Flour in the Attic

by Winnie Archer

  Lisette hadn’t answered my question about whether or not her mother had been happy with David. I circled back to it. “Do you think she was happy with your stepdad?”

  She sighed again, this time with resignation. She couldn’t keep dodging the question. “I told you we weren’t really talking much.”

  “You and your mom?”

  She nodded.

  She had mentioned it. “What happened?”

  She didn’t speak for a minute, focusing on driving. Then she abruptly pulled the car alongside the curb, threw it into park, and turned her body to face me. “I’m going to be honest with you, okay?”

  “Okaaay,” I said, drawing out the word. Had she been dishonest before this?

  “My dad, he made mistakes.” She cupped her hand over her forehead, her head angled down. Her chest heaved, rising and falling with her heavy breaths. It was obvious that she was still having a hard time dealing with her father’s betrayal and the fallout from it. “She couldn’t forgive him.”

  “Do you blame her?” I asked. I hadn’t been able to forgive Luke for his infidelity, although I’d done enough reflection to know that I had probably been looking for a way out and had seized the opportunity.

  She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know if I do or not. I wonder if things would be different right now, though, if they’d stayed together.”

  I curled one leg onto the seat of the car, turning to face her. “What do you mean, Lisette? Why would they be different?”

  “After my abuelo died, she started losing it. If they hadn’t gotten divorced, I’d have been there. My dad would have been. We could have talked her off the ledge.”

  It felt like she was talking in puzzles. I struggled to understand what she was getting at. “What ledge, Lisette?”

  “She was turning delusional. Nightmares. Boogiemen. Seeing blood and bones everywhere. She had horrible dreams about my grandfather. Heaven versus hell. She was obsessed. And she was worried about her mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was becoming forgetful. She’d lose her keys. Forget where she parked her car. She thought we’d buried my grandfather, then we’d show her the ashes, and she’d freak out.”

  My mind went back to what David had told us about his wife. Lisette’s words now echoed his. Did Marisol really believe she was developing early Alzheimer’s or dementia? No one could answer that question except Marisol. “Did she confide in you?”

  “She told my brother. Ruben,” she clarified when I raised my eyebrows. “He told Sergio and me, but we couldn’t do anything to help her. She wouldn’t answer when I called. What could any of us do? She was off the deep end with it all. Conspiracy theories and crazy talk.” Her chest heaved again, and she let out an anguished sob. “I was so angry at her for giving up on my dad. I didn’t go to her and David’s wedding. How could I do that to her? How selfish do you have to be to not go to your own mother’s wedding? To begrudge her happiness?”

  She looked at me, imploringly, as if I had some magical answer that could absolve her of her guilt. Unfortunately I didn’t. That was something she would have to figure out how to deal with on her own. “Do you know if she shared all of this with David?” I asked. Although he’d told us about her forgetfulness, he hadn’t said anything about his wife’s nightmares or obsession.

  Lisette turned to stare out the front windshield, her face blank. “She told Ruben no one would understand, so . . .” She hung her head. “I don’t know.”

  I played that over in my head. Marisol thought no one would understand her nightmares, but she’d contacted Johnny. She’d known him since they were kids. A relationship that had lasted that long could have meant that she trusted him not to judge her and to just listen, or it could easily have meant the opposite—that he’d seen this sort of behavior from her before and knew how to, as Lisette had said, talk her off the ledge. Maybe that is exactly what Marisol had needed.

  Or—I came up with a more sinister idea—whatever she was obsessing about involved Johnny. I couldn’t pursue that line of thinking with Lisette, though. She’d lost her mother; I couldn’t in good conscience introduce the idea to her that her father could be involved. Not to mention that I had no concrete idea how he could be.

  Her voice grew quieter and I had to lean forward to hear her. “I could have just let her be happy, you know? Why didn’t I just let her be happy?”

  “I’m sure she forgave you.”

