“You never said much about your time in California.” Whiskey was testing the waters.  “When you’d go out and spend time with that woman.”

Mason just looked at him.  He hadn’t heard from Eileen Parker in a few years.  That’s not to say he hadn’t thought of her often.

On his last trip to Las Angeles things had gotten intense.  Always one to push boundaries, Eileen had taken things in the bedroom to places even Mason wasn’t equipped to deal with.  After that trip, he didn’t hear from her for a long time.  Then, out of the blue she called.  It was about six months after his last time out.  By then he’d hired a secretary who had taken the call.  She’d jotted down the name and number and noted something about “an invitation” on the pink message.  Mason didn’t return the call and he never heard from Eileen again.

“Never knew you were looking for details,” Mason replied.  “Not like you to be poking your nose into places it don’t belong.”

Whiskey had hinted a time or two in the past that he was curious.  Mason had never taken the bait.  Whiskey kept the details close to his vest as far as the women who visited him in his ramshackle trailer at Modern Manor Mobile Home Village.  Mason felt no obligation to share any of his own tawdry experiences.

“I knew you went out there with the primary purpose of poking that little princess,” Whiskey noted.  “It must have been good enough to keep you coming back for more.”  It had obviously become a challenge to get Mason to spill some beans.  He was a little put out that Mason was so closed-mouth.  After all, there were other relationships Mason had gone through whose details weren’t closely guarded secrets.

Sucking the last draw out of the Lone Star Longneck he’d been nursing, Mason signaled Hank, the bartender at the Lucky lady, to bring him another one.  He remained silent as far as Whiskey’s need for detail.

“Suit yourself,” Whiskey said.  “Just thought it was interesting that some dude was found dead in her swimming pool.”

There was only a handful of times in their decades-long friendship Whiskey could remember genuinely surprising Mason McCullough.  The reaction he got to that revelation was one of them.  Maybe the biggest.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mason said after almost choking on his beer.

“Didn’t even register at first,” Whiskey began.  “The name Parker McHale sounded kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place it.  Then I saw her picture and realized it was Eileen Parker.  The same woman who had you on speed dial whenever she needed some of that Spicey Texas sausage she couldn’t get in Hollywood.”

With his slow southern drawl and graphic metaphors, Mason chuckled, though he didn’t want to.  “Cut the crap and tell me about who they found in her pool.”

In the years since his trips to the Golden State Mason had done well.  He owned several businesses in Fort Stockton outright, more in partnership with others.  He seemed to have his finger in everything, more than most people even knew.  The kid who’d nearly got kicked out of Jim Bowie High his senior year had done well for himself, better in fact than those who finished at the top of the class.

Mason owned eighteen percent of Frontier Ford.  As such, he special ordered a brand new 1978 Continental Mark V Pucci Edition.  It was the most expensive car in Fort Stockton when he took delivery, the most expensive offering the Ford Motor Company had at the time, probably all of The Big Three.  Being young, brash, and New Money, that was why he bought it.  The first time he saw it, Whiskey had an appreciation for the amount of money it must have cost his friend.  He enjoyed saying ‘Pucci’, though his pronunciation was probably not the one Lincoln intended, nor one Mason appreciated.

“Well,” Whiskey said now that he finally had Mason’s attention, “it seems like your fuzz-bumpin’ buddy had a young male friend staying at her house.  Same one you visited in Hollywood. He wound up face down in the deep end.  Of the pool, that is.  Not your friend.  Reports said alcohol may have been involved.  Imagine that.”

The color drained out of Mason’s face quicker than the beer from the amber colored bottle in his hand.  “Cheese and crackers,” he mumbled.

The mood changed at the bar.  Whiskey could tell Mason was pondering the news he’d just been given.  “Where’d you see it.”

“I was in line at the Piggly Wiggly.  Saw it in the PEOPLE magazine while Mrs. Drury checked out the old woman ahead of me in line.  Weren’t you doing the dirty deed with Mrs. Drury before she got married when you both lived at the Alamo Arms?”

“Is that what it’s come to?  Just trying to get together, have a beer, and catch up and you have to turn that into the need to enumerate and define whatever past love interests I may have had?”  Mason seemed tense.

Whiskey knew he’d hit a sore spot when he heard the word ‘enumerate’.  Mason liked to try to intimidate him with big words when he got pissed off.

“I’m happy to list a bevy of women you’d be embarrassed to recall dragging back to your mobile mansion,” Mason retorted.  “And probably a couple barnyard animals, for all I know.”  He had another Longneck, but the conversation ceased.  Whiskey was surprised the reaction to the news was as extreme as it was; it made him even more curious as to what had happened on those trips to Tinseltown.

Mason made his way out to the Mark V parked in front of the Lucky Lady.  He was a little more unsteady on his feet than he’d thought he would be.  The Longnecks had more sharp edges to them than the fender lines of the Continental, but had a tendency to sneak up on you.  Cranking up the 460 cubic inch V8, he slid the 8 track tape of Saturday Night Fever and skipped over to the Stayin’ Alive track over and over again.

Looking over the big burgundy dashboard, through the windshield and towards the Glass Mountains in the moonlight on the horizon, Mason kept thinking about the manuscript he’d found in Eileen’s study the last trip he’d taken to see her.  And the fact someone wound up dead in her pool.