A shocked murmur rose and grew louder; everyone looked over at her.
“My God!” someone shouted. Ted Murphy, of course.
“But!” Sandy roared above the crowd, quieting it again. “I’ve been informed that we don’t need to close down. Forensics people are coming. We need to give them free passage and easy access to the stairs, so no one up in the gallery, okay? Unless you’re a guest and you want to go to bed. I don’t know anything more at this time, and I don’t think even Marshal O’Brien does. I beg you, however, to stay, to drink, to play. Tragedy struck the Longhorn—that’s something we already knew. But the saloon is still an incredible piece of history, as is our beloved Alamo. Thank you, my friends.”
Sandy accepted the cowboy’s help in stepping down from the bar stool. She stared across at Kelsey, and with a nod of thanks, Kelsey hurried back up the stairs.
The forensics people were going to be at it through the night, surveying the wall and determining how best to remove the corpse. Kat planned to stay and supervise, and after a while, it seemed that there was nothing left for Kelsey to do but leave.
Logan told her, “Pack up a few things. There’s no sleeping here tonight.”
“I know this puts Sandy in a bad position,” she said, “but there was nothing I could do. I still feel as if I pushed her right over the edge. Ted Murphy is downstairs. It’ll take a crane to get him out of the place. It’s like death has become a spectator sport.”
Logan mulled that over. Sadly, throughout history, death sometimes had been a spectator sport.
“Kelsey, you did the right thing. You realized Sierra had to be in the wall. You dug her out. What else could you do?”
She shook her head. “This turns everything around. Now we have to find the previous owner, and we have to find everyone who worked here at the time.”
Kat walked over to them and said, “The previous owner is dead. There was an article about him—written by none other than Ted Murphy—several months ago. The guy was elderly and he lived in Austin, where he died of some kind of flu. He didn’t spend much time at the Longhorn to begin with, and he would’ve been questioned back then, so whatever he had to say will be in the police reports. But he wasn’t here when the blood was discovered by one of the maids. He was in Austin. He’d been there for weeks before it happened.”
“Sandy will know who was working here,” Kelsey said. She turned to Logan. “I’m really tired,” she murmured.
He didn’t put an arm around her the way he wanted to; they were in a professional situation. But he wanted to get away from this place as fast as he could. With Kelsey.
And he was going to be the head of this unit?
Maybe unit was the key word. People who worked together, who had one another’s backs. Because, before he could ponder the situation, Kat spoke up.
“You two get out of here tonight,” she said. “I have this covered. Go to your house and get some sleep.”
“Thanks,” he said gratefully.
“I’m the one whose job it is to deal with the mortal remains.” She laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “You have to catch the living who commit the crimes.”
He smiled at her and took Kelsey’s hand, and he no longer cared who saw him. “Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
“I think I’m ready to exit by the fire escape.”
“Aw, come on, tough girl. I know you can handle it.”
And, of course, she did. They went downstairs, and when people crowded around them, Kelsey was the perfect professional.
“There’s nothing to say,” she explained. “Remember, we assume it’s the body of Sierra Monte. We won’t know any more until the medical examiner has examined the remains, and that won’t be for a while.”
“Why wasn’t that body found before?” Ted Murphy demanded.
“I guess no one looked in the wall,” Kelsey said coldly. “And beyond that, Mr. Murphy, I have no idea. I’m just in from Florida. And, as we all know, this is Texas!”
Murphy was going to question her again. But, somehow, the man no longer ignited Logan’s temper as he had earlier.
“There’s nothing else to tell anyone tonight. Please have some respect!” he said loudly. “This was a living person who died tragically. Please give the people working for the state and the country time to get in there and do their jobs.”
He walked through the crowd, drawing Kelsey along with him.
They were in the car before she turned to him and said, “What the hell is wrong with people? With all of us? Why isn’t there more concern about the fact that someone died?”
He was quiet for a minute. “I don’t think the issue is that people don’t care. We’re all horrified to hear about an earthquake or some other disaster that killed thousands. But we can’t help taking it more personally when someone close to us dies. Besides, the news media told everyone a year ago that Sierra Monte had to be dead. So, our mutual grief over a young woman who had her life cut short has already been felt. Now, it’s more of a curiosity.”
