“That’s it. Katherine, she was always talking about things like that, to embarrass me, and she even tried to get me to go to bed with her once, but I hit her. I thought I was fired. I busted her lip. But she put her finger to the blood and looked at it and laughed at me. She was very strange.”
“This boyfriend, he come around?” I said. “Ever see him?”
She nodded.
“What did he look like?”
“Not so tall, kind of thin, and good-looking. Mexican, illegal like me.”
The general description fit the body by the bed, except I couldn’t say about the handsome part. He didn’t have a face.
“Do you know anything about the boyfriend, where he worked, anything?”
“Katherine said he was going to be a painter. His brother was a painter.”
“When you say the boyfriend wanted to be a painter,” Brett said. “Do you mean an artist?”
“A house painter. He was trying to start his own business with his brother, but he didn’t have the money for it. I heard Katherine say that. He came to the house once, no twice, which is how I know what he looks like. Doctor Cotton didn’t like him. She wouldn’t let him come back.”
“Do you know why she didn’t like him?” I asked.
“She said because she thought he was no account, but I think it was because he was Mexican, same as me. We were all right, me and my mom, because we worked for her. Had he been the yard or pool boy, he’d have been fine. She used to have men who worked there daily, doing the yard and the pool, but Katherine wouldn’t leave them alone, so she let them go. Got a service to come in and take care of things. They did their work and left.”
“Did you ever meet the boyfriend’s brother?” Brett asked.
“No.”
I said, “I’m getting a vibe here that you think Doctor Cotton wasn’t really as open minded as she seemed?”
“I got that feeling,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe with all what’s going on, way people talk about us, way I got to worry about being picked up and sent to Mexico, I might not be thinking straight…You aren’t going to send me back, are you?”
“We don’t do that,” I said. “We’re private. You know that.”
“Yes, but…”
“We’re white?” I said.
She nodded and looked slightly embarrassed.
“Far as we’re concerned, you’re fine. Listen, any idea where we can get in touch with the boyfriend’s relatives?”
“Like we all know one another,” she said.
“No,” Brett said, “like maybe you heard something through Katherine.”
“I’m sorry,” Mindy said. “I’m feeling sensitive.”
“No problem,” Brett said. “You have that right.”
“I think he worked for a painter in town, but I don’t know the name, but I think he did. Like I said, he wanted his own shop.”
“I know the police didn’t tell you all that happened, merely that your mother, Doctor Cotton and Katherine were dead,” I said. “But, Katherine’s boyfriend, or who we think is her boyfriend, and the boyfriend’s brother are dead as well.”
“I don’t understand,” Mindy said.
“That’s all right, no one does,” I said.
Mindy sat quietly for a moment, her hands folded in her lap.
“You know, I think they said something about Smatterly Paint or some such,” she said. “You know, I’m not sure. But something like that.”
“Let me ask something else,” I said. “The safe. Who knew where it was? Did you?”
She nodded. “We all did. It wasn’t a secret. I knew it was there and so did everyone in the house, and we all knew Doctor Cotton had expensive jewels in it, as well as money.”
“Who knew the combination?” Brett asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it. Mother didn’t.”
“What about Katherine?” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I got the impression that Doctor Cotton was the only one.”
(19)
We couldn’t locate a business by the name Mindy gave us, but we did find one called Smallette’s Painting. We thought that might be close enough to be the right one. Me and Brett drove over there.
It was on the loop well outside of town, and it was a large building with a larger fenced in area off to the side and attached to the main building. Signs said they painted houses, cars, and there was a sign that read: IF IT ISN’T MOVING, WE CAN PAINT IT.
Behind the desk, toward the back, was a middle-aged woman with her hair combed straight back and tied with an orange scrunchie. She didn’t wear make-up and had on coveralls. She was a little plump and was leaned back in her chair doing damage to what looked like a leaky meat ball sandwich.
Me and Brett walked up to the desk. The lady reluctantly stopped eating, stood up and walked over. She was tall and broad shouldered.
She looked at Brett. “Damn, aren’t you the pretty thing?”
“You ought to see me on Tuesdays,” Brett said.
“We’re looking for the owner,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” she said, “you’re looking at her.”
“Ms. Smallette?”
“Small. My mother and father called me Smallette as a joke, ‘cause I was the youngest and the only girl, only I turned out bigger than they expected. My dad never could quite get over that. I think he wanted a girly-girly who didn’t like girly-girls, but that isn’t how things shook out. He stopped calling me Smallette when I reached my twenties. Everyone else kept calling me that, though. When Dad died, I took over the business because both my two older brothers, and my mother, are in prison for fraud. I decided to call the business Smallettes instead of Smalls.”
“That’s really interesting,” I said, but really, I didn’t give a shit.
“What you need painted?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You’re looking for the taxidermist that’s down the loop a little.”
“No,” Brett said. “We’re looking for you.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I hope you’re especially the one looking.”
