Nick said firmly, “We understand.” I got the impression he didn’t want me to open my mouth again about the trucks.
Ramirez said, “As you know, our employee, Eddy Monroe, died of a gunshot wound to the head several days ago.” Um, yeah, in our driveway. “The police ruled his cause of death a suicide. We are not convinced this is true. These things you already know. Nick has been kind enough to take the case and do some preliminary work. I have brought in some of my co-workers,” he said, including the others with an elaborate flourish of his long-fingered hand, “and would like to update them on what Petro-Mex hopes to accomplish, and your results so far.”
Six heads nodded in acknowledgment, mine one of them.
“I appreciate everyone’s discretion with some of the comments I will make, and would remind you that we are all subject to confidentiality agreements.”
Nods again.
“Several factors are at play. One troubling issue is that we experience a higher than normal rate of suicide in the refinery community. Not just among our employees, but among their family members as well.”
One of the other men broke in. “We cannot accept the police’s quick judgment about Mr. Monroe, if for no other reason than the emotional strain the label of a suicide puts on all of us. It’s too easy, too convenient, and at the same time too damaging. And it hurts our ability to keep valuable employees and replace those we lose. It’s already hard enough for my people in human resources to attract people to work here.”
Wow. This was news. Truly, they kept the suicides in the family. Very Stepford Wives of them. Maybe that explained the overly Zen gardening outside.
Another Petro-Mex employee interrupted in Spanish. This sparked a heated discussion that I could not follow, other than the words “terrorista” and “muerto.” Terrorista didn’t need an English translation, and my limited Spanish vocabulary included muerto, the word for “dead.” I dug my fingernails into Nick’s thigh but he just sat there like a drugstore Indian.
Ramirez held up his hand and interrupted the other men sharply. “Enough. We can discuss this when our guests are not present.” He turned to Nick and me and added, “My apologies for the lack of manners of my colleagues. It will not happen again.” Said colleagues averted their eyes, and I heard an audible expulsion of breath. Hot prickles marched up my neck.
“Now, where was I?” Ramirez asked. “Ah, yes, the other factors necessitating your inquiry. While Mr. Monroe was from the United States, his wife is from Mexico. She has requested the investigation, and we want to honor her wishes. Mr. Monroe does not present a classic case for suicide . . . too many signs point us in another direction.” He placed his hands on the table in front of him and laced his fingers together. Done.
What signs? I didn’t ask aloud.
Nick spoke. “Thank you, José. After our telephone conversation on the night of Mr. Monroe’s death, I secured the police report. I’ve also spoken with Detective Tutein again.” He swiveled his head toward the other Petro-Mex employees. “For those of you who didn’t know, Katie and I were already involved in this case before Mr. Ramirez called me. Mr. Monroe died right outside the gate to our home. Detective Tutein interviewed me as a witness for the investigation by the police.” He looked back at Ramirez. “Suffice it to say, Tutein did not appreciate my visit. I didn’t get anything from him except a few subtle chuptzes.”
“Not unexpected,” Ramirez said.
My turn. “We have scheduled an interview with the widow, Elena Monroe, this afternoon. Also, we will need access to the hard drive of Mr. Monroe’s computer, or computers.”
Ramirez said, “I will arrange—” but he was interrupted by the same man who had spoken up about the impact of the police’s suicide finding. He was speaking loudly in Spanish this time, and Ramirez raised his voice in return, then turned back to Nick. “We will have to get back to you about the computer.” Then he spoke to everyone in the room. “Any questions for Nick and Katie, gentlemen?”
The four other dour-faced men said nothing, and Ramirez concluded the meeting. What the hell was going on here? I was pretty sure it wasn’t my pants that were stinking up this case.
As we stood up in the stifling silence, Ramirez kissed me goodbye. A mere five minutes after it had begun, and with nothing accomplished as far as I could tell—unless you count me being creeped out even more about this case than before—our meeting ended on a resounding minor chord.
Damn.
