I had the speedometer back up to eighty in almost nothing flat and it was driving in on me like a hurricane. It was exactly how it had felt when I was up on top. And when was that? Yesterday?

  “The cavalry is here,” I said into the mic. “Everybody stay down back there. This should all come to an end pretty quickly.”

  All the traffic behind us had magically cleared away, but we were catching up to a clump of cars in front, and yet another glance in the driver’s side view mirror told me that one of the last two bikers was coming up beside me fast. He had what appeared to be a twelve gauge shotgun, and I had no illusions about its effectiveness on the driver of a bus traveling down the road at eighty miles per hour. First of all, the driver’s side window was less of a window and more of a hip-to-ceiling bubble. In the distance back there, both Sheriff’s cruisers were doing their best to catch up.

  The helicopter came seemingly out of nowhere, swooping down onto the highway. A rotor blade barely nicked the motorcycle rider with the shotgun but the effect was exceptional. An enormous, high-pressure spray of blood erupted as if a shark had taken a very large bite out of something big. The blood sprayed forward and a few drops came back and peppered the cab of the bus. I wiped a speck off of my cheek. And just as quickly, the helicopter launched back upward, twisted around and righted itself. I passed underneath it. The bike and rider tumbled onto the highway and passed behind us.

  “Is that—?” Julie called, but I completed the thought for her.

  “Ronnie Bristow! And his girlfriend Sylvia!” I shouted.

  In my sideview mirror a disembodied arm and the shotgun it had been holding came to rest in the center of Highway 290.

  Which left exactly one biker to contend with, and I had a notion as to who it might be.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  If I remembered correctly, little more than a mile or two of space separated the two wineries, even if they were in separate counties. Thus far, all roads for this particular trip led to and from those two points, as if Purgroy and Herndon were two universal nexus points—the cosmic intersections of all time and space.

  At first I thought that the last biker was coming for me, but when he sped on ahead of us, and when Ronnie in his chopper took off after him, I knew the fat was in the fire. The biker, of course, was Cleetus. At the last second before Ronnie could come down on him and do to him what he’d done to the dis-armed one, Cleetus slowed and turned left and in through the Purgroy main gate, which still stood open to the world. Ronnie’s chopper slowed and ascended over the trees and back to the north, in the direction of the winery.

  “All right, people,” I said into the mic, and my voice flooded through the bus. “Is anyone in need of medical assistance back there?”

  “Fine!” “Fine here!” “We’re okay!” Leroy Frederick said, “Go, man. Do what you have to do.”

  “Okay, good. We’re turning into Purgroy now. I’d say this is all going to end here.”

  I slowed and made the turn, bounced us through the gate and onto the narrow, tree-lined lane.

  I began talking into the mic, adlibbing my way. “We hope you have enjoyed riding on the Lone Star Wino Express. Be sure and tip your porter, complement our gracious driver, Ms. Althea, and spread the word about the wonderful time you’ve had. This has been your substitute driver, Bill Travis, signing off.”

  I dropped the mic on the floor. I wouldn’t be needing it. We were no more than a minute from Purgroy.

  Sirens and flashing lights heralded our charge back to the winery.

  I realized that Dickerson Linton was there beside Julie. The wind whipped at his hair, and for a moment I thought he resembled some soldier from ages past.

  “You know what?” he asked.

  “What’s that, Mr. Linton?”

  “Seeing that helicopter take that guys arm off completely sobered me up.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but it was beyond my control.”

  “No, I’m glad I’m sober. This has been a hell of a wine tour. And all along something else was going on, but I was too drunk to realize it, or at least up until the moment we had to subdue that hijacker, and I had to grab you to keep you from falling back out of the bus while we were in motion. I don’t know how you came down from the sky like that. Craziest thing I ever saw. But here’s the deal. It seems that someone was murdered, which was why you must have come on this tour in the first place, then someone else got murdered, and you’ve been looking into it all every step of the way.”

  “He has,” Julie said. “My husband is a Special Texas Ranger.”

  “I didn’t know that. Anyway, thanks for the adventure. I think Sonia and I are going to be dating each other after this.”

  “That’s good,” Julie said. “Congratulations. She’s a lovely woman.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Okay,” I said, and turned left suddenly and into the parking lot in front of the winery. “We’re here.”

  I jerked the bus to a stop and noted the motorcycle lying in the flower bed near the front steps, its motor still running.

  “Ms. Althea,” I said, “I have no idea how to put this thing in Park and turn it off.”

  She reached over and threw the lever in Park.

  “Okay,” I said, getting up. “Everybody stay here.”

  “You can count on that,” Janice Frederick stated. Leroy made as if to get up, as if he was going to go along with me, but Janice jerked him back into his seat. “Where do you think you’re going?” she said to Leroy. You almost got yourself shot last time!” He regarded the sudden admonishing scowl on her face at him, turned to me, and then gestured that I should proceed without him. As the door slammed open, I found myself chuckling. I made my way to the door, put the Ruger Redhawk in my belt, fished out my wallet and held it up coming out of the bus and shouted, “Texas Rangers,” to the three sheriff’s cruisers that jerked to a stop behind the bus.

