In Big Trouble

Sighing resignedly, Tess flipped back to the descriptions of the murder, which took up the middle third of the slender book. Ahern's prose puffed and panted, but his ability to describe blood in varied ways could not disguise the fact that he had no firsthand information-and that the investigation of the crime had stalled almost immediately. The murder scene was all Ahern had, and he kept returning to it. The word "grisly" figured largely.

Lollie had been found near the door, killed by one shot to the back of the head. The cook, Pilar Rodriguez, was nearby, also killed execution style. Frank Conyers, chief financial officer of Sterne Foods, was in the kitchen, where he had been going over the books at a long wooden table. Nearby cans of gasoline and a pile of rags indicated that the killers had pla

Tess's tired mind caught the name on the second mention: Frank Conyers. Because everyone used all three names when they spoke of Maria

Just holding this book in her hand made Tess feel dirty. She would have tossed it into a trash can on her way out of the Vietnam, but it was hard to throw away something that had cost twenty-five dollars. She still couldn't fathom why Maria

A ringing phone woke Tess from a not very restful sleep. Her mind seemed to be stuck, like a video machine playing back the same scene over and over again. She kept hearing Crow's words, yet it was the black and white photos from the old murder scene that ran across her mind. Ruined everything, ruined everything, ruined everything.

"Hello?" she asked the receiver. Then she figured out it worked better if you picked it up. "Hello?" With the curtains drawn, the room was dark, so the bedside clock proclaiming it was eight o'clock wasn't much help. She could have been sleeping for four hours, or sixteen, or even twenty-eight.

"Why do you sound so groggy?" Kitty asked.

"Napping," Tess muttered, looking at her watch, still trying to anchor herself in time and space. All her instruments agreed: She was in La Casita on Broadway in San Antonio, Texas, a city of a million-plus souls, few of whom seemed to like her very much. Esskay was stretched out on the bed next to her. It was the last Sunday in October, unless it was Monday. And if Kitty were on the line, demanding to know why she sounded groggy, deductive reasoning meant it must be a time when normal people are awake.

"How'd you find me, anyway?" she asked her aunt. "I didn't even wait for the machine when I called you yesterday."

"I starred-69 your ass, as the expression goes. Maybe I should be the detective in the family."

"You want my business, it's yours. What's up? Everyone okay?" The Sternes' tragic history had reminded her how fragile family happiness was, how quickly an unknown and unexpected evil could shatter everything one loved.

"Tyner called, so did Pat. I'm not sure which one is more furious with you."

"Pat?" Her mind was still cluttered with the weekend's events.

"Patrick Monaghan, your father, my brother. Remember him? He seems to hold me personally responsible for you being in Texas. I tried to tell him you sneaked out without letting anyone know where you were going, but he wasn't mollified. And Tyner's over here every hour of the day and night, wanting to know if I've heard from you. I am not your answering service, Tesser. Call these people-and talk to them, not their machines. Write them postcards. All they want to know is that you're okay."

"Okay," Tess said, but she wasn't agreeing so much as repeating Kitty's last word back to her.

"You are all right, aren't you?"

"Sure, yeah. Just tired."

"Did you find Crow?"

"Found him-" She stopped to calculate. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Had so little time really passed? "Two days ago."

"And he's fine?"

"More or less." Probably less than more, what with a corpse in a pool house, an unexplained shotgun under his bed, a missing femme who might be fatale in every sense of the word, and some bad-ass ex-con on the loose who was likely to be miffed about his dead buddy, assuming he wasn't the one who had killed him. Then there was the part about her hormones kicking in at a most inopportune moment, but that was so much more information than Kitty needed.

Tess heard a high-pitched babbling on Kitty's end of the co

"Yes, Jackie dropped her off. She has a date."

"Jackie has a date?"

"Di

A brief silence, then Tess heard Laylah's snuffly little breaths as she panted into the phone. Laylah felt that telephone communication was largely telepathic. She just held on tight and thought lovely thoughts, until they flew through the line.

"Hey, Laylah, it's Tesser."

No response. Laylah knew the piece of plastic that Kitty held to her face wasn't Tesser.

"No, really, it's me. Esskay is here, Laylah. What does Esskay say? What does the doggie say?"

More snuffly breaths. Then, suddenly, clear as a bell: "Hey, hey, Esskay. Go yo' way. Hey, hey, Esskay."

It was a fragment of the sausage company's hotdog jingle, the one that Cal Ripken had been pretending to sing all summer long on the Orioles' radio broadcasts. Tess laughed so hard she almost fell off the bed. She was still laughing, and Laylah was still repeating the jingle, very pleased with herself, when Kitty took the phone back.

"She takes after you, Tesser. Your first sentence came from a commercial for pork products, too. ‘More Parks sausages, Mom-please?'"

"Bullshit," Tess said, but she couldn't stop laughing, and her room at La Casita no longer seemed quite so dark. Somewhere, there was a place she knew, a place where people knew her. She'd get back there eventually. She could be there the day after tomorrow if she really wanted. Get in the car right now and drive without stopping. Steal a cat nap somewhere in Te

But she wasn't finished here yet. Finding Crow had proved to be only the begi