Murder Takes a Break by Bill Crider Page B

entanglement of pipes and towers that always filled me with amazement.   I wasn't at all amazed at the myriad products the plant produced.   What amazed me was that anyone could ever have built something so intricate and complicated in the first place.
    Steam and smoke spiraled into the sky, and I resisted the urge to hold my breath.   I told myself that I was only imagining that my throat was beginning to tingle.
    I turned down Palmer Highway and went toward town, if that was the right word.   Texas City is one of those towns that really isn't there anymore.   All the business had migrated out toward the interstate, and I drove past huge discount houses and restaurants serving everything you could think of, from Chinese food to barbecue.
    Somewhere along the way, Palmer Highway changed names and became 9th Avenue.   Fewer restaurants, but plenty of fast food: sandwich shops, a Dairy Queen, a Jack-in-the-Box.   I didn't bother to stop to see if Mr. Box was there.
    I drove between the high school and the Moore Library.   Not far ahead on my right, a bulbous water tank with "Fighting Stingarees" painted on it sat atop its towering legs.   I passed a park with a train engine and a caboose in it, and then I was nearing what had once been the downtown area.   On both sides of the street were auto repair shops, car washes, pool supply houses, pest control offices.
    The downtown itself was a mere shadow of its former self.   There was a nicely restored building housing a coffee shop, and there was a pharmacy that looked prosperous, but that was about all.   Down 6th Street, the Street of Memories according to the sign, there was an old movie theater, the Showboat, with a poster for Blackbeard the Pirate displayed in front.   Linda Darnell, Robert Newton, William Bendix.   All of them dead now, like most of the downtown itself.   Across from the theater was an entire block of deserted buildings, their plate-glass windows dark, some of them cracked, some of them covered with writing: "Going out of business."
    I drove straight on down 9th Avenue for a couple of blocks into the residential area.   The yards were full of tall palm trees and oaks that spread their branches all the way across the street.   The houses were well-kept but old, though not as old as the oak trees.   There were other areas on the outskirts of town where the hundred-thousand-dollar houses were, but the Mullens didn't live there.   I didn't blame them.   The older homes had character, and they were only a few blocks from Bay Street and the Texas City Dike, a great place to fish.   I wondered if Big Al ever went there, but I didn't think she did.   She preferred Seawolf Park.
    According to the directions I'd been given, the Mullen house was on the corner of 3rd Street and 13th Avenue, and I found it easily.   It was a big house of light-colored brick with a wide front lawn, most of which was still green.   In front of the house, as in front of a lot of others I'd passed, there were Christmas decorations standing under a palm tree.   In some yards there had been scenes of Santa, with the reindeer pulling his sleigh, which looked pretty strange in their tropical setting, like the lights on the palms at the Galvez.   But the Mullens had a manger scene, which somehow looked more appropriate.   Not that I knew whether there were palm trees in Jerusalem.   And if there were, they were probably a different kind of palm tree from the ones in Texas.   Still, camels looked better standing under them than reindeer did, at least to me.
    I parked the truck on the side street, hoping that no one in the house would notice it, and walked around to the front yard.   My knock on the door was answered by a short woman with big hair and a wide smile.
    "Mr. Smith?" she said.
    I admitted that I was, holding my clipboard in front of me so she couldn't miss it.
    "Come right on in," she said.   "I'm