The sky was pale blue and Tillis couldn’t see the tiniest scrap of cloud in any direction. It was hard to tell there had ever been a storm. Here and there a trickle of moisture was working its way down the sides of the cliffs on either side of the dam. But it was far enough into the day that the heat had burned off much of the effect of the previous evening’s storm. Tillis glanced toward the horizon at the far end of the lake, hoping for a cloud of some kind. It was going to be a scorcher.
His white cowboy hat gave his face a bit of shade, but the round silver badge pinned above his pocket glittered in the sun.
A crowd of cars had pulled up on the hills on either side of the dam, and some folks in the finer houses were out on their porches to look down at the half-dozen smaller boats around the red and white rescue boat from where the divers worked. Tillis and Sheriff Eldon Watkins were in one of the sheriff’s department boats watching and waiting, but keeping out of the way.
Tillis heard a splashing. His head snapped to Eldon, who stood at the edge of the boat with his uniformed back to them.
“Eldon,” Tillis said, “there’re all kinds of people up there looking down here. Couldn’t you hold that in? Why didn’t you take a leak before we got out here?”
Eldon didn’t stop. He looked up at the cliffs around the dam. “You ain’t the one who drank four cups of coffee.”
“Well, maybe they can’t see much from way up there.” Tillis tried to take some of the snap out of what he’d just said.
“I don’t mind ‘em lookin’,” Eldon said. “I just wish they wouldn’t laugh out loud.”
“Maybe you could yell up at them that they’ve got their binoculars wrong way around.” Tillis fought to keep from smiling when Eldon glared over his shoulder at him.
Tillis looked across the water to the half-dozen other boats with various official markings that were spread across the area where Donnie and Karyn had spotted the body. The other boats bobbed in the small waves of the chop that a wind gusting to fifteen miles per hour was causing.
“What the hell you suppose those kids were doing out here at night in a storm anyway?” The sheriff looked off at the biggest of the boats, where the divers with their gear were taking turns going down.
“From what I can make out, they want to get married, but can’t until Donnie straightens out what happened to his father.”
“I wouldn’t let anything like that get in the way of me porking some sweet young thing like that.”
Tillis said, “I’m glad Logan’s in one of the other boats and not here in earshot of your sentiments.”
“Yeah, he has a touch of temper, that one, if I remember rightly.” Eldon turned to look directly at Tillis. Eldon’s rounded and weathered face was topped by short, thinning, bristly hair. The graying hair in his ears and nose was thicker and longer than that on his head. When he squinted in the sun, it gave him a mean look, like a tough kid whose toy had been taken away.
“What’s come over Logan anyway, Tillis? You know him as well as anyone. Hell, he used to hunt and fish like the rest of us. He wouldn’t even go out dove hunting with me this year. Then that sting operation he set up along the highway nabbed three guys I know all too well. If I’d of seen a ten-point buck like that standing in a field beside a road just waiting to be plugged, I might’ve taken a shot at it myself. And, if that don’t tear a plank off the back barn, he’s been patrolling the lake like a madman almost every day. Tore out every unmarked trotline he could find. Cost my nephew Rudy damn near fifty dollars in trotline gear.”
“You know unmarked trotlines, especially ones from the shore, are illegal. Beside, I think you know what’s bugging him. Just give him some time.”
“You weren’t too easy on them kids, were you, Till? I mean, no one’s accused you of being a bleeding heart, but you probably didn’t get out the rubber hose, brass knuckles, nothin’ like that.” The sheriff’s head tilted a quarter to the right, to underscore that he wasn’t really being funny.
“They’re kids.”
“But they still know something. More than you do yet. Let me ask you again, in case you kinda wanted to skip over it. Do you think you’d have come all the way out here and done a night dive?”
“It’s hard to say what you might do if you were obsessed enough.”
“But to come out here in the middle of a goddam storm, and with no running lights.” Eldon shook his head slowly.
“They sure didn’t expect anyone else to be stupid enough to come out and find them here then.”
“They didn’t know you.”
