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  “I think that’s called a significant oversight,” she said.

  “It was wrapped in black plastic, and I got used to seeing it, you know? Like it became part of the landscape. I cleaned the holy fuck out of that place.”

  “But forgot the body,” Herta said and laughed. Cole, who rarely laughed, smiled broadly. Herta turned to him. “You ever think how oversight has opposite meanings?”

  Cole pointed behind them. The opossum was gone.

  * * *

  E-mail from Madelyn to her father:

  Dear Dad,

  I decided to follow your lead and roadtrip!!!

  I got so tired of my Houston bunch, just like you said I would!!!

  I’ve gone to Mexico!!!

  I thought about inviting friends but decided to wing it!!!

  I’m so brave!!!

  I’ll write again when I’ve got a hotel with wifi.

  I hope you’re feeling better about Mom being dead!!!

  Love!

  Madelyn

  “I think you’ve slipped into parody,” Cole said.

  “I’m the one who studied her e-mails,” Herta replied. They strolled through the Plaza de Mercado in downtown Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville. “Some stuff you can’t parody.” She wore Madelyn’s big floppy hat, scarf, and sunglasses, as well as one of her blouses—a distinctive polka-dot number. She stood in the shade of a palm tree to take a selfie.

  Cole examined the photo and shook his head. “Make the face,” he suggested. “Move deeper into the shadows.”

  In her passport photo, Madelyn offered a moue—not to seem pouty, in Cole’s analysis, but to give her face more shape. Whenever Herta showed the passport, she was careful to make the same expression.

  “That’s her sexy face,” Herta argued, “not for her dad.”

  “He’s seen it a lot, though,” Cole said. “He’ll assume she’s sending the pic to her friends too.”

  “I guess.” Herta moved farther into the shadows for the next photo.

  In texts to her friends, Madelyn would say that Cole broke her heart and she needed travel. They were spending from Madelyn’s bank account, using her credit cards. They had transferred her money to accounts Herta set up, which was how they’d given Tariq his share. “And what if Pork Chop, who’s nursing his own broken ticker, texts to say he wants to join Madelyn down here?”

  Cole thought for three seconds. “Tell him to bring a lot of cash.”

  * * *

  Text from Madelyn to Pork Chop:

  Laptop stolen!!!!! Everyone here is out to take what they can!!!! Going to dash down to Can in for better ocean. Let’s get together when I get back. Just me and you!!! I’m ready to try. Love you!!!!!

  * * *

  “Going to Can in?” Cole asked.

  “That’s what autocorrect gives you for Cancún,” Herta said.

  “Nice touch,” Cole conceded. “You’re kinda dicking with ole Pork Chop.”

  “I know.” She laughed. “It makes me so happy. I’ve got an even better one coming up for Dad.”

  “Don’t make me read it,” said Cole. “I trust you.”

  Madelyn’s text to a girlfriend included a photo that showed Herta-as-Madelyn nuzzling Osvaldo Cuevas, who cleaned the pool at the Hotel Alameda de Matamoros, where Herta was staying. He’s so ethnic!!!!!

  Cole stayed across town at the Best Western. He didn’t want the inevitable investigator to hear that Madelyn had come to town with another gringo. “The problem with Mexico,” he said, “is I don’t know how to steal from people here.”

  “We don’t need to steal from anyone here,” Herta pointed out. “We have all we need stealing from Madelyn’s rotting corpse.”

  “Exactly,” said Cole. “It’s boring.”

  The plan called for Madelyn to rent a car and drive all the way to Cancún. There, she would e-mail everyone about a jungle trip she was planning with a guide whom they’d make absurdly sketchy. Then the e-mails and texts would stop.

  “Juan is not a sketchy name,” Herta said. “Adolph is a sketchy name.”

  “You can’t name a Mexican guide Adolph,” said Cole.

  “It’ll be the one odd detail that’ll convince them,” Herta insisted.

  “Whatever. You’re the one who likes to think.”

  “Are you depressed or something?”

  “I’m never depressed,” said Cole. “Just bored.”

