Fool's Puzzle by Earlene Fowler (reading eggs books .TXT) 📕

a private place to question people.” I heard fumbling, a few muttered Spanish words; then he was back. “I can see you at two o‘clock. Come a few minutes early and get your prints done. I’ll leave word at the front desk.”

“I ...” I started to say I was too busy. My intention was that Rita would be the person talking to him, not me. I just hadn’t figured how I was going to work that out.

“What?” His voice practically barked.

“I’ll see you then,” I said lamely.

“Good,” he said and hung up.

Sticking my tongue out at the buzzing receiver made me feel juvenile, but a whole lot better.

Less than an hour later, the detectives showed up. Detective Ryan, the bushy-browed one from last night, and Detective Cleary, a somber-faced black man with skin the color of aged oak. With exaggerated politeness they commandeered my office and methodically called in each artist and questioned them. I wandered through the studios and tried to eavesdrop. Finally, I just came out and asked one of the quilters, a gossipy, myopic woman named Meg, what they were asking.

“They wanted to know where we were at the time she was killed. How well we knew her. Did we know of anyone angry at her. Things like that.” She held up a lap quilt she was working on, a copy of Georgia O‘Keeffe’s painting ’Corn.‘ “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “That’s all they asked?”

“That’s all. Why, what did they ask you?” She leaned forward, crumpling the quilt in her lap, her face awash with curiosity.

“Same thing.” I avoided her avid gaze, deciding I’d better limit my questions until I found Rita. “I have to go out for a while. I have some errands to run, then I’ll be at Blind Harry’s. If anyone needs me, I should be back by three or four.”

I glanced at the unfinished quilt exhibit as I walked through the main hall. I wondered if Eric would ever show up. If he didn’t, it looked like my Thanksgiving would be spent hanging quilts, something I wasn’t really upset about—at least it would keep me busy. I tried briefly to imagine Eric stabbing Marla. It just didn’t seem probable. For one thing, she was five inches taller than him. And he seemed too shallow to work up the kind of passion it took to kill someone. But then again, I’d only known Eric three months. What did I really know about him?

Detective Ryan called to me as I was about to walk out the front door. “Can I use this?” He pointed at the phone behind the tiny gift shop counter.

“Sure,” I said. “Take as long as you like.”

Take all day, I thought. I didn’t know how many detectives Ortiz had working on the case, but I was hoping it was just Cleary and Ryan. This had to be the best time to cruise by Marla’s place and see if there was any sign of Rita. If the police were there, I’d keep driving. No one would ever know.

Easy, Dove would say, as shooting a turkey.

Of course, I should have remembered what Daddy always added to that statement in his calm, ironic voice.

“Or your own foot.”

5

MARLA RENTED HER paint-peeling, 1930’s bungalow from Floyd, her boss at Trigger’s. It squatted in a neighborhood where fifty-year-old houses shared street lights with muffler repair shops and aluminum recycling centers. Half-covered by a huge orange bougainvillea bush that clashed with the faded red clapboard walls, it appeared deserted when I swung into the driveway. After banging on the torn screen door and pressing the rusty doorbell until my forefinger throbbed, I came to the brilliant conclusion that no one was home. There was no indication the police had been there, but then what did I expect, a twenty-foot banner?

Though Trigger’s was the last place I felt like going, I knew I’d have to talk to Floyd. There was only a slim chance he knew where Rita was, but it was a possibility I couldn’t overlook.

Trigger’s Saloon was two blocks away, and though it was only eleven o‘clock, the parking lot was already half-full. I pulled up between a chopped Harley with “Midnight Confessions” painted in script on the purple gas tank and a school-bus-yellow crew cab pickup.

I sat in my truck and stared at the bar. A flat-roofed cinder-block building the size of a small bowling alley, it sported the usual Silver Bullet, Budweiser and Dos Equis signs in the darkened windows, as well as two large white satellite dishes on the roof. It played live country-western music six nights a week, was the bar of choice for oil-field workers and cowboys, concrete and otherwise, and served the best beef dip sandwiches in the county. It was also the last place my husband was seen alive.

The air in the bar felt thick and cold and rippled with the scent of wet, smoldery beef, the vinegar of men’s sweat. I scanned the room uneasily, studying the high-backed booths lining the walls, the three crowded pool tables, the long bar presided over by a depressed-looking elkhead with battered cowboy hats stuck in its antlers. A smoky haze hovered over the room like a misty tarp. From the juke box, Alan Jackson moaned about the haunted, haunted eyes he saw one midnight in Montgomery.

I almost ran out.

But something—responsibility, loyalty, stupidity—compelled me to walk up to the bar where Floyd swabbed the counter with a stained white towel. His fiftyish face held a tired look. A sparse, graying beard attempted to cover a cherry-red skin rash.

“Floyd?”

“That’s my name,” he said. He traded the tired look for a suspicious one.

I stared at him for a moment. The questions on the tip of my tongue had nothing to do with Rita. What I really wanted to ask was—Do you remember Jack? Did you serve him that last beer? Did you talk to him last? The one thing I’d never been able to let go, was the feeling that if