Murder Takes a Break Read online

  So could Dino, who probably could have bought the hotel if he'd wanted it, though you wouldn't guess it from looking at him. He had on a pair of faded Levi's, and a wrinkled white cotton shirt that he strained at the shoulders because he worked out all the time on exercise equipment he bought after watching infomercials. He was also wearing a pair of scuffed Bass Weejuns that he'd probably bought when he was in college.

  I didn't look any better. I was wearing an old sweatshirt with a picture of Bevo, The University of Texas mascot, on the front and a pair of jeans as faded as Dino's. My blue and white Etonic running shoes were practically new, though. I thought they gave the outfit a touch of class.

  The lobby was full of people who were dressed a lot better than we were. They were considerably older than we were, too, past retirement age, and they were no doubt waiting to go somewhere on one or more of the tour buses. Either that, or listen to the hand bell choir.

  We made our way through them, hardly attracting a curious glance. Anyone who's been in Galveston more than half an hour knows that the dress code on the Island is pretty lax. Even in a place like the Galvez.

  Dino led me past the hotel's restaurant and down a hallway to the bar, which was fronted by huge glass windows that looked out over the seawall and into the Gulf. I could see The Island Retreat, a ramshackle building that extended out over the water on its rickety wooden pier.

  I imagined what the building had been like at Christmas all those years ago, when half the high-rollers in Texas would have been there to spread a little Christmas cheer and win a little money. Or lose some.

  There would have been cars lining the seawall for blocks, big cars like Cadillacs and Buick Roadmasters and Chrysler Imperials. Maybe a Packard or two. There would have been women wrapped in furs, even if the weather had been as warm as it was today. And maybe a national TV star or two.

  There was nothing like that now. The street was nearly deserted, and I could see the realtor's sign nailed to the front door. The sign was fading now, and I wondered if the building would ever be sold or whether it would just stand there until some wild storm surge dragged it down into the Gulf.

  A man stood up at a table near the front of the bar and waved us over. He was big enough to have played football, all right, but he hadn't been in shape for years. He had a hard belly that jutted out over his belt, and his shirt looked uncomfortably tight. His thick, curly gray hair tumbled over his forehead. His face was puffy, and his voice was a little too loud.

  "Hey, Dino," he said. "Come on over."

  When we reached the table Dino said, "Tru, this is Tack Kirbo. Tack, Truman Smith."

  Kirbo stuck out a hand the size of a Christmas ham, grabbed mine, and tried to crush it.

  "Truman Smith," he said. "I guess you don't remember ever seeing me, but I got into a couple of plays against you in a game one day."

  I got my hand back before he mangled it. "Dino told me you played with him on the Red Raiders."

  Kirbo laughed. "Mostly I just sat on the bench and watched. I wasn't anywhere near the player Dino was. Or you. Hell, you'd have won the Heisman if Dino hadn't torn up your knee for you that day."

  "Why don't you introduce your wife," Dino said.

  My knee wasn't his favorite topic of conversation. It was OK for him to mention it to me, but he didn't like for anyone else to bring it up. Me, neither.

  "You must think I have the manners of a hog," Kirbo said, moving aside so that I could see the woman who was sitting in his shadow.

  I had a feeling that she sat there a lot. She was much smaller than her husband, and she looked years older. Her face was wrinkled, and her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying recently.

  "This is my wife, Janey," Kirbo said. "Janey, this is Dino and Truman Smith. I've told you about Dino, and Smith was the best damn running back in the Southwest Conference in his day."

  There wasn't a Southwest Conference any more, which was just one more indication of how long ago my day had been. It was something I didn't want to think about much, like my knee.

  Janey Kirbo didn't stand up or extend a hand. She said, "I'm pleased to meet you Mr. Smith."

  She didn't look up at me. Her voice sounded strained, as if it were being squeezed through a very narrow opening.

  "Have a seat, have a seat," Kirbo said.

