“Would you slow down?” Viv said when we got out the church door. “It's not like we went up there and tore the place apart.”
My conscience was apparently making up for lost time. For years I did a lot of things I shouldn't have, and didn't worry about it much at all. Now I felt like I'd committed an atrocious crime when it hadn’t been even an impressive prank.
“Sorry.” I forced myself to slow down and tried to look not guilty, but how in the world does a person do that? The prospect alone kept my mind occupied till we got back to Viv's car.
I didn't ask where we were going, I just sat back and breathed in sweet freedom. My thigh muscles twitched from all the exertion.
“Wasn't that incredible? It's as if not a thing has changed. That was as smooth as I could ever hope for. Oh, I wish Mac could have seen that.” She turned to me and slapped the seat beside me. “Mac was husband number two, and the best of the lot. He taught me to lift like that. Wasn't that a hoot!”
“Oh, yeah.” I could still barely breathe. I lolled my head against the back of the seat. “A hoot.”
“Did you see how smooth it all went down? That little escapade was divinely inspired, divinely protected.”
“Are you kidding me?” I scooted closer to my door. “God sanctioned you to steal George's keys and go into a place you were forbidden to go? Lightning is going to strike you, and I'm going to get fried, too, because I was with you.”
“Oh, hush. If God was going to strike me down, he would have done it a long time ago. I've certainly given him enough chances.” She sighed with contentment as she careened the Caddy around a corner. “I believe he put into our hearts to go up into that tower. We were obedient, that's the important thing to remember here.”
“If he wanted us to go up there, why wasn't there some kind of clue or evidence or something? I'm as much in the dark as I was before we went up. And now I have bird poop dust all over my shoes.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Viv said, white dentures flashing with her smile.
“I hate it when people say that! That's just another way of saying he makes no sense.”
“Now who's going to get struck by lightning? All I know is, I was obedient, I exercised a long-dormant skill, and it has done my heart good.”
I couldn't say the same. If my heart had recovered from A – the strain of strenuous exercise and B – the shock of a live pigeon flying into my face, it hadn't quite gotten over C – the bells of all hell bonging in my ears, and then G-Ma calling.
G-Ma. I grabbed my phone and called her back.
“I need you to come get your stuff,” G-Ma said, not bothering with a “Hi.”
“What stuff?”
“The stuff you left in the restaurant.”
I didn't know what she was talking about, and I decided I didn't have the time or the energy for this. “Can we talk about this later?”
“We can talk about it when you get here. I need you to come get this stuff this afternoon.”
“This afternoon? Today?” How was I going to get all the way out to Clovis Highway?
“Mario wants to start putting his equipment in.”
“G-Ma, I don't even have a car. I can't come today.”
“You have to, I have to get all this stuff out for Mario. He needs the room.”
I knew that tone – misplaced panic mixed with stubborn determination. The gist of it was, I would be over there by the afternoon, if I had to walk. There was no talking to her when she decided something was an emergency.
“I'm kind of in the middle of something right now,” I said.
G-Ma took a deep breath.
I also knew what that meant. That meant Give Up Now. Just give up. “I'll be over there in a couple of hours.”
She was still talking when I punched the “end” button. I hoped she wouldn't call back, but with G-Ma there was no telling.
“Ugh! That is not what I wanted to deal with today.”
“Luckily, I'm free and the day is young.”
“You'll take me over there?”
“Sure. Got nothing else to do.”
“What about your choir practice?”
Viv waved a hand carelessly. “What are they going to do, kick me out?” She flipped the lever on the air conditioner. “Now, where am I going?”
I pointed her in the right direction.
“After this, we can go visit your connection on the PD.”
“You sound like someone on a TV police drama,” I said. “I was thinking we could do that tomorrow or the next day.”
“What's wrong with today?”
It was sooner, I thought but didn't say, and talking to Bobby was something I'd just as soon procrastinate. “Nothing, I guess.” I couldn't think of anything she wouldn't shoot down. “I'll call him when we get back to my place.”
Again Viv waved. “We'll just stop by the police department when we finish up at your grandma’s.”
“Fine,” I said. “But don’t say ‘grandma’ around her. She doesn’t like it.” I shoved my feet against the floor and braced for impact as Viv narrowly missed sideswiping a Lexus. Stump groaned and squirmed; I had her in a death grip.
We came to an abrupt halt in front of the motel office. It needed a coat of paint. At one point it had been white with blue and orange trim, but it was faded and chipped and just sad looking. G-Ma had changed the name to the Executive Inn eight or nine years ago, in the hopes of catching some of the traveling businessman trade. I hated to think what kind of executive would stay there.
