by Camy Tang
“He seems to have lived a very modest lifestyle,” Elisabeth said.
“The only thing odd about that is his watch.”
“His watch?” Elisabeth peered at the photos. He wore the same watch in all the pictures, so it might have been the only watch he owned, the one he used every day.
“I like vintage watches, which is why I noticed it,” Liam said. “That’s a vintage Rolex—and a pretty valuable one. It might be old enough to have been passed down to Felix by his father. It’s the only expensive item he wears, and it’s not really the type of watch you’d expect of someone making money from drug deals. So I’m guessing he’s not involved in the Bagsics’ meth trade.”
“Well, Tomas killed him for a reason, and now he’s after Joslyn.”
“The only way to stop the threat against you and Joslyn is to stop Tomas.” Liam had a determined glint in his blue eyes as he held her gaze. “We need to investigate this murder, find evidence and put Tomas in jail.”
It was true. Tomas had resources, and he had already shown he absolutely needed Joslyn—and he’d go through Elisabeth to get her. Elisabeth should have been fearful, but instead she was angry and determined. Years ago, she had made a decision that she wouldn’t let any man bully her ever again. She would not let Tomas get away with this. “There’s only so much we can do with internet research. We have to go to L.A.” The heart of Bagsic territory.
Liam’s expression was sober. He understood the risks they were taking. “We don’t know yet if Tomas told his superiors about you and me in his search for Joslyn. It could be that the gang won’t realize Tomas is after us.”
At that moment, a distinctive beeping pattern sounded. Within seconds, Nathan appeared, his face tight. “Are you expecting anyone?” he asked abruptly.
“No,” Liam answered. “No one even knows we’re here.”
“Well, I’m not expecting anyone, and that was the sensor for my driveway. Someone’s here.”
FIVE
Liam shot to his feet. Elisabeth’s chest tightened. Had the gang found them somehow?
“We drove around to make sure we weren’t followed,” Liam said.
“How about a tracker on her car?” Nathan said.
“Liam and I checked my car,” Elisabeth said.
“You have about ninety seconds before whoever’s headed this way arrives,” Nathan said. “What do you want to do?”
Elisabeth grabbed her car keys. “I’ll move the car behind the house.”
Liam followed her out the door. “I’ll hide behind the trees in the yard to wait.”
“I’ll meet whoever’s coming.” Nathan stopped to collect a gun from a locked cabinet.
Elisabeth dashed to her car. She cranked the engine and held her breath until it caught. She drove around the house as fast as she could, into a dirt area just beyond the back door.
She pulled her gun from her purse and made her way to the corner of the house, peeking around the edge. She had a clear view of the barred gate, where Nathan stood waiting. His posture was casual, but she could see the tense set of his shoulders even from where she stood. She couldn’t see Liam at all, but assumed he was hidden in the shadows of the stand of oak trees.
Soon a car came into view. Elisabeth noted that it was an older-model sedan, nothing like the newer cars that had driven up to the women’s shelter. She remained hidden around the corner of the house, but some of the tightness in her stomach relaxed.
Nathan didn’t open the gate, but climbed over it to speak to the driver. Elisabeth watched, hating the fact that he was vulnerable to whoever was in the car, despite the fact she knew he was armed. What if the driver pulled a gun, too? She shouldn’t have let Nathan greet the visitor by himself.
After a moment, the car did a three-point turn and left. Only then did Elisabeth’s jaw unclench. She took a deep breath, then stepped out from behind the corner of the house. Liam appeared next to Nathan at the same time.
“They took a wrong turn,” Nathan said. “They were looking for the Howards’ farm. It’s the next driveway about half a mile down the road.”
“It wasn’t a trick?” Liam asked.
“Hey.” Nathan gave him a mock punch in the arm. “I may not be a detective anymore, but I can still tell when someone’s lying.”
Liam held his hands up. “Sorry.”
They all headed back to the house. “It may have been a false alarm, but it cemented for me that we can’t stay here and put you in danger,” Elisabeth said.
Nathan opened the front door for them. “I can take care of myself, and I can help you. Besides, there’s strength in numbers.”