“No, I guess they didn’t, Eldon.” Tillis watched one of the divers come up at the side of the diving boat and gesture urgently. Two other divers shot off the side with a cable in tow. A man on the deck of the boat cranked the spool holding the cable, to send line down with the divers. The diver who had surfaced and started the sudden activity spotted the sheriff’s boat and started swimming toward it.
Tillis watched the strong strokes as the diver came closer, and was surprised to note as the diver came in range that it was a woman. He doubted if he could swim as fast as she was going, and she had on full diving gear.
When the diver was all the way to the side of the boat, she grabbed the gunwale with one slim brown hand, then tugged the mask back from her face and held it by the strap as she grabbed the gunwale with both hands. Her face gave Tillis a start. It was a startling, exotic face, and showed some Hispanic background, maybe a touch of Indian too. But it reminded Tillis more of carvings he seen of Olmec jaguar gods. The lips were thick and sensual, with a slight downward curve at either end. The eyes were a penetrating brown. The nose looked like it had been broken once and set by someone who didn’t particularly care how it came out. She looked like she didn’t much care either. The face was almost animal-fierce until she spoke.
“Found the body,” she said. Then she smiled. “I hope you didn’t have one of your big breakfasts, Eldon.”
What a smile, Tillis thought. It was like a different person. There was a mischievous twist to the grin, like someone in on a personal joke about which only she knew. This one spends a lot of time alone, too, he figured.
“Oh, yeah, Tillis, this is Gala, my newest deputy.” Eldon rubbed an awkward finger along the line of sweat on his forehead and looked out across the water. “I don’t believe you’ve met her yet—only been on six weeks, but turns out she’s got more diving experience than all my other deputies combined. Gala, this is the Texas Ranger I mentioned would be hanging around, bugging us.”
Her brown eyes flickered an irritated wince at the scrap of flattery. But that was gone by the time she turned back to Tillis.
Tillis ignored Eldon and bent to shake the hand she held out. It was a firm, strong grip. Those penetrating brown eyes laughed back at the puzzled look that must have shown in his glance. She had that damned smile going again, and he couldn’t think of a thing to say. She seemed to know just how long it’d been since he’d seen a woman’s wet face like that, with the black hair swept back like she’d just come out of the shower. Whatever she knew seemed to amuse the hell out of her, Tillis thought.
“It’s been a long time, you think?” he finally managed.
“I’ll bet.”
“I mean the body. It’s been down there quite a while?”
She winked. “This one will hardly smell at all. But he’s a sight, all right. Wait’ll they get him up. But they’ve gotta go slow or he’ll crumble. He must’ve been buried down there for a long time, only come loose in a recent storm or the current. Otherwise, he’d have been beaten apart a long time ago.”
“What makes you think all that on first glance?” Eldon said. Forensics had never been his long suit, and some of the background new deputies brought out to the county often seemed to surprise, even irritate, him.
“Wait’ll you see his gear.” She gave Tillis another wink, a slower one this time, and lifted her diving mask and slipped it back on. Then she spun from the boat with a wave of one slim brown hand and dove back in to help.
“What do you . . .”
Whatever Tillis was going to ask was cut off by the sheriff twisting the key and starting the motor.
Eldon eased the boat around a couple of the floating red with white-stripe flags, over closer to the diving boat, until one of the men on the boat reached out and grabbed the tender Tillis held out. The man, who still wore the bottoms of a diving suit, lashed the tender from the sheriff’s boat to a cleat on the diving boat; and then he dropped over a couple of white tubes of polyform boat fenders on cords, so the sheriff’s boat could swing around in the current and come to beside the bigger boat, without scratching paint on either vessel.
Eldon climbed over the gunwale into the diving boat, and Tillis followed. They kept out of the way, but were handy when the body came up. The two men working the winch reached for the steel cable and helped lift their load out of the water and swing it over onto the deck.
Gala climbed up the stern ladder, tugged off her mask with one hand, tossed her fins onto the deck, and dripped over to stand beside Eldon and Tillis. Tillis got a momentary satisfaction when he realized she was no more than five-foot-two or so. But she glanced up at him with such a look of penetrating intelligence and, yes, a touch of mockery, that he squashed that thought.
