Scent of Roses ; Season of Strangers

by Kat Martin

  “No there isn’t. But in this case, there are other things to consider.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that Zach’s a loner and always will be. He was when we were kids and he still is. Lisa can handle a guy like that. Sex means nothing to her. You aren’t that way.”

  No, she was nothing like Lisa. She had said those same words to Zach, but he had convinced her it didn’t matter.

  “I really like him, Gwen. He’s nothing like he was back then. He cares about those boys at Teen Vision. When I’m with him, I feel like he cares about me.”

  “Maybe he does,” Gwen said gently. “Maybe he cares a great deal. But in the end, he’ll leave. That’s the way he’s always been, the way he always will be.”

  Elizabeth glanced away, her throat suddenly tight. “I know you’re right. It could never work between us. But I’m not ready to give him up. Not yet. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  Gwen reached over and squeezed her hand. “The guy’s a hunk, no question. Just don’t let him in too deep. Don’t let him break your heart.”

  Elizabeth made no reply. She had a very bad feeling it was already too late.

  * * *

  On his way into San Pico, Zach stopped by the little cantina, La Fiesta, at the edge of town on the off-chance Mariano Nunez might be there with some of his friends. For once luck was with him. The old man was on his way out as Zach walked in.

  “Señor Harcourt,” the overseer said with a friendly smile. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”

  “I stopped on the chance you might be here. I’ve got a couple more questions I was hoping you might answer. How ’bout I buy you a beer?”

  The old man’s smile widened and Zach noticed one of his bottom teeth was missing. “Gracias, señor. It is still hot outside.”

  Zach ordered a couple of Dos Equis and they sat down at one of the battered wooden tables at the back of the bar. The smell of green peppers and roasting meat drifted out from the kitchen at the back of the room.

  “I thought maybe you could tell me a little more about the Espinoza family.”

  While Zach sipped his beer, Mariano talked easily about his friends, answering Zach’s questions. Speaking partly in Spanish, he told Zach that Juan’s wife had borne him a number of children over the years. Six, as he recalled, but none had arrived after the couple had moved into the old gray house.

  “My father mentioned something about Señora Espinoza losing a child,” Zach said, getting to the subject he had come to discuss. “Do you remember anything about that?”

  Mariano frowned, the lines in his weathered face etching more deeply into his nut-brown skin. “Sís, I remember. She was carrying their seventh child when Juan got one of the overseer’s jobs and moved his family into the house.”

  “What happened?”

  Mariano shook his head, moving the long gray hair around his ears. “She got sick or something. She lost the child and they moved away a few months later. I was sorry to see them go.”

  “Do you recall what year it happened?”

  “The family moved away in the fall of nineteen seventy-two. I remember because I had to help find a replacement for Juan. It was not an easy thing to do.”

  Zach took a swig of his beer and set the icy bottle back down on the table. He couldn’t help wondering if Señora Espinoza had seen the ghost Maria claimed to have seen, if perhaps she had received the same dire warning and paid it no heed.

  He shoved back his chair and came to his feet. “Thank you, Mariano. You’ve been a big help.”

  The old man grinned. “It is good to talk of old times.”

  Zach just nodded. Maybe it was good for Mariano, but the information he’d just received made Zach’s insides churn.

  Señora Espinoza had birthed six healthy children before she moved into the old gray house. She had lost the seventh baby and shortly after that, the family had moved away.

  Perhaps it was only coincidence.

  The knot in Zach’s stomach told him it wasn’t.

  * * *

  The drive through the San Joaquin Valley took a little over three hours. Fresno was a valley town much like the other small towns around it, flat and dusty, sprawling ever outward. Except that the city itself was bigger, with multistoried buildings downtown and several freeways spewing traffic from one end to the other, the surrounding farmland more likely planted with vineyards and orchards than cotton.

  Leaning back in the passenger seat, Elizabeth watched the passing landscape with little thought to her surroundings. Her mind was on Zach and the conversation she’d had with Gwen at the office yesterday after work.

  Though she had tried to ignore Gwen’s warning and had succeeded somewhat when Zach had arrived last night, in the bright light of morning, her friend’s ominous words sat in the back of her mind like a bitter lump of poison. As she looked over at Zach’s handsome face, she couldn’t help thinking of the Lone Wolf he had been and always would be.

  She’d been a fool to get involved with him and she knew it, and the urge to run grew stronger by the moment. Or at least the desire to reconstruct the wall she had once put between them.

  She would do it, she told herself, but not today. Today she needed Zach’s help. She had a frightened young woman to protect and a murder to unravel. Perhaps today they would find the answer to the mystery of the house.

  She shifted in her seat as the town of Fresno approached through the smaze, a local combination of smoke and haze hanging over the valley. Zach pulled the Jeep off the 99 Freeway and headed through town to E Street and the building that housed the Fresno Bee.

  As always, it was hot, the late August heat permeating the car the instant the doors swung open in the parking lot. Neither of them spoke as they made their way inside the structure, up to the receptionist’s desk.

