“Right. That’s what I said. Don’t break my balls, Bear. Cruz is a brown-skinned woman working in the kitchen of a white woman’s house in Sugar Land, Texas. I was not out of line to assume Cruz was a maid. And unlike you, I don’t think there’s anything shameful in being a maid or disrespectful in thinking that’s what Cruz is.”
I would work on that one later.
“And did you find anything of note on Graham’s computer or papers?”
“You mean all of twenty-four hours after we picked them up and less than seven after we’ve inventoried everything? We’re still going through them. I thought the firm trying to pick up ‘firm property’ on the very day Garcia died was a little hasty, that’s all. It caught my attention. I don’t know that there’s more to it than good fiduciary duty.”
“You read John Grisham?”
“I do. With pleasure. I don’t use his books to solve crimes.”
“Then what did you learn?” I asked.
“Oh, that Honey has a dad who has a textbook case of megalomania.”
“Textbooks don’t list megalomania anymore.”
“But HD Parker fits the definition, doesn’t he?”
“Give me your definition.”
“Delusional dreams of wealth and power.”
“Parker isn’t delusional about those things. He’s the real thing. Or he was once. But yeah, he’s a piece of work. What did you learn from Alex?” I asked him.
“Let’s see, more than you might imagine, considering he barely said a word to me, and wouldn’t answer most of my questions, and hardly looked at me.”
I tried not to smile. “He was taking his cues from his lawyer.” God bless Glenn Carter for sending someone sharp.
He shook his head. “I think he saw the lawyer’s presence as an insult. He definitely saw his mother’s presence as an insult. Alex did his best to ignore them both. And that attitude. Umm. I guess I saw that as a point in his favor. He doesn’t seem afraid, not the way I’d expect him to be, not for himself.”
“So what did you learn?”
“That he was out all night the night his father was killed. Strictly speaking, Garcia was killed in the morning, but Alex wasn’t home when it happened.”
“You knew that yesterday.”
“That his truck, a very distinctive, eye-catching truck, was seen parked at the Avalon Community Center around two in the morning. You know where that is? Where the tennis courts are?”
That wasn’t good news. If it was true, it meant Alex’s truck was parked just down from where Graham was killed. A sidewalk led from the parking lot up to the levee and then skirted the golf course right past what I was coming to think of as the murder scene.
I said, “His isn’t the only truck of its kind in the whole wide world.”
“No, but it may well be the only one of its kind in First Colony; I’m having that checked.”
“Did he say the truck was his?”
“He didn’t deny it.”
“That’s not the same as confirming it.”
He swung his leg down and leaned forward, elbows on thighs, hands clasped loosely between his knees.
“Not in a court of law it isn’t, Mr. Wells. I’m not trying to build a case against Alex Garcia; I’m trying to find out what happened that night. I’m trying to find out the truth. You know, the truth will set you free.” He smiled at me.
I was afraid the truth might not set Alex Garcia free.
“It doesn’t seem like much to go on, does it?” I asked. “Lots of teenage boys stay out overnight, racing their cars, probably smoking pot in the greenbelts,” I hesitated. “You know what a greenbelt is? Those strips of park the developers use to separate subdivisions?”
I got a look from Wanderley.
“Okay. Just being clear. Anyway, the Avalon parking lot is a favorite make-out spot. Or so I’ve heard. Why would Alex have killed his dad anyway? Far as I know, father and son got along fine.”
“How far do you know, Mr. Wells?”
And there it was, the great difficulty. How far did I know? How far did I go on faith? And where did I place my faith? Not in men, and certainly not in chariots and horses, or whatever their modern equivalent might be.
Beyond the portion that is revealed to me, I don’t have any idea what on earth goes on behind the members of my congregation’s closed doors. I don’t know what temptations beset them, I don’t know what demons they wrestle, I don’t know which of them cry themselves to sleep, I don’t know who is enslaved to addictions that ride them ragged, I don’t know who is on their knees all night praying and hearing no answer, I don’t know who walks out of church, smile on his face and clap on the back to go home and beat his wife and children bloody or to excoriate coworkers with words sharper than glass shards. I don’t know.
