recommend that he send a deputy out here right away to keep watch, at least until morning sun-up.”

“Excellent! What a way to start a Sunday.”

•••

Bob Hauffler and his team arrived Monday morning to digest the burn scene, right as Amy and Andy were packing to return to Houston. “Sure has been a nice, restful weekend,” she said. I laughed. “Amy, regardless of what’s going on here, it’s been great being with you two. We have to do more of it. Next time I’m in Houston I’ll give you a call.”

“Dad, let’s both do better keeping in touch.”

“I promise.” And I meant it. It’d been a long time since I’d felt like a family man.

Hauffler broke up the tender little good-bye scene, pulling up in the driveay in his squad car.. “There’s no reason anyone would do this to you if you weren’t wrapped up in the Longstreet murder and Bruto’s arrest. He obviously didn’t do it since he’s lolling around in my jail. Given how this was started, the gas can, and the late hour, whoever did this must have torched the church as well. The only suspect I can think of is Blaise.”

“Yep. I’ll lock my gate from now on, not that that will keep anyone from breaking through my fence and coming in anyway.”

“Can’t hurt. Just be aware. Tell Carla and your guests too.”

“Thanks.”

After Bob left, I called Carroll Johnson’s office to bring him up to date. His secretary said he was travelling but she’d get the message to him that I’d called. Next I tried Larry, and he answered immediately. “The plot’s thickening, as they say,” I said. Larry laughed.

“No telling who the pyromaniac is, and without a direct connection, Hauffler can’t go out and arrest Blaise. Everything points to him though.”

“We must be getting closer to the truth if someone wants to kill me, or at least send a message. By the way, Amy and Andy left this morning, so it’s okay for you to come back up here if you think your talents will help get to the bottom of this.” Even though I enjoyed my time alone with Carla. I somehow missed having Larry around.

“I’ve got a hunch that I need to follow up here. After I do that, I might come up Wednesday if my hunch pans out. I’m happy you had a good time with the family. Wish I had that.”

“Well, you’re family now too. It’s been good seeing Amy. I feel strange that I’m going to become a father and a grandfather around the same time.”

“That’s weird all right, but the two kids should be great fun when they’re together. Adios for now.”

Within five minutes the phone rang. Johnson calling. “Hey, John. Haven’t talked to you in a while. I’m in New Orleans right now. What’s up?”

First I told him the details of Bruto, his DNA and his arrest. Carroll was silent. Then I told him about the fire. I could hear him breathing into his phone.

He let out a little whistle and said, “John, I didn’t want you to get involved in something that puts you in any danger. It’ll be better for you to back off and let Hauffler and the DA take charge of this.”

“I certainly intend to do just that.”

“And your friend Larry too. Don’t want him hurt.”

That last comment gave me pause. Carroll’s statement almost sounded like a threat. Maybe my paranoia was getting the best of me.

Then I asked, “When are you coming up next?”

“Probably next week. I should check on how things are going with Gus and the other help.”

“Just let me know when, and we can go over what I’ve done for the estate inventory and all that boring stuff.”

“Got it. Stay safe.” No other goodbyes. Odd guy. Probably just busy.

My next task: call Jane Semang. I wouldn’t take her job as district attorney for all the money in Texas. Her district covers Blanco and Comal Counties, together a far-flung area. Trials are held at each county seat, and with trial preparation trips to various sheriff and city enforcement offices, she must put fifty thousand miles on her car each year. The counties appreciated her skills. In her mid-fifties with dark brown hair and brown eyes, five ten or so, she presented a rather imposing figure, especially since she wore her hair in a tight bun. Except in the courtroom she showed a light sense of humor and an informality that made anyone dealing with her feel relaxed and comfortable talking with her.

“I’ll be in Johnson City at the court house tomorrow finishing up a short trial, but I’m pushing for a plea deal that avoids having a full, several day-long jury trial. I sorta hate to do that since juries get pissed off that they’ve been called only to be dismissed. A lot of people, particularly retired folks, look forward to jury service.”

“I understand. Just give me a call tomorrow at my office, and I can be there in twenty minutes or so. Need to brief you on Bruto Rivera and the Longstreet murder.”

“Bob called me and said the same thing. The three of us should get together.”

“I’ll check with Bob and see what’s on his plate tomorrow.”

“Good. Thanks.” All business. Jane was smart and knowledgeable. Her strongest trait was juggling a packed schedule, which she always did with grace and neutrality to all lawyers. Her husband, Tom, built houses for a living. I wondered what the two of them had in common.

14

Semang called mid-morning the next day. “I finished up my plea deal this morning,” Jane said. “DUI wreck with several people injured. The guy had two priors, and I figured that at some point he was going to kill either himself or other people, so I agreed to time served on the condition that he go in to a ninety-day rehab and then probation for three years conditioned on his not drinking or taking drugs. He can afford that. Most people can’t. Justice served. And he’ll have to answer to civil suits by the injured parties. Time for lunch. Can we do this over lunch at El Charro?”

“Sure. Bob will love doing it that way. See you there in a half hour. Okay?”

“Deal.” Short and sweet.

After the three of us had consumed a basket of chips and salsa, we got down to business. Bob related the facts from the point of Betty’s death to the fire at my house. Jane scribbled a number of notes.

“What do you want from me?” Jane asked.

“Simple,” Bob said. “Bruto claims he didn’t kill Betty, but his DNA puts him at the scene. He’s gonna have trouble wriggling out of that. We want to find out who got him to do the dirty deed. At a bare minimum, someone had to tell him about Betty’s gold cache, where it was, and how to get in without the staff hearing him. That execution style killing would normally get him a death sentence but if you could do a deal with him to tell all in return for a life sentence, we might get the real culprit.”

“Interesting. You told me he deals drugs around here, so we wouldn’t want him coming back here anytime soon. Maybe life without parole or parole after, say twenty years.”

“That’s up to you. How do we set this up?” Not being experienced in criminal law, I really didn’t know.

“That won’t be a problem. Chad Gordon’s already called me, but I’ve been ignoring him. Chad’s pushy and always wants to tell me how to do my job. I’ll just call him and set up a one-on-one meeting with him. I’ve dealt with him for years. Knowing him, he’ll make an unreasonable proffer, I’ll reject it, and then we’ll have a second meeting and get down to brass tacks.”

Bob and I chuckled. The voice of years of experience.

“We’ll back off and wait for you to take care of Gordon,” Bob said.

Then we dived into our lunch. We adjourned more than satiated. I went back to the office, relaxed but determined to get work for other clients done. However, I was still catching up on the sleep I’d lost Sunday night. I dozed in my chair for a good forty-five minutes.

My phone ringing woke me up out of my stupor. Larry intoned, “Bingo. My instincts are still working. Ya know Orlando Pena? Something’s been nagging me in the back of my brain because of the hit he was bragging about. I got Jim Peterson to run his record for me, and, to my surprise, he was in the Sugarland prison as a guest of the State the same time Bruto was there. Every inmate who’s Hispanic gets sucked into the MS-13 orbit even though they may not join as an official member. Bruto and Orlando know each other.”

I righted myself in my chair. “Small world. Very interesting, but just because they know each other doesn’t link Pena to the murder. I wonder if anyone’s got Pena’s DNA.”

“Good idea. I’ll find out. If we can match it to the other DNA on the coin we’re home free.”

“Not quite. There’s another person behind this. If Pena and Rivera were in league together, or even if Rivera did it alone, where would they have gotten the information concerning where the gold was and how to get to it? Besides, neither of them are the type to think up complicated plans.” We hung up thinking we had even more questions to answer.

On my way home, I stopped at Loew’s for a few groceries and a bottle of wine. As I was wandering around, I ran into Chuck Blaise. He moved toward me with a worried look. “The fire chief called me to go over the details of my church burning down again. He said he had to do that because the same person who did it to me tried to burn your house down. I’m so sorry. I know how you feel. And I said a prayer of thanks that you and your family are okay. At least no one was in the church when it burned.”