  “May I help you?” asked an older, heavyset woman with at least two chins and a weary expression that said she was bored with the job she’d been doing for too many years.

  “We need to look at your old newspaper files,” Elizabeth told her, following the same approach she had used in San Pico.

  The woman nodded, jiggling her chins. “I’ll have someone come out and show you where to find the records.”

  The receptionist was helpful and the rest of the staff friendly. They spent the balance of the morning poring over old newspaper records, reading and printing every article they could find on Hector and Consuela Martinez, starting with the day the kidnapping of Holly Ives had been reported, the couple’s arrest, the trial, and the twelve years that followed, until Hector’s execution in 1984. One last small notice reported Consuela’s death from cancer in 1995 during a life-sentence term in the women’s prison in Chowchilla.

  “Take a look at this.” Elizabeth handed Zach a copy of the article she had just printed. “This was published the day after Holly was reported missing. It gives a detailed description of what she looked like.”

  Zach took the article and skimmed the words. “It says she had brown hair and hazel eyes.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Which means she can’t be the ghost Maria claims to have seen.”

  “Apparently not. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really think she would be. The age wasn’t right and it happened too far away.”

  “I couldn’t help hoping. I still think there’s a connection.”

  “So do I.” Zach skimmed a couple more articles, reading them in chronological order. “Here, look at this.” He handed her a printout of the article he’d been reading, and a shudder rippled through her.

  Body of Victim Found Buried in Basement. Her chest squeezed painfully. “Oh, my God, Zach. This is just so awful.”

  “Yeah, and the people who did it lived in the old gray house.”

  “Which sat on the same spo
t where the new house is built.”

  “No wonder the place is so scary.”

  She scanned another article. It went over the story again, listing the brutal details of the murder. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “They tortured her, Zach. They tortured that poor young girl.”

  Zach took the printed page from her shaking hand. According to the article, Holly Ives had been brutally beaten, then raped and sodomized with various household items before being murdered. She had been strangled, then buried in a shallow grave in the basement of the house.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. “This was easier when I didn’t know all the awful details.”

  “There wasn’t as much written about it in the Newspress, since the Martinezes were no longer living in San Pico.”

  Elizabeth looked down at the stack of printed pages. “I can’t stand this, Zach. Even if Hector was the one who killed Holly, how could a woman sit by and watch her husband do something like that? How could she allow it to happen?”

  Zach just shook his head, his eyes dark and hard. “I don’t know.” He set the page he was reading down on the top of the stack. “It looks like Holly Ives’s death is unrelated to what’s going on in the house.”

  “Not directly, at least.”

  “But I keep thinking that if Hector and Consuela Martinez kidnapped and murdered a child in Fresno, maybe they did the same thing a couple of years earlier—when they were living in the house at Harcourt Farms.”

  Elizabeth’s stomach knotted. The notion had been nagging her, too. It made sense. Too much sense. “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

  “And maybe the reason no one can remember a child dying in the house is because no one knew.”

  She said nothing, the terrible notion squeezing painfully inside her. “All right, if that’s what both of us are thinking, where do we go from here?”

  “We’ll need to speak to the Fresno PD, see if there’s anyone still working in the department who might remember the case. If there is, maybe he can tell us something that isn’t in the papers.”

  Elizabeth nodded, dreading the idea of hearing even more gruesome details of the young girl’s murder. Then she thought of Maria and her baby and remembered the terrifying night she had spent in the house.

  “Let’s go,” she said and started for the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “One of the worst cases I’ve ever seen.” Detective Frank Arnold shook his head, his leonine mane of gray hair teasing the collar of his slightly frayed white shirt. “Happened over thirty years ago, but I remember it as clear as if it had been yesterday.”

  Arnold was in his early sixties, but not yet retired, still married to the job, still working long hours, his memory apparently as sharp as it was back then.

  “We’ve read everything we could find in the newspapers,” Elizabeth told him. “Can you tell us anything more about the case?”

  “We’re particularly interested in finding out if the Martinezes were suspects in any other homicides,” Zach added.

  The detective’s head came up. “Funny you should mention that. I always had my suspicions there were, but neither of them ever confessed to any other murders and we were never able to connect them to any other missing persons.”

  “But you think it’s possible,” Zach pressed.

  “Those two were as bad as they come. What they did to that girl—” He broke off, shaking his head. “The papers didn’t print half the details. We didn’t want the facts made public and we were trying to shield the parents as best we could.”

  “It said in the newspaper she was kidnapped from the mall,” Elizabeth said.

  “That’s right. We never found out the exact details. Holly went shopping with a couple of her girlfriends. They got separated…you know how kids are. Her friends never saw her again.”

  “What did the Martinezes say?” Zach asked.

  “They admitted to the murder but never gave up any of the details. We tried to play them against each other, but neither one of them ever said much. We figure Holly might have decided to go home early. Maybe the wife offered her a ride home or something. Consuela was five months pregnant at the time. She probably looked pretty harmless.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Consuela Martinez was pregnant when she murdered that girl?”

