Bite the Moon (25 page)

“
Well, I’ve got to run. My phone number and e-mail address are in the front of the album. Let me know if you find out anything.”

She stuck out her hand and I took it between both of mine. “Thank you, Molly,” she said, and I felt blessed. When she smiled at me, she looked like one of Botticelli’s angels.

After she left, I slid in Jesse’s CD. Jenny was right about his singing, and just as she did, I recognized the song right away. I played the Wolfe Pack CD next. When Wolfe’s voice sang Jesse’s words, I felt the raw power of Jesse’s poetry. The full band added more instrumentation, giving the composition greater depth. There was a slight variation in the rhythm, but there was no denying it: this was the same song. The song Jesse lived for. The song Jesse died for.

I played Jesse’s CD again while I looked through the pages of photographs his sister left me. A toddler Jesse with a plastic guitar dragging in the dirt behind him. A ten-year-old Jesse holding a full-sized guitar like a sub-machine gun. An early adolescent Jesse, hair hanging in his eyes as he struggled to look soulful and worldly slouched in a beanbag chair, a guitar draped across his lap.

All of the snapshots hit me with a painful poignancy, but none as much as the most recent shot. There Jesse smiled and his eyes met mine. His face was a reflection of Jenny’s, with a sharper jaw and a hungrier look—a face too soft, too sweet, too pure to last.

Until today, Jesse had been merely the third of three unsolved murders. Now I could see him, hear him, ache for him. He was a real person. I had to make sure he was not forgotten.

I didn’t know where to turn next. I needed to review what I knew and what it meant to me with another set of eyes and ears. I could bounce it all off of my quasi-employer, Arnie. I was sure he’d give me time and attention. But I wanted face-to-face interaction, and the thought of driving to Houston made my fingers twitch. It was like playing Russian roulette, and the gun was being held to the body of my little car.

So, of course, my thoughts turned to Lisa. In her weird little way, she had a great knack for cutting through the crap. She agreed to grab a lunch along the way and meet me in Landa Park.

It was my favorite place in New Braunfels. In one corner, the waters of the Comal River bubbled up from underground—clear, clean, cold water. The baby river ran under the road and split. One branch of the path of blue—incredibly blue—water raced in a beeline to the small lake. The banks were flat and low, nearly level with the surface of the fast flowing water. Overhead a canopy of trees—trees that in other regions of the country would tower like prehistoric giants—were squat and gnarled here, struggling to find nutrients in the rock-strewn soil. Every inch grown was a valiant triumph of determination over the elements.

The other branch of the newly spawned river meandered through the park, artificially widened at one point for a kiddies’ wading pool and tapered back to a narrow six feet where a small, flat footbridge connected the two sides. Not much farther down, the distance was fifty feet and spanned by a graceful, arcing bridge. Then that branch, too, fed into the lake.

On the lake, geese, mallards and teal floated and squawked while black swans drifted by, adding dignity to the noisy chaos. Egrets and herons of all kinds high-stepped on the banks, hunting for food. On the islets in the lake, black cormorants gathered in the trees, their wings spread wide to soak up the sun.

The lake fed a naturalized community pool, then collided with a small dam and cascaded into a wide, deep, clear-as-glass river. During warm months, the river filled with tubers who floated on the steady stream of moving water, exiting just before the Comal crashed into its wilder, longer sister, the Guadalupe River.

Between all this water lay huge swaths of green, the tortured shapes of ancient live oak trees and scatterings of picnic tables. On holiday weekends, the park was packed with families who reserved their tables in advance, and chock-full of huge barbecue grills towed in by truck. The smell of mesquite and the squeals of children filled the air, and for a brief span of time, the people outnumbered the squirrels.

On this early spring day in the middle of week, the park was a peaceful place. A few people sat on benches contemplating the lake, singles and couples walked here and there and the squirrels ruled. I sat down and opened up my lunch, but only had time for one bite before Lisa joined me.

After a little small talk—Lisa talked, I listened—I pulled out a piece of paper. “This is the suspect list I drew up early on in the investigation. I wanted to see what you think about all these people. Who should I eliminate? Who should remain?”

“
Who you need to add?” she asked.

“
If you think of someone, sure.”

Lisa looked at the sheet I laid on the picnic table. “You can scratch two names off right away. If you’re right and the murders are connected—and I think you’re right about that—then none of the crimes were committed by Happy Parker or Jesse Kriewaldt.”

I started to draw a line through Happy’s name, then I stopped. “Unless one or both of their deaths were a revenge killing for a previous murder.”

Lisa scrunched up her face and shook her head. “Too complicated,
Mija
. The simplest solution is the right solution.”

I scratched them off the list. “Now, I hate to divert us from the task at hand, Lisa. But what you said reminded me of something else. You know how you always call me
‘Mija’?
”

“
Yes,
Mija,
” she said with a smile.

“
Well, I checked with a Mexican-American woman I know down at the courthouse. She said that it is literally a contraction of ‘my daughter,’ but if a person is fond of any younger girl or woman, it is appropriate. She said that no one uses it for someone older—it would be disrespectful.”

“
Oh,
Mija,
please, that is so rigid. I am not being disrespectful. Even though you are older, I look upon you as a little sister—my little sister. I love you like a little sister. Does that make you feel better?”

I said, “Yeah,” but I wasn’t really sure. I had a feeling it did not reflect well on the level of my maturity. There was nothing to do but change the subject before I thought about it for too long. I pointed to Teresa Faver—now Tess Holland—and looked at Lisa.