“Yes, I’m thankful too,” Blaise said sincerely. “I just hope they catch whoever did it soon. Makes me nervous.”

“I understand. At least whoever it is doesn’t want to hurt us.” Blaise gave every appearance of sincerity and concern. “Good to see you.”

“Thanks. Off to the bread aisle,” I said as I strolled away.

•••

When one’s wife is with child, any new topic can come up. When I got home early for a change, Carla poured a glass of wine for me, and since the temperature was in the high sixties, unusual for late December. She suggested that we stroll out to the gazebo. I knew she had something on her mind.

“John, I’ve been thinking.” Uh-oh. Time to be quiet. “We’ve got to start working on names for the baby.”

“Shouldn’t we wait to see what sex the baby is from your sonogram in two weeks?” I said.

That was the wrong thing to say. “Can’t hurt to be thinking of alternatives. Naming a baby can be the most important decision for us since our baby will be stuck with the name all its life.”

“Okay. If you’re thinking of John Marshall Mariner, Junior, promise me we won’t call him ‘Chip” or ‘Bubba’.” That got Carla laughing at the exercise, and I rolled off a list of possible names of boys and girls. Many choices, so instead I suggested names we did not want, such as Mary, Brett, Carla and Amy. I’m rather fond of Carlotta. We had plenty of time.

•••

Jane Semang called around four-thirty to tell me that she’d finished her latest trial. “Chad called me yesterday after I talked with you and asked for an appointment with me this coming Monday after docket call to discuss the Rivera case,” she said. “He wouldn’t get specific but said he’d like to discuss a plea deal. Good thing. If we do a plea deal with Rivera I need the next of kin on board. Don’t want family criticizing me for agreeing to a lighter sentence, and if we don’t do a deal, Gordon knows I’m going to ask for the death penalty given the execution style of the murder.”

I brought Jane up to date on Bruto’s background and the link with Pena, though I had no idea whether or not that was relevant. “John, you should be at the meeting since you’re in touch with the family. There’s no need for Bob to be there when we meet, but if he wants to come, he should feel free. Besides, it won’t hurt to have witnesses regarding what’s said.”

I quickly agreed to be in the meeting. “I’m looking forward to getting the full story from Bruto. I presume you’ll condition any deal on his testifying.”

“Yep. I’ll set the meeting up for Monday at two. I can never tell when docket call’s going to be over. Besides, I have a bunch of other things on my plate that morning.”

The weekend passed quickly. Sunday afternoon, Carla and I decided to drive over to Boerne, where her grandparents lived a half century ago. We were both amazed how that little town dripping with German heritage had metamorphosized into a modern suburb of San Antonio. The old haunts remained. After a long lunch at The Gretel, a restaurant with German fare, we meandered on back roads home. The bratwurst, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes made me sleepy as we drove, so I let Carla take charge to drive us home. “John, what’s bothering you? You seem not quite here today.”

“Sorry. I’m just worn out not knowing everything about the murder. I’m just antsy about my meeting tomorrow with Chad Gordon. I’m hoping to find out how Betty died and who did it. Thinking about the meeting made me restless last night. I just couldn’t sleep.”

“I’ll be glad when this is over,” she said sympathetically. “Maybe you’ll find out who started the fire at our house too. Don’t forget to ask that if the story comes out.”

“I won’t,” I said as I dozed off.

•••

Monday couldn’t come soon enough. I left early for Johnson City and got to Bob’s office to pick him up at one-thirty. Bob insisted that we not go to Semang’s office until close to two, since he knew she’d be busy with other things. We went over what we knew and didn’t know over a cup of his office’s bland coffee. I wondered why all institutional coffee is so bad.

“Hey, John!” Chad Gordon almost shouted when I walked into Semang’s reception area. Gordon was always more than friendly, but I always felt he was putting on his lawyer mask rather than being genuinely friendly.

“Chad, how’ve you been? You know Bob, don’t you?” We three then performed the usual hand-shaking ceremony, as if we were football captains squaring off on the field for a game. Jane came out of her office, also greeting every member of the group in amicable fashion. Then she joined the handshake routine too.

“Let’s go into the jury room where we won’t be so crowded,” she said. We filed into the large windowless room adjoining the courtroom, where there were fourteen, not twelve chairs. The extras were for alternate jurors. The jury table was huge, long and rectangular. I’d read that when people gather around such a table to negotiate, facing against each other makes for an adversarial negotiation. The author of the article I read advised sitting next to one’s potential adversary to encourage a sense of working together and avoiding the “me against you” sense. So I sat next to Chad near one end, with Bob on the other side and Jane at the head of the table, judge-like.

“Okay, Chad. Bob and John have briefed me on the circumstances of Betty Longstreet’s murder, what they found at the crime scene, and the DNA results. What did you want to propose on Rivera’s behalf?”

Gordon cleared his throat. “First, we need to agree that anything said in this meeting is privileged and confidential, not to be used in testimony if we end up having a trial. Agreed?”

We voiced agreement. Jane looked at Chad and said, “And Chad, you need to understand that if we agree to any deal, it’ll be conditional on your client telling the truth and being willing to testify if others are involved. Also, if we do a plea deal, the deal only involves the Longstreet murder and no other offenses. Okay?”

“Yes. Agreed. Now to get down to business, let me run a hypothetical by you. Let’s suppose my client, a previously convicted felon, gets contacted by an old prison buddy. The buddy claims that he is on to a job in my client’s neighborhood that’ll involve grabbing a bunch of gold coins and bars, fifty grand worth. The buddy needs a local to get him to the source of the job and help him with breaking in and moving the loot. Are you with me so far?”

Again we all nodded. “So this buddy comes to Blanco, and my client and he go to this ranch in a pickup, with a ladder to get to the second floor of the ranch house, at two in the morning. He’s also got two large backpacks to carry the gold they are supposed to find. My client’s driving, and when they get to the gate, his buddy gives him the gate code and they drive through the gate. Again just a hypothetical. It’s a clear, moonlit night. They park the truck fifty yards from the house and wait for their eyes to adjust and listen to make sure no one’s awake. Then they go around the back of the house with the ladder, go up to a second floor porch, and quietly enter through a large set of doors with windows. The buddy walks over and turns on the lights. He pulls an automatic pistol. My client thinks it’s a Glock thirty-eight. He tells the lady in the bed to stay quiet, keep her eyes closed and lay on her stomach.

He continued, eager to tell his client’s tale. “The buddy seems to know where everything is. He tells my client to go into the closet and look for a door. My client does what he’s told, opens the door, and sees a bunch of gold stored inside a little room inside the closet. The buddy tells my client to load the gold in the two backpacks, which he starts doing. Then he hears the pistol go off and comes back into the bedroom. He sees the woman in the bed sprawled out, dead. ‘What did you do that for?’ my client asks. The buddy just shrugged his shoulders and says, ‘You don’t need to know. Anyway we don’t need any witnesses.’ The buddy then goes into the little room with my client and they pack up the gold. Then my client’s buddy says that they need to leave a sort of calling card as a joke, so they leave one coin….my client’s buddy takes one out of his backpack, gives it to my client and tells him to put the coin right where the gold was stored as a good-bye present.

Gordon paused and took a deep breath. “My client’s upset that his buddy killed the lady. They leave with the gold, take the ladder with them, and get in the truck and leave. When they get back to Blanco, the buddy takes his backpack with his share of the gold, gets in his car, and goes back to Houston, where he’s from.”

The room stayed silent for at least two or three minutes. Jane broke the silence. “All hypothetical, but if the story’s true, what do you want?”

“Bruto’s no dummy and he knows what he’s up against. He can’t stand the thought of being put on death row, or just as bad, being sentenced to life without parole. He’d accept a simple life sentence. That way, with good behavior, he’d be out in ten years. Because he’s been in prison before, we’ve got to get the record sealed to keep his buddy from having another gang member take him out in a prison killing in retribution for his testifying. Comprende?”

“Sure do,” Jane said. “I tell you what. Your information is a lot to digest. The three of us need to think this through.”