I trust in the encompassing love of God, but I know from experience that that love allows horrors on this earth. In short—not that I ever am—I didn’t have one clue whether Alex Garcia might have a motive for killing his father. I didn’t know but that Alex might feel he had a very good reason for killing his father.
I said, “I don’t know.”
Wanderley drew something from his pocket and held it concealed in his hand. “The witness who told us about the truck? He told us it looked like there were two people sitting in the cab.”
“Really? So Alex might have someone who could alibi him? Obviously, he didn’t tell you who it was, or you would have said, but do you have any ideas?”
Wanderley reached his arm out toward me and opened his fingers. A stream of gold slipped out. A heavy rose-gold chain dangled from his finger and at the end of it swung a gold locket, engraved initials twined together. The initials were J.W. for Josephine Wells. It was my mother’s locket, until she gave it away. To Jo.
Wanderley said, “I have an idea.”
Fifteen
My heart didn’t stop, nothing that dramatic, but it did give an extra skip before I could get a hold of myself. My body flooded with adrenaline and I had that high-alert feeling. I took the locket from Detective Wanderley and looked at it, slid my thumbnail in the groove, and popped it open. On the left-hand side was a picture of my dad, taken in his uniform. The picture used to be on the right-hand side. On Jo’s thirteenth birthday, Mom made a “now you are a woman” speech and then opened the locket. She had moved Dad’s picture to the left-hand side.
“That way, Jo,” Mom said, “when you put in your own sweetie’s picture, his picture will lie against your heart.”
The sweetheart face looking back at me from the right-hand side of the locket was Jo’s. And next to hers, Alex Garcia’s.
I snapped the locket shut as if I could shut out what I had just seen and closed my fingers around it. I leaned back and rested my elbows on the arms of the chair. It was important to look relaxed and unconcerned even if my mind was whirring like a hamster wheel.
“So you recognize the necklace?” Wanderley said. The jerk.
“How did you recognize it?” I asked.
“You mean besides the fact that it’s got her initials on it? And that she’s in it?” He gave a nod toward the picture I have on the wall. “She’s wearing it in the portrait.”
“You saw her picture once and you recognized that locket? You must have been damn good at Concentration when you were a kid.”
He grinned. “I was.”
“Alex had it?” I asked.
“He was wearing it around his neck. Under his shirt, but the chain showed and I asked to see it. It looks better on her.”
“He just showed it to you? Handed it over just like that?” Not very gallant.
“He didn’t know I wasn’t going to give it right back. He was not happy with me when I told him I wanted to keep it awhile. But yeah, he showed it to me. He’s proud of it. He’s proud of Jo.”
Again, I felt my heart do something weird. I’m proud of Jo. I am. I mean, she’s not at her best. Her grades have only recently begun to be acceptable, and only ba
rely acceptable, and she quit all her school sports, and Heaven knows she’s hard to live with. She’s not where Merrie was at the same age, and there’s no getting around the fact that that’s going to cost her come college application time, but she’ll catch up. If she applies herself.
Wanderley said, “I promised him I’d make sure Jo got it.”
Then he held out his hand as if he thought I was going to give him the locket. Cretin.
“I’ll take care of the locket,” I said. I dropped it in the breast pocket of my shirt.
“I told Alex I’d see to it Jo got it back.”
He was insisting, still holding out his hand like some Sunday school teacher asking for a pilfered crayon.
I looked at him, not saying anything, and after a moment he withdrew his hand and put it in his jacket pocket like nothing had happened.
“I guess I can tell Alex you’ll give it to Jo.”
“You can.”
And I will, too. When she’s thirty.
“I would like to talk to Jo about Monday night; Alex didn’t say she was there, but—”
“That’s not going to happen, I can tell you right now.”