The men stepped back away as they lifted the cable clear from what they had brought up. Tillis took a step forward and bumped into Eldon. They both stared at the aged black diving suit that was slumped over the rust-covered metal chest that was half the size of a footlocker, but looked much stronger. The shapes of loose bones were visible under the black rubber drape of the suit, and in places a brownish, moss-covered bone stuck out from the suit that seemed barely able to hold together.
“Good Lord,” Tillis said. “That’s World War II diving gear, or maybe Korean conflict at best.”
“And would bring a good price in some antique shop if it wasn’t in the shape it’s in,” Gala said.
Eldon took a step back and bumped into Tillis again. When Tillis glanced at him, the sheriff’s face had washed whiter than usual. His mouth hung open a half-inch, and he seemed to be trying to swallow but had forgotten how.
“This one’s going to be harder’n hell to ID,” Gala said. She leaned closer to gently lift the hood. The mask must have long ago been lost.
“I don’t know about that.” Tillis still stared at the sheriff.
Gala followed where he was looking. “What’s the matter with you, Eldon? I wouldn’t have figured you for the squeamish type. This one’s been dead too long to smell. Hell, it might’ve even happened before you were sheriff.”
“Who is it?” Tillis asked. Gala looked at him, then realized he was talking to Eldon. Tillis nodded toward the sheriff and said, “He knows.”
Eldon Watkins wasn’t looking at either of them, or what was left of the diver, for that matter. He stared off at the sheer wall of the cliff that went up from the dam on one side of the lake. A few yucca plants and some yellow blooming prickly pear cactus dotted the otherwise blank wall of stone.
His words came out like a hollow echo. “There’s only one person that could be—Hugh Spurlock.”
“Denny’s father?” Tillis asked.
“No, Denny’s older brother.”
“Better give me the whole story.” Tillis sighed, looking over at the limp diving suit.
“Lemme check something first.” Eldon went over to the body and pushed one of the divers to one side. He lifted the suit with a careful finger and was staring at the box.
“That’d better wait until we get this to the lab, hadn’t it?” Tillis said. He’d eased up to Eldon’s side, and Gala came along up closer with him.
“Get me something to have a go at opening this box.” Eldon glanced at one of the divers, then held out an expectant hand, as if he were a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. He stared at the lock on the box, and the double length of chain that had rusted to it. The diver hustled down into the boat’s hold.
“I think we should wait, Eldon.” Tillis looked from Eldon to Gala, but both still stared at the box.
“Hell, he’s been down there since before the damned flood. Give your city scientific crap a break for a second here.”
“What’s that his arm’s stuck in?” Tillis asked.
Eldon looked up at him, and Tillis hadn’t often seen this level of intensity in him before. “That, young man, is a bear trap.”
It was clear to Tillis then. He looked at Gala and realized she’d already figured it out. “How long ago you think this happened?” The words came out stilted and slow, the way Tillis felt.
The bear trap had been set on the metal box and held in place, concealed to one side, by a double wrap of chains. When the diver had swum down to it in the dim light of water that deep, he’d grabbed the box to bring it up and had been grabbed by the bear trap. The whole thing was too much weight to take to the top, or it’d been held onto the bottom, chained to a wooden boat or something that’d long ago rotted away.
It was an awful, awful way to die, Tillis thought, trapped down there and waiting for the air to run out. He moved closer and saw the cuts through the suit and across the bone he expected and feared he’d find. Near the end, the diver had made the final try. He pulled his diving knife and got to the worst of it in a last-ditch try. He sawed at the arm, trying to cut it loose from the box. But it’d been too late. He was out of air, or energy, or something. Anyway, he’d been down there on the bottom for a long time.
“There’s a local yarn, goes back a ways,” Eldon seemed to be talking to make idle conversation while waiting, “that Hank Spurlock died out on this lake, went down with his boat.”
“When was this?” Tillis figured he could play along. He glanced at Gala, who watched the sheriff.