  “That’s right. Sick, isn’t it? She never made it to term, lost the kid while she was in jail. That was the hand of God at work if I ever saw it.”

  Elizabeth felt the blood leach out of her face. “She was pregnant, Zach.”

  “Yeah.” He fixed his dark eyes on the detective. “We don’t have any proof yet, but there’s a chance the Martinezes may have murdered another girl when they were living in San Pico.”

  “Oh, yeah? You got a name?”

  “Not yet. We’ve got a general description, that’s about all.” He gave the detective the description of the child Maria had seen, the blond hair and blue eyes, around eight or nine years old, the party dress she had been wearing. The detective made notes on his pad.

  “How’d you come across this information?”

  Zach took a deep breath. “So far, like I said, it’s just speculation.”

  “Based on…?”

  Zach cast Elizabeth a desperate glance.

  “We’d rather not say quite yet,” she told the detective, “not until we have more to go on. But we’d really appreciate it if you’d take a look at your missing persons file from 1967 to 1971. Those are the years the Martinez couple lived in San Pico. If you run across a child who fits the description Zach gave you, we’d really like to know.”

  “I’ll take a look. Doesn’t ring any bells, though. I’ll let you know if I run across anything in those files.”

  Zach extended his hand. “Thanks, Detective. We appreciate your time.”

  They left the Fresno police department, Elizabeth exhausted and depressed.

  “That was even more awful than I thought it would be,” she said as Zach drove out of town.

  “Yeah.” He looked as tired and tense as she was feeling.

  “We’ve got to tell Maria,” she said.

  “If we do, she’s going to be even more frightened than she is already.”

  She sighed. “Maybe we should tell Miguel. If he knows a pair of brutal murderers lived in his house, maybe he’ll move out.”

  “They didn’t live in his house. They lived in another house that was in the same place, and it was over thirty years ago. Even if we tell him about the murder, I don’t think it will convince him. He needs his job too badly.”

  “Maybe we should talk to your brother again.”

  He flicked her a disbelieving glance. “We need something more solid, something that will force Miguel to believe his wife’s story and let her move out of the house. Better yet, something that will convince my brother to let them move.”

  “We need to find out if the Martinezes murdered another child while they were living in the old gray house.”

  “Yeah. One with blond hair and blue eyes.”

  “Then we’ve got to find out if a child who fits that description went missing somewhere around San Pico sometime between 1967 and 1971.”

  Zach turned to look at her. “You know this could all just be some weird coincidence.”

  “It could be. I don’t think it is.”

  “Neither do I.” Zach raked a hand through his hair. “I know a guy…a private investigator named Murphy. I’ll give him a call as soon as we get back, put him to work on this and see what he can find out. In the meantime, we’ll talk to the local police. Maybe they can help.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky. In the meantime, don’t forget tomorrow you’ve got an appointment with Dr. Marvin.”

  “I have
n’t forgotten. I’m supposed to be at Willow Glen at one o’clock.”

  She smiled for the first time that afternoon. “I’ll be holding good thoughts for you.”

  “I was…um…kind of hoping you might go with me.”

  Surprised, she glanced at his profile, taking in his dark skin and lean, handsome features as he studied the road. “I could take a late lunch. It wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Some of Zach’s tension seemed to ease. “Thanks.”

  Elizabeth didn’t say more. She thought of the things Gwen had said, but she couldn’t seem to make them fit with the man who sat beside her, a man who seemed to need her, as Zach had just then.

  She couldn’t keep her hopes from rising. Maybe Gwen was wrong. Maybe Zach wasn’t the loner he used to be.

  Elizabeth knew it was dangerous thinking.

  * * *

  Zach spent the morning chasing down Ian Murphy, putting him to work on finding a missing girl who met the description of Maria’s ghost, then he went over to the San Pico police department.

  He was given the names of a couple of longtimers who had been in the department since the late nineteen sixties. They remembered the old gray house. Unfortunately, they also remembered Zachary Harcourt—or at least the man he’d once been.

  “Officer Collins?” Zach offered his hand to a tall man with a slight paunch and Collins reluctantly shook it. “Thanks for taking time to see me.”

  “No problem.” He eyed Zach up and down, assessing the beige slacks, knit shirt and Italian loafers. “I guess you gave up black leather.”

  Zach forced himself to smile. “Yeah. Did that some time back.”

  “You know, we met before,” Collins said. “Maybe you remember. I was there the night you were busted for negligent homicide.”

  Zach kept the smile fixed on his face, though it took a Herculean effort. “Actually, I don’t remember a whole lot about that night. What little I do recall, I’m trying to forget.”

  The other man moved closer, gray-haired and iron-jawed, a sergeant named Drury, according to his badge. “Heard you were a big-time lawyer now. Fancy firm in L.A. somewhere.”