Mario and G-Ma were inside the restaurant when we got there. “All that's your stuff over there,” G-Ma said, pointing to a pile of junk in the corner. “And I can’t have dogs here. This is a restaurant, not a kennel.”
I looked around at the filthy, messy room. Judging by the pile of shredded paper and little black pills in the corner, and by the smell of urine, both mice and cats had been living in perfect harmony for the past several years. Stump was one of the cleanest things in the place.
“Neither one of us is staying. I’m just here to get the stuff.” I rummaged through the junk. “That's not mine,” I said. There was a cracked plastic pitcher with daisies, set of shiny blue and purple curtains painted with gray dolphins, and an old blanket with holes in it.
“Remember you asked me to store this stuff for you?”
I patted my leg and called Stump back from sniffing in the rat corner. Now, there are a lot of things I don't remember, but I think I would know if I ever had blue and purple curtains with dolphins on them. They weren't mine...but they did look familiar.
“This is Mom’s stuff,” I said. “She must have asked you to store it.”
“Whatever.” G-Ma waved a hand the exact same way Viv just had. I was beginning to feel dismissed. “We have to get it out of here so Mario can get to work.”
“Ovens,” Mario said, spreading his arms wide and looking at the space as if picturing it in his mind.
No one seemed to care that the stuff that needed to be moved wasn’t actually mine.
I looked at the pile and sighed. Three big boxes and a couple of little ones. “I think I'll take it all straight to the Dumpster.”
“You can't do that.. Tina will have a fit if you get rid of her stuff.”
“She doesn't want it or she wouldn't have left it here. It’s been three years since she moved out of that house on 22nd Street. Has this been here since then?”
“She'll want it for sure if you throw it away.”
I groaned. G-Ma was right. Whatever I threw out would become Tina's most prized, beloved possession the moment she found out it was gone. There would be no end to the drama.
It wasn't as if I had lots of room to store a bunch of junk, either. I supposed I could scoot stuff around in the closet in my spare bedroom. I'd cleaned it out six months ago when I'd had a yard sale to raise money for my probation payment. I'd netted less than twenty bucks, but at least I'd gotten rid of eight-year-old clothes and books I would never read.
“Have you heard from her?” I asked G-Ma. I knew the answer but I asked the question anyway.
“You're joking, right?”
“If I knew how to get hold of her I could call and ask what she wants me to do with all this.”
“Well, she's been gone, what? Three months? Three and a half? Give it another month or two and she'll be back complaining about how he lied to her and used her and how she hates being used.”
My mother did hate being used, that was a fact. She much preferred being the user.
Her most recent conquest was a convenience store owner from New Mexico who promised her weekends full of skiing and camping and gambling in the reservation casinos. She'd brought him over to my trailer to introduce him one time, a skinny man named Wayne with a round belly, mostly-bald head and jeans with starched creases. Mom had gone on and on about how she was going to help him run his business. I'd kind of felt sorry for him. He had no idea she would refuse to get out of bed after the first couple of days and whenever she worked for him she would surely smoke up all his profits.
I sifted through another box. “Oh, good Lord,” I said, finding a picture of my five-year-old self. My hair stuck out like it hadn’t been brushed in days, and I glared at the camera.
Viv looked over my shoulder. “Ooooh, look at that frown,” she laughed.
G-Ma pushed her way over and looked, too. “Yeah, she was always like that. Grumpy.”
I figured it wasn’t really the time to point out that at that time my father was non-existent, and my mother was negligent and had a string of low-class boyfriends, most of whom could not keep their hands to themselves. “I was not grumpy. I was…lonely and sad.”
“Your own fault you were lonely,” G-Ma said. “You always pushed everybody away. Never did want anybody to love you.”
I frowned, put the picture back into the box, and hefted it to my hip. What-freaking-ever, I thought. The kindergartner was the problem in this whole dysfunctional equation.
I lugged the boxes out to Viv's car while Viv told Mario the story of when she worked in the pizzeria in Little Italy and learned to toss the dough in the air, and about how she'd stumbled onto a mob conspiracy to shoot the mayor of New York and she'd had to flee for her life to Los Angeles. I'd heard that one twice before, only I think one time it had been the governor of New York. Stump trotted after me. I think she was a little scared of G-Ma.
I shoved the dusty boxes into the back seat of Viv's car and said a short prayer of gratitude that Viv wasn't as picky about her car as G-Ma was. G-Ma would never have tolerated dusty boxes in the back seat of her Lincoln. I rubbed my hands against my jeans and headed back inside.