“Oh, forty years ago, or so. Well, when young Hugh here—at least I’m pretty sure we’ll find that that’s who this is—had wrapped up his play in WW II, with a silver star and a couple of purple hearts, and diving skills he’d gotten over there somewhere doing the kind of diving those kind of guys do, he took his act on to Korea, the same as you and Logan. Only he was there from Pusan to Chosin, in the thick of the worst of it, and was one of the ones who got a taste and had to keep at it.”
“Of killing?” There’d been a few flare-ups when Logan and Tillis were there, though it’d been years later, but he left that alone.
“Of whatever it is in war that gets under the skins of some men that young. Hell, maybe it was the camaraderie, though I doubt it. When Hugh came home, he was full of all that training and an adventurous itch. He was somebody nobody wanted to mess with, that’s for sure.”
One of the divers brought over a crowbar, and Eldon bent over the box and used it to pop the chains in half. They parted with brittle, sharp cracks. He levered one end of the crowbar between the sides of the box at the lock and twisted, shoved, then pushed down hard. The lock separated with a softer, tearing crunch.
“What about the father?”
“He was missing, like I said. Everyone thought he’d gone down, boat and all, out here. There were even one or two witnesses who claimed they could see through the storm, though, truth is, I doubt if either could see their hands in front of their faces the way everyone talks about that storm. Why, some folks even said . . .”
“Can we get back to Hugh and Hank?”
“Well, excuse me all to roller skate. The short version, if you’re in such a damned hurry, is that Hank was missing and Hugh spent a lot of time trying to find out where he’d gone. Then Hugh disappeared.”
“Until now.”
“Sure looks that way.”
Eldon bent forward, and levered the lid up off the box. Tillis and Gala leaned forward too, and the other divers crowded in. The inside of the box was filled with water to the top.
“Get some of that water outta there.”
The box was too heavy to tilt, so the divers bailed at first, then tilted it to let the water pour out from one corner.
“Careful there. Just the water.” Eldon was leaning over, getting in the way more than helping. One of his boots and the pants cuff got wet, but he didn’t seem to notice.
The divers set the box back down, and the sun was bright enough to poke through as the muddy water settled. Eldon reached in and grabbed at a handful of what looked like loose gravel. He lifted it, looked closer, then tossed all of it back into the box but one of the stones. He rubbed it at his shirt, looked closer and frowned.
“What is it?”
He turned to Tillis and gave the stone a casual flip overboard. Tillis watched the stone plunk into the rippling blue surface and disappear. He repeated, “What is it?”
“Gravel. Just gravel.”
“Hugh Spurlock died over a box of gravel?”
“That’s sure enough what it looks like.”
* * * * *
The ride in to Fearing, the county seat of Kiowa County, was a long one for Tillis. Eldon had decided to have Rudy, one of his deputies, tow back the department boat and had invited himself along. He sat in the passenger seat, slumped down and staring ahead, apparently deep in thought, and such a thing was possible, despite the rural look and manner he cultivated. Tillis drove.
The radio speaker below the dash cracked and a voice came through. “Ranger Macrory?” It wasn’t the usual voice he got on the radio.
Tillis reached for the speaker and pressed the button on its side. “Go ahead.”
“Is Sheriff Watkins with you?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to speak with him, if I might.”
Tillis passed over the speaker to the sheriff. “Must be something warm, for you to be tracked down this way.”
He shrugged. “New dispatcher. Still a bit over the top,” he said. He keyed the mike. “Go ahead.”
“Eldon? That you?”
“Yeah. What you got?”
“There’s a fellow here to see you, a Don Cinco Hernandez. He says it’s muy importante. That’s all the lingo I can make out from him so far.”
“You need to pick up a bit of Spanish, or get him on your wavelength.” When Eldon let go of the key this time, he grinned over at Tillis.
The radio voice crackled on, “I doubt our wavelengths are going to connect at this moment. I could use a hand from Gala, if you can’t get right to him.”
“She’s busy, but should be heading there soon. Do what you can. Use that investigative mind of yours.”
“And in the meanwhile, you can get that growth on your neck checked.”
“What growth?” One hand went involuntarily up to feel each side of his neck.
“I mean your head.”
Eldon sighed, waited a tick or two for his cheeks to get a lighter pink, before he keyed the mike. “Tell him to cool his heels a bit. I’m headed that way.”