“There’s more to this story,” Chad said. “My client and his buddy were put on to this by a third party that Bruto says he doesn’t know. That’s how this whole thing started. If we agree to a deal, Bruto will do everything he can to find out who that is from his buddy. He says he doesn’t know right now but can find out. If we got that name for you it’d sweeten the deal for you.”

Semang raised her eyebrows and said, “Likely story. I resent his holding key information hostage to push us into a plea deal. We need to know the names of everyone involved in this tawdry event. We’ll get back to you by Wednesday and let you know what we think. If we agree to a deal, we need to write the terms down and sign it. Bruto needs to understand what we expect of him.”

“I’ll make sure he does. Thanks for meeting with me. I know the three of you want to talk over what you just heard, so I’ll excuse myself. You know how to get in touch.” With that, we went through the handshake routine a final time and said our goodbyes to Gordon as he departed.

“Well that was interesting,” Jane said. “He put me off with Bruto withholding the name of his confederate and the identity of whoever may be behind this. That shouldn’t hold us back from making a deal if the State and you, John, think a deal’s advisable. What’s your view of all this?”

“Like peeling an onion layer by layer. We’re just through a couple of layers at this point. I’d need to get to the bottom of this. I don’t expect any pushback from Carroll Johnson or Paul Scranton if we decide to agree to a plea deal that will get us to the truth. Besides, I’m no fan of the death penalty, and if he didn’t pull the trigger, a life sentence is appropriate, even if the law is that if he was with the killer, he’s equally responsible. To me, ten to fifteen years in prison, with the gangs, the boredom, the restraints on freedom, and the boring institutional food, is pretty severe punishment. If we run down the shooter, a plea deal’s much more difficult with him. We’ll see.”

“I agree with both of you,” Bob said. “The family, the police, and the criminal system need closure. This case’ll go cold in another month or two. Whoever killed her needs a death sentence.”

“Okay,” Jane said. “I have a bunch of other things on my plate to address. Let’s leave it this way. If I don’t hear a negative from either of you by Wednesday morning at ten, I’ll call Chad and offer him a life sentence in return for Bruto coming clean with the information and then testifying.”

“Done,” I said. Bob nodded assent, and we left Semang to her other duties. I’d never take her job unless they gave me a lawyer assistant to keep the backlog of cases down. At seventy thousand a year, the sixty-hour work weeks didn’t seem very attractive even with a good assistant.

Bob and I adjourned to Ken’s Barbeque to think aloud and trade local rumors. For small towns, Blanco and Johnson City sure did generate a lot of stories. Lots of n’er-do-wells for Bob to keep track of. Most of the law-abiding young people leave town for college or oil patch jobs and never come back. We shared opinions on what those involved in Betty’s killing deserved as punishment. Good thing neither of us would be the judge. Like most officers, Bob only wanted to catch everyone involved and then disassociate himself from the justice process, except as a possible witness. Sure, he often was irritated with a criminal who didn’t get prosecuted or got off on some technicality, but he realized that his was not to judge, but to bring bad guys to justice and help build the case against them.

I had mixed feelings. To me a death sentence is more merciful than life without parole. Besides, at a cost of sixty or seventy thousand a year to incarcerate each prisoner, sentencing the most severe criminals to death makes more economic sense, but for the appeals process. Lawyers can delay a death sentence for twenty years. Something’s wrong with the way the entire system works.

15

“I’d like to know what’s upsetting you,” Carla said more than a little irritably when I came home that Wednesday night. She always knew when I was brooding.

“I’m sorry. This has all taken a lot out of me. We’re going to meet with Bruto tomorrow and finally, I hope, get the real details behind Betty’s murder.” I’d given Carla the detail of Chad’s long hypothetical, indicating that others were involved. “I’m in favor of letting Bruto save his ass if we can get the others. I sure wouldn’t want to be him in prison, however. Bob should be able to see if the State can do an exchange with another prisoner in another state, change his name and get him anonymity that way. Otherwise the MS-13 guys’ll make sure he pays for squealing. I just can’t wait to hear the whole story. Thinking through the story Chad told us, they got in only because someone — Blaise, Johnson, Harold, Gus, or even one of the girls — gave Bruto and his pal the information needed to get into the ranch and then go up to Betty’s bedroom, telling them that there was a pile of gold to be found in the closet.”

“I’d vote for it being the smarmy minister, the guy who reminds me of Elmer Gantry.” Carla never liked Blaise, even though she’d only met him once, but of course she’d heard a lot from me, including my opinions of him.

“Blaise, you mean.”

“Yes. I think he torched his own church and then burned our garage to keep you from finding out about the murder and the fire,” she said with no hesitation.

“Could be. Plenty of other suspects. Ya never know. Remember the radio sleuth that your dad always quoted? ‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of man? The Shadow knows.’ No one we interviewed can be excluded, not Blaise or Carroll, not Scranton, not even Gus or Harold.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Carla said. She always said that when she planned an abrupt change of subject. “I’ll make you a deal. If you’ll buy into naming a boy after you, we can call him Marshall or Mars after his middle name rather than Chip or Junior. And if it’s a girl, I know you like Carlotta, and I do too, but I don’t want people calling her Carl. People did that to me when I was young, so we have to call her by her full name. Deal?”

I love Carla, and the past months have brought us closer than I ever thought we would be. But arguing with a very pregnant wife being inadvisable, I said, “Sure. Either name would make me very happy. Actually, all I want is for our child to be healthy and normal. I’ve even said a few prayers.” Our new arrival would get me back to the Baptist church. Carla and I had been remiss and needed to get back to Sunday services. I’d slacked off not only from simple laziness but also from a malaise generated by my negative opinions regarding the future of mankind. Terror, mass murders, rampant drug abuse, terrible educations for many, and national and world debt levels that eventually could create a major world-wide crisis. Going to church could give me much-needed comfort and peace. I’d need that when the baby came. I wondered what kind of life the new one and my grandson would have. Maybe God would help me with that.

•••

The next day couldn’t come soon enough. When I arrived at the court house ten minutes before ten, the appointed hour, Bob’s Suburban was already parked in front of the courtroom area, emblazoned not only with “Sheriff Blanco County” on each side in large letters, but also in smaller script on the driver’s door, “Robert Hauffler, Sheriff”. Bob must have brought Bruto to the courtroom by himself from the jail. As I walked in, I noticed that everyone — Bob, Jane, Chad, Bruto in chains and a court reporter — had already assembled in the jury room. When I worked in Houston, meetings always started late, lawyers being the prima donnas they are. In the hill country, for reasons I’ve never understood, meetings start before the appointed time more often than not.

Bruto and Chad were poring over a document. Jane handed me a copy. In big, bold letters at the top of the first page, it said “Plea Agreement”. The three-page document amazed me. Unlike most legal documents, Jane had composed a short agreement, written in understandable, simple English. The document even had bullet points reminding Bruto that he had to tell all, that he had to testify if needed and agreed that a plea on the murder charge didn’t absolve him of any other crimes unrelated to the murder, or for that matter the murder itself if he turned out to be the actual trigger man.

“I wish all the legal documents I have to read were this clear and concise,” I said, trying to add a bit of levity to this very serious meeting.

“I want to make sure that Bruto understands the deal,” Jane said.

Chad piped up. “I want to make sure the judge accepts this if we agree to it.”

“I’m way ahead of you on that already, Chad,” Jane said. “I talked to Judge Woodard on a hypothetical basis, and he said firmly that if I recommended a plea deal, he’d accept it.”

“Good.” Chad turned toward Rivera. “Bruto, I want to make sure you understand what we’re doing, so let’s go over the agreement.” Chad then recited each bullet point. I wondered whether Chad was just being careful or had a concern that Bruto couldn’t read. In any event, his going over the deal paragraph by paragraph would cement the effectiveness of the agreement.