“Not if we have to stay out of sight because we’re not supposed to be here,” Elisabeth said. “Just now, we left you exposed. And what if someone comes to visit you and gets caught up in our mess, too?”
“She’s right.” Liam’s eyes were determined as they rested on his friend. “When you and Arissa and Charity stayed at my place last year, I didn’t have any visitors because no one in Sonoma knew yet that I’d come back to town. But you have a job here, friends, family. You’re not as isolated as I was. Having us hide out here is more dangerous to you.”
Nathan closed the front door, his jaw set stubbornly.
“Besides, we have to go to Los Angeles,” Elisabeth said.
“Because it’s so much safer to go somewhere crawling with Bagsics,” Nathan said.
“We need to find a way to stop the threat against Elisabeth and Joslyn,” Liam said.
“We think Joslyn’s ex-boyfriend, who looks like he might be a Bagsic captain, murdered her father,” Elisabeth said. “If we can find proof, we can put him in jail and the threat against us will end.”
“We were hoping you could check with your LAPD contacts for information about the murder,” Liam added. “In the meantime...we’re investigators. We’ll investigate down in L.A.”
Nathan hesitated, then reluctantly nodded. “I’ll give my contacts a call and see if I can dig up anything that’ll point you in the right direction. But you’ll need to be careful with your investigating. You won’t have a chance to find much if you’re recognized by the gang.”
“I have an idea,” Elisabeth said. “But I’ll need some help.”
* * *
Jericho Street was crawling with Bagsic gang members.
Liam’s palms were damp against the steering wheel, but he tried to keep his posture casual as he drove Elisabeth’s car down the residential Los Angeles street. Every block or so, Liam spotted a Bagsic member in purple and gray.
“That’s her address.” Elisabeth pointed to an apartment building with dingy walls painted Pepto-Bismol pink.
Joslyn’s official place of residence was her father’s apartment. On the six-hour drive down from Northern California this morning, Elisabeth had called the three places in Los Angeles that she knew referred women to Sonoma’s Wings shelter. One had been an Asian-American church, which was nearby Joslyn’s father’s apartment. In speaking to the women’s ministry staff worker, Elisabeth had discovered that one of the church members, Mrs. Andrada, lived in the same apartment building as Joslyn’s father. So that was their first stop.
The building only had street parking, which was full. They would have to park down the street and walk, passing Bagsic members on the sidewalk.
Liam glanced at Elisabeth. “You ready?”
She ran her hands down her newly curled hair, lightened to dark blond from its normal deep brown. “I think so. I guess this will be a test to see if the Los Angeles Bagsics were given our pictures or not.”
“Even if they were given our pictures, they wouldn’t recognize you now.” Nathan had asked his fiancée, Arissa, to pick up items to help Elisabeth disguise herself, changing not just her hair but her eyes with light-colored contact lenses from a costume store, which transformed Elisabeth’s golden-hazel eyes to green. Elisabeth had spent part of the night lightening and perming her hair, and she now looked more Caucasian than Filipino.
“I know you said you met Patricia at an outdoor café, while wearing sunglasses, but do you really think that baseball cap is going to disguise you enough?” Elisabeth asked him.
He tugged the bill farther down his forehead. “It hides my buzz cut and my eyes. Do I need more makeup?” Arissa had also gotten a dark shade of makeup, which Elisabeth applied to Liam’s face, neck, and exposed hands to darken his already tanned skin tone.
“No, any more and you’ll look odd with your facial hair.” At her suggestion, he hadn’t shaved, and his golden-brown whiskers, which always grew quickly, now softened his jawline. It would take a day or two to be a more effective disguise. He was reminded why he preferred to be clean-shaven when he had to constantly stop himself from scratching at it.
He parallel-parked two blocks from the building. There was a spot closer to the apartment, but it had been next to an expensive BMW coupe with a couple Bagsic members leaning against the car.
As they got out of the car, Liam casually scanned the street. The weather was a bit warmer down here in Southern California, but the winter chill still cut through his leather jacket. Christmas lights were strung in apartment windows, and a few doors sported small wreaths. He compared the tired-looking decorations to his father’s home, lavishly decorated with lawn ornaments, beribboned wreaths, and dripping with Christmas lights.