Kelsey sat back. “I think I care too much,” she said.
“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be who you are, and you wouldn’t be so good at what you do.”
She looked at him and smiled slowly. “Thank you. I just feel bad that I betrayed a friend.”
“Kelsey, I’m sorry, but murder takes precedence, and Sandy will have to realize that. Besides, it didn’t appear that we harmed her business any.”
She seemed to agree with that.
When they reached his house, he suggested she might need food, but she said she wasn’t interested. He poured her a glass of wine, and she drank it, and afterward, she walked into the bedroom. He left her alone until his own sense of exhaustion took hold. He went in as quietly as he could, doffed his clothes and slid into his side of the bed. A few minutes later, she moved against him; he was surprised.
When they’d made love, he thought maybe it had been an affirmation of what was good about life, and he was glad to sleep with her through the night. Maybe they were both too tired to dream, or have visions, or nightmares. He remembered holding her, stroking her hair—and then his alarm rang, announcing that it was seven-thirty.
He rose and showered and dressed, while Kelsey was still deeply asleep. He sat by her and tousled her hair, trying to wake her gently. He was worried; he hadn’t thought she’d be quite so upset by yesterday’s events. Her guilt about Sandy, in particular, seemed to distress her. He hoped she’d gotten over it—or at least forgiven herself.
She opened her eyes and groaned. “This was supposed to be vacation time while I decided about taking the job,” she said. She closed her eyes again and opened just one. “You didn’t happen to make coffee yet, did you?”
“I did. But you don’t get any until you’ve had your shower,” he told her.
That brought her to her feet, pushing him out of the way and flying for the bathroom. He returned to the kitchen; she was soon there, neatly and professional dressed in one of her dark pantsuits.
“Where are we going? The office?” she asked.
He nodded. “We’ll keep getting information. Ned Bixby confessed to all the murders, but we know he was lying. I don’t think he murdered his wife—that’s in his mind. He believes it’s his fault she’s dead and he wants to be punished.”
Kelsey got cream from the refrigerator for their coffee. “But…I thought you agreed the drowning victim—Cynthia Bixby—was the victim of a different killer.”
“When we learned who she was and what her marriage had been like, I wanted to believe we’d found the killer. But when we sat with Bixby… Kelsey, he cried so hard over the pictures of his wife. I just don’t know.”
“You don’t think he killed her in a fit of passion and anger? Or that maybe he is crazy and did kill the others?”
Logan shook his head. “I just don’t feel it,” he said.
Kelsey hesitated, running her fingers over the rim of her coffee cup. “Logan, I went back to the Longhorn yesterday because I’d talked to various people who helped us get IDs on two of the dead women. Both of them thought they had psychic powers. Whether they did or not, we’ll never truly know. But I think you’re right about the diamond. In whatever way this man is managing to drug the women, making them pliable—just as in a date-rape situation. But he doesn’t want to rape anyone. He wants to find someone who’ll communicate with Rose Langley and have her reveal where the Galveston diamond is hidden. But…”
“But?”
“Rose doesn’t know.”
Logan studied her. “You asked Rose’s spirit, I take it?”
She nodded. “I wonder so much about what we see, and what we can’t see. I thought maybe she’d gone on, because what I saw in visions or dreams was what everyone calls a residual haunting. But yesterday, she was there. And what’s…nice, I suppose, is that Rose and Sierra know each other. And maybe they’re in that room together because of the diamond. Or…who knows why Rose is still here? Whether he really died fighting for Texas or not, Matt Meyers is certainly long gone.”
“But Sierra’s killer isn’t—and men are apparently still prepared to kill for a diamond.”
“We’re back to square one,” Kelsey said.
“No, we’re not. Now we can safely assume that Sierra was a victim, just like the others. And even as a ghost or spirit or residing soul, she can’t tell us anything because she must have been taken in the same way. The roofie in the drug cocktail keeps the women from remembering. But it does help to know that Sierra obviously met the same fate. Because we can start looking harder and closer at the people who were involved with the Longhorn at the time she died. Okay, not the old owner since he was never around and he’s dead, anyway.”