After that process and after Bruto shrugged his shoulders and indicated he was okay with the plea agreement, Jane said, “While the testimony Bruto’s to give us now is confidential, I’ve taken the liberty of getting a court reporter to record the testimony and set up a video recording of the session. That way, if he reneges on our deal or if something happens to Mister Rivera before the trials, such as a car accident, the recording can be used as testimony to back up our case. Any objection, Chad?”

“No, we’ve gone this far. Proceed.”

“Mister Rivera, just so you know, the uniformed gentleman is Robert Hauffler, the Blanco County sheriff. He’ll be following up on any information you provide us today. The man next to me is John Mariner. He’s a lawyer and represents Mrs. Longstreet’s family and her estate. He’s gotten permission from Mrs. Longstreet’s husband and son to agree to the plea deal and will keep the family informed and help make sure that our deal isn’t challenged by the family. Comprende?”

“Sure. I’ve met Mr. Mariner, unfortunately. And you can talk to me in English. I was born here and graduated from Blanco High School.” Bruto had a chip on his shoulder.

Jane stopped the proceeding to get the court reporter in the room. The court reporter came in, and she took almost ten minutes to set up the audio and visual recording equipment, including a screen that we could look at as if Bruto was on a TV screen. As she tested the equipment, I saw at the bottom of the screen that words were instantly translated into a streaming transcription of what was being said. Great technology. We could watch the stream of words and tell when Bruto was mumbling or not understood by the transcription.

Jane’s authoritative voice pierced the meeting room. “All right, Mister Rivera,” Jane said to start things off.

“Call me Bruto,” he grumbled.

“Okay, Bruto. Let’s go through the preliminaries. Bob, please read Bruto his Miranda rights. Bob did that, saying, “Bruto, do you understand all that?” Bruto glanced at Chad, who nodded, and said “Yes.”

“Here’s your intake sheet with your personal information, residence, driver’s license, social and prior record. Is every item correct?”

Bruto looked it over, then said, “Yes.”

“And here’s your rap sheet. I got it from Sheriff Hauffler. Looks like you’ve spent a good deal of time in local jails and in prison. Correct?” Jane looked him over as he reviewed the papers.

“Yes,” Bruto said sullenly. I’m sure Bruto just wanted to get the interrogation over with.

“Let’s start with who was with you on the night of the murder.”

“A guy named Orlando Pena. From Houston. I met him when I was in the prison in Sugarland. We’re friends. He helps me in my business.”

“And what business would that be?”

“I buy wrecked cars in Houston and Austin at insurance auctions and take them to Nuevo Laredo. The repair shops in Nuevo Laredo fix up the cars, and then we bring them back to San Antonio, where we re-sell them. Since I’ve been arrested, I haven’t been able to do anything, and I’ve got five cars waiting to be shipped back for sale. The sheriff can tell you that he won’t let me run my business from the jail.”

“How does Pena fit into this?” Jane pressed.

“He buys the cars at auction in Houston for me. I buy the Austin ones.” Rivera seemed small in his chair, rightly uncomfortable with the process.

“So tell us how you and Pena came to Betty Longstreet’s.”

“Orlando called me two months ago and told me that he had a job, that a friend had told him about a bunch of gold in a big house in a ranch not far from Blanco. He said he needed a local to help him with the job. He said he had all the information on the house and how to get in. He needed me to get a ladder and drive for him since it would be a night job. He said he’d split the proceeds with me sixty-forty. Told me it’d be fifty thousand total. Twenty grand for me for one night’s work. He also said the gold would be easy to get rid of after things cooled off. He didn’t tell me that there’d be anybody in the house.”

“Go on.”

“Orlando told me where the house was and asked me to cut the game fence near the gate so people would think we got into the place on four-wheelers through the hole in the fence. I did that two days before we did the job.”

“And then what?”

Suddenly Rivera opened up and talked at length.

“Orlando came up from Houston that day, and we had dinner together and had a little weed. We talked about our time together in prison and what we were doing these days to make ends meet, casual partners in auto repairs from time to time. Then we watched television at my house until we were ready to move. At two in the morning, we drove out to this ranch. When we got to the big gate, Orlando told me the gate code, and we drove through. We went up a crooked road for a quarter mile or so, and when we could see the house, Orlando told me to drive slowly and quietly. When we were a football field away from the house, he told me to stop and kill the motor. We walked the rest of the way, Orlando holding the top of the ladder and guiding me in the back. We walked on the grass around the back of the house, and then Orlando stopped where there was a porch. We put the ladder against the porch rail and climbed up and onto the porch. Orlando opened the door and seemed to know where the light switch was, turned it on, and a woman in the bed sleepily turned over and said ‘Who are you? What are you doing in my room?’ Orlando pulled out his pistol — a Glock thirty-eight — and ordered her to turn over and lay face down on the bed. Then he turned to me and told me to fill the back packs with the gold hidden in the special room inside the closet. I took his backpack and went into the little room, took my backpack off, and loaded the gold bars and coins into the back packs, three each to him and two to me. Then I heard the pistol go off. I ran into the bedroom and Orlando was standing over the lady.”

“Did you hear any talking or shouting between Betty and Orlando right before the pistol was fired?” Jane asked.

“No, ma’am. Orlando didn’t tell me nothing about shooting anybody. The job was just for the gold. When I walked back into the bedroom, Orlando turned and looked at me. ‘I didn’t want any witness to be able to finger us,’ he said. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, but I’ve never killed anybody. I didn’t know what to do. I was angry. Then Orlando and I went back into the closet for the gold, and he took one of the gold coins out of his backpack, handed it to me, and told me to put the coin where the gold had been sorta as a joke. That part was weird.”

“Did Orlando ever tell you where he got the information to get into the house?”

“No, that part bugs me. We left with the gold on our backs and retraced our steps to the truck. I turned my truck around and we left. On the way back to Blanco, I asked him again who told him, and he just said it was a friend. I told him he shouldn’t have killed her, that we could have gotten away without her identifying us. Orlando said that his friend didn’t like the lady, and if she was snuffed, the friend would pay us sixty grand minus whatever gold we found. No witness besides. He said he’d send me my share of the bonus when he got it from his friend.”

Jane leaned back in her chair. We now had what we needed on Orlando, but the instigator of the killing was still unsolved. “All right, Bruto, that’s it for now. If you’ve been honest with us and will testify against Orlando, our deal is firm.” Bob, please take him back to the jail.

Bob said to me, “John, I need to get him back in his cell. Would you stop by headquarters for a post-interview chat? Jane, I’ll call you after I talk to John. Chad, thanks for orchestrating this.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Please keep me in the loop,” Chad said.

“We will. Thanks, gentlemen. Off to my next hearing,” Jane said with finality.

16

I followed Bob and Bruto back to headquarters and its jail. While Bob got Bruto back in his cell, I lounged in Bob’s office. Bob returned scratching his head.

“We’ve now got the goods on Orlando, but I’ve gotta figure out whether the mastermind in this is Johnson, Blaise or someone else.”

I had the same questions swirling in my head too. “I keep going back to the fire at my house and the church. Whoever torched my garage has to be connected with the murder, don’t you think?”

“Yep, but first off we need to get Orlando arrested.” Bob, frustrated, took a seat.

“Wouldn’t the fastest way be to set things up with Jim Peterson and get him to arrest Pena?”

“That’s a good shortcut. Otherwise I’d have to go through channels and it would take a couple of days, and, who knows, create a leak that would give Pena time to run to Mexico.

I gave Bob Larry’s number, and the two of them set up a conference call with Peterson. Peterson was affable. “What’s up with our boy Rivera?” he asked. Bob and I brought Larry and Jim up to date on our arrest of Bruto and his interview, along with the plea deal.

“Rivera’s statements, along with the other stuff we now know, are enough to arrest Pena on a murder first charge. I’ll get that going. I hope our street intelligence can tell us where he is. If he gets wind of Bruto’s arrest, he’ll disappear. Give me twenty-four hours and I’ll call you, Bob, with an update.”

“Sounds good.” All we could do was wait, I thought.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Bob.

“What’s that?”

