Still following some woman around Austin. Peeping through her windows with binoculars at night. Poor guy."
"She was murdered."
The smile flickered around the edges, then disappeared.
She listened while I told her the story. She kept her expression soft and sympathetic, but her eyes weren't totally focused on me. They were moving slightly back and forth like they were reading math equations, maybe calculating what the murder meant for my job prospects.
When I was done Carolaine folded her arms. "What did Erainya say?"
"That I was handling it wrong anyway. End of case."
"What did you say?"
"I quit."
After a moment of stunned silence Carolaine looked at her watch. Then she took her purse off the counter and rummaged for something inside. She was trying not to let it show, but I could see the relief loosening up her shoulder muscles.
"So what now?" she asked.
"I don't know. It depends on what Milo Chavez wants."
"You mean you might keep working for him, unlicensed - like the work you did before?"
She said before like it was a euphemism for something one didn't talk about in polite company.
"Maybe," I admitted.
"The last time you did this man a favour it almost got you killed, yes?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand - I don't see why you can't just..."
She stopped herself. The corners of her mouth tightened.
"Say it," I told her. "Why can't I just use my degree and get a real job teaching English somewhere."
She shook her head. "It's not my business, is it?"
"Carolaine - "
"I have to leave, Tres." Then she added without much optimism, "You could come back to the studio with me. We could get takeout, spend the afternoon in my dressing room like old times. It might do us some good."
"I have to call Milo."
The frost set in. "All right."
Carolaine closed her purse, then came up and kissed me very lightly without ever really looking at me. She smelled like baby powder. There were a few freckles on her nose that the makeup hadn't quite covered.
"Sorry I bothered you," she said.
The front door slammed behind her.
Robert Johnson came out of the closet as soon as he heard Carolaine's car start. He looked out the window suspiciously, then gave me a look of death he must've learned from Erainya Manos.
"You want to play Anne Frank when people come over," I said, "don't blame me."
He came over and bit me on the ankle, lazily, then headed for the food dish.
Some days everybody wants to be your friend.
Chapter 5-6
Chapter 5
At sunset the sky turned the colour of cooked eggplant. Seven million grackles descended for a convention in the trees and phone wires above the city. They sat there making a scratchy highpitched sound that was probably screwing up the sonar of every submarine in the Gulf of Mexico.
I stood in the kitchen reading the ExpressNews late edition. I had just started on my third Shiner Bock and was starting to get mercifully numb in the extremities.
Julie Kearnes had had the good sense to get murdered on a slow news day. She merited a small story on A12. I received honourable mention for making the 911 call.
The staff writer had done some homework. He wrote that readers might remember Kearnes for her song "Three More Lonely Nights," recorded by Emmylou Harris in 1978, or for Julie's more recent work as fiddle player and backup singer to rising local star Miranda Daniels. The police had no leads in the killing, no murder weapon, no useful witnesses.
The writer mentioned nothing else about Julie Kearnes - none of the immaterial stuff I had learned from following her around town, talking to her neighbours, going through her garbage. For instance that Julie's favourite food was Thai. That she shopped at the same New Age stores my mother liked. That Julie had played fiddle in country bands since she was six but secretly, at night, preferred to listen to Itzhak Perlman. That she drank cheap white wine and owned a parrot.
None of that made it into the ExpressNews - just the fact that Julie Kearnes now had a hole in her head.
The last part of the article talked about what a pain it was having the SAC parking lot cordoned off all morning for the investigation. It quoted some grumpy students who'd had to park several blocks away from class.
I thought about Julie Kearnes all dressed up nice, fiddle beside her in the '68 Cougar.
I thought about the real downside of surveillance - not the boredom, like most P.I.s will tell you, but the times when