Chapter 27
-
She parked out front of the first address on the list. They went inside, got nothing, and came out again. The next two were the same. No luck.
The fourth address was a low adobe building on a side street, a hand-painted sign over the door and a swamp cooler running in one window.
Inside it was dim and cool after the glare of the street.
A few regulars sat along the bar in the middle of the afternoon.
A man in his sixties stood behind it, drying glasses with a towel.
Scarlett and Patterson took two stools near the end, away from the others. The bartender came down and set two cardboard coasters in front of them.
“I’m Beto. This is my place. What’ll it be?”
“Two of whatever’s coldest,” Scarlett said. “And one for yourself, if you take one on the job.”
He didn’t smile, but something in his face eased a degree.
He drew three beers, set two in front of them, and kept the third near the register.
Scarlett laid a bill on the bar that covered the beers several times over and didn’t ask for change.
The bartender looked at it, then at her, and left it where it lay.
“Where you folks from?” he asked as if he cared.
“Houston.” Scarlett turned her glass a quarter turn on the coaster. “I’m a private investigator. The man with me is a retired police detective. I’d rather you hear that from me than wonder about it.”
“Most people don’t lead with it.”
“Most people want something for nothing. I don’t work that way.” She took out a second bill, folded it once, and set it on the bar under two fingers. She didn’t slide it across. She left it there, where he could look at it. “You’ve owned this place a long time?”
“Twenty-six years.”
“Then you remember the people who come through here. I want to ask you about a couple of them, and I’ll pay you for your time.”
The bartender looked at the folded bill as if he was deciding. Down the bar a guy laughed, and the moment passed and none of them looked over. He picked the bill up and put it in his shirt pocket without comment.
Scarlett brought up the first photo on her phone and turned it to him. Nancy Keane’s image in a casual pose, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, wearing a neutral expression. She’d pulled it from the digital frame Patterson collected at the Keane house.
Beto looked at it and shook his head. “No. Never seen her.”
“You’re sure?” Patterson asked.
“Pretty woman like that comes into my bar, I’d remember.” He handed the phone back. “Who is she?”
Scarlett swiped to the second photo showing Oakley in a similar pose wearing similar clothes. She showed him the image.
“That’s Carla.” Beto set down the glass he was holding. “She waited tables here a while back. Worked a couple of weeks, then one day she didn’t come in.”
“What’s Carla’s last name?” Patterson asked.
“Didn’t ask and she didn’t say. She came in one afternoon asking did I need help.
I did. She started that day and she was good with the customers.
I paid her out of the drawer at the end of the night and we got along fine, and then she was gone.
” He looked at the photo again. “She said she’d been on the road awhile.
Thumbed a ride off the interstate to get into town. Kept to herself otherwise.”
Scarlett nodded. “She say where she came from? Where she might be going?”
“People come through here between one place and the next. None of my business.” Beto shrugged.
Patterson had half turned away from the bar, his beer untouched, watching the door and the regulars and the bartender. Easy, like a man making conversation, he said, “Funny thing to ask, but has anybody else been in here lately showing pictures, asking?”
Beto’s towel paused on the glass. It was a small thing, but Patterson noticed.
“Now that you mention it.” Beto set the glass down and leaned against the bar. “A while after Carla left, two men came in. One did the talking. The other stood by the door the whole time and never said a word, just looked at the room.”
“What did the talker want?” Scarlett asked.
“Showed me a picture. Asked had I seen the woman in it.” Beto nodded at her phone. “Same as you, just now. Wasn’t Carla, though. It was the other one. The first picture you showed me. The woman in the yard with the flowers.”
Scarlett asked, “You’re certain the men showed you the woman from the first photo? Need another look first?”
“No need. I told them what I told you. Never seen her. He didn’t like it. Asked it three different ways like the answer might change if he kept at it. They left unhappy and that was the end of it.” Beto picked the towel back up. “Until you walked in.”
“Describe the two men for us,” Scarlett said.
“The talker was big through the shoulders, friendly in a way that worked the mouth and left the eyes out of it. The other one lean and quiet, stood by the door, watching everything.”
Scarlett pulled up the images she’d saved from Flint’s CCTV the night the two goons broke into Patterson’s sedan. She showed Beto the heavy set one first and then the taller one.
“These the two guys?” she asked.
Beto nodded. “Yep. That’s them.”
“One more thing,” Scarlett said. “When Carla worked here, was there a woman she was friendly with? Dark hair, around Carla’s age?”
Beto thought about it. “Not that I saw. Carla kept to herself, like I said. She worked her tables and she went home. I never saw her sit down with anybody for a chin wag, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“She never mentioned needing a private investigator?” Patterson asked.
“A private investigator.” Beto almost smiled as he shook his head. “In here? No. The people who drink in my bar in the afternoon don’t have private investigators. People come in, they drink, they talk about the heat and their exes and sports. That’s about it.”
Scarlett nodded and let it go. Oakley lied. Again. She’d said a dark-haired woman in an El Paso bar had given her Scarlett’s name. Maybe she’d meant a different bar, but that seemed unlikely.
“You’ve been a help,” Scarlett said as she slipped off the bar stool. She considered giving him another hundred to forget they’d been asking and then thought better of it.
“You find Carla, tell her Beto asked after her.” Beto paused a moment and made a decision. “Those two weren’t looking to do that woman any kindness. When you find her, tell her to watch her back.”
“Thanks. We’ll do that,” Scarlett said as she followed Patterson outside to the SUV. She started the engine and flipped the air-conditioning up to full blast.
“They had a picture of Nancy Keane, not Oakley,” Scarlett said as she pulled away from the curb and turned toward the interstate. “And Beto didn’t recognize her. He saw Oakley and called her Carla. Whatever that means.”
“It means Oakley was here. And the two men hunting Nancy Keane are the same two we don’t need to worry about anymore.” Patterson watched the desert begin to slide past the window. “That part we don’t have to work out.”
Scarlett merged onto the interstate and cruised into the right lane headed eastbound. “Oakley told me a woman in an El Paso bar sent her to me.”
“Yeah, well, Oakley’s relationship with the truth is more than a little adversarial. Not surprising she lied,” Patterson said. “What’s your read on the rest of it?”
“She said people were hunting her. Two men carried a photograph into that bar and a lot of other bars like it, and we both know how far they got.” Scarlett set the cruise and settled deeper into the seat. “We came out here to find out how much of what she said was true. Now we know.”
The lights of the oncoming traffic slid past in a steady chain.
“Long way to drive,” Patterson said finally, “to come back with half a story. Those two goons who were looking for Nancy Keane in Beto’s bar a few weeks ago were not likely working the situation on their own.”
Scarlett glanced across the console and met his gaze. “We know they weren’t because by the time they died, there were six of them.”
“My point is, no reason to assume there were only six, either,” Patterson replied. “You heard from Flint and Drake at all?”
“No. My calls are going straight to voice mail. We’ll meet up at the safe house when we reach Houston,” Scarlett replied, pushing the cruise control a little higher.