  Dino and I pulled out chairs and sat at the table. Almost as soon as we were seated, a young woman with an order pad appeared.

  "What'll you have?" Kirbo asked.

  I was tempted to ask if Big Red was available, but I knew better, so I just ordered ginger ale. Dino asked for a gin and tonic.

  Kirbo said, "Just put it on my tab, honey, and bring me and the little lady two more of the same."

  He said it all without any self-consciousness, as if he called all waitresses "honey" and always ordered his wife's drinks without consulting her. I could tell I was going to love working for him.

  I looked at Dino, who avoided my eyes. I didn't blame him. It was going to be a long afternoon.

  3

  Dino and Tack Kirbo made small talk while we waited for the drinks, something about the Dallas Cowboy's chances of getting to yet another Super Bowl. I didn't pay much attention. I was watching Mrs. Kirbo.

  She was looking out the windows, but I didn't think she was seeing anything. Her eyes were as vacant as The Island Retreat.

  The drinks came, and I sipped ginger ale while Kirbo told us all how he would have been a better football player if he'd just had the talent to match his desire.

  "I tell you," he said, "having to sit on that bench and watch the game was hard on me. I wanted to be in there bangin' heads, but I was always a hair too slow off the ball. I was just as likely to get knocked on my butt as to tackle anybody. One or two plays a game, they'd let me go in, but they just did it to pay me off because I worked so hard in practice. A little reward for bein' a good boy, you could call it. I think if we'd ever had a real solid lead in the fourth quarter, I'd have gotten in for a whole series, maybe two, but in those days we never got that far ahead. The team's a lot better now, though."

  I didn't see what any of this had to do with a missing son. I looked at Dino again.

  This time he didn't avoid me. He nodded, turned to Kirbo, and said, "Your son got in a little more time than you did, I hear."

  It got very quiet at the table for just a second or two. Tack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Jane Kirbo continued to stare blankly out the windows. She hadn't touched her drink.

  Her husband had nearly finished his. He took the last swallow and said, "I guess we might as well get down to it."

  "I think that would be a good idea," Dino said.

  "But we need more drinks first," Kirbo said, signaling the waitress.

  We made more small talk until the drinks arrived and Kirbo dived into his like a man who'd just run a marathon across the Mojave. His wife looked at him, looked at her drink, and looked back out the window.

  "All right," Kirbo said to me when he came up for air, half his drink already gone. "How much do you know about the situation?"

  I shrugged. "Not much. Your son was here for spring break, he disappeared, he hasn't been found."

  "That about says it all," Kirbo told me. "I guess you want more details than that, though."

  "You guess right."

  "I figured. OK, here's the deal. Randall — that's my boy's name, Randall — he and some friends were down here for spring break, like you said. They went to some parties probably, and I expect they drank some."

  He looked at his wife, who gave no sign that she noticed, then back at me.

  "There's no harm in drinking," he said, and paused as if he expected someone to contradict him. When no one did, he said, "not if you do it in moderation."

  I wondered whether he was defending his son or himself, but I didn't ask. Since no one seemed inclined to challenge his assumption, he went on.

  "Anyway, Randall wasn't much of a drinker. He liked to have fun, but he w
asn't ever the kind of a boy to get in trouble. Not in high school, not in college, not ever."

  I thought I might as well say something. "But he disappeared."

  "Yeah. He disappeared. And nobody knows how or why, least of all your Galveston cops."

  I started to tell him they weren't my cops. They didn't belong to anyone, though at one time they had pretty much belonged to Dino's uncles. That was another thing that had changed.

  "Tell us about the cops," I said.

  "They looked for Randall," Kirbo said. "Or at least that's what they told us. They said they looked hard. But they didn't find him."

  "They looked hard," Dino said. I must have looked surprised at his defense of the police, because he said, "Well, they did. It's not just bad for their reputation when something like that happens. It's bad publicity, and that means it's bad for tourism. See?"

