Scent of Roses ; Season of Strangers

by Kat Martin

  “But what?”

  “There’s something there,” Zach said. “We’re trying to find out what it is. If you would cooperate—”

  “Forget it. I’m not about to encourage any of this. There is nothing the least bit wrong with that house. In fact, the inspectors thought it was in very good condition—you told me that yourself. Now I’m telling you—stay out of Harcourt business. If you don’t, it’s going to be the Santiagos who suffer.”

  Turning on his heel, Carson stormed out the door, leaving them standing there staring after him. The door slammed so hard the sound reverberated through the whole apartment.

  “Sometimes I actually do hate him,” Zach said darkly.

  “If he does fire Miguel, the family will really be in trouble. Jobs are hard to find, especially one that pays well and includes housing, and they’ve got a baby on the way. What are we going to do?”

  Zach paced over to the window. “I promised Raul I’d do whatever it took to help him and his sister. I’m not going to break my word.” He turned to face her. “We’re going to do exactly what we’ve been doing. We’ll just be more careful about it.”

  “How do you think he found out?”

  “Carson’s got a long reach in this town. We’ll have to find a way to get around it. I’ll get word to Mariano Nunez. I’ve got to go back to L.A. tonight, but I’ll try to set up a meeting as soon as possible.”

  “You think he’ll show up?”

  He nodded. “There’s a little cantina he and his friends hang out in at the edge of town. I can get him to meet me there. I’ll find out if Espinoza’s wife had a miscarriage and if he knows of any other women in the old house who lost their unborn children. In the meantime, I want you to go back to the newspaper and run that list of names.”

  They had a fairly complete list now. It would make the research a lot easier. “There’s an alphabetical index of names found in each paper,” she said. “I’ll call my office in the morning and have Terry cancel my appointments. I want to go over to the paper first thing.” She glanced up. “What if Carson finds out?”

  A muscle tightened along Zach’s jaw. “If he wants to play hardball, two can play the game. They’ve got a strong farm union in this town. Even Carson doesn’t like going up against those guys. He tries to fire Miguel without cause, and I’ll have the union all over him. Carson likes things to run nice and smooth. Problems with the union are the last thing he wants.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She walked to where he stood at the window. Outside, two little boys played kickball on the lawn in front of the apartment building. She wondered if she’d ever have a child of her own. What kind of a father would Zachary Harcourt make? She thought of him with the kids at Teen Vision and the amazing thought struck that he would probably make a good one.

  She took a breath, her chest suddenly tight. Unfortunately, Zach wasn’t the type of guy to make the kind of long-term commitment it took to raise a child.

  She turned away from the window, walked over to the sofa. “I wish I could call Maria, make sure she’s all right, but Miguel wouldn’t like it, and I don’t want to cause her any more trouble.”

  Zach moved behind her, slid his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him. “We’re doing the best we can. Maybe something will turn up tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth hoped so.

  She wasn’t sure what kind of danger Maria and her baby might be facing, but whenever she thought of the night she had spent in the house, she believed, soul deep, that danger was real.

  * * *

  Elizabeth left her office early Monday morning, drove down Main, then turned onto Fifth Street, heading for the redbrick newspaper building three blocks away.

  She was thinking about the list she carried in her purse when she glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed another car turning the corner, a dark green pickup she had seen several times before. The day she had gone to So Cal Edison, she had noticed the truck two cars behind her. She remembered because another car had turned sharply in front of the truck and there had nearly been a collision, would have been if the driver of the truck hadn’t fiercely blown his horn.

  The pickup was there again today, three cars back. She passed the entrance to the newspaper office and instead of turning in, kept on going. She pulled through the drive-thru at McDonald’s, ordered coffee and an egg McMuffin, then turned back onto Main and turned into the parking lot behind her office.

  As she parked the car in one of the empty spaces, she saw the truck drive slowly past. She didn’t recognize the occupant, a large man in a short-sleeved, checkered shirt wearing a battered straw cowboy hat.

  Was he following her?

  Surely not. She was just getting paranoid.

  Still, she didn’t want Carson to know what she was up to. She didn’t want to risk Miguel’s job.

  Walking into her office, she made a couple of phone calls then went through a few of her client files. When a half hour had passed, she walked out the front door and made her way the few blocks over to the newspaper office.

  The pickup was nowhere in sight. She just hoped the lady at the front desk wasn’t somehow in touch with Carson.

  “I’d like to do a little more work with the microfiche,” she said to the gray-haired woman.

  “Help yourself.” The woman continued to type away on her computer. “You know where everything is.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Elizabeth made her way back to the room with the file cabinets and microfiche readers. She had already checked the names on Mariano’s list, but now she had Fletcher Harcourt’s more extensive list, which went a lot farther back.

  As she moved through the years, starting clear back in the late nineteen fifties, she saw a couple of names that matched the ones in her notepad. Same name, different people, as it turned out. After she had pulled the actual newspaper article, she’d discovered that none were occupants of the house.