  “We know who you are,” Ladd Ross’s voice stated over the loudspeaker from one of the cruisers. “Go get ‘im, Bill. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Ronnie’s helicopter settled down onto a bare patch of ground near the beginning of the grape orchard, kicking up fountains of dust as he cut power to the rotors. I didn’t hesitate to wait and see how he was getting along, but instead turned and ran up the front steps of the winery.

  *****

  Inside, all was still. Sunlight streamed in through the high windows up near the roof and through the sliding glass door in back, making for bright patches of yellow light with vast areas of low-lit, shadowy gloom.

  “Cleetus!” I called out.

  There was no answer.

  A woman screamed and appeared from around a corner. I recognized the wine steward—I couldn’t recall her name—who had tried to sell me and Julie a case of Reveille wine, in red. She ran past me and out the front door.

  I looked to where the woman had emerged from and decided there was a door back there.

  “Cleetus!” I called again. “I know you’re back there. This is Bill Travis, and I’m coming for you.”

  Nothing.

  Ladd Ross came in the front door and stood beside and a little behind me. He had his sidearm out and pointed low so that he didn’t over-react and shoot a random wine steward who decided to come running out. My sidearm, though was held high. I don’t react to stimuli, I cause it.

  “Cleetus Herndon is back there,” I said, hopefully loud enough for Cleetus to hear me. “I hope to take him alive.”

  “Alive. Dead,” Ladd said, also loudly, “what does it matter?”

  “I guess you’re right. But I want to give the idiot a chance to come out of there. He’s got a lot of music to face. Conspiracy to commit murder—two counts of that, and it’s anywhere from three to eighteen counts if you include Chet’s bus hijacking. Racketeering. At least one RICO charge. So far it’s all just prison time. No death penalty.”

  “You hear that, Cleetus?” Ladd called out. “Just prison time. Don’t throw your life away. Because if we have to come back there, chances are you’re going to get filled full of holes.”

  I took a step forward, then another. I turned my head sideways and said to Ladd, “I think you’re wasting your breath, Sheriff. And I don’t like wasting mine.”

  At that moment, Ladd’s radio at his shoulder sqwawked.

  “This is forty-two, go ahead.”

  The radio spoke to Ladd Ross just above a whisper. It went on for half a minute and I couldn’t make out all the words, but I caught the name ‘Herndon’ several times.

  “The hell you say,” Ladd stated into the radio.

  I barely heard the acknowledgment.

  “Make sure the deputies out front surround this place.”

  There was a second acknowledgment.

  “What gives?” I whispered to Ladd.

  “The Gillespie Sheriff’s Department just found the body of Bruce Herndon.”

  “The old man?” I asked.

  “Yep. Shot six times in the chest and head. A witness said Cleetus came running down the steps right after the shots were heard. He had a revolver in his hand.”

  “Capital murder,” I whispered back.

  “Yeah. Okay, let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Walking into a possible ambush is almost like going for a Sunday stroll, except that in no respect can the two be equated.

  I went first.

  The door around the corner was slightly ajar. I stepped to the side of it and listened. There were distant whispers from inside.

  I held up two fingers to Ladd. His dark silhouette nodded back to me in understanding.

  I opened the door with my foot and the whispers went silent. I could barely make out two tall filing cabinets just inside the room, facing inward with no more than three feet of space between them.

  Pantomiming to Ladd what I saw, I let him know that I would take the opposite side and he should take the side closest to the door.

  He nodded his understanding.

  I held up three fingers for the count. I curled one down, leaving two. Then I curled the next one down. The last one gone, I had a fist for one hand and drawn weapon for the other. I opened the door and darted inside and across and Ladd came in behind me.

  “Hey, Cleetus,” I called out.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who you got back there with you?”

  “Is that Travis?”

  “You’re damned right it’s Travis,” I said. “You know, you are one stupid son of a bitch.”

  “I don’t like you,” he said.

  “It’s mutual. I repeat, who you got back there with you?”

  “It’s Jimmy,” another voice called. “Look, I don’t want to be in the way of anything. You could just let me leave.”

  “I could. But then again, I’d be allowing Tomford Wooding’s murderer to go free. And Bobby Kennedy’s as well. That’s not going to happen.”

  “Shit,” Jimmy whispered to Cleetus. “He knows. How does he know?”

  “Shut the fuck up, you idiot,” Cleetus said. “He can hear you.”

  “Hey,” Jimmy called out. “You let us walk out, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “Will you confess to murder?” I asked.

  “I’ll confess to anything.”

  “Throw out your gun, Jimmy, if you’ve got one.”

  “Don’t do it,” Cleetus’s said to Jimmy.

  “Hey, we walk out of here. We take our chances in court. It’s no big deal.”

  There was the distinct sound of metal clacking against concrete, then there was the unmistakable long and grating sound of a gun sliding toward us.

  It appeared out of the complete darkness at my foot.

  “What’d you do that for?” Cleetus asked him.

  Before a reply could come, there were two blasts from the rear of the room. My ears rang in the enclosed file room. The sound seemed to echo on and on, but after a moment I realized the reverberation was in my head, somehow. I was creating it. Then came the sound of a body slumping against filing cabinets and slapping down onto the concrete floor.

