“Maybe in a refined form.” The familiar Wilmington oil refinery stench made Kate look up.
“Where do we turn off?” he asked.
“Off ramp after this one. Go north.”
“What occurred to me,” he said, maneuvering to the right side of the freeway and then down the exit ramp, “is that one by one all the heirs except you have been eliminated.”
“Except Carl.” Kate pointed right at the first intersection. “Turn there.” She directed him to the street that ran along the empty field, hoping she could find the driveway apron again.
“If Mother had managed to get Miles put away,” she said as she watched the curb, “she could have frittered away the legacy he had planned for his son, for Carl. He had to stop her without revealing Carl’s secret.”
“But it still doesn’t explain why you were attacked.”
Kate spotted the driveway. “Turn here.”
“You’re kidding.” He eyed the field skeptically. “You didn’t bring me out here for an abduction did you?”
She laughed. “I thought about it.”
The trailer and its outbuildings, a collection of lopsided metal sheds, shimmered in the distance like a cartoon-desert oasis. Twisted bits of automobiles littered the field like the carcasses of animals that had perished on the way to the watering-hole.
“People live here?” Tejeda asked.
As if to answer him, Oscar stepped out of the largest shed, wiping motor oil from his hands onto his overalls. The shed, made of sheets of corrugated metal nailed to a wood frame, was almost indistinguishable from the heaps of scrap around the trailer.
Tejeda stopped next to Oscar and got out of the car, holding his door open for Kate to follow out his side.
“Oscar,” Kate said, “this is Lieutenant Tejeda.”
“I know. I know.” Oscar tucked a wrench into his pocket and unhappily offered a grimy hand. “We been expecting someone, after what happened. Come with me.”
He led them behind the trailer to a small vegetable garden where Esperanza and Rosa knelt on carpet squares, weeding the crooked furrows. A basket between them contained a few ears of scrawny corn and some oversized zucchini.
Kate knelt down beside Esperanza and checked the scabs forming over the burns on her face. They still looked raw and painful. “How are you feeling?” Kate asked.
“It hurts her too much to talk.” Kate heard the warning in Rosa’s voice. Rosa got to her feet using Esperanza’s shoulder for support.
“I know about Carl.” Kate said directly to Esperanza, ignoring Rosa as much as possible. She saw tears moisten Esperanza’s long black lashes and felt sorry about the pain she had to bring the injured woman, but it was unavoidable. “You can write notes if it’s easier, but it’s time for you to do some talking before anyone else gets hurt.”
“I will tell you.” Rosa stepped in front of Kate, blocking her view of Esperanza. “Come inside.”
Kate balked and turned to Esperanza. Looking sad, Esperanza nodded, making her shooing gesture.
“Okay,” Kate said, standing close to Rosa so that the smaller woman had to look up to her. “Let’s go.”
“I will show you some things.” Rosa gripped Kate’s arm tightly as if to prevent her from escaping, and walked her toward the trailer. She glanced back at Esperanza. “Who is to say? Maybe you have a right to know.”
Kate heard Tejeda scuffing the gravel as he followed. He had to duck his head to get through the low trailer door.
Rosa seemed even more cross than she’d been the night before. As she poured coffee for Kate and Tejeda, her movements were tense and quick. She plunked mugs down on the table in front of them, sloshing some of the steaming liquid. When she muttered something in Spanish under her breath, Tejeda chuckled.
“Don’t count on it, señora,” he said.
Rosa didn’t acknowledge him. She bustled into Esperanza’s alcove and came out with a tattered shoebox. Squeezing in behind the table, she placed the box on the seat beside her, out of view of her guests. As if she were hiding state secrets, she bent over her box, rifling through its contents and selecting a dozen yellowed photographs.
Kate thought about the picture fragment she had found on the beach and wondered if the rest of it might be in that box. But how would she get it away from Rosa to find out?