Elisabeth headed down the sidewalk, her stride confident. Liam hurried to catch up to her. He admired how she tended to attack obstacles as if conquering a hill, but it also made him want to protect her and shield her, which he knew she wouldn’t appreciate.
Her pace faltered as they were forced to pass the two Bagsic members leaning against the BMW. One had a more aggressive posture and wasn’t as finely dressed as the other, who looked more like a Bagsic captain.
The captain’s mouth pulled into a slow, predatory smile as Elisabeth approached, and Liam’s hands in his jacket pockets clenched into fists. The man’s dark eyes roved over Elisabeth’s body, conservatively dressed in jeans, boots and a black wool peacoat. Elisabeth stiffened for a second, but then she gave him a saucy smile, lifted a shoulder as she passed him and tossed her hair before continuing on her way.
Liam had to concentrate to relax his stiff jaw. “What was that about?” he growled to her.
She muttered back to him, “Those guys are used to women fawning over them. Ignoring him would have gotten his attention. Now I’m just one of dozens of girls he’ll see today.”
Liam hadn’t thought of that. He’d only felt the need to protect her. He risked a look behind him and saw the two men climb into their car, which soon headed down the street.
They climbed the cracked cement steps to the apartment building and found the back stairs to the second floor. The landing was surprisingly clean. Joslyn’s father’s apartment was cordoned off with yellow police tape. The door looked as though it had been kicked in, and a padlock had been put in place. There was a small window beside the door, but the curtain prevented them from seeing much.
“I wish we could go in,” she said.
“Unless you’d like to add breaking and entering to your police rap sheet...”
She sighed. “Absolutely not.” She knocked on the door directly across.
Mrs. Andrada, who answered the door, was a small woman, frail looking with sad eyes and a droopy mouth. Her short hair was beautifully curly and snow-white, and she gazed up at them with slightly clouded brown eyes. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Andrada, I’m Elisabeth Aday and this is Liam O’Neill. We spoke on the phone?”
“Oh, yes, come in.” Her Filipino accent was very slight. She stepped aside.
The living room they entered was shabby but scrupulously clean. Mrs. Andrada was apparently partial to lime-green and sunflower-yellow, because the colors popped up in the print of the sofa, the pictures on the wall and the throw rugs that brightened the thin beige carpet. The windows were thrown wide-open, making the apartment cold, but it seemed to be airing out the faint scent of bananas and frying oil that he could smell.
“Sit.” Mrs. Andrada gestured to the sofa. “Do you like lumpiyang saging?”
Liam blinked, not sure what he had heard.
“Love it,” Elisabeth said enthusiastically. As Mrs. Andrada disappeared through a narrow doorway into the tiny kitchen, Elisabeth leaned close to Liam and whispered, “Bananas in a deep-fried spring roll.”
“Oh.” That explained the smell.
Mrs. Andrada served them the small fried spring rolls alongside a sweet, hot, strong ginger tea that woke him up as effectively as coffee. The spring rolls were still warm, crispy on the outside and filled with sweet bananas.
Elisabeth leaned forward, her hands around the cracked mug holding her ginger tea. “Mrs. Andrada, as I mentioned on the phone, we’re trying to help Joslyn.”
“Isn’t Joslyn at Wings shelter? I told her about it.”
“I’m afraid she left Wings a few weeks ago.”
Mrs. Andrada sighed and leaned back in her comfortable recliner, decorated with a green-and-yellow crocheted blanket thrown over the back. “I’m so worried about that girl. I used to babysit her when she was little, you know? I knew her boyfriend was bad news.”
“Did you know Joslyn’s boyfriend, too?”
The woman shook her head. “I never met him. That’s how I knew he was wrong for her. She and her father had such a close relationship, and her boyfriend never came by to meet him.”
Through the open window came the sound of raised men’s voices speaking in Filipino. Both Elisabeth and Mrs. Andrada’s brows wrinkled at whatever they were saying.
