Half a Mind (The Kate Teague Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Oh, Theresa,” Linda exclaimed, handing over her drippy umbrella. “You look so beautiful. Is that a new sweater?”

  “No, it’s Kate’s.”

  “Watch her, Kate,” Ricardo said, wrapping Kate in his arms and planting a wet kiss on her cheek. “Before you know it, there won’t be anything left in your closet.”

  “I’ll know where to look for it.” Kate took a heavy crystal bowl from him and winked at Theresa.

  Rachel came from the kitchen. She paused long enough to make sure everyone had time to see and appreciate; then, with the tiniest of curtsies, she collected the dishes Linda and Ricardo had brought and carried them away.

  During the round of cheek-kissing and introductions, Kate glanced at Trinh, who stood just outside the family circle.

  Trinh had changed into a deep blue dress and tied a matching ribbon around her long dark hair. She seemed so excited that she couldn’t keep both feet on the floor at the same time. Kate went over and put her arm around her and drew her into the sitting room with the rest of the group.

  “You look beautiful,” Kate said.

  “Yes, I am,” Trinh said. Then she blushed. “I mean, everything is so beautiful.”

  “Thanks to you. Now it’s time for you to be a guest.”

  Ricardo had found a station beside the canapés. “I love this place. Reminds me of the Ahwanee Lodge in Yosemite.” He accepted a sherry from his son. “Remember, Rigo, when we went there?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tejeda said.

  “Of course he doesn’t remember.” Linda nibbled a canapé. “Little Rigo was only six months old.”

  “Nana’s here,” Theresa announced, leaving her seat by the front window. “Come on, Dad. Richie’s brought Nana.”

  Tejeda left the room and returned shortly with Nana, his grandmother, holding her by the arm as if she were very delicate. It seemed to Kate that Nana tolerated this special care with good humor, but didn’t need it. She was in her late eighties, very tiny and slim in a bright green dress. Her step was sure and strong, her back very straight. Her dark eyes shone with intelligence and an impishness that she seemed to have passed on to Ricardo.

  Ricardo folded Nana in a hug. “You are lovely, Mother.”

  Nana laughed. “Only to you, mijo.”

  In one hand she held a nosegay of daisies, which she handed to Kate with a light kiss, in the other a box of peanut brittle, which she gave to Tejeda.

  Linda waited for her turn to embrace Nana. When their heads were bent together, Nana whispered something and laughed in a way Kate could only describe as bawdy.

  “Sherry, Nana?” Tejeda asked.

  “Sherry?” Nana repeated. “Maybe a gin and tonic, Rigo dear.”

  “I know,” he said. “Light on the tonic.”

  “I’ll help you.” Nana took his arm again and they went off to find the gin.

  Richie had followed Nana in, self-consciously holding his girlfriend, Jena Rummel, by the hand. Cassie followed, looking tentative. Kate walked over to greet her, bring her into the crowd, but Cassie hesitated as if to put off their meeting. Then she seemed to steel herself. She tossed her rain-frizzed hair back and moved forward again.

  Kate offered her hand. “Glad you could come, Cassie.”

  “Thank you. Where do you want this?”

  This was a flat basket covered with shiny blue-black disks. Kate wished she knew whether to offer them as hors d’oeuvres or put them in the powder room.

  “Well, Cassie.” Ricardo loomed over Kate’s shoulder. “What the hell is that?”

  “Indian blue-corn cakes,” Cassie said, with a hint of challenge.

  Ricardo chuckled. “Cassie belongs to one of the ancient tribes of County Cork. She’s helping them resettle in New Mexico.”

  Linda swept past him and took Cassie by the arm. “Everything goes to the kitchen. Come along, I’ll show you.”

  Very smooth, Kate thought, grateful that Linda had taken charge. She would have given up Christmas to listen in on what they had to say to each other in the kitchen; they hadn’t spoken to each other for a long time.

  The rest of her guests clustered into groups. Theresa, Eddie, Justin, and Trinh played cribbage by the front window, while Reece, Ricardo, and Nana swapped limericks. Richie and Jena were off together in a corner pretending to look at a collection of snuffboxes in a small case. From a distance, Tejeda watched them. Kate went to him and slipped her arm around his waist.

  “Ah, young love,” she whispered.