“
The ex-wife?” she asked.

I nodded my head.

“
Killing Rodney makes sense. But the other two? She wasn’t sleeping with them, was she?”

“
You sure have a jaded view of relationships, Lisa.”

“
Please. It’s always money or sex—without them, murder would be rare. So what’s the verdict, was she—could she have been—sleeping with them?”

The picture of Tess I found on the Internet flashed before my eyes. I wouldn’t put it past Tess—but Jesse or Happy
with
Tess? Nah. “Not likely,” I said.

“
Mike Elliot?” she asked pointing to his name. “Why would you ever have his name on here?”

“
There’s a natural friction between the manager of a venue and the manager of the band. It seemed logical.”

“
Friction, sure. But the murder of Faver wasn’t friction. It was white-hot passion.”

“
Who knows what passion can erupt in a heated argument?”

“
Mija,
Mike does not have that much passion. If he saved it up for years, he couldn’t accumulate that much passion.”

“
Lisa, that’s not a nice thing to say about any guy.”

“
I’m talking murder here, not sex. But, now that you mention it, there probably is a synergy there. Or maybe it’s a lifestyle choice. Murder or sex. One guy takes one road, the other is great in bed.”

I rested my forehead in the palm of my hand and shook it back and forth. Heaven knows, I’d never be bored around Lisa.

“
Molly, look at me. I’m not joking. I would
not
joke about passion. You weren’t thinking of Mike as a possible boyfriend, were you? Look at me, Molly.”

I raised my head. I felt the heat of a blush in my face.

“
Oh,
Mija
. No. No. No. It will never do. He will never be able to satisfy you. Trust me on this.”

“
Oh, c’mon, Lisa. What is this routine? ‘I’m a
Latina
,
I know all about passion,
Gringa
.’ ”

“
Just because it’s a stereotype doesn’t mean it’s not true. We have a gift.”

I couldn’t argue with that one. I scratched Mike off the list.

“
Fingers Waller? Who is he?” Lisa asked.

“
The keyboard player.”

“
Oh, that’s his name. What about him?”

“
He disappeared right after the Solms Halle gig and I haven’t found anyone who has seen him since.”

“
He could be dead.”

“
Or he could be a prime suspect,” I said. I put an asterisk by his name.

“
Trenton Wolfe?”

“
He fed me a story about childhood trauma that was supposed to make me believe he was incapable of killing Rodney Faver in the way he was killed. But I don’t know. He’s an angry man. And he claimed credit for a song Jesse Kriewaldt wrote.”

“
Okay. That could be a motive for killing Jesse. Why would he kill Happy Parker?”

“
He knew something about Faver’s murder, maybe?”

“
All right. Why Faver?”

“
He made a deal that afternoon with Jesse. But he hadn’t the time to do anything about it yet.”

“
Prime suspect number two,” Lisa declared.

I put an asterisk by his name.

“
Heather? Who’s Heather?”

“
Happy’s girlfriend,” I said.

“
Another Tess?”

“
Pretty much. But not exactly. Unlike Tess, she was broken up about Happy’s murder—or at least acted as if she was. And, unlike Tess, she knew Jesse. But I just can’t see it.”

“
Scratch her?”

“
Yeah,” I said. One more down.

“
Stan Crockett? Is he the one that looks too skinny to be alive?”

“
Yeah.” I laughed. “That’s Stan. But he really is alive.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
Yes. He sent me flowers.”

“
Put an asterisk by his name, too.”

“
You must be kidding. I’m going to scratch him off the list.”

“
No, you can’t. Are you blinded by flowers? By lust? By love?”

“
No,” I snapped. I worried that there might be a bit of truth—a little, tiny, miniscule bit—in her judgment of my conclusions about Stan.

“
Put an asterisk,” she insisted again.

“
Lisa, he’s the only member of the band who approached me and talked to me. And he did it without a lawyer and without a hassle.”

“
Asterisk,” she said again with the stubbornness of a toddler.

We compromised. Stan Crockett got a check mark next to his name.

“
Bobby Wiggins is not on your list?”

“
Bobby? No, of course not,” I said.

“
Have you really, really examined the possibility of his guilt?”

“
Aw, c’mon, Lisa. You know how I feel about Bobby.”

“
You must be objective,
Mija
. The key was, after all, in
his
pocket.”

“
Lisa,” I whined.

“
Write his name down. But you can give him a check mark, not an asterisk. So there you go. Two prime suspects—Trenton Wolfe and Fingers Waller. And two maybe suspects—Stan Crockett and Bobby Wiggins.”

I winced when she said Bobby’s name.

“
What do you do now? What are your next steps?”

“
I don’t know, Lisa. I’m fresh out of ideas.”

“
No, you’re not. You’ve laid out clear priorities here. Number one: locate Waller. Number two: find out everything you can about Wolfe. Have you called his mother?”

“
No,” I admitted.

“
Why not?”

“
She won’t be objective.”

“
Of course not, but she might drop a tidbit of information you can use.”

“
I would just dig up her old pain.”

“
Think about calling her anyway. What is a few minutes of her pain compared to Bobby’s lifetime? Think about it,
Mija
. Priority three: find solid, concrete evidence to eliminate either Crockett or Bobby or both. If you can’t, you need to consider upgrading those checkmarks to asterisks.”

I nodded in agreement.

“
And when you finish this case,
por Dios,
take the time to get that ugly thing off of your arm.”

In response my hand flew up and landed on the sleeve over my tat. “How did you know about that?”

“
Mija
, everybody—
everybody
—knows about that.”