by Diane Kelly
“You’re killing me!” I cried at the screen.
The television automatically began the next episode. Who was I to fight technology?
The show opened in the hotel, Isidora’s husband and the so-called business associate finished their meal and walked to the hotel’s elevators. Instead of parting ways there, they stepped into a car together. The crafty Isidora, still wearing the bellhop’s uniform, grabbed a loaded luggage cart when an actual bellhop turned his attention away. She pushed the cart onto the elevator, hiding behind it so that the two wouldn’t realize it was she who had entered the car after them. She reached out to the panel of buttons and, taking notice that the one for the tenth floor was lit up, pushed the button for fourteen.
Isidora’s husband and the woman exited on the tenth floor. Isidora stayed in place, as if planning to go on up to the fourteenth floor. But we viewers knew better. She was going to follow them. Yep, Isidora was a woman of action. I’d learned that right away.
Just as the doors were about to close, the camera zoomed in on a hand with red-tipped nails pushing them back open. She stuck her head out of the opening, watching with heavily made-up eyes to see which room the two entered. Abandoning the luggage cart in the elevator, she scurried down the hall and put her ear to the door of room 1022. The show ended there, leaving us wondering what, if anything, Isidora might have overheard.
I couldn’t very well go to sleep without finding out, could I?
No way!
I watched yet another episode from start to finish, then the next, then the next. Isidora thought she’d heard some moans of passion and left a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket outside the hotel room door, along with two glass flutes she’d laced with poison and a note reading Compliments of Le Belle Maison Hotel. Her husband and his mistress—or was she truly just a business associate?—barely managed to call for help before succumbing to the poison. The two ended up in the emergency room, fighting for their lives. Of course, Isidora played the shocked and worried wife role as well as any Academy Award winner, sobbing into a tissue at the hospital. When nobody was looking, she sneaked into the room of her husband’s business associate and/or lover and turned off the IV drip delivering the antidote into the woman’s system.
When I finally checked my clock, it was after two a.m. ¡Ay carramba! Where had the time gone?
I programmed the DVR to begin recording new episodes of the show so I could watch them once I caught up on the older shows on the app. With a reluctant sigh, I switched the television off and went to sleep, my dreams filled with scenes of amor and some of vengaza.
* * *
When my alarm buzzed at 5:30 Thursday morning, I was tempted to hit snooze, roll over in bed, and go back to sleep. But I wouldn’t let myself. I was dead tired after staying up half the night watching the telenovela, but there was too much at stake, most importantly the lives of innocent people taken advantage of by an unscrupulous, heartless coyote. I had mere hours to collect the evidence needed to keep Salvador Hidalgo in jail. The weight of the world, or at least North and South America, was on my shoulders.
While my cats noisily crunched their kitty kibble, I myself crunched my way through a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, washing the colorful flakes down with a steaming mug of coffee flavored with a sweet hazelnut creamer. My RDA of sugar, caffeine, and red dye number three thus fulfilled, I set off to fight for truth, justice, and effective tax administration.
I left my house at the ungodly hour of 6:15. My first destination was El Loro Loco. According to the restaurant’s manager, Julio Número Uno should be working the breakfast and lunch shifts today. Thankfully, the sun was out today, and the rain the storm had brought the day before had mostly dried up. The only evidence that a storm had blown through was a few puddles here and there and the humid heat that made you sticky and sweaty, as if soup were coming out of your pores. Ick.
I made my way across town in the bumper-to-bumper early morning traffic, making slow progress and wondering what acts of vengeance—or vengaza—Isidora Davila would have in store for me when I got home and could watch another episode. The woman might be a psychotic, self-centered, narcissistic psychopath, but she made a damn interesting lead character. And even though I didn’t agree with her methods, you had to respect the woman for taking matters into her own hands and never letting anyone get one over on her.
Eddie’s car was already in the lot when I arrived a few minutes before seven o’clock. Looked like he’d beat me here. I pulled into the spot next to him and glanced over. He’d reclined his seat and was fast asleep, his mouth hanging open like the squawking parrot’s had the other day. Who could blame him for stealing a moment to snooze? Our jobs were demanding enough, but he had two young girls and a good-sized house to take care of on top of that. All I had were my cats and my cozy town house with the postage-stamp-sized patio.
I climbed out of my car and walked over to Eddie’s window. From inside his car came the faint buzz of his snore.
“Eddie?” I said softly, not wanting to jar him. When he continued to snooze, I spoke a little louder. “Eddie? Hey, Eddie. Wake up.”
He remained in dreamland.
“Good morning, merry sunshine!” I sang, swinging my arms and performing an improvised soft shoe routine.
Zzzzz.
I stopped dancing and raised my voice. “Eddie?” Still nothing. The guy was out.
Having failed to rouse him with words, I raise a hand and tapped on Eddie’s window. Tap-tap-tap!
He woke with a start, shrieked—“Aaah!”—and reflexively threw out his arms, inadvertently hitting the horn. Honk!
When he regained his composure, he scrubbed a hand over his face and unrolled his window. “Why the heck did you sneak up on me like that?”