  He smiled down at her. “You’d think the rest of us didn’t even exist. No one can be in love like the young.”

  “You’re wrong,” Kate said.

  “Ricardo!”

  Tejeda turned at the sound of his mother’s voice.

  “Ricardo, where’s the cranberry salad?”

  Kate reached up and turned Tejeda’s face back to her. “It’s just that the young don’t have so many distractions.”

  “Could be,” he laughed.

  Linda was scolding her husband. “I put it in your hand and sent you out to the car. What happened to it?”

  “I remember. I had the plate in my hand when I went into the garage.” Ricardo closed his eyes as if to visualize the fate of the cranberry salad. “Then you called out and said it was raining, so I put the plate down on the dryer to get an umbrella.”

  “Ricardo!” Linda gripped him by the shoulders, kissed his cheek hard, then threw up her hands. “I will never understand how you can take a sixty-piece marching band all the way across the country and never lose so much as a baton. But you can’t get one little salad from the kitchen out to the car.”

  “No one in the band sends me to get umbrellas.” He shrugged. “I suppose we can’t do without this confection?”

  “Thanksgiving with no cranberries?”

  “I’m going.” Ricardo flipped up the collar of his suit coat. “It’s raining, but I don’t mind driving all the way back to the house, because what is Thanksgiving without my wife’s lovely salad?”

  “Grandpa.” Theresa bounded over, smiling deviously. “I have my learner’s permit. Can I drive you?”

  “Let you drive?” he said with mock horror. “Let you use my own car to kill me?”

  “Kate?” Theresa sidled closer, her hands clasped prayerfully. “The Rolls?”

  “If Ricardo’s game, it’s okay with me.”

  Theresa alternately pushed and pulled her grandfather, who made a show of reluctance and fear, out to the foyer for raincoats and the car key. Laughing, Kate and Tejeda followed.

  “You’ll love this car, Grandpa. It’s like riding in a boat.” Theresa reached into the Chinese vase for the key. When she brought her hand out, she did a double-take, then held up a stubby aluminum key to Kate. “Haven’t seen this before.”

  “Me either.” Kate took the key and turned it over. The top was flat and square to accommodate some engraving.

  “Silver’s Meats,” she read aloud. “Locker one-oh-nine.”

  Tejeda grabbed her wrist. “Hang on,” he said as he reached for the red silk handkerchief in his father’s pocket. He draped the silk over the key and lifted it from Kate’s fingers. She watched a full range of emotions cross his face, from sheer terror to flushed anticipation, as he bent his head over the key.

  “So?” she said.

  “So? So, Theresa, ask Eddie to come out here, please. Then you stay with the others.”

  Theresa balked. “What about Grandma’s salad?”

  “We can do without cranberries for one Thanksgiving.”

  Cassie was there suddenly, hovering in the background like the ghost of Christmas past. “Do what your father said, Theresa.”

  Theresa gave her mother a quick vacant glance, then hurried off on her errand.

  Ricardo was quizzing Tejeda about the significance of the key, but Kate couldn’t pull her attention away from Cassie. She had an eerie gleam on her face; triumphant, Kate thought. And ethereal, as if she might evaporate. There was a
lot more going on behind Cassie’s doll-like face than a simple, sudden urge to see her family again. She was gathering information, Kate decided, remembering how she had watched and eavesdropped yesterday while Lance told Kate about his brother. Just as she was now. But information for what?

  A surge of panic shot through Kate’s unease. “Where’s Lance?” she asked.

  Tejeda rubbed the scar on his temple.

  Eddie Green came on the run. “What is it?”

  “Silver’s Meats.” Tejeda showed him the locker key. “Someone put this in the vase here.”

  “Jesus,” Eddie spat. “Kate, will you look after Justin? If I’m not back by eight, will you take him to his grandmother’s?”

  “Of course, Eddie. He’ll be fine.”

  “Damn,” he said. “I finally get my kid away from Libby, and this happens.”

  Tejeda nodded. “You might ask Libby how close she came to the Chinese vase.”

  “Not funny,” Eddie said.

  “No, it isn’t. Spud, I want uniforms posted on the doors.” Tejeda turned to his father. “Until the uniforms get here, I want you to play sheepdog. Don’t let anyone out alone, and be careful who you let in.”