Chapter Five
Nick and I swung by the Petro-Mex compound straight from grabbing a quick bite of lunch at the BBQ Hut, a ramshackle building across from the boarded-up shell of Fortuna’s, which was once a popular restaurant run by an ex-boyfriend of mine who now lived in a maximum security prison in Puerto Rico. I hadn’t always made the best of choices in my personal life, but I’d changed all that with Nick. Or I had changed a lot of it, anyway. Oh, hell’s bells, I was still an occasional mess and I knew it, but I was trying, and I was proud of him and how Stingray Investigations was growing. I relished working our first official case together.
In order to speak to Elena Monroe, we had to clear the security gauntlet again. Would I feel more or less safe living behind this type of protection? I suspected it would make me paranoid. Certainly it explained some of the us-them division between the refinery’s residents and the rest of the islanders.
The houses inside the gates stood in perfect rows, like little toy soldiers with green berets. Each one wore the occupant’s name like a lapel insignia, although the only thing indicating rank was architecture. Privates lived in modular homes, captains in concrete, and the superior officers boasted individualized concrete and stucco dwellings.
Elena Monroe lived in a modular home on the far side of the compound. As we drove through the neighborhood, I gaped at my surroundings. I had lived on-island for two years and had never seen the interior of the Petro-Mex community. On St. Marcos, people lived indoor/outdoor. Most of our homes did not have air conditioning, and heaters were unnecessary. We all spent as much time on our patios, decks, and balconies as we did inside. Not so, at Petro-Mex. Not a soul entered my field of vision.
When we parked in front of Elena’s house and got out of the car, industrial noise pummeled our ears. Although the refinery was almost a mile away, it sounded like we were in the middle of an avalanche. They should hand out earplugs at the guard gate. We walked to the door together and I almost reached out to hold Nick’s hand, but it didn’t seem professional. Patting his butt, then, was out of the question. Rats.
A tiny woman opened the door before Nick could ring the doorbell, the scent of Calvin Klein Obsession preceding her. She looked twenty-one, maybe twenty-three years old, tops. Her lustrous hair hung in a sheet of black steel to her waist, which was tiny between a double-D rack and a bootylicious bana. Whoa.
But it was her eyes that arrested me. She had the sultriest brown eyes I had ever seen. I’d expected puffy flesh, dark circles, spiderwebs of redness, but if I didn’t know she’d lost her husband a few days before, I would never have believed it.
I decided to hold Nick’s hand after all.
“Meester Kovaucks?” she asked.
Was it just me, or did the two of them exchange a “let’s pretend we don’t already know each other” look? My eyes turned greener.
“Hello, Mrs. Monroe. Yes, I’m Nick Kovacs and this is Katie.”
“I’m his wife,” I interjected. Oh criminy, where did that come from? And then it hit me: I was being a jealous bitch, and this woman was a grieving widow. My husband loved me, even if I still had leftover bulges from the twins. I resolved to control myself and forced a toothy smile.
Mrs. Monroe said, “Sí, yes, hello, very nice to meet you. Call me Elena. Please come into our living room and find a chair,” she said. Her accent was heavy on the “eeeeez” and rolled R’s. Sexy talk.
We entered a darkened room full of Mexican women. Sisters? Friends? Neighbors?
“Mamá, por favor vas a la
cocina?” Elena said to an older woman who bore a striking resemblance to the Charo of “cuchi cuchi” fame in the 1970s.
Elena’s mother rounded up the other women and herded them reluctantly into the kitchen, where they hovered by the door closest to us.
A knock sounded at the front door. Elena walked to it, her steps a slink slink slink motion, and greeted a man who spoke to her in rapid Spanish.
I put my lips on Nick’s ear to whisper, “I feel completely out of my element.” I hoped not only to get my message across to him, but also to tear his eyes away from Elena as she raised her arms to rake her hands through her mane of hair, exposing her concave brown midriff and about a quarter inch of the underside of her unrestrained breasts. I was pretty sure I might vomit at any moment.
Elena began her shimmy back toward us and the visitor followed her. I recognized him immediately. He had attended our meeting earlier and had really pissed off Ramirez during the heated interchange en español about Eddy Monroe’s computer. What was he doing here? I looked at Nick and saw fury on his face.