“Is something wrong?” Liam asked.
“Not really,” Elisabeth said. “I guess I’m just jumpy with so many Bagsics nearby.”
“One of them sounds like Mrs. Navarro’s boy.” Mrs. Andrada sighed. “She didn’t want him involved with any of the gangs, but living in this neighborhood, it’s hard for the kids not be influenced.”
Liam rose and went to look out the window. There were some young gang members, and they were congregating around a souped-up Accord parked along the street. They weren’t quite arguing, but it wasn’t a gentle discussion, either. He remained by the window, watching them, as Elisabeth continued talking to Mrs. Andrada.
“Did Joslyn ever talk to you about Tomas?” Elisabeth asked.
“She was always so shy, she didn’t date many men. Stupid.” Mrs. Andrada said something in Filipino. “Joslyn is so beautiful. So when she first started dating Tomas, I was pleased for her because she seemed so happy. She moved in with him and stopped visiting her father as often. But then later in the relationship, she started visiting her papa more, and she seemed very subdued whenever I saw her. I kept praying for her, and then one day she confessed that Tomas beat her. He kept her from her friends at work and school. He’d only let her come visit her papa.”
Liam couldn’t stop the fire that flared in his gut as he heard about what Tomas had done to Joslyn. Even his isolating her from her friends was a form of abuse. He couldn’t stand men like that, who wanted to feel superior by taking advantage of someone weaker. Even the young gang members outside seemed to be picking on the smallest and youngest, a slender boy who couldn’t be more than fifteen years old.
“A few days after that, Joslyn pounded on my door. She was covered in blood and distraught. Her papa was dead and she was so afraid.” Mrs. Andrada shuddered. “She said that Tomas and his friends had killed her papa because he wouldn’t tell them where she was.” Mrs. Andrada sniffed, reaching for tissues in a box next to her. She dabbed her eyes. “He was such a good man.”
Liam looked away from the window for a moment. “He wasn’t involved with the Bagsics, was he?”
“No,” Mrs. Andrada said emphatically. “He didn’t even know Joslyn’s boyfriend was a Bagsic captain, although she told me.”
“Do you remember the time Joslyn came to your apartment after her father was killed?” Liam asked.
&nbs
p; Mrs. Andrada pursed her lips as she thought back. “I had just started watching Survivor when she came in.”
Liam nodded. It would be easy to look at a TV schedule and figure out about what time Joslyn had come to Mrs. Andrada.
“How awful for Joslyn.” Elisabeth’s voice was soft. “To be betrayed by her boyfriend and then to lose her father, all at once.”
“She felt more frightened than betrayed by Tomas,” Mrs. Andrada said. “They stole her father’s money and all his valuables, making it look like a robbery gone wrong. Joslyn was scared because Tomas was after her. So I told her about Wings shelter in Sonoma, because I knew they’d keep her safe.” The woman’s lower lip trembled. “I wish I could have done more for her. Why did she leave that shelter?”
Elisabeth shook her head. “I don’t know. She was very frightened of Tomas. I think she was afraid he’d find her, and then it would endanger everyone else at the shelter.”
Mrs. Andrada nodded slowly. “She was like that, thinking about others. She said she stopped seeing her friends because she didn’t want Tomas to know about them.”
“Did she think they’d get involved in the gang, too?”
“No. I think she was afraid Tomas might use them against her somehow, if he knew how much they meant to her.”
Like her father.
“Did you know any of her friends?” Elisabeth asked.
“I only know one girl, Mariella Gable. A very nice Chinese girl. She brought me moon cakes for Chinese New Year.” Mrs. Andrada’s face creased as she smiled. “She and Joslyn were both studying for their master’s degrees at the college.”
Liam straightened as he continued watching the men on the street. The argument seemed to be getting heated.
“You won’t mention anything that I’ve told you to the Bagsics, will you?” Mrs. Andrada wrung her hands together, the tendons standing out under her frail skin. “This neighborhood is part of their territory.”
“We won’t say anything about you.” Elisabeth reached forward and laid her hand over the woman’s fingers.