  “There’s another murder rap,” I called out. “It’s all over. Either you die now, or you die later. Which will it be? At least you get to breathe a little longer if you give up now.”

  “Neither!” he said, and I sensed fluid motion from the other end of the dark room.

  Flashes of light sprang out and I counted seven distinct shots. They were loud, too terribly loud in the enclosed space. My ears rang and rang as I hunched down against the filing cabinet. There was a continued click as he continued to pull the trigger.

  “Now!” Ladd barked, and I found myself swinging around into the open space where bullets had just whizzed past. I emptied the nine millimeter in my hands into what I judged to be the center of that space. And all the while, beside me, Ladd’s own sidearm barked in syncopation to my own.

  There was another wet sliding sound.

  A brilliant beam of light appeared, and for the briefest of instants it was as if Ladd Ross had produced a lightsaber straight out of Star Wars. Then I realized it was his flashlight.

  He shined it end of the room, and there lay Cleetus with his upper half against the far wall, half-lying, half sitting, and blood oozing from his mouth. His eyes were open in death.

  I watched as Ladd walked back and felt for a pulse in Cleetus’s neck. He turned back to me and shook his head. He stepped to the side and I imagined him doing the same thing with Jimmy.

  “Both of them are gone,” he said.

  I turned and left.

  *****

  Once I was outside and felt the summer wind blowing in my face, I was confronted by a scene I have never before seen, nor hope to ever see again. Apart from the thirty or so police vehicles and perhaps forty armed and armored men and women with their sidearms held at parade rest. Between them, not far from the front steps was the tour bus. The thing was not quite as recognizable as it should have been.

  Ms. Althea and the rest of the passengers, including Julie, were over to my right underneath a stand of trees and well into the shade.

  Julie waved and ran to me. She raced up the steps, grabbed me and hugged me hard.

  “It’s okay, honey. It’s over now.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too. I’m looking at the bus, and I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to get home.”

  Ray Fisher came up the steps, catching the last of my words. “Don’t worry. We’ve got a wine delivery truck. I’ll drive you home. Besides, Mrs. Purgroy will want you to take your twenty cases home.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Ray.”

  Ladd Ross stepped out of the double doors behind me. He stepped quickly past me and several deputies came over to him.

  “It’s all secure in there. Somebody get the coroner wagon down here. Better yet, make that two of them.”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff,” a deputy said. A stream of law enforcement officers passed by us going up the steps. They disappeared into the winery.

  Julie kept her arm around me and turned to survey the scene. “You know how to cause quite the effect, don’t you?”

  “I reckon so. I don’t mean to...”

  “Just, people sometimes make the mistake of getting in your way.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ms. Althea came over. Her timing was good in that Ronnie and Sylvia, along with Ronnie's CPA, Martin Blanc, came from the other direction and arrived at the same time.

  “My bus,” Althea said. “They’ll never let me drive again.”

  “Ronnie,” I said, “seeing as how all the damage was caused by Herndon and his family, and seeing as how you won’t have any more problems from any of them, can you help this lady with her bus?”

  Ronnie looked to Mr. Blanc, who gave a curt nod and said, “Mr. Bristow can afford it.”

  “ ‘Ew ‘us,” Ronnie stated, and nodded vigorously.

  “New bus,” I said. “You hear that, Althea? Ronnie Bristow, full owner of Herndon & Sons Winery, is going to buy you a new bus.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say thank you,” Julie said.

  “Thank you,” Althea turned to Ronnie and said, which was probably her biggest mistake because Ronnie smiled, scooped her up in his huge arms and lifted her off her feet. She screamed with delight. I looked to see Sylvia smiling.

  “Syliva,” I said. “Your cousin, Cleetus, is dead. Now it’s just you and Chet.”

  She nodded.

  “Your grandfather is also dead.”

  She nodded again, and mouthed, “I know.”

  I reached out and drew her to me in a hug.

  Mrs. Purgroy came up the steps. When Sylvia was done hugging me, the old woman took her turn. “I know you saved us, Mr. Travis. Thank you.”

  “That’s okay, ma’am.”

  She let me go and stood back. “I don’t know how long we can continue on without a real vintner, but we’ll give it our best shot.”

  I frowned at this. “Your winery isn’t in danger of having to close, is it?”

  “It is. It has been for years. But I have kept a careful watch on the books. We’ll see what another season brings.

  “Another season,” I muttered.

  “Yes. The harvest this year was paltry, and sales have slumped dramatically. I don’t know quite what it is. I guess it’s the same run of dry luck I’ve had ever since Phil died.”

  I briefly considered letting her know that her husband’s murder of several years back had not, indeed, been a robbery gone wrong but had instead been a contract hit, and then decided against it. Sometimes bringing up old wounds can do far more harm than help, especially if there’s no ready remedy for it.

  “I understand,” I said instead. “But luck has a way of changing. Sometimes it changes with the wind.”

  “Yes,” she said, and brightened. “Sometimes it does. Come on. Let’s all go inside and have some wine.”

 

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