Brushing away imaginary crumbs from the table top, Rosa arranged the photographs in a semicircle facing Kate. The beautiful blond boy in Esperanza’s alcove portrait looked out at her from every photograph. In holiday clothes, at the zoo, carrying schoolbooks, playing with pets, he stood with Esperanza or Rosa or Oscar, sometimes alone, and once with a tall slender woman Kate barely recognized as Helga. Always, he looked like a happy, cherished child. Someone special.
Kate studied all the ankles, but the three pairs here were all thicker than the ankles in her fragment.
“He was our chico, our little boy.” Rosa picked up one of the pictures and held it against her breast. “Your grandfather gave Helga money to get rid of her baby. But she was too far along. Mr. Miles asked my sister for help. So after Helga had the baby she came to us.”
Kate reached for a picture with a torn corner, but Rosa snatched it away. “Did these come from my Uncle Miles’s house?”
“A few.” Rosa shrugged. “Helga brought some to me, but most of these were mine.”
“You were pretty close to Helga, then?”
“Not so much as with Mr. Miles. We never understood why she wouldn’t wait for Mr. Miles’s divorce, so the baby could have a father. But he took too long and she found someone else.” Rosa’s lips turned up in a sneer. “She always liked men too much. She left the baby with us and got married to some fellow. It didn’t work out, so she came back for the boy and took him norte, across the border. We followed her to be close to our chico.”
Kate saw her smile for the first time, a wide, tender smile as she thought about Carl.
“You never saw a sweeter boy,” Rosa continued. “He was so beautiful and so smart. There never was a boy like him.”
“Did you see him often?” Kate asked.
“Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. It depended. His mother moved around a lot, married a few more times. She would leave him with us when it suited her. And always they came to us when things went bad.” Rosa picked up the box and half raised the lid. Inside, Kate could see cards and letters, and bits of a child’s handwriting. “Mr. Miles always sent them money, even when she had a husband. He was better off without Helga. But he never got over losing the boy.”
“Did Miles ever come here to see Carl?”
“Of course. He came here all the time, until …” She spiraled her finger at the side of her head. “You know, loco. When we had the boy alone he would always come. But never when Helga was around. He always begged her to bring the boy and come live with him and she didn’t like to hear him.” Rosa gave Tejeda a piercing glare, as if he were a conspirator. “But she always took his money.”
“Surely Miles could have claimed legal custody of Carl,” Kate said.
“Maybe.” Rosa sounded doubtful. “But Helga said the boy wasn’t safe with your mother and grandfather around.”
Rosa had told Kate plenty, but crucial parts of the story were still missing. What seemed so strange to Kate was that this had gone on all during her lifetime among people she shared her most private feelings with and she never knew any of it. She could understand Esperanza and Miles keeping a bastard child under wraps—society had stricter rules forty-some years ago—but how could they let Kate marry him without saying something?
Kate cleared her throat and looked at Rosa. “Why didn’t Esperanza tell me this before I married Carl?”
“He is your cousin. You would not have married him. Like Nugie would not.” Rosa’s face came close and she jabbed at the air with a stubby finger. “Your family owed him something. We would not interfere when he took his rightful place.”
“Did any of you think about me and my rights?” It
wasn’t a challenge. She just wanted to know.
Rosa carefully gathered up the photographs and returned them to their box. She held the box tightly, as if she knew Kate wanted to take it.
Tejeda held Kate’s hand under the table as he glared at Rosa. “The lady asked you a question.”
Rosa only shook her head in response and stood up with her box. She opened the trailer door and gestured with her thumb, like a hitchhiker, for Kate and Tejeda to leave.
When Kate tried to pass her to get out the door, Rosa moved into her path. She stood so close Kate could see the gold in her back teeth. “We thought he was too good for you.”
EIGHTEEN
ALL KATE WANTED was to get out of the trailer and away from the woman’s long-stored hatred, but Rosa seemed to take up all the space.
Tejeda shouldered his way past Rosa and caught Kate’s arm as she faltered at the doorstep. She took his hand as they hurried back to the car. Kate looked for Esperanza on the way, hoping there was something to salvage between them.
