Second Chances Page 3

  “You got that right. The old bastard took my daughter away from me. What do you want me to say to him?”

  “You’re not concerned that Maya’s been gone for six weeks?”

  “Maya’s not my responsibility anymore. Helmut took me to court.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. That was something Helmut hadn’t told me. “Do you think Maya ran away?”

  “I did when I was her age. I know what that old fossil is like. He never goes anywhere or does anything except work that worthless patch of limestone rock he calls a ranch.” She was bitter at the world for not treating her right.

  “Did you ever think he was working all those long hours to support you and your mother?”

  Anna looked at me like I’d just slapped her in the face, not expecting to be called on her bullshit.

  “Didn’t you move back here because he threatened to cut you off?”

  “He owes me. I’m his only daughter.”

  “He doesn’t owe you a damn thing.” I let my anger get the best of me.

  Her bottom lip trembled. She covered her face to hide her tears. She didn’t want to listen to what I had to say. There was obviously more to the story than Helmut had told me.

  I tried to soften my approach. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Was she close to anybody back in California? Maybe your husband’s family?”

  “She didn’t get along with them. They didn’t want us there.” Tears streamed from her bloodshot eyes. “I don’t know… I don’t know… Can you find her?” Somewhere beneath her bitterness, she was concerned.

  “I’ll do what I can. If she does contact you, give me a call.” I tossed my business card on her maid service cart and got back in my pickup. Before I started the engine, I saw her sneaking a sip from a pint bottle of vodka hidden under the clean towels.

  Chapter Five

  The second person on my list to talk to was Lori Kostoch. Helmut said Maya had mentioned her name after she had gone to the school to register for classes. I knew the Kostoch family and called their house first. I explained to Lori’s mother who I was and that I was looking for Helmut’s granddaughter. I told her Lori might have run into her at registration. Her mother said Lori had a job at the German café on Main Street and was there now helping out for the busy festival weekend. Since it was almost lunchtime, I figured it was a good time to have a chat with Lori and see if the jaeger schnitzel was still as good as I remembered.

  On the way, I called my partner, Skeeter. He was house-sitting for me in San Antonio and recovering from a gunshot wound of his own. The last case had almost taken out the entire Fischer Private Investigations firm—all two of us. His specialty was online research and, my worst nightmare, social media. I was the last generation not to be born with a cell phone in my hand. I didn’t get one until after I got out of the Marine Corps and was still baffled by all the ways the younger generation kept in touch. Skeeter was my age but suffered no such confusion. If Maya left a digital footprint, he could track it, and he would post on Facebook and the missing persons sites. I gave him Maya’s burner phone number in case there was anything he could do with it.

  There was no place to eat within a ten-mile radius of downtown that didn’t have four or five tourists waiting to be fed. The German Café was no exception. While I stood in line, I searched for Lori. Her mother said she was tall and slim and had blond hair. Several of the waitstaff matched that description, so I asked the hostess if Lori was working. She pointed out a teenager hustling out of the kitchen carrying two plates of German sausage with generous sides of potato salad and red cabbage.

  When it was my turn to be seated, I steered the hostess to a table near the kitchen that looked like it was part of Lori’s territory.

  Lori stopped at my table a little out of breath and flashed a cheerleader smile. She was appropriately dressed in a blue cotton dirndl. Everybody was German on Oktoberfest weekend. I wore a baseball cap pulled low over my forehead scars to appear more approachable but slipped off my sunglasses and set them on the table.

  “Hi, I’m Lori. What can I get you to drink?” she asked.

  “Hey, Lori,” I said, flashing what I hoped was a friendly smile. “I’m Nick Fischer. I was a battlin’ billy back in the day.

  “Oh, yeah…” She recognized the name. Fredericksburg was still a small town. “Come home for the festival?” She was distracted and in a hurry to move to the next customer.

  “Actually, I’m a professional polka dancer, now. Giving a demo at seven in the American Legion tent. You should stop by.”

  Her face lit up. I had her attention.

  “Really?”

  “Do you like to polka?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She was a true daughter of Fredericksburg.

  “I’m just kidding. Actually, I’m looking for Maya Chavez. Her grandfather asked me to help him find her. She hasn’t been around since August. I’m a private investigator.” I dug out my license and held it up. I saw a little twitch at the corner of her mouth. The cheerleader smile disappeared. “Her grandfather said you two were friends.”

  “Her grandfather?” Her eyes darted to the front door.

  “You’re both seniors. She was a transfer student from California.”

  “Yeah. I think I do remember her.” She glanced around the jam-packed café again as if checking to see if anyone was watching our exchange. “No, I haven’t seen her.” She tugged at the calico apron on her costume.

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I only met her at registration. I didn’t know she… she had any relatives in town. She said she was from California.”

  “The police didn’t talk to you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Why would they?”

  “Because she’s missing, and her family is concerned. Her grandfather is Helmut Geisler.” The color drained from Lori’s cheeks. “You know Mr. Geisler?”

  “Yes, of course. He… he bought my steer at the junior livestock show last year.” She stood wringing her hands on the apron. She seemed not to know what to do or say next. I handed her one of my business cards with the words Semper Fi written under my name. She studied the card.

