March Of The Mustangs: A Xara Smith Mystery

March Of The Mustangs

A Xara Smith Mystery By Bill McGrath

Copyright 2007 Bill McGrath

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Xara Smith Mysteries By Bill McGrath

Available at Smashwords.com:

January Juggling The Jentons

February At Feldman’s On Fifth

March Of The Mustangs

April At The Antique Alley

May Might Mean Murder

June Jumping the Jaguar

July Jill's Justice

August Avenging Arlene

September Surgeon Shamed

October Octagon Occult

November Naughty Nurse

December Deadly Dolls

Also by Bill McGrath:

Virika - Maiden

Bill McGrath Web Site:

WWW.WIX.COM/WGJM53/BILLMCGRATH

To contact author please send email to WGJM@Yahoo.com

CHAPTER-01.

I looked at the electronic clock at the bottom of the television screen and it told me there were one point one seconds left. On the sideline at mid-court the boy dressed in the red uniform number fourteen took the ball from the ref. He slapped the ball once and his team mates all went into motion. His team; the Mustangs, were behind by a single point. I was sitting at the bar in my favorite restaurant staring at the big screen flat panel television above the bar. The restaurant was jammed but it was completely quiet in the place. Not a single diner tapped his fork on his plate. No waitress lifted a tray or set one down. The bartender, Joe Stepho, did not pull on the tap to fill the next empty beer stein. Even the help in the kitchen was, at least for the moment, silent. When number fourteen slapped the ball his four team mates jumped to motion. It was a choreography that had been hastily scrawled on a chalkboard during the previous time out and never before rehearsed, yet the four red clad warriors danced their individual parts expertly. One of the opposition dressed in blue and gold, the uniform of the DePaul Blue Demons, did frantic jumping jacks in front of number fourteen trying to screen off his view of his team mates. DePaul had been good for a time even winning the collegiate national championship in 1961, but they had not been a competitive team in the last decade. A low rumble from the television slowly built but the restaurant patrons maintained their silence. I was not breathing and I doubted any others were either. The four red clad boys ran patterns on the hardwood floor followed closely by four blue and gold’s trying to interfere with their play without fouling a Mustang which would allow him free-throws which would likely win the game for the red team. Number fourteen had exactly five seconds to throw the ball onto the court but the official time, the one point one seconds, would not start counting down towards zero until one of the boys on the floor touched the ball. It was one of the many intricate rules that governed the game. Red double zero reached the top of the key, which is the round circle painted around the free-throw line, and came to an immediate stop followed closely by a blue and gold warrior who bumped into him from behind. Number double zero must have been expecting the blow because he firmly held his spot on the floor at the top of the key. As the collision occurred one of double zeros red team mates wearing number twenty-two whizzed by him followed closely by his own chosen blue and gold defender and passed right in front of double zero in the direction of number fourteen who still held the ball out of bounds. A zebra stripped referee could be seen using his right arm to count off the allowable five seconds but it was unclear how many seconds he had already counted. Number double zero stuck his chest and stomach out just an inch or so as twenty-two passed him and that knocked twenty-two’s defender off of his track by only millimeters but perhaps it would be enough. As the blue and gold boy doing jumping jacks in front of fourteen reached his pinnacle with his arms stretching towards the sky and his legs spread cutting of as much view as his body could, fourteen bounced the ball on the floor between the outstretched legs. Red twenty-two snatched the ball off the bounce in both of his hands. The electronic counter in the bottom-left corner of the huge video screen started it’s swift countdown from one point one downwards to it’s inevitable zero. The blue and gold clad defender doing the jumping jacks turned towards number twenty-two abandoning number fourteen as no longer important. The original blue and gold defender assigned to guard red twenty-two reached from behind and disregarding the potential foul placed the palm of his hand in the middle of the back of twenty-two and shoved hard. Red twenty-two and his two blue and gold defenders all jumped into the air at the same instant as their bodies collided. At the top of the leap twenty-two flipped the round ball in a high arc towards the goal even though his back was to the goal itself so he did not have a good view of his target. As the ball reached the peak of it’s arch a loud buzzer came from the television screen and the rumble of the crowd instantly turned silent. I took a quick look at the bottom left of the viewing screen and the electronic counter read zero point zero. The three boys all hit the ground awkwardly turning their bodies so they could observe the flight of the ball. The other players on the floor as well as the three referees stopped what they were doing and watched the ball fly it’s course. No players were seated on the benches along the sideline because each and every one of them as well as the coaches were standing along the side line pointing at the ball and watching it’s trip through the arena’s air. I licked my lips and my hand gripped very hard on my half empty beer stein. Somewhere to my right I briefly saw someone in the restaurant wearing a red jersey do the sign of the cross on himself. The ball edged it’s way through empty space until it met only the net part of the goal and made a very audible and expected sound. Swish.

The crowd at the restaurant and the crowd at the nearby Moody Coliseum at Southern Methodist University (SMU) erupted as one. On the giant television people swiftly spilled out of the stands crowding onto the basketball floor. Here at Feldman’s on Fifth the man to my right, whose name I did not even know grabbed me and kissed me full on the lips spilling the remainder of my beer as he did so. I had enjoyed a really good seat for the game as my fat ass was parked on the bar-stool directly across from the center of the huge plasma screen but at this instant I judged the position a little less than desirable as I found myself the center of a huge group hug. I am happy I was not wearing my best outfit because my own beer was not the only thing spilled at that instant.