Oscar came out of his shed and opened the car door, to hurry them away.
“I want to see Esperanza,” Kate said.
Oscar glanced toward the trailer and Kate saw the fear in his eyes. But of what? Rosa?
“Please go now,” he said, and ducked back into his shed.
“He’s right,” Tejeda said. “We should just go now. When they simmer down I’ll come back.”
Kate hesitated, expecting to see Esperanza rush out to her from somewhere in the wreckage-strewn field. But she seemed to have disappeared behind Rosa’s protective wall.
Reluctantly, Kate got into the car. As Tejeda sped away she sat close beside him, hanging on to him as if he might otherwise suddenly vaporize like the mirage her life had been with Carl and Esperanza. She looked back once as the car bounced over the field, leaving Esperanza and little chico behind in a cloud of gray dust. Far behind.
Once he was out on the street again, Tejeda pulled to the far side and stopped. He turned in the seat so his back was against the door and held Kate in his arms.
“Crazy old woman,” he said. “She didn’t need to say that.”
“Maybe she did.” She looked up into his deep brown eyes, “cow eyes” Esperanza had called them.
He kissed her, tentatively at first, then with more insistence. After a few minutes he started to pull away.
“Sorry,” he said, combing her hair away from her face with his fingers. “That wasn’t fair. Not after what just happened.”
“After what just happened,” she said, “it’s exactly what I needed.” She touched his face, the crisp rasp of his whiskers roughing her skin, replacing her anger toward Rosa with a different, more pleasant tension. She reached up to him and lightly traced the space between his lips with the tip of her tongue.
His soft laugh as he teased her tongue with his own was like the beginning of a whole new language she was eager to learn. He kissed the side of her neck just above her collarbone and she shivered, a delighted giggle escaping where her lips touched his shoulder.
“You liked that?” he laughed.
“Try here.” She pointed to a spot just below her ear. Then she turned and touched the back of her neck. “And especially here.”
“And here.” He tickled her ribs, gently jabbing as she laughed and tried to escape. “And everywhere.”
She relaxed her head against his chest as his arms crossed in front of her, his hands lightly resting on her breasts. She nestled her cheek against his shoulder and with her hand caressed the muscled arm that held her. She wanted all of him. She wanted to see and touch and taste every inch of him. But not here. She had a strong feeling that what was to follow between them needed a proper beginning. And from the quiet that had settled over Tejeda, she sensed he agreed.
Kate brought his hand up and kissed it, then sat up.
“Ready to go home?” he asked.
She nodded, but home, her house at any rate, seemed an empty prospect.
Tejeda started the car. Kate stayed close to him with his right arm wrapped around her. Reaching through the steering wheel with his left hand to shift the car into gear, he said, “I don’t know if I can drive like this anymore. ‘Course I’ve had no practice in a Mercedes. Used to borrow my dad’s Plymouth.”
“What does your dad do?” she asked as she twined her fingers in his. It seemed suddenly important to know.
“He’s the band director at Santa Angelica High.”
“And your mother?”
“Teaches third grade at Archibald Byrd Elementary School.”
“My grandpa’s school,” she said. Her uncles had donated land for the school as a memorial to their father, and Kate always thought that was strange. Her grandfather sent his boys, and Kate, to private schools because, he said, public schools were a hotbed of mediocrity. Kate smiled. Maybe the gift was a last little gesture of defiance. If it was, the whole family had conspired in it. “I came home from boarding school for the dedication of the school.”
“I know. That was the first time I saw you. You had a mouth full of braces.”
“How can you remember that?”
“My mom pointed you out. See, when I was a kid my folks used to take us to the beach below your house. My little sister called your house ‘the castle’ and she and Mom made up stories about the little princess who lived there.”
“You’re making this up.”
“No,” he grinned. “It’s true. Every time your picture was on the society page, Terry, my sister, would show us the princess.”