  “Here’s something that might interest you. What if Adolph holds Madelyn for ransom?”

  “Hmm.”

  They were walking on the beach and the setting sun caught in the waves’ curls, shining white within them like oceanic smiles.

  “How much do you think we could get?” asked Cole. He took her hand.

  * * *

  Facebook post on Tariq’s page:

  Any of you guys read Orlando? Gotta wild tranny angle. I’m on a mad Woolf kick. What should I read next?

  PART II

  PEACEFUL HAMLETS, GREAT FOR FAMILIES

  A DARK UNIVERSE

  by Larry Watts

  Clear Lake

  Curtis Simon maneuvered his year-old Nissan 370Z into a parking space in the strip center on Egret Bay Boulevard. On the window in front of him, he saw a bumper sticker proclaiming, Proud supporter of the Clear Lake High Falcons.

  Curtis thought of his days at Clear Lake High, which was three miles from where he sat at that moment. Back in school, he’d rubbed shoulders with the children of astronauts. That was back when it was first announced that Houston would annex Clear Lake. Curtis’s parents dragged him to their Saturday marches to voice their objection to the annexation. He was always embarrassed by their activism or anything else that exposed him to public display. The astronauts and their children didn’t participate in that sort of things. They seemed to consider it an activity for the lower strata of society. And he’d lived anonymously in that strata, until he met Jennifer.

  Jennifer was born in Galveston—born on the island, or BOI, as the locals said—which put her as close to royalty as the local hierarchy offered. She was self-assured and popular. Willing to be and beautiful enough to be the center of attention in any situation. That would create problems for Curtis, though he didn’t know it at the time.

  They’d met as students at the University of Houston. While Curtis was handsome enough and excelled in math, he was shy. Jennifer needed a calculus tutor, and he relished the opportunity to share his expertise. They began dating.

  After graduation, Curtis landed an accounting job with a prominent NASA contractor. Jennifer skillfully groomed him to become a husband she could control, who would let her lead her life as she pleased. Curtis put his math skills to use in the stock market. Within a few short years, his and Jennifer’s financial well-being no longer depended on a paycheck. Until recently, he reflected as he sat in his car, marrying Jennifer had seemed like the greatest achievement of his life.

  Curtis reached for the ignition and turned off the engine. He opened the door and unfolded from the low-slung sports car, carefully avoiding the many potholes in the parking lot. He stood at the glass-fronted office in the middle of the retail center that seemed otherwise devoid of tenants. The sign on the door declared in large red letters: DONOVAN AINSWORTH, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.

  Curtis took a deep breath and opened the glass door. A bell jingled, announcing his arrival. There was an unoccupied dusty desk just inside the office. From the looks of it, no one had worked at the desk for some time.

  Just as he was becoming uncomfortable standing in the empty office, he heard a toilet flush. A door opened from a narrow hallway at the back of the room. A man about his age, forty-five or so, raised his hand in a half-hearted greeting and walked toward Curtis. The man appeared to have slept in his clothes. From the pained expression on his face, he might have been hugging the commode a few minutes earlier, rather than using it for traditional purposes.

  “I’m Ainsworth. What can I do for you?” he said in a hoarse, l
ess-than-welcoming voice.

  “My name’s Curtis Simon, and I’m looking for help,” Curtis muttered as he held out his hand.

  Ignoring the outstretched hand, Ainsworth reached for the chair behind the desk and rolled it into an open space before plopping his body into it. “Pull up one of those other chairs,” he said, pointing to three chairs positioned in a semicircle in front of the desk. “If you want help, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

  Curtis dusted the seat of the chair closest to Ainsworth’s and turned it to face the other man. As he sat, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. He felt vulnerable with no desk between himself and the man he hoped would keep him out of prison. He realized, however, based on the detective’s greeting and apparent attitude, that telling his story was necessary if he didn’t want to be thrown out of the office.

  “My wife’s been murdered,” he mumbled, clearing his throat before continuing, “and I think the police believe I did it.” Lips tightened, he studied Ainsworth’s face in anticipation of a useful directive.