  She wrung her hands, nodding, her expression a mix of shame and regret. “It’s my fault.”

  The poor woman was falling apart before my eyes. “What’s your fault, Lisette?”

  “If I hadn’t shut her out . . . If I’d been there for her, maybe . . .”

  “Lisette,” I said, gently placing one of my hands on hers. “None of this is your fault. You’ll drive yourself crazy, and you can’t change what happened. We all make choices. Your father made his. Your mother made hers. Those choices had nothing to do with you.”

  “But if I’d accepted her and David, maybe she’d have come to me. Told me what she was feeling. I could have helped her.”

  “Maybe, but maybe not,” I said. “You can second-guess what’s already happened, but you certainly can’t change it.”

  Her eyes welled and she squeezed them shut, pressing her fingers into the corners to keep her emotions in check. After a valiant try, however, she gave in to them, breaking down. The tears flowed.

  After a few minutes and my litany of encouraging words to her, she pulled back into traffic and drove the remaining distance to Maple Street. As she pulled up to Mrs. Branford’s house, where I’d directed her so I could collect Agatha, I thought about Marisol and the turmoil she’d been in before she died. The loss of her father had sent her over the proverbial edge. She’d been grief-stricken, had felt alone, and her mind had been playing tricks on her. What had Lisette said? Her mother had been dreaming of blood and bones.

  But as I stood on the sidewalk and watched the piercing red of her taillights disappear into the waning light, a new thought formed in my mind. So far, we had no motive for Marisol’s death. What if she hadn’t been delusional? What if she hadn’t been having nightmares in her sleep, but had actually witnessed something that had spooked her? What if her conspiracy theory, whatever it might have been, was not conspiracy at all, but real?

  She’d wanted to talk about it. She’d reached out to her son, Ruben. And then she’d called Johnny. She’d called him, I thought, and then she’d died.

  New questions came to mind. Why did he wait to share the message with the police? He’d said he was afraid it would incriminate him by placing him at the scene, but what if he was there? What if he’d been seen? Had he decided to share the message in order to cover his tracks to make himself look like an innocent, when actually, he was anything but?

  A shiver wound down my spine. Did the blood and bones Marisol had talked about have something to do with him?

  Chapter 13

  There’s something about the idea of a man killing his wife—or in this case, his ex-wife—that I have a hard time understanding. I turned it over and over in my mind, trying to make sense of the theory that Johnny could have killed Marisol. I spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about it, moonlight filtering through the louvered blinds covering the window. Agatha had curled up in a tight little spiral beside me, oblivious to the turmoil that had prevented me from falling asleep. She slept like a log, moving only when I readjusted her head to stop her light snore.

  No murder is justified. I know that. But a man killing his wife seemed particularly heinous. The fact that Marisol was Johnny’s former wife added distance to their connection. Except, of course, they weren’t distant, because Marisol had reached out to Johnny and had wanted to meet him.

  On the day she died.

  At the location of her death.

  When I thought about perception, I knew Johnny was right to be scared of sharing this information with the police. The messag
e from Marisol made him an obvious suspect. I didn’t want to believe that he could be behind her death. In my mind, it always came down to the children. They’d raised a family together. They had grandchildren. Marisol’s death had taken a toll on her children. It didn’t matter that they were adults. What mattered was that someone they each loved with all their heart was dead. I couldn’t fathom a father choosing to put his children and grandchildren through that pain.

  But, I reminded myself again, Marisol had wanted to meet with him. At the pier. And then she’d died. It could have had to do with David, for all I knew, but somehow I didn’t think so. If I went with my gut, all roads at the moment seemed to point to Johnny.

  At some point, I finally drifted off. I didn’t sleep long before I woke with a start at the clanking sound of a truck somewhere outside. I sat bolt upright, realization hitting. Garbage day! I’d completely forgotten! I jumped from the bed, not taking the time to pull on socks or slippers, and raced to the garage. I pressed the garage door button and headed straight to the corner where the green recycle and blue trash cans sat. I grabbed the first one, using my bare foot to lever it onto its two back wheels, then I spun it around and hauled it down the driveway and onto the street just in front of the curb.