  “My dad was a Marine,” she said.

  “I knew your dad,” I said.

  Her smile returned. She knew what Semper Fi meant. Her dad had been killed in action in Afghanistan. She had more information but for some reason was too scared to share it with me.

  “If you think of anything that might help me find her, give me a call.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Fischer,” she said.

  I had to stop myself from looking around the table to see if she was talking to me. Nothing brings home the inevitability of aging more than returning to your hometown after fifteen years and being called “mister” by the local teens.

  “How’s the jaeger schnitzel?”

  “Still the best in town,” she said, getting her confidence back.

  “Sold. And bring me a Spaten Doppelbock.” There weren’t many places that had dark German beer on draft. I figured I would take advantage of it.

  “Anything else?”

  “Nein danke,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. Everybody tried to speak German on Oktoberfest weekend. It was like going to a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo and ordering with a Spanish accent.

  When she brought the food, I thought she might add more details about Maya. Instead, she pasted on the cheerleader smile and made a point of not making eye contact.

  I drank the beer and polished off the schnitzel. It was as good as I remembered. If I kept eating like a ranch hand, I would eventually have to do some work. When I was in San Antonio, I kept up a regular routine of running with my Labrador along the San Antonio River Walk and working out at Lucky’s boxing gym. Since I’d been shot, all I had been doing was eating, sleeping, and reading history books.

  I finished my meal and waited for Lori to re
appear with my bill, but she never came back. Another waitress brought my check. The café was too busy to look for her, so I took the check and walked to the register. Lori had written her name on the bottom in girlish script with a heart in place of a dot above the i in her name. Below that, she’d written, ask Owen Bauer.

  Chapter Six

  I was looking forward to the Fredericksburg Oktoberfest not only because of the high concentration of beer and sausage but because Kelly was driving down from Lubbock for the weekend. She was an old friend I’d first met in the Marine Corps and who had helped me on my last case. She was there when I took a bullet in the chest and stuck around until I was released from the hospital. I had promised her a polka dance at the festival and hoped it might lead to something more intimate after the oompah band went home. Since Helen extended her stay at the ranch house, I had to scramble to find a room at the Best Western, which is normally booked months in advance. It wasn’t exactly a romantic love nest, but Kelly was a farm girl and didn’t seem to be impressed by excessive shows of money—a welcome change from my last girlfriend.

  My reunion with Kelly would be a little complicated now that I was working on a case, or at least looking into it. Nothing had convinced me that Maya would be easy to find. No one, so far, had told me everything they knew. Like any other case, I proceeded with the idea that the more people I talked to, the closer I would get to the truth. There was no such thing as disappearing without a trace.

  Lori had given me a name. Owen Bauer. If he was from the same Bauer family I knew growing up, he wouldn’t be hard to find. The Bauers were a fixture in Gillespie County. Like the Geislers and the Fischers, the Bauers traced their family roots to the original settlers. They farmed, raised cattle, and at one time owned a dry goods store on Main Street.

  I had also read Owen Bauer’s name in the local sports section. He was the senior quarterback for the football team and had an outstanding game against rival Kerrville last week. As an alumnus, I always tried to keep track of the team, and the current head coach had been my teammate.

  I drove to the high school and parked behind the Battlin’ Billies stadium. When I wasn’t getting into trouble or hunting, this was where I spent my time in high school either waiting for football practice, on the gridiron, or drinking beer.

  It was early afternoon in October and still hot outside. Not the sticky, humid-hot of San Antonio because the town was sixty miles further away from the Gulf of Mexico and a thousand feet higher in elevation, but hot enough that watching the football team do wind sprints made me break out in a sweat.

  Rocky Velosic was the head coach. I could see him on the field wearing one of those straw field-hand hats with the extra-wide brim, torturing the team with blasts of his whistle—every time he blew it, the players hit the turf, then jumped up and ran in place. It was the same drill we both hated when we were on the team together. It was a cakewalk compared to boot camp, but at the time, all my teammates thought we would die.

  I didn’t want to stroll down memory lane with Rocky before I got a chance to talk to Owen, so I waited in the parking lot until the team was finished and the coaches and players ran into the locker room.

  Twenty minutes later, I spotted Owen walking out of the gate under the stadium. I recognized him from his picture in the paper. He had thick blond hair that was damp from a shower and tucked under a red team hat. The brim was flat, like he’d just picked it off the shelf, and he wore it covering the tops of his ears as if the team had somehow ordered all the caps in extra-large.

  “Hey, Bauer,” I called through my window before he could reach his brand-new Ford F-250 4x4 pickup. His family had one of the larger peach orchards north of town, and his grandpa was one of the first to put in domestic grapes and cash in on the Texas wine craze. He turned toward me as if he expected the paparazzi and dropped his team duffle bag to the parking lot.

  “Do I know you?” he asked. The kid had a chip on his shoulder that could have held up the north end of the stadium.

  I got out and walked over to him. “Nick Fischer. I used to play football here back in the day.” We shook hands. “I was on your coach’s team.” That got his attention. “How’s the team look this year?”

