Closely Akin to Murder

by Joan Hess

  The narrow streets were unfamiliar, but I was aware we were headed toward the vicinity of the Hotel Las Floritas. Surely Chico was not so brazen as to return there the day after the murder, when the police might be keeping it under surveillance. Surely not.

  The taxi driver slowed down, peering at numbers above doorways in the increasing gloom. “Señora,” he said, “I do not think you should come here by yourself. Please let me take you back down to Costera Miguel Aleman, where there are many safe places to eat and drink. You will not have to pay me anything.”

  “The address I gave you is that of a bar,” I said. “Could that be it up there on the left?”

  He pulled up in front of an open doorway through which loud Latino music blared. A woman in a tight dress that exposed considerable cleavage and covered only the tops of her thighs staggered out onto the sidewalk, braying with laughter. A man came after her and nudged her into an alley. Inside the dim, smoky barroom I could see faceless figures shifting like shadows on an uneven wall. A group of men played cards at a table beneath a flickering lightbulb. A young man came to the doorway, lit a cigarette, then gave me a cool look before retreating. All in all, it lacked the sanitized ambiance of the bar at the Acapulco Plaza.

  I took out my wallet, but the driver held up his hand. “No, Señora, I will accept no money to bring you here.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I got out of the taxi and waited until he drove up the hill. There were no vehicles approaching from either direction; I was on my own—and a lot loco.

  The interior of the bar smelled like a restroom at a grungy gas station. My entrance garnered only fleeting curiosity; the business of the hour was drinking. I eased into a chair in the corner of the room and scanned the faces for that of Chico. I didn’t spot him, but if he’d shaved off his mustache, cut his hair, and changed into less disreputable clothes, I might not have recognized him.

  A woman in a stained apron came to the table and put down a handwritten menu. I shook my head and said, “Nothing, gracias. I’m, ah, waiting for someone.”

  She retrieved the menu and shuffled away, apparently inured to the idiosyncracies of tourists. A dwarfish man at the next table gave me a toothless smile; I looked down at the scarred tabletop and reminded myself that bolting out of the bar would jeopardize Caron.

  I was beginning to fear I was in the wrong bar when a hefty woman with bleached hair dropped a note on the table as she brushed past me. She was already out the door before I realized what had happened and swung around to get a better look at her. I unfolded the note, took out my reading glasses, and tried to make out the cramped print.

  The note instructed me to walk up to the next corner, turn left, and continue for three blocks. At that point, I would find myself in front of the Hotel Las Floritas. I was to go to the restaurant, where I would find a bag on the bar. After I put the money in the bag, I was to return to where I currently was. Caron would be released shortly thereafter.

  I had no idea if Chico had a network of unsavory spies, but no one seemed interested as I wound among the tables and went out to the sidewalk. Peering nervously at dark recesses and clutching my purse as if it were a parachute, I followed Chico’s directions to the gates of Las Floritas. Unlike the crime scenes in Farberville, which were always decorated with yellow tape and signs forbidding trespassing, there was nothing to indicate that the police had been there the previous day. There was enough light from the houses across the street for me to see that the Cadillac was not in the parking lot.

  I crept up the path to the lobby, half-expecting a policeman to emerge from behind a tree and begin shouting—or shooting—at me. The door where I’d left the note was ajar, but I had no desire to take a peek inside so that at a later time I could share my insights with Comandante Quiroz. Peter was never appreciative of my contributions, even when I tied up his case in a pretty pink bow and demurely declined any credit. Quiroz wouldn’t hesitate to have me dragged off to a cell.

  The steps to the restaurant were treacherous in the dark. I eased my way up them and continued into the relative protection of the thatched roof. The rafters were likely to be home to a colony of bats; the best I could hope was that they were fonder of fruit than of blood.

  A plastic bag lay on the bar. I put the cash in it, dropped it, and retraced my way to the steps. I stopped to listen for some hint that Chico was nearby, but all I heard was distant music and the rumble of a truck struggling up the steep hill. He could be anywhere—inside the building, perched on a branch like a vulture, crouched behind any of the bushes. Wherever he was, he had the advantage.