“Sneak up on you?” I raised my palms. “I’ve been out here calling your name. I even sang to you!”
He shook his head as if to shake himself awake, rolled his window back up, and climbed out of the car. “You owe me big for coming out this early.”
“I do,” I agreed. “How about I buy you a couple of breakfast tacos to repay you?”
“Make it three and I’ll call it even.”
“It’s a deal.”
We entered the restaurant, greeted by the same mechanical parrot from before. “SQUAWK! Welcome to El Loro Loco!”
The other day I’d thought the macaw was precocious but cute, but having made little progress on my cases and having enjoyed little sleep the night before, I found his words especially grating this morning. Eddie, who’d never been fond of the bird, yanked out his pocket square and draped it over the bird’s head, covering the circular motion sensor on his forehead. “That ought to shut the birdbrain up.”
The same older woman was working the hostess stand. She frowned when she looked up and saw the two of us walking toward her. “If you’re looking for Julio,” she snapped, “he’s not here. He called in yesterday and quit.” Her pointed expression said she believed I was to blame for his resignation. “All he wanted to do was make a living. Why can’t people just live and let live?” She muttered something in Spanish that it was probably just as well I didn’t understand.
“I’m very sorry about Julio,” I told her. “It was never my intention for him to leave the restaurant.”
She answered with an angry wave of her hand, as if willing us to be gone.
I pulled my wallet from my purse. “Can we get three breakfast tacos to go?”
“They’re for me,” Eddie said, raising his hands in innocence. “I’m only along for the ride.”
“Twelve dollars,” the woman said, holding out her hand.
I gestured to the chalkboard mounted on the front of the hostess stand. “This says breakfast tacos to go are only two dollars each.”
“Not for you,” she said. “You give me trouble, you pay double.”
“I think that’s illegal,” I told her with a frown. But I handed her the money anyway. I’d already promised Eddie I’d buy him break
fast and I wasn’t going to let him down after he’d risen extra early to help me on my case.
The woman stuffed the cash into her apron pocket, disappeared through the swinging kitchen door, and returned a few seconds later with a paper bag bearing the likeness of the parrot. She shoved the bag at Eddie. “Enjoy.”
“Thanks.”
He snatched his pocket square back off the robotic parrot’s head as we left the restaurant. “SQUAWK!” the macaw called after me. “Rot in hell, Tara!”
Okay, maybe that’s not really what he said. But that’s how I heard it.
With a sigh, I slid back into my car and drove to the mobile home park where Julio lived, hoping to catch him there. Eddie trailed along after me. As I pulled up to the unit, I noticed three things. The first was that there was no car in the driveway. The second was the young boy’s stuffed dog lying under the porch steps. The third was a white sign with red lettering in the front window: FOR RENT.
Uh-oh.
The curtains on the front windows were open, but the morning sun reflecting off the glass made it impossible to see inside. I climbed out of my car and retrieved the dog from under the steps. Eddie joined me and we ascended the stairs together to rap on the front door. Knock-knock.
When no noise came from inside and nobody came to the door, I ventured over to the window. Shielding my eyes with my free hand, I put my face to the glass and peered in. The living room was vacant.
“See anything?” Eddie called from where he waited on the porch.
“The room’s empty.”
“Aw, shit.”
Aw, shit, was right. I continued to the other windows, peering inside them as well. All of the rooms were empty. No people. No furniture. No nothing.
I looked down at the dog in my hand. “Where did your family go?” He was no help whatsoever. He merely stared back at me, his felt tongue hanging out of his mouth in a perpetual pant.
I turned to Eddie and motioned for him to join me. “Let’s go talk to the management office. Maybe they’ll know something.”
We walked down the row of mobile homes until we reached the first one at the entrance, which was designated as the management office. The door contained a metal mail slot for tenants to submit payments after hours. I knocked and a thin middle-aged man in jeans and a polo shirt answered. After identifying myself and Eddie I asked, “I see that the home on lot twenty-eight is for rent. Can you tell me what happened to the family that used to live there?”
“They moved out in the middle of the night Tuesday,” he replied. “Slipped a note through the drop box to let me know.” He gestured down at the mail slot.
“Do you know why they moved?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “They just said they had a family emergency and had to go. Why?”
I explained that the man and woman might have information that could be useful in a criminal investigation.
His eyes narrowed. “They weren’t dealing drugs, were they? I don’t allow that on my properties.”
“No,” I said. “Nothing like that. In fact, they were the victims in the crime I’m investigating.”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
“Any chance they left a forwarding address?”
“No,” he said. “The note only said they’d had to move out.”
“May we see the note?”
He stepped away from the door and returned with the note, which was printed on wide-ruled notebook paper. It was written in Spanish so I couldn’t precisely tell what it said, but the words familia and emergencia were obvious. There were no numbers on the note, no names of towns or cities or states.
I looked back up at the man. “You can read Spanish?”
“Only a little. One of the other tenants told me what it said.”
“Okay if I take a picture of it?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Don’t see any problem with that.”
“Hold this.” I handed the stuffed dog to Eddie and held the note in my left hand while snapping a photo with my right. Nick could translate it word for word for me later. Having lived in Mexico for three years, he was fluent in Spanish.