“Mr. Kovacs,” said the visitor, “we met earlier today, no? I am Antonio Jiménez, the manager of Human Resources for the refinery. I will be sitting in on your interview with Mrs. Monroe.” His smile did not reach his eyes.
“I wasn’t informed that you would be present, Mr. Jiménez. This is very irregular,” Nick replied. His tone lowered the temperature in the room by five degrees.
“Pero, it won’t be a problem, no? Petro-Mex cares so much about Mrs. Monroe, and I think she would like for me to be here.” Another five-degree chill.
Nick looked at Elena. “Is it your wish that Mr. Jiménez be present, Elena?”
She looked at Mr. Jiménez, and then at the floor. “Ahhh, sí, sí, yes, it is OK,” she said. She put one hand over the other.
We took a seat, but Mr. Jiménez chose to remain standing behind Elena. So we began our interview, sandwiched between the whispering females and the glowering Petro-Mex HR manager. Nick and I had planned that I would interview Elena, one woman to another, so I took the lead now. He would add any questions he thought I missed. I had conducted countless depositions and questioned hundreds of witnesses in court, but this strange scenario flummoxed me a bit. I cleared my throat and pulled out a yellow pad.
“Elena, we are going to record our meeting. Will that be OK?” I asked. Nick set his iPhone on the arm of the chair and pulled up the audio recording app.
Elena turned around 180 degrees to seek permission from Mr. Jiménez. Not a good sign. He nodded.
“Sí,” she said to me.
I started softly with her. “I am very, very sorry about your husband.”
“Gracias,” she said.
“Tell me, how long had you and Mr. Monroe been married?”
“Six months.”
Shorter than I’d imagined. “How did the two of you meet?”
Once again, her head rotated back to Mr. Jiménez, whose face this time was impassive. She turned back to me and fumbled over her words. “Eddy, my husband, well, I met Eddy through friends. Friends here at Petro-Mex on St. Marcos.” Her eyes remained dry, but her face looked tight enough to crack.
Everything about her answer said it was not the answer. Should I push her on the question? I decided to let Nick be the hammer if he wanted to.
“Elena, the police said Mr. Monroe may have killed himself. What do you think happened? Do you think he killed himself?” I cringed as I said it; I had never had to ask such painful questions as an employment attorney. Embarrassing, à la “did you grab the plaintiff’s ass,” but not painful. At least I knew the answer to this question, as Ramirez had told us she’d requested the investigation precisely because she didn’t believe her husband had killed himself.
Before, her answers had puzzled me. This time, her reply astonished me.
“Yes, I think he did. I think he killed himself. He was very depressed.”
Mr. Jiménez all but lunged forward at her. “But Mrs. Monroe, you told us you did not believe he killed himself. And how could he? You are so beautiful, and he was a newlywed. You are mistaken. All of his co-workers know how happy he was—with you, with his job, with everything. You are grieving and confused, and that is why you say this terrible thing, no?”
Elena gave no explanation for changing her story. She didn’t cry. She simply sat with her hands gripped together and her knuckles white. Her mother appeared and sat beside her, stroking her anxious daughter’s hair and speaking to her in words I could not understand, not for lack of trying. I sat stock still, taking it all in, the two women, the large silver and bronze crucifixes hanging behind them, the heavy wooden furniture, the black leather upholstery. Jiménez shoved in next to them on the couch and the conversation grew animated.
Nick whispered to me, “This is a clusterfuck, Katie. We’re not getting anywhere with Lurch standing behind her. We should get the hell out of here, and come back at her later with a different approach. I have some ideas.”
“Yes,” I said, “Let’s get out of here.”
I stood up. “Elena? We know this is a very upsetting time for you. Thank you for talking to us. If you have anything else you want to tell us, here’s Nick’s card.” He handed it to her. “But for now, we will leave you with your family and friends. So sorry to intrude.”