  I saw. Galveston lived on tourists. If the word got around that there were mysterious unsolved disappearances here, pretty soon the tourists would find somewhere else to go, and the spring breakers would move on down the coast to Corpus Christi and South Padre, where a lot of them were going already, taking all their nice tourist dollars along with them.

  "You mean there was pressure on the police?" I said.

  Dino nodded. He didn't say how he knew, but he didn't have to. If he said it, he knew. He might not have had as many ears in high places as his uncles once had, but he still had plenty.

  "And they looked everywhere?"

  "Everywhere," Kirbo said. "They said they covered this island with a fine-tooth comb."

  "Did your son have any reason to disappear?"

  Kirbo looked offended. "What does that mean?"

  "It means, how were his grades? What was his status with his coaches? Was his girlfriend pregnant?"

  Kirbo's face, already a little red, got redder. He gripped the edge of the table with both hands, and for just the fraction of a second I thought he might stand up and slug me. He didn't, though, which may have had something to do with the fact that I was in better shape than he was. Or maybe not.

  He said, "You shouldn't talk about a boy like that, not in front of his mother."

  As far as I could tell, his mother hadn't even heard me.

  "Sorry. It's something that had to be said."

  He didn't appear convinced, but I didn't let it worry me. I took a drink of ginger ale and looked at him.

  He relaxed his grip on the table and gulped down the rest of his drink. His wife still hadn't touched hers, or said a word.

  "I suppose you got a copy of the police report," I said.

  "Yes," Mrs. Kirbo said, surprising me. She picked up a canvas bag from the floor and pulled out a thick manila folder. "Here it is."

  I took the folder, but I didn't look inside it. I laid it on the table and said, "What did the police find out?"

  "Not a damn thing," Kirbo said. He tipped his empty glass in the general direction of the report. "What you said a while ago about Randall? How he came down here, disappeared, and hasn't been found? That's what it says."

  "If there was pressure on the police to do a good job, they would have done everything possible to find your son," I said. "Even without the pressure, they would have done everything they could. They have the men and the resources to do a lot more than I can. So what makes you think I'm going to find out anything they didn't?"

  "Because somebody's lying to them," Kirbo told me.

  "Oh," I said, and waited.

  Kirbo's theory, expressed with entirely too much hand waving and leaning toward me across the table, was that someone knew something. He wasn't sure who it was, or what they knew, but he was convinced that someone knew what had happened to Randall.

  "Maybe his roommate," Kirbo said, leaning back in his chair, much to my relief. "Chad Peavy. He was one of the friends that Randall came down here with."

  "He's at Texas Tech?" I said.

  "No. He flunked out in the spring semester and didn't go back this fall. He's living in Houston with his parents. It's all in that report you've got."

  "All right," I said. "Who else?"

  "Who else, what?"

  "Who else is lying?"

  Kirbo looked around the bar for our waitress. I could tell that he wanted another drink. He wanted it a lot. He didn't see the waitress, so he turned back to me.

  "Hell, I don't know who's lying. That's why I'm hiring you. To find out."

  "You haven't hired me yet," I said.

  Mrs. Kirbo looked away from the windows and into my eyes. "Please," she said. "Help us."

  "He will," Dino said, giving me a hard look. "Won't you, Tru."

  I thought about it for a minute, wondering whether Dino had known Mrs. Kirbo when they were college students. And wondering whether I'd have the nerve to ask him.

  "I'll try," I said finally. "But I can't make any promises."

  Mrs. Kirbo tried to smile and almost made it. "Thank you."

  "Don't mention it," I said.

  4

  Dino didn't have much to say as we drove back to my — OK, his — house. Dino was in a pretty good mood because we'd managed to get out of the hotel before the bell choir began playing. He turned on the radio and punched the button for the Houston oldies station, and we listened to the usual tunes. My theory is that they have a list with about a hundred songs on it, and D.J.s aren't allowed to play anything else. As far as their programmer is concerned, the only song Roy Orbison ever recorded was "Oh, Pretty Woman."

