In Big Trouble Page 5

  "So I'm right—I never really knew him. I'm even less suited to finding him than I thought."

  Chris stood up. "I need to show you something. Down in Felicia's studio. Do you mind?"

  The night was cold and crisp, one of the first true autumn nights this season. Their breath was visible as they walked through the garden, to the cottage from which Felicia had materialized that afternoon. Chris Ransome unlocked the door and flicked on a light.

  "Crow had his own studio here." Chris grinned with a rueful self-awareness. "We've always been a little indulgent, I suppose."

  "Would I understand your theories?" Tess asked suddenly, stalling for time. She felt uneasy, almost frightened of seeing whatever Chris Ransome found so urgent. "Your ones about economics, I mean. Could you make them so simple that a bonehead like myself could get it?"

  "If I can't, then it's my failure, not yours. The basic premise is plenitude."

  "Plenitude?"

  "Simply, there really is enough."

  Tess's mind balked at this. "Everything I see says we live in a time of scarcity, that there are too many people and not enough resources."

  "Well, the theory of plenitude begins with changing one's definition of what ‘enough' is. Look, I brought you here to show you Crow's studio. To convince you that you did know him, and he knew you."

  He opened a door on the far end of the large room where Felicia worked. Moonlight poured through the windows, and before Chris flicked on the light, Tess had a sense of hundreds of canvases, from large to small, surrounding her. When the light did come on, she saw there were no more than a dozen, and they were all quite small.

  But every face looking back at her was hers.

  There she was, in pastels, in pen and ink, in oil, in crayon. She was clothed, she was nude, her hair was braided, her hair was undone. Even Esskay, who had arrived so close to the end of what would be her time with Crow, had managed to creep into a few of the pictures. There was one of the two of them sleeping, their bodies mirroring each other. It made Tess blush to look at it, to think of Crow standing over her and the dog, studying them, remembering all the details, including the dirty white socks she wore to bed. The only thing she wore to bed.

  "We didn't know they were here until a week ago. We've always respected his privacy, but after he stopped calling and writing…well, we thought he might have left some sort of clue behind."

  "You know I did try to make amends," Tess said, feeling a little defensive. The etiquette of the situation overwhelmed her. She was standing in a room with an ex-boyfriend's father, looking at naked pictures of herself. She had never read Emily Post, but she was pretty sure this situation had not been covered. "He didn't want to try again. He said it was too late for us, and he was probably right."

  "These things happen. Felicia and I are the last people to be judgmental about the ways of the human heart. What did Faulkner say in his Nobel speech? ‘The heart wants what the heart wants.'"

  "Actually, I think that was Woody Allen, at the press conference about Soon-Yi. Faulkner said the conflicts of the human heart are the only thing worth writing about." Every now and then, it helped, being an English major. Not often, but sometimes.

  "I know they're the only thing worth living for." Chris Ransome picked up one of the smaller studies, a nude that had been exceptionally kind to Tess's rounded figure, narrowing the waist just a shade, deepening the almost-dimple in her chin, removing any dimples farther south. But the leg muscles were hers, Tess thought, and that little dent by her tricep. She had worked hard to get her arms cut like that.

  Ransome studied the picture, then looked at Tess thoughtfully. In another man, the look might have been salacious, offensive. But Chris Ransome looked at Tess as if she were merely another in the series of beloved objects his son had toted home over the years. The arrowheads, the rock collection, the Star Wars figures, the Nature Store telescope. A swallow's nest.

  "Felicia and I know we could hire someone else, Tess. We probably should. But there is something unfinished between you and Crow. I won't put a name to it, but whatever it is, it's like a divining rod. You'll find your way to him. Or he'll find his way to you. No other private detective can offer us that."

  He pulled something from his pocket. "This is the last postcard Crow sent to us, before he disappeared."

  The card wasn't a photograph, but a hand-tinted drawing of blue flowers dotting a green field. "Texas blue-bonnets," said the legend on the front.

  On the back, Crow had written: "I feel as if I'm starting over. Things here are not as expected, but that doesn't make it bad, right? As Dad said, I am following in an outlaw tradition by coming here. GTT, Crow."