  I let out a squeak as something scurried across the path and disappeared into the weeds, and I was trying to persuade myself that it was nothing more than a vole when I heard male voices at the gates. Flashlights illuminated the cracks in the parking lot, then flickered toward the lobby. As the two men came inside, I could see the outline of their hats and the bulge of holsters at their waists. Badges glinted in the moonlight. Would Chico assume I’d tipped them off and carry through with his threat?

  They came up the path toward the lobby. The restaurant was a logical destination on their itinerary. Forcing myself to move slowly to avoid catching their attention, I went back to the bar, stuffed the bag into my purse, and tested a door on the far wall. It was locked. The restaurant was too close to the edge of the cliff to risk concealing myself behind the low wall; one loose rock and I’d be found in the same spot where Oliver Pickett had been thirty years ago.

  The voices were growing louder. Whatever they were saying to each other sounded good-natured, but I had a feeling they might not be inclined to banter with me. I was not a gymnast who could grab a rafter and swing into the shadows with the bats. I took a step toward an overturned table, reconsidered, and dropped behind the bar seconds before the policemen arrived at the top step.

  The floor was sticky, but it was not the time to criticize the lack of adherence to the municipal health code. I crawled as far as I could, then curled up under the counter and held my breath.

  The beam of a flashlight splashed across the empty shelves and cracked mirror. A conversation concerning tequila and whiskey ensued; I tried not to imagine what would happen if one of them decided to search for an overlooked bottle behind the bar. I wiggled further into the niche—and bumped into a warm body. A hand clamped across my mouth, cutting short my involuntary gasp. I tried to jerk away, but a second hand pressed against the back of my neck, holding my head in a vise.

  Clearly, I was a whole lot loco.

  CHAPTER 6

  The policemen lingered for a few more minutes, then left. When their voices were no longer audible, my head was released with such suddenness that I would have fallen forward if space permitted. I crawled out from under the counter and took several gulps of air, then stood up as Chico emerged. Manuel’s characterization of the residents as cockroaches seemed à propos, although in this case blue uniforms had been as effective as blue lights.

  I stomped on his hand to get his attention. “Where’s Caron?”

  “Hey,” he whined, “there’s no need for violence.” He tried to pull his hand free, but I increased the pressure until I heard bones creak. In that I needed his cooperation, I did not attempt to find out if I could make them crack. Then again, at that moment I would not have described myself as a mild-mannered bookseller.

  “Where’s Caron?” I repeated.

  “She’s all right,” he said.

  I removed my foot, allowing him to crawl out into the narrow aisle. When he attempted to stand up, however, I kicked his shoulder hard enough to knock him onto his scrawny rear. “I want to see her now.”

  He sat up and massaged his hand. “Jeez, it feels like you broke something. How am I gonna type the definitive American novel with broken fingers?”

  “Now.”

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered, watching me warily as he got to his feet. “But you have to give me the money first. We made a deal.”

  “This is
not a television game show, and you don’t get what’s behind curtain number two until you produce Caron—and tell me what you know about the Oliver Pickett case.”

  “You have to promise not to turn me in,” he said sullenly. “I never killed anybody, including Santiago. He and I got along just fine.” He pushed past me and headed for the steps, his sandals slapping on the floor like apathetic applause. “Your daughter’s in the last bungalow. I’ve met bikers’ chicks with cleaner mouths. How old is she, anyway?”

  “Old enough to object to being kidnapped,” I said, wondering what she’d been reading lately. Mr. Dickens would never have used anything spicier than a “Balderdash!” or a “Pshaw!” Making a mental note to inquire into this at a later time, I followed Chico past the lobby and down a path lined with a few white rocks. There were six bungalows on each side; the ones away from the cliff were set high enough on the hillside to provide a view over the roofs of those opposite.

  “If you didn’t kill Santiago, who did?” I asked.