Mario was giving Viv the tour of where everything was going to fit and how many tamales he was going to make a day, and how he planned to expand his menu.
“Come up to Belle Court sometime,” Viv said. “Those old people need some good healthy fat and starch in their diets. The restaurant there only serves baby food.”
Mario thanked her for the tip and got back to moving junk around to make room for his restaurant equipment. My stomach growled at the thought of all that delicious food. It didn't look like there was much hope in me getting any of Mario’s tamales today, though.
“I hear you,” Viv said in response to the growl. “Let's grab some lunch before you go see your friend at the police department.”
“You have a friend at the police department?” G-Ma asked. Her penciled-on red eyebrows made it plain she highly doubted it.
“Just a guy I knew from Idalou,” I said. “Bobby Sloan. He's a detective with the Lubbock Police Department now. He's working the Lucinda Cruz case.”
“I remember him. He was the hotshot basketball player and drove that car with the bird on it.”
“Football, G-Ma. He played football. And yes, he drove a Firebird.”
He’d had a gold one, and he’d driven it around town like a bat out of hell, and I spent about a thousand hours of my fifth grade year dreaming I was the girl riding in the passenger seat, my hair blowing loose and beautiful because he'd taken the T-tops off.
“I think he's stayed here a few times,” G-Ma said, digging through a drawer. “This is all junk. Salem, why don't you carry this stuff out to the Dumpster?”
I did as I was told because I didn't want to talk about Bobby anymore, and I sure didn't want to think about him coming to the Executive Inn. I'd been staying with G-Ma one time when he came in with Carol-Anne Moore to rent a room, and it had broken my heart. I cried into my pillow so loud that G-Ma threatened to send me down to an empty room on the other end of the motel.
Lunch sounded good. I hoped Viv wanted something fried and greasy. I needed some empty calories to fortify me if I was going to be talking to Bobby that afternoon.
“Maybe you should just take your pretentious bony butt and get off my property,” G-Ma was saying when I walked back inside.
Uh-oh. Old lady cat fight. I don't know what Viv said, but G-Ma apparently wasn't having any of it. She took a threatening step toward Viv.
Viv, bless her heart, laughed. I don't think she really wanted to get shot; she was probably just ignorant.
“I'm simply trying to give you some friendly advice,” Viv said. “No need to get huffy.”
Oh, this was bad. First of all, G-Ma didn't take advice, friendly or otherwise. And there was nothing she hated more when she was huffy than for people to call attention to it.
“I was gone for two minutes,” I said, stepping between them. “How could you two manage to fall out in two minutes?”
“This…person thinks she knows all.” G-Ma craned her neck around me and glared at Viv. “We've got everything under control here, thank you very much. So you can take your high falutin’ advice and save it for someone who needs it.”
“It's not high falutin’ advice,” Viv protested. “My fourth husband owned a whole string of Dairy Queens back in the early ‘80s. Believe me, you can pick up some grease-cutting tips in a nasty place like that.”
Oh no. She really did want to be shot. You don't insult Dairy Queen around G-Ma. She believes Dairy Queen is the backbone of the American Heartland's economy and anybody who thinks they're too good for a Beltbuster is just a snob, plain and simple.
“Viv and I were just leaving. Thanks for giving me all that...stuff,” I said, because I really was trying not to cuss. “Good luck with the restaurant. We'll be your first customers.”
“I don't think our food will be good enough for your friend here,” G-Ma said. “She can just stick with the Country Club.”
Viv opened her mouth to say something else so I grabbed her bony elbow and pulled her outside. “Just let it go, Viv. There's no point.”
“Your grandmother is kind of a hothead.”
“Actually she's about the most level-headed one in the family. But yeah, when she thinks she's been insulted she can fly off the handle.”
“And she has a chip on her shoulder concerning people with money.”
“Of course,” I said as I buckled myself in and wrapped my arms around Stump. “Everyone without money does. Where's lunch?”
All the talk about burritos and tamales had us choosing Taco Pete's on Thirty-Fourth Street. They had an outdoor patio that I could take Stump to. The stair climbing had loosened up my jeans, so I ordered extra cheese and sour cream on everything. Just in case I didn't feel quite fat enough to go see Bobby. For Stump I got a soft chicken taco, because her vet thinks she needs to lose some weight, too.
“So maybe you shouldn't just come right out and ask him what evidence they have,” Viv coached around bites of her taco.
“There's no way this is going to work.” I squeezed a packet of hot sauce onto my burrito.
“Salem, you have to think positive. Do you want to solve this case or not?”