Elena rose. She turned toward Nick and extended her delicate hand. He took it. She did not shake, simply stood with her hand in his, and looked up at him from below her lowered lashes. “Thank you, Nick.” Neeeeeeek. “On your card, it says you are a pilot?”
Nothing about her demeanor said grief. Yet she was radiating an emotion so strongly that it permeated the air around her: fear.
“Yes, I am also a pilot.”
“Bueno. I have your card, so I may call you, no?”
“That would be great,” he said, her hand still in his. “Oh, and could we trouble you to let us look at the files on your computers, to look for people who might have wished Mr. Monroe harm?”
Mr. Jiménez stood up beside Nick and faced Elena. “Mrs. Monroe, you do not have to give him anything you do not want to,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” she said to him. Then, “I am sorry, Nick, but there is nothing on our computer that will help bring Eddy back.”
Nick and Mr. Jiménez locked eyes. Neither looked away, but Mr. Jiménez spoke.
“So that’s it, then. Buenos días, Mr. and Mrs. Kovacs,” he said.
His squinty-eyed expression of distrust was getting old.
“Nice to see you again, sir. Good day to you,” I said, and I grabbed his hand and shook it harder than I should have. If he noticed, he didn’t show it.
We bolted out the front door from the dark interior of the house, away from the dark meeting. The brilliant light burned my eyes. I’d turn into a vampire if I lived in there.
I was rattled. Elena’s weird come-on to my husband, if that’s what it was, had knocked me back a step. I didn’t get it. And try as I might to sympathize with her, I didn’t like it.
We walked briskly to the Montero without a word. Nick sucked his top lip into his bottom one. Then he ran his hand through his hair, a sure sign of consternation.
I spoke first. “That was a freak show. I want to get as far away from this place as possible.”
He said, “Let’s just head straight back up to Annalise then, and we can talk about this on the way, OK?”
“Fine by me. But don’t forget, we promised Taylor we would take him to the Agricultural Fair this afternoon.” I looked down at my iPhone. “Your mom texted me about an hour ago that she has the kids ready to go, and she said Taylor has been asking when he gets to go see Wilburn approximately every forty-five seconds.”
Nick pursed his lips and exhaled at length. “All right.”
He looked down at his phone and scrolled through a text. He muttered and I caught the word “Elena.” Elena? As he typed a quick response he said, “You know, it probably wasn’t such a great idea after all
to bring you in on this case. I’m worried about your safety. I think you’re going to have to sit this one out, after all. I’m sorry, Katie.”
I saw flashing strobe lights and a siren went off in my head.
Breathe, Katie, breathe.
My emotions were still in such a tangle that I decided to hold it in for now—an act of monumental will. Because what I wanted to tell Nick was that he was a patronizing boob and could kiss my ass. It’s possible that my sudden personal growth and maturity might have had something to do with our proximity to Playboy’s Playmate of the Year, the one who had held Nick’s hand and refused to let go.
Or maybe it was because I was scared, too.
Chapter Six
Two hours later, Nick was pushing the twins in our all-terrain double stroller beside me as I walked hand in hand with Taylor through the crowds at the Ag Fair, carefully avoiding the eyes of my recently former boss. Taylor coughed. We hadn’t had a good rain in weeks and the throng had kicked up quite a dust cloud. The girls slept peacefully, despite the noise and smells.
“Mama, I want cotton candy,” Taylor said.
“Soon, but first let’s eat dinner. Cotton candy on an empty tummy will make you sick.”
“Daddy, I want to go see the pigs. I want to see Wilburn.”
“We’re headed there now, champ. Walk faster and we’ll see them sooner.”
I preferred the smell of fry chicken and johnnycakes to the odor of the barnyard, so I chimed in. “We have to eat some dinner first, though.”
The food smelled great. St. Marcos residents love their parties, and Carnival in January, monthly Jump Up festivals, and the annual Ag Fair were the big events of the year. The Ag Fair featured an exposition of plants and animals, but it also boasted a carnival and the best food the island had to offer. I knew what I wanted to eat: sizzling hot beef patés—spicy ground beef inside fried pastry, doubly greased up. Heaven.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 5