  Eddie drew back. “Where do you think you’re going, Rog?”

  “With you.”

  “I can’t let you jeopardize yourself.”

  “Like hell.”

  Cassie took a few steps closer. “It’s happening all over again, isn’t it, Roger?”

  He wheeled on her. “Don’t be so goddamn dramatic, Cass. I’m a cop. This is police business.”

  “You used to be a cop,” she said. “Now you’re crazy. I’m taking the kids back to New Mexico with me tonight.”

  “You better ask them first,” he said.

  Kate put her hand on his arm. “Do you have to go?”

  “Yes. I have to go.”

  “Okay,” she said. “The proposition I made last night still stands.”

  “Yeah?” He took a deep breath and looked off into space. Then he smiled. “Proposition accepted.”

  15

  “What’s the matter, you guys run out of ways to harass the Silver family, you gotta pull me away from my dinner?”

  “Just unlock the door, Lou,” Tejeda sighed. He’d listened to Lou Silver grouse for a solid half-hour, nonstop, from the minute he had been served with a search warrant for his butcher shop. Because he was Arty Silver’s uncle, the whole routine was nothing new to Lou. So Tejeda wished he’d just open his shop and shut up about the turkey he had been preparing to carve, and about his widowed mother who had driven all the way from Van Nuys for dinner. No one else was complaining. In fact, Tejeda thought, the judge they’d rousted to sign the warrant would have come along if his in-laws hadn’t shown up early. He’d been damned curious to see where Arty Silver had learned how to use a butcher’s saw.

  Once inside, they split up: Lou and Eddie to the tiny office for the locker-rental books while Tejeda went ahead to turn on the lights in the cavernous meat-packing room. The place was frigid. Tejeda pulled the collar of his windbreaker up around his neck, but it didn’t do much good. He plunged his hands into his pockets and wondered how, in that cold, the smell of blood could be so strong.

  Lou was close behind him. When he stopped swearing long enough to look around, he nearly sobbed.

  “You leave in a hurry last night?” Tejeda asked. Lou only shook his head with dismay. Tejeda felt bad for him. He knew this meat business was Lou’s life, and he was proud about keeping it clean to strict kosher standards. He would never have locked up and left the crusty brown mess that was coagulating on and around the big center butcher block.

  “No more,” Lou muttered. He went to the big stainless sinks, turned on the hot water, and picked up a scrub brush.

  “You have to leave it, Lou,” Tejeda said, and turned off the spigot. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “I know the drill.” Lou slammed the scrub brush against the wall. “Damn kid. Damn fuckin’, stupid kid.”

  “What kid?” Eddie held the rental books in one hand and covered his nose with the other. “You know who made this mess, Lou?”

  “No, I don’t know who made this mess. But we all know who’s responsible. Damn,” he spat. “I try to do the right thing, give my brother’s kid a job so he can earn money for college. What do I get? A bleeding ulcer and a never-ending bellyful of grief.”

  “Why do you blame Arty?” Eddie asked. “He couldn’t have been here. I checked—Arty hasn’t left the lockup.”

  Lou sagged against the sink. “Can you lock up the devil?”

  Tejeda watched him grieve, feeling helpless. With the first kid he lured to his death, Arty had triggered an epidemic of grief. Every person touched seemed to deal with his affliction differently; some passively taking it as a scourge from God, others demanding retribution as if it were a curative drug. In the current round of events, Tejeda saw every stricken relative and friend as a wild card, an unpredictable free agent.

  When he added everyone involved, from Arty’s first victim to Wally Morrow, the possibilities loomed huge. Especially since the families of so many victims were in town for the start of Arty’s trial on Monday. And so were his friends.

  Tejeda shared some of Lou’s desperation. Like many others, Lou wanted nothing more than to be released from the endless reruns of Arty’s horror show.

  Lou had had a particularly heavy load. After Arty’s arrest, the police had found parts of three corpses frozen in Lou’s lockers. And, like Fred down at Clyde’s, Lou had come perilously close to losing the business he had spent a lifetime building.

  Lou was a hothead, and Tejeda could see him doing something stupid and drastic to be shed of Arty. Then he thought again and shook his head; Lou was too much of a wild card to call. Tonight, when they had picked him up, Arty’s parents had been seated at Lou’s dining-room table.