He handed the mike back to Tillis, who glanced his way. “Breaking in a new dispatcher is always a treat. This one’s still a bit rough on the edges. Been out of society a while, and I’m easing her back in.”
“Why that’s unusually decent and altruistic of you, Eldon.”
“Humpf.”
“What happened to the dispatcher you did have, that good-looking Betty Lou?”
“That’s just the thing. Wife got a glimpse of her.”
* * * * *
Esbeth Walters sat and quietly stewed in her chair in front of the sheriff’s department radio. Heat was rushing in small, pulsing waves up the sides of her neck. On her very first day on the part-time job, with just enough instruction for her to get her bearings about everyday procedures, she’d been left alone, high and dry in the command module. It made her feel responsible, nervous, and, for the first time in quite a long spell, inadequate.
Not even having enough time herself to fully unpack in her new home didn’t bother her as much as the feeling of being out of her usual comfort zone. She’d not lived out here long enough to get a glimmer of anything going on in the town, and Eldon sure hadn’t helped with that. She was more sure than not that Eldon’s hiring her had been to keep track of her and to keep her out of the way, rather than to use any of those detecting skills he’d been so full of flattery about, when he’d said she was able to give a jaybird the first two pecks and still beat it to the bug.
She knew no more about Denny Spurlock’s death than she’d read in the papers, and now it seemed there was another body to deal with, about which she knew less. Coming to a new community made it harder for her to catch the pulse and rhythm of the place, its elemental hum that, when off-beat or out-of-tune, told her where to start nosing. In Austin, big as the city was, she’d had more of that. Here she was a virtual outsider, knowing no more about the locals than she did the fellow sitting so meek yet so full of dignity in the chair along the wall.
In a small town or rural county area, there is one personor even two people, most often male in Texaswho blatantly, or behind-the-scenes, runs the town. With the mayor dead and no other prominent citizen to consider, Esbeth hadn’t quite figured out how things worked out here in her newly-adopted hometown. All she could be sure about was that the person wasn’t this pleasant paísano-looking gentleman seated along the wall.
Occasionally she’d seen people who carried the entire history of their race carved on their faces, and this small but stately specimen was one of them. In her orienting trips around town, she’d detected some sense that prejudice was alive and well in the area, people with dirt beneath their own nails still willing to use not-so-nice words, like “beanos” or worse, to refer to the Hispanics in town, to complain that “they” had taken jobs in auto repair garages and doing lawns that could just as well go to others.
She wasn’t one of those so politically-correct types herself that she’d made the quick leap to saying “Latino” instead of “Hispanic.” All that made as much sense to her as the fellow who’d studied Latin because he planned to visit Latin America. There just seemed something wrong and mean-spirited about name-calling, ever, though she wasn’t without stain herself, especially when driving. Maybe it was guilt, she reasoned, that makes some people want to do right.
There weren’t all that many people like this kindly fellow in the town, and even fewer blacks. She supposed many of the smaller towns had settled into demographics like this, while the larger cities provided far more opportunity for anyone whose skin was the color of a worn saddle, the way this man’s was.
If faces could talk, his could sure tell a story. He was no taller than Esbeth, which put him somewhere around five-foot-three, but his upright bearing, even when seated, made him seem much taller. What a study in contrasts. He looked humble, but passionate: a servant perhaps, but someone accustomed to leading. It was an odd mix. His clothes didn’t help the confusion either. The boots and pants could be those of a common laborer, but the shirt was of an uncommon, white, silky material. The hat seemed new as well, perhaps worn especially for a meeting with the sheriff. The wrinkles on the mahogany of his weathered face placed him at Esbeth’s age or beyond, yet the glittering twinkle in those dark eyes could have come from a man in his twenties.
He saw her looking at him and spoke. “Abuelita?”
“No. I’m not even a señora.” She tried to take the edge off that with a low chuckle. You couldn’t teach high school in Texas for over thirty years without picking up some Spanish, no matter what she’d shared with Watkins. She said, “E tu? Un abuelito?”