  “Someone who didn’t want you to question him,” he said without looking back at me. “He knew more than he let on about the night the girl killed the other girl’s father. I don’t know who was paying him to keep quiet, but after thirty years, he was still getting money in the mail every year. He’d wave it around and talk about how he was going to restore this dump, but then he’d buy a bottle of tequila to celebrate. Within a week, the money would be pissed away. Qué será, será, I suppose.”

  “Did he ever say who was sending the money?” I asked, frowning. Santiago did not sound as if he had had the wits or the wherewithal to track down Ronnie after she returned to the U.S. and changed her name. If by some miracle he had and she’d been sending money once a year, his name should have come to mind when the half-million-dollar demand was made.

  “Once he and I were sharing a bottle when the letter arrived, and while he was chortling and counting the money, I happened to pick up the envelope. No return address, but it was postmarked here.”

  He turned down a short path to a cliffside bungalow. The glass in the windows was held together with strips of peeling tape, and the door hung aslant on a single hinge. Moonlight illuminated broken tiles, bottles, tin cans, and what appeared to be the frame of a baby stroller.

  He pushed aside the door and stuck his head inside. “Your mother’s with me, so don’t try anything funny.”

  “I’m here,” I called. “Everything’s going to be all right, dear.”

  The inside of the bungalow was as black as the boiler at the bookstore. Chico stepped back and gestured for me to precede him, as if he believed Caron might come flying at him with a makeshift weapon of some sort.

  “She’s in the back bedroom,” he said. “I tried to make her as comfortable as possible. I don’t have the chance to talk to my fellow compatriots very often, you know. We could have had a pleasant conversation if she’d ever quit carrying on like she was strapped on a rack in a dungeon.”

  I tripped on some unseen object, but caught myself and reached the far side of the room. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the minimal light. Finally I made out a bed and a figure on it. I encountered no obstacles as I hurried over to the bed, sat down, and began to tug at the tape across Caron’s mouth. The ripping sound was painful, but I kept at it until the tape came free in my hand.

  “Kill him,” she croaked.

  “Let me get you untied,” I said, working on the wire around her wrists.

  “It’s not like we have dinner reservations. I really don’t mind waiting while you kill him.”

  Her exhortation had merit, but I put it aside for the moment and twisted the ends of the wire until I’d removed it. “Are you okay?” I asked as I started on her ankles.

  “Oh, I’m dandy, considering I was brought here with a knife poking my back and have been on this filthy, stinking mattress all day long.” She sat up and examined her wrists for signs of permanent scarring. “All I’ve had to eat since breakfast was a bag of some kind of vile banana chips. I refused to drink the water he gave me in a rusty cup, so he got me a bottle of orange soda that Wasn’t Even Cold. Then he brought me this pathetic sandwich that tasted like week-old dog food. I am malnourished and dehydrated—but other than that, I’m just dandy.”

  I unwound the wire around her ankles, then turned around and hugged her so tightly she groaned in protest. I felt wetness on my cheeks, but I wasn’t sure whose tears they were. Images of her infancy and childhood scrolled past me: bibs and bonnets, pigtails, scabby knees, birthday cakes and ice cream, petitions printed in crayon, the gathering thunderheads of puberty. When I could trust myself, I said, “Do you need me to help you get up?”

  “Give me a minute,” she said. “My feet are numb from lack of circulation. If you hadn’t found me tonight, you’d have to be looking up ‘amputation’ in your Spanish phrase book.”

  “It’s amputatión,” Chico said, “and the wire wasn’t all that tight. It’s your own fault, anyway. If you hadn’t tried to kick me in the face, I wouldn’t have had to put the wire around your ankles.”

  Caron sneered at him. “Well, excuse me. I guess I haven’t read the Dear Miss Demeanor column on being held hostage.”

  “Hush, dear,” I said, patting her knee. Chico had not yet pulled out a knife, but there was no need to provoke him into doing so. I glanced back at him and was disturbed to see he’d edged into the room, and now was within a few feet of the end of the bed. Doing my best to laden my tone with the menace of a gangster, I said, “Listen, Chico, you implied you know something significant about Oliver Pickett’s death. Tell me what it is and I’ll pay you. What you do after that is your own business.”

