The Puzzle of Piri Reis (21 page)

His wife looked up at me with hope glowing in her
eyes. "That proves he wasn't here, doesn't it, Mr.
Boudreaux?"

"All it proves is that there's a message on the answering machine. You want me to tell you what the cops will
say? They'll say you paid some joker five bucks to call
and leave the message."

Martha Cobb's face crumpled into tears. Cobb put
his arm around her shoulders to console her.

"Look, if it'll make you two feel any better, I believe you"

He looked at me gratefully.

"But, I'm going to have to verify your story. This
old man, is he the only one who saw you?"

Cobb considered for a moment. "Well, there were
others who passed and waved, but-I suppose he's the
only one I know how to get in touch with."

I smiled at Mrs. Cobb. "I'll check on his alibi. If it
holds up, then you've caught a lucky break. I should
be back before dark"

On the way to the hotel, I ran back over the events
of the last few days. As soon as I figured out the last
twist Odom put in his puzzle, I'd have the Piri Reis.

I was convinced that Odom and his niece were both
murdered, and the killer or killers were after the map.
With that little assumption in place, then the efforts to
scare me off-the eighteen-wheeler, the tossed room,
the planted coke, the gunman, and the setup-all made
sense.

What had begun as a simple search for a map had
turned into a double murder. I knew I should pay a visit
to Chief Louis Ibbara and reveal what I knew. But then,
I reminded myself that I really knew nothing, not for
certain. All I had, with one exception, were neat little
theories with no proof. The one exception was Leo Cobb, and later that afternoon, I would find out if he
could have strangled Lamia Sue or not.

I set her death at sometime between three and three
thirty. Probably closer to the former for when I arrived
at four, her body was already cooling.

Janice was waiting for me when I reached my room.
She was casually dressed in brown slacks and a beige
blouse that set off her dark eyes. Her brown hair was
parted in the middle and framed her face like a heart.

She stood on tiptoe and curled her arms around my
neck. "I've missed you," she purred, touching her lips
to mine.

I'd be lying if I said the marriage business was not in
the back of my mind, but then, the tingle of electricity
when her lips touched mine reminded me just how
much I had missed her. "That goes double for me"

I could feel her lips curl into a smile. She pulled back
slightly and arched an eyebrow. "You have the most romantic way of putting things, Tony."

I saw the teasing glitter in her eyes. "Hey," I retorted
with a laugh, "that's one of the lines Casanova always
used" I swatted her playfully on the derriere. "You
ought to be grateful I'm such a sophisticated lover."

She laughed and gracefully stepped back. "So, what
do you have in mind for us this afternoon?"

I relaxed slightly. "How about a drive through the
hill country in your Jag? Weather's perfect. Couple of
hours, then drinks, a light dinner on the River Walk, and then join the annual Mexican Bracero Festival
here at the hotel."

Janice is rich, obscenely rich, but in all fairness she
wears her cloak of wealth without a great deal of posturing. She laughed brightly and touched a manicured
fingernail to my forehead. "You must have read my
mind. I brought the Miata instead of the Jag. It's a lot
more fun to drive on days like this."

I laughed and hugged her to me. "Then let's get
with it."

We headed north on 1-35 in her three-year-old Miata. I had questioned her when she bought the XK Jag
as to why she hadn't swapped the Miata in. Her retort
was a typical rich child's response: "It's cute, and it's
more fun than the Jaguar."

Years back, I had ridden in a friend's reconditioned
MG, a 1953 model. The unique little car shuddered and
bounced over bumps, and when you hit ripples in the
highway, it was like sliding down an old fashioned
washboard.

The Miata, in that respect, was the MG reincarnated.

But none of that mattered when we hit the winding
two-lane Farm to Market asphalt road carrying us deep
into the hill country out of San Marcos. There were
several sharp S-curves that the little Miata manipulated
effortlessly.

Most of the vehicles we met were pickups, many
four-wheel drives, several off-roaders.

Ancient live oaks starting to lose their leaves lined
the road. Occasional maples and sweet gum and pecan
displayed patches of red and gold among the panorama
of green.

"It's beautiful out here," Janice called out over the
roar of the wind.

I glanced at her. She was leaning back against the
headrest, the wind whipping the ends of her hair in her
eyes. "Yeah"

She turned her head on the seat and look at me, an
amused look in her eyes. "Any particular reason for
coming this way?"

Janice could read me like a book. That's probably
because I'm as complicated as a primary reader. You
know the one. "See Jane. See Jane run"

With a grin, I said, "Well, now that you mention it."

She laughed. "I thought so. What's going on?"

I flexed my fingers about the wheel of the little car.
"Nothing much. I just need to find out if one old boy
was out here yesterday afternoon"

A sign on the shoulder of the road read DEVIL'S
BACKBONE 3. "That's where we're heading." I glanced
at my watch. Almost an hour since we left the hotel.

"Devil's Backbone" She feigned a shiver. "Brrr.
Sounds ominous."

The winding road began to climb. A couple of minutes later, we found ourselves speeding along the crest
of one of the six hump-backed ridges rising several
hundred feet above the hardwood forests below. Stunted
live oak and scrawny cedar dotted the steep slopes of the individual ridges. On either side of the road were
guardrails between the shoulder and the steep drop-offs.

Looking at the ridges, I couldn't fathom the inspiration for the word "backbone," unless whoever named
it pictured the devil bending so far over backward that
the back of his head touched his heels.

At the top of the first ridge was a roadside park, the
one Cobb had mentioned. I pulled off and climbed out.

Janice followed, standing on the concrete slab on
which the picnic table stood. A spreading live oak
shaded the table, and a crisp breeze slithered across the
crest of the ridge. She peered out over the valley below
that spread to the horizon. "It's beautiful up here"

"Yeah," I replied, my head stuck in the fifty-five gallon barrel serving as a trash container. I saw no sign of
the Oreo package or the empty Dr Pepper cans.

