Maggie and the Hidden Homicide

by Barbara Cool Lee

  This was one of the clinical times.

  "What happened this time, Maggie?"

  She looked around. He hadn't come alone. There was an entire crime scene tech team with him, and they were already swarming the shabby little trailer.

  The door was open, and she could see the jeans-clad legs of the dead man inside. Ibarra had just come out from looking at the body and now stood in front of her, waiting for her answer to his question.

  She stood on the dirt path outside, her arms wrapped around herself to keep from shivering.

  She wasn't cold.

  "I… there was a dead body," she whispered, finding it difficult to revisit the sight she'd just witnessed.

  Ibarra's expression softened, and he stepped closer. He bent his head down to be eye level with her. "Do you need to sit down, Maggie?" he asked kindly.

  She shook her head. "I'm fine. I just—you know I don't like seeing this kind of thing."

  "I know," he said. He started to put his arm around her, but then glanced up and noticed some of the other cops staring, and he took a step back and cleared his throat. "So, Ms. McJasper, what time did you discover the body?"

  "I have no idea. But I called you just a couple minutes after I got here," she answered, knowing this was important. "You have a record of that, right?"

  He nodded. "I'll check the phone record."

  "And it seemed like you got here pretty fast," she said.

  "About ten minutes," he said. "So did you come to the barbecue alone?"

  She looked away for a moment, gathering her thoughts. She didn't want to tell him that she'd called Reese first when she found the body. And that he'd quickly excused himself and run here. And that she'd asked him to search around for Taiyari, because she had to stand here waiting for the police.

  "Maggie?" he asked. He narrowed his eyes at her, noticing her evasiveness. He was too observant. Something he'd often accused her of being.

  "I… Reese came with me."

  "And where is he now?"

  She saw Reese's tall golden figure heading this way. "There he is," she said, unable to hide her relief.

  Ibarra pursed his lips, and she got the impression it wasn't frustration with the investigation, but something more visceral that caused his reaction. She was startled to realize it looked like jealousy, a jealousy similar to what the men at the party had shown toward Taiyari earlier.

  Reese came up with Jasper on his leash. He put his arm around her, and Jasper bumped against her side in relief at seeing her.

  She sank into Reese's comforting embrace, and the two men glared at each other.

  "Where've you been?" Ibarra asked suspiciously.

  "I figured I'd play a cop in my next movie, so I was hunting for fingerprints," Reese said with sarcasm dripping from his usually laconic drawl.

  "Don't get smart with me, Stevens. I'll throw you in a cell just for fun," Ibarra growled.

  Maggie pulled herself out of her shock. "Knock it off, you two. This is important."

  They both looked suitably embarrassed. She wiggled and Reese removed his arm from her shoulder. He handed her Jasper's leash and she wrapped it around her wrist.

  She gave the dog the sit command, and he plopped down next to her, but leaned in close, obviously sensing how upset she was.

  Ibarra pulled out his notebook and pen and opened to a fresh page. "So what were you doing out here in this awful place, Maggie?" he asked. "This is pretty far from the barbecue."

  "I was meeting someone."

  "Out here? Why?"

  She explained about the beadwork, and how Taiyari had offered to show her all the pieces her grandmother had made.

  She pulled out the skull she'd put in her purse and showed him. He let out a low whistle. "Pretty snazzy," he said. This girl—"

  "—Taiyari Méndez—"

  "—she gave this to you?"

  "Sort of. She gave it to Abby Xiong. Do you remember her? She was my assistant at the bead shop. Now she's interning at the Carita NTSB. And when she was interviewing Taiyari, she learned about the beadwork and so she hooked us up with each other to talk about it."

  "And this bead stuff was her story?"

  Maggie shook her head. "She was assigned a profile on the farmworkers charity. But then she interviewed Taiyari, and they talked about this as well."

  He nodded. "So of course she thought of your bead shop, and passed on the skull."

  "Exactly. And invited us to come to the barbecue to meet her."

  "And did you?"