  After a few seconds of silence, Ainsworth leaned back in his chair and asked sarcastically, “So, do you think you could give me a little more detail, or is it all a big secret?”

  “No, no, it’s not a secret. I . . . I just wasn’t sure you wanted to hear more. My wife was shot in the head as she was getting in her car in a hotel parking lot on Bay Area Boulevard. It happened three days ago. The police have questioned me about it every day since. This morning, the detective asked me why I killed her. I’m not a murderer and, if I was, I would never have killed Jennifer. Marrying her has been the greatest accomplishment in my life.” Curtis’s voice was pleading and his face twisted in anguish. “Can you help me?”

  Donovan Ainsworth would take the job, even if the prospective client had only a few bucks, because not one other person had jingled the bell on his front door for two weeks. But Curtis Simon didn’t know how desperate he was for a client.

  “I’m not cheap,” Ainsworth began, “but if you’ve got a $5,000 retainer, I’ll try to help you.”

  For the first time in the conversation, Curtis showed an inkling of confidence. “No problem, Mr. Ainsworth. Will you take my check?” He reached for the inside pocket of his sports coat.

  The two men spent the next hour discussing Curtis Simon’s life. Ainsworth learned that Jennifer had an affair less than a year after their marriage and that she’d engaged in several more trysts in the years since. Curtis knew the particulars of some of the conquests. In fact, he’d considered one of the men his best friend. But nothing Jennifer did had been enough to cause him to end the marriage. He loved being married to her. Curtis chose to bury himself in his work in the hope that she would eventually mature and recognize the shallowness of flirtations with other men. He told Ainsworth he believed Jennifer had recently become involved with an astronaut, Brodie Bancroft.

  * * *

  As Curtis walked out the door, Ainsworth glanced at his watch. Still time to get to the bank and deposit the check. He wasn’t worried about it bouncing, but about several checks he’d written in the last few days. One was for the office lease. Since he’d been kicked out of his apartment for failing to pay the rent there, losing the office would mean sleeping on the streets.

  After making the deposit, Ainsworth returned to his office. Past the bathroom, at the end of the hallway, was a room just large enough for an army cot, a small table with a George Foreman Grill, and a refrigerator, on top of which a microwave perched precariously. Under the table was a cardboard box containing Ainsworth’s drinking supplies. He retrieved a relatively clean cocktail glass and a bottle of Scotch. It was Johnnie Walker Double Black, the one extravagance he allowed himself, even if it meant hot checks and no food. At nearly fifty bucks, the bottle was more than twice the cost of what he referred to as bar Scotch.

  Sipping the golden liquid at his office’s dusty reception desk, Ainsworth spent a few minutes pecking on his computer keyboard and learned that Bancroft had flown on the final mission of the American Space Shuttle program, on the orbiter Atlantis in 2011. He was a throwback to the old days, when astronauts were former test pilots—raucous, hard-drinking, and living life as if it would all be gone tomorrow. But Texas Monthly magazine had published a profile on Bancroft, noting that he had settled down since his marriage to a Houston socialite.

  * * *

  Two days later, Ainsworth discreetly obtained copies of the reports on the ongoing murder investigation from an old friend who worked homicide cases at the Houston PD. From these, he learned Jennifer was shot with a 9mm pistol. The slug had been recovered in good enough shape to be matched to a weapon, if one were to be discovered. The reports indicated that Curtis had told the detectives everything he’d told Ainsworth, including his suspicions about astronaut Brodie Bancroft. When interviewed, Bancroft acknowledged that he knew Jennifer, but denied a relationship beyond casual acquaintance. Ainsworth concluded that Curtis Simon was the focus of the homicide investigation. There appeared to be no more than a passing interest in Brodie Bancroft as a suspect.

  After reviewing the reports, Ainsworth spent a few minutes on his computer and had Bancroft’s address. He wasn’t surprised that the man whose personality was much like that of the sixties-era astronauts lived in Taylor Lake Village, a small, elite community where some of those older astronauts still resided.