  "GTT?" Tess asked Chris.

  "Gone to Texas. It's what outlaws wrote on their doors when they headed out to the frontier. ‘I've gone to Texas. Don't bother to look because you won't find me.'"

  "Is that so?" Tess said, lifting her chin. And they had her.

  Tess called Kitty the next day from Abingdon, Virginia, just before crossing the line into Tennessee. She called the private line, knowing Kitty would be in the store and the machine would pick up. She didn't want to explain why she was going, she just wanted to go.

  "It's Tess," she said. "If Tyner calls, tell him I'm headed for Texas. I'll call him tonight, when I've crossed the Mississippi." She figured that was just far enough to be safe from Tyner's wrath, that the Mississippi was wide enough to keep the volume of his voice from reaching out and lassoing her home.

  She had a generous per diem and a sizable advance. She had her Toyota and her overnight bag. She had a week's worth of clothing purchased in less than thirty minutes at an outlet mall with a Gap and an Old Navy. She had the sweats she always carried in her trunk, along with a jump rope and a basketball. She had her dog, her datebook, and her copy of Don Quixote, because she had gotten in the habit of carrying it around, thinking she still might finish it one day, if only by osmosis. She had seven pairs of heavy-duty white cotton underwear, which had cost only a dollar at some off-brand store, possibly because "Wednesday" was spelled "Wenesday."

  It was enough. Or at least plenty. Chris Ransome was right: You just had to change your definitions.

  Chapter 4

  Tess, who never paid close attention in seventh grade social studies, had expected Texas cities to spring out of vast, dusty prairies, then disappear quickly in the rearview mirror. But Austin seemed to begin in fits and starts as a series of strip centers along Interstate 35. Where were the green fields with little blue flowers? What had ever happened to Lady Bird Johnson's Highway Beautification program? Her eye was drawn to the strange names of local groceries and convenience stores. HEB, Circle K, Stop ‘n' Go.

  Traffic was heavy, too, worse than any rush hour she had ever experienced back home. Even when the Toyota crested a hill on I-35 and she saw the Texas Capitol building ahead, the glimmer of a river or a lake beyond it, she was still unmoved. She also was overwhelmed and exhausted. What had she been thinking?

  "You shouldn't be in Texas by yourself," Kitty had scolded when Tess called her earlier that day. "Tyner will have a fit when he hears. He's already called here twice, looking for you."

  "I'll call him pretty soon," Tess said. She was at a roadside restaurant in Waco, the Health Camp, which seemed to specialize in spectacularly unhealthy food. A gas station attendant had given her the tip when she filled up her car outside Dallas that morning. She sucked up the dregs of her coffee milkshake, gave Esskay the last bite of burger and bun. More bun than burger, but Esskay was still grateful.

  "Where are you going to stay?"

  "Some fleabag motel that takes fleabags, I guess."

  "That won't do. You should be in a place where you have access to a fax machine, or even a computer if you need one. I know a bookstore owner down there. He might put you up, as a favor to me, and help you find your way around." There was a strange, awkward pause, and Kitty laughed a coy, most un-Kittyish laugh. "We…were together at that convention f
or independent booksellers a few years back. The one in San Antonio."

  "‘Together?' Aren't you shy all of a sudden. Why haven't I heard about this adventure before?"

  "Keith was different." Kitty sighed. "He runs Quadling Country."

  "Come again?"

  "Keith's store. It's like mine, a store for children and adults, only with an emphasis on fantasy, with a comics department on the side. Quadling Country. From the Oz books."

  "Oh, where Glinda lived. Right. But comic books and fantasy?" Tess made a face, even though Esskay was the only one there to see it. "You mean sci fi and outer space and little green men and images of the future that almost always include some kind of monorail system?"

  "Don't be a snob," Kitty admonished. "Besides, I can't remember the last time I saw a book of any stripe in your hands."

  "Hey, I'm almost finished Don Quixote," Tess pointed out. Just five hundred pages to go. She had actually read a little bit here at the Health Camp. It was surprising how much of the famous stuff—the wind-mills, the muleteers, the barber—came at the beginning of the book. Or maybe not so surprising. Probably a lot of people lied about reading the damn thing.