By the time the hug relaxed the television was already doing the super-slow-motion replay of the shot and the replay would be repeated over and over for an hour with every commentator who could get to a microphone shouting to be heard above the crowd. There never really was any debate. The rules clearly stated that as long as the ball was in the air before the buzzer started it’s peal the shot would count. The replay could and did use stop motion to prove beyond doubt that the ball had left twenty-two’s hand when the electronic counter said zero point four. Using all kinds of technology they were able to run the shot frame by frame so that we saw the ball at the peak of it’s flight right when the counter hit zero point zero and we also simultaneously heard the sound of the buzzer proving beyond any doubt that the shot was legal. In one of the dozens of replays some clever video engineer had been able to sink up several pieces of videotape so that we could watch the ball and the clock but also one of the referees making a signal similar to the old German Heil Hitler stance which was the official umpire body language for the shot counts.

The replay verified what everyone at Feldman’s and everyone at the arena already knew. The SMU Mustangs had won it’s last game giving themselves twenty-eight wins against a meager twelve losses elevating it to the very last of the sixty-four college teams that would be invited to the post season NCAA tournament to determine the national championship of basketball. It was March first. Let the madness begin.

A dozen years or so ago I was quite a basketball player myself being the star of both the woman’s basketball team and the woman’s volleyball team all through high-school. Unfortunately for me girl B-Ballers getting huge college scholarships was still a few years in the future when I graduated.

My name is Xara Smith. I am a young thirty years old. I stand six foot three. I run my own detective agency. I am athletic rather than curvy, but I am quite blonde. I had not come to Feldman’s on Fifth to view the Mustang game but I had easily fallen into the revelry. I had come in for a little dinner with my friends Joe Stepho the restaurant owner and sometimes bar-tender, and his daughter Jill Stepho who was my friend as well as my partner/client on my last case. That case had come to conclusion just three days ago and I now considered myself on vacation. For us private detectives, on vacation means we have finished one case and have not yet been hired to work on our next one.

Being a Tuesday night the crowd quickly thinned with the end of the game. Half an hour later there were but two tables in the restaurant that still had diners finishing up their meals, and I was the only customer left at the bar. Joe drew me another stein of beer as his cute little daughter Jill slid herself onto the bar-stool to my right.

Crazy night, Jill said.

How ‘bout them Mustangs? Joe pitched in.

Anyone know how the Lady Mustangs did? I asked.

Personally, I despised the name Lady Mustangs but it was, in fact, what they were called. Why wasn’t the boys team called The Gentlemen Mustangs?

The Mustang team the women athletes were on had played against the female team of the DePaul Blue Demons earlier that day but the game had not been televised. The Lady Mustangs were rated as the fifth best female college basketball team in the entire nation and had qualified for the NCAA tournament four weeks ago, but they didn’t even rate television coverage. Go figure. The best I could do was revel in the fact that Title Nine had been passed which meant that if Southern Methodist University wanted to field a competitive boys team they were at least forced to offer scholarships as well to a dozen or so female glandular cases like myself so the girls got to be something besides cheer leaders.

You have anything down on the game? Joe asked.

What? said Jill.

He means did I have a bet on the game, I answered her, then I turned towards her father and said No. How did you do?

Joe told me that he had bet half a yard on the Mustangs but he had to give up three and a half points. That meant that his bet was for fifty dollars and he had wagered that the Mustangs would win, which they did, but he lost the bet because as a condition of the bet the Mustangs would have to win by more than three points and even though they won the game, they had won by only a single point, therefore Joe had lost the bet. He was not unhappy about it though as he really enjoyed the game and his rowdy customers had more than made up for it on what normally would have been a quiet Tuesday night hardly worth keeping the restaurant open for.

I would like to tell you that I am not a gambling woman but that wouldn’t be exactly the truth. I, myself, did like wagering on sporting events. My profession as a licensed private investigator though demanded that I keep a clean record, so publicly accepting a wager for cash was something I simply could not afford to do. On the rare occasion when I did bet it usually ended up being something like if I won the bet the loser would have to clean my kitchen but if I lost the bet I would perform some similar task for the winner.

My six year old Taurus was parked in the restaurant lot on south Fifth Street in the Dallas suburb known as Irving, Texas. I have lived here seven years now and been in business as a P.I. for the last three. I live in my house/office on an access road off of highway 183 in Irving, so I carefully piloted my car the three and a half miles and parked in front. As expected the key to my front door worked just fine as I let myself in and the little green light on my phone was flashing in the darkened house indicating that there was at least one message awaiting me.

There were a total of four messages but only one of importance. Detective Eric Samuels of the Dallas Police Department, a friend of mine for almost three months now, had left me no information about why he had called other than to request that I call him back as soon as possible. His message was left just after six and it was now nearly nine P.M. but I tried his office number anyway and he surprised me by picking it up on the first ring. He wasted no time at all and requested that I meet him at Parkland Hospital which is a big medical center in nearby Dallas. I told him how much time it would take me to get