Eileen could have told Mason to set himself on fire and he’d have probably reached for the matches at that point.  The alcohol certainly played a part.  She may have even slipped something into the alcohol, he couldn’t tell for sure.  The way she’d strung him along for hours on end took him somewhere he’d never been before.  By the time she led him into the bedroom and tied his wrists and ankles, he longed for a kind of release he’d never experienced before.

Straddling him while she placed the scarf around his neck, the only thing he remembered was the blackness of her eyes.  Like a shark.  The tightness of the scarf changed so gradually he didn’t even notice it.  That wasn’t what he was focused on.  Just as the scarf was cutting off his air supply and his pleasure reached its peak, Mason woke up in a cold sweat.  The were sheets soaked beneath him.  He’d had the dream dozens of times since that last trip to California, but this time it was more specific in the details than normal.  He looked around to be sure he was in his own bed.

When the scene had been played out originally in the bedroom overlooking the pool of the Spanish Mission style home in Hollywood, he’d woken up in a similar state.  Sheets drenched.  The red scarf was still around his neck, but his limbs loosened from where they’d been bound to the bed.  Eileen was in the kitchen, naked at the stove.  Her hair was done; her makeup complete.  Like it was just another morning in sunny Southern California.

“I feel like we should talk,” Mason said as he stumbled into the kitchen.

“Now’s not the time.  I’m making breakfast.  As soon as we’re finished you need to shower and pack.  I have a studio car on its way to pick you up.  I have to go to the office for a meeting.”  She was matter of fact and not in a mood to vary the instructions.  Eileen read Variety while she barely ate the breakfast she’d prepared.  While he ate, Mason watched the Hispanic gardener tending to the flowering hibiscus just outside the window, next to the pool.

Still naked when she escorted Mason to the door, she closed it behind him and he’d never seen her again.

“Are you still Eileen’s attorney?”  Franklin Danbury was surprised at the question.  He talked with Mason McCullough regularly, representing him occasionally on some mergers and acquisitions.  Eileen had never been mentioned before.  That line of questioning was not what he expected when his secretary told him Mason McCullough was on the phone for him.

“I handle some work for her regarding employment contracts and book deals.  So yes, I suppose I am,” Franklin said.  “But her main representation is in LA.  I’m not licensed to practice law in California.”

“And it’s fair to say you’re mine, too.  Right?” Mason asked.

“Of course.” Franklin replied wanting to know just where this was going.

“Then there is some kind of privilege that exists?” Mason asked.

“Not sure exactly what you’re asking, but yes.  There is attorney-client privilege with each of you.”  Franklin was confused and growing impatient.

“We need to talk in person.  Preferably this morning.  Not at your office,” Mason said.  “How about the Grounds for Divorce?”

“I’ll see you at 10:00.”  Franklin hung up the phone and wondered just what was going on.

Franklin Danbury stood out, even among the wealthy in Fort Stockton.  First of all, he drove expensive foreign cars.  The latest was a Jaguar.  There were only a handful of people in town that drove foreign cars in 1978, so he stuck out like a sore thumb.  Franklin kept a kid on staff just to ferry the car back and forth to the dealership in Odessa, where it spent most of its time since he’d purchased it.

The second thing that made him stand out was the fact that he’d never married.  While some tongues wagged at the Piggly Wiggly that perhaps he was ‘light in the loafers’, enough rumors made it back to Fort Stockton from more exotic locations throughout Southwest Texas that disproved that theory.

Trixie at the Klip-N-Dye swore she was living proof that Franklin put the ‘hetro’ in heterosexual.  Trixie was known to plant a flag on mountains she’d never climbed, however.  Her word could not be taken for gospel on the matter.  When Lucinda vouched for Franklin’s male virility, the matter was settled.

Sliding into the corner booth at the GFD, the formalities were quickly dispensed with.  “Eileen Parker wound up with a dead body in her pool,” Mason said.  He seemed glad to have been able to tell someone else what many already knew.

“So I heard.”  Franklin was surprised at the topic.

“Some kid trying to make it in movies, I would assume.  Poor bastard.  Couldn’t make it to the edge of the pool, much less the Big Screen,” Mason said somberly.

“Initial reports seem to say it was an accident,” Franklin noted.

“Whatever.”  Mason looked around and then waited for Lucinda to refill the cups in front of them with some hot Folgers.  “I spent time in LA.  With Eileen.  I think there might be more to this thing than people know.”

Franklin looked across the table at Mason, but didn’t say anything else.  He just waited for Mason to continue.

“I’m not sure how to put this.” Mason was looking for the right words.