“Going back to the fires, if we subpoenaed the cell tower records of Rivera, Johnson, Blaise, Scranton and that Harold guy, we might find out who was around both the church and your house.”

“Great idea,” I exclaimed.

“The records won’t prove up any more details of the murder itself, but if we find the arsonist, we may have a better idea of who’s involved in the murder, unless it was Bruto. Should’ve asked him where he was when the fires were started. I’ll order up the records.”

“Do you think Pena will talk once you get your hands on him?”

“Doubtful. He’s tough. He’ll look for a plea deal, life without parole instead of death row, but then again, he may count on the system to keep him alive and find a flaw in the process of bringing him to justice. You know that most of the inmates on death row have been there for a long time, some for over twenty years. Let’s get lunch. All this thinking is making me hungry.”

“Let’s do Ken’s barbeque again.” And with that we adjourned. The lunch of beef brisket with ordinary conversation —football, hunting season preparations, local politics —dissolved the tension of the morning.

•••

Friday was supposed to be busy pursuing Pena’s arrest and obtaining the cellphone records, but the day remained uneventful. No records. No Pena. Nothing ever happens fast in the hill country.

Bob called that afternoon. “I got an audience with Tilton Woodard, the District Judge. Fortunately, he was in Johnson City today. I filled him in on the murder and the suspects, as well as the fires, and he granted a subpoena of the cell records of Johnson, Scranton and Blaise. He said he’d issue one for Harold Metzger later if nothing turned up on the records of those three. I notified the carriers in the Blanco and Houston areas and scanned a copy of the subpoena to each of them. A pain in the ass, took most of the day. I should get results late next week but will have a deputy call around mid-week to get a status report. I called Jim Peterson, and the only word he has at this point is that Pena’s in Houston and not on a run. Jim’s hopeful he can pick him up before the weekend’s over.”

“Thanks for the update,” I said. After finishing my call with Bob, I talked to Larry. He’d already been updated by Peterson. Not having anything pressing, I decided to leave the office early. When I was in a law firm in Houston, I could claim I was leaving early to beat the rush hour traffic, but that excuse didn’t work in Blanco. There is no rush hour. But then again, I didn’t have to account to anybody in a law firm anymore. I’m the only employee.

Another reason I wanted to leave was to find out the results of Carla’s sonogram in Austin, set for earlier that afternoon. She’d not called, and I wondered whether the sonogram had identified the sex of the child. Sonograms don’t always show the front of the baby, thus preventing a view of the kid’s plumbing. I suspected that was the problem. Or she wanted to tell me face-to-face. My wondering what the results showed drove me home.

When I pulled into the driveway and walked into the house, Carla was nowhere to be found. I called out, and she responded from one of the guest bedrooms. “How do you think this bedroom will look in baby blue,” she said with a smile.

“A boy then?” I said smiling.

“Yep, so we’ll have a John Marshall Mariner, Junior.”

“I wish we could celebrate.” I wondered how my life was going to change with a new male capturing Carla’s attention.

“We can. I just bought a standing rib roast, potatoes to bake, and your favorite, brussels sprouts. We’re having a banquet tonight. You can have your wine but I’m just going to have water.”

What a week. The family and the pregnancy thriving, my practice growing, and progress on Betty’s murder. I spent the weekend very unproductively, not doing anything but reading and watching a fire in the fireplace.

•••

Bob called Sunday night with welcome news. “We’re in luck. Those guys in Houston sure have a pipeline into the underworld. HPD picked up Orlando as he was going into his house early Sunday morning. Fortunately he’d had too much to drink, so he didn’t put up any resistance. Nice pad he lives in, in a Hispanic middle class suburb near Hobby Airport. As a bonus, HPD found a half million dollars-worth of cocaine, weed, and pills, along with almost a hundred thousand in cash. Peterson’s elated that he’d shut down a big drug operation. All Pena said when he got arrested was that he wanted a lawyer. He refused to talk. Given his being pretty drunk, the arresting officers just put him in a cell to let him sleep the alcohol off. That may have been a mistake, since when he woke up he was madder than a wet hen. Claimed he hadn’t done anything, shouted obscenities. When he demanded to know why he was locked up and then told murder in the first for his execution-style slaying in Blanco, he shut up and then cursed Bruto. He had to know the only individual who could finger him was Bruto. The officers enjoyed the show. They always love taking a guy down who’s killed a victim in cold blood.”

“I’m so glad they caught him. He might be the one who started the fires.” I said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Bruto may have told us the truth when he said Pena killed Betty, but I doubt he’d fess up to other crimes like arson. With both of them in jail, the chance of another fire has gone down considerably. And you don’t have to worry about your safety. Neither of them can get bail since both are up for high crimes and both are flight risks.”

“What’s next?”

“Orlando will be arraigned tomorrow, and that will give HPD the chance to ask him questions in front of the judge. He’ll refuse to answer and ask for an attorney. Once that guy shows up or is appointed, we’ll have a lawyer to talk to. Pena can afford his own attorney. I’ll let you know when the cell phone records arrive. Do you think Larry’s available to look them over? That’s going to be a very time-consuming task, and I don’t have the people to do that quickly.”

“I’ll find out and get back to you. Thanks for the update.”

•••

“You guys made page one,” Larry said when I called late Monday morning.

“What?”

“The Houston Chronicle had a page one story detailing how Orlando Pena had been arrested and charged with murdering Betty Longstreet. Big news in Houston when a Houston socialite’s murdered, and bigger news when the bad guy is from Houston.”

“Johnson must know by now. I wonder if Blaise does as well?”

“With his Houston connections, almost for sure. How do we sort out which one of them’s the guilty party?”

“I’m glad you asked. Last Friday Bob Hauffler got a subpoena for the cell phone records for Johnson, Scranton and Blaise, hoping to connect one of them to the fire at the church and the one at my home. Bob’s expecting the records by the end of the week and wondered if you had time to come up here to go over the records. They’re voluminous and’ll take time to work through. As you know, Bob doesn’t have the personnel to do that quickly.”

“I’d love to do that. Will I have my meter on to charge the estate? That’ll make it easier for me to escape my duties at Crowe and Cowley.”

“Absolutely. With the three prime suspects being beneficiaries, the estate has every interest in sorting out whether one of them’s involved. Could be none of them. There’s always the possibility that either Orlando or Bruto overheard talk about the gold and initiated the scheme themselves. Unlikely though.”

“Good. I’ll be up Friday around noon. That’ll be a good time for Mexican food at El Charro. I’ll buy.”

“You’re on.”

•••

Pena did as everyone expected. Refused to say anything either to the police or to the judge except “Not guilty” at the arraignment. He’d immediately lawyered up with Percy Groom, a prominent criminal defense attorney who’d become famous for getting alleged criminals off with either a hung jury or a not guilty verdict. Not even lesser offense convictions. The system’s supposed to work that way. Better that a bad guy escape justice than an innocent man go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

Thursday started off with a bang. Larry called, excited. “John, the strangest thing’s happened. Late last night Peterson called and said that there’d been a major wreck on Memorial Drive, inside the 610 loop around midnight. Remember where Memorial Drive goes under Greenbrier-Shepherd, curving a little as you drive under it?”

“Sure do. Always drove that way when I lived in Houston if the traffic was backed up during morning rush hour on I-10.”

“Well, a car was going eighty or ninety under the bridge and lost it. Went right into the concrete pillar. A Cadillac Escalade, new one. You could hardly recognize the vehicle except from the rear tailgate.”

“What’s this got to do with what we’re working on?” I was confused.

“Guess who was driving the Caddy?”

“Who?”

“Carroll Johnson.” It hit me hard. I couldn’t figure out what this meant for what we were doing, piecing together the murder and finishing the estate work.

“Is he alive?”

“No. Very dead. No one could have survived a crash like that. No one was in the car with him.”

“I’ll be up there for lunch tomorrow. To me this is just another Aubrey McClendon story.”

“What do you mean by that? Who’s he?” I said.