I glanced around and spotted a broken branch about
three feet long. Using it, I stirred the first level of trash
and spotted a wadded up Oreo bag and two crushed Dr
Pepper cans. Maybe Cobb was telling the truth. I fished
out an empty plastic bag, and then using the branch,
managed to dump the crushed bag and cans in it. If they
were Cobb's, his prints would be on them. Now all I had
to do was establish a definite time.

"How about something to drink? There's a store
down the road apiece."

"Never mind," she replied, turning to me with a twinkle in her eyes. "I came prepared" She pulled the passenger seat forward and extracted an insulated bag from
which she produced a bottle of Zinfandel and two Styro foam cups. She held one up. "I know it's an unforgivable
social sin to drink wine from a foam cup, but at least the
law won't know what it is." She smiled wickedly.

I laughed and hugged her, then quickly poured us a
drink. "I've got to stop down there at the store anyway.
Won't take but a minute."

A rock-jawed redneck with a week-old beard and
knotted fists glared at me from behind the counter. "Old
Jake is the one you need to see. He run this here place
yesterday. He took off this afternoon"

"He live around here?"

He stared at me. For a moment, I didn't think he
was going to reply, but then he nodded. "Go on up the
highway here about two miles. Farm Road 3314 heads
back to the lake. Take a left there. His place is the first
road to the right."

I thanked him and started to leave, but he stopped
me. "If you're going to see old Jake, he won't talk to
you."

Turning back with a frown, I asked why.

With an amused twist on his lips, he said, "Jake's
kinda odd. He don't like outsiders. You want to talk to
him, you got to take a bottle of whiskey for him and
his pets" He nodded to the package store next door.

I studied the grinning man for several seconds. If ever
I'd seen a rip off, this was one, but I didn't want to take
the chance. "Whatever you say." I reached for the glass
door opening into the package store.

"You can't go through that one," he exclaimed. "You
got to go outside and come through the front door."

Standing there, holding the door partially open, I
stared at him. "Do what?"

He shrugged. "It's the law. Package store's got to
have a single entrance for customers. He nodded to the
front door. Go out and come in the door over there. I'll
meet you there" He stepped through the door I was
holding open and pulled it shut behind him.

All I could do was shake my head and do as he said.

While a couple of years had passed since I bought a
fifth of Jim Beam Black Label, I knew inflation had not
kicked it up to twenty bucks a bottle, which is what I
had to pay. I held up the bottle. "You guarantee this will
do the trick?"

He leered at me. "It's the only thing, friend."

Old Jake's place was a quarter of a mile back in the
woods, a doublewide mobile home sitting on concrete
blocks in the middle of two acres of rusted hulks of cars
and pickups, broken down riding mowers, and half a
dozen skeletons of various brand tractors being scavenged for parts. A face appeared at a window when we
pulled up. Moments later, a wizened old man shuffled
onto the porch and squinted at us.

I waved and stepped out, under my breath telling Janice to stay put. "Jake?"

Saying nothing, he eyed me suspiciously.

"The old boy at the store told me where I could find
YOU."

Taking a few steps closer, I held up the bottle of Jim
Beam. "I brought a present for you"

The mistrustful expression on his face broke into a
grin. He waved to me. "Then come on in, sonny. And
bring your girl."

"That's all right. She'd-"

"No, no. Bring her in." He called out to Janice."Come
on in, young lady. We'll break open the bottle"

I looked around at her helplessly.

She lifted her eyebrows and shrugged as if to say
"Why not?" She climbed out.

The mobile home smelled musty. It wasn't quite
like the moldy smell of straw in a barn. The smell was
familiar, but I couldn't place it. We sat at the kitchen
table while Jake poured us stiff drinks in dingy tumblers. Janice eyed hers warily, and I wouldn't have
been surprised to see a crew of bugs sailing a boat in
my bourbon.

He downed his in one gulp then poured himself another. "Now, what can I do for you two?"

"Yesterday afternoon. Did an outsider come in to
the store and buy Dr Peppers and Oreos?"

He pursed his thin lips. "That all you want to know?"

I grinned. "That's all."

"Sure did. Kinda fat. Not much hair. Sweats a lot. He
come in just before closing and bought two Dr Peppers
and a bag of Oreo cookies. I don't know what he was up
to but he'd been sitting up at the roadside park almost
all day"

With a sigh of relief, I relaxed. Leo Cobb had just
been cleared. Good news for him, bad for me, al though his innocence narrowed the field of suspects.
"I don't know if anyone else is going to want to ask
you about this guy or not. They might."

He chuckled. "I got no objection long as they bring
a bottle for me and my pets."

I glanced at Janice who had taken a couple of dainty
sips from her tumbler just to be polite. "Yeah, the old
boy at the store said you had pets" I glanced around. "I
don't see them. What are they? Dogs, cats? You got
them outside?"

His eyes twinkled. "Yep, I got my share of no-good
hounds, but they ain't pets. No, sir, my pets, I keep 'em
in the house" He tapped sharply on the table several
times and peered at the couch in the living room. "Jefferson Davis oughta be coming out anytime now"

Suddenly, from under the couch popped the head of
a black snake as big around as my wrist, which proceeded in leisurely slithers across the floor toward us.
Behind me, I heard Janice gag. "Tony!"

"Don't worry none," Jake said. "He's an old rat
snake, and he ain't going to hurt no one. He just wants
a drink." Taking a shallow saucer from the table, he
put it on the floor and splashed a dollop of bourbon in
it. "Just don't make no sudden moves and scare the little feller."