  "Yes. And she said this was one of her amateur attempts. But that she had a dozen of her late grandmother's pieces that were amazing, and she wanted to show them to me." Then it finally hit her what she'd been missing in the shock of finding the man's body. "The Huichol art is gone!" she yelled, turning to go look in the trailer again.

  "Stop, Maggie!" Ibarra said, moving to block her way. "You know you can't go in there."

  She let him stop her, and stood there tapping her foot, thinking hard. "It's all gone. I just realized. Taiyari asked me to come see her grandmother's art, and there's none of it in there."

  Ibarra raised an eyebrow and didn't say a word. And she realized she was wrong.

  "Yeah," she said softly. "There's one piece there." A knife. Sticking out of the man's back.

  "But where are the other sculptures?" she asked. "Is that the motive for the murder? Did someone want to steal them?"

  "Are they valuable?" Ibarra asked.

  "I don't know. I was hoping to learn more about them from Taiyari. I've never seen anything like them before. So I don't know if they are just folk art keepsakes, or the kind of museum-quality art that…."

  "That someone would kill to steal?" Ibarra finished. "We'll find out, once we find the girl." He turned to Reese with an astute smirk. "Did you find her?"

  But Reese was an actor, with years of experience at not letting the slightest hint of his true feeling peek through his veneer, so he just said, "Who?" with a blank look.

  Maggie figured Reese hadn't, or he wouldn't have come back so quickly. But she was afraid Ibarra's knowledge they were looking for her would make things harder on the missing girl. The girl with the dead body in her trailer.

  "I can't imagine she had anything to do with this, Will," Maggie said. "I was just talking to her an hour ago, and she hardly seemed the murderous type."

  "Really? And what exactly is the murderous type?"

  "Not a teenage girl who'd worked all her life to go to college, I'm sure. There's no way she did this, Will."

  Brian Kirby, the owner of the farm they were standing on, came running up to them then. He was a portly middle-aged man, and he was more than out of breath. He was in a panic. "Ethan?!" he cried out. "Ethan?!"

  "Is that who…?" Maggie asked. The man in the trailer had been lying face down, his head under the little table and his body covered in papers. She had carefully stepped out the door and called Ibarra, not wanting to contaminate the crime scene. So she didn't know—

  "—Is it true?!" Mr. Kirby asked, his voice rising up to a wail at the end of the sentence.

  Ibarra nodded slightly, and Kirby broke down right there, standing in that ugly, squalid little trailer camp, sobbing.

  So it was Ethan Kirby lying on the floor in Taiyari's little trailer. The young man who'd held her hand, and sat next to her, and looked at her like the sun rose and set in her eyes.

  The same man she'd brushed off with a frown when he'd tried to talk to her alone.

  The same man the other men had glared at jealously every time Taiyari had spoken to him.

  The same man Maggie had seen trying to talk to Taiyari, whispering frantically to her in a corner, and saying, "I'll meet you there. I'll tell you everything," only an hour before Maggie had found him lying dead on the floor with Taiyari's Wixáritari knife sticking out of his back.

  Chapter Six

  Lieutenant Ibarra took Mr. Kirby aside then, trying to calm him.

  Jasper stood up and
tried to follow, wanting to offer comfort. Maggie had to pull him back and put him into a sit again. He whined and watched the grieving man, desperate to help.

  "There's nothing you can do, boy," Maggie told him.

  "You either," Reese said.

  "I know," she said sadly. "But I just wish I could do something."

  "So can we go home now?" Reese asked.

  Maggie watched Ibarra patting Kirby on the back and speaking softly to him. "I doubt it," she said absently. "He's going to want a full statement."

  "I don't see why," Reese said, annoyance in his voice. "You found the body. What else can you tell him?"

  Maggie turned away from Ibarra to face Reese. "What I saw. What I know. What the clues are."

  Reese pursed his lips. "You're not a cop, Maggie. That's his job. Let him do it."

  "Taiyari is missing," she pointed out, staring at the door of the trailer, where the coroner was preparing to move the body. She shuddered and looked down. "She might be dead. We don't know who did this. Or why. It could be about the beadwork. Or something else. Taiyari could be another victim of the killer."