  "I'll call Keith as soon as I hang up," Kitty said.

  "But let me give you the directions to his store first."

  "You've been there?"

  "Oh, yes. My last vacation."

  "You said you went to Atlanta for a bookseller's convention."

  "Did I?"

  Tess left the highway and drove west along Sixth Street, which appeared to be home to a good portion of Austin's club scene. Wouldn't it be nice, Tess thought, if she could just see Crow striding along here, guitar case in hand? So easy and simple. But things had never worked that way for her. The long way around was the route she always ended up traveling.

  About two miles west of the downtown district, Quadling Country sat on a small hill above Sixth Street. The two-story purple house didn't have the spick-and-span quality of Kitty's Women and Children First, but it was large and enticing, Tess supposed. As was the young man bounding down the crumbling concrete steps.

  He was young, of course. Tess had expected that much, although this one was something of a record, even for Kitty. He looked to be nineteen, a strapping but very dewy nineteen. He must have needed instruction in all aspects of life, from bed to bath and beyond. But he didn't seem as hangdog as most of Kitty's castoff lovers. Maybe the distance, the whole gestalt of the convention fling, had inoculated him against the inevitable disappointment.

  "Are you Tess? And this must be Esskay. Cool dog." Esskay, ever the sucker for a compliment, promptly attached her face to his leg and began whimpering for attention. "Kitty called to say you'd be here this afternoon. But you must drive kinda slow. That was almost two hours ago. I can make it from Waco to here in less than ninety minutes."

  "Well, I drive pretty fast, too, when I know a place," Tess said, and instantly felt as if she were all of two years old. "But the traffic was horrible, and I was worried about speed traps."

  "Speed traps? Like, only if you're going above a hundred. Let me get that for you." He tried to lift the duffel bag of new clothes from Tess's shoulder.

  "I can carry it," she said, wrestling it back from him.

  "Of course you can. But you're a guest here. You're just gonna have to take our courtesy even if it kills you." He grinned at Tess, a little wickedly, and she sensed that his idea of Southern hospitality might include late-night visits to lady guests, if they were so inclined. Of all Kitty's young louts, this one was the youngest and most loutish by far.

  "How did you come to have your own bookstore, anyway?"

  "Well, I only run the comics section, but it's the best one in the city. I won the readers' poll in the Chronicle, even."

  "And you are…"

  "I don't know," he said. "What am I?"

  Tess blushed. "I mean, how old are you?"

  "I'll be eighteen in April."

  Jesus. This one wasn't even legal.

  "And you met Kitty…"

  He put his hands on his hips and stared her down. "So, do you like ever ask a direct question, or do you just play this fill-in-the-blanks game? 'Cause I gotta tell you, it's annoying."

  "Look, Keith, I'm just trying to figure out how my aunt ended up in what is probably an illegal relationship even under the statutes of this backwards state."

  "Keith? I'm not Keith, I'm Maury, his son. And who are you calling backward? As I recall, Maryland was all over the news not long ago because a thirteen-year-old married her twenty-nine-year-old boyfriend." He stopped, then allowed himself a sly smile. "So you thought I was getting it on with Kitty? Crazy. Not that I would mind scrounging my dad's leftovers. He's got pretty good taste."

  "Keith is your dad?"

  "Right. He's at Whole Foods, picking up some stuff for vegetarian lasagne." Maury suddenly looked the way Esskay did when some off-limits food was simmering on the stove. "We're death on red meat around here."

  "Texas vegetarians? Isn't that an oxymoron?" Great, she had come all this distance to a place famous for barbecue and fajitas, only to end up in a household where meat was banned.

  A sputtering bright yellow Triumph pulled up on the side street.

  "There's my dad now. Guess I'll go help him with the groceries." He was back to smiling, bouncy Maury now. "He's not threatened a bit, if I lend him a hand."