  Another name appeared. A guy named Vincent Malloy that Fletcher Harcourt had mentioned living there in the early sixties was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. In nineteen sixty-five, a man named Ricardo Lopez was killed in a car wreck on Highway 51.

  Elizabeth sighed and returned to the master index for the next ten years, comparing the names on her list to the names on the microfiche. It was eleven o’clock straight up, the morning slipping away when another of the names in her notebook appeared.

  Consuela Martinez. Below it, listed alphabetically, the name of her husband, Hector, also appeared. The index covered the decade of the nineteen seventies, which, according to Zach’s father, didn’t match the time frame the Martinezes had occupied the house. But the older man’s memory was hardly reliable.

  Elizabeth blinked as her eye ran down the sheet of microfiche and she saw the two names listed half a dozen times.

  Returning again to the file cabinet, she plucked out the roll of microfiche that covered the earliest newspaper article containing Hector and Consuela Martinez’s names, September 15, 1972. The reel hummed and slowed as she searched for that date then found it. It took a while to locate the article, which was halfway down the page. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw it.

  Fresno Couple Arrested For Murder.

  Her pulse began to drum. She hurriedly scanned the article, then read it again. By the time she had finished, her heart was beating wildly, her mouth cotton dry.

  According to the article, the Fresno couple that had resided for a brief time in San Pico, had been arrested for the kidnap and brutal slaying of a twelve-year-old girl. The child had been sexually abused before her death, and according to the article, both the man and his wife had been charged with the murder, which had taken place in their home.

  Stunned, Elizabeth sat back in her chair. Though the crime had happened in Fresno, not in the house at Harcourt Farms, the violence of
the act, the fact that the murder had happened in the couple’s home and that the victim had been a child, simply could not be ignored.

  For the next half hour, Elizabeth found, read and printed every article in the San Pico newspaper that mentioned the Martinez couple. Since at the time they were no longer residents of the area, the coverage was slim, with only sketchy information on the girl who had been killed and few actual details of the crime.

  There was an item in the paper before the upcoming trial, then another when the couple was convicted of the murder. The most prominent article was headlined Hector Martinez Sentenced to Death. Because of the brutal nature of the crime, the jury had recommended the death penalty and the judge had agreed. Martinez’s wife was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

  The last date listed on the index card was August 25, 1984, nearly twelve years after the couple was first arrested. It was a report in the Newspress printed the day after Hector Martinez was executed in the gas chamber in San Quentin State Penitentiary.

  Tired but excited, Elizabeth picked up the material she had printed and left the office. The murder in Fresno might be completely unrelated. That the couple had once lived in the house in San Pico might simply be coincidence.

  But something told Elizabeth she had just stumbled onto the clue that could help them find the answers to the frightening occurrences happening in the Santiago house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sitting behind his desk, Zach listened as Elizabeth recounted the disturbing information she had dredged up at the newspaper office that morning. What she told him sent chills down his spine.

  “I think this is important, Zach.”

  “So do I. I’ve got to finish out the day, but I’ll be up there late tonight.”

  “Tonight? You’re taking time off from work?”

  “I’d pretty much already decided. I spoke to my partner, Jon Noble, this morning. He said he’d cover for me during the week. Then Dr. Marvin called. He wants to talk to me and Carson about a new surgical procedure. He’s going to be up in San Pico on Wednesday to take another look at my dad. He wants to see both of us when he gets there.”

  “That’s great, Zach. Maybe this is the chance you’ve been waiting for.”

  “I hope so. In the meantime, I need to speak to Mariano again. I can’t forget the frightening things that happened to us that night in the house and I can’t help thinking about Maria. We’ve got to find out what’s going on. If Maria and her baby really are in danger, time is running out for them.”

  “She’s eight months pregnant. This is a crucial time for her.”

  “Did any of the articles you read give a description of the girl?”

  “No, they just gave her name, Holly Ives. But she was twelve, not eight or nine.”

  “We still need to know more about her. Tomorrow we’ll drive up to Fresno, see what else we can find out.”

  “I’ll clear my calendar.”

  Zach hung up the phone, wondering if the murdered girl might have had blond hair and blue eyes. From what he’d read, it seemed a stretch to think the apparition Maria had described was the girl murdered in Fresno, since her death took place more than a hundred miles away, but this was the first lead they’d had and they needed to look at any possible connection.

  Zach checked his wristwatch. The hour was slipping toward closing. He had a couple more things to do before he’d be finished for the day, then he needed to go by his apartment to pack some clothes. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to be in San Pico, but he’d made up his mind he wasn’t going to leave until he had kept his word to Raul and his sister.

  Until he somehow managed to solve the riddle of the terrifying happenings in the house.

  * * *

  It was just before five o’clock, nearly time for the day to end. Elizabeth walked her last client to the door then returned to her office to retrieve her purse and a couple of files she wanted to take home with her that night.