I drew my head back. “Solve the case? What are we, the Hardy Girls?”
“If you don't want to solve the case what are you doing here? Why were we poking around in the tower looking for evidence?”
“I just want to help Tony, that's all.”
“And wouldn't finding the real killer accomplish that?”
There. Somebody had said the words out loud – find the real killer. An overweight recovering alcoholic on probation and an old lady who lived in her own fantasy world were going to solve a crime that trained detectives couldn't solve.
Sheesh.
“We could do it,” Viv insisted, pointing a tortilla chip at me. “Lots of people would talk to us who probably wouldn't talk to the police.”
That could be true, but still... “It would help if I knew which questions to ask.”
“The Lord will provide.”
“Like he provided a way for you to get George's keys back without getting caught?”
“God is on the side of the oppressed, honey, and if your husband is oppressed and we’re trying to help him, God will help us help him. I know it.”
I was glad someone had faith. As for me, I'd had a few too many unanswered prayers lately to be feeling the faith thing.
“You ready?” Viv stood and rattled her keys
I looked up. I still had a burrito and a taco burger to finish. Stump darted looks between the keys and the unfinished food on our tray, torn between her two loves – car rides and eating.
“You can finish in the car.”
I pictured myself sitting across the desk from Bobby with a wiped-off blob of refried beans on my shirt. He'd have his finger over his mouth but he’d be thinking, “No wonder she's so fat. What a slob.”
“What's the rush?”
“I'm motivated. Pumped. The Holy Spirit is speaking to me, telling me to move fast. Let's go free the oppressed.”
The Holy Spirit should tell her to take a Xanax, I thought. I sighed and stood, grabbing a couple handfuls of paper napkins from the dispenser at the walk-up window. Since leaving food uneaten was my other option, I decided to take my chances with the blob of beans. Stump trotted at my feet, her eyes locked on the food wrappers in my hand.
On the way to the police station, I was struck with inspiration. “The Holy Spirit is telling me to take another direction.” I panicked the second the words were out of my mouth. I shouldn't be falsely claiming the Holy Spirit; that was as likely to get me struck by lightning as any of Viv's claims. But I decided it was still the better alternative to seeing Bobby just yet. “Tony's aunt is a friend of mine. She’d tell me more than Bobby would.”
“Why would she know anything?”
“That family is really tight. Whatever Bobby and Mrs. Solis know, Sylvia knows. They don’t really get along, but they see each other all the time. She'll be able to fill us in on the gossip about Lucinda Cruz, too. We couldn't get that from Bobby, I guarantee.”
“Tell me how to get there,” Viv said.
Sylvia owned a Laundromat over on 21st Street, a block or so from the church. Only a tiny blob of beans leaked from my burrito and it didn't show too bad. Stump chomped my finger trying to get the last bit of taco burger but I knew she didn’t mean to.
Tango, Sylvia’s chocolate miniature poodle, threw a high-pitched fit as soon as I walked through the door. He was Sylvia's baby. She couldn't stand to be away from him, and she tipped me ten bucks every time she had him groomed because I always got him in and out as fast as I could. She didn't know that I was only too happy to do so; Tango was a high-strung little pain in the butt.
“Salem, hi!” Sylvia's broad face beamed when she saw me. She wore an oversized red smock with blue and yellow parrots on it. “Tango, hush! Look, he's so happy to see you.”
It was warm and humid in the Laundromat, with dryers humming and a TV blaring cable in the corner. A woman stared at the television while a toddler fished at something under a row of plastic chairs with a stick.
I faked a smile and patted Tango's curly head, trying to get my shins out of his reach. No such luck. He jumped up to my knee and began to dig with his hard little claws.
“Tango, you sweet dog you,” I said through gritted teeth. Man, he was going to hit bone in a second. I bent and tried to pet him and push him away at the same time, Stump cradled once again under my left arm. She silently bared her teeth at Tango but didn’t lunge, thank goodness.
“We need to ask you a couple of questions about Tony.” Viv folded her arms across her chest.
I stepped in front of her. Sylvia wasn't going to be very forthcoming with that kind of approach.
“I asked Viv to bring me by here so I could find out how he's doing.” I played the evil sister card. “I tried to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“That old bat. She never changes. Come on, let’s go back to my office and get caught up.” She led us to a small room at the back of the Laundromat.
The quickest way to a man’s heart might be through his stomach, but I’ve found that for a woman, a common enemy works faster than pound cake.
“Have a seat.” Sylvia scooped a basket of laundry off a wingback chair and cocked her head toward Viv.