  The man who got out of the car was short and stocky, pot-bellied in truth, with thinning hair. Maybe he had fallen apart after Kitty had thrown him over. The Kitty that Tess knew took up with young men like Maury, not pudgy guys of her own age, and ran through them as quickly as Esskay devoured rawhide bones. Keith's face was round, pleasant but ordinary. Maury's genes obviously came from some long-legged, long-ago stunner of a leftover, to use his parlance.

  "Tesser," Keith said, balancing his canvas grocery sack in one arm, pulling her to him with the other and kissing her on the cheek. "Not to be overly familiar, but I was almost your uncle, you know."

  "Oh, sure." She had never heard of him and he knew her family nickname. That seemed fair.

  "A magnificent woman, your aunt. I just couldn't see moving to Baltimore, leaving my life here. And she felt the same way about Texas."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I'm glad we could finally be friends, although it wasn't always easy. When she called today and asked me to put you up, I couldn't have been happier. I look forward to us getting to know each other."

  "Absolutely."

  Tess grabbed Esskay's leash and followed Keith and Maury into Quadling Country, wondering if anyone ever really knew anyone.

  Texas was hot in October, with no promise of the autumn weather that had settled over the mid-Atlantic. Tess—traveling with Maury at Keith's insistence—drove to Crow's old neighborhood on the city's north side, a place called Hyde Park, beyond the University of Texas. She tried not to complain, but the Toyota's air conditioner had given up just last month. Back in Baltimore, this had not seemed particularly urgent.

  "I don't see how you stand it," she said for the fifth or sixth time, shrugging out of her leather jacket, then the denim shirt she had worn over her T-shirt.

  "Stand what?" Maury asked. "Wait, turn here, this is the block you're looking for."

  The address to which Crow's parents had sent checks through the month of August was an old Victorian, cut up into at least six apartments by the count of the mailboxes. Names had been affixed randomly—one with an old-fashioned label-maker, others with scraps of paper held in place by layers and layers of Scotch tape. Groves, Perelman, Lane, Gundell, Linthicum. None of the names meant anything to Tess. She rang the bell for number 5, which had been Crow's apartment.

  "No answer," she told Maury.

  "Would you answer if you were an illegal sublettor? Like Dad told you over dinner last night, there's no way an apartment is sitting vacant in this market. The question is whether the landlord kicked Crow out to up the rates, or if he found someone to take his pla
ce. Let's try the door." He started up the steps ahead of Tess, but she passed him on the landing and reached the door marked No. 5 before he did.

  "I'm looking for Crow Ransome," she called through the door, after knocking and getting no reply. She heard footsteps creeping toward the door and away again, as if someone had peered through the fisheye and decided not to answer. "Look, this door is so thin I can practically hear you breathing through it."

  "You got the wrong place," a voice called from the inside. "Never heard of anyone by that name."

  "No, it's the right place. And I know whose name is on the lease here, and it sure isn't yours," Tess said, her voice louder now. "I'd hate to track down the landlord and tell him you're not the one on the lease."

  Her bluff brought results. A marijuana-laden breeze drifted into the hall as a skinny man in baggy plaid shorts opened the door. He had red hair pulled back in a scraggly pony tail and pink, blotchy skin. His hairline was as high as it could be and still be considered a hairline at all.

  "You with someone official?" he asked.

  "I'm a private detective looking for the man who used to live here. Crow Ransome. You know him?"

  "Never heard of any Crow."

  "Maybe you knew him as Ed or Edgar."

  "Eddie?" Eddie? "Okay, sure, a little. I mean, I met him when I took over the place. I gave him cash up front for the next six months, he pays the landlady. He makes an extra 25 dollars a month on the deal. Everybody's happy, you know?"

  "Twenty-five dollars isn't that much. Why didn't he just break the lease and have his mail forwarded to wherever he was living?"

  The man was beginning to relax, or maybe he was just too stoned to stay anxious. He yawned, leaned against the doorjamb, scratched the gingery hair under one freckled arm. "I don't know. He had moved in with this chick, and he needed every peso he could get. Maybe he wasn't sure it was going to last. We kind of left it open. I knew if he showed up here before his lease was up, I had to let him have it back. Those are the breaks."