  "Or she could be the killer," he pointed out.

  "I can't picture that." But she could, to be honest. The girl had been like the center of a whirlpool, with all those men swirling around her, unable to break free from the attraction. More than attraction. She seemed to symbolize different things to different people. For Ethan Kirby, was she rebellion? For Donovan Cruz, a symbol of the charity's success? For that other man who had lurked on the edges of the group, she meant something else. What could it have been?

  The girl in the center of all that attention could easily have felt threatened by one or more of them. She could have lashed out to protect herself. "It could have been self-defense," she said aloud.

  "Then why isn't she here?"

  "Maybe she's afraid of the police."

  "You think she has reason to be?" he asked.

  "If she's a witness to a crime, or, okay, the criminal, then yes, she has plenty of reason to be afraid."

  "You don't know that, Maggie."

  "No. I don't know. We won't know what happened to her until we find her."

  Donovan Cruz and Susan Gallegos showed up then. They had stayed back at the barbecue to advise the farmworkers of their rights, Susan told them. But now they were here to try to help Taiyari.

  Maggie told them Taiyari was missing, and that the dead person was Ethan Kirby.

  Both appeared stunned. "Ethan?" Donovan said in a gravelly voice. "That's terrible."

  Maggie looked down to avoid meeting his eyes. She wasn't sure how much she believed his sentiment. She'd seen his resentment toward his rival for Taiyari's attention.

  She noticed his jeans were wet. His shirt, too, where it was visible beneath his light windbreaker. "I spilled beans on myself," he explained when he saw her staring.

  Susan froze, as if startled by what he'd said.

  "I had to wash up, so I missed the police arriving until Susan told me about it."

  "Oh," Maggie said in a disinterested way, but Susan picked up on it.

  "You can't suspect Donovan," she said quickly. "He was with me the whole time."

  Maggie could have sworn she saw a flicker of surprise on Donovan's face, but it passed so quickly she wasn't sure.

  "Yes," he said. "We were talking about the charity fundraiser we're holding. But then I had to wash up after making a mess. I was only gone a minute."

  Maggie shrugged, again trying to appear uninterested. "I'm worried about Taiyari. When was the last time you saw her?"

  They both looked confused. "I'm not sure," Susan said. "I think she was talking with Ethan for a bit there at the party. But after that…?"

  "Yeah," Donovan said. His hands rubbed on his damp jeans unconsciously. Was there a guilt and shame there, or was he just uncomfortable because his jeans were wet?

  Mr. Kirby was sitting down on the trailer hitch now, and Susan excused herself to go talk to him. Maggie watched her bend down and speak softly to him, and he put his head in his hands as she touched him gently on the shoulder and whispered kind words.

  The police were bringing out the body now, and they all moved back to let them pass.

  "What was their relationship?" Maggie asked Donovan.

  "Ethan and Taiyari? They were friends, I guess." She raised her eyebrow at him and he admitted, "I think he was in love with her. But I'm not sure she felt the same way." She still didn't say anything, but kept looking at him without any expression on her face. "Okay," he finally admitted. "I think they were a couple. But it wasn't serious. At least on her part. She talked constantly about leaving for college in two months. That was what she cared about. Moving away and making a life for herself. She'd promised her grandmother and didn't want to let her down. It kept her focused even after we lost the old lady."

  "When did her grandmother die?" Maggie asked.

  "About a month ago. The poor old lady went in her sleep. It's a hard life, doing field work. And she was pretty old. She was under a lot of strain."

  "I can't imagine," Maggie said, though the abject poverty of the little trailer had given her some small glimpse at the world Taiyari had grown up in.

  "It's actually a problem we've been trying to help Taiyari with," Donovan said. "These trailers rent for thousands per month, and without her grandmother's income, it's going to be hard for her to hold onto the place for another couple of months until she leaves for college. She was talking about living in her car when the rent came due."

  "What kind of car does she have?"