“Sí.” His smile was slow to come, as if there weren’t many of them. But when it came, it was the sun breaking through the storm clouds.
He started to reach for his wallet, then stopped. The smile slid away.
“Fotografías?” she said.
“No. Lo siento.”
That was the last he said for a while, which was just as well for Esbeth, who’d used up about all the Spanish she had, asking him if he had photos of his grandchildren.
He seemed to know that too from her faltering efforts. He sat quiet, waiting, like all the patience in the world in one place.
When he did look her way, those brown eyes—sad, yet with sparks of low fire—looked at her in ways she couldn’t begin to understand, yet another mystery in a county where, too often so far, an irritating number of matters felt out of touch or over Esbeth’s head.
The worst of it was that in her former dealings with Eldon and Tillis, the former schoolteacher side of her had resisted their efforts to pick her brain by saying, “If I told you everything, you’ll never learn anything.” Now she was on the other side of that, and it didn’t feel all that pleasant, she had to admit.
She got busy with two calls of locals just being nosy and some radio traffic for a few moments. When she looked over in his direction again, he was gone, the chair empty, as if he’d never been there.
* * * * *
Eldon crossed his arms and looked out the window on his side of the truck, making a point of not talking for a few miles. There were times, Tillis recalled, when Eldon could be a veritable cornucopia of borrowed wit and country-flavored sayings. But somehow, he thought, it was occasions like these, where Eldon shared long stretches of hard silence, that seemed to give him any real character.
“What was supposed to be in the box?” Tillis finally asked, as they came into the outskirts of Fearing traffic.
Eldon sighed. “Diamonds.”
“Diamonds? From where?” Tillis was picturing the faceted and glittering pile of stones he’d seen once, spilled out from a small pouch onto a black velvet surface, after the loot from an upscale Houston jewelry store robbery had been recovered.
“Native Texas diamonds.”
“There aren’t any diamonds in Texas.”
“Yeah, you think there ain’t such an animal. Well, that’s what I thought too,” Eldon said. He frowned and kept his face pointed straight ahead.
That was the last Tillis got from the sulking sheriff until they pulled into the gravel lot by the sheriff’s department and jail building. Eldon’s dark mood seemed to lift a bit as he unlocked the door and they slipped into the air-conditioning. There he had the familiar setting of his office and staff surrounding him.
Tillis had been to the building often enough before. The walls were dark green up to four feet off the floor and then were light green the rest of the way up and across the ceilings. Someone in the administration before Eldon’s had read that green was a relaxing color. The furniture was a mix of gray metal and older oak mismatches that filled the single room where the sheriff’s desk was off against the wall in the corner. There was a window where, if he chose, the sheriff could lean over in his chair just a bit and look out enough to catch a corner of the parking lot.
In the middle of the room were two other desks the deputies shared when they needed to do reports after their shifts. They were usually out moving around the county, so there wasn’t much call for sitting around in the department’s office. Though if any of that did need to be done, Eldon preferred to do it himself.
The sound of the dispatcher’s radio squawked softly as they came into the open office room from the long hallway. A couple of things were different from the last time Tillis had been here. Where the air had smelled of stale smoke before, now it was clear, with perhaps a touch of air freshener. The other thing was the shape of the woman who sat at the dispatch desk with her back to them as they came in. This time there were rounded shoulders on a squat, low body, topped by a round puff of white hair.
Eldon caught Tillis’ stare, and the sudden hitch in his steps. His grin had none of the mischievousness of Gala’s. It was a grin that confirmed he enjoyed seeing Tillis squirm, especially when the woman turned on her squeaking oak swivel chair to look at them.
“Where’s this Don Cinco, this fella you were in a lather for me to see?” Eldon asked Esbeth.
“Why, it’s Esbeth Walters,” Tillis said.
The rounded face of the seventy-two-year-old former reluctant amateur detective looked back at him, the head tilted an inch to the right and the smile more polite than sincere.
“How’re you, Mr. Macrory? Still Rangering, I take it.” She turned to Eldon, “He took off. Skedaddled. Gone like a speckled bird. He said something about a banana, or that could have been manana.”