“We’re married,” I said.
“So are a lot of people,” Smallette said.
No way to contradict that.
“The Cabalas brothers worked for you?” Brett asked.
“Still do, but after today they may not. Didn’t show for work last couple of days. Course the day is young enough. I’m flexible cause good painters are hard to find, but they may be asking me to be too flexible.”
“You know,” I said, “you might want to put a want ad in the paper for a painter.”
Smallette studied me for a moment.
“Something happen?”
“They got dead,” I said.
(20)
Smallette brought us behind the desk and into a small office with a struggling air conditioner. She sat behind a desk that took up too much room, and Brett sat in the only other chair while I leaned against the wall and listened to the air conditioner try not to die.
From where I stood I could see she had a pistol on a stool next to the desk. If you were sitting where Brett was sitting you wouldn’t be able to see it. It looked like a .22 revolver from where I stood.
Painting business must be a tough gig. Then again, in Texas, every asshole walks around with a gun and thinks they’re Wyatt Earp. I tell you straight, it doesn’t make me feel safer. Even preachers have guns.
“Man, that’s some shit,” Smallette said after we explained what happened to them, told her about Doctor Cotton, her niece and maid. She didn’t seem all that torn up about it actually. We could have told her they were having a two for one sale on socks at Walmart, and it might have got more of a reaction. “Any idea why?”
“We got some thoughts,” Brett said, and we did. We had discussed them in the car on the way over. I thought I’d give Smallette a taste of our idea, see if that elicited anything. I gave her a general rundown on what had hap
pened, that the doctor was murdered, very general stuff, then laid out some things that were more specific.
“Way we’re thinking,” I said, “is the brothers, along with the murdered Doctor’s niece, were trying out intimidation, which was a plan to have Doctor Cotton real scared before they tried out blackmail. They finally got there, but that didn’t play out the way they wanted. We’re thinking the brothers wanted their own paint business, and we’re thinking they had partners to help them get it, but those partners wanted the jewels and fewer partners.”
“So, they were going to leave my ass,” Smallette said.
“We’re here to see if you got anything you can give us that will help us figure out who the brothers were in with,” I said.
“Not an idea one,” she said. “Thought you said this doctor laid you off.”
“She did,” Brett said, “but you might say we feel unfulfilled.”
“That so. Well, they were good painters and will be missed, but you know Mexicans wanting work are a dime a dozen. They hadn’t been in some kind of bad business, they wouldn’t be dead.”
“You have an address for them?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I got cell phone numbers, but I bet no one answers,” she grinned when she said that. “Hey, they were going to fuck me over, leave me high and dry, start their own paint business. Oh, hell, bless the goddamn dead and their family, of course, but one thing I don’t need is more competition.”
Charming.
I got a card out of my wallet. It was a little dog-eared. I gave it to her. It had the name of the agency on it and two numbers. The office land line and my cell. Each of us had the same cards, except our personal cards had our individual cell numbers on them. Brett had a set of cards with all our numbers on it, written on the back. On the front was BRETT SAWYER INVESTIGATIONS, and under her name was the silhouette of a blood hound.
“Think of something, anything might help, give a call,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “Shame the way they were done. Tortured and murdered, the safe robbed, and that being a walled home in a good neighborhood. You can’t be too careful these days, no matter where you live.”
“This is true,” Brett said, and we walked out.
(21)
Outside the paint business, I said, “She didn’t seem particularly curious.”
“No, she didn’t,” Brett said, “First thing I want to do, we leave here, is buy today’s paper.”
“And I know why,” I said.
We passed the fenced in section. Through the fence, we could see three men air-blasting a travel home. Well, one was doing the blasting. The other two were standing around, as if holding the concrete flooring in place.
I found the gate and opened it and we stepped inside.
As we got nearer to them, one of the men who was watching one of the others use the air blaster, noticed us. Or rather he noticed Brett. You can always tell when they notice Brett.
Brett showed them all her teeth, including the caps she had on a couple of back teeth, and said, “How are you boys?”
The boys all looked pretty much alike, except one of them was very tall, six-seven, if I had to guess. They all wore gray coveralls and gray caps and work boots, had long, ragged beards that rested on their chests, had faces that looked like the seats of a well-worn saddles. They had small noses, noticeable small, as if genetics was all out of the good noses the day they were born, so they had to take the emergency back-up children’s variety.
“Damn, ZZ Top,” I said. “As I live and breathe.”
“Well, we do have a band,” said the one switching off the blaster, turning to give Brett the once over. “We ain’t any good, though. We was going to be rock stars once, twenty years ago. Turned out we can barely carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it.”
The third man, the smaller of the three, was standing by the travel trailer. He looked at Brett and actually licked his lips. Not something I enjoyed seeing, but Brett was a big girl, and no doubt luscious looking, so I decided not to kill him.
“You work for Ms. Smallette, of course,” Brett said.
