Murder Takes a Break by Bill Crider Read Free Book Online Page B

along.
    Â  "Just tell me what you do know." I said.   "We can help each other on this.   We've done it before."
    He picked up the glasses and slid them back on.   He looked around to see if anyone was listening to us, but no one was.   There was hardly anyone else there.
    "What I'm about to tell you?" he said.
    "What about it?"
    "I didn't say it."
    "Of course you didn't."
    "All right.   We think there's a connection between Kirbo and Davis, all right.   Hell, we know there is.   We just can't get anywhere with it.   We're getting stonewalled all around."
    "But you're going to tell me what the connection is."
    "Yes.   Not that I think it'll do you any good."
    "You never can tell," I said.
    "That's right.   You might accidentally stumble onto something.   Otherwise I'd be keeping my mouth shut."
    "You're not, though.   So what's the connection?"
    "We think that Randall Kirbo did know Kelly Davis, but we can't prove it.   We think they met at a party at a beach house, but we're not sure who else was there.   We've put a little pressure on a few of the ones we think might know something, but we can't get a thing out of them."
    "Why not?"
    "The beach house is owned by Big Al Pugh," he said as if that explained it all.
    Maybe it did.   Big Al was into a little of everything — restaurants, beach property, illegal gambling, prostitution, and drugs — or so it was said.   No one had ever proved anything about the illegal stuff, mainly because people who seemed likely to reveal any of Big Al's secrets had a way of turning up missing.   No one wanted to mess with Big Al.   Not even the police.   Certainly not me.
    Goddamn that Dino.
    "I'm surprised you found anyone who even might know something," I said.
    "So am I," Barnes admitted.   "But we don't have much.   We found a couple of kids who didn't know any better, and they said they thought that maybe they'd seen Kirbo and Davis at the party, but they couldn't say whether they were together or not.   And the next time we talked to them, they didn't even remember that much."
    "Big Al had a little talk with them," I suggested.
    "I doubt it.   Big Al doesn't talk to anybody, not that way, not these days.   I figure it was Henry J."
    I wasn't sure what the exact relationship between Henry J. and Big Al was.   They might have been partners, or Henry J. might have been just an employee.   If anything, Henry J. was bigger and meaner than Al.   If that was possible.
    "None of that was in the police report Randall Kirbo's father had."
    Barnes didn't say anything.   He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling.   Well, the report had been only a copy, not anything official.
    "What can you give me?" I asked.
    He thought about that for a while, then opened a desk drawer and pulled out a folder a lot like the one Tack Kirbo had given me.
    "I'm going to take a walk outside," he said.   "Get a little fresh air.   If you copy anything out of that report, I won't know about it."
    That was fine with me.   He had a pencil and paper lying on his otherwise clean desk, and I started writing almost before he had taken ten steps.   I got the names of the two people who'd said they might have seen Kirbo and Davis at the party and the phone number and address of Davis' parents, who lived in San Antonio.
    It wasn't much, and Barnes was back as soon as I finished.   He took the folder and slid it back into the desk drawer.
    "You knew I was coming," I said, folding the paper I'd written on and slipping it in the back pocket of my jeans.   "You had the folder ready."
    "I thought you might drop by."
    "I wasn't invited."
    "I told Lattner not to give anything away.   I wanted to see if you'd put it together.   You did it a lot faster than I thought you would.   I wasn't expecting you for a couple of days."
    "People like you and Lattner always tend to underrate us expert detectives."
    "Maybe.