Sylvia was one of those full of life people. She's always the first person to talk, the first to say hello, the first to compliment you, and says your name three or four times when she talks to you. She was nice to be around, and yet it made me kind of tired, too. She was really intense.
“How sweet that you want to help Tony. I always knew you had a good heart, Salem. I hate that things went so badly for you and Tony, but I knew you had a good heart and no matter what anyone said, you never meant to ruin Tony’s life.”
“Ummm…thanks.”
“How did Josie seem when you talked to her?”
Shrieky. Borderline maniacal. Standard Mrs. Solis. “Very upset. Scared for Tony, mad at the police.”
Sylvia nodded and reached for a glass of iced tea sitting beside her chair. “I know it has to be so hard for her, dealing with this. Bless her heart, Tony’s always been such a good boy and not given her any trouble at all, except for –” She threw me a quick glance and looked away. “She’s just not used to dealing with anything like this.”
I figured if anyone would be used to dealing with trouble from their son, it would be Sylvia. Her boy Rey was the same age as Tony and had been nothing but trouble as far back as I could remember. If something was broken or stolen or vandalized, you could bet Rey had a hand in it. If you were inclined to play a game of Compare the Kid, Josephine Solis won hands down over Sylvia.
“Of course, who would be able to deal with this? It would be difficult for anyone to believe their son was guilty of murder.” Sylvia took a sip of her tea. “Would you like some ice tea?”
“No, thanks. Do you know why Tony is a suspect?”
Sylvia nodded. “Something about something of his being found there. I’m not sure what, but he was there that night, at the church. The security guard saw him go in.”
“But if his company cleaned the place, wouldn’t that give him reason to be there?”
Sylvia shrugged. “From what I understand, he wasn’t usually there. He went there occasionally to make sure everything was being done right, but he didn’t go there every day, just his workers.”
“That still doesn’t seem like enough to charge him.”
“Well, I don’t know the whole story, of course –” and she gave a look that made me think she did indeed know the whole story and a few other things besides – “but there’s something about motive, like I said –a personal belonging at the scene of the murder, but I don’t really know. I know it’s hard to believe he’d actually do that, but you know what they say, crime of passion.”
“It’s impossible to believe,” I said. It was kind of getting on my nerves that Sylvia wasn’t more adamant in Tony’s defense. Not that I wanted her to be like Mrs. Solis, but still… “Why would he have a motive to kill that girl? Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, but Tony was very fond of Lucinda. He had taken to her, you know.”
“And?” And I had no reason at all to be jealous. I had never felt anything except attraction and maybe a little fondness for Tony, and certainly I didn’t have any claim on him now, even if I was still his wife.
“If she rejected him, he could have been very hurt by that. People do strange things when they’re hurt.”
“Did he tell you he was in love with her?” I held my breath.
“He didn’t have to tell me. It was plain from the way he cared about her.”
“Tony’s a very attentive person. You know that. It doesn’t necessarily mean he was in love with her.”
“And we’re not really concerned with whether or not he was in love with the girl. We just want to know if he killed her or not,” Viv said.
Oh, yeah. That. “Are the police saying it was a crime of passion?”
“Sweetie, I don’t really know. I’m sure justice will prevail, no matter what Josie rants about. If Tony didn’t do it, he won’t be convicted.”
“Tell that to all the falsely convicted sitting on death row right now,” Viv said.
Death row. I rubbed the chill bumps on my arms. “I wish I knew exactly why they thought Tony did it. Maybe somebody could help him if they knew more…”
“Well, he does have a lawyer, and I think they have an actual investigator.” She tossed a quick look from me to Viv. Did we look as stupid as I felt like we did?
“That’s good,” I said. Stupid-looking or not, finding proof myself would make me feel better. As much as I didn’t want to, I asked Sylvia to tell me more about Lucinda Cruz.
“The paper said she lived in Mexico until a few months ago?”
Sylvia nodded. “Actually she’d been up here before, when she was twelve or thirteen, but her family had to go back and then she stayed down there until a few months ago. Her third cousin is mine and Rosie’s aunt, and she called and said Lucinda needed a job, so Josephine asked Tony to hire her.”
“She’d been working for him for a few months?”
Sylvia shrugged. “I guess. Not very long.”
“Was she a good a worker?”
“I suppose. I didn’t really know her that well.”
“You said it was clear that Tony cared about her.”
“Yes, you know how Tony is, very attentive, like you said. He made sure she took care of herself and got plenty of rest, and didn’t lift anything too heavy and didn’t mess with any of the chemicals they work with. He was really concerned about the baby.”
“Baby?”
“Didn’t you know? Lucinda was pregnant.”