“He was an oil and gas wheeler-dealer in Oklahoma City. He got indicted on charges related to his oil company, and within a day crashed into a bridge support at a high speed and died. Never could tell if he lost it driving or committed suicide to save face.”

“Interesting. As you may remember from our so-called suicides in Houston eight years ago, I just don’t understand people committing suicide.”

“He had to have heard that Orlando had been arrested and charged. Personally, I’ve always thought that minister in Blanco started all this, but this may change things. See you tomorrow.”

“Strange. I’ll let Bob and Jane know. I’m not sure whether this simplifies things or makes them more complex. At any rate, the search for the brains behind the murder is still on.”

I called Bob and Jane and brought them up to date about Johnson’s death. Jane said that she’d started the process of getting Pena extradited to Blanco County pending a trial. She carefully brought up the possibility of a plea deal with Pena. Groom had brought the subject up when he called Jane to ask about the possibility of bail.

“I’ve travelled this road many times,” she said to me. “Justice versus knowledge. Pena can tell us what happened but needs a bargain to make sense for him to spill his guts. On the other hand, anyone who murdered on a contract killing deserves a death sentence. Society needs him to be eliminated, and spending eighty grand a year incarcerating him for the rest of his life wastes money. How do you feel about a plea deal? He tells the full story and we let him off with life without parole? I’m not sure myself.”

“Gotta think that one over. With Johnson dead, the only person who might object is Paul Scranton. Johnson’s heirs perhaps, if Johnson’s not the one behind this.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. You’ll hear when Pena’s on the way up here.”

“Thanks.”

Starting off the morning with Johnson’s death and Jane’s thoughts on a plea deal ruined my plan to go to the office. I’d wanted to work up a set of questions for a deposition in a case I agreed to handle involving a nursing home death in Wimberley. The poor woman, nearly 89, had passed away in the home, and when her children made arrangements for the funeral, discovered that she’d literally wasted away over time. Even though she was originally around five-five, at her death she weighed only eighty pounds. So her children sued the nursing home. The nursing home retained me to defend them and agreed, oddly, to pay me an advance of twenty grand. According to the nursing home, the woman had been at the home for three years, was bereft of any real memory, and after the first year refused to get up and move around. By the third year, she’d sleep almost all day. They said they made every effort to get food down her, even feeding her the last six months, but the record of her intake of calories showed that she wasn’t getting enough nutrition. They’d called a local doctor in multiple times, but he said he couldn’t prescribe anything that would reverse her decline.

A sad case, but the nursing home said they couldn’t have done anything else that would have changed things. The children of the woman, two daughters and a son, hadn’t seen their mother for two years. The daughters lived in Dallas and the son in Little Rock, all of them with active lives, spouses and children of their own. My sense of the case was simple, that the children felt guilty for not seeing their mother for so long and wanted to do something to make up for their absence, an absence that may have contributed to their mother’s decline. Asking questions in a deposition of the three would be very delicate and had to be thoughtful, not confrontational. I just couldn’t get myself to work on that after the events pushing the Longstreet matter toward a conclusion.

I blew off doing anything that day. I enjoyed lunch with Larry the next day. We talked through the details of Johnson’s suspicious death and speculated on what the cell records would look like. A random thought of mine, that Johnson and Blaise were in league together, got quickly shot down by Larry. They had nothing in common and if anything were adversaries, not co-conspirators. Larry did mention that they were doing an autopsy on Johnson, as Texas law required. Along with the cell records, we might be able to piece the murder facts together without depending on Pena to fill in the blanks.

Larry agreed to take the afternoon off since the records, we were told, wouldn’t arrive until Monday morning. When we got home Larry hugged Carla and smiled at Carla’s growing belly. “Can I be a godfather?” he said, surprising both of us.

“Why of course,” Carla replied enthusiastically. “We’d be honored.”

After noticing the chill in the air, I suggested adjourning to the living room where we could build a fire and talk. We did that, and after an hour of that, we got sleepy. Carla went to our bedroom and Larry and I dozed between conversations and reading. That set us up for a nice, quiet weekend. I tried to forget about the nursing home and the Longstreet murder.

17

Sure enough, the cell records came in as promised the next Monday morning. Turned out that Blaise had AT&T and Johnson and Scranton had Verizon. Both carriers claimed their people had worked over the weekend to get the records to us quickly, knowing why the police wanted them. And indeed the records, sent in electronic form on thumb drives, filled up the three gigs on each drive. All that interested us, however, were the records from six months before Betty’s death up to October 23, when she died. That cut down on the volume of cell locations Larry had to look at. Identifying the towers cited was task number one. Each carrier provided a geographic guide so that Larry could map out the local towers in Blanco, near the church, and near the Longstreet ranch. Still, Larry had a challenging and time consuming task. And a boring one. Glad I didn’t have to do it. The best part was that Larry needed a desk top computer to analyze the data and then print it, so I gave him my court house office, and I worked from home on my lap top. It’d take Larry two days to work through the data. Might get used to this schedule.

Mike Trombley, the owner of the Wimberley nursing home, called me on my cell. “John, I’ve been thinking over the weekend. I don’t want to run up a big bill on the Schwartz death at the home. The family needs to know where we are. I have one insurance policy for errors and omissions, for a hundred thousand. The company they’re suing is a management company that runs the place, and the building is owned by a trust whose beneficiaries are my children. I own the stock of the management company but its net worth is less than fifty grand. I’ve spent years keeping assets out of my name, so I only have a small net worth, and almost all of my property is exempt, not reachable by any judgment or a bankruptcy.

“You’re in charge of the case, but I’m in favor of your calling them, telling them the circumstances and offering the insurance policy proceeds, arguing that that’s the most they’ll ever get even if we go through a trial. A judgment’s not worth anything if it’s over a hundred grand. What’ya think of making a settlement offer right now?”

“Worth a try. That way the three of them wouldn’t have to come here for the deposition. Might be better to set the deposition first and then contact their lawyer and see what I can get done. I’m a little worried that you own the management company. They might attack you personally, but piercing the veil of your corporation’s tough in Texas. We could offer them an affidavit telling them what you just told me, that you don’t have much in the way of non-exempt assets.”

“I understand. Been down that road before. Just runs up legal fees to have a full-blown trial, but they’ll have a hard sell to a jury, especially since they didn’t visit Mom for years.”

“Agreed. I’ll do what I can.”

•••

Mid-day Tuesday, I’d stayed in my pajamas to work at home. Larry called from my office. I could tell he was excited. “These cell tower sequences are like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I have it figured out, at least about the fires.”

“Well, go ahead.” I was anxious to learn what he’d found.

“Nah. It’s gonna cost you a lunch at the Old 300 for barbeque. I promise I won’t get anything beyond the lunch special. No beer. I’ll come to your office, go over what I have, and then we’ll walk over to lunch.”

“That wasn’t very nice of Larry,” Carla said. “I want to know too.”

“That’s Larry. He wants to show me what he has, not tell me. He needs me to authenticate his conclusions. Then we can tell Bob and Jane. Tell you what. I’ll call you as soon as I hear him out. Okay?”

“Sure. Don’t go too fast running into town.”

The square in Blanco was full, as the lunch hour always creates a crowd at the restaurants around the square, and people line up at the post office over their lunch hour to get things done. I had to park down Fourth Street, past city hall.

Larry had pasted several sheets of copy paper together. At the top of one he’d written “Johnson”. Below that he’d written two sequences. “Look here, John. This is the core of it. The first one, surprisingly, has Johnson in Blanco the day of the church fire. He must have eaten in the town square, and then, after that, drove to the church. He was there for ten minutes and then left. The additional sequences are cell towers on his way back to Houston.” The news about Johnson surprised me. I hadn’t even thought he might be the one who started the fires.

“The second sequence is more interesting. He left Houston around dinner time, travelled up here in three hours, stopped in Wimberley, then drove near the cell tower closest to your house. Then he high-tailed it back to Houston.”

“Pretty well shows Johnson’s the culprit. Why would he do the fires?”