  The following morning, he drove to the Village and located the stately lakeside house where the astronaut lived. It was easily worth a million, maybe two or three. He could imagine why Bancroft might want to deny an affair. He had a lot to lose.

  As Ainsworth circumnavigated the block to make a second pass by the home, he spotted Bancroft ahead of him, pulling out of the circular drive onto the tree-lined street. He easily identified the astronaut because Bancroft was driving a Mercedes SL 450 Roadster with the top down. His face matched the photo in the magazine article Ainsworth had looked at again just before leaving his office. He fell in line behind the Mercedes.

  The driving surveillance was short-lived. Bancroft’s sleek convertible pulled into a convenience store/service station at the corner of Kirby Drive and NASA Parkway, just blocks from where he’d spotted the astronaut leaving home. Ainsworth parked beside the convertible and waited for its driver to exit the store. When he returned, the detective approached Bancroft, identified himself, and asked if they could talk. His request was immediately rejected with language that clearly expressed the astronaut’s displeasure. The diatribe ended with a threatening demand that the detective stay away from Bancroft’s neighborhood and family.

  Donovan Ainsworth returned to his office, not shaken in the least by the astronaut’s aggressive behavior. He poured a half glass of Scotch and pondered the murder of Jennifer Simon. He was certain that the focus of the investigation needed to be redirected toward Brodie Bancroft. That would require another visit with his client.

  “So why do you suspect that Bancroft and your wife were having an affair?” Ainsworth asked as soon as Curtis was seated.

  “Two days before she was murdered, I saw them drinking coffee at the La Madeleine Café on Bay Area Boulevard, just down the street from where she was killed,” Curtis murmured.

  “And . . . is that it?” the detective asked. “Nothing else?”

  Curtis looked uncomfortable. “She has a history. I told you that. I just know her. I thought you were on my side.”

  “Here’s the deal, Curtis. There’s nothing about Bancroft that has piqued the interest of the police so far. If you want me to try to get them interested in him, I’ll have to set up a surveillance on his activities. If I do that, we’ll blow through your retainer in a day or two. I’ll need another five thousand if you want a surveillance. Even then, I’m not promising you anything.” Ainsworth suspected he’d be off the case momentarily, but the retainer he’d already received would keep the rent paid and the Scotch flowing for a month or two. To his surprise, Curtis Simon reached for his checkbook.
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  “No problem, Mr. Ainsworth. Have you been to the scene of the crime? Would there be any reason to take a look at where it happened? I’m happy to increase the amount if you believe it will help your investigation to examine the parking lot where she was killed. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I’m not the suspect.” Curtis paused with pen in hand, which hovered over the checkbook.

  Before he responded, Donovan Ainsworth pondered just how low he’d fallen. His head ached from too much Scotch. Though he was relatively sure there was nothing in the parking lot the cops had overlooked, especially several days after the murder, Ainsworth knew the words with which he would reply. “Well, if you want an in-depth look at the crime, rather than just trying to get the focus off you as a suspect, that will require more money. Let’s say $7,500 additional. That should get us close. I’ll let you know if there’s more needed.”

  Curtis Simon wrote the check without comment. As he handed it over, he took a deep breath. “When do you think you’ll be able to survey the crime scene, Mr. Ainsworth?”

  The detective said, “I’ll be out there first thing in the morning, probably before ten. Why do you ask?”

  Curtis retreated with slumped shoulders and diverted eyes. “Oh, no real reason. I just feel like I can’t get on with my life as long as the police think I was involved.”

  Ainsworth stood, anxious to get the tortured little man out of his office. He had considered offering him a drink, but decided a quick exit was the better plan. Once Curtis was gone, he could nurse the Scotch bottle the rest of the afternoon.

  Curtis didn’t need encouragement. He jumped from his chair.

  “I’ll let you know if there’s any progress tomorrow,” Ainsworth said, following his client to the door.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ainsworth slept late. After Curtis had left his office the previous evening, he’d finished a fifth of Scotch. He slept until after nine and only woke then because the garbage truck in the alley made a lot of noise emptying the giant container there for his office and other nonexistent tenants.