“That sounds like the kind of thing Leo was talking about.”

“I’d like you to keep me up to date on this. If it turns out the original burial site is outside of Austin, that’s something I’d want to know.”

I nodded and agreed to keep him apprised.

Chapter Seven

Jimmy Hughes saw the round face with the broad cheeks, small chin and full lips on the screen of his television on the six-o’clock local news. It was a ghost-the face of a woman missing for sixteen years, a girl from his hometown, a girl from Viola, a girl he had loved since he was eighteen. Her name had been Adelaide Russell-“Addie” they called her. She was only fourteen then, and he was off to Vietnam. Addie may have been fourteen, but Jimmy had known her all of her fourteen years, and he loved her. At eighteen, Jimmy was still a boy in his heart and Addie was a pretty young girl with long, blond hair. Jimmy went to Vietnam and came back and Addie was dating someone else. Later, she married, had two children, and then disappeared at the age of thirty-two. That was sixteen years ago.

Jimmy had called the number on the screen and spoken to Tommy Lucero. Tommy had asked him to come in.

“So, what was he like?” I asked as I put lunch on the table.

Tommy shrugged. “You know, typical overage-hippie type. The normal Austin citizen.”

“I don’t know, Tommy,” Mike chimed in. “I think the guy looked like he’d tried to dress up, sort of. He was wearing dark green cords and a real clean T-shirt. I think he had even pressed the shirt a little.”

“The cords were old, man.”

“Yeah, but they were clean-and they looked pressed, too.” He looked at me. “It wasn’t one of your ironing jobs, Mario, but it wasn’t bad for a bachelor.”

Tommy smiled at the use of my nickname. He made a grab for the fresh bread, and I slapped his hand gently.

“Hey, dude, we say grace first in this house,” Mike said.

“You’re one to talk, young man, since you’re notorious for grabbing food first and saying grace later,” I admonished.

Tommy chuckled.

“So, then I’ll offer the grace,” Mike said.

I sat down at the table with them, and Mike did offer the grace. Then the two men tore into that food like two hungry wolves. You’d think they were sixteen-year-olds still growing two inches every six months.

“So, he made an attempt to look good,” I said, “but not for either one of you characters. Could he have wanted to look good for her?”

Mike nodded. “I think so.” He slugged down almost his entire glass of tea in one gulp.

“What are you talking about?” Tommy said. “She’s dead and he knew that-he ID’d the face from the news.”

“Tommy, I’m telling you, that guy thought he was going to identify a body.”

“No. I totally disagree. She’s been dead sixteen years. We had to have her face reconstructed. No one in their right mind would think he was going to ID a body.”

“Okay, man-whatever.”

I could tell this had been a running argument all day. I poured both of them some more tea. Tommy grabbed a fresh lemon wedge, squeezed it into his tea and then dropped the wedge into the glass.

“So, what else did this guy tell you?”

“She’s some girl from his hometown,” Tommy said. “He had some kind of crush on her or something. When she disappeared, she was married to a guy named Dody Waldrep. We checked the records in Viola and there is no Dody Waldrep there anymore, but we found the woman’s mother, Maureen Russell. She still lives there.”

“Yeah, she says that Dody lives in Manor now. They don’t keep in touch. She raised Addie’s two children for the last fourteen years-two girls-twenty-two and twenty-four now.”

“So, what was the story with the dad? Why did Grandma get the kids?”

“Dad drinks, ever since Mom skipped,” Tommy said.

“Skipped?”

“Mrs. Russell said we would hear all the rumors anyway, so she would just tell us. She says the townspeople thought that her daughter was having an affair, and that she ran off with the man. She disappeared sixteen years ago, and so did he.”

“So, Mom-ask who he was.”

“This Jimmy Hughes who identified her?”

“Anhh, you lose twenty-five thousand dollars and the trip to Bermuda,” Mike said.

“Okay, smarty, who was it?”

“Jimmy’s brother, Doug,” Tommy said, nodding.

“Interesting.”

We all ate in silence awhile. I watched while the food evaporated from the table.

“So, what did this Jimmy say about his brother’s disappearance?”

“We didn’t know all that when we interviewed him this morning, so we haven’t had a chance to ask him.”

“Yeah, Mario, you’re getting ahead of us again. We just talked to Mrs. Russell on the phone a little while ago. There hasn’t been time for us to go up to Viola and see her in person, or to find and talk to Dody Waldrep, the victim’s husband, much less go back and question Jimmy again.”

“But Jimmy must have said something this morning about his brother’s disappearance-right?”

The two men looked at each other and then at me, and shook their heads in unison.

“Weird, huh, Toni?”

“To say the least. So, he just came in and identified the woman and told you who she was and a little bit about how he knew her, and that was it?”

“Yep,” Mike said as he dabbed up the last bit of food from his plate with a piece of bread.

“We couldn’t get anything else out of him. He was quiet and kind of edgylike, but he was almost belligerent in his answers a few times.”

“I agree with that,” Mike said. “He wasn’t trying to cooperate, really. I mean, he identified her by calling in, and then coming in to talk, but he wasn’t forthcoming after he got there.”

“No sign of grief?”

“That’s hard to say, Toni. It was hard to tell what was going on with this guy. He was kind of withdrawn sometimes, and then like I said, he’d be belligerent. He was a tough read-strange, and a really tough read.”

“I’d like to go talk to him, if you don’t mind. You know, when people find out that I’m the one who sculpted their friend’s or family member’s face, they sometimes open up.”

Mike sighed. My son had issues with me “interfering” in his cases, but I had issues with leaving my sculptures alone-both before and after they reacquired their identities. I had already become involved with Addie Russell Waldrep before I knew that’s who she was. I had held her skull. I knew every square millimeter of her face. She and I had made a connection across the expanse of time-we had a kind of spiritual friendship. I wanted to help find who killed her. I had to find who killed her.

“I don’t mind,” Tommy said, “for the usual deal.”

“I tell you everything I find out.”

“Yep-and we’re still going to see him again later anyway, whether you go or not. It’s our job, you know.”

“I understand, Tommy. You know I understand.”

He nodded. “Go talk to him, then. I’ll give you the phone number and address.”

Mike sighed again, and Tommy shook his head and smiled.

“Hey, Toni, take Leo with you-Okay?”

“Not in her uniform. He won’t talk to me.”

“I didn’t say she had to be in uniform. Just take her, and tell her I said to wear that ankle holster I gave her.”

I sighed, “Right.”

“Tommy’s rules, Mario.”

“I heard, son.”

My Black Beauty rumbled to a stop in front of a dinky frame house in one of the old Central/West Austin neighborhoods. There were rows of small one-story houses on narrow little lots. Built in the late 1940s and early 1950s for the postwar set, it was affordable middle-class housing for mostly blue-collar folk…pretty stylish then, but out-of-date now and way overpriced. The houses were pretty lightweight stuff compared to the new construction in Austin, but people lived in these neighborhoods for the convenience and the atmosphere of Central/West Austin.