“I’m surprised too. An important investment banker getting his hands dirty like that. He must have known that Betty and Blaise had a relationship going. Betty may have told him that she’d become disenchanted with the cowboy church, if not Blaise himself. Johnson could have figured that he’d make Blaise the patsy, so he’d get blamed for Betty’s death. And as to your fire, just a warning, and one that you’d suspect Blaise for. In fact I’d bet that Johnson covered his ass and talked to you after both fires.”

“Come to think of it, he did. I thought he was in New Orleans both times too.”

“By that time he was, and he made you part of his cover story.”

“Good work. Certainly incriminates Johnson in the fires. Doesn’t prove any connection he had with the murder, however. Why would he want to kill Betty?”

“We may never know. He probably got tired of hearing rumors of Betty’s side relationships. They argued a lot whenever he came to the ranch. At any rate, Johnson made sure he stayed in Houston the night Pena killed Betty in Blanco. Pena did it. Johnson put the killing in motion. I’d hate to have to make a deal with Pena now with this information. That guy’s an animal.”

“Let’s call Bob and Jane, bring them up to date and get a little barbeque. Gotta call Carla first and let her know. I promised I’d do that. I know they’ll all be as surprised as we are about Johnson.”

•••

I figured I should go to Johnson’s funeral in Houston despite the latest revelations. With him deceased, his share of Betty’s estate would go to his brothers unless I got the court to declare his estate ineligible for arranging Betty’s murder. Proving his involvement would be based on circumstantial evidence, and his brothers might contest Betty’s will distribution if I cut Carroll out of the will, especially if Pena didn’t tie him to the murder. At least I’d meet the people I’d have to deal with.

The funeral beat all I’d ever been to, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, near the heart of River Oaks where the very wealthy, and Carroll Johnson, lived. The congregation represented a small slice of the upper-crust citizenry. All professionals and their spouses. Couldn’t tell the lawyers from the investment bankers. All very presentable, looking grim. I bet that there wasn’t a calloused hand in the church that day. A reception followed, and I made a point of looking up Johnson’s two brothers, Caleb and Sam. A reception line formed and I stepped in line. As anticipated, both looked different than Carroll, but both were as handsome and important-looking as Carroll had been. Given where we were, I just told them who I was and said I’d be in touch with them later, getting their contact information as I walked awkwardly through the reception line. To Sam’s right a beautiful woman stood, looking at me. She had light brown hair, tall at five nine, and a figure most women would die for. She had on a grey pin-stripe suit. Another investment banker.

“Hello, Mr. Mariner. I’m Cynthia Carter. Carroll told me about you and your efforts to solve the Betty thing.” She couldn’t get up the nerve to say murder. “I worked with Carroll, and he may have mentioned me when you were quizzing him where he was that night.”

“Yes, he did. I know you two were close, and I need to talk to you to finish up Betty’s estate. Could I get your contact information?”

“Sure.” She turned around, dug in her purse and gave me her card.

“Thanks.”

I’d done my duty. Besides, I hate funerals, especially this one, a funeral for the prime suspect in killing my client. I left the reception as soon as I could, leaving the very proper crowd, hearing them talking loudly. . . many laughing off and on. Plenty of beer and wine too. Not my cup of tea.

On my way back to Blanco, I pondered next steps. Johnson’s autopsy wouldn’t change anything unless he’d been killed by a bullet before he hit the concrete, a doubtful assumption. We still needed to get to the bottom of things. A plea deal with Pena wasn’t out of the question. As I’d told Bob, to me life without parole is greater punishment than a death sentence. Lengthy life terms cost society an extraordinary amount of money. Geriatric medicine has become a specialty in most prison clinics. I didn’t care whether Pena got life without parole or a death sentence, and none of Betty’s relatives would care either. I had to wrap this up and get it over with. I had other things to do, such as getting ready to father again. My mind meandered and then I had a thought. Would Cynthia Carter know the real truth about Carroll and his possible entanglement in Betty’s murder? I thought she needed time to grieve over Carroll’s death, even if I was anxious to find out what she knew. Meeting with her, I decided, was the next step, regardless of her grief.

Carla and Larry greeted me with a steak dinner when I got home. I felt good luxuriating in familiar surroundings. How odd, I thought, that I had no longer harbored warm feelings toward Houston and didn’t miss living around pin-striped suits, as I had for years.

Bob called the next morning. “Peterson called. The autopsy came in on Johnson. No alcohol, but he had a shit load of cocaine in his blood. Could be an accident, nothing more. He must have felt the noose tightening and committed suicide, taking the coke to stiffen himself to do the deed.”

“Messy.” I brought him up to date on the funeral and the Johnson family, and I suggested that I find a way to interview Cynthia Carter informally.

“Good idea. Bet she knows more than you think.”

•••

Much as I wanted to wrap up the Longstreet estate right away, subconsciously I knew that wouldn’t happen. Betty had named me alternate executor of her estate, so with Johnson dead, I became the executor and got that authenticated at the court house in Johnson City. Beyond that, I had to patiently wait for time to pass. After two weeks, I called Cynthia Carter. I’d decided that if I could interview her, I’d do it face-to-face. Too easy to avoid tough questions on a phone call.

She answered my call. “I’ve had a hard time lately, as you can understand. It’ll take me a while to get over this. I understand you need to talk to me, but I’m not sure what I can contribute to figuring out Betty’s murder and Carroll’s possible involvement. Nonetheless, come on to Houston. I can meet with you tomorrow at two if that works for you.”

“I’ll make it work. I’ll be in your office at two. Thanks.”

The next twenty-four hours passed too slowly. As I drove to Houston, a number of questions rolled around in my mind, but I knew that anything I’d be saying to her would feel awkward. Her offices, the same ones Carroll had inhabited, were lush. Dark wood panels, expensive looking pictures of hunters shooting ducks and deer on the wall. Expensive leather chairs. Quite impressive. A world away from mine.

“Hello, Mr. Mariner,” Carter said as she entered the foyer and greeted me.

“Call me John. I appreciate your seeing me.”

We walked into a conference room and sat at the end of a big conference table seated for a dozen or more.

“What can I help you with?”

“You already must know that Carroll told the sheriff that he was with you the night before and the night of Betty’s death. I assume that’s correct.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“The way he described it, your relationship with him was more than just professional.”

Then the bombshell. Tears flowed freely. “A lot more. Carroll and I were going to get married.”

“Really! Did he tell you he would divorce Betty?”

“Yes. We were together for almost two years. Living together for all practical purposes, I mean. The truth is that we were together all through both nights.

“I’d been urging him to get the situation with Betty resolved for a long time. Mind you, I had nothing against Betty, in fact I liked her the few times I met her. A real, genuine woman. Strong. Her lifestyle differed from most people, if you know what I mean, but I saw no reason for Carroll to put up with it. He couldn’t make up his mind. He didn’t want to deal with the fallout from a divorce, and he knew Byron Longstreet wouldn’t approve of the divorce even though he didn’t approve of Betty’s lifestyle. I could never get him off the dime. To tell you the truth, I told Carroll that the status quo couldn’t go on. I told him that if he didn’t go forward with the divorce by the end of the year, I’d have to move on.”

“Did he tell you when he was traveling up to the ranch? Did you ever go with him?”

“No reason for me to go with him, except that I knew that he and Betty were continuing their physical relationship, almost surely. I didn’t ask, but, you know, if she was sleeping around with anyone who came along, Carroll and I could catch something. I needed it stopped. But he didn’t go there to visit with Betty. He went there to look after business, often going early in the morning and coming home late at night. Taking care of the ranch took a lot of time.”

“I have to ask, but did Carroll ever criticize Betty’s conduct with other men?” I asked gently. Her stern pose as a tough investment banker melted away as we talked.

“Sure. He tired of being married to a wife who he thought was sleeping around with other men and worried that word would get around that he was a cuckolded husband. He knew Betty spent a lot of time with that minister and his cousin. And he knew of Betty’s needs because she strayed when they lived together in Houston. Our relationship was monogamous, exclusive. He just couldn’t bring himself to resolving things.”