“I wish you’d told me this sooner,” she said, laughing to cover her chagrin.
“You like being a princess?”
“No. It stinks,” she said. “But knowing about your family would have spared me some grief. See, for a while I thought you might be Miles’s bastard.”
“Me?” The car lurched forward as he started. “Whatever gave you such an idea?”
“Remember Officer Little? The man you sent with me at the hospital?” When he nodded, she continued. “He thought it was strange you were spending so much time on Mother’s case because normally you don’t go out digging around hillsides for clues. He said mostly you supervise the lowlier detectives.”
“Lowlier?”
“He says you’re pretty big potatoes.”
“Think I’ll keep an eye on Little, recruit him into my department.” Tejeda took his eyes off the road for an instant to look at Kate. “But how does that make me a bastard?”
“You’re about the right age. For a while I wondered if Esperanza had been Miles’s lover. They were always pretty close.”
“Don’t ever let my mother hear any of this.”
“You do look more like Esperanza than like Helga.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“But what really made me wonder about you was that you were around all the time but Sergeant Green did all the dirty work.”
“I’m good at delegating,” he chuckled. “So how long did this suspicion last?”
“About an hour. At various times I also considered Reece, Sy Ratcher, Lydia, and myself.”
He pulled her closer. “But not Carl?”
“No. Never Carl.” It was still too outrageous to accept fully. She tried to imagine him living in the trailer with Rosa and Oscar, using the outhouse they had directed her to that morning. He was always so meticulous; everything around him had to be clean and orderly and top quality. Except his car, she thought. Then she wondered if Oscar kept the car running, and if maybe that was why Carl hung onto it.
Kate’s hand was asleep so she disengaged her fingers from Tejeda’s and shook them out. His arm was probably numb, too, she thought. He flexed it and rested it on the back of the seat. She moved away from him a little and tucked her left leg up under her so that she was turned in the seat facing his profile. The point of her bent knee just touched his thigh. He was awfully quiet.
“Come clean,” she said. “Why did you come out of your offic
e for this case?”
For a moment he didn’t seem to hear. On the Central Santa Angelica off ramp ahead of them an ancient blue slat-truck with Tiajuana license plates threatened to spill its load of salvaged tires at every curve. Tejeda, both hands on the wheel now, seemed to be calculating his best route of escape if the truck went over.
The blue truck rolled into a service station by the bottom of the ramp and Tejeda relaxed. He glanced at Kate. “You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated, braking for a red light. “I had orders from the mayor.”
She was watching his face, just because it was nice to watch. When he mentioned the mayor she saw that something bothered him. “What did the mayor want you to do?”
“Media people had stirred up a lot of public interest in your mother’s death because of who she was,” he said. “Some planning commissioner put a bug in the mayor’s ear about your mother and Sy Ratcher lobbying for zoning variances on land they had no title to. He was worried about who might have been involved and what they might have done to your mother. So the mayor, being a public whatsis, didn’t want to be caught with his pants down on network TV, in case there was more involved than a mugging. He and a lot of his friends have had business dealings with your mother.”
“Did he want you to…”
“Cover up? No. He just wanted a head start on the six o’clock news team. Does that bother you?”
“No,” she reassured him, feeling that Tejeda had more qualms about the mayor’s motives than she had. She knew the mayor. He’d been her grandfather’s fair-haired boy on the city council many years ago. He was a decent man. But like most men who had risen as far as he had, he had buried a few bones along the way. Kate understood the power structure of Santa Angelica well enough to realize that if he fell from grace, some of her family interests might tumble with him. So he’s less than perfect. Who isn’t? she thought, remembering Nugie and a few other incidents in her own past.
They were in Northtown, the suburban, inland area of Santa Angelica. Tejeda turned left off the busy north-south boulevard that divided that part of the city into commercial and residential areas. Approaching the maze of short streets in Tejeda’s neighborhood from this direction, Kate was completely lost until they were on his block.
No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1) Page 20