  The hulking city waste-management truck, with its massive pronged lift system, was in front of my neighbor’s house after having made its way down Maple Street. The driver maneuvered the forks of the lift to grip the blue can next door, lifting it up and over, letting the contents spill into the hopper. He did the same for the green can after he pulled the truck forward, dumping the recyclables into a different compartment in the truck’s hopper.

  I ran back into the garage, dragging my second can to the street just as the massive truck lurched forward, stopping in front of my house. I’d gotten the cans out in the nick of time. The driver emptied the cans, gave me a wave and a smile, threw the truck into gear, and it jerked toward the next house on the street.

  Now that my adrenaline had receded to normal, I felt the chill of the cement of the sidewalk against my feet and the cold breeze against my body. I folded my arms across my chest and hurried back inside. Part of me wanted to crawl back into bed and snuggle up next to Agatha, but reason kicked in. I had places to go. People to see. A murder to solve.

  The bottom line was that I knew I had to get out of the house to clear my head. I decided to start by taking Agatha for a short walk at the shore before heading to Yeast of Eden. Olaya was short-handed today, so I’d offered to help for a few hours. It would also give me a chance to fill her in.

  I bundled up in a heavy UT Austin sweatshirt, snapped Agatha into her green and black harness, and drove to the little parking lot near one of Santa Sofia’s state beaches. We headed down the pathway running alongside the cement retaining wall. Beyond the expanse of sand, violent whitecaps topped dark, tumultuous waters.

  The ocean water seemed to reflect my thoughts last night as I’d tried to fathom what Johnny could be involved in that would have caused Marisol to have nightmares about blood and bones. I drew a blank. The guy worked in a credit union. Unless he was involved in the unsavory underbelly of the loan industry, which involved loan sharks and other disreputable people—and did that even exist in Santa Sofia?—then I couldn’t make a connection.

  I tried to move on with my thinking, but then circled back around. Johnny had given me good advice about living in my house for a while before making changes, but then he’d said something odd. A second against my home mortgage was possible, but then he’d said there were other ways to get the money I might need. What had he meant by that? Ways of borrowing money off the books? Separate from the banking system? Could he be involved in something less than aboveboard? Maybe it wasn’t so farfetched.

  I played devil’s advocate. If I assumed that Johnny was, indeed, involved in some sort of illegal enterprise—gambling . . . money laundering. . . prostitution . . . loansharking, then I was also assuming that whatever it was, Marisol found out. Would Marisol have protected him if he was doing something illegal? Would that make her an accomplice after the fact? Or a coconspirator? I didn’t know the legalities in such a situation, but it seemed to me that Marisol would be putting herself in a sticky situation if she’d known something incriminating and was keeping that secret.

  That begged another question, though. What if she wasn’t keeping it secret? Could she have intended to blackmail Johnny? Was that why she wanted to meet with him on the pier?

  Agatha had been obediently trotting along beside me, picking up speed when I did or slowing down when I got bogged down with my thinking and my pace lagged. “If Marisol knew something about Johnny, I don’t think she told David,” I said to Agatha. The guy was genuinely distraught and might be drinking himself into oblivion at this very moment. If he thought Johnny was involved in some way, I couldn’t see him keeping it to himself.

  “But the color of the swimsuit was wrong,” I muttered, remembering what Lisette had said about her mom’s superstition. Agatha looked up at me. Her ears were back, her tail curled happily. “If Lisette is right, wouldn’t Johnny have known about her affinity for the color blue? Could he have just forgotten?”

  Agatha barked in response.