  When I was getting out of the car, Dino said, "I hope you can do something for them, Tru."

  I ducked down and stuck my head inside. "'Them'?"

  He squirmed a little on the seat. "Why are you saying it like that?"

  "No reason."

  "You were always a smart-ass, Tru. Even in high school."

  "So you keep reminding me."

  "Only because it's true."

  My neck was beginning to hurt, so I got back inside the car and sat down.

  "You knew her in college didn't you?" I said.

  He didn't have to ask who I meant. "You guessed, huh?"

  "I'm a trained detective, and we trained detectives don't like the word guess. We prefer logical deduction."

  "Yeah. I'll bet you do."

  "So are you going to tell me or not?"

  "There's not much to tell. I knew her a lot better than I knew Tack, let's put it that way."

  "So I logically deduced."

  Dino stared out through the windshield. Where he was parked there wasn't much to see. Just my — his — front porch. The house itself was camouflaged by all the bushes that grew so closely around it that it was hard to see from the road. The Gulf breeze was whipping their branches against the bricks and the windowpanes.

  After a while, Dino said, "I went out with her a time or two. But then she started seeing Tack. He was a little bit more of a solid citizen than I was."

  "A time or two?"

  "Maybe three or four. I wasn't counting."

  "Sure."

  I didn't say anything for a few seconds. Both of use stared at the porch. Nameless sped across it in hot pursuit of something I couldn't see, maybe one of the geckos that lived in the bushes. Or maybe it was nothing at all. Maybe he was just running for the sheer joy of it, though he was getting a little old for that.

  "He's not exactly a solid citizen now," I said. "Tack, that is."

  Dino nodded. "He drinks a little. But he's got money that he made the old fashioned way, in the West Texas oil fields. His daddy was in the business to begin with, but it was Tack that hit it lucky. He was just getting started when that oil shortage came along in the 'seventies."

  "No one mentioned a ransom note," I said.

  "There wasn't one. This isn't a kidnapping, Tru. Something funny's going on."

  I had a strong sense of dèjà vu, and I thought again about the time Dino's daughter had disappeared. I hadn't mentioned it the first time I thought of it, and I didn't mention it this time, either.
>
  "Maybe he just didn't want to go home again," I said. "Lots of tension there."

  "You noticed."

  "Trained detective, remember? We're observant as well as logical."

  "Right."

  There was something else very familiar about the situation, and it wasn't as touchy as the bit about Dino's daughter, not quite anyway, so I thought I might as well say something about it.

  "You know, getting involved with old girlfriends isn't always a good idea. They might not be the way we remembered them."

  "Not everyone's like you, Tru. In the first place, I'm not getting involved with an old girlfriend. And in the second place, she's married. And in the third place, I'm still seeing Evelyn."

  Evelyn was the mother of Dino's daughter. She and Dino hadn't spoken in years, not until the daughter disappeared, but now they were slowly developing some kind of relationship. I wasn't sure what kind.

  "I just wanted to be sure I knew where we stood," I said.

  "Well, now you know."

  "All right." I got out of the car again. "You want to come in?"

  "I think I'll go on home, work out a little. Maybe watch a little TV."

  I knew he was eager to get back home. He'd been out of the house a lot longer than he liked. I tightened my grip on the copy of the police file as the breeze flapped my sweatshirt and ruffled my hair. I smelled salt and sand and seaweed.

  "I'll call you," I said.

  "You do that."

  I shut the car door, and as I watched the big old Pontiac crunch away down the oyster-shell road, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into this time.

  5

  I'd been reading from a collection of John O'Hara's Gibbsville stories when Dino had come over to talk to me about the Kirbo disappearance. Not too many people read O'Hara these days, which was part of his appeal to me. The other part of his appeal was that he wrote good stories.

  I didn't go back to the stories, though, good as they were. I had something else to read. So I put the Kingston Trio's The Twelfth Month of the Year on the CD player and sat in the broken down recliner to look over the police report.