Joe Lansdale - Devil Red

Leonard said. “What’s this?” He was holding up one of the photos of the dead girl.

“Kind of obvious, don’t you think?” Marvin said.

“Not the girl. The tree.”

“Let me see,” Marvin said. “I’m going to go for Hoss apple.”

“The other tree,” Leonard said.

“Hickory nut,” I said.

“No. What’s on the tree?”

We each found our copy of the photo and looked at the hickory tree. There was something on it all right. It was an angled view but it was some kind of drawing. What I could make out was a horned head and a partial face. It was painted there in red. Spray paint, most likely.

“Graffiti,” I said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said, “but is there anything about it in the notes?”

“No,” Marvin said. “And that’s because no one thought it meant anything. Kids paint on trees and underpasses and walls all the time. Why would someone kill them and then make a design on a tree?”

“All I’m saying,” Leonard said, “is Mrs. Christopher may be right. It might not be a random murder.”

“That whole mystery clue thing with paintings on trees and feathers and moles in the shape of the state of Rhode Island on a blonde’s ass, in real life, it doesn’t happen much,” Marvin said.

“He’s working his way through the Sherlock Holmes series,” I said. “He’s gotten a little obsessive about mysteries. He found a pair of socks he’s been missing for a couple of months, and he thinks he’s full of deductive reasoning now. Like maybe the socks had some kind of plan to hide out.”

“Listen, Ace,” Marvin said. “You and Hap just go out and ask questions and bumble around. I’ll do the real detective work from the office.”

“Ouch,” Leonard said.

So that’s how it went. Now we were sitting on the couch looking at those same photos and reading the information that came with them, thinking back on our meeting with Marvin.

It had started raining hard again, and the atmosphere had settled on the house like a woolen cap. The electricity blinked and crackled a few times but stayed on. It was so dark outside we had to turn on a light.

“So,” Leonard said. “Where do we start?”

“Same place the cops did, with the people who knew the victims.”

“There’s a long list here,” Leonard said, flipping through the folder.

“I think we should do what Marvin suggested. Talk to the sister.”

“To do that,” Leonard said, looking out the window at the rain, “we have to get off the couch. And drive around. We could wait until tomorrow.”

“We weren’t hired to stay home and play Scrabble.”

Leonard’s eyes lit up. “It’s a perfect day for Scrabble. Me and John used to play Scrabble when it rained.”

“I’ll get us a couple of rain slickers and we’ll go to work.”

“So,” Leonard said, “you’re not suggesting we sit on the couch in rain slickers and play Scrabble and call that work?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Dang it.”

We left Leonard’s wreck in the driveway to let the rain work the hardened bird shit off his windshield, took my car.

Before we left, Leonard got something out of his car and slipped in beside me. He laid what he had on the seat between us and pulled off his slicker and put it in the backseat with mine. He picked up what he had laid down and put it on his head.

“What in the hell is that?” I said.

“It’s a deerstalker cap.”

“A deerstalker cap?”

“You know, Holmes wore one in the movies.”

“I know, but what are you doing with one?”

“I’m wearing it.”

“Should I wear a bowler and carry an umbrella and let you call me Watson?”

“Would you?”

“Where did you get that?”

“I bought it last Halloween, for a party.”

“You dressed up like Sherlock Holmes for Halloween?”

“I don’t get to dress up often,” Leonard said. “John went as Watson.”

“So why are you wearing the hat now? Halloween is long past.”

“We’re on the hunt. The game’s afoot.”

“Leonard, you are not wearing that foolish cap.”

“Why not?”

“Because you stand out like a hard dick in a nunnery.”

Leonard quit looking at me. He turned and stared at the windshield.

“So you’re gonna give me the cold shoulder?”

He didn’t respond.

“You have this thing for hats, Leonard, but you are not a hat person… Look, you can wear it in the car. The car only. Got me?”

Leonard put on his seat belt, rested his hands in his lap, and stared straight ahead.

“Outside the car, you got that thing on I might have to kill you.”

First on our list was Ted’s sister’s house. My idea of a really neat house is one that doesn’t have to be held up with a stick, and there are no burnt cans in a pile in the driveway or an old Dodge on blocks with chickens roosting under it.

This house was way past that. It was so cool and connected to the center of the universe it stopped raining when we got there. It was behind a fence and a barred gate. As we cruised up, through the gate, we could see there was enough green yard to play the Super Bowl. Even the colorful leaves that fell from the trees and blew across the grass seemed embarrassed by the intrusion.

We parked in front of the gate. I rolled down the window and pushed a button on a metal box inside a brick indentation. There was a buzz and a long silence. I was about to push it again when a snappy female voice with an accent south of the border asked if she could help us.

I explained who we were and what we were doing and that June’s mother had hired us to look into something for her. The voice went away. I turned and looked at Leonard. He was still wearing the deerstalker.

The voice came back, said we could come up, but the tone now was sharp and hard enough to clip paper dolls from cardboard. I guess she had hoped we would be rejected.

The gate slid back and we glided in. The driveway was a big loop of shiny wet concrete in front of a yellow adobe house with a Spanish tile roof. The house was big enough and tall enough to hold all of Noah’s animals and a spare woodchuck. You could have driven four horses running abreast through any of the windows, and the doorway was tall enough and wide enough to accommodate at least one war elephant if it bent its head slightly and went through politely.

No one rode out to meet us in a golf cart, so after I made Leonard take off his hat, we got out and stepped up the walk. When I looked back at my car, it looked unnatural in the driveway. That driveway knew and adored limousines and sports cars, not functional metal, plastic, and glass. I leaned down by the side of the walk and felt the grass. Damn if it wasn’t artificial.

Leonard wanted to ring the doorbell, so I let him. I wanted to ring it too, but sometimes you have to give in to the children. You could hear it chime throughout the house.

No one inside made a rush of things. Of course, a house that big, you might have to pack a sandwich before you went to answer the door.

When the door was finally opened it was the woman that went with the voice over the intercom. She was a petite Hispanic woman in her late twenties and she was actually wearing a maid outfit, just like in the movies. She had beautiful black hair and great skin and lips that looked like they would have been fun to suck on. Because of her stern voice, I had somehow expected her to look like the ass end of a mule and be built like a linebacker.

We were invited inside. I tried not to rubberneck. I had been in government buildings that size, but not a house, and the government buildings weren’t so well furnished.

The maid hustled us along a long wide hall with blue and white tile floors. The walls had paintings on them that looked like they had been painted by madmen and recently. I liked them.