In Big Trouble

At last, he hung up. "My source gave me a lead on a retired detective who worked the Darden-Weeks case, knew these guys as well as anyone."

"Was that the detective?"

Rick rolled his eyes and pulled at his collar as if it were choking him. "His wife. She says he went to Las Vegas on a charter, won't be back for two days. Probably trying to get away from her for a while. She talks a blue streak. Gave me a complete blow-by-blow of her health, her husband's health, their dog's health, what she had for breakfast this morning-English muffin with raisins, a little Sanka. Jesus. He probably goes gambling just to have some peace and quiet for a change."

"See?" Kristina said. "That's how marriage works. I bet there was a time when he told her he loved her, and couldn't be without her, and now he's reduced to playing blackjack to get away from the sound of her voice. That's what marriage is, Rick. The death of romance."

"That's not what marriage to me would be like," he said, circling her waist and kissing her neck. Kristina never missed a beat in her dusting.

"Two days," Tess complained, feeling awkward. "What do we do until then? I don't want to sit around La Casita, watching Esskay sleep."

"Look for Emmie," Rick said, still holding fast to Kristina, who continued to ignore him. "That's what you said you wanted to do in the first place. Got any ideas where to start?"

"In fact, I do," Tess said, eyeing the skeletons, which seemed to he laughing at her. "I think I'll see if the Duchess of Euphemism would like to take tea with me this afternoon."

Chapter 17

Maria

"It's one of the things I've done right, taking care of my skin," she volunteered, although Tess had asked for no explanation, had not yet even reintroduced herself. "I never sunbathed like the other girls."

Maria

"You'll be sorry," she said. Maria

"Probably," Tess agreed. "Did Lollie Sterne sunbathe?"

If Maria

"You've been busy," Maria

"Very," Tess agreed.

"How old are you? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?"

"I was thirty in August."

"Still young. Too young to know there are stories you will grow weary of telling. Especially when it's the only story anyone knows about you. Or cares about."

Tess smiled and nodded. She had no idea where Maria

"I am a survivor. Not in the new sense of the word, which implies triumph over self-inflicted adversity, followed by public redemption in the chapel of some talk show host. I am a ‘survived by.'"

"Survived by whom?"

"No one, that's just it. I'm the one in the list at the end of the obituary. So-and-so is survived by. I'm the official mourner, and my past is as noisy as Marley's chains. I am Frank Conyers's widow, I am Lollie Sterne's best friend. That's the sum and total of who I am. People no longer remember that my father's people were related to William Barrett Travis, the commander at the Alamo. Distantly, but related nonetheless. They don't recall the things my father did for this city, how almost every building here has a foundation poured by his concrete company. There was a time when I would have given anything to he known as someone other than my father's daughter. Be careful what you wish for."

"By withdrawing from the world, you made it worse," Tess said. "You've frozen yourself in time. If you want to compare yourself to a Dickens character, try Miss Havisham."

Maria

"If you want to listen to my story, then you have to listen. Don't you know how many reporters have tried to get me to tell this to them? Usually at this time of year, too. Right before what they call the ‘a

She stopped, her eyes fixed on some spot in the garden wall. Tess knew to leave the silence alone.

"And then one day, someone shows up who doesn't know anything. A young woman with an accent as flat and matter-of-fact as she is. A young woman whose ignorance allows me, for a moment, to not tell the story I thought everyone knew. Yes, I rewrote history for a day. Horace dead in a hunting accident. Well, it happened in a hunting camp. Lollie, Frank, and Pilar, dead in a car accident. "Suddenly, brightly: "Did they tell you they tortured him?"

"Who?"

"My Frank." She held a finger to her lips. "Only we're not allowed to say how. That's something only the killer knows."

Jimmy Ahern's book had hinted at details about Frank's death that had never come to light, but Tess had assumed he was a bad reporter.

"I'm sorry, I didn't-"

"-know. You didn't know. Exactly. That was your charm."

Charm. The Duchess of Euphemism had struck again. What Tess had been was stupid, even arrogant.

"So you knew who Tom Darden was all along."

"No, I was truthful on that count. When you came here on Friday, Tom Darden was nothing more than a corpse on my property. Yesterday was the first I heard that he was thought to know something about how Lollie and Frank…died." She smiled ruefully. "You should understand the Sternes and I have not been kept informed about all the developments over the years. Perhaps we should have been less critical of the police investigation. But they made such a mess of things, at first."

"How so?"

Maria

"Small things. Probably unimportant things. But when it's you, and it's your husband-or your first cousin, and the servant who all but raised you, in the case of Gus Sterne-there are no small things. All I know is they never came close to making an arrest, and they didn't seem to have many satisfactory explanations as to why. Now the detective tells me Darden and this other man were in prison all these years, so the case ‘lacked urgency.' Well, it never lacked urgency for me.