“We don’t know. Where did he come from originally?”
“Like I said, we hardly said a word to each other. All the rest of the time we lived there, people stared at me and whispered. That damned sister of Hume’s. You’re a nice man, Mr. Meyer. I’d tell you anything I know that would help. But I don’t know anything. Every time I think about it, I feel so damn dumb. I could live a million years and still never know how that could happen to me that way. And the hell of it is, Mr. Meyer, if he came in right now and smiled at me and took me by the hand, I think he could lead me right off wherever he wanted.”
“I do appreciate your being so open and honest with us.”
“I hope you find him. You should do with him like they do with witches and vampires. Pound a stake right through his black heart.”
“You have no idea where he went when he left?”
“No, and neither did the law. Walker Garvey called them in on it first thing. They left with over two thousand dollars from under a loose board in the floor of his closet, some watches and some guns, and some sterling silver flatware that had come down from Izzy’s grandmother on her mother’s side. And of course, the pickup truck, which was found, I heard, in Abilene weeks and weeks later.”
“And the girl never came home?”
“Never even wrote.”
A group of men came into the restaurant, talking loudly and laughing. She got up quickly.
“I don’t know anything that would help you. Really. And I’d just as soon not talk about it any more.”
“Thank you for everything you told us,” Meyer said. “I know how hard it must have been for you, remembering it.”
Her face softened. “It was a long long time ago.” She hurried off to take orders from the new arrivals. When she came back toward the kitchen, we signaled to her and ordered the Spanish beef stew. When she waited on us she was polite but remote. It was as though the conversation never had happened.
Fifteen
IT WAS a quick twenty-eight miles to the Cotulla exit. In Cotulla-which looked to be twice the size of Freer-State Road 97 went straight, and we turned off on little old 468, narrow and lumpy.
We stopped twice to ask about the old Garvey place, and at the second stop we got explicit directions and were told to look for the name Statzer on the rural mailbox. That was one of old Garvey’s daughters, they said. Christine.
The Statzer drive was about four hundred yards long, and the buildings were spread out on a long knoll. Kids and dogs came swarming out. of the bushes. The dogs looked big and dangerous, but the little kids whapped them across the side of the nose and chased them back out of the way.
A chubby blond woman came out on the porch, shaded her eyes, and shouted, “Who you looking for?” She wore jeans and a T-shirt advertising Knotts Berry Farm.
“Christine Statzer?”
“That’s me. What’s it about?”
“Isobelle Garvey.”
“Izzy?” She plunged down the three steps and came trotting to the car as we were getting out. “Is she alive? Where is she?” All the little kids were standing around, wide-eyed.
“I don’t know where she is,” Meyer said. “We came to ask about her.”
The animation went out of her face. “So who is asking?”
“My name is Meyer. This is my associate, Mr. McGee. He is helping me look for the man we think married and then killed my niece. When he was using the name Larry Joe Harris, the same man is reported to have robbed your father and run away with your sister.”
She tilted her head to the side and frowned. “Friend, that was eighteen damn years ago! That ain’t exactly a red-hot trail you’re following.”
“The more we can learn about him, the better chance we have of finding him. We thought you might be willing to give us what help you can.”
She shooed the children away and led us up onto the long deep porch. “They aren’t all mine,” she said. “Summertime, two of my sisters bring their kids up from Laredo for me to look after. It all evens out sooner or later. Set.”
Meyer sat in a rocker. She sat on a bench and I sat on the porch railing. There was a mother cat with a basket of kittens under the bench. Three geese walked across the side yard, angling their heads to peer up at us.
“Papa didn’t know a thing about Larry Joe. The way he found him, Papa went over there to Galveston when they wired him about those damn Jap lanterns coming in on a freighter. Do you know about the lanterns?”
“Your father got mad at a garden-supply dealer?” I said.
“Right. He got mad easy and often. He tried to import a dozen and then fifty, but thirty tons was the least he could take. He got the license and went ahead with it, and by the time they came in, he had almost forgot about them. So he went over and arranged for them to be trucked right here to the farm. On the way back, Papa picked up Larry Joe, hitch-hiking, and got onto the problem of the thirteen hundred garden lanterns, all of them in three pieces, and this Larry Joe told him he could sell anything to anybody anywhere, and they struck a deal. I must say that everybody liked him. When I met him, I liked him fine. At that time I’d been married almost a year, and my first baby was beginning to show. You see, Izzy and me, we were the two youngest of the seven. And when I left the place to move in with Burt and his folks, just Izzy and Papa were left here.”
Meyer slid the photograph out of his folder and handed it over to her. She studied it. “Must be real recent. He’s forty here if he’s a day. Fine-looking man. Who’s that beyond him?”
“Norma. My niece.”
“She’s blurred but she looks pretty. Anyway, it looked like Papa had made a good choice, because Larry Joe surely unloaded those weird lanterns. He must have put ten thousand miles on that old pickup. The people that bought them made a real good buy, if you like that kind of thing. He got rid of all but about a dozen. They’re still out there in one of the sheds, I think. I remember seeing them a couple of years back. Maybe Burt moved them, I don’t know. Papa sicked the cops onto Larry Joe. I guess the trouble was that Papa always had too many deals going. He was always taking off to check out something he owned some kind of a piece of. And that meant that Izzy and Larry Joe were here alone probably once too often. We all really loved Izzy, all us sisters. She was the best of the lot, believe me. She was cute and warm and funny and loving. And just a kid. You know? Sixteen. Too young to really know what kind of man he was. After they’d been gone some time we heard of two situations where he was getting an extra bonus along with the pay for those lanterns. Some woman down near Encinal, and another one above Catarina. And if it came out there was two of them, you can be pretty sure there must have been ten more being so careful it never came out.”
“Your father must have been very upset.”
“He was like a crazy person. He never could figure out how Larry Joe knew about the money under the floor, because he’d never let on to any of us he kept that kind of cash money in the house. They took two gold watches out of Papa’s desk, and they took the sterling silver flatware that came down from my grandma. And the pickup truck which turned up in a used-car lot in Abilene weeks later. It turned Papa meaner than a snake. Not that he was exactly cheerful beforehand. He stayed sour until the day he died. Mom died when Izzy was three, wore down from having all us girls. Look, I’m telling you things. Tell me more about Larry Joe Harris.”
“When he married my niece earlier this year, his name was Evan Lawrence. Five years ago, when he ran away with the sister of a real-estate broker in Dallas, his name was Jerry Tobin. She was killed in an accident near Ingram, when the car hit a tree and burned and he was thrown free. We don’t know who he really is yet. We’re trying to find out.” She got up suddenly and walked to the end of the porch. She stood by the railing with her back to us, then turned around and snuffled and knuckled her eyes.