  Families of the dead, he thought, family of the killer; they all seemed to function from a sort of Sirhan Sirhan logic. Who could tell what any of them might do? Or why?

  “Coroner’s on his way over.” Tejeda put what he hoped was a reassuring hand on Lou’s shoulder. “We won’t keep you long.”

  Lou made an effort to pull himself together. “Sorry I flew off. I just can’t get used to the idea that Arty … Out of my brother’s three boys, Arty was always the good one. Honor student, track star. Everyone liked Arty.”

  “Not everyone,” Eddie said. “You come in this morning?”

  “No,” Lou said. “We worked late last night, getting our turkeys delivered.” He glanced at the mess on the chopping block. “Last thing, like always, I cleaned up.”

  “According to your books, locker one-oh-nine is rented to the Santa Angelica Gun Club.”

  “Was. The gun club rents a tier of lockers every fall for game birds they go out and shoot—you know, pheasants and quail and like that. Last couple days they been coming in to get their birds to have for Thanksgiving. That whole tier’s empty now. And it’ll stay that way till I can clean it—you never know what wild birds might leave behind. Like I said, we worked late last night. I was too tired to do the books.”

  “Where do you keep the keys?” Tejeda asked.

  “Rack, there by the freezer door.” Lou’s face clouded over. “But how did he get inside? I wasn’t that tired—I know I locked both the outside doors.”

  Eddie shrugged. “You still keep an emergency key somewhere in the neighborhood?”

  Tejeda watched Lou seem to fold in on himself. The breath he took before he answered took some effort. “There’s a key behind the toilet in the all-night market next door.”

  Vic Spago’s cigar stench announced his arrival. He came in arguing with his snappish crew of two about holiday overtime. When he saw Tejeda, he stopped in feigned shock. “Lieutenant, my friend, I thought you got the word. You can’t play with us anymore.”

  “I can do anything I damn well please,” Tejeda said, liking the way that sounded. He sti
ll wasn’t clear about the details, but the more he thought about it, the more sense Kate’s offer made. “As of Monday morning, if the Police Commission doesn’t promise to stay off my back, I’m taking early retirement.”

  Eddie gasped. “Like hell.”

  “Yeah.” Spago grinned. “Like hell.”

  “Exactly,” Tejeda said. “So, Vic, what’s first?”

  Spago exhaled a black plume. “Otis Washington always says he can smell human blood the instant he comes into a room. I can’t. I mean, I can smell blood, but I can’t tell what sort of beast it came from.”

  Vic scratched his balding head as he made a slow circuit around the butcher block, stumbling twice over Mark, his number-one assistant, who was taking flash pictures. “Anyone give me time parameters?”

  “I locked up at eleven last night,” Lou said.

  “And everything was spic and span?” He scraped a congealed pool with a scalpel blade. “Mark, get a blood titer here. Do tissue, hair, et cetera. Same shit we did in Oceanside this morning.”

  “Maybe you should look in the locker first,” Tejeda said. “If anything’s in there, you might want to see it before it gets any harder.”

  “What locker?” Vic snapped.

  “I told you on the phone,” Eddie said. “Roger found a key to locker one-oh-nine at his house.”

  “You said he found a key to Silver’s Meats.” Vic picked up a black evidence case. “You didn’t say anything about a locker. Come on, Mark. That’ll keep.”

  He stopped and thumped Lou on the back. “Is this déjà vu, or what?”

  “Shit, Doc.” Lou shook his head. “You know where the freezer coats are.”

  Mark went ahead like the king’s vanguard for pictures. Tejeda stood in the doorway outside the huge walk-in freezer and watched him through a fog of condensation.

  “God, look at the prints,” Mark said. “Ask Vic if the laser fingerprint unit will work in a freezer.”

  “Tell him, who knows?” Vic yelled. “We never tried it.”

  Vic was pulling on a pair of heavy gloves. “You know, Lieutenant, I was hoping the Commission would lay you up for a while.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I need a little rest.” He crushed out a spent cigar and lit a new one. “I was up a good part of the night with Otis, working on your limb. Thought I’d get a little sleep before the family came over, but Eddie here dragged me down to Oceanside.”