“Are you referring to Eileen’s exotic tastes in the horizontal entertainment arts?” Franklin calmly asked.

Mason looked across the table in disbelief.  It became clear that Franklin was well acquainted with Eileen’s particular proclivities when it came to the act of practicing procreation.

“I made a few trips to Los Angles.  First on business.  Later, for pleasure.  Non-billable hours.”  Franklin seemed neither embarrassed, nor prideful.  Just matter-of-fact.

Mason had to let that settle in.  It had never even occurred to him that someone else from Fort Stockton was involved with Eileen.  Lines that were never very sharp to begin with suddenly just got blurrier.  He wasn’t sure if the fact that his attorney was involved with her made the situation easier or more complicated.  He quickly figured there was only one way to find out.

“On any of your visits, was there a red scarf involved?”

Before Franklin could answer the question, Rusty Hammer and Brother Bob came into the cafe.  They slid inside the booth with Franklin and Mason like it was any other morning.  Before long, Chad had wandered in.  In a matter of minutes, Sister Thelma pulled a chair up to the end of the table, the benches on either side of the booth being full.

“I’ve got to run,” Franklin said.  “Good to see you all.  Mason, maybe you could swing by the office later.”

Within the paneled walls of Franklin’s private office the two resumed their earlier discussion.  “Eileen enjoyed pushing the boundaries.  If you spent time with her, I’m sure you figured that out,” Franklin noted.  “I’ll leave it at that.  I’m certain you didn’t come here to go over those details.”

Mason understood the delicate nature of the situation, yet had information relative to the floater whose body had been pulled from Eileen’s pool.  Or thought he might, anyway.  “ I found a manuscript in Eileen’s study.  By accident.  One she’d clearly written.  And it was dark.”  He waited for a reaction from his attorney.

“That’s how Eileen makes her living.  It’s made her rich,” Franklin replied.  “The darker the story, the better it sells.”

“Parts of it seemed confessional in nature.  Explaining crimes from her own complicated past, as well as some not yet committed.  At that time, anyway.  Maybe one she wanted to commit,” Mason said.

“Her best work has been based on true crimes told with her own unique perspective.”  Franklin was an expert in explaining away that which would cause concern for most people.  But then, that was his profession.

“She claimed her mother killed both her husbands.  The second one is buried behind the garage at the old place outside town.”  Mason’s voice was getting higher.  “Just like the kid in the Greenlease kidnapping case in St. Jo, Missouri.”

Franklin wasn’t as quick with an explanation as he had been.

“Here’s the thing.,” Mason lowered his voice though they were alone in the office with the door closed.  “She described, in detail, how she would perform specific sex acts on an unsuspecting partner, choke him to the point of passing out, then cart the poor bastard out to the pool just off her bedroom.  Sliding him into the pool, it would look like a natural drowning.”

Franklin looked at Mason as though he was the one creating the fiction.

“I was very nearly the guy in the pool.  If I hadn’t slipped the pocketknife from my jeans under the pillow on her bed ahead of time, I was one red scarf away from meeting Jesus in Eileen’s pool.  And Jesus doesn’t swim.”

The two sat in silence, each reflecting on his own experience.  And his responsibility.  Mason felt a burden lifted, just by sharing the details with Franklin.  For his part, Franklin felt the same about the situation as he did his new Jaguar.  He was attracted to it for its beauty and exotic nature, but also realized that pursuing it would bring a series of problems that would quickly outweigh any potential benefits.

“I’ve thought about this, and I’ve got an idea,” Mason said.  “We buy the old place Eileen’s stepfather built.  The bank got it back when he disappeared.  They tried to sell it, then rented it out for a while.  It’s been sitting vacant and decaying the last ten years.  We could probably pick it up for a song.”

Franklin had no idea where Mason was going with the whole thing.

“We dig up the areas behind and around the garage out back.  See if there really is a body buried out there,”   Mason said.  “If there is, there’s a greater than zero chance the rest of what I read has some truth to it, as well.  We go to the authorities here with the discovery, the authorities in LA with what we think might have happened to the guy they found in Eileen’s pool.”

“And if we dig up the whole place and don’t find anything but grub worms and wild onions?” Franklin asked.

“Then we turn the property into a bed & breakfast.  Make it cash flow, sell it at a profit.”  Mason figured there was no way they could lose on the idea.

“Seems like a lot of effort to simply prove or disprove a theory.”  Franklin had a point.

“Or, could it be a good investment that has the added benefit of being able to solve a crime from twenty years ago while helping determine if another one has just been committed?”  Mason’s point was harder to argue with.