  “I think we’re going all the way,” he said, putting on a goofy grin and launching into what sounded like a rehearsed speech. “If our frontline can give me the protection I need, I’m going for Coach Velosic’s passing record.” Rocky was a local legend. It wasn’t enough to win us the state championship, but it did launch his college career at North Texas, and it eventually landed him the head coaching job at his alma mater.

  “Enjoy it while you can,” I said. It wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. His goofy grin faded, and I caught him focusing on my forehead scars and the bandage on my upper arm.

  “Who are you again?” he asked.

  “Nick Fischer. I did play with your coach, but I’m a private investigator, now.” I showed him my creds. “I was wondering if you’d seen Maya Chavez.”

  His tan face turned crimson. A little switch went off in his brain. He blinked a few times in rapid succession before the goofy grin returned.

  “Maya who?” he said. The kid needed to work on his lying if he was ever going to be a superstar athlete.

  “Chavez. New student. Her grandfather’s Helmut Geisler. You know him?”

  “Sure. Everybody knows Mr. Geisler.” He picked up his bag and tossed it in the back of his pickup. “I’m drawing a blank on the girl.”

  “Maya. Maya Chavez.”

  “Yeah. Why’re you lookin’ for her?”

  “Mr. Geisler’s worried about her. Hasn’t seen her since August.”

  “Maybe she went back to California,” he said and got into his pickup. He was in a hurry to go.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I thought that’s where she was from.”

  “I never said that.”

  He opened a can of wintergreen-flavored snuff and packed his bottom lip while the wheels in his brain tried to come up with a good comeback. He stayed silent. Evidently, nothing came to mind.

  I handed him my business card through his open window. “If you hear from her, give me a call.”

  He glanced at the Marine Corps motto. Clueless. He spit brown tobacco juice into an empty plastic water bottle.

  “Sure thing. You’re a private investigator?” he asked. It was finally sinking in. “Must be serious.”

  “I just wanna be sure she’s safe.” I held his gaze. Most of his cocky bluster had faded.

  “Were you any good? In high school, I mean. When you played football with Coach V.”

  I smiled at him. “Who do you think caught all those passes he threw?”

  “Where’d you play college ball?”

  “I didn’t. I joined the Marine Corps.”

  Chapter Seven

  Owen Bauer was anxious to get out of the parking lot. He definitely knew Maya, and he definitely lied about it. He could have been in a hurry because he had a hot date—it was Friday night on Oktoberfest weekend, and the Battlin’ Billies had a bye week, but it seemed more likely that something I said touched a nerve. He didn’t like hearing Maya’s name or that she was Helmut Geisler’s granddaughter. He and Lori were both surprised by that connection.

  I followed him down a residential street that ran parallel to Main Street. All the locals knew to avoid downtown because the road would be bumper to bumper and stay that way until after midnight when the festival shut down. I slowed to let him get a block ahead of me, but I didn’t think he would be expecting a tail. He was a high school football jock, not a CIA agent or a hardened criminal.

  With any luck, Maya wasn’t far from home, and she had kept in touch with her high school buddies while she was taking a break from her alcoholic mother and stern grandpa.

  Owen parked his new F-250 on the side of the road near the rear of the restaurant where Lori Kostoch worked. I checked my watch. It was
after four thirty. Maybe he was hungry after practice, or maybe Lori was his girlfriend.

  He hurried to the back door and let himself in. I found a shade tree across the street and waited. I was supposed to meet Kelly at the motel by six o’clock. I wanted to go back to the ranch and shower and change before she got there, but I also didn’t want to miss finding out what Owen Bauer was up to.

  Letting work interfere with our relationship probably wasn’t the best way to start things off, but I couldn’t help it. Either Kelly would understand, or she wouldn’t. Besides, with any luck, I would find Maya before Kelly arrived.

  Five minutes later, Owen came out the back door pulling Lori by the hand. I watched them argue back and forth, not knowing what they were saying. Owen was doing most of the talking. Lori stared down at her shoes and played with her blond hair. If I confronted them while they were together, they both would lie to me again. The question was, which one would lead me to Maya the fastest? It seemed likely that one of them would finish the argument and pick up a cell phone, or even better, go talk to Maya in person.

  My phone rang. It was Kelly. “Hey, gorgeous,” I answered. Ever the charmer.

  “You don’t sound like you’re home in bed,” she said, sounding a little disappointed.

  “I’m flat on my back, saving all my energy for you.”

  “Liar. I hear traffic. You’re going to have to do better than that. You’re supposed to be recuperating.”

  “Okay, you caught me. I came to town so I could get the keys to our love nest for the weekend.”

  “You promised me a night of polka dancing.”

  “I was thinking we could limit ourselves to beer and brats. I’m still really sore.”

  “Oh, no. Put on those lederhosen, Mr. Fischer. Don’t play the wounded warrior with me.”

  Kelly was explaining her choice of outfits for Oktoberfest, when Owen slapped Lori hard across the mouth. It was all I could do to stay in my pickup and not rush across the street and put the teen quarterback on his ass. Lori covered her face with the costume apron. The arguing stopped. Owen took a step back. Lori sat down on a metal bench.