Laura Lippman - In Big Trouble

"Barrett was her maiden name. The Barretts go way back in this county. They go way back in Texas."

"What's that-thirty, forty years?" Of course, no one in Tess's family had arrived until the 20th century was well under way, but the sheriff didn't know that.

"Texas was a free-standing republic in 1836."

"That's right," Tess said agreeably. "You seceded from Mexico so you could have slaves, right?"

The sheriff was not impressed that she knew this particular bit of Texas history. "Now here's the thing. That old boy up at the Barretts' wasn't killed there. No blood. No blowback. You know what that is, don't you? You shoot a man in the face with a rifle, there's going to be brains and stuff everywhere." He held up the trash can, but Tess shook her head. She had nothing left. But moon pies, through no fault of their own, would be forever banned from her diet. "So he was killed somewhere else, maybe not even in my county, and left here for me to clean up. Now that kinda pisses me off."

"I can see that."

"You got any idea who that ol' boy is, by the way?"

" No ," she said, hoping it was the truth.

"So you didn't go poking around in his pockets." The sheriff grinned at the way her mouth thinned and tightened, her gag reflexes working again. But she just shook her head and swallowed.

"Well, given the condition of his body, we'll have to send him to the medical examiner, but his papers say he's Tom Darden, a recent guest of the state prison system over to Huntsville. A San Antonio boy. Cops down there tell us he's been hanging out with an old buddy of his, Laylan Weeks, who was sprung at the same time."

The sheriff leaned toward her, hands clasped in that prayerful position again, trying to look kind and concerned. But whereas a genuine good ol' boy might have been able to pull this off, this technocrat was nothing more than a virtual Bubba. Tess stared back at him, unmoved, determined to say nothing unless necessary.

"Now if you happened to have a glass cutter and you happened to use it to get into the house after you found ol' Tom, that wouldn't be quite the same as breaking and entering, see? We'd call that a mitigating circumstance."

His words offered no comfort to Tess. Who needed legal terms unless one was going before a judge?

"I've thought of something," she said suddenly.

The sheriff smiled.

"I guess his buddy had the glass cutter. The one that the San Antonio cops said he was running around with, since they got out of prison?"

"Laylan and Tom weren't burglars. According to what I've been told about them, they're the kind of boys who'd put their fists through the glass, and enjoy doing it."

"People change in prison. I mean, that's the point, isn't it?"

"Are you asking me or telling?"

She met his eyes directly. "Just guessing. That's legal, isn't it?"

"It depends on what kind of guesses you make."

"Here's one: I'm guessing you don't have any reason to hold me and I'd like to go now. Unless you're going to detain me and charge me. In which case, I'd like to call a lawyer."

"Why would I charge you?"

"I don't know. That's what I've been wondering for the almost two hours you've held me here. I got lost. Okay, I trespassed up on the old Barnes place. Fine me, I'll pay it."

"Barrett."

"I found a dead body and I called the police. The sheriff . I guess it's true, no good deed goes unpunished."

"Did you know Tom Darden or Laylan Weeks, Miss Monaghan?" The sheriff was no longer taking the time to mispronounce her name, and what little drawl he had was gone, replaced with a clipped, precise voice. "You one of those girls who likes bad boys? Did you hook up with these two and find you were over your head? Because they're pretty bad. They've done things that you don't want to know about."

"I've been in Texas for less than seventy-two hours. I haven't had a chance to make any new friends." She stood up, reached for the Dentyne pack he had left on the desk. "I have been staying with some friends of my aunt up in Austin, and they'll be wondering where I am. So if you don't mind-"

"I'll want a number where you're staying up in Austin," the sheriff said. "And one back home."

"Sure," Tess said. She gave him her own home phone number. Let him talk to the mechanized version of herself. As for Keith's number-well, if the sheriff called there, Keith would tell him she had gone back to Baltimore. Because that's what she planned to tell Keith. Her work was done, she was heading home, taking the scenic route, stretching the 1,600-mile trip over several days. Let the sheriff call out the highway patrol in every state between Texas and Maryland. They'd never find her there-because she'd be here.

Even as the sheriff had tried to pry information out of her, he had provided her with the next lead she needed. The Barrett place, the last place Crow had been, a place where a convict's body lay rotting in the pool house, belonged to one Marianna Barrett Conyers of San Antonio, just eighty miles south of Austin according to the sign posts she had seen that afternoon.

Maybe she'd get to see the Alamo, after all.

The front desk clerk at the Marriott in downtown San Antonio took one look at Tess, with her wrinkled T-shirt and unraveling braid, and announced he had nothing for her. Esskay's presence probably didn't help her cause, but the dog had howled so piteously when Tess tried to leave her in the car.

"No room at the inn. No room at any inn," he said, showing off his teeth in a ravishing smile. He was a handsome young Latino, a type Tess had always found attractive, perhaps because it was in such short supply in Baltimore. But this man's charm was perfunctory and impersonal, a wall with no footholds.

"There has to be a hotel room somewhere," she said. The highway into the city had been one long red blur of No Vacancy signs, so she had headed for downtown, assuming the larger, expensive hotels would be more likely to have rooms available. So far, she had been turned away at three of them.

"Sorry. La Posada came early this year."

" La Posada?"

" La Posada. The inn. Around here, it's the reenactment of the Mary and Joseph story. The kids go from hotel to hotel on the Riverwalk, getting turned away. At least they get hot chocolate at the last hotel. All I can give you is some candy." He pushed a dish of brightly wrapped sour balls and Hershey kisses across the counter.

Tess sighed and, hating herself for it, called on those powers granted every reasonably attractive woman between the ages of thirteen and death. Her eyes widened, her voice sweetened, the coffee cup on her Cafe Hon T-shirt expanded just a little bit. "Are you sure there's nothing you can do for me?"

"Oh, there's a lot I could do for you," he said amiably, without a flicker of interest. "I just couldn't find a hotel room to do it in."

Aware that it would be hypocritical to be insulted-she had put the ball into play, after all-Tess rested her upper body on the counter and tried not to whimper audibly. The long day, with its singular events, was beginning to take its toll. All she wanted was a place to sleep for a little while. A place with room service, where she could shower and put on CNN at full volume, hoping it would drown out the night's sounds and the day's images.

"What's the deal, anyway?" she asked. She had been shooting for plaintive, but ended up whiny. "Why are all the hotels full?"

The clerk thawed a little then, as if he had been merely waiting for her to drop the bullying and bullshit. "There's a medical convention in town and then the All Soul Festival starts up mid-week. You won't find a room anywhere downtown. Especially not with that ," he said, jerking his chin at Esskay. The dog reared up on her hind legs and propped herself on the front desk next to Tess, as if she were going to demand to speak to a manager. Instead she helped herself to a hard candy from the dish.