  “I’ll see you on Wednesday,” she said to Terry, who was shutting down the computer on the receptionist’s desk, getting ready to leave. As Elizabeth had promised, she had cleared her schedule for Tuesday, saying only that she was working on a case that involved some research in Fresno.

  Terry stuck a pencil into her short, frosted-blond hair. It was moussed into a hi-tech style that looked surprisingly good on Terry. She was tall and athletically built, smart and a hard worker, an asset to their small office staff.

  “Anything special you need me to do, just call,” Terry said.

  “I will. And I’ll have my cell phone with me. Don’t hesitate to call if a problem comes up.”

  Dr. James was already gone for the day. A couple of times, he had asked about Maria and her “ghost,” but Elizabeth had merely said she had been trying to help the girl straighten things out. There was no way Michael was going to believe Maria Santiago had actually seen a ghost.

  The truth was, Elizabeth had a hard time believing it herself.

  She was walking over to lock the front door when the knob turned and a familiar, red-haired woman stepped into the waiting room.

  “I was hoping I’d catch you before you left for the night,” Gwen Petersen said with a smile.

  “Your timing’s perfect.” Elizabeth returned her friend’s smile. “I was just getting ready to leave.” She flicked a glance at Terry. “I’ll lock up. Have a good night and I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

  Terry waved and headed out the back door.

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” Elizabeth said to Gwen. “I’ve been thinking about you all week. I’ve been meaning to phone. I just got so busy.”

  “Seems like everybody’s been a little crazy lately. That’s why I decided to see if I could catch you.”

  “How about a Diet Coke or something? There are usually some sodas in the fridge.”

  “Sounds great. It’s really hot out there.” Gwen followed Elizabeth into the little kitchen/lounge at the back of the office and settled herself at the tiny wooden table. Elizabeth opened the door of the fridge and pulled out a soda. She divided the contents, pouring the liquid into a couple of glasses, and then joined her friend at the table.

  Gwen took a sip of her drink. “So you’ve been working hard lately?”

  “I’ve been putting in some pretty long hours. Like I said, I meant to call but the time just slipped away.”

  “That happens sometimes.” Gwen wasn’t much for small talk. And looking at her now, there was something in her face that made Elizabeth wary.

  “You don’t usually come by the office. Is there something in particular on your mind?”

  Gwen set her glass down on the table. “Actually there is.” She ran a finger over the moisture on the outside of the glass, making abstract designs in the condensation. “Jim and I were having dinner out at The Ranch House. On my way to the ladies’ room, I ran into Lisa Doyle.”

  Elizabeth’s lips curved in a smile that wasn’t. “I’m sure she sends her best.”

  “Actually, I think she’d like to cut out your heart with a dull-edged knife.”

  “She already did that. Tell her she’ll have to think of something else.”

  Gwen didn’t smile. “Lisa says you’re sleeping with Zachary Harcourt.”

  Elizabeth’s hand shook as she reached for her glass, picked it up, and took a long drink of diet soda. “I don’t think who I’m sleeping with is any of Lisa’s business.”

  “It wouldn’t be my business either if you weren’t my best friend.”

  It was true. They rarely kept secrets from each other and this secret was a ten on the Richter scale. “Zach and I are working on a case together.”

  “Really. What kind of case?”

  “Zach is heavily involved in Teen Vision. Most people don’t know it, but he’s
actually the person who founded the place.”

  A sleek red eyebrow arched up. “I thought it was Carson’s project.”

  “Apparently attaching Carson’s name makes it easier for them to raise money. At any rate, Zach’s helping one of the kids in the program. I’m trying to help the boy’s sister. We thought working together might get better results.”

  “So it’s just business. You aren’t really involved with him.”

  Elizabeth glanced away. It was impossible to lie to Gwen. “We’re seeing each other. Just on weekends, or whenever he’s in town.”

  Gwen’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God, then it’s true. You’re sleeping with Zachary Harcourt!”

  Elizabeth shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant when that wasn’t the least how she felt. “We’re both adults. We can do whatever we want.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Elizabeth swallowed. The astonished look on Gwen’s face reminded her that she had once felt exactly the same. Memories rushed back of the man Zach had been when she was in high school—wild, reckless, uncaring. Women meant nothing to him. He liked them easy and only for a night or two. He lived up to his high school nickname in a very predatory way.

  “I mean, I can understand the attraction,” Gwen went on, “any woman could—but that just makes getting involved with him even worse.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” Elizabeth defended, trying to shake off the memories, trying to convince herself. “It’s purely a physical thing. Neither of us is looking for a long-term relationship.”

  Gwen leaned toward her across the table. “Who are trying to kid, Liz? Zach or yourself? This is your best friend you’re talking to. I’ve known you for years and we both know you aren’t the kind of woman who goes in for casual sex.”

  Elizabeth glanced away. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t want to hear her own thoughts put into words. “For the most part, no, but this is different. It’s been a long time since I’ve been sexually attracted to a man—and never the way I’m attracted to Zach. I wanted to know what it felt like—just this once. There’s nothing wrong with that.”