  "Her grandmother's old pickup." Then he narrowed his eyes. "I suppose the police are going to want to know about that."

  "I imagine so," she said. "Was it parked in that same area where we parked for the barbecue?"

  He shook his head. "The workers park in the dirt along the edge of that field." He pointed off in another direction. "It's just over there."

  "I suppose someone could drive away from there without being seen by anyone at the party?" she asked, and he nodded.

  "Yeah. So whoever did this could have—" He stopped. "Wait. You don't think Taiyari did it, do you? She couldn't have."

  "I don't think that," Maggie said. And she didn't. Despite the circumstantial evidence, she really didn't picture that bright teenager with her life in front of her as a murderer.

  But he was still bristling, staring from Maggie to Reese. "You outsiders don't understand what life is like for these people. You just assume they're criminals and low-lifes." He glared at the tall celebrity with pure resentment. "You have no idea."

  "Hold on a second," Reese said. "We don't think anything like that. I did plenty of moving pivots and plowing fields when I was a kid on my dad's farm. And Maggie may be a city slicker," he smiled at her fondly, "but she's the kindest person you'll ever meet. We're on your side here."

  "And more important, we're on Taiyari's side," Maggie added. "Tell me more about that. About her grandmother. She told me her parents died a few years ago."

  "Yes," Donovan said, calming down and answering her more openly. "Her parents died in a car accident. I don't know exactly when. It was before I came here. Her grandmother was an elder of the Huichol people. From what I understand, she was a real high mucky-muck, and so at first apparently Taiyari went to Mexico to live with her. But her grandmother soon realized all that Taiyari was giving up: her parents' dream for her to go to college, and the girl's own plans for how she wanted to live. So the grandmother gave up everything in her own life, to come here and work in the fields for Taiyari."

  "So Taiyari is an American citizen?" she asked, wondering if her immigration status made her run away from the police.

  But, "oh, yes," Donovan said. "She was born and raised here." Then he said, a bit hesitantly, "not that it matters now that the old woman is dead, but her grandmother was undocumented. That was another stress on the girl. She was always worrying that someone would find out, and that her grandmother
would be arrested."

  He pulled out his phone and called up a photo to show them. It was Taiyari with her grandmother. They looked a lot alike, and the affection between them was palpable. The grandmother had the same bright intelligence in her eyes, and an expression of firm determination.

  Maggie smiled. "I wouldn't want to get on her bad side," she said lightly.

  He frowned at that. "Yeah. There's something to that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know."

  She raised an eyebrow at him, and he said, "no, really. I don't know. But there was something going on. I'm still an outsider to these people. But there was something happening. Something involving the grandmother. She was being stalked, or bullied, or something. When she passed away, I thought it would stop. Taiyari wouldn't tell me what it was. In fact, I'm not sure she knew what her grandmother was mixed up in. I got the feeling the grandmother kept her in the dark for her own protection."

  "Really? What could that old lady have been mixed up in?"

  "I don't know," Donovan said. "But I got the sense that, whatever it was, it wasn't over once the grandmother died. But there's something there. Something secret that makes the farmworkers hold back and not tell me what's going on. Ask Susan Gallegos. She's seen it, too. She's been around this much longer than I have, and she told me she's never seen anything like this. There's a threat, a danger, and they are refusing to tell anyone what it is."

  Maggie looked at the forlorn little trailer with its turquoise stripe and the police swarming over it, examining it for clues. "Do you think it has anything to do with Ethan Kirby's death and Taiyari's disappearance?" she asked.

  "I don't know," he said quietly. "I honestly don't know."

  Donovan went over to Susan Gallegos and Mr. Kirby then.

  Maggie turned around and saw Ibarra standing just a few feet away. "How much of that did you hear?" she asked him.

  "Pretty much all of it, I imagine," he said. "You're a good interrogator, Maggie."

  Reese put his arm around Maggie as Ibarra came closer. She shrugged it off. Having these two men getting possessive over her was beginning to bug her, and she wondered if Taiyari had felt the same way.