  “Yeah, he might have,” I said, reasoning that they’d been divorced, and who knows what their relationship had really been like prior to them splitting up. He very well may have forgotten about Marisol’s superstition. Or, more likely, he was agitated over whatever it was that she knew and hadn’t been thinking clearly.

  I did an about-face and headed back to the car, anxious to get to the bread shop to talk through this theory with Olaya, because what I didn’t know how to do at the moment was find out what Johnny Morales might be involved in.

  * * *

  More than an hour passed at the bread shop before it slowed down enough for me to help Olaya in the kitchen rather than in the front of the store. The table she used as a desk took up a good portion of her little office, but she’d managed to get a small chair in the room, opposite the desk, which is where I sat. She turned her computer to the side so I could see the screen. “This is the menu for the funeral,” she said as she closed the notebook she’d had with her when she’d met with Lisette at the funeral home.

  I read through the list of baked goods, both savory and sweet, my stomach rumbling. I hadn’t eaten since the banana I’d had during my walk with Agatha. I hadn’t been hungry then, but now I was starving. “I’ll be right back,” I said, leaving Olaya to stare after me while I foraged for something to eat. I returned to the office a few minutes later carrying a plate laden with a stem of red grapes and several slices of a peppery cheese, both of which I’d found in the fridge, and a small baguette from one of the bakery racks.

  “Ivy, mija,” she said, gesturing first to my plate then to the clock on the wall. “You take things too much to heart if you are not taking care of yourself. You must eat.”

  “I know,” I said as I tore off a piece of the bread, added a bit of the cheese, finishing the bite off by popping a grape into my mouth. Olaya was right. I’d been so wrapped up in my head during my walk with Agatha, and then had been in a rush to get to the bread shop, that I’d simply forgotten. That didn’t happen often.

  We both turned back to the menu for the funeral and I read the list.

  Carnitas sliders

  Air-fried shrimp with lemon and chili

  Albóndigas with bread

  Black bean and corn mini tostadas

  Cheese and chili quesadillas

  Asparagus mini quiches

  Baked brie en croûte with spicy fig compote

  Butternut squash and bacon tarts

  Bite-sized scones

  Mini pan dulce

  Lemon curd and strawberry butter

  Olaya was pulling out all the stops for one of her sister’s closest friends. The celebration of Marisol’s life was going to be a feast for the palate. “Baptista’s is doing the carnitas, but the rest? Is that
you?” I asked.

  “Miguel and I, we have divided the items. He is making the spicy fig compote, but I will make the puff pastry for the baked brie. I will make the pastry for the tarts, but he will do the filling. He will do the tostadas and the quesadillas, the albóndigas, and the shrimp, and I will make the breads to accompany them. I will make the scones and the pan dulce, of course. The timing of it all will be important. Your Miguel will be busy today.”

  The tune to the Beatles song “Michelle” suddenly played in my head. My Miguel. It had a nice ring to it. “So will we,” I said.

  She smiled. “Exactamente.”

  My cell phone rang. I dug it out of my back pocket, swallowing the bite of bread and cheese I’d just taken before answering. Emmaline’s voice greeted me. “We’re releasing the body to Vista Ridge,” she said.

  “Funeral’s tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “Any new information?” With the body having been underwater, I didn’t know what other forensic evidence might surface, but I suspected there wouldn’t be much.

  Em confirmed that with a succinct no, then followed it up with a single question that was full of hope. “You?”

  I hesitated. All I had were suppositions and theories, none with evidence to back them up at this point. Until I had more, I didn’t relish throwing anyone under the bus. I did, however, recognize that my best friend had resources that I did not. “Not really, but did you find a will?” I asked, still wondering about the house and the beneficiaries.

  “She had one. Redone after she and David Ruiz married.”

  “Does he inherit the house?” I asked. The theory that Johnny was involved in something illegal was thin. Marisol’s property, however, was incredibly valuable. I hated thinking it could be a reason for murder, but there it was. Money and greed topped the list of motives for killing.