Eddie and I both gave the man our business cards.
“If they come back or you hear from them,” I said, “please ask them to call us.”
“All right.”
I held out the dog. “I found their son’s dog. They might come back for it.”
The man looked down at the worn, slightly dirty thing, his nose quirking with minor disgust. He took the dog from me and tossed it in his wastebasket.
Eddie fished the dog out immediately and gave him a disapproving look. “Please also tell them we have the dog and would be glad to return it to them.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Besides being annoyed with him, we thanked the man and returned to our cars.
Eddie handed me the stuffed dog. “What’s the plan now?”
“I’m going to check in with four guys at a construction site.”
“I’ll follow you.”
Before I could object, he was already heading to his car. Oh, well. Even though I’d been trying to hide the fact that my coyote investigation involved Brett’s business, it couldn’t hurt to have a second agent with me this morning, especially since Brett couldn’t be there to reassure his men I meant them no harm. If they wouldn’t open up to me, maybe they’d relate to a fellow family man like Eddie.
I climbed into my car, placed the dog on the passenger seat, and closed my eyes for a brief moment. Julio and his family had fled to God only knows where. In their quick, late-night departure, his little boy had dropped the stuffed dog that brought him comfort. And it was all my fault.
I opened my eyes and banged my hands on the steering wheel. “Dammit!”
My gut twisted. Sure, I wanted to help nail a human trafficker who’d left people to die horrible deaths in the desert. I also wanted to do whatever I could to help find the kidnapped girls. But I didn’t want to scare desperate people, to send them running underground into hiding, to make their lives any harder.
I sat there a long moment, conflicted, before eyeing myself in the rearview mirror. “Are you doing the right thing, Tara?”
Unfortunately, my reflection didn’t know the answer any more than I did.
chapter eighteen
Talk Is Cheap. Lawyers Aren’t.
As I left the mobile home park with the stuffed dog riding in my passenger seat, the song “Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” played through my mind. Poor little boy. He was probably singing that song himself. Or a Spanish equivalent of it.
With Eddie trailing along behind me, I headed directly for the job site in Frisco where Brett’s men were working. After weaving our way through traffic, we pulled into the new development. Ahead were a lineup of new, green heavy-duty pickups with king cabs and attached flatbed trailers. Lettering on the doors identified the vehicles as part of the Ellington Nurseries fleet. The lettering matched that on the sign at the nursery, including the Is dotted with daisies. Those trucks didn’t come cheap. Looked like Brett’s business was doing well. Good for him. He’d need to earn a pretty penny to send little Spencer or Evan to college. At the rate tuition was increasing, it would probably cost a million dollars by the time the kid was ready to go. I hoped my own Hank or Waylon or Reba or Dolly would land a scholarship.
I pulled to a stop behind the trucks and looked out at the site. The crew wore green uniforms that also bore the logo for Brett’s business, as well as matching lightweight hats with flaps along the back designed to keep the sun off the wearer’s neck. The group performed various tasks. Two men carried PVC pipes from the trailer to the lawn and began laying them out in a pattern for the lawn sprinkler systems. Another used a shovel to dig holes along the side of the house for the red-tip photinia bushes lined up behind him. A fourth lined a flower bed with decorative stone. I surmised the four must be the men going by Julio Guzmán, Pablo Perez, Miguel Gallegos, and Diego Robles. I wasn
’t sure who was who, or what their actual names were, but I hoped at least one of them could speak English. Growing up in east Texas, not far from the Louisiana border, I’d opted to take French in high school. In retrospect, Spanish might have been the more useful option. It’s not like I got down to New Orleans very often.
I climbed out of my car and stopped at the curb so as not to interfere with their work.
Eddie stepped up beside me and pointed to the sign in the yard. “Ellington Nurseries. Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Because it’s Brett’s business.”
“Brett? You mean that guy you dated before Nick?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie chortled. “Well, isn’t this interesting. I wonder what Nick would think if he knew you were out here cavorting with your old flame.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m hardly cavorting with my old flame. Brett’s not even going to be here today.”
“Oh, yeah?” Eddie arched a suspicious bow. “And how, exactly, do you know that?”
Because he’d told me so yesterday when we parted ways at a hotel. But I couldn’t very well say that, could I? I tried to play nonchalant. “Because I spoke with Brett yesterday. It’s standard procedure. After all, he’s the owner of the business.”
“I’ll give you that,” Eddie said. “How did Nick take it?”
“How did Nick take what?” I asked.
“When you told him you’d spoken with Brett?”
Ummm …
My failure to respond in a timely manner told Eddie what I hadn’t said in words.
“You haven’t told him?” He scoffed. “Not even married yet and already keeping secrets from each other. That’s not supposed to start until year three or four.”
I replied with a frown. “I don’t tell Nick everything I do all day, and he doesn’t tell me, either. We share the important stuff. Seeing Brett wasn’t a big deal. Besides, why should I tell Nick something that’s just going to piss him off?”
Eddie raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. You have your reasons. Just don’t expect me to keep your secrets if he asks.”