“Do you have a record of his trips, or does he have them in his records?”

“No. I haven’t looked in his records, but since our firm’s calendars are accessible to everyone in the office, most of us don’t log in our personal meetings.”

“You’ve been very helpful. I’m so sorry for your grief and your loss. Let me know if I can do anything for you. I’ll keep you up to date once we put the pieces together on Betty’s death.” I felt sorry for her somehow. I wasn’t sure others would feel the same way.

“That would be nice. Thank you.”

The trip home gave me time to think through our mystery. I called Larry to bring him up to date. He had news.

“I began thinking about Johnson’s supposed accident and the coke he had in him,” Larry said. “HPD arrested Pena on Sunday night, three weeks ago. I went back to the cell records after locating the cell tower nearest Pena’s house. Johnson was there three times the previous twenty days, including the Saturday night before they arrested Orlando.”

“Too bad the cash they seized can’t be traced. Part of it might have come from Johnson for the hit on Betty.”

“We need to get the gang together and see whether we can put this puzzle together finally. I’ll call Bob and Jane and see whether we can meet tomorrow afternoon at headquarters. Carla’ll want to come just to listen since I’ve been so involved in this.”

Everyone agreed to meet at eleven at Bob’s office, including Carla.

We met in the large conference room at headquarters, as always five minutes before the appointed hour, as the hill country tradition dictated. I’d prepared for the meeting as if I was in court, presenting a case.

I wanted to put on a bit of a show. “Ladies and gentlemen. I’ve gotten our little group together today to make an announcement. I’ve made a decision regarding Betty’s estate. I am disqualifying Carroll Johnson as a beneficiary on the grounds that he arranged the murder of Betty. The missing link to the murder got filled in yesterday. Motive. Cause. The motive seems obvious. Johnson got tired of Betty’s sleeping around, and his significant other, Cynthia, put pressure on Carroll to divorce Betty and marry her.

I paused, then continued. “Why kill her? Carroll didn’t want a messy divorce. Betty liked things the way they were and would have gotten one of those high profile Houston divorce lawyers. He’d get a troublesome lawyer and the battle would be on. She might even claim a part of his ownership in his investment firm. Worse yet, Cynthia would have gotten dragged into the mess.

“Then he has an idea. He knows Betty hoards gold and plans the perfect crime. A killer goes into Betty’s bedroom, takes the gold, kills her to eliminate any witnesses and takes off. Nothing to tie the crime to Johnson with one exception. The killers got in through the gate and not through the hole they’d cut in the fence. They knew where the bedroom was and where the gold was. The killer had to have inside information. Who gave them that information would remain a mystery had it not been for Bruto giving us his DNA.

“Carroll knew he was a beneficiary of a quarter of her estate. Upon her death, everyone in Houston sympathized with poor Carroll. They didn’t know that the two of them had long been separated and lived different lives. After a couple of months, Johnson figures he’s free to marry Cynthia. As a bonus, he’s heir to five million. He’s resolved his female relationships and added to his wealth. End of story.”

“Why the fires?” Carla asked.

“Johnson did both of them. Now that we know he travelled from Houston just prior to each fire, I guess he lit the fires to put the blame for the killings on Blaise. Betty must have told him about Blaise and the church, but Johnson only met him once. The girls at the house could have mentioned to him how frequently Blaise came to the ranch. Who knows. So he burned the church down either in retribution or to create suspicion or both. The fire at our house he set too, to scare me away from asking questions and to create more suspicion of Blaise.”

Jane had a big grin on her face and said, “John you’ve just nailed it. The cell records and Johnson’s connection with Pena I can prove up in court. Pena’s trial will need to establish motive, and we’ve got that now. I wonder where the gold went. Do you have any interest in working a plea deal with Pena?”

“That’s up to you,” I said. If you do work a deal, getting the gold back would be a bargaining chip. Could be fifty thousand worth. I keep thinking that a plea deal would give us a sense of closure. The State could spend a bundle convicting him, then he’d go on death row and spend the next twenty years fighting his conviction, then get executed. On the other hand, if a higher court found a flaw in your trial, you might have to start over. Groom might even deliberately mess up his defense to create a reason for a later lawyer to appeal, claiming that Pena had poor legal representation. From a pure economic point of view, a plea deal makes sense.”

Larry spoke up. “Hell, this means I’m out of a job here. Let’s celebrate. We can go to Ken’s Barbeque. At least they have beer there. I’ll pay and charge Cassidy and Crowley.”

Lunch lasted two hours, with the entire gang in a festive mood. All of us felt a tremendous sense of relief that our journey was over. We were done with the murder. Life could return to normal. After we got back home, Larry packed up and went on his way. Peace and quiet had returned.

Epilogue

The day after our all-hands meeting clearing up who did what, I realized that although Betty’s killing had been solved, my involvement in the estate had just begun. As both the executor and lawyer for the estate, I had to sort out the assets, make distributions and close the estate.

As mentioned before, the other beneficiaries besides Johnson were not the people I would have chosen to fall heir to a lot of money. My hands were tied, however. The one thing I did decide to do was sell the ranch, even at a discount. I listed the property with an Austin firm that specialized in ranch sales, figuring a rich Californian or a high tech Austin entrepreneur would take the bait, and three months after I listed it, a company bought the ranch. I looked them up, and they were a Houston firm that specialized in buying and breaking up large ranches, buying acreage low and selling smaller plots in twenty- to fifty- acre sizes, doubling their investment. So be it. I’d had enough of the old Lucky Strike ranch.

Once I got rid of the ranch and had collected the liquid assets, I got my bill for my services together. I figured I should get a premium since I was key to solving the murder of my client, but then I wondered what I’d do with extra money. I’d learned my lesson. Avoid great wealth. Money in large quantities almost always creates a burden, not a benefit. Sure, I had another child on the way, and statistics show that parents spend a quarter of a million or more on each child, not counting college. I’d get that fixed over time.

Paul Scranton had to leave his cushy dwellings on the ranch, but he inherited a third of the eighteen million left after my fee and court costs. I cleared over two hundred grand, which would pay for the new kid and then some. I made sure Larry got paid handsomely. I even gave a new service revolver to Bob. Pena had worked a plea deal, a life sentence with a minimum of thirty years in exchange for his describing Johnson’s involvement, so I never had any trouble with Cynthia or Johnson’s heirs over my cutting him out of the will.

I thought Gus was the only actor in this scenario who deserved a payout. His bequest of two hundred grand didn’t change his life, but he said he planned to put the money away to build a retirement fund. Or, he said, he could buy a place of his own. For the time being, however, the new owner of the ranch hired Gus and Jake to keep things up as they worked on turning the ranch into a hill country subdivision. The new owner certainly didn’t want to lose the ag exemption.

Blaise was another story. He did rebuild the church with the insurance money and then invested the church’s distribution with a blue chip investment adviser. He hired a new pastor, turned over everything to him, and took off for places unknown with his six million. I can’t say I missed the guy. Glad to have him gone.

John Marshall Mariner, Junior, came right on time, and three months later Amy’s baby arrived, named Brett after her brother. I’ve gotta confess that all babies are ugly, even my own son and grandson. That problem would clear up quickly. The best part of the birth of Marshall turned out to be Carla’s decision to nurse him herself, so I was treated to being able to sleep through the night without being enlisted to feed him.

As to the nursing home litigation, I escaped that too. The lawyer for the family understood that the amount of money anyone could get for the death of a feeble eighty-nine year old was low, so after I explained the insurance and the delicate financial position of the home, the children took the hundred grand. At least the case settled. I never could convince myself that the nursing home had done anything wrong.

With the birth of our son Marshall, Carla made me promise that I’d stop getting involved with the police, with druggies, and with low lifes. I had to agree with her. I needed a well-deserved, long rest from stress. That’s why I’d come to Blanco in the first place.

Table of Contents

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Epilogue