“We got a piece of the pie here,” said the man with the blaster.
I held out my hand, “Hap Collins.”
The air blaster man put the blaster on the concrete and shook my hand.
“Wilson Small. That goober by the trailer, that’s Rat, least that’s what we call him, and this fellow by me is Too Tall. We’re brothers.”
No surprise there.
“Smallette is your sister,” I said.
“Yeah. She kind of runs the business.”
“No offense,” Brett said, “but Ms. Smallette said her brothers and mothers were in prison.”
“That’s right, but we’re the other brothers.”
“Oh,” Brett said.
“Yeah, there’s a bunch of us,” Too Tall said. “Us three are fancy-free and looking for love.”
He showed Brett a big smile when he said that.
“I’m sure you’re going to be a fine catch for some nice woman,” Brett said.
“Hell,” Rat said. “We don’t want them nice.”
The brothers laughed together, ended up making snorting sounds. Ain’t genetics wonderful?
We told them the same thing we told Ms. Smallette, and they said that was too bad about the brothers, but Rat added, “Them spick brothers wasn’t good workers anyway. Jaime, he could paint, but he was slow as Christmas on a crutch. Always had to get everything just right, like people can tell two coats of paint from one.”
How picky of him, I thought.
We gave them our cards and went away.
(22)
We drove over to the newspaper office. They have machines out front, and they have papers in them. We bought one and went back to the car and sat there. Brett read about the murders on the front page.
“Here it is,” she said. ”I was thinking Marvin wouldn’t have told reporters all the details. There’s nothing about torture or a safe, so even if Smallette read the papers this morning, how would she know that?”
“Maybe she’s psychic,” I said.
“I’m thinking it might have something to do with her being in on that shit,” Brett said. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Me,” I said, “I’m sticking to psychic.”
“Sure, you are,” she said.
“I think Smallette not only was in on it, but so were those bearded, moronic brothers of hers.”
“Do we tell Hanson?”
“No, we caught this one and we dropped the ball, so we got to pick it up.”
“Doctor Cotton dropped the ball,” I said.
“Still, I feel we have to pick it up. I think we start by checking florists, see if anyone bought a hell of a big load of flowers this morning. Something they took from the florist to deliver themselves. My guess is that’s how they got through the gate.”
She didn’t start the car up though.
“Little turns of fate can sure mess a person up,” she said.
“Fucking a dog on camera is bound to lead to bad things,” I said.
“That was years ago. She had changed her life, was trying to do good for people.”
“You were less on her side when we talked about this before.”
“I’ve had time to think. Doctor Cotton didn’t start this, the niece did. The ungrateful bitch was going to rob her. She knew her aunt knew her boyfriend. Which means to me, she might have planned to kill her aunt and the maids right from the start. She was bad as the Smalls. Then she got snookered. There’s some cold irony in that.”
“I’m thinking the boyfriend shot Katherine,” I said. “I like to think they forced him too. She was the only one that was killed in a, pardon the term, comfortable way. Lying in bed with her eyes shut. They let him do that, and then he thought he was still going out with the money and jewels. But he wasn’t. They killed him. The brother made a break for it, and Smalls nailed him too.”
“There’s a
reason those other Smalls are in prison,” Brett said. “They’re a family of vipers.”
“Now, now, don’t insult vipers.”
(23)
Brett took me to my car and caught up with Leonard and filled him in with what me and my lady were thinking.
“I was thinking that too,” he said.
“So now you’re going to pull that,” I said. “Me and Brett do all the work, and all the thinking, and you’re going to claim you were all over it.”
“I was.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“I kind of was.”
“You are priceless, Leonard.”
“I have my fedora on.”
“Yes, you do. And I’m sure glad you explained that, and here I sit looking at it on your head.”
“That’s something,” I said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me if you had your underwear turned around backwards.”
“You want to check, don’t you?”
“I do not.”
“I think you’re thinking about it.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said. “You didn’t know shit.”
“Where’s Brett?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Am not.”
“Am too…She’s checking out florists,” I said.
“What are we doing?”
“Lunch,” I said. “Brett wanted to do the florists by herself. She likes flowers. I’m also supposed to tell you not to tell Pookie what we think we know. We’re keeping the law outside of this. Brett wants to get even with the sonofabitches did this, let it be us that proves what they did and turn them in.”
“Brett knows what the fuck is up,” Leonard said.
We went to the El Salvadorian restaurant we like and had a light lunch, and then to a coffee shop on North Street. I had hot chocolate, Leonard had coffee, and a couple sitting at a booth against the wall almost had sex. I think they were getting the better deal.
“Let’s change seats,” Leonard said.
We took our drinks upstairs and went out on the veranda that overlooked the parking lot.
“You know, one of the cops at the scene might have blabbed to someone about what was found and seen at Doctor Cotton’s, and this Small lady picked it up from somebody who heard it from somebody.”