  “The night he died, I was in the bungalow right across from his. I’d come to do some deep-sea fishing with a guy from work. I hadn’t bothered with suntan lotion during the day, and the sunburn combined with a bad hangover kept me in. Most of the evening I sat out on my porch, nursing a beer, smoking dope, and watching the party get wilder and wilder. Santiago kept flapping down the path like a wounded parrot to plead with Pickett’s daughter. From what I could hear, she wasn’t receptive. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I heard was the mighty Pickett himself bellowing so loudly they should have heard him down at the Hilton. The kids took off every which way. He went inside and bellowed some more; I heard his daughter’s name more than once. It was so entertaining that I stepped inside to answer the call of nature, get another beer, and settle in for the show, but when I came back out, everything was as dark and peaceful as a cemetery.”

  “Cemeteries aren’t dark during the day,” Caron inserted acerbically. “No wonder you can’t sell your so-called literary novels to anyone.”

  I squeezed her leg to shut her up. “Go ahead,” I said to Chico. “Then what happened?”

  “I opened a beer just as Pickett’s daughter came out of the bungalow and ran toward the restaurant and parking lot. She was making all sorts of unholy noises. If she hadn’t been running so fast, I would have wondered if she’d been stabbed in the gut. I was contemplating all this when I saw someone else come out of the bungalow.”

  “Someone else?” I said. “Who?”

  “Whoever it was did not have the common courtesy to come up to the well-lit path, but instead stayed in the shadows alongside the bungalows. It’s a shame you can’t ask Santiago for details. He was standing at the top of the path, and had a much better view of the person. Of course, he might have been disinclined to talk about it even after all these years. Be sure and mention all this in your article.”

  “Mother,” Caron said, “I am the victim here. Whatever happened thirty years ago is history. My blood sugar is dangerously low and I feel dizzy. Could you and this worm turd continue your conversation at a later time?”

  Chico shook his head. “There’s no reason to be verbally abusive. I explained to you why it was necessary for me to do what I did. In reality, this is your mother’s fault for refusing to meet me on the beach las
t night.”

  “Maybe you can explain it again at Manuel’s funeral. I’m sure the family will be thrilled.”

  I stood up and positioned myself between the two. “You’d better leave town as soon as possible,” I said to Chico. “Jorge Farias is very unhappy with you, and he seemed to think he would have no difficulty finding you. I don’t think he wants to hire you as a chauffeur.”

  “He drives worse than Rhonda Maguire,” Caron contributed from behind me, “and she flunked drivers’ ed three times. After she ran over Coach Witbred’s foot, he told her—”

  “Let’s be on our way, dear,” I said. “I’m sure Chico needs to start on his travel arrangements.”

  “Farias?” he said, sounding as though he needed to start on his funeral arrangements. “He practically runs this town from his hillside mansion. He’ll have men crawling all over the Sona Rosa by now. I’d planned on being in Mexico City before Manuel was found. Is he going to be okay?”

  “You’re damn lucky someone found him before he bled to death.”

  “All I did was tap him on the head so he couldn’t yell for help,” Chico said as he edged toward the door. “Before you leave, you might want to go out on the balcony and look around.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” I asked.

  “It’s where Pickett’s body was tossed.”

  I was too startled to reply as he disappeared into the darkness of the front room. Moaning piteously, Caron got off the bed and said, “Well, at least you didn’t give him any money. He should have to pay me for all my pain and suffering.”

  I’d dropped my purse on the floor when I saw Caron. I located it and determined that the plastic bag had been removed while I’d been occupied with the tape and wire. “If we see him again, I’ll mention it,” I said, mentally cursing myself for my carelessness.

  We went out into the front room. Earlier I’d been too frantic to notice anything, but now I could see an opening that led to a balcony. Beyond that, the bay was outlined with tiny lights. It would have been quite romantic in a different situation.