“Listen, Bear, I’m not saying your daughter was involved—”
I stood up. “You better not be; I’d have a phalanx of lawyers crawling all over you in the time it took you to draw a good breath, and if you make so much as a—”
That sentence remained unfinished because that’s when Annie Laurie walked in with a big brown bag under one arm. She stopped when she saw Detective Wanderley.
“I’m so sorry, Bear, I tried to call but I kept getting voice mail so I came on up with dinner. I’ll wait out in the reception.”
“No, we’re done, Annie, go ahead and set up dinner, I’ll see Detective Wanderley to his car.”
That was as clear a dismissal as anyone could ask for. Wanderley stood up and made a big point of walking over to Annie and taking her hand, saying he was sorry he wasn’t going to have a chance to visit.
Annie said, “I’ve made plenty if you’d like to stay and have dinner with Bear and me. You know you’re welcome.”
I bit my tongue.
Wanderley turned and looked at me and smiled big. He was still holding Annie’s hand. I was starting to perspire and I was saying “Let the words of my mouth” over and over in my head so fast that they weren’t words anymore, more like a mantra.
Wanderley gave Annie’s hand a final squeeze. “I’ll have to take you up on that thoughtful offer another time, Mrs. Wells. Got to get back to the office.”
He strolled out of my office and I followed him down the stairs. People were drifting into the building. On Tuesdays, along with the sundry adult meetings in the building, the youth group brings in fast food and they eat together and then have a devotional; that’s how Annie and I had gotten into the habit of having dinner together in my office. Wanderley scanned the foyer, noticing everyone: the clusters, the couples, the loners.
Wanderley saw Jo and her friend Ashley Spenser before I did. Ashley was holding a Taco Bell bag. Jo was holding an apple. They were talking. Must have been some pretty important girl stuff; Jo had her mouth about an inch from Ashley’s ear and my daughter was incandescent with excitement. Ashley’s eyes were as big as duck eggs while she listened, and she squeezed her Taco Bell bag in a way I knew couldn’t be good for her burritos.
Maybe Jo was saying, “Hey, Ashley! I got to watch my boyfriend brain his daddy the other night!” I gave myself a shake. A mental shake. At least I hope it was only a mental shake, what with eagle-eyed Detective Wanderley right next to me, taking everything in.
Wanderley slowed when we passed and said, “Hello, Jo.” She looked up, not recognizing him, her glance at me a question.
I took him by the elbow to keep him going and called over my shoulder, “Aren’t you ladies supposed to be with Brick now? Go on up to your classroom.” Jo rolled her eyes but headed up to her class.
“I’ve never been hustled out of church before, Bear. Do you use that move a lot?” Wanderley said. Then he put the brakes on, near the door where five or six teens were grouped. He shook me loose and walked up to Emma Tilton. I thought he must know her.
Emma is an unhappy sixteen-year-old. She’s heavy, and not very pretty. She’s gone the Goth route, the way a lot of heavy girls seem to, and the look didn’t work any better on her than it does on most of them. She doesn’t have a lot of friends, even here. We have failed her that way, all of us at the church.
Wanderley took Emma’s hand in his. The group of teens turned as one to watch the scene.
He said, his voice clear and carrying, “You have eyes like dark purple pansies. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Then he took her hand and put his mouth close to her ear and whispered something. Wanderley drew back, kissed the knuckles of her hand, and winked at her. He strode out of the church. Emma stared. All the teens stared. I stared, too.
I hurried out after Wanderley and caught him as he was pulling the keys out of his pocket.
I stopped at his car and put my hands on the hood, leaning my weight against the car. It shifted away from me; I was pressing that hard. Right then I felt like I could push his car right over. I could have. I’d abandoned “Let the words” and had resorted to “Please, God, please, God, please, God.” I took a moment until I could feel some of His peace calming me.
“Wanderley, are you deliberately trying to get me to lose my temper?”
That surprised him, my being so direct. He pulled himself up straight, looking professional. “Wells, I’m only trying to find out the—”
“What was that in there? With Emma?”
“You’re mad because I complimented that girl?”
“I want to know what you were up to—she’s all of sixteen, and it’s hard for me to believe—”
“Bear. Did you think I was coming on to that girl? What I was doing, Bear, is what someone should have done a long time ago. I saw that girl. And I made it possible for all your perfect High School Musical–type kids to see—what did you say her name was, Emma?—with new eyes. She was invisible in your church, Bear. No one saw her but me.”
I took the time to think before I opened my mouth. I do that sometimes.
“What did you say to her? In her ear? All close and secret?”
Wanderley looked tickled. “Bear, you think I seduce children? I’ll tell you what I said.” His face got serious. “I said, ‘No matter what, don’t tell anyone what I’m whispering in your ear. It’s our secret, and if you tell, you’ll break the magic.’”
Now the detective looked mad. “And if you don’t think I worked magic, Bear, wait until you walk back into that building where all you good-looking Christians let a lonely girl stand alone, by herself, with no one to talk to. I don’t know if you preach about that sort of thing, preacher, but the God I read about? Don’t I remember something like, ‘Whatever you don’t do for the least of my brothers, you didn’t do it for me’?”
He didn’t have it exact, but it was close enough. Too close for comfort certainly.
“All right,” I said. “You’re right. I’ll see what I can do about it.” That meant I was in a pickle because I sure haven’t figured out how to get kids to accept someone they don’t want to accept. Another problem to fit on a plate that was overloaded.
“Emma could be Jo, Bear. She could be Molly. I couldn’t stand to see Molly in a corner all by herself.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. I couldn’t. I had a vision of one of my precious girls isolated the way poor Emma was. I made a resolution to find some way to help Emma.
I said, “Listen, Wanderley, I want to help you. I do. I’m not some bleeding heart who thinks cops are bad and murderers are misunderstood. Graham Garcia was a child of God and his blood cries out from the ground. I want you to catch his killer. And I want to be a help to you if I can be.”
Wanderley started to say something but I held up my hand.
&nb
sp; “Let me finish. Every time we’re together, I feel like you’re setting traps for me. But I don’t think I’m a suspect, am I?”
Wanderley looked up at me from under those black eyebrows. He was standing head down with his hands on his hips, pinky fingers hooked in his back pockets.
“Not yet, you’re not.”
My jaw dropped and he grinned that wicked grin. He gave my arm a punch and got in his car, unrolled the window. As he pulled out, he stuck his head through the window and said, “We’ll be talking, preacher. I’ll try to work on my ‘people skills.’”
Cara Phelps, Autumn Flagg, and Becky Bell were all huddled around Emma when I walked back into the church. Her face was glowing. Those pansy eyes were glowing, too. I could see Brandon Ridley and Zachary Zhou watching Emma, too, something appraising in their look. Wanderley was right. He had worked magic. And Emma Tilton did have eyes like pansies. Wanderley made us all see her. She wasn’t invisible anymore.
Dr. Fallon stopped me to say a word before I could get back to my office. He leads the New Members class, and to save my life, I couldn’t tell you what it was he asked me—I had other things on my mind.
By the time I got back to my office, I had only half an hour to eat before the beginning of the self-help groups, divorce recovery, AA, the church choir practices, that sort of thing. It was a good thing I wasn’t leading a group this quarter; I’m not sure I could have talked sense.
Annie had already eaten. She had my dinner set out on the coffee table, on the blue-and-white-checked tablecloth she’d made in junior high. A big roast beef sandwich on French bread, with a Styrofoam cup of spicy broth to dunk it in, plus carrot and celery sticks. There were homemade chocolate chip cookies there, too, lumpy with pecans from my Aunt Sue’s farm. I gave Annie a kiss before I started eating. I was starving.
She waited patiently for me to finish my meal and was picking up the mess when she finally asked, “What was that all about?”
I checked my wristwatch. “We need to be in the divorce recovery group in five minutes, sweetie. Can I tell you about it later?”
Faithful Unto Death Page 12