“You get you one of them there Spanish phrase books, Esbeth, and you pick up a few strings of words. Or get a boost from Gala. Might come in handy sometime.”
Tillis was as surprised by the strained politeness coming from the sheriff as he was by finding Esbeth Walters, of all people, working as dispatcher.
Esbeth wore jeans and a white blouse. Tillis was mildly glad she was not required to wear a uniform. On one corner of her desk was a pile of newspapers, among them copies of The New York Times, to which Tillis recalled Esbeth subscribed by mail. There was a story above the fold, Tillis could see, about Senator Martinez, the only congressional former member of Delta Force, saying the U.S. still needs a domestic counter-terrorist squad, in response to the FBI saying the country already has what it needs. There was no one like Esbeth for wanting to keep up on every detail of crime or law that might in some way connect with something in which she was nosing around.
“Kinda surprised, ain’t you?” the sheriff said. Eldon wore a smirk at Tillis’ apparent discomfort as he eased himself into his own swivel chair, and hooked a straight-backed chair with the toe of one boot and slid it toward Tillis by way of invitation.
“Always humble and ready to take an occasional steer from anyone who knows more than I do.” Tillis managed a smile toward Esbeth as he sat. She was still turned in her chair, watching him.
“I want you two to get along now,” Eldon said.
“Why shouldn’t we?” Tillis nodded at Esbeth.
“I don’t know. She kinda helped you out of a spot once. I know you got a reputation as being willing to take help from whichever direction it comes. But some folks aren’t as good at that as they say.”
“I’m fine with it,” Tillis said. He tried to make the words sound not too mechanical.
“I hired her ‘cause she has a good nose for this sort of thing, and she’s a good dispatcher too.” Eldon gave the matter a curt nod.
“Not to mention, as I just learned, that his wife made him fire Betty Lou. I was the least threatening person out there willing to take the job,” Esbeth said.
Tillis had seen Betty Lou, and had reason to recall that Eldon had described her once by saying, “I’d rather watch her walk than eat fried chicken.”
There was a squawk from the radio and Esbeth turned to tilt closer and catch the string of numbers.
Eldon’s smile slipped a tiny bit. “Now what the hell?”
“Just means her location’s at headquarters now.” Esbeth turned away from the ten-code list she’d tacked to the wall earlier and reached for a button on the corner of the disk. There was a buzz, then the sound of the outside door opening.
“Damn numbers. I used to know ‘em back about thirty-two years ago, when I was a rookie just out of academy. I don’t know why she asked the deputies to try using them.”
“If it helps, some of those ten-numbers are different from department to department. Only a few are APCO standard.” Tillis was sorry he’d said anything at all, as soon as he was done. He watched the flicker of color wash across Eldon’s pale face.
“No, it doesn’t help.”
“Oh, let me have my rookie moment,” Esbeth said. She was turned back around in her chair now, facing them. “Besides, it confuses some of the nosy locals, sitting around listening to the police bands on scanners.”
Eldon frowned at her and said, “I didn’t hire someone with your experience to have rookie moments.”
“What’s the matter with you, Eldon? You sure are all a’grump today.” Gala came through the hallway and walked across the room. She was in uniform. Her black hair was short and swept back from her tanned-looking face, which still had more than a bit of a feral, feline look to Tillis. But he found it exotic. She eased herself onto the corner of a desk, and it was also hard not to notice that she had the athletic thighs of an ice skater or ballet dancer. Tillis forced himself to focus on Eldon.
“I’d have thought you’d be pleased,” she said. “You took swift, decisive action, and soon the reporters’ll be here from all over, to share with your voters the level of competence you bring to the job.” She shared another of those mischievous smiles.
“Speaking of which, that reporter Thirsty Mills called.” Esbeth glanced over at a note she had on the log. “He wants you to call him back.”
Eldon glanced at the clock. “Hell, if I was of a notion to call him, it’s almost noon. Who’s to say that he’d be sober at this hour?”
“I’d be careful of underestimating him,” Esbeth said. “He was Ivy League once.”
“Yeah, and I was young and had hair once,” Eldon said.
Gala frowned. She had a few more laugh lines than frown lines on the toffee tan of her face, but both seemed to work equally well when called upon. “You really are a regular grump today. Why aren’t you more chipper?”
“Because I’ve had a can of worms opened on me I’d have as soon kept closed.”
“This business about the diamonds?” Tillis said.
“What diamonds?” Gala said, close enough to be an echo. She leaned forward and her brown eyes glittered.
“There are no diamonds, never were any diamonds. I’m telling you, that’s my last word on the subject.”
“I don’t think so, Eldon.” The Ranger’s eyes narrowed. “You’re better at telling tales than this.”
“Hell, the statute of limitations probably ran out on Hugh Spurlock’s death.”
“There’s no statute on murder. Even if there was, Denny’s death is recent enough. If I can show the glimmer of a connection . . .”
Gala and Esbeth’s eyes tracked the two men like a crowd watching a tennis match. Tillis realized he had stood all the way up, and Eldon was halfway out of his chair.
They both stopped at the same time, and slowly straightened.
“I think,” Eldon said, “it being lunchtime and all, that you and me oughta slip over to the Bluebonnet Cafe for some biscuits and gravy. What d’you say, Tillis?”
“I guess I could stand some lunch.” He watched disappointment show on the faces of both women.
“You can’t just go off and leave us hanging like that, Eldon,” Esbeth said.
“You will find, Esbeth, that in fact I can, and that I often will.” He spun on one boot heel and led the way to the door.
“You can’t do that,” Gala called after him.
He spun and stared at her. “Do what?”
“It’s not right to cut your staff out like that, Eldon. It’s not fair.”
Eldon grinned at her. “The fair comes to town once a year, and you can always tell when that is, because you’ll spot the Ferris wheel.” He turned and started out again.
Tillis followed. He didn’t know what to make of the look on Gala’s face as he went past her this time.
He heard her mutter, “Men.”
But her frown shifted to stark, open, brown-eyed surprise when Tillis winked at her this time.
* * * * *
The men had been out of the room a good five minutes, with Esbeth quietly grumbling to herself, before Gala looked up from the report on which she was working. “What’s up with you anyway, Esbeth?”
“What do you do when you’re not working, Gala?”
Wow. Esbeth watched Gala’s face shoot through a gamut of emotions, starting with startled and settling on defensive. Gala’s eyes widened, alert, a little concerned. Then they narrowed just enough to form a mild threat. For a few seconds her face took on a nearly Asian cast, inscrutable.
Esbeth could hear the slow, regular tick of the large-faced clock on the wall, and a ripple of static that came from the radio’s speakers. She gave a quick shake of her head. “I mean, you’re almost as new to this place as I am. Have you found anything to do? I mean, anything that makes you feel more connected to this place?”
“Oh, you mean volunteer work?” The white teeth of her smile were striking against the tanned tone of her skin.
“Like that. Helping pick up trash in parks, reading to kids, helping old folks—I mean, folks even older than me.”
“You’re just feeling a bit cut out . . . because Eldon’s not sharing. You thinking being involved in the community could help more?”
“Couldn’t hurt.” Esbeth paused, watched Gala relax just the tiniest bit in her chair.
“I know how you feel,” Gala said. “I was a bit out of sorts myself when I first got here. But, you’ll settle in.”
“I miss some of the people I knew, even the ones who didn’t care much one way or the other about me. And, I miss Carol Bean’s Mean Baking Machine—best pie in Austin and only a block and a half from where I used to live.”
“I expect Eldon knows a pie place or two. The rest will come with time, Esbeth.”
Esbeth nodded, then remembered. “There was a fellow in here to see the sheriff, a Don Cinco. You know him?”
“Oh, what did he want?” It sounded casual, but wasn’t.
“I guess just to be listened to. Wanted to see the sheriff. He couldn’t speak much English at all. Well, no English that I could tell. I know only a handful of words in Spanish, and that’s including: Como frijole? How you bean?”
Gala’s smile shifted to her mischievous grin. “He comes in here again, you let me know, Esbeth. I’ll help you with him.”
Esbeth took the full measure of the suppressed